“…the motorcade the president took onto the pool yesterday to review the project was heavy enough to have sprung the newly-repaired joints between the concrete slabs that make up the pool bed.”
Like an old alley cat spraying everything around him with his stink.
A few thoughts came together yesterday while I was composing a response to a reply to one of my comments. The following is an updated version of yesterday's reply.
Human culture evolves. Everything gets better if it evolves in a positive direction. In that case, evolution was adaptive. Everything gets worst if it evolves in a negative direction. In that case, evolution was maladaptive. We can’t stop it from evolving, but if we know what we are doing, then we can end maladaptive evolution.
Cultural evolution is sometimes adaptive and other times maladaptive because the underlying thought process is sometimes adaptive and other times maladaptive.
There is a simple 3-step adaptive thought process … Step 1: Trust. Step 2: Verify. Step 3: Return to Step 1 and repeat. An adult conversation is a manifestation of the adaptive thought process.
There is a simple 3-step maladaptive thought process … Step 1: Assume I’m right. Step 2: Blame someone or something for what went wrong. Step 3: Return to Step 1 and repeat. Assuming someone doesn’t know what they’re talking about and not bothering to verify the assumption is a manifestation of the maladaptive thought process. Rick Sender is a product of the maladaptive thought process.
Our culture evolves adaptively toward excellence or maladaptively in the other direction. In the words of Dr. W. Edwards Deming (1900-1993), “Survival is not mandatory.”
As MLK would say, we need fewer thermometers and more thermostats. Our collective understanding of the undesirable current state is important, insufficiently accurate, and much less important than our collective engagement with the path toward the desirable future state.
The cause of the undesirable current state is too many people forming the (bad) maladaptive thought habit by not deliberately practicing the (good) adaptive thought process. In the desirable future state, everyone deliberately practices the adaptive thought process until it is the only habit. But don’t take my word for it.
Almost two and a half millennia ago, Aristotle (384-322 BC) said, “We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.”
Sam Alito claims to be an originalist. I claim that anybody that’s not a nobody knows that Sam’s a big phony.
Don’t forget the words of Patrick Geddes (1854-1932), who said, “Think global, act local.” And remember when Anonymous said, “Nothing is more local than the person in the mirror.”
Well written, but when just the nine black robes of SCOTUS can replace all the white robes of the KKK's, and they anoint their "Grand Wizard" immunity from their lifetime powers (that their Grand Wizard gave them), it's hard to see how "the person in the mirror" can do much.
Luckily, neither God (nor the Pope) grants immortality, and DonOld is old, increasingly addled mentally and physically, scoring only 33% on all his tests. It's hard to imagine America's elation when Lucifer returns to Hell. We will need a ballroom for that event.
Like the Hungarians danced when Orban was voted out.. MAG(N)A should learn a lesson when they see the results of their blind loyalty to the party. Of course, if that is what they want, means they no longer have to think or make decisions for themselves. They are like the sheep being herded by border collies and farmer who are old, senile, partially blind and deaf. Yes, it's time to go to the slaughterhouse. It will be a fun truck ride with all of your friends.
Attributing all of the fascist actions to trump is a big mistake, he couldn't accomplish anything without the help of the GOP (the Fascist Party), either with Congressional votes or staying silent and avoiding having to vote so there is no record of their support for every fascist action carried out in government. The corrupt right-wing Justices on the Supreme Court on the other hand, have repeatedly voted on their support for Fascism.
If I assume I won't catch a fish, and I act based on the assumption that I won't catch a fish, then I won't catch a fish.
If the problem is SCOTUS (and it is, but it's only six and not nine), then that's not the only problem. However, if that problem becomes the excuse, then the problem is no longer SCOTUS because the problem at hand emerged with the making of the excuse. Fortunately, that's an easy one for all of us to solve. Stop making excuses.
It's hard for the person in the mirror to see what can be done when the person is looking everywhere except the mirror. And there's another problem with an actionable solution.
It wasn't 9 black robes! It was and has been only 6!!! 6 people and less than 300 in Congress and less than 60 in the Senate and 1 malicious, spiteful, evil human in the White House that are taking away the rights of 340 MILLION PEOPLE, to govern themselves.
Not just “take the throne” but still in positions of power throughout government and the corporate/oligarch world, not to mention the Seditious Six on SCOTUS, working their masterpiece: Project 25. What is currently wrong in our country is a Hydra and I still hope We The People will be the Hercules who cuts off and buries the serpent’s heads. Just the demise of one won’t change the disaster the U.S. has become.
He came in and fired everyone who knew anything. Decades of institutional knowledge out the door. Anyone who refused to kiss the ring. Intelligence analysts for the Middle East. Generals, admirals, commanders. The only requirement for a cabinet position is complete unquestioned acceptance of his positions. Entire departments evaporated. Heritage Society email says he has enacted about 2/3 of the items specified in the 2025 plan, all in a bit more than one year.
It wasn't 9 black robes! It was and has been only 6!!! 6 people and less than 300 in Congress and less than 60 in the Senate and 1 malicious, spiteful, evil human in the White House that are taking away the rights of 340 MILLION PEOPLE, to govern themselves.
So you are calling the Supreme Court a bunch of KKK sympathizers and over one hundred people like that lie? Did it ever occur to you that maybe the SC are fighting all the illegal and immoral laws that prior administrations have imposed without any regard as to their effect on taxpayers? I'm more than thrilled they have gutted the insane enviromental protection agency and their trillions of dollars. Did I hear Al Gore say that we are in for a future artic abyss? You just can't make this stuff up; now we are supposed to freak out about a future of increasing colder temperatures? Get real.
Laurie, please go take your medicine! You, again, are making statements without proof- EPA has helped to control some pollution by showing the science behind what they studied & confirmed. Could you at least take today off? Your rage is showing. Troll.
Care to tell us what the "illegal and immoral" laws are? Maybe you should go live near a coal yard. Take a peak at the water and air.
I guess you don't read the science section of anything that details that the oceans are rising, and water is getting warmer, and the largest iceberg ever is gone.
Maybe in your insignificant part of the world there is no threat to you, but then again I guess you've never flown into LAX to see the purple smog above the city.
I’m sorry for you, Laurie. I remember driving from Michigan to Chicago. The highway went through Gary, Indiana. The sky would be gray with pollution. Then there were also foundries in our little town. They closed YEARS ago but the land was so polluted nothing could be built on it. When they cleaned out the small river near these sites they took out enough trash to lake a pile that was the size of a football field and two stories high. Because of the EPA these lands, air and water had to be cleaned up and protected. It is curious that you would celebrate pollution. What are you/we going to leave for future generations? Remember, there is no Planet B.
RS has been a troll on HCR for a long time. I have responded to his maladaptive comments before. But I have taken the attitude that there is no cure for stupidity and it’s really not worth anyone’s time or energy to respond to him. It’s like pissing into the wind (sorry if that offends anyone).
I blocked RS a long time ago, so I don’t have to endure whatever he is up to now. I recognized his type after some exposure- his goal is not to argue for a point of view; it is to garner attention, period. Don’t give it to him, and he won’t exist. Your life will be better for it.
I have encountered a few people, a very few people, for whom negative attention is as valuable as positive attention. Maybe somehow even better. They will continue to get in your face as long as you respond. Your response is their drug. Cut them off.
It's so clearly the case. Ignore, ignore. But I taught public school for years and have no trouble recognizing what's obvious. I'm guessing many here can't (or won't) figure this out for themselves. Yet it's as predictable as the sun coming up in the east. Do not engage. Deprive them of their reason for being here.
Not sure what you think teaching is, but good teaching isn't about bombarding your students with how you see the world, but asking them to describe how they see it with tools you help them find.
Physician heal thyself. In RS, you're seeing an advanced case of a bad disease. But how wide spread is that disease? Who tests positive and who tests negative? What's the test? And once you have those answers, how do you triage the patients? What if your test comes back and you're told that you test positive? I'm not saying you do, but let's find out what's going on first, and then draw some evidence-based conclusions.
To solve a problem you first identify the problem and then collect data while analyzing what others have tried you then test different hypothesis. It’s not what you believe and think it’s what you can analyze and understand. The reason this administration is restricting and destroying data is simple to understand.
When young engineers were supervised by Taiichi Ohno, he would stand them in an "Ohno circle" marked with chalk on the factory floor for hours upon hours until they could see past their prejudged conclusion about what was really going on. When things fall apart, our first impressions are almost certainly wrong.
Deming took his ideas to American car companies and they wanted to piece meal his ideas Only Toyota could see what he was offering. I see Demings ideas and systems as a way to solve a large amount of problems in the world.
Very funny coming from a party that hates the country they live in. What data are they destroying or restricting? This has been the most open administration in our history; you just can't stand the fact that America is winning and your sour outlook and the outrageous "politics" of the Dems party are what is destroying America. Open borders will be the downfall of your party, whether you admit it or not. Why are the Dems doubling down on what lost them the last election? Nobody but Dems want criminal illegals walking around our neighborhoods and killing our women and children, all in exchange for a few illegal votes. Shame on all of you.
I blocked that little scumbag months ago. It’s true, ignorance is bliss, and not seeing his hateful spew every morning makes the day just a little bit brighter.
No, he's here this morning. But you can have fun when you see one of his replies by comparing it to the 3-step maladaptive process. You can't tell me my description isn't accurate because it is.
To paraphrase Bob Marley, we must free ourselves from mental slavery. None but ourselves can free our minds. Like all great artists, the adaptive process was habitual for Marley because he kept deliberately practicing it until it became an (almost) automatic reflex. Repeatedly practicing the maladaptive process turns its user into an automaton (hence, mental slavery, MAGA, etc.).
He's actually s**t all over the original comment just above this thread in the "oldest first" read; he showed up 2 hours ago (for measure, your comment was 4 hours ago), although it looks like James found him earlier than that.
I blocked RS somewhere around Inauguration Day. Thank heavens!
But yesterday I had a different annoying Substack technical issue for the second time this week when I could not locate a half dozen or more comments made by others to things I had posted. What a colossal waste of my time scrolling through hundreds of comments repeatedly. Notice of the posts arrived in my e-mail just fine but when I clicked on the show button it failed to disclose it or what thread it jad come from. Obviously a technical glitch but beyond my capacity tosolve or bring notice of to anyone , , ,
Help ???? What do I do when they occurs again? It will effectively kill my future engagement in the discourse . . . It would be akin to hunting harbor rats in the dark of night at the old the Jamaica dump with a 22 rifle minus a sighting flashlight taped to the barrel . . ..
To take Aristotle seriously requires A Thought Process! “”Almost two and a half millennia ago, Aristotle (384-322 BC) said, “We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.””
Aristotle also counted courage as an important virtue. A little reading would identify the excess and defects associated with all virtues Aristotle identified. The republicans once claimed these virtues.
Amazingly some people, including those sitting around his cabinet table, require more schooling in history, political science, ethics, philosophy, and so on; that is unless they are happy with the state of affairs. Apparently, they are.
To take anything seriously requires a thought process. I'm just saying that, when you observe carefully, it's the same underlying process as millennia ago. And that's because its standard equipment formed in the brain during fetal development.
It's just a tool. A hammer is a tool. You can use it to create something of lasting value, or you can use it hit someone over the head. Yesterday, MAGA used it to hit Virginia over the head.
My point about thermostats versus thermometers is that the pro-democracy movement needs to focus much less on the undesirable current state and much more on the how to get to the desirable future state. Conversely, MAGA is throwing everything and the White House kitchen sink toward its efforts to keep the pro-democracy movement focused on thermometers.
James, if by "Yesterday, MAGA used it to hit Virginia over the head" you refer to the Sup. Ct. decision, I am very familiar with the court and it is neither MAGA, nor BLM, nor anything other than a bunch of high end lawyers interpreting the law. To say that race as a basis for voting districts is unconstitutional is hardly revolutionary. As for what MAGA means in tthis, or any context for that matter, is not clear.
I might have been better off using a different term, but if you have a valid counterargument to my comment, then I'll need some help because I don't see it.
Well, in the spirit of candor, I didn't understand yours either:) But as a general matter, while Trump (or MAGA, whatever that is). clearly has autocratic impulses, I don't see him as a threat to democracy, which is what I infer to be your argument. Does he test the limits of executive authority? Yes for sure. Does it he it more than did Clinton, or Bush, or Obama or Biden? Maybe. But they all have since Roosevelt, in one way or another. I just perceive Trump as a bizarre guy with a broad array of imprecise personality disorders who makes some excellent and bold decisions (and usually executes them imperfectly) and also some really bad ones, which yes, he takes to extremes.
But I read your comment re: Virginia to imply that the court acted for political reasons, and think there is no basis for that. They just banned race discrimination. I thought that was usually seen as a good thing. If some see it as bad, its for political, not legal reasons.
I would love for some group of scholars to undertake a study of the correlation between homeschooling by rightwing/hyperchristian parents or schooling in the “Christian” charter schools and the emergence of so many “adults” who are not capable of rational thought.
Linda, I have one sibling, a sister six years my junior. We had the same evangelical parents who remained married for their entire lives. Due to my parents' financial circumstances, I went to public schools and secular college.
When my sister came along, my parents' finances improved sufficiently that they could afford to send her to a "Christian" school. She graduated and attended my parents' alma mater, a church-affiliated college, where she received a teaching degree. She married a boy she met in college whose degree was worthless in the real world. He could only get jobs that didn't pay enough to support his household, but he forbade my sister to get a paying job. Rather, he kept her pregnant and in the kitchen until their five kids were nearly adults. My sister's teaching degree was only good at another "Christian" school where she got a job. That whole family is a bunch of Trumpers.
I have worked for several corporations and reached a level of corporate directorship, but learned that "even if you win the rat race, you're still a rat." So I downsized my career for the sake of my sanity, becoming a creative director at an ad agency. Now, I own my own firm. I loathe Donald.
Cindy, give your heart two aspirin and call me in the morning. 😁
I appreciate your kind thoughts, but it really hasn't been that much of a burden. At an early age, I recognized that they were on the wrong path, and I would have to find the right one for myself.
When my sister was born, she turned our family upside-down and frankly, I never liked her. But even though she was disruptive, she knew how to manipulate my parents, and that she did (the stories I could tell!). So I just let them do their evangelical thing and I went on my merry way. My sister and I have never spoken, except at funerals in the family.
When my mom died last fall, that severed any connection between my sister and me, so we won't speak or see each other again. The only regret I have is that it makes some of my friends sad and/or uncomfortable, because they think I've "missed something." I think one can't miss something one never had.
Let me put it this way…. Because my family lived in the boonies when I was little, I was sent into town to a catholic boarding school. By the third grade I was perfectly aware of the outright propagandizing to which I was being subjected. It made me a lifelong agnostic. By the time I was 14, and able to go to a public school, I found that world history had been rewritten over that summer. I learned that people of different races,cultures or religions were just ordinary people and that perhaps we “ nonbelievers” were not damned to everlasting hell after all.
Shellyj, They are corrupt grifters, greedy, power hungry, and absolutely the worst choices for the positions they hold. Plus they are A number one sycophants, heaping praise on that cancerous monster.
Excellent, I especially like your final quotes from Aristotle and Geddes. We the people, think global and act local. It seems fitting that we are at the cusp of 250 years as a democracy and we are experiencing the strongest effort to dismantle our democracy since the civil war. Hope lies in the actions of each of us to see ourselves in the mirror and move toward justice.
We're now led by corrupt, dishonest, greedy, self-serving people put there by greedy (wealthy) people in alliance with racists and white Christian Nationalists who lack critical thinking skills, who are ignorant of history and/or who suffer from Amathia, a form of willful blindness. In other words, they need to believe so fervently that something is true that any facts or reason to the contrary are beyond their comprehension. This is not uncommon, Many believe that humans have souls and that there is life after death though there is no proof of either. The fault in large part is owing to the fact that our public and private school systems failed to teach critical thinking skills, history and civics to its students and our Christian churches failed to teach Jesus' essential message: respect for others. One wonders, for example, how Trump voters rationalized away his attempt to overthrow the 2020 election on 1-6-2021, ignoring the fact that if in power a second time his effort to end free and fair elections might succeed. What were they thinking?
I believe I have a soul. I believe I have been part of teams that have spirit. By spirit, I mean that the team was a whole that was greater than the sum of its parts because its parts worked together like three musketeers (all for one and one for all). By soul, I mean that the "me" team is a whole that is greater than its parts for the same reason.
You say there's no proof of a soul. That's like saying there's no proof of team spirit. And you can say that if you're looking for "proof" in a photograph of the team, but then I'd say compare the performance of different teams. I've been on teams with spirit, and I love it, and I've been on teams with no spirit, and I feel like one of three stooges (all for one and that one is "me"). Likewise, if you want to see proof that people have soul, watch Bruce Springsteen. And yes, some people have no soul, like six US supreme court (so-called) justices.
But again, please and thank you ... fewer thermometers and more thermostats.
As a member of two wind bands and a chamber group, I can attest that the "whole is greater than the sum of the parts" in many contexts. My tuba part of 30 measures of sustained C's two below middle C at the end of "Hobbits Symphony" is an exercise in perseverance, and takes at least two players to make it work. When the other parts are added, the auditory visual of Gandalf sailing away creates something amazing.
Wonderful to see a nickname "Gandalf" irst annointed some thirty years ago at a weekly sauna on Cape Rosier, ME. I always resonate to unanticipated delights like that! Thanks, Ally ;-)
American screenwriter John Rogers said, "There are two novels that can change a bookish fourteen-year old’s life: The Lord of the Rings and Atlas Shrugged. One is a childish fantasy that often engenders a lifelong obsession with its unbelievable heroes, leading to an emotionally stunted, socially crippled adulthood, unable to deal with the real world. The other, of course, involves orcs."
He was correct about my bookish fourteen-year old's life. My novel involved orcs.
Seriously, you are saying that claiming that there is no soul is the equivalent of claiming that there is no such thing as team spirit? It's a false equivalency. Some members may have "team spirit" and some may not. Using that line of reasoning, some have souls and some don't? It just is what it is, far beyond human comprehension. If there is a God, what existed before God? How did God come to be? And if there is a true loving, just and all-knowing personal transcendental God, how does one explain the likes of Hitler, Stalin, Putin and Trump? Why would God allow such cruel, worthless, despicable humans to gain power over others?
Richard ... I won't say your comment is a manifestation of the maladaptive thought process (Step 1: Assume I'm right. Step 2: Blame someone or something for what went wrong. Step 3: Return to Step 1 and repeat.) I will say please excuse my brain for jumping to the potentially erroneous conclusion that your comment's pattern and the adaptive thought process pattern (Step 1: Trust. Step 2: Verify. Step 3: Return to Step 1 and repeat.) don't appear to match.
Here's something for you to check into. It's a great service that Melanie Trecek-King, a biology professor at a Boston area community college, has put together: thinkingispower.com. It's on the process of implementing the critical thinking processes.
After 10 years of Dumpism, I am so sick of that ignorant and egomaniacal bullshit artist that Voltaire's famous comment about the British execution of Admiral Byng comes to mind. 'Occasionaly the English shoot an admiral pour encourager les autres.' It would be nice if a future historian could say that Anericans removed Dump to restore decency and honor to our public life, and perhaps to restore sanity to the nation.
-my deep thoughts, continuing to rely on fossil fuel infrastructure is maladaptive and the root of the evil in the US. We’ve reached peak fossil fuel as a species, maxed out the amount of good we can get from a gallon of gas and not accounted for the bad. The good; moving heavy objects uphill without slaves or horses, space exploration, modern medicine, increased living standards for average people, electronics and communication, useful plastics, etc. The bad; changed/polluted atmosphere, plastic pollution, extraction pollution and INCOME INEQUALITY, etc. Over the next 1-2 decades, possibly sooner if we think of atomics, we have to decide if we are going to survive as a species.
Sally ... with one exception, I agree with your comment. I would not have used the "root" term in the way you have used it because it implies that you've done for the environment what Jonas Salk did for polio victims. I'd say our use of fossil fuels is only a symptom of the "disease" (although I agree it's a really bad symptom).
I'm suggesting the root cause is our failure to respond to each other reflexively the way God (or Truth, or Nature, or whatever name one prefers) loves us, meaning that to respect each other as equals needs to be an automatic reflex.
James Talarico often speaks of the lesson his grandfather taught him: being a Christian is not easy, but it's simple. I don't identify as a Christian, but I do identify with Talarico's story. I identify as a scientist, and I say being a scientist is not easy, but it is simple. If I disagree with someone, rather than just assume that they're wrong, I test my assumption.
True ... but if the environment is ideal for that creature and the people who want him to leave also want to keep contributing to that environment, then Trump is a problem, but not the current problem.
I agree. We need to put someone in charge of that. Let's make a deal: I'll promise not to nominate you if you promise not to nominate me. But if you're wondering who I'd nominate, my opinion is that Pete Buttigieg would be the best choice.
Wonderful. Thank you. And “think global, act local” is one of my favorites. It’s what I was trying to explain yesterday about a liberal arts education. It’s what leads to precisely that, particularly if it’s enhanced by parents and public schools. Of course there’s nothing like underlining it with Aristotle who knew a thing or two and could write it!
James R. Carey: Can you explain to me how STEM education relates to liberal arts education other than in the sciences? Music is disappearing, for example. It’s far more important than a lot of people realize. Too many people think they cannot sing. It’s as depressing to think of as not learning to speak! (I auditioned more than 50 college students for a musical—I was a graduate student who had sung in school assemblies since third grade and in church choirs and school choruses since I was 10— finding only one student who was tone deaf.) Music is the best cure for depression. As I write, realizing that it beats any pills. At 92, range lost, but can still many days manage pitches that please because at 58 I had an excellent teacher who encouraged me to sing the Rachmaninov “Vocalise.” To rise to the high C# with all the breath and beauty I could summon was a joy that could come to many if we continued to sing in public school as we did in my small poor one, during WWII. (We did math and biology, chemistry, physics, civics, and world history too!)
It is why there is an "A" added to STEM, which stands for Arts.
We live at opposite ends of the musical spectrum. I JUST wrote a comment to James upthread where I describe our two person tuba section holding 30 measures of a C two below middle C (two ledger lines down in the bass clef staff) in Hobbits Hymn. You cannot do it alone, and by itself is nothing; with the rest of the group, it is the image of Gandalf sailing away.
James R. Carey: Can you explain to me how STEM education relates to liberal arts education other than in the sciences? Music is disappearing, for example. It’s far more important than a lot of people realize. Too many people think they cannot sing. It’s as depressing to think of as not learning to speak! (I once
I can explain my understanding and hope that does the job. To me, STEM = education minus the arts = EDINO (education in name only). Conversely, STEAM = STEM + the arts = restorative education.
STEM is the misguided assumption that doing the wrong thing more efficiently is a good thing. STEAM is the evidence-based conclusion that it's more effective and efficient to have faith that right makes might; and in that faith, to dare to do our duty as we understand it.
Rick Sender is an Elon Musk Nazibot, a tool to sway people who have not evolved into people capable of informed, logical, and rational thinking.
As AI and Social Media evolve and become more difficult to detect as artificial, the more people will be manipulated to believe the irrational. They will give up all power to the ultra-rich, specifically the Nazi tech Oligarchs, who have financed the Fascist GOP and unless the vast majority of people wake up, starting with the midterm elections reject all GOP candidates and stay focused on installing candidates at every level of government who will work to make sure power will be totally in the hands of the people by amending the Constitution to remove nonpublic financing from politics at every level and requir politicians to rely on voters to award vouchers to fund their campaigns at every step of the political process. And set rules for procedures in Congress that now rely on norms and the integrity of officeholders. Civics education should be mandatory throughout a students primary and secondary education.
Considering how many voters chose to vote for trump in 2024, knowing he is convicted for fraud 34 times and the publication of Project 2025. And how many chose not to vote at all, I don't have much hope that we will be able to rescue our democracy. But it is worth the effort.
"In this age, in this country, public sentiment is everything. With it, nothing can fail; against it, nothing can succeed. Whoever molds public sentiment goes deeper than he who enacts statutes or pronounces judicial decisions." — Abraham Lincoln (1858).
"There is a simple 3-step adaptive thought process … Step 1: Trust. Step 2: Verify. Step 3: Return to Step 1 and repeat. An adult conversation is a manifestation of the adaptive thought process.”
That’s all fine and good, if the actual verification process were as simple as that statement makes it out to be.
You wrote: "That’s all fine and good, if the actual verification process were as simple as that statement makes it out to be."
Here's what I would have written if the shoe was on the other foot: "My issue is that your statement seems imply that the verification process is simple whereas every process I've been involved ranges between 'very' and 'extraordinarily' complicated. Please address my issue."
Baseball is hard, but it's simple. Likewise, verification is hard, but it's simple. To paraphrase Jimmy Dugan, verification is supposed to be hard. If it wasn’t hard, every species would do it. The ‘hard’ is what makes it great.
Baseball can be both simple and very difficult to play depending on the level of play, but verifying what happens in a baseball game is not hard at all. It may be great fun to debate what happened in this game or that, but in the end, such debates are far more for the fun of it than because verification is difficult.
What happens in international relations/economics, the interior machinations of the Supreme Court, the politics of electoral process at al are not.
The complexities of an interconnected world are far more difficult, even for veteran practitioners who do not speak each others’ language or practice each others’ cultures, hence the variety of opinions that surround those areas even among those who do.
For those who are charged with making decision in the voting booth, the time and effort needed to make wise decisions based on a sufficient understanding of those complexities, it can seem nearly impossible, even if one had the time or the inclination to thoroughly educate oneself, which many American voters, caught up in the necessities of here and now do not.
That's a good challenge, James. In the words of Russell Ackoff (1919-2009), "Our ability to solve problems is limited to our conception of what is feasible."
Is it feasible for me to expect people who interact with me directly to deliberately apply the adaptive thought process (trust, verify, and repeat) while deliberately avoiding the maladaptive process (assume "I" am right, blame, and repeat)?
Is it feasible to trust the education system to add adaptive behavior pattern training to its standard curriculum at every grade level, and then apply the same behavior pattern to continuously verify the effectiveness of the training?
Is it feasible to expect people who identify as (fill in the blank) to behave like (fill in the blank) by applying the adaptive process (Christians, scientists, lawyers, politicians, capitalists, journalists, etc.)?
Is it feasible to expect people who have a basic conceptual understanding of the difference between the good and bad processes to get the idea that supporting a candidate with the emotional maturity of a badly enable five-year-old for the office of the most powerful human on Earth was not such a good idea after all?
Is it feasible to expect that by the end of the current decade it will be significantly easier to address the issue you've identify in your comment?
If you want my answer, then it's yes to all of the above.
"That's a good challenge, James. In the words of Russell Ackoff (1919-2009), "Our ability to solve problems is limited to our conception of what is feasible.””
Does that mean what is feasible in terms of our physical, psychological, financial, etc. ability to solve problems or feasible in terms of our ability to conceptualize all the potential aspects of the problem itself in advance of attempting to solve it, or feasible in terms of our ability to even define or to understand the problem itself?
Such a stupid, repulsive and disrespectful thing to do. There was absolutely no reason to drive on the reflecting pool like that and that’s exactly why Donold did it, because he’s an impulsive, arrogant, tactless lunatic.
When you’re a celebrity, they let you do it. You can do anything, drive anywhere. I just popped a tic-tac and moved on that Reflecting Pool like a bitch. Just grab it by the joints…
Yesterday, President Trump dropped decades of UFO files, promising Americans “the truth about aliens.” The headlines screamed “Disclosure!” and the public gazed skyward, imagining interstellar diplomacy. What they actually got were blurry dots, orange orbs, and heavily redacted memos that might have been labeled “Use Your Imagination Here.”
Trump himself advised, “Have fun and enjoy.” And enjoy we did—mostly the spectacle, not the science. UFO enthusiasts speculated wildly, journalists squinted at 1940s photos, and the rest of America looked up while inflation, war spending, and political chaos marched on.
No alien autopsies. No Martian embassies. Not even a green glow in a government memo. What this revealed was Trump’s uncanny talent for distraction. The real extraterrestrial phenomenon? The ability to make Americans ignore urgent domestic crises in favor of indistinct blobs in old photos.
The files were political theater at its finest. Attention abducted, crises ignored, reality TV masquerading as interstellar revelation. By the time anyone noticed the photos were decades old, the next headline had already appeared: “Aliens? Wait, What About the Debt Ceiling?”
No aliens confirmed. No spacecraft cataloged. The closest encounter of the fifth kind was watching Twitter explode. Yet the spectacle succeeded perfectly: America’s gaze fixed on the heavens while chaos below remained entirely terrestrial.
Thank you, Mr. Trump. Your cosmic red herring reminds us that the real alien life in America isn’t 93 million miles away—it’s right here, in plain sight, and it comes with a press secretary.
The tRump regime’s incompetency, grift, lies and greed continues to astound me. One would think that by now I'd be immune and numb, but for whatever reason it still slaps me in the face.
ICTT yes: but the stuff the Felon is spraying is coming out of his diaper, not merely the ejaculations of an old randy demented creature (I refuse to debase cats of any variety by associating them with him). I would also like to point out that, as I mentally predicted--and something HCR did not mention because perhaps it was so far down in the news headlines--there was also a Friday Stock Market Manipulation announcement that Russia and Ukraine had agreed to a 3-day ceasefire. Which I do not believe, because the past ones--like the ones Israel claims occur--were merely an opportunity for Putin to bomb the crap out of Ukraine and then complain when the Ukrainians retaliate. And, predictably, the markets did go up. I find the whole manipulation of the equities markets to be disgusting, but I decided long ago to adopt Voltaire's clever use of the stock markets of the 18th century: he got rich and used the money to support the lawsuits of victims of the very organizations he profited from. For me, this is a useful way to upend capitalism through capitalism.
He can't walk any more. I understand. I'm 80 and don't walk as well as i did but i do manual labor 9 hours/day to buy food and gas and this FAT ass and his FAT, lazy, drunken entourage couldn't walk 100 yards to prevent a million dollars damage. My sympathy is thin.
It apparently never occurred to this “ master builder/developer that the beast and his additional +\- 300 lbs of blubber might do damage to the newly sealed pool. God forbid that he get his fat ass out and walk over to observe the unnessary vanity project. That “golden statue” should be thrown in the bottom of that pool and submerged to rot away just like he is doing.
But at least with an ally cat there is the chance it might have the possibility of being nice. Case in point, I had this big ole tom cat show up at my door one day, I called him Gordo he was so big. He had an abscess on his head & since there is an invisible sign over my door that says "Sucker lives here, all strays welcome!", I couldn't take him to the vet he did allow me to treat his wound & let me feed him. He hung around for a while & I thought I would be able to adopt him. But when I went to pick him up he dashed away & disappeared. But still he was nice in his own way. trump does not have the capacity to be nice, he'll he doesn't even have the capacity to be tolerable!
Nothing could make me more determined to vote than some partisan rural circuit court judge overturning my vote (along with those of 3 million of my friends) on a technicality — by a vote of one. Fuck that nonsense.
Turnout remains everything. Too big to rig. Too big to be gerrymandered into irrelevance. Too important to look away from.
Despite everything, it’s still “the economy, stupid.” And money remains the secret sauce. Our coffers are empty. No time for self-pity. Blue wave still approaches. Let’s get to work…
In the meantime, happy 100th birthday, Sir David Attenborough!
JL, it is the economy, but we need to make it even more than that! The protection of our rights as Americans being taken away by Trumplandia, at every turn to make us totally subservient/enslaved to them is in the works. We need to tell those in gerrymandered districts in the south that they are being used and that the manipulators are using their hatreds of others against them to make them comply with whatever stupid idea they come up with at any given moment. Once they harm the other groups, they will come after the rural and suburban white folks as loafers, illegal landowners, or whatever comes into their addled fascist brains. Their beloved Donald Trump is at the center of what is about to happen to them even though his dementia won't let him remember any of it and he will lie to say it didn't happen. The basic Democratic platform has to be universal, then added to in each district to meet the needs of the people there: universal healthcare, a living wage for every job, end of tariffs, automatic voter registration upon citizens turning 18, fair voting districts independently drawn, court reform at all levels, fair taxation without loopholes for the rich, significant funding for renewable energy and dealing with global warming, clean air and water everywhere, protection of our public lands, strong support for our public schools, separation of church and state, reinstatement of supports for diversity-equity-inclusion, full rights for differently able-bodied and LGBTQ persons throughout the country, rebuilding strong relationships with the world particularly our allies, reinstating US Aid and other international service organizations, improvement of public transportation, and more based on what a committee of strong progressive Democrats see as necessities. People all over the country need to be encouraged to VOTE in every single election, not just the ones of high interest. We need people to make calls and texts, knock on doors of all sorts of people and actually listen to their issues, get people registered to vote, get billboards up wherever possible that present parts of the Democratic platform, flood social media with the positives of the platform and who the candidates are who support it in the district, hold regular press conferences to let people know what Democrats federal and local are doing for the people and what they are opposing and why. Call out the corruption, maybe 2 points of corruption a week so people won't be overwhelmed, call out the tech bros who are only for themselves and what they can get their AI to do that can and will do harm to the American people. We can do this! We have nearly 6 months to get this going! Let's skip the Democratic infighting and make this happen!
In early April I filed a verified complaint with the Attorney General of CA, ROB BONTA, attacking trump's attack on early mail-in voting which is an electoral process controlled by the states not the Feds.
Less than 1 week later, my CA AG, Rob Bonta, outdid me 22 times over by getting together with 22 AG's across our country & filing a lawsuit in Massachusetts on behalf of ALL early mail-in VOTERS in every state.
I did that for the Ohio primary, as I was able to vote at the election office in the county building in Dayton. I was coming back from attending my niece’s confirmation in Chicago. I will vote early for the midterm election as well.
That’s a good thing. I am admitted and fully licensed in Ohio and several times worked as a Democratic election observer to make sure the supplies and ballots were available and voters did not face excessively long lines or attempts to challenge their right to vote. One of my friends and former coworkers runs a local polling place in the next county over.
Bryan, good for you. But CA is not TN, where the governor, legislators and every high-level administrator lives to serve the Orange God. If trump ordered Lee to murder every third person in TN, he would do it, and fast.
What I found was Tennesee’s abusive revenue day for over the road truckers. When passing over Mt. Eagle the signs directed every truck into the rest area atop the pass. Once slowed down a DOT agent would hop on the running board and declare an outright revenue day. Safety? I really didn’t believe the stories about departmental widespread fraud in southern states until confronted with it. My truck was new out of the box and I was a proud yankee boy. Dumb proud yankee boy. I left several hours later sans 400.00$. The next time they sprung the trap I asked the guy what would be the cheapest fine I could get away with. Very congenially he allowed me to declare my small horn was not working for a mere $35.00. I graduated with honors. Ohio was next then Wisconsin, and California, finally South Dakota. Eventually dynamite solved South Dakota while California was caught on hidden cameras. No recourse in Ohio and I quit after Wisconsin. Such is the tale of the outlaw trail. Recruitment proceeded to the prisons who’s denizens had no such sensitivities.
I wonder if they do that in Virginia. I have never seen so many tractor trailer trucks on the highway in my life. Must have been at least a 5:1 ratio. At one rest stop I counted 18 trucks stopped. Virginia could clean up.
Bryan, Kudos to you and the others who got your AG and the other AGs to bring the suit, a righteous suit that I hope will win in court because it is truly critical! Trump (OK, Trump's handlers in the white house toddler pool) is trying to destroy our government so their rich white male buddies can take over and steal our country blind. That is not legal, but nothing they are doing is really legal, they just have bought enough judges and justices as well as Republicans in legislatures across the country that few are standing against them, and they were bought cheap. We need to find legal ways to get this whole Trumplandia mess out of office, maybe impeaching the whole regime for treason against the American people. I think we have a lot of exhibits from every corner of the insanity to make our case: the AIers coached and corralled by Musk to Johnny Roberts and the SC 6, to everyone in that toddler pool, then Trump who actually has no clue what is going on, but will mouth whatever comes into his head, recently, a whine on the word "sea." Well, thanks for being one of those standing against them and having that stance picked up by some folks in power.
Ruth, Ruth! You need to get over your frustration with the system. Impeachment is a waste of mental effort. First, you can't "impeach the whole mess of them" at once.. each impeachment is a separate event. Second even if an impeachment could be made in the House, there is NO POSSIBLE WAY to get 67 votes in the Senate needed to actually remove anybody. We all need to vote Democratic and get back control of congress. But we waste our breath and our time with impeachment.
Bryan, as corny as it sounds I always felt a kind of pride walking into the local school gymnasium to vote. I loved the whole process. Greeting acquaintances, carefully marking my ballot, placing the card into the automatic vote counter machine. I felt a little taller walking back to the parking lot.
This year, even though I plan to work the polls on election day, I will vote early to try to make sure my vote counts. Although in my state the greater number votes democratic.
Oregon has voted by mail for almost 30 years. I miss going to my polling place to cast my vote. My first vote was in the May, 1976 primary election, where I cast my vote for Jimmy Carter, and for the local library levy (others I know, those I remember). Oregon went to full vote by mail after almost a quarter of eligible voters requested mail in ballots.
Marj, yes, there is something special about voting. I vote early now too, but I like to visit the polling place and bring treats for the workers and the folks outside who give information about their candidates.
Ruth, may I make a suggestion? I read you yesterday and had trouble following. Today, likewise. Could you please break your long comment into paragraphs? It’s so hard to read long prose without breaks. Thanks.
I will let you know that sometimes it is difficult to do that on Substack as the software will sometimes run paragraphs together. It depends on what device you are using (phone, tablet. Laptop, desktop)
It is the economy because at least 34% of the country (and we must assume at least 34% of the "failed to vote" 80% of the voting eligible population) want segregation and the termination of equality legislation. The economy hits us all (well, except the people who are given more money than they can possibly spend in a normal person's lifetime). You are correct that we need to stop "democratic infighting" (I use "circular firing squad") and we are all paying for gas that has increased exponentially in the past few months in all areas of our lives.
Western States Plywood, Elk River mill. Diesel 10 cents per gallon to log trucks delivering loads. Port Orford Oregon 1964. 10c written by hand in red paint on gravity flow tank, signature and amount please record in log book. Keep in mind that was the mill price only for trucks delivering. In town it was just under .30.
Ally House, yes, it is the economy because we tell people that is the only thing that matters to them when there is so much more. Most things do relate to the economy, but fair elections, providing critical services, universal healthcare, ending corruption are all really important so need to be emphasized too and if necessary, show how it ties into the economy.
The state doesn’t have to follow an unconstitutional ruling. You’re right that everyone has to turnout to record numbers, but Virginia also needs to fight back against this decision. They don’t need to comply in advance. It sounds like the Virginia AG is thinking along these lines. Even Hakeem Jeffries’ comment alludes to this as well. Another very very relevant Christopher Armitage article (written in January) on this subject: if the court went against the constitution, the ruling doesn’t need to be followed.
The red state gerrymandering is not seeking voter input. Tennessee drew and approved a new map in two days and Louisiana is stopping an election in progress to redraw their map. Can someone explain why Virginia can’t just go ahead and draw a new map to be approved by the legislature and governor?
No such thing as too big to rig, and that's the point. As long as you continue to believe that voting is the viable solution and its just that "not enough of the right people showed up" then you aren't organizing real solutions that actually threaten government power.
America has never liked cheaters and Cheeto is always looking for ways to cheat to win.
Trump has never paid the consequences for most of his cheating, lying, grifting and stealing. The emoluments clause of the US Constitution is a joke as are several other Amendments.
Our system of checks and balances means nothing if the corrupt Republicans in the current majority refuse to act as a check on the current egregiously corrupt regime. The orange menace breaks the law in plain sight, and the Republicans just shrug their shoulders, like so what.
Exactly, and both the Republican dominated House and Senate have decided to rubber stamp whatever Trump wants. They think this is why we have them there.
Geek, I estimate the law-skirting started about 20 years earlier. An excerpt from the Wikipedia article about him:
"Trump was a millionaire in inflation-adjusted dollars by age eight.
Trump attended the private Kew-Forest School through seventh grade. His father enrolled him in the New York Military Academy, a private boarding school, from eighth to twelfth grade. The academy pushed students into sports and taught the imperative of winning."
Many stories have been written about Donald's cheating in school and paying others to take his tests. And yet, with all that cheating, Wharton professor William T. Kelley was quoted saying “Donald Trump was the dumbest goddamn student I ever had.” Hence, Donald's extraordinary efforts to conceal his school records.
He took some action, I presume legal in nature, to prevent both Fordham and Penn from releasing his academic records. I too think that others probably were paid to take his tests and write his papers. This would have been much easier to do in the late sixties-early seventies when he was university age. And when he went to work for the Trump organization, whom did his father select to mentor him but the very nasty, dishonorable Roy Cohn, master mafia mouthpiece.
No. We still can operate within our Constitution and law. Yes, we need to be aggressive, but any hints of "real solutions" (violence? Civil war?) are not viable. Every single special election has shifted blue. They haven't stopped those. We are here because people didn't show up to vote in 2024, or refused to vote for Harris because of purity tests. We can overcome this through our votes. THEN we can institute broad and aggressive changes to the system.
Don't just vote: Revolt. Revolution is what's needed and at this point, it's possible that nothing short of a revolution will return us to (or return to us) government of the people, by the people, and for the people.
It seems that we are already involved in a peaceful revolution. No Kings keeps growing; non-violent pro-democracy activists are everywhere. Every revolution encounters obstacles, but keeps pushing. We are on our way.
At some point, perhaps we Democrats will watch the Vigilantes Inc video at gregpalast.com and start thinking about ways to keep another round of cheating from occurring from Vigilantes (I have suggestions). Perhaps the governor of Virginia could declare that the new map will be used, citing the red states that have gerrymandered without a vote, and the many instances of Trump ignoring judicial orders. The party needs leadership from smart people, who are capable of bending the rules as Trump has to win. Unfortunately, I don't see that happening, but I am not plugged in to what the leadership is doing. Perhaps all the blue states should gerrymander without a vote! Has that been considered?
I am beginning to think that Dems can't continue to behave as if all the laws and rulings pertaining to governance, like the Virginia ruling, must be followed. The Red states are operating by their own rules made up as they go. Dems cannot win if we play by the "old" rules.
If we do that we lose. Period. Violating the law is a criminal act and even a governor can be charged with sedition.. "but what about them?" What about them? The enemy is in charge and they are going to violate the law repeatedly, we know that. But unless we are willing to accept the consequences of doing the same, we will all go down in defeat. No, we MUST continue to act as if our Constitution and our government and our laws mean something even when Trump is violating them all. Because when they no longer mean anything, we have lost anyway. Violating our own laws is a self defeating action. Even if it is for a noble cause.
ILLEGAL remedies. Go read that post again. I can’t even begin to think what kind of “non-voting” violent remedies the poster was implying we should use.
We are being "ruled" by a Tryanny of the MINORITY. A ruthless, racist, White nationalist MAGA minority. At most 25%-30% of Americans strongly approve of the MAGA agenda. 60%-70% disapprove. Regardless of gerrymandering, the inhumane TRUMP/MAGA agenda gives us the REAL opportunity to bring many hard working Americans back to the inclusive, human agenda of the Democratic party. The contrast couldn't be greater. FRET LESS DO MORE!! WIN!!
"Abusing every loophole" is the fig leaf effort of this repulsive regime to appear as if they are law abiding. Finding or inventing executive privilege loopholes is the sole purpose of legal advisors in this Administration and it makes a mockery of the rule of law.
I read on BlueSky that the Virginia Legislature has unrestricted ability to set a mandatory retirement age for the state's Supreme Court Justices. As I understand it the majority Justices making that ruling are all over 54.
That sounds like there is an actionable window to overturn that decision!
[ I am a North Carolina resident deeply offended that the NC Supreme Court redecided (after a partisan GOP majority of Justices was elected) that a five-months-old decision to prod the legislature to fund schools according to the state constitution, was inappropriate, and reversed it.]
That's why we need to get rid of the electoral college. trump won several states only by 1%, yet he gets all of their electoral votes. Basically (in my mind) all of those other votes don't count
At the risk of sounding simplistic it seems to me that the very first priority of a Democratic administration is to work with Congress to set up the Justice Department as a completely & permanently independent entity. Smarter minds will have to figure out the reporting structure but it is increasingly clear that none of the 3 branches of government can ever again be in sole control of Justice. Note that the Department of Justice was not dictated by the constitution.
It's certainly among the Top 5. And Barack Obama agrees with you -- apparently we need to codify the rules so that a President can never usurp the nation's chief law enforcement office to serve as his private solicitor.
"Despite everything, it’s still “the economy, stupid." And "Top 1% taking 90% of the Wealth" and "Corruption." Whoever opposes Repbulican candidates, simply explain to the voters that voting them will not help themselves, but hurt economically. Gerrymandering may not matter. Truth could bring the win.
So Bush II's hobby war cost about $3 trillion? And what did we get for our money? Don't let a Republican anywhere near the US treasury. If Democrats "tax and spend" for the public good, Republicans run up the debt, and make the richest richer, and most of us poorer. Weird that they manage to sell that.
Nothing to see here folks, just another forever war started by another clueless Republican President.
The story that really gets my goat, is the Sean Duffy story. All of the airlines will lose billions this year because of Kegbreath's and Trump's idiot Iranian War and what does Duffy do, he takes a 7 month paid vacation.
I refuse to fly domestically because of Duffy's incompetency. Fortunately, we can drive a few hours to Montreal and fly anywhere in the world, except of course the US. And thanks to Trump, I can drive across the country and it only costs me 75% more than it did two months ago.
And we are facing missile shortages, which is one of the many things Trump and Kegseth failed to plan for in their foolish attempt to distract the public by launching an illegal war in Iran. The most powerful missiles cost $15m per missile and take some time to build.
Missiles are part of old school war. Ukraine is winning thanks to drones. Not saying missiles aren't needed ,but they are no longer the most important tool in the toolbox.
Yes! Your comment needs to be amplified. Old skool Donnie and old skool Petey are spending billions of taxpayer dollars on old skool military platforms to lose wars they start.
Meanwhile, Ukraine is destroying old skool Vladimir's military with smart, cheap drones. Of course, it takes clever personnel to deploy those drones.
Old skool Petey is ridding himself of all those clever personnel because they're not white and/or don't have penises.
Oh! But Kegsbreath loves his ability to use our military to make things go BOOM! Never mind that he is leaving this country vulnerable to attack and subjugation by any hostile actor who is not as f^@$ing stupid as our band of morons and thieves.
HRC-Hillary Rodham Clinton- made a remark during her 2016 campaign against the felon, that some of his followers (the ignorant racist homophobic ones) were a “basket of deplorables.” Taken out of context, it was damaging to her.
It's the sort of mistake I have made all my life. Some brains are prone to that. To me, it's not so big a deal to me, and computers help, though it can sometimes sow confusion.
Thank you, Emily. I was also puzzled. Not to tell someone else how to write their comments, I would think that given whose forum we're on, it would be advisable to avoid an acronym that is easily confused with the initials of our host.
Imagine, Anne-Louise, if instead of "deplorables," Hillary had cited humanities.
We already then had a wealth of great novels, memoirs, histories, films, songs, and other arts in touch with our working classes who so outrageously and for so long had gotten the shaft from our predator, dehumanized elites.
Sadly, pathetically, Hillary belonged to those elites, and had no awareness of either our humanities or our working classes so many of those humanities so well described.
Nah. She just made a few missteps that cost her. She didn’t listen to campaign advice. She stupidly used nongovernmental computer to do gov business. Yes she rightfully called them deplorables. But that became their battle cry. Many people revenge vote during presidential election having no interest in intellectual decision making. My opinion. We unfortunately deserve those who we elect.
You could say that. Trump was a con from birth like his father. It’s was inbred. And we, collectively, swallowed it. I’m afraid the worst is yet to come.
Yes and fools like my sister voted against HRC. When I asked her why she said 'Benghazi'. Knowing she only listens to talking points she had no reply when I asked her what about Benghazi?
Phil, HRC had the best pedigree for any person running for President in my lifetime. She is female. This country is unwilling to elect a female as President.
And HRC is bright. She and Bill are an enduring pair because of their mutual intelligence and patriotism. Both have contributed more to US than they will get credit for if we do not survive the current challenges.
Agreed, Ally. Saw her in Richmond, VA, Capitol Square, 1992, doing Bill’s brief speech because he had lost his voice. Spotted her as a midwesterner, solid as a rock. The recognition of her expansive intelligence came later. Intelligence is not hugely valued by American voters.
Yeah, and I have wanted to know how much money is President Voldemort getting for selling pardons to white collar criminals? I’m not convinced he is pardoning the people merely because he wants to. Voldemort is a transactional person and can’t think in any other method.
Yes Kathy, even if it takes a century, we should investigate every transaction the scumbag president and his family was involved in. Necessarily, the sooner the better so we can deposit all that money into the Treasury department and use for the good of the people.
I must admit to being very, very frustrated with those who look at the outrageous Republican hypocrisy regarding gerrymandering (it's legal for Republicans to force it through without the consent of the governed but Democrats can't do it under any circumstances) and say "it's okay, we'll fix it with a blue tsunami in the midterms". Personally, I want Democratic "leadership" to pull out all the possible legal stops to push back *now*. The Republicans have shown they will go well beyond playing hardball and break all the rules in their effort to enforce their fascist kleptocracy.
It's time for Democrats to fight like this is the fight of our lives and of the life of our democracy. Because *it is*!!!!
"(it's legal for Republicans to force it through without the consent of the governed but Democrats can't do it under any circumstances)"
Kinda the whole Republican schtick. Meanwhile, if I understand the Robert's court, it's not OK to fix an election based on racism, but it is OK to fix an election to insure the the party based on racism wins. Sounds dodgy to me.
Exactly -- the intended racist result was A-ok, but ensuring representation based on race is a big No-no. And then he had the chutzpah to say the Court was not partisan?? Seriously?
This SCOTUS is an unapologeticly Republican “court”. They, like most Republicans say that they deplore legislating from the bench, and that it is a practice done by Democrats, all the while legislating in the most egregious way to further their antidemocratic agenda.
It seems the problem with the elected Dems is the same problem experienced by all of us: divided attention. The Steve Bannon plan to exhaust the populace with a continuous shower of excrement has to affect the electeds as well, and there's only so many of them. As others have recommended, "divide and conquer" -- ie, certain small groups have to focus on compartmentalized projects, such as the Epstein files. Otherwise we are like stampeding wild animals on the plain, going hither and yon driven by panic. But Dem leaders should be handling that division of labor. Perhaps they are, and it's not visible to us?
They need to fight back alright. It sounds like Virginia AG is considering options. If Dems sit back and say.. ‘that’s it, we just need to turn out the vote’, that is complying in advance. This is a very relevant article (written in January) arguing that if the SC rules in an unconstitutional manner, their rulings should not be followed.
Thank you. While many of us turn off the news because of the unbearable stress of watching democracy slip away and corruption grow like a cancer, you persist. Please take care of your own wellbeing. For everyone else, how do we organize? If there are good webcasts to join or other actions please advise, thank you! 🙏🏽
Frederick Douglass before his death in 1895, was asked by a young man for advice on what to do with his life. The advice was whispered, “Agitate! Agitate! Agitate!” We must unite as One People, organize and agitate. Do so within your Congressional District to assure your Representative represents you. A good read is “Rules for Radicals,” by Saul Alinsky. He was a master union organizer. Knock on doors in your local area and talk with neighbors. Organize together with one or two others: every revolution in history began with two or three people working together. Get involved with regestering new voters: Democrats. Assure voters in your district know how to vote and get the vote out. Reach out to family and friends also. Attend rallies with creative picture signs edited with a few words only thus making it more readable. For a rally you and your group can organize an indictment with people testifying with researched concise memorable lines alerting the public and press of specific bad deeds resulting from corporate deregulation which have been destructive of our economy, lives and Earth. Focus always on growing in numbers: use word-of-mouth, handouts, technology, social media, and 60 second YouTube videos to reach out to others. As Alinsky said, “Do what you do best!” Network with other groups near you so that if a flash rally is needed then more of us can be there. The goal is to go big with 35 or more persons in your group and hold District town hall meetings inviting your district Representative, or request a meeting in their office also with your group.
Thank you for the book recommendation. I actually do most of what you have advised! ATM am looking for a national or regional campaign to jump into. One that United a mass of people who are looking to take action . Again I appreciate your advice
Not just register, but give the civics lessons that appear to have been eliminated in our public(and some private) schools. These kids need to know why it is their responsibility to vote, and to be Informed voters!
We’re experiencing the greedy desire of the mega-rich persons of the world and their corporations to control the world. They’re using the divide and conquer strategy to make little ones out of big ones. The reason is taking over smaller and less powerful governments one at a time is easier than attacking large powerful and rich governments. The most recent “Fortune Global 500", an annual ranking of the top 500 corporations worldwide, includes 138 headquartered within the USA. Many companies based abroad also operate extensively in the USA. A significant number of these 500 companies are large multinational corporations whose financial influence is comparable to that of the USA government.
In 2020 the United Kingdom (UK), withdrew from the European Union (EU), a political movement called “Brexit”. The Conservative Party of the UK, the “Tories” which are the corporatist fascist there, were the primary party delivering Brexit. Now most people polled in the UK feel Brexit is a failure and 55% + say it was wrong to leave the EU and they would support rejoining.
This week a corporatist fascist group in Canada, the “Alberta Prosperity Project”, are seeking to separate Alberta from Canada. They turned in more than 300,000 signatures (only 178,000 needed) in support of putting the referendum on the ballot. They say “sovereignty for Alberta holds the promise of economic prosperity, political empowerment, cultural preservation, greener energy, and an enhanced position on the global stage.” Unlike the UK which is surrounded by ocean, Alberta as a State would be landlocked thus having significant economic problems by increased cost in exporting and importing of goods. Right now the Conservative Party has a significant edge among registered voters in Alberta. If they win then the people of Canada would need to vote on the issue of a constitutional amendment to allow secession. All this should be a major RED FLAG to us.
All three branches of our government are clearly involved in this corporate take over of the world. The USA and it’s allies are being divided by tariffs and the Iran war. In the USA they are dismantling our Federal Executive Departments. The Roberts Six with their gerrymandering decisions are inciting States to attack voting rights of groups, thus individual persons. With their Citizens United decision they increased powers of mega-rich persons and their corporations to control elections. Thus downsizing the Federal governments and giving States more power to control whose votes count the most. The number of “Red States” controlled by these corporatist fascist must be a prime motivating factor for Democrats to win the “Swing States” this year, in 2028 and henceforth. The same is true for the single candidate swing districts in all States. UnitedWeAmend.org.
Unfortunately, the horrible stories from earlier in the week, like the cover-up of our bases in the Middle East being destroyed will all but be forgotten by Monday.
Trump is helping to encourage the Alberta secessionists, and the Canadian government would be within its rights to stop in. Western Canada, particularly Alberta, has had some weird right wing populist movements in its history. Muskrat’s history is rather relevant here. His grandfather Joshua Haldeman, had a long history with Canada’s extreme right and antisemitic Social Credit party. Haldeman saw no future for people with his views in Canada, so he, his wife, and their daughter Maye left Canada for South Africa, then under the rule of the apartheid creating Herstigte Nasionale Party. Haldeman died in 1974 when a small plane he was flying solo crashed.
Yeah , we thought that the Tea party and MAGA stuff was too stupid to gain any popularity also. Never underestimate the willingness of any population to embrace their worst instincts! And never underestimate the willingness of certain people to take advantage of that intentional stupidity.
We survived the much greater threat of Quebec separatism. Which is still a thing. So I can’t get too excited over these Alberta weirdos. They don’t have anything like the popular support the Quebec separatists had.
Yes, that’s exactly what he did. The New York Times has a photograph of the act of desecration on its main page. And Andy Borowitz has a photo of the Fatted Golden Idol at Mar-a-Lardo with a gaggle of fundamentalist pagans ooh-ing and aah-ing around it, like the apes in “2001: A Space Odyssey” in front of the Monolith.
It's probably covered in gold Rustoleum spray paint from Home Depot. Just wait until the pigeons poop on it and they have to clean up the statue and the paint comes off.
HAL definitely comes to mind when you contemplate AI, the tech-bros’ lust for power, and if you are familiar with Kubrick’s film “2001: A Space Odyssey.” It was based upon the novel by the late British born novelist Arthur C. Clarke.
Trump is the quintessential representation of "white trash." He has no class, the values of a snake-oil salesman, thinks he's the smartest person in the room when he's usually the dumbest and has no decorating skills whatsoever.
More like "bourgeoisie" than white trash. He is one of the nouveau riche that "old money" folks despise. He loves tacky and gaudy things. No taste, no class.
I concur, Signe. Truth is, Donald's ancestors were never quite as poor and ignorant as the expression "white trash" applies, although Grandpa Friedrich stooped pretty close with his pimping. Mary Anne was low-born, but none of her folks lived in caravans that we know of.
When considering the Trumps, I always think of Hyacinth Bucket (pronounced boo-kay) in the Brit Com "Keeping Up Appearances."
It’s used in ‘Gone with the Wind’ several times so possibly originated from the devastation and depredations that many Southerners faced during the Civil War and its aftermath.
Would have to say there have been a few white trash presidents already though, like Andrew Jackson and George W. Bush.
Wikipedia has a lengthy article on the origins of the term, but I'll just paste DuckDuckGo's AI summary:
"The term "white trash" originated in the early 19th century, first appearing in print in the 1820s, and was used to describe impoverished white individuals, particularly in the Southern United States. It reflects historical class distinctions and societal attitudes towards poor whites, often seen as morally inferior or lacking in social status."
He does have execrable architectural taste. He wants his ballroom/bunker come hell or high water, and is ignoring the court orders and judgments based upon his arbitrary decision to demolish the West Wing without following proper procedure. He also wants his tasteless Arc de Trump no matter how much people revile the very tasteless idea. After grifting money from big corporations for the cost of his ballroom/bunker, he now expects taxpayers to cover the costs, cutting Social Security, healthcare under ACA, SNAP funding and other essentials to build this stupid structure. He will likely do the same if he is able to build the Arc de Trump. We the taxpayers, who aren’t getting our money’s worth, will be expected to cover the costs of this unwanted architectural excrescence.
The biggest story was not . . . . What a great way to enumerate just how demoralized things have gotten. I am betting the U.S. Supreme Court will turn down a challenge against the ruling of the Virginia Supreme Court by rationalizing that it is too close to the elections.
Because the Louisiana case had federal repercussions because of the Voting RIghts Act, and they used it as a lever to allow them to run the last functional parts of the VRA through the woodchipper and finally say that the only racism in America is racism against white people.
This is the same VRA that MLK died for, that was passed after his assassination by popular demand, and that has been gutted by Republican partisan justices ever since. But it took the Roberts court to render it completely nonfunctional and turn it ass backwards. But Republicans are second to none at turning things ass backwards.
MCC has worked with Jordan Peterson, Tucker Carlson, Dennis Prager, Heritage’s Kevin Roberts, and representatives of the Federalist Society, the Manhattan Institute, and Project Veritas. The entire ecosystem of the American right has been taking meetings, and influence, and money in some form, from an institution built on Hungarian taxpayer money and Russian oil revenue.
Heritage Foundation president K-K-Kevin Roberts called Hungary “not just a model for conservative statecraft but the model,” then used that model to build Project 2025.
Son-of-a-bitch.
❇️ What Magyar Is Actually Doing
He’s pulling the financial floor out from under the whole operation. Halleluiah!
Sixteen years of Viktor Orbán didn’t just hollow out Hungarian democracy, it built an international infrastructure for dismantling democracy everywhere.
And now that infrastructure has a new owner, and he’s coming for it.”
Seems like a good list, Steve. At the top, you recognize that this country was settled via the theft and extermination of the Indigenous Peoples and on the backs of kidnapped Black slaves; the Confederacy never really left us. Your other three musings are of a different category, but I am insufficiently caffeinated to be able to articulate it clearly.
If you are interested in an examples of good candidates who would help take back our democracy (if they win in the 2026 election), here are some mostly new ones. You can listen to what they say in the provided links and decide for your self. Heather has a policy of not endorsing any specific political candidates so I am not presenting them to imply that they have any kind of endorsement from me or anyone else.
(1)Graham Platner, Democratic US Senate candidate in Maine. “Graham Platner Holds a PACKED Town Hall in Biddeford, Maine - YouTube”. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GFxav3SPzfI and “Graham Platner On Service, Messaging & the Future for Democrats | The Weekly Show with Jon Stewart - YouTube”. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-itNjgCJDxU. N.B. Governor Janet Mills who was endorsed and financially supported by the DNC, Chuck Schumer, the AIPAC, etc. has dropped out so Platner will run against Susan Collins.
(2) Ryan Busy, Democratic US Representative candidate in Montana
She is an American physician and researcher, a volunteer in the presidential campaign of Barack Obama and prior director of the Ohio Department of Health (the first woman to hold the post) who led Ohio’s COVID-19 pandemic response. She is a child of divorce and has described childhood experiences of neglect, abuse and periods of homelessness until she moved in with her father in 7th grade. She payed her own way through college.
(4) James Talarico, Democratic candidate for the U.S. Senate in Texas, is a Presbyterian seminarian, a former educator and has served since 2018 as a member of the Texas House of Representatives. “James Talarico gives commencement address at Paul Quinn College - YouTube”. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yEgjjBPFzNA and. “Rep. James Talarico On Confronting Christian Nationalism, And Strange Days In The Texas Legislature - YouTube”. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oiTJ7Pz_59A
(7) Peggy Flanagan is an American politician and Ojibwe activist serving as the 50th lieutenant governor of Minnesota since 2019. A member of the Minnesota Democratic–Farmer–Labor Party (DFL), Flanagan served in the Minnesota House of Representatives from 2015 to 2019. She is running for US Senator in MN. “LIVE: Fighting Oligarchy in Rochester, MN with Peggy Flanagan, Tina Smith and Keith Ellison - YouTube”. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E9k0OR8N6AQ
(8) Julie Gonzales is an American lawyer and politician serving as a member of the Colorado Senate from the 34th district in the City and County of Denver since her election in 2018. She is a progressive member of the Democratic Party. She has served as Senate majority whip and supported progressive causes including death penalty repeal, abortion rights, and immigrant protections. She is running for US Senator in Colorado. “Full conversation: State Sen. Julie Gonzales announces run for US Senate - YouTube”. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_tlwRWPp5fI
(9) Anthony Davis of Meidas Touch interviews Saikat Chakrabarti, an American political advisor, climate policy advocate, and software engineer. A progressive Democrat, Chakrabarti co-founded Justice Democrats, which powered Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez's successful insurgent challenge to Representative Joe Crowley, and Chakrabarti served as her campaign manager. He then served as chief of staff to Ocasio-Cortez, who became the U.S. representative from New York's 14th congressional district, until 2019. Chakrabarti left Ocasio-Cortez's office to run New Consensus, a group promoting the Green New Deal, whose development he led. He is running to succeed former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi as the representative for California's 11th congressional district in the 2026 U.S House election. He is highly intelligent and has a lot of good ideas about how to win elections with candidates who will work for the people rather than the billionaires. Enjoy.
(10) We also have a number of prominent Democrats giving town halls and other talks around the country to educate the populace: Governor Andy Beshear of Kentucky, US Representative AOC, US Senator Bernie Sanders, former Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg who gave a town hall in dark red Tulsa, OK. (“Pete Takes Questions, Live from Tulsa - YouTube”. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MCc-ipWVShY and “AOC LIVE - YouTube”. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nbzYO_e9xnw )
I would add Callie Barr, running for Michigan's 1st Congressional district (Upper Peninsula and Northern "Mitt." Local (born here unlike Big Oil's plant, Jack Bergman). Veteran, military spouse, attorney, NOT owned by Big Oil:
Joyce, what a despicable catalogue of Trumpian chicken shit less than a week before Bone Spur meets President Xi.
As a former Foreign Service Officer, the thought that Trump is representing the United States in a head of state summit with China makes me want to puke.
The United States once was indispensable on the global scene. I was proud to represent the United States. I welcomed the respect that we had earned throughout much of the world.
Under Trump’s AMERICA FIRST we have become insufferable and AMERICA ALMOST ALONE.
During the Cold War, I was proud how our presidents confronted Stalin, Khrushchev, Mao, and other authoritarians who opposed what America and her allies stood for.
Now I imagine Trump as a mouse going to meet Xi, a hungry cat. We are in an interminable conflict with China over coming years and decades. I can only imagine how Xi, a tough and focused bastard, must see Trump as a weak and pathetic foe.
Your catalogue of Trump’s daily horror stories highlights why I fear that, in a futile effort to ‘win’ in Peking, he will take a further slice out of America’s heritage in yet another narcissistic folly.
Ricardo Even when he is asleep, evidently his fingers keep moving on Untruth Social. Perhaps take him to a golf course—the Mao Tse Tung—and leave him there?
Well, it seems there is absolutely no low to which Trumplandia will not go. The VA Supreme Court told VA voters in a sense, "we don't give a damn what you want, our loyalty is to Donald Trump and we will do whatever we can to make sure he wins." What a bunch of stooges! The people of VA need to get that Supreme Court out of power and in November, vote Democratic in every single state and federal election to show that the American people have rights that no court should be able to eliminate! We will have to work on our Supreme Court and other federal courts too over time!
Make sure the voters in your communities know about Trump's impounding of FEMA money to Democratic states.
The PAC "One Nation" has been sending out weekly paper mailings to Maine voters. They talk about how Susan Collins is saving the hospitals and supporting firefighters and teachers.
GJ, I knew it when I wrote my 1600. premium payment to FEMA in July that he'd never declare a state of emergency in MA. Meaning FEMA would never pay out a loss due me. Writing these checks feels like a big fat waste of my hard earned money!
Gerrymandering presupposes ‘normal’ turnout numbers. This is NOT going to be a normal turnout year. All the GOP bets are off. There is a chance that it will backfire in all the counties that are being robbed in the process of altering the count. The smell in the air is corruption, a party that has been rotting since Reagan’s time.
So, first step, have Republican legislatures – or Republican courts – cancel elections, cancel democracy, gerrymander everywhere so even if by obviously rank cheating all districts go to Republicans only.
Second step – but there is no second step. If democracy’s dead, there are no real choices by any of us “We the people.” Despots only rule. No alternatives to that.
In such a climate, how many American schools can teach essay writing for seeing “others” as individuals in their cultures? How many students can read whole books teachers choose for them – and discuss them? And how many rule out all of that – rule out any students or teachers looking closely at things and questioning well?
If we’re submitting to despotism as the Republicans are arranging – for the moneyed classes, for the commodifiers, the nationalist white supremacists – do we have a name for what has schools packaging all instead?
There are two Substacks you need to look at today, back to back, to know what we have to do to win at the midterms despite Trump and the courts' election interference amid the gerrymandering wars:
The messages are simple in the face of the Republican onslaught: we can still win seats despite the gerrymandering, and we have to bring our own guns to the gunfight and redistrict Republican seats out of every Democratic state in response by using the same argument to the courts that got the “wins” for Republicans.
My list for what you have to do to protect individual Democratic votes hasn’t changed (see below), and it’s even more imperative now. But there is something else you MUST do today. Write to your state representatives and shame them if they are Republicans, and if they are Democrats in a blue state, tell them you are wholeheartedly behind their doing an emergency redistricting before the midterms. If you don’t like the take guns to a gunfight analogy, say we need to fight fire with fire. You light backfires to burn the land, preventing a larger fire from spreading and destroying more valuable property by creating a buffer zone with no fuel.
DEMOCRACY is the valuable property. Democratic redistricting is the backfire. There is no choice here—non-partisan maps can be rebuilt to be indestructible when we win veto-proof majorities. They aren’t now—and that is a brutal lesson we are having to learn this minute.
Make sure your vote will count. Remember that last-minute changes to the rules could occur--the Trump plan is to maximize chaos.
1. Check that you are registered and that your name on the voter roll matches your required photo ID and passport. Do it now, in 3 months and two weeks before Election Day.
2. Be sure you have documentation proving citizenship easily available- a copy of your birth certificate, a US passport, proof of name changes. A marriage certificate may not be sufficient. If SAVE America is passed by Congress, or a clone is passed by your state, you could be required to provide proof of citizenship as well as a valid photo ID. Student IDs may not be considered a valid photo ID.
3. Know what district you will now be voting in and who the candidates are, given the massive last-minute redistricting efforts that may be occurring.
4. Make sure you know where and how you will vote in case mail-in ballots are suddenly disallowed.
5. Join community outreach groups to get people registered and to the polls. The next few weeks have a lot of groups registering soon-to-be high school graduates.
6. Talk to your neighbors who lean Republican, or who are uninvolved or undecided, or who are just leaning Dem about what is at stake. Give yourself a goal of getting one other person to vote Democratic in the midterms.
7. Talk to your college-age kids who live at school and help them decide where and how they will vote. They need to have a plan for registration and voting, and their documentation assembled.
8. When you vote in the primaries, vote for the Democratic candidate who will be most electable. The more of your neighbors you talk to, the better you will be able to identify that person. Hold your nose if you have to. I know that is a big ask. But the time to fix the broken system with ranked-choice voting isn't here yet. R's are counting on us to splinter and worry about purity tests on a few controversial issues. In the meantime, Indiana just showed us that they are choosing to be monolithic behind the money.
WE CAN DO THIS. Hungary did. But we have to work our butts off for the primaries and the midterms. EVERY VOTE in EVERY ELECTION!!!
#8 is so hard to inform people about. In California the governor primary results in two with the most votes advancing to November. Party affiliation plays no role. There are two Republicans and a half dozen Democrats; so stupid! One of two font runners is a Democrat. Voting has already begun and the attack adds against by some of those other Democrats are still on the air. They have no chance in hell and will not let a dead horse lie. Also, California is perhaps the most plural State and those other candidates are a sample of that thus there is the bias vote being lost for the front runner. We could actually have two Republicans on the Nov. ballot and need top vote against the worst one.
That is absolutely why we have to vote strategically—and that is for the Dem most likely to be elected. Nuance is for the time when we are in the majority, not when we are fighting to still be able to vote.
Oh yes Robert Hubble. Alwasys liked him even after he banned me for disagreeing with him on events leading up to Russia invasion. He needed to have the last word. But I still, like him but no longer read him.
How many pictures of people with signs on overpasses can we liverals see? How effective are they? How many people could they inform and convince it they were close enough to look into their neighbors eyes and ask about their concerns instead of spending all those hours standing behind their signs. At best the Trump supporters believe that they are a tiny group of cranks because none of hte legacy media or the right wing commentators are taking any notice.
These are sincere people who are trying their best but there is no A for effort in politics, there are only winners of elections and losers.
Politics in times like these requires personal, extended, one-on-one interactions about shared concerns. That is scary. There is no safety in numbers, unless you are standing up against the lawless perpetrators of crimes against the people, like the Minnesoatans did. The opposition won in Hungary because they spoke to people individually over two years.
Go to your local diner and sit down at the counter next to the man wearing the MAGA hat or talk to the waitress in the Trump T-shirt and start a conversation about the price of the scrambled eggs and toast and a cup of coffee breakfast special. And really listen to them first and find some common ground, and then tell them what you are worried about. Tell them about one Democrat you strongly support and what they would be doing to fix your mutual problem and ask them who they favor to fix the issue. No judgement calls, just shared information.
And keep doing it. If we each influenced one more person to move left in one election on the ballot on every primary and regular election day it would be enough to take the majority in the Senate, and possibly the House. If we could each get 3 shifted in each election we would be making on our way to veto-proof majorities in 2028.
It will take a while to find a Trump supporter who is not yet identity fused with Trump and will still be amenable to the truth. Keep trying. Nobody is saying this is easy.
The Pew report shows that solid Democrats and lean Democrats have eroded slightly since 2020 while Republicans in those categories increased slightly with Rs now having a less than 1% edge in those combined categores. There are 7-8% with no registered opinion.
Do we have a choice? There are other voter suppression shoes that will drop between now and the midterms—Trump and his minions are facing an existential crisis. They are desperate and will try everything they can, and they have a complicit judiciary to aid and abet them. We have to strengthen our base, and convert who we can. And most of all, we have to start selling what we intend to do to make things better where we can—and that may be locally first while SCOTUS betrays us on a national level.
Georgia, I get it. Once when our current governor ran for senate in 2006, I posed a plan to his manager. I was already embarking on this. I told him if he asked every confirmed supporter to only fund one person they knew who was probably likely to vote for him but was simply to that motivated to vote (we all know those people), and work on them little by little. I knew such a person. She wasn’t that motivated. So I periodically called her and casually worked into the conversation Ned Lamont. It was a 3-way race and the 3rd candidate was a republican in disguise. On Election Day I called Maryland and asked if she needed a ride to the polls but she told me she had already voted. I never told her my strategy that I had picked her and worked on her. When I posed this the Ned Lamont’s manager, his response was “Why only one person why not 10 people to get to the polls.” It was at that moment I knew he didn’t take my plan seriously. And his candidate lost. End of story.
Most importantly, let us never forget this "enshitification" is in fact intentionally genocidal. How and why? Poverty kills -- particularly poverty deliberately reinforced by deadly disease vectored by anti-vax murderousness. Whatever the disaster, the rule outside the aristocracy is the death toll rises as income decreases. And by exterminating lower-income groups -- particularly people of color and single mothers -- the ChristoNazis are slaying the groups most likely to rise against them, whether with ballots or more powerful weapons.
Thus the terrible truth behind the statement of Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D/Rhode Island), pointedly quoted by Dr. Richardson, that the regime's policy is to "damn the health consequences for Americans.”
But of course most USians remain oblivious to the magnitude of Evil that assails us. Though I have pondered this fatal blindness for decades, it finally comes to me that to see the Absolute Evil personified by the failed United States of America and declared the sole national purpose of its successor the "Unified" ChristoNazi "Reich," one must have endured life in the South as a hated "yankee" or a person of color -- because only then do we realize our national Evil has literally no conceivable limit. And only then are we psychologically positioned to do what must be done if we are to have even one chance in one million of achieving Liberation.
But Loren, doesn't the aristocracy require a steady supply of low-level workers to keep their machinery (farms, factories, prisons) going? So setting the poor up for early death would leave them with no slaves (literal or figurative). But even as I type this, I remember: they (the wealthy) are mostly stupid.
As a Yankee living in the South, I am amazed at the perpetual ill will that still exists towards Northern USians, Loren. Even my friends seldom fail to comment on my « pahking », « khakey » « scahrf » …
Anne Marie...Because of my father's rather significant involvement in the war effort, we moved from New York City to Jacksonville, Fla., in the late summer of 1943. I was three years old. We rented an apartment in a very upscale complex on the St. Johns River, a gated "community" complete with a locked playground. Less than a month later, three of our aristocratic neighbors, white male Southron spawn ages six and seven, tried to kill me by holding me upside-down and burying my head in the playground sandbox. I was rescued by a fellow Yankee who had befriended me, Mary Alice Shotwell, the notably fierce five-year-old daughter of a naval officer who was one of my father's colleagues; Mary Alice grabbed a child-sized garden hoe and attacked my assailants, sending them home bleeding and screaming for their mothers. Four years later, also in Jacksonville, a gang of my fellow Norwood Elementary School students -- I a second grader, most of my assailants third-grader Southron males -- tried to stone me to death at a school-bus stop, leaving me unconscious in a pool of blood when two fellow Yankees, both military kids, chased them off; that incident required a trip to St. Luke's Hospital and left me with permanent facial scars. Years later, other white Southrons tried three times to murder me in retaliation for my support of the Civil Rights Movement: https://lorenbliss-outsideagitatorsnotebook.blogspot.com/2025/10/censorship-lessons-from-nader-and.html
Thus was I primed to recognize -- and never make the common error of fearfully under-estimating or delusionally denying the truly infinite magnitude of the Absolute Evil that now besets us in the form of the "Republican" (sic) ChristoNazi/Neoconfederate Party and its "Democratic" (sic) Fifth Column. Thus too my conviction that -- just as our too-brief interval of civil-rights justice mandated two northern invasions of the South -- now that the Southrons have (as Dr. Richardson points out), won the Civil War, our (only) hope of rescue is invasion by Liberators from without, supported of course by a strong internal Resistance movement. But given our craven refusal to move even one inch in that direction -- first essential step the creation of a shadow government in a militarily secure city abroad -- I cannot doubt the ChristoNazi conquest is forever.
Sad to say, Anne-Louise, I saw this as a U.S. Army Viet translator/interpreter years ago.
If we'd followed the model of Frenchman Paul Mus, who literally walked over Nam in the early 1950s, and conversed with many, many, we'd have seen how the people genuinely backed Ho Chi Minh's love of the U.S. Declaration of Independence.
Instead we backed the rich, the followers, hangers-on, and profiteers of French colonialism.
The only thing our "best and brightest" understood then was materiel, quantity, supplies, ordnance: Hueys, razor wire, concertina wire, mortars, frags, Agent Orange, napalm, B-52s, motorbikes for Saigon Viet guys, cases of beer, pounds of steak, and ammo, ammo, ammo for the 500,000 U.S. troops. And body bags.
Such an old story for U.S. bureaucracies: always trust numbers, supplies, materiel -- never even begin to know the human.
I’m curious, Phil. Do you regret serving in Vietnam? From childhood, I knew it was wrong and by 14 I was already on the streets protesting. Why did you go? I’m not asking to be insulting. I’m curious how young people make decisions.
I served in the U.S. Army, Bill, 2 Sept 1969 to 4 Apr. 72. Never was "in" Nam.
True, I was a Viet translator/interpreter. Of the year-long cycle when I was based at the old South Post, Fort Myer (Arlington Memoria Cemetery), there were ten classes, each made up of 12 students, half who'd been in Nam already, half officers, half enlisted, all mixed.
I finished with the top score -- and the army had me at overseas replacement, in tropical uniform, awaiting my flight to Nam, but then diverted me to Germany.
I spoke fluent Viet, French, and Russian -- not a word of German.
It was the country, Bill. I loved the U.S. Its land, its peoples, its cuisines, its traditions and culture. I'd wanted to see close-up what we were doing.
I saw. Especially in that year full-time learning the language, from native teachers and from those already who'd been on tours in Nam.
In Germany I learned the language and got an army job based on using it. I learned much, first in an office of congressional correspondence, where I saw the corruption close-up (all tied to uses of the passive voice), later that job based on using German, making a social program between German youth and U.S. army personnel.
The U.S. standardized testing industry profited, MaryPat.
Corporate America then had -- still more has had since -- insatiable need for programming all to fit unquestioningly into its packaging priorities. Testing winnows that. It reduces all life to the conceits of linear-only cause-&-effect, and an ur-rational concentration on fitting all thinking to groups and categories.
And a vicious determination to have all teachers and students learn they may never question anything -- just keep deferring to the anonymous elites who, for the moneyed classes, are ever the only ones to ask any questions.
“…the motorcade the president took onto the pool yesterday to review the project was heavy enough to have sprung the newly-repaired joints between the concrete slabs that make up the pool bed.”
Like an old alley cat spraying everything around him with his stink.
A few thoughts came together yesterday while I was composing a response to a reply to one of my comments. The following is an updated version of yesterday's reply.
Human culture evolves. Everything gets better if it evolves in a positive direction. In that case, evolution was adaptive. Everything gets worst if it evolves in a negative direction. In that case, evolution was maladaptive. We can’t stop it from evolving, but if we know what we are doing, then we can end maladaptive evolution.
Cultural evolution is sometimes adaptive and other times maladaptive because the underlying thought process is sometimes adaptive and other times maladaptive.
There is a simple 3-step adaptive thought process … Step 1: Trust. Step 2: Verify. Step 3: Return to Step 1 and repeat. An adult conversation is a manifestation of the adaptive thought process.
There is a simple 3-step maladaptive thought process … Step 1: Assume I’m right. Step 2: Blame someone or something for what went wrong. Step 3: Return to Step 1 and repeat. Assuming someone doesn’t know what they’re talking about and not bothering to verify the assumption is a manifestation of the maladaptive thought process. Rick Sender is a product of the maladaptive thought process.
Our culture evolves adaptively toward excellence or maladaptively in the other direction. In the words of Dr. W. Edwards Deming (1900-1993), “Survival is not mandatory.”
As MLK would say, we need fewer thermometers and more thermostats. Our collective understanding of the undesirable current state is important, insufficiently accurate, and much less important than our collective engagement with the path toward the desirable future state.
The cause of the undesirable current state is too many people forming the (bad) maladaptive thought habit by not deliberately practicing the (good) adaptive thought process. In the desirable future state, everyone deliberately practices the adaptive thought process until it is the only habit. But don’t take my word for it.
Almost two and a half millennia ago, Aristotle (384-322 BC) said, “We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.”
Sam Alito claims to be an originalist. I claim that anybody that’s not a nobody knows that Sam’s a big phony.
Don’t forget the words of Patrick Geddes (1854-1932), who said, “Think global, act local.” And remember when Anonymous said, “Nothing is more local than the person in the mirror.”
Well written, but when just the nine black robes of SCOTUS can replace all the white robes of the KKK's, and they anoint their "Grand Wizard" immunity from their lifetime powers (that their Grand Wizard gave them), it's hard to see how "the person in the mirror" can do much.
Luckily, neither God (nor the Pope) grants immortality, and DonOld is old, increasingly addled mentally and physically, scoring only 33% on all his tests. It's hard to imagine America's elation when Lucifer returns to Hell. We will need a ballroom for that event.
We wont need a ballroom!! We will DANCING IN THE STREETS….
There'll be swinging and swaying and record playing.🎶
🎶 dancin’ in the streets 🎶
I'll be there.
I forgot the notes green hills girl. :-)🎶
...it doesn't matter what you wear, just as long as you are there!...at the polls in November!
And in the streets in the interim....!
Amen, Sister!
We should remove Trump from office. Let' spread that around. Get everyone saying that.
That’s easy Patrick. For Dumbty should be removed.
Like the Hungarians danced when Orban was voted out.. MAG(N)A should learn a lesson when they see the results of their blind loyalty to the party. Of course, if that is what they want, means they no longer have to think or make decisions for themselves. They are like the sheep being herded by border collies and farmer who are old, senile, partially blind and deaf. Yes, it's time to go to the slaughterhouse. It will be a fun truck ride with all of your friends.
You betcha Nancy!
Attributing all of the fascist actions to trump is a big mistake, he couldn't accomplish anything without the help of the GOP (the Fascist Party), either with Congressional votes or staying silent and avoiding having to vote so there is no record of their support for every fascist action carried out in government. The corrupt right-wing Justices on the Supreme Court on the other hand, have repeatedly voted on their support for Fascism.
the FPs
I'll tell you how I see it:
If I assume I won't catch a fish, and I act based on the assumption that I won't catch a fish, then I won't catch a fish.
If the problem is SCOTUS (and it is, but it's only six and not nine), then that's not the only problem. However, if that problem becomes the excuse, then the problem is no longer SCOTUS because the problem at hand emerged with the making of the excuse. Fortunately, that's an easy one for all of us to solve. Stop making excuses.
It's hard for the person in the mirror to see what can be done when the person is looking everywhere except the mirror. And there's another problem with an actionable solution.
Lucifer trolls the earth seeking the souls of humans who end up in Hell.
He doesn't have to go much farther than the White House and this maladministration to have quite a haul.
Refuse the Mark---remove Orange Judas!
It wasn't 9 black robes! It was and has been only 6!!! 6 people and less than 300 in Congress and less than 60 in the Senate and 1 malicious, spiteful, evil human in the White House that are taking away the rights of 340 MILLION PEOPLE, to govern themselves.
Don't forget to count the millions who voted for Trump and the millions who didn't bother to vote at all for giving us Trump.
Why didn't they vote?
What will it take to "annihilate" the 6 in black, the 60 in the Senate and under 300 in the House?
This the "perfect" year to re-establish our republic. That this country is controlled by the "consent of the governed", not these representatives.
They no longer represent the "people", only themselves and their benefactors.
And how many are lined up to take the throne when he dies?
Not just “take the throne” but still in positions of power throughout government and the corporate/oligarch world, not to mention the Seditious Six on SCOTUS, working their masterpiece: Project 25. What is currently wrong in our country is a Hydra and I still hope We The People will be the Hercules who cuts off and buries the serpent’s heads. Just the demise of one won’t change the disaster the U.S. has become.
He came in and fired everyone who knew anything. Decades of institutional knowledge out the door. Anyone who refused to kiss the ring. Intelligence analysts for the Middle East. Generals, admirals, commanders. The only requirement for a cabinet position is complete unquestioned acceptance of his positions. Entire departments evaporated. Heritage Society email says he has enacted about 2/3 of the items specified in the 2025 plan, all in a bit more than one year.
“All things must pass,” as George Harrison reminded us all. Including Donald Trump.
Jeff, not soon enough!
Lucifer will have a ballroom at the ready when tRump makes his entrance. I would hate to see what *that* will look like.
It wasn't 9 black robes! It was and has been only 6!!! 6 people and less than 300 in Congress and less than 60 in the Senate and 1 malicious, spiteful, evil human in the White House that are taking away the rights of 340 MILLION PEOPLE, to govern themselves.
So you are calling the Supreme Court a bunch of KKK sympathizers and over one hundred people like that lie? Did it ever occur to you that maybe the SC are fighting all the illegal and immoral laws that prior administrations have imposed without any regard as to their effect on taxpayers? I'm more than thrilled they have gutted the insane enviromental protection agency and their trillions of dollars. Did I hear Al Gore say that we are in for a future artic abyss? You just can't make this stuff up; now we are supposed to freak out about a future of increasing colder temperatures? Get real.
Laurie, please go take your medicine! You, again, are making statements without proof- EPA has helped to control some pollution by showing the science behind what they studied & confirmed. Could you at least take today off? Your rage is showing. Troll.
Hello? Are you really RS using a pseudonym?
Care to tell us what the "illegal and immoral" laws are? Maybe you should go live near a coal yard. Take a peak at the water and air.
I guess you don't read the science section of anything that details that the oceans are rising, and water is getting warmer, and the largest iceberg ever is gone.
Maybe in your insignificant part of the world there is no threat to you, but then again I guess you've never flown into LAX to see the purple smog above the city.
I’m sorry for you, Laurie. I remember driving from Michigan to Chicago. The highway went through Gary, Indiana. The sky would be gray with pollution. Then there were also foundries in our little town. They closed YEARS ago but the land was so polluted nothing could be built on it. When they cleaned out the small river near these sites they took out enough trash to lake a pile that was the size of a football field and two stories high. Because of the EPA these lands, air and water had to be cleaned up and protected. It is curious that you would celebrate pollution. What are you/we going to leave for future generations? Remember, there is no Planet B.
Nope, never occurred to me. Because I actually read and corroborate what I read. Try it sometime.
RS has been a troll on HCR for a long time. I have responded to his maladaptive comments before. But I have taken the attitude that there is no cure for stupidity and it’s really not worth anyone’s time or energy to respond to him. It’s like pissing into the wind (sorry if that offends anyone).
Block him, life is much better without him. He’s Stage 4 cancer.
I blocked RS a long time ago, so I don’t have to endure whatever he is up to now. I recognized his type after some exposure- his goal is not to argue for a point of view; it is to garner attention, period. Don’t give it to him, and he won’t exist. Your life will be better for it.
I have encountered a few people, a very few people, for whom negative attention is as valuable as positive attention. Maybe somehow even better. They will continue to get in your face as long as you respond. Your response is their drug. Cut them off.
It's so clearly the case. Ignore, ignore. But I taught public school for years and have no trouble recognizing what's obvious. I'm guessing many here can't (or won't) figure this out for themselves. Yet it's as predictable as the sun coming up in the east. Do not engage. Deprive them of their reason for being here.
You taught public school for years? What exactly did you do with opinions and facts that didn't agree with your agenda? Curious.
Not sure what you think teaching is, but good teaching isn't about bombarding your students with how you see the world, but asking them to describe how they see it with tools you help them find.
Me too...blocked him a long time ago.
I didn’t see anything about RS in these comments at least the early ones, so has (it) he been blocked?
No. He's s**ting all over a comment in the "oldest first" line one or two ahead of this thread.
I must have blocked him before because I dont see him! So glad!
Physician heal thyself. In RS, you're seeing an advanced case of a bad disease. But how wide spread is that disease? Who tests positive and who tests negative? What's the test? And once you have those answers, how do you triage the patients? What if your test comes back and you're told that you test positive? I'm not saying you do, but let's find out what's going on first, and then draw some evidence-based conclusions.
To solve a problem you first identify the problem and then collect data while analyzing what others have tried you then test different hypothesis. It’s not what you believe and think it’s what you can analyze and understand. The reason this administration is restricting and destroying data is simple to understand.
When young engineers were supervised by Taiichi Ohno, he would stand them in an "Ohno circle" marked with chalk on the factory floor for hours upon hours until they could see past their prejudged conclusion about what was really going on. When things fall apart, our first impressions are almost certainly wrong.
Deming took his ideas to American car companies and they wanted to piece meal his ideas Only Toyota could see what he was offering. I see Demings ideas and systems as a way to solve a large amount of problems in the world.
Very funny coming from a party that hates the country they live in. What data are they destroying or restricting? This has been the most open administration in our history; you just can't stand the fact that America is winning and your sour outlook and the outrageous "politics" of the Dems party are what is destroying America. Open borders will be the downfall of your party, whether you admit it or not. Why are the Dems doubling down on what lost them the last election? Nobody but Dems want criminal illegals walking around our neighborhoods and killing our women and children, all in exchange for a few illegal votes. Shame on all of you.
Boy, that koolaid must be addictive. You just can't give it up can you?
Maybe you should try some of the Jim Jones Koolaid. I hear it's stronger.
Troll again. you'll burn up from all your hate or, your computer will explode. Goodbye.
To much to unpack. They have eyes and cannot see and they have ears and cannot hear.
Colette, sometimes we have to piss into the wind to keep from exploding.
Agree!
The issue is a Platform burden under the law chosen by Substack Inc under law chosen by the Platform itself.
Substack Inc was very capable attorneys. I am familiar with with their attorney's Palo Alto CA office.
The 3rd Court of Appeal has destroyed the Platform's get-out-of-jail card. Recently, a Jury stung META big time.
Haven’t seen Sender around, hope it stays that way. He is nothing but a troll.
I blocked that little scumbag months ago. It’s true, ignorance is bliss, and not seeing his hateful spew every morning makes the day just a little bit brighter.
I blocked him too a long time ago.
I did too 👍
Ditto
How do I block the poster, the three dots don't show "block poster".
If you click your cursor on the line below that person's picture/circle, it collapses the entire thread
David, I can't remember how to block someone, just collapse the comment.
No, he's here this morning. But you can have fun when you see one of his replies by comparing it to the 3-step maladaptive process. You can't tell me my description isn't accurate because it is.
To paraphrase Bob Marley, we must free ourselves from mental slavery. None but ourselves can free our minds. Like all great artists, the adaptive process was habitual for Marley because he kept deliberately practicing it until it became an (almost) automatic reflex. Repeatedly practicing the maladaptive process turns its user into an automaton (hence, mental slavery, MAGA, etc.).
I agree with you. In addition, I love the reference to the lyrics of Bob Marley’s “Redemption Song.”
🎶 Won't you help me sing these songs of freedom 🎶
“All I ever had was Redemption Song.”
He's actually s**t all over the original comment just above this thread in the "oldest first" read; he showed up 2 hours ago (for measure, your comment was 4 hours ago), although it looks like James found him earlier than that.
I blocked RS somewhere around Inauguration Day. Thank heavens!
But yesterday I had a different annoying Substack technical issue for the second time this week when I could not locate a half dozen or more comments made by others to things I had posted. What a colossal waste of my time scrolling through hundreds of comments repeatedly. Notice of the posts arrived in my e-mail just fine but when I clicked on the show button it failed to disclose it or what thread it jad come from. Obviously a technical glitch but beyond my capacity tosolve or bring notice of to anyone , , ,
Help ???? What do I do when they occurs again? It will effectively kill my future engagement in the discourse . . . It would be akin to hunting harbor rats in the dark of night at the old the Jamaica dump with a 22 rifle minus a sighting flashlight taped to the barrel . . ..
I’m have mixed success (and have for some time) tracing comments back. Easier on my laptop than my phone.
To take Aristotle seriously requires A Thought Process! “”Almost two and a half millennia ago, Aristotle (384-322 BC) said, “We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.””
Aristotle also counted courage as an important virtue. A little reading would identify the excess and defects associated with all virtues Aristotle identified. The republicans once claimed these virtues.
Amazingly some people, including those sitting around his cabinet table, require more schooling in history, political science, ethics, philosophy, and so on; that is unless they are happy with the state of affairs. Apparently, they are.
To take anything seriously requires a thought process. I'm just saying that, when you observe carefully, it's the same underlying process as millennia ago. And that's because its standard equipment formed in the brain during fetal development.
It's just a tool. A hammer is a tool. You can use it to create something of lasting value, or you can use it hit someone over the head. Yesterday, MAGA used it to hit Virginia over the head.
My point about thermostats versus thermometers is that the pro-democracy movement needs to focus much less on the undesirable current state and much more on the how to get to the desirable future state. Conversely, MAGA is throwing everything and the White House kitchen sink toward its efforts to keep the pro-democracy movement focused on thermometers.
James, if by "Yesterday, MAGA used it to hit Virginia over the head" you refer to the Sup. Ct. decision, I am very familiar with the court and it is neither MAGA, nor BLM, nor anything other than a bunch of high end lawyers interpreting the law. To say that race as a basis for voting districts is unconstitutional is hardly revolutionary. As for what MAGA means in tthis, or any context for that matter, is not clear.
I might have been better off using a different term, but if you have a valid counterargument to my comment, then I'll need some help because I don't see it.
Well, in the spirit of candor, I didn't understand yours either:) But as a general matter, while Trump (or MAGA, whatever that is). clearly has autocratic impulses, I don't see him as a threat to democracy, which is what I infer to be your argument. Does he test the limits of executive authority? Yes for sure. Does it he it more than did Clinton, or Bush, or Obama or Biden? Maybe. But they all have since Roosevelt, in one way or another. I just perceive Trump as a bizarre guy with a broad array of imprecise personality disorders who makes some excellent and bold decisions (and usually executes them imperfectly) and also some really bad ones, which yes, he takes to extremes.
But I read your comment re: Virginia to imply that the court acted for political reasons, and think there is no basis for that. They just banned race discrimination. I thought that was usually seen as a good thing. If some see it as bad, its for political, not legal reasons.
I would love for some group of scholars to undertake a study of the correlation between homeschooling by rightwing/hyperchristian parents or schooling in the “Christian” charter schools and the emergence of so many “adults” who are not capable of rational thought.
Prove me wrong!
Linda, I have one sibling, a sister six years my junior. We had the same evangelical parents who remained married for their entire lives. Due to my parents' financial circumstances, I went to public schools and secular college.
When my sister came along, my parents' finances improved sufficiently that they could afford to send her to a "Christian" school. She graduated and attended my parents' alma mater, a church-affiliated college, where she received a teaching degree. She married a boy she met in college whose degree was worthless in the real world. He could only get jobs that didn't pay enough to support his household, but he forbade my sister to get a paying job. Rather, he kept her pregnant and in the kitchen until their five kids were nearly adults. My sister's teaching degree was only good at another "Christian" school where she got a job. That whole family is a bunch of Trumpers.
I have worked for several corporations and reached a level of corporate directorship, but learned that "even if you win the rat race, you're still a rat." So I downsized my career for the sake of my sanity, becoming a creative director at an ad agency. Now, I own my own firm. I loathe Donald.
My story is anecdotal, but it proves you right.
Dale, my heart hurts for you & your family. What a load you have carried with all the beliefs they held.
Cindy, give your heart two aspirin and call me in the morning. 😁
I appreciate your kind thoughts, but it really hasn't been that much of a burden. At an early age, I recognized that they were on the wrong path, and I would have to find the right one for myself.
When my sister was born, she turned our family upside-down and frankly, I never liked her. But even though she was disruptive, she knew how to manipulate my parents, and that she did (the stories I could tell!). So I just let them do their evangelical thing and I went on my merry way. My sister and I have never spoken, except at funerals in the family.
When my mom died last fall, that severed any connection between my sister and me, so we won't speak or see each other again. The only regret I have is that it makes some of my friends sad and/or uncomfortable, because they think I've "missed something." I think one can't miss something one never had.
Nice turn of phrase there, Linda. Well played, Sister.
Let me put it this way…. Because my family lived in the boonies when I was little, I was sent into town to a catholic boarding school. By the third grade I was perfectly aware of the outright propagandizing to which I was being subjected. It made me a lifelong agnostic. By the time I was 14, and able to go to a public school, I found that world history had been rewritten over that summer. I learned that people of different races,cultures or religions were just ordinary people and that perhaps we “ nonbelievers” were not damned to everlasting hell after all.
Linda, I had friends that entered public school in their teens & boy, were their eyes opened. Main question from them: Why did the nuns lie to us?
Shellyj, They are corrupt grifters, greedy, power hungry, and absolutely the worst choices for the positions they hold. Plus they are A number one sycophants, heaping praise on that cancerous monster.
Deductive reasoning (being able see the next 20 steps before you take Step 1) is critical. One does not have to be HF ... "high functioning".
Excellent, I especially like your final quotes from Aristotle and Geddes. We the people, think global and act local. It seems fitting that we are at the cusp of 250 years as a democracy and we are experiencing the strongest effort to dismantle our democracy since the civil war. Hope lies in the actions of each of us to see ourselves in the mirror and move toward justice.
And when the broken hearted people living in the world agree, there will be an answer, let it be. (1970)
Oh yes James, oh yes.
We're now led by corrupt, dishonest, greedy, self-serving people put there by greedy (wealthy) people in alliance with racists and white Christian Nationalists who lack critical thinking skills, who are ignorant of history and/or who suffer from Amathia, a form of willful blindness. In other words, they need to believe so fervently that something is true that any facts or reason to the contrary are beyond their comprehension. This is not uncommon, Many believe that humans have souls and that there is life after death though there is no proof of either. The fault in large part is owing to the fact that our public and private school systems failed to teach critical thinking skills, history and civics to its students and our Christian churches failed to teach Jesus' essential message: respect for others. One wonders, for example, how Trump voters rationalized away his attempt to overthrow the 2020 election on 1-6-2021, ignoring the fact that if in power a second time his effort to end free and fair elections might succeed. What were they thinking?
I believe I have a soul. I believe I have been part of teams that have spirit. By spirit, I mean that the team was a whole that was greater than the sum of its parts because its parts worked together like three musketeers (all for one and one for all). By soul, I mean that the "me" team is a whole that is greater than its parts for the same reason.
You say there's no proof of a soul. That's like saying there's no proof of team spirit. And you can say that if you're looking for "proof" in a photograph of the team, but then I'd say compare the performance of different teams. I've been on teams with spirit, and I love it, and I've been on teams with no spirit, and I feel like one of three stooges (all for one and that one is "me"). Likewise, if you want to see proof that people have soul, watch Bruce Springsteen. And yes, some people have no soul, like six US supreme court (so-called) justices.
But again, please and thank you ... fewer thermometers and more thermostats.
As a member of two wind bands and a chamber group, I can attest that the "whole is greater than the sum of the parts" in many contexts. My tuba part of 30 measures of sustained C's two below middle C at the end of "Hobbits Symphony" is an exercise in perseverance, and takes at least two players to make it work. When the other parts are added, the auditory visual of Gandalf sailing away creates something amazing.
Wonderful to see a nickname "Gandalf" irst annointed some thirty years ago at a weekly sauna on Cape Rosier, ME. I always resonate to unanticipated delights like that! Thanks, Ally ;-)
I am Samwise. No hero, just a friend.
American screenwriter John Rogers said, "There are two novels that can change a bookish fourteen-year old’s life: The Lord of the Rings and Atlas Shrugged. One is a childish fantasy that often engenders a lifelong obsession with its unbelievable heroes, leading to an emotionally stunted, socially crippled adulthood, unable to deal with the real world. The other, of course, involves orcs."
He was correct about my bookish fourteen-year old's life. My novel involved orcs.
Frodo lives!
Seriously, you are saying that claiming that there is no soul is the equivalent of claiming that there is no such thing as team spirit? It's a false equivalency. Some members may have "team spirit" and some may not. Using that line of reasoning, some have souls and some don't? It just is what it is, far beyond human comprehension. If there is a God, what existed before God? How did God come to be? And if there is a true loving, just and all-knowing personal transcendental God, how does one explain the likes of Hitler, Stalin, Putin and Trump? Why would God allow such cruel, worthless, despicable humans to gain power over others?
Richard ... I won't say your comment is a manifestation of the maladaptive thought process (Step 1: Assume I'm right. Step 2: Blame someone or something for what went wrong. Step 3: Return to Step 1 and repeat.) I will say please excuse my brain for jumping to the potentially erroneous conclusion that your comment's pattern and the adaptive thought process pattern (Step 1: Trust. Step 2: Verify. Step 3: Return to Step 1 and repeat.) don't appear to match.
Here's something for you to check into. It's a great service that Melanie Trecek-King, a biology professor at a Boston area community college, has put together: thinkingispower.com. It's on the process of implementing the critical thinking processes.
Thinking?
After 10 years of Dumpism, I am so sick of that ignorant and egomaniacal bullshit artist that Voltaire's famous comment about the British execution of Admiral Byng comes to mind. 'Occasionaly the English shoot an admiral pour encourager les autres.' It would be nice if a future historian could say that Anericans removed Dump to restore decency and honor to our public life, and perhaps to restore sanity to the nation.
If restoring sanity to the nation is restoring 2015, count me out. If the better angels of our nature restore sanity, where do sign up?
James, love the deep thoughts!
-my deep thoughts, continuing to rely on fossil fuel infrastructure is maladaptive and the root of the evil in the US. We’ve reached peak fossil fuel as a species, maxed out the amount of good we can get from a gallon of gas and not accounted for the bad. The good; moving heavy objects uphill without slaves or horses, space exploration, modern medicine, increased living standards for average people, electronics and communication, useful plastics, etc. The bad; changed/polluted atmosphere, plastic pollution, extraction pollution and INCOME INEQUALITY, etc. Over the next 1-2 decades, possibly sooner if we think of atomics, we have to decide if we are going to survive as a species.
Sally ... with one exception, I agree with your comment. I would not have used the "root" term in the way you have used it because it implies that you've done for the environment what Jonas Salk did for polio victims. I'd say our use of fossil fuels is only a symptom of the "disease" (although I agree it's a really bad symptom).
I'm suggesting the root cause is our failure to respond to each other reflexively the way God (or Truth, or Nature, or whatever name one prefers) loves us, meaning that to respect each other as equals needs to be an automatic reflex.
James Talarico often speaks of the lesson his grandfather taught him: being a Christian is not easy, but it's simple. I don't identify as a Christian, but I do identify with Talarico's story. I identify as a scientist, and I say being a scientist is not easy, but it is simple. If I disagree with someone, rather than just assume that they're wrong, I test my assumption.
I can appreciate a fellow scientist and appreciate people who can think and articulate.
Trump is entropy personified.
True ... but if the environment is ideal for that creature and the people who want him to leave also want to keep contributing to that environment, then Trump is a problem, but not the current problem.
Trump is an aggravating symptom that will have to be dealt with in order to progress toward a resolution of the underlying condition.
I agree. We need to put someone in charge of that. Let's make a deal: I'll promise not to nominate you if you promise not to nominate me. But if you're wondering who I'd nominate, my opinion is that Pete Buttigieg would be the best choice.
I'm good with Pete, and I promise to keep your name out of it. John Wick would be my first alternative choice.
Wonderful. Thank you. And “think global, act local” is one of my favorites. It’s what I was trying to explain yesterday about a liberal arts education. It’s what leads to precisely that, particularly if it’s enhanced by parents and public schools. Of course there’s nothing like underlining it with Aristotle who knew a thing or two and could write it!
Providing STEM education is the logical equivalent of providing driver education to someone with no place to go. Go STEAM education!
James R. Carey: Can you explain to me how STEM education relates to liberal arts education other than in the sciences? Music is disappearing, for example. It’s far more important than a lot of people realize. Too many people think they cannot sing. It’s as depressing to think of as not learning to speak! (I auditioned more than 50 college students for a musical—I was a graduate student who had sung in school assemblies since third grade and in church choirs and school choruses since I was 10— finding only one student who was tone deaf.) Music is the best cure for depression. As I write, realizing that it beats any pills. At 92, range lost, but can still many days manage pitches that please because at 58 I had an excellent teacher who encouraged me to sing the Rachmaninov “Vocalise.” To rise to the high C# with all the breath and beauty I could summon was a joy that could come to many if we continued to sing in public school as we did in my small poor one, during WWII. (We did math and biology, chemistry, physics, civics, and world history too!)
It is why there is an "A" added to STEM, which stands for Arts.
We live at opposite ends of the musical spectrum. I JUST wrote a comment to James upthread where I describe our two person tuba section holding 30 measures of a C two below middle C (two ledger lines down in the bass clef staff) in Hobbits Hymn. You cannot do it alone, and by itself is nothing; with the rest of the group, it is the image of Gandalf sailing away.
James R. Carey: Can you explain to me how STEM education relates to liberal arts education other than in the sciences? Music is disappearing, for example. It’s far more important than a lot of people realize. Too many people think they cannot sing. It’s as depressing to think of as not learning to speak! (I once
I can explain my understanding and hope that does the job. To me, STEM = education minus the arts = EDINO (education in name only). Conversely, STEAM = STEM + the arts = restorative education.
STEM is the misguided assumption that doing the wrong thing more efficiently is a good thing. STEAM is the evidence-based conclusion that it's more effective and efficient to have faith that right makes might; and in that faith, to dare to do our duty as we understand it.
Excellent comment. Thank you for sharing these insights.
Rick Sender is an Elon Musk Nazibot, a tool to sway people who have not evolved into people capable of informed, logical, and rational thinking.
As AI and Social Media evolve and become more difficult to detect as artificial, the more people will be manipulated to believe the irrational. They will give up all power to the ultra-rich, specifically the Nazi tech Oligarchs, who have financed the Fascist GOP and unless the vast majority of people wake up, starting with the midterm elections reject all GOP candidates and stay focused on installing candidates at every level of government who will work to make sure power will be totally in the hands of the people by amending the Constitution to remove nonpublic financing from politics at every level and requir politicians to rely on voters to award vouchers to fund their campaigns at every step of the political process. And set rules for procedures in Congress that now rely on norms and the integrity of officeholders. Civics education should be mandatory throughout a students primary and secondary education.
Considering how many voters chose to vote for trump in 2024, knowing he is convicted for fraud 34 times and the publication of Project 2025. And how many chose not to vote at all, I don't have much hope that we will be able to rescue our democracy. But it is worth the effort.
Oleg Penkovsky to Greville Wynne in “The Courier” (2020 film starring Benedict Cumberbatch): We are only two people … but that is how things change.
What changed? They were only two people … but they prevented WWIII. True story.
I wonder if there is any recourse to the horrible decision in Virginia.. Somebody Has to do something!
Somebody has a suggestion. Here's his suggestion:
"In this age, in this country, public sentiment is everything. With it, nothing can fail; against it, nothing can succeed. Whoever molds public sentiment goes deeper than he who enacts statutes or pronounces judicial decisions." — Abraham Lincoln (1858).
FYI, we are still in the same "this age."
"There is a simple 3-step adaptive thought process … Step 1: Trust. Step 2: Verify. Step 3: Return to Step 1 and repeat. An adult conversation is a manifestation of the adaptive thought process.”
That’s all fine and good, if the actual verification process were as simple as that statement makes it out to be.
You wrote: "That’s all fine and good, if the actual verification process were as simple as that statement makes it out to be."
Here's what I would have written if the shoe was on the other foot: "My issue is that your statement seems imply that the verification process is simple whereas every process I've been involved ranges between 'very' and 'extraordinarily' complicated. Please address my issue."
Baseball is hard, but it's simple. Likewise, verification is hard, but it's simple. To paraphrase Jimmy Dugan, verification is supposed to be hard. If it wasn’t hard, every species would do it. The ‘hard’ is what makes it great.
Baseball can be both simple and very difficult to play depending on the level of play, but verifying what happens in a baseball game is not hard at all. It may be great fun to debate what happened in this game or that, but in the end, such debates are far more for the fun of it than because verification is difficult.
What happens in international relations/economics, the interior machinations of the Supreme Court, the politics of electoral process at al are not.
The complexities of an interconnected world are far more difficult, even for veteran practitioners who do not speak each others’ language or practice each others’ cultures, hence the variety of opinions that surround those areas even among those who do.
For those who are charged with making decision in the voting booth, the time and effort needed to make wise decisions based on a sufficient understanding of those complexities, it can seem nearly impossible, even if one had the time or the inclination to thoroughly educate oneself, which many American voters, caught up in the necessities of here and now do not.
That's a good challenge, James. In the words of Russell Ackoff (1919-2009), "Our ability to solve problems is limited to our conception of what is feasible."
Is it feasible for me to expect people who interact with me directly to deliberately apply the adaptive thought process (trust, verify, and repeat) while deliberately avoiding the maladaptive process (assume "I" am right, blame, and repeat)?
Is it feasible to trust the education system to add adaptive behavior pattern training to its standard curriculum at every grade level, and then apply the same behavior pattern to continuously verify the effectiveness of the training?
Is it feasible to expect people who identify as (fill in the blank) to behave like (fill in the blank) by applying the adaptive process (Christians, scientists, lawyers, politicians, capitalists, journalists, etc.)?
Is it feasible to expect people who have a basic conceptual understanding of the difference between the good and bad processes to get the idea that supporting a candidate with the emotional maturity of a badly enable five-year-old for the office of the most powerful human on Earth was not such a good idea after all?
Is it feasible to expect that by the end of the current decade it will be significantly easier to address the issue you've identify in your comment?
If you want my answer, then it's yes to all of the above.
"That's a good challenge, James. In the words of Russell Ackoff (1919-2009), "Our ability to solve problems is limited to our conception of what is feasible.””
Does that mean what is feasible in terms of our physical, psychological, financial, etc. ability to solve problems or feasible in terms of our ability to conceptualize all the potential aspects of the problem itself in advance of attempting to solve it, or feasible in terms of our ability to even define or to understand the problem itself?
Such a stupid, repulsive and disrespectful thing to do. There was absolutely no reason to drive on the reflecting pool like that and that’s exactly why Donold did it, because he’s an impulsive, arrogant, tactless lunatic.
When you’re a celebrity, they let you do it. You can do anything, drive anywhere. I just popped a tic-tac and moved on that Reflecting Pool like a bitch. Just grab it by the joints…
Brilliant simile to that “alley cat spraying everything around him with his stink.”
No offense to alley 🐈🐈⬛🐈
Nor cats!
If Duffy takes his GART on the highway in a Winnebago it may cost him $4.54 per mile.
Costs the taxpayers! He fat, dumb, and happy sucking at the federal ca$h teat!
''Look Up, Ignore Reality: Trump’s Alien Theater''
Yesterday, President Trump dropped decades of UFO files, promising Americans “the truth about aliens.” The headlines screamed “Disclosure!” and the public gazed skyward, imagining interstellar diplomacy. What they actually got were blurry dots, orange orbs, and heavily redacted memos that might have been labeled “Use Your Imagination Here.”
Trump himself advised, “Have fun and enjoy.” And enjoy we did—mostly the spectacle, not the science. UFO enthusiasts speculated wildly, journalists squinted at 1940s photos, and the rest of America looked up while inflation, war spending, and political chaos marched on.
No alien autopsies. No Martian embassies. Not even a green glow in a government memo. What this revealed was Trump’s uncanny talent for distraction. The real extraterrestrial phenomenon? The ability to make Americans ignore urgent domestic crises in favor of indistinct blobs in old photos.
The files were political theater at its finest. Attention abducted, crises ignored, reality TV masquerading as interstellar revelation. By the time anyone noticed the photos were decades old, the next headline had already appeared: “Aliens? Wait, What About the Debt Ceiling?”
No aliens confirmed. No spacecraft cataloged. The closest encounter of the fifth kind was watching Twitter explode. Yet the spectacle succeeded perfectly: America’s gaze fixed on the heavens while chaos below remained entirely terrestrial.
Thank you, Mr. Trump. Your cosmic red herring reminds us that the real alien life in America isn’t 93 million miles away—it’s right here, in plain sight, and it comes with a press secretary.
Wasn’t it an eerie koinkidink that all those aliens looked just like ground squirrels?
🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣
The tRump regime’s incompetency, grift, lies and greed continues to astound me. One would think that by now I'd be immune and numb, but for whatever reason it still slaps me in the face.
When trump's evil doesn't feel like a slap in the face anymore we will lose our democracy.
Thank you Mary Pat, you are right 😊
ICTT yes: but the stuff the Felon is spraying is coming out of his diaper, not merely the ejaculations of an old randy demented creature (I refuse to debase cats of any variety by associating them with him). I would also like to point out that, as I mentally predicted--and something HCR did not mention because perhaps it was so far down in the news headlines--there was also a Friday Stock Market Manipulation announcement that Russia and Ukraine had agreed to a 3-day ceasefire. Which I do not believe, because the past ones--like the ones Israel claims occur--were merely an opportunity for Putin to bomb the crap out of Ukraine and then complain when the Ukrainians retaliate. And, predictably, the markets did go up. I find the whole manipulation of the equities markets to be disgusting, but I decided long ago to adopt Voltaire's clever use of the stock markets of the 18th century: he got rich and used the money to support the lawsuits of victims of the very organizations he profited from. For me, this is a useful way to upend capitalism through capitalism.
He can't walk any more. I understand. I'm 80 and don't walk as well as i did but i do manual labor 9 hours/day to buy food and gas and this FAT ass and his FAT, lazy, drunken entourage couldn't walk 100 yards to prevent a million dollars damage. My sympathy is thin.
It apparently never occurred to this “ master builder/developer that the beast and his additional +\- 300 lbs of blubber might do damage to the newly sealed pool. God forbid that he get his fat ass out and walk over to observe the unnessary vanity project. That “golden statue” should be thrown in the bottom of that pool and submerged to rot away just like he is doing.
It wasn’t just The One Beast, but the Seven Other Beasts always in a motorcade so you never know which one is hauling the real lardass.
And those "Beasts" are fortified vehicles, so they weigh far more than an "ordinary" vehicle.
great analogy
Like a dog looking for a place to shxx!
But at least with an ally cat there is the chance it might have the possibility of being nice. Case in point, I had this big ole tom cat show up at my door one day, I called him Gordo he was so big. He had an abscess on his head & since there is an invisible sign over my door that says "Sucker lives here, all strays welcome!", I couldn't take him to the vet he did allow me to treat his wound & let me feed him. He hung around for a while & I thought I would be able to adopt him. But when I went to pick him up he dashed away & disappeared. But still he was nice in his own way. trump does not have the capacity to be nice, he'll he doesn't even have the capacity to be tolerable!
Looking forward to creative cat images.
What a perfect analogy!
Ya think? Think - he doesn't do that.
Take a nice big whifffff.
2.5 more wonderful years
Stinky Rick Sender
Nothing could make me more determined to vote than some partisan rural circuit court judge overturning my vote (along with those of 3 million of my friends) on a technicality — by a vote of one. Fuck that nonsense.
Turnout remains everything. Too big to rig. Too big to be gerrymandered into irrelevance. Too important to look away from.
Despite everything, it’s still “the economy, stupid.” And money remains the secret sauce. Our coffers are empty. No time for self-pity. Blue wave still approaches. Let’s get to work…
In the meantime, happy 100th birthday, Sir David Attenborough!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I1D9YF0YapQ
Sir David is one of my heroes. And yes, it's the economy AND the corruption. They are linked.
JL, it is the economy, but we need to make it even more than that! The protection of our rights as Americans being taken away by Trumplandia, at every turn to make us totally subservient/enslaved to them is in the works. We need to tell those in gerrymandered districts in the south that they are being used and that the manipulators are using their hatreds of others against them to make them comply with whatever stupid idea they come up with at any given moment. Once they harm the other groups, they will come after the rural and suburban white folks as loafers, illegal landowners, or whatever comes into their addled fascist brains. Their beloved Donald Trump is at the center of what is about to happen to them even though his dementia won't let him remember any of it and he will lie to say it didn't happen. The basic Democratic platform has to be universal, then added to in each district to meet the needs of the people there: universal healthcare, a living wage for every job, end of tariffs, automatic voter registration upon citizens turning 18, fair voting districts independently drawn, court reform at all levels, fair taxation without loopholes for the rich, significant funding for renewable energy and dealing with global warming, clean air and water everywhere, protection of our public lands, strong support for our public schools, separation of church and state, reinstatement of supports for diversity-equity-inclusion, full rights for differently able-bodied and LGBTQ persons throughout the country, rebuilding strong relationships with the world particularly our allies, reinstating US Aid and other international service organizations, improvement of public transportation, and more based on what a committee of strong progressive Democrats see as necessities. People all over the country need to be encouraged to VOTE in every single election, not just the ones of high interest. We need people to make calls and texts, knock on doors of all sorts of people and actually listen to their issues, get people registered to vote, get billboards up wherever possible that present parts of the Democratic platform, flood social media with the positives of the platform and who the candidates are who support it in the district, hold regular press conferences to let people know what Democrats federal and local are doing for the people and what they are opposing and why. Call out the corruption, maybe 2 points of corruption a week so people won't be overwhelmed, call out the tech bros who are only for themselves and what they can get their AI to do that can and will do harm to the American people. We can do this! We have nearly 6 months to get this going! Let's skip the Democratic infighting and make this happen!
Fight back lawfully.
In early April I filed a verified complaint with the Attorney General of CA, ROB BONTA, attacking trump's attack on early mail-in voting which is an electoral process controlled by the states not the Feds.
Less than 1 week later, my CA AG, Rob Bonta, outdid me 22 times over by getting together with 22 AG's across our country & filing a lawsuit in Massachusetts on behalf of ALL early mail-in VOTERS in every state.
Vote early regardless per your owns state' law.
I did that for the Ohio primary, as I was able to vote at the election office in the county building in Dayton. I was coming back from attending my niece’s confirmation in Chicago. I will vote early for the midterm election as well.
Good one Kathy Hughes, As a CA Trial attorney in California I was often in court on Election Day.
No problem. The Registrar of Voting's Office where I could vote was in the basement of the courthouse.
That’s a good thing. I am admitted and fully licensed in Ohio and several times worked as a Democratic election observer to make sure the supplies and ballots were available and voters did not face excessively long lines or attempts to challenge their right to vote. One of my friends and former coworkers runs a local polling place in the next county over.
Bryan, good for you. But CA is not TN, where the governor, legislators and every high-level administrator lives to serve the Orange God. If trump ordered Lee to murder every third person in TN, he would do it, and fast.
Understand. I moved to SoCal to be near family & my brother's new grandchild & my weeks old niece.
🎶 I will survive 🎶 despite the touch of grey.
🎶 We will survive 🎶
Lyrics by Robert Hunter
Music by Jerry Garcia
What I found was Tennesee’s abusive revenue day for over the road truckers. When passing over Mt. Eagle the signs directed every truck into the rest area atop the pass. Once slowed down a DOT agent would hop on the running board and declare an outright revenue day. Safety? I really didn’t believe the stories about departmental widespread fraud in southern states until confronted with it. My truck was new out of the box and I was a proud yankee boy. Dumb proud yankee boy. I left several hours later sans 400.00$. The next time they sprung the trap I asked the guy what would be the cheapest fine I could get away with. Very congenially he allowed me to declare my small horn was not working for a mere $35.00. I graduated with honors. Ohio was next then Wisconsin, and California, finally South Dakota. Eventually dynamite solved South Dakota while California was caught on hidden cameras. No recourse in Ohio and I quit after Wisconsin. Such is the tale of the outlaw trail. Recruitment proceeded to the prisons who’s denizens had no such sensitivities.
I used to be along haul trucker Pat and OHIO was the worst back then!
I wonder if they do that in Virginia. I have never seen so many tractor trailer trucks on the highway in my life. Must have been at least a 5:1 ratio. At one rest stop I counted 18 trucks stopped. Virginia could clean up.
Bryan, Kudos to you and the others who got your AG and the other AGs to bring the suit, a righteous suit that I hope will win in court because it is truly critical! Trump (OK, Trump's handlers in the white house toddler pool) is trying to destroy our government so their rich white male buddies can take over and steal our country blind. That is not legal, but nothing they are doing is really legal, they just have bought enough judges and justices as well as Republicans in legislatures across the country that few are standing against them, and they were bought cheap. We need to find legal ways to get this whole Trumplandia mess out of office, maybe impeaching the whole regime for treason against the American people. I think we have a lot of exhibits from every corner of the insanity to make our case: the AIers coached and corralled by Musk to Johnny Roberts and the SC 6, to everyone in that toddler pool, then Trump who actually has no clue what is going on, but will mouth whatever comes into his head, recently, a whine on the word "sea." Well, thanks for being one of those standing against them and having that stance picked up by some folks in power.
Thank you Ruth Sheets, yes, it does take the help of "others".
It’s a shame the republicans are Ruth-less.
Ruth, Ruth! You need to get over your frustration with the system. Impeachment is a waste of mental effort. First, you can't "impeach the whole mess of them" at once.. each impeachment is a separate event. Second even if an impeachment could be made in the House, there is NO POSSIBLE WAY to get 67 votes in the Senate needed to actually remove anybody. We all need to vote Democratic and get back control of congress. But we waste our breath and our time with impeachment.
Jon, why does Ruth need to accept your advice to save mental effort? It seems that she has plenty of mental energy.
Do we waste our time and our breath when we call out high crimes and misdemeanors? Many Americans only know the price of gasoline and groceries.
Thanks for the mansplaining Jon.
Bryan, as corny as it sounds I always felt a kind of pride walking into the local school gymnasium to vote. I loved the whole process. Greeting acquaintances, carefully marking my ballot, placing the card into the automatic vote counter machine. I felt a little taller walking back to the parking lot.
This year, even though I plan to work the polls on election day, I will vote early to try to make sure my vote counts. Although in my state the greater number votes democratic.
Oregon has voted by mail for almost 30 years. I miss going to my polling place to cast my vote. My first vote was in the May, 1976 primary election, where I cast my vote for Jimmy Carter, and for the local library levy (others I know, those I remember). Oregon went to full vote by mail after almost a quarter of eligible voters requested mail in ballots.
Marj, yes, there is something special about voting. I vote early now too, but I like to visit the polling place and bring treats for the workers and the folks outside who give information about their candidates.
Ruth, may I make a suggestion? I read you yesterday and had trouble following. Today, likewise. Could you please break your long comment into paragraphs? It’s so hard to read long prose without breaks. Thanks.
I will let you know that sometimes it is difficult to do that on Substack as the software will sometimes run paragraphs together. It depends on what device you are using (phone, tablet. Laptop, desktop)
MLMinET, will do it! Thanks for the suggestion!
It is the economy because at least 34% of the country (and we must assume at least 34% of the "failed to vote" 80% of the voting eligible population) want segregation and the termination of equality legislation. The economy hits us all (well, except the people who are given more money than they can possibly spend in a normal person's lifetime). You are correct that we need to stop "democratic infighting" (I use "circular firing squad") and we are all paying for gas that has increased exponentially in the past few months in all areas of our lives.
Western States Plywood, Elk River mill. Diesel 10 cents per gallon to log trucks delivering loads. Port Orford Oregon 1964. 10c written by hand in red paint on gravity flow tank, signature and amount please record in log book. Keep in mind that was the mill price only for trucks delivering. In town it was just under .30.
Ally House, yes, it is the economy because we tell people that is the only thing that matters to them when there is so much more. Most things do relate to the economy, but fair elections, providing critical services, universal healthcare, ending corruption are all really important so need to be emphasized too and if necessary, show how it ties into the economy.
The state doesn’t have to follow an unconstitutional ruling. You’re right that everyone has to turnout to record numbers, but Virginia also needs to fight back against this decision. They don’t need to comply in advance. It sounds like the Virginia AG is thinking along these lines. Even Hakeem Jeffries’ comment alludes to this as well. Another very very relevant Christopher Armitage article (written in January) on this subject: if the court went against the constitution, the ruling doesn’t need to be followed.
https://cmarmitage.substack.com/p/lincoln-defied-the-supreme-court?r=56wm8i&utm_medium=ios
The red state gerrymandering is not seeking voter input. Tennessee drew and approved a new map in two days and Louisiana is stopping an election in progress to redraw their map. Can someone explain why Virginia can’t just go ahead and draw a new map to be approved by the legislature and governor?
Maybe for the same reason John Robert’s expedited the ruling in Louisiana v. Callais? Republicans must come out ahead. Trump said so.
Carol, yes, Trump said so, and the bought and paid for Roberts 6 just can't cross their Baby Donnie!
Joan, it seems that it is because it is a blue state now, and can't have that!
No such thing as too big to rig, and that's the point. As long as you continue to believe that voting is the viable solution and its just that "not enough of the right people showed up" then you aren't organizing real solutions that actually threaten government power.
America has never liked cheaters and Cheeto is always looking for ways to cheat to win.
Trump has never paid the consequences for most of his cheating, lying, grifting and stealing. The emoluments clause of the US Constitution is a joke as are several other Amendments.
It seems as if he never experiences the negative legal consequences for all of the lawbreaking, cheating, lying, corruption, and grifting.
Our system of checks and balances means nothing if the corrupt Republicans in the current majority refuse to act as a check on the current egregiously corrupt regime. The orange menace breaks the law in plain sight, and the Republicans just shrug their shoulders, like so what.
Exactly, and both the Republican dominated House and Senate have decided to rubber stamp whatever Trump wants. They think this is why we have them there.
It “seems.” No, he definitively never has.
He has always skirted just outside the Law. Started at 28 years old….
https://theofficialurban.substack.com/p/whats-the-deal?r=463md&utm_medium=ios
Earlier than that, I'm sure. It is characterological.
Geek, I estimate the law-skirting started about 20 years earlier. An excerpt from the Wikipedia article about him:
"Trump was a millionaire in inflation-adjusted dollars by age eight.
Trump attended the private Kew-Forest School through seventh grade. His father enrolled him in the New York Military Academy, a private boarding school, from eighth to twelfth grade. The academy pushed students into sports and taught the imperative of winning."
Many stories have been written about Donald's cheating in school and paying others to take his tests. And yet, with all that cheating, Wharton professor William T. Kelley was quoted saying “Donald Trump was the dumbest goddamn student I ever had.” Hence, Donald's extraordinary efforts to conceal his school records.
He took some action, I presume legal in nature, to prevent both Fordham and Penn from releasing his academic records. I too think that others probably were paid to take his tests and write his papers. This would have been much easier to do in the late sixties-early seventies when he was university age. And when he went to work for the Trump organization, whom did his father select to mentor him but the very nasty, dishonorable Roy Cohn, master mafia mouthpiece.
No. We still can operate within our Constitution and law. Yes, we need to be aggressive, but any hints of "real solutions" (violence? Civil war?) are not viable. Every single special election has shifted blue. They haven't stopped those. We are here because people didn't show up to vote in 2024, or refused to vote for Harris because of purity tests. We can overcome this through our votes. THEN we can institute broad and aggressive changes to the system.
Purity tests are pointless.
Spot-on Laurie.
Don't just vote: Revolt. Revolution is what's needed and at this point, it's possible that nothing short of a revolution will return us to (or return to us) government of the people, by the people, and for the people.
It seems that we are already involved in a peaceful revolution. No Kings keeps growing; non-violent pro-democracy activists are everywhere. Every revolution encounters obstacles, but keeps pushing. We are on our way.
I agree that it is possible that revolution will be necessary, but I think that will happen in November depending on how the voting goes.
You go donna Woodward.
At some point, perhaps we Democrats will watch the Vigilantes Inc video at gregpalast.com and start thinking about ways to keep another round of cheating from occurring from Vigilantes (I have suggestions). Perhaps the governor of Virginia could declare that the new map will be used, citing the red states that have gerrymandered without a vote, and the many instances of Trump ignoring judicial orders. The party needs leadership from smart people, who are capable of bending the rules as Trump has to win. Unfortunately, I don't see that happening, but I am not plugged in to what the leadership is doing. Perhaps all the blue states should gerrymander without a vote! Has that been considered?
I am beginning to think that Dems can't continue to behave as if all the laws and rulings pertaining to governance, like the Virginia ruling, must be followed. The Red states are operating by their own rules made up as they go. Dems cannot win if we play by the "old" rules.
This is why we need people willing to fight and defeat the Republicans at their own game leading the party.
If we do that we lose. Period. Violating the law is a criminal act and even a governor can be charged with sedition.. "but what about them?" What about them? The enemy is in charge and they are going to violate the law repeatedly, we know that. But unless we are willing to accept the consequences of doing the same, we will all go down in defeat. No, we MUST continue to act as if our Constitution and our government and our laws mean something even when Trump is violating them all. Because when they no longer mean anything, we have lost anyway. Violating our own laws is a self defeating action. Even if it is for a noble cause.
Review the lawsuit filed in Massachusetts filed by 22 AG's to protect Mail-in Voting.
Whatever the fuck that means.
What ICTT, you don't think about nor believe in legal remedies? You should change your handle.
ILLEGAL remedies. Go read that post again. I can’t even begin to think what kind of “non-voting” violent remedies the poster was implying we should use.
We are being "ruled" by a Tryanny of the MINORITY. A ruthless, racist, White nationalist MAGA minority. At most 25%-30% of Americans strongly approve of the MAGA agenda. 60%-70% disapprove. Regardless of gerrymandering, the inhumane TRUMP/MAGA agenda gives us the REAL opportunity to bring many hard working Americans back to the inclusive, human agenda of the Democratic party. The contrast couldn't be greater. FRET LESS DO MORE!! WIN!!
Merrill - great post - wish I could cram all that on a bumper sticker and put it on every OTR vehicle in the country!
“Too big to rig”. Love it, ICTT!
"Abusing every loophole" is the fig leaf effort of this repulsive regime to appear as if they are law abiding. Finding or inventing executive privilege loopholes is the sole purpose of legal advisors in this Administration and it makes a mockery of the rule of law.
Viktor Orban used the same technique.
Oh my! Thank you for this awesome “birthday message” for Sir David Attenborough.
Breathtakingly clever and pleasant. Thank you for sharing!
I read on BlueSky that the Virginia Legislature has unrestricted ability to set a mandatory retirement age for the state's Supreme Court Justices. As I understand it the majority Justices making that ruling are all over 54.
That sounds like there is an actionable window to overturn that decision!
[ I am a North Carolina resident deeply offended that the NC Supreme Court redecided (after a partisan GOP majority of Justices was elected) that a five-months-old decision to prod the legislature to fund schools according to the state constitution, was inappropriate, and reversed it.]
Yes, it's still "the economy stupid". always has been, just so much more in our faces now.
That's why we need to get rid of the electoral college. trump won several states only by 1%, yet he gets all of their electoral votes. Basically (in my mind) all of those other votes don't count
At the risk of sounding simplistic it seems to me that the very first priority of a Democratic administration is to work with Congress to set up the Justice Department as a completely & permanently independent entity. Smarter minds will have to figure out the reporting structure but it is increasingly clear that none of the 3 branches of government can ever again be in sole control of Justice. Note that the Department of Justice was not dictated by the constitution.
It's certainly among the Top 5. And Barack Obama agrees with you -- apparently we need to codify the rules so that a President can never usurp the nation's chief law enforcement office to serve as his private solicitor.
"Despite everything, it’s still “the economy, stupid." And "Top 1% taking 90% of the Wealth" and "Corruption." Whoever opposes Repbulican candidates, simply explain to the voters that voting them will not help themselves, but hurt economically. Gerrymandering may not matter. Truth could bring the win.
So Bush II's hobby war cost about $3 trillion? And what did we get for our money? Don't let a Republican anywhere near the US treasury. If Democrats "tax and spend" for the public good, Republicans run up the debt, and make the richest richer, and most of us poorer. Weird that they manage to sell that.
Nothing to see here folks, just another forever war started by another clueless Republican President.
The story that really gets my goat, is the Sean Duffy story. All of the airlines will lose billions this year because of Kegbreath's and Trump's idiot Iranian War and what does Duffy do, he takes a 7 month paid vacation.
I refuse to fly domestically because of Duffy's incompetency. Fortunately, we can drive a few hours to Montreal and fly anywhere in the world, except of course the US. And thanks to Trump, I can drive across the country and it only costs me 75% more than it did two months ago.
And we are facing missile shortages, which is one of the many things Trump and Kegseth failed to plan for in their foolish attempt to distract the public by launching an illegal war in Iran. The most powerful missiles cost $15m per missile and take some time to build.
Missiles are part of old school war. Ukraine is winning thanks to drones. Not saying missiles aren't needed ,but they are no longer the most important tool in the toolbox.
Yes! Your comment needs to be amplified. Old skool Donnie and old skool Petey are spending billions of taxpayer dollars on old skool military platforms to lose wars they start.
Meanwhile, Ukraine is destroying old skool Vladimir's military with smart, cheap drones. Of course, it takes clever personnel to deploy those drones.
Old skool Petey is ridding himself of all those clever personnel because they're not white and/or don't have penises.
Reportedly Trump has been calling himself "the most powerful person to ever live".
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/trump-private-conversations-iran-war-dictator-b2967476.html?loginSuccessful=true
Everything else follows from that. Souls traded for money and power. There is something to it.
Certainly in a limited war.
And my distant nephew is CEO of the largest defense plant in the world. I’ll leave his name blank but you could find it easily enough.
Sorry 2nd largest.
Just toys in Donny-boy's Toy-Box. The public (today and for years to come) in there to foot the bill.
Oh! But Kegsbreath loves his ability to use our military to make things go BOOM! Never mind that he is leaving this country vulnerable to attack and subjugation by any hostile actor who is not as f^@$ing stupid as our band of morons and thieves.
Kegsbreath 🤣🤣
Dumb Duffy has no sense of propriety! Gosh, wish I could have taken months to travel while employed.
Where is DOGE when you "need them"? Talk about needless waste. Who's going to pay for all that? (A rhetorical question).
I'm sure Trump's hours and expenses on the links are classified as "National Security".
HRC paid dear for her flippant descriptive remark, but they've been proving her right ever since.
Feel like I missed something here. What did HCR pay dear for???
HRC-Hillary Rodham Clinton- made a remark during her 2016 campaign against the felon, that some of his followers (the ignorant racist homophobic ones) were a “basket of deplorables.” Taken out of context, it was damaging to her.
Well bye bye Miss American Pie
Drove the Chevy to the levy
But the levy was dry
Those good ole boys were drinking
Whiskey and Rye
Singing this will be the day that I die
This will be the day that I die
( Sorry I don’t have much else to say. Got to go feed the cats.)
It's levee, but yes to the sentiment.
I failed all spelling bees.
"Deplorables".
Anne- Louise, weren't the Deplorables a set of cartoon characters? ;-)
I think Anne-Louise might have been referring to Hilary's use of the term "deplorables" to describe conservative voters?
Not HCR, HRC.
A mistake that I make CONSTANTLY.
Me, too, always do a double take.
It's the sort of mistake I have made all my life. Some brains are prone to that. To me, it's not so big a deal to me, and computers help, though it can sometimes sow confusion.
Thank you, Emily. I was also puzzled. Not to tell someone else how to write their comments, I would think that given whose forum we're on, it would be advisable to avoid an acronym that is easily confused with the initials of our host.
Imagine, Anne-Louise, if instead of "deplorables," Hillary had cited humanities.
We already then had a wealth of great novels, memoirs, histories, films, songs, and other arts in touch with our working classes who so outrageously and for so long had gotten the shaft from our predator, dehumanized elites.
Sadly, pathetically, Hillary belonged to those elites, and had no awareness of either our humanities or our working classes so many of those humanities so well described.
Nah. She just made a few missteps that cost her. She didn’t listen to campaign advice. She stupidly used nongovernmental computer to do gov business. Yes she rightfully called them deplorables. But that became their battle cry. Many people revenge vote during presidential election having no interest in intellectual decision making. My opinion. We unfortunately deserve those who we elect.
Trump gave permission for his voters to be their worst selves, and they took full advantage of it.
You could say that. Trump was a con from birth like his father. It’s was inbred. And we, collectively, swallowed it. I’m afraid the worst is yet to come.
So am I.
And his son-in-law? Don’t forget Chris Christie of the great highway disruption put Jared’s father in jail. Just another Republican bit.
Yes and fools like my sister voted against HRC. When I asked her why she said 'Benghazi'. Knowing she only listens to talking points she had no reply when I asked her what about Benghazi?
A revenge vote. And my neighbor did too and she apologized and I quoted her in my book.
And then they proceeded to show she was absolutely spot on
Phil, HRC had the best pedigree for any person running for President in my lifetime. She is female. This country is unwilling to elect a female as President.
And HRC is bright. She and Bill are an enduring pair because of their mutual intelligence and patriotism. Both have contributed more to US than they will get credit for if we do not survive the current challenges.
I put her ever so slightly ahead of Harris, but they are really neck and neck as far as qualifications go.
Agreed, Ally. Saw her in Richmond, VA, Capitol Square, 1992, doing Bill’s brief speech because he had lost his voice. Spotted her as a midwesterner, solid as a rock. The recognition of her expansive intelligence came later. Intelligence is not hugely valued by American voters.
Yeah, because the “ men” are doing such a wonderful job……right???
She is a little conservative but I would have liked her to win.
How much of the $6.9 million is being kicked back to trump?
Most of it ML.
I've done the math, and the answer is $5,100,000.
Not bad for one phone call to "his gal" in New Canton, VA.
My thought exactly!
💯
K L, it's not weird if you consider the huge number of stupid people in this country. They did the numbers and the tailored the message.
Yeah, and I have wanted to know how much money is President Voldemort getting for selling pardons to white collar criminals? I’m not convinced he is pardoning the people merely because he wants to. Voldemort is a transactional person and can’t think in any other method.
And let's not forget the billions he charges to join his board of peace.
The board of peace is another scam designed to put Donald in the seat of power. It also allows him to do what he wants with the cash members give him.
Yes Kathy, even if it takes a century, we should investigate every transaction the scumbag president and his family was involved in. Necessarily, the sooner the better so we can deposit all that money into the Treasury department and use for the good of the people.
It helps make some companies richer.
I must admit to being very, very frustrated with those who look at the outrageous Republican hypocrisy regarding gerrymandering (it's legal for Republicans to force it through without the consent of the governed but Democrats can't do it under any circumstances) and say "it's okay, we'll fix it with a blue tsunami in the midterms". Personally, I want Democratic "leadership" to pull out all the possible legal stops to push back *now*. The Republicans have shown they will go well beyond playing hardball and break all the rules in their effort to enforce their fascist kleptocracy.
It's time for Democrats to fight like this is the fight of our lives and of the life of our democracy. Because *it is*!!!!
"(it's legal for Republicans to force it through without the consent of the governed but Democrats can't do it under any circumstances)"
Kinda the whole Republican schtick. Meanwhile, if I understand the Robert's court, it's not OK to fix an election based on racism, but it is OK to fix an election to insure the the party based on racism wins. Sounds dodgy to me.
Exactly -- the intended racist result was A-ok, but ensuring representation based on race is a big No-no. And then he had the chutzpah to say the Court was not partisan?? Seriously?
This SCOTUS is an unapologeticly Republican “court”. They, like most Republicans say that they deplore legislating from the bench, and that it is a practice done by Democrats, all the while legislating in the most egregious way to further their antidemocratic agenda.
It seems the problem with the elected Dems is the same problem experienced by all of us: divided attention. The Steve Bannon plan to exhaust the populace with a continuous shower of excrement has to affect the electeds as well, and there's only so many of them. As others have recommended, "divide and conquer" -- ie, certain small groups have to focus on compartmentalized projects, such as the Epstein files. Otherwise we are like stampeding wild animals on the plain, going hither and yon driven by panic. But Dem leaders should be handling that division of labor. Perhaps they are, and it's not visible to us?
They need to fight back alright. It sounds like Virginia AG is considering options. If Dems sit back and say.. ‘that’s it, we just need to turn out the vote’, that is complying in advance. This is a very relevant article (written in January) arguing that if the SC rules in an unconstitutional manner, their rulings should not be followed.
https://cmarmitage.substack.com/p/lincoln-defied-the-supreme-court?r=56wm8i&utm_medium=ios
April, your name should not be April but Year-Round. We need you not just in April. 🤗
Thank you. While many of us turn off the news because of the unbearable stress of watching democracy slip away and corruption grow like a cancer, you persist. Please take care of your own wellbeing. For everyone else, how do we organize? If there are good webcasts to join or other actions please advise, thank you! 🙏🏽
Frederick Douglass before his death in 1895, was asked by a young man for advice on what to do with his life. The advice was whispered, “Agitate! Agitate! Agitate!” We must unite as One People, organize and agitate. Do so within your Congressional District to assure your Representative represents you. A good read is “Rules for Radicals,” by Saul Alinsky. He was a master union organizer. Knock on doors in your local area and talk with neighbors. Organize together with one or two others: every revolution in history began with two or three people working together. Get involved with regestering new voters: Democrats. Assure voters in your district know how to vote and get the vote out. Reach out to family and friends also. Attend rallies with creative picture signs edited with a few words only thus making it more readable. For a rally you and your group can organize an indictment with people testifying with researched concise memorable lines alerting the public and press of specific bad deeds resulting from corporate deregulation which have been destructive of our economy, lives and Earth. Focus always on growing in numbers: use word-of-mouth, handouts, technology, social media, and 60 second YouTube videos to reach out to others. As Alinsky said, “Do what you do best!” Network with other groups near you so that if a flash rally is needed then more of us can be there. The goal is to go big with 35 or more persons in your group and hold District town hall meetings inviting your district Representative, or request a meeting in their office also with your group.
Thank you for the book recommendation. I actually do most of what you have advised! ATM am looking for a national or regional campaign to jump into. One that United a mass of people who are looking to take action . Again I appreciate your advice
Albert, I believe you to be the most intelligent person responding on HCR. What you write is valuable.
Start with Indivisible.
Reading newspapers these days seems to be an exercise in doomscrolling.
Join your local League of Women Voters:
https://www.lwv.org/
MaryPat, do you know of a group going into schools to register kids to vote? LWV does not seem to offer this.
I plan to contact my local league of women voters and see if they are doing a push to sign up young voters.
Not just register, but give the civics lessons that appear to have been eliminated in our public(and some private) schools. These kids need to know why it is their responsibility to vote, and to be Informed voters!
Linda, I can't build Rome in a day. I will do the happy dance just to extract a promise to vote.
I turn off talking heads who are not in elective office.
We’re experiencing the greedy desire of the mega-rich persons of the world and their corporations to control the world. They’re using the divide and conquer strategy to make little ones out of big ones. The reason is taking over smaller and less powerful governments one at a time is easier than attacking large powerful and rich governments. The most recent “Fortune Global 500", an annual ranking of the top 500 corporations worldwide, includes 138 headquartered within the USA. Many companies based abroad also operate extensively in the USA. A significant number of these 500 companies are large multinational corporations whose financial influence is comparable to that of the USA government.
In 2020 the United Kingdom (UK), withdrew from the European Union (EU), a political movement called “Brexit”. The Conservative Party of the UK, the “Tories” which are the corporatist fascist there, were the primary party delivering Brexit. Now most people polled in the UK feel Brexit is a failure and 55% + say it was wrong to leave the EU and they would support rejoining.
This week a corporatist fascist group in Canada, the “Alberta Prosperity Project”, are seeking to separate Alberta from Canada. They turned in more than 300,000 signatures (only 178,000 needed) in support of putting the referendum on the ballot. They say “sovereignty for Alberta holds the promise of economic prosperity, political empowerment, cultural preservation, greener energy, and an enhanced position on the global stage.” Unlike the UK which is surrounded by ocean, Alberta as a State would be landlocked thus having significant economic problems by increased cost in exporting and importing of goods. Right now the Conservative Party has a significant edge among registered voters in Alberta. If they win then the people of Canada would need to vote on the issue of a constitutional amendment to allow secession. All this should be a major RED FLAG to us.
All three branches of our government are clearly involved in this corporate take over of the world. The USA and it’s allies are being divided by tariffs and the Iran war. In the USA they are dismantling our Federal Executive Departments. The Roberts Six with their gerrymandering decisions are inciting States to attack voting rights of groups, thus individual persons. With their Citizens United decision they increased powers of mega-rich persons and their corporations to control elections. Thus downsizing the Federal governments and giving States more power to control whose votes count the most. The number of “Red States” controlled by these corporatist fascist must be a prime motivating factor for Democrats to win the “Swing States” this year, in 2028 and henceforth. The same is true for the single candidate swing districts in all States. UnitedWeAmend.org.
Follow the money. That "I WANT TO RULE THE WORLD" thing seems to never go away, even if, from time to time, we teach it some manners.
Unfortunately, the horrible stories from earlier in the week, like the cover-up of our bases in the Middle East being destroyed will all but be forgotten by Monday.
“Flood the zone” works.
Maybe no more Green Party dividing the vote. No more Jill Bolsvick Stein running for president.
⬆️⬆️⬆️⬆️⬆️⬆️
‼️‼️THIS ‼️‼️
🤪🤪🤪
Trump is helping to encourage the Alberta secessionists, and the Canadian government would be within its rights to stop in. Western Canada, particularly Alberta, has had some weird right wing populist movements in its history. Muskrat’s history is rather relevant here. His grandfather Joshua Haldeman, had a long history with Canada’s extreme right and antisemitic Social Credit party. Haldeman saw no future for people with his views in Canada, so he, his wife, and their daughter Maye left Canada for South Africa, then under the rule of the apartheid creating Herstigte Nasionale Party. Haldeman died in 1974 when a small plane he was flying solo crashed.
The Alberta separatists won’t win (my prediction). They’re probably being funded by Russia and perhaps even MAGA.
Yeah , we thought that the Tea party and MAGA stuff was too stupid to gain any popularity also. Never underestimate the willingness of any population to embrace their worst instincts! And never underestimate the willingness of certain people to take advantage of that intentional stupidity.
We survived the much greater threat of Quebec separatism. Which is still a thing. So I can’t get too excited over these Alberta weirdos. They don’t have anything like the popular support the Quebec separatists had.
Dean Blundell wrote about MAGA funding for Alberta separatists. Sorry, I can’t find the link.
I have long suspected that. But they’re still a pale shadow of the Quebec separatists.
My daughter lives in Alberta and she’s not worried.
Beautifully calibrated letter. Slow burn, then the explosion when we reach the black gowns. Quoth the raven, Nevermore.
(Trivial, but does that mean he had his motorcade (so grotesque) drive on the actual surface of the once reflecting pool?)
Yes, that’s exactly what he did. The New York Times has a photograph of the act of desecration on its main page. And Andy Borowitz has a photo of the Fatted Golden Idol at Mar-a-Lardo with a gaggle of fundamentalist pagans ooh-ing and aah-ing around it, like the apes in “2001: A Space Odyssey” in front of the Monolith.
It's probably covered in gold Rustoleum spray paint from Home Depot. Just wait until the pigeons poop on it and they have to clean up the statue and the paint comes off.
Interesting thought; more previously unstudied symbols to penetrate, in that remarkable film?
I’m waiting for AI to start telling me “I’m sorry, Dave, I can’t do that…”
Siri says that quite often to me, but so far has not tried to cut off the air or lock me out of the house.
HAL definitely comes to mind when you contemplate AI, the tech-bros’ lust for power, and if you are familiar with Kubrick’s film “2001: A Space Odyssey.” It was based upon the novel by the late British born novelist Arthur C. Clarke.
Trump is the quintessential representation of "white trash." He has no class, the values of a snake-oil salesman, thinks he's the smartest person in the room when he's usually the dumbest and has no decorating skills whatsoever.
More like "bourgeoisie" than white trash. He is one of the nouveau riche that "old money" folks despise. He loves tacky and gaudy things. No taste, no class.
I concur, Signe. Truth is, Donald's ancestors were never quite as poor and ignorant as the expression "white trash" applies, although Grandpa Friedrich stooped pretty close with his pimping. Mary Anne was low-born, but none of her folks lived in caravans that we know of.
When considering the Trumps, I always think of Hyacinth Bucket (pronounced boo-kay) in the Brit Com "Keeping Up Appearances."
Haha yes, I loved that show on the BBC! Hilarious.
I always wondered where the term “white trash” originated. I never thought it would end up in the White House, though.
It’s used in ‘Gone with the Wind’ several times so possibly originated from the devastation and depredations that many Southerners faced during the Civil War and its aftermath.
Would have to say there have been a few white trash presidents already though, like Andrew Jackson and George W. Bush.
Wikipedia has a lengthy article on the origins of the term, but I'll just paste DuckDuckGo's AI summary:
"The term "white trash" originated in the early 19th century, first appearing in print in the 1820s, and was used to describe impoverished white individuals, particularly in the Southern United States. It reflects historical class distinctions and societal attitudes towards poor whites, often seen as morally inferior or lacking in social status."
He does have execrable architectural taste. He wants his ballroom/bunker come hell or high water, and is ignoring the court orders and judgments based upon his arbitrary decision to demolish the West Wing without following proper procedure. He also wants his tasteless Arc de Trump no matter how much people revile the very tasteless idea. After grifting money from big corporations for the cost of his ballroom/bunker, he now expects taxpayers to cover the costs, cutting Social Security, healthcare under ACA, SNAP funding and other essentials to build this stupid structure. He will likely do the same if he is able to build the Arc de Trump. We the taxpayers, who aren’t getting our money’s worth, will be expected to cover the costs of this unwanted architectural excrescence.
Demolished the East Wing. And, yes, he has execrable taste. Perfect description.
Tell me something I don't know.
Money can’t buy……like my gramma always said
The biggest story was not . . . . What a great way to enumerate just how demoralized things have gotten. I am betting the U.S. Supreme Court will turn down a challenge against the ruling of the Virginia Supreme Court by rationalizing that it is too close to the elections.
Sadly, it’s non-appealable, as I understand, because it concerns an application of state, rather than federal law.
That being the case, why did they take the Louisiana case, I wonder?
Because the Louisiana case had federal repercussions because of the Voting RIghts Act, and they used it as a lever to allow them to run the last functional parts of the VRA through the woodchipper and finally say that the only racism in America is racism against white people.
This is the same VRA that MLK died for, that was passed after his assassination by popular demand, and that has been gutted by Republican partisan justices ever since. But it took the Roberts court to render it completely nonfunctional and turn it ass backwards. But Republicans are second to none at turning things ass backwards.
So the Louisiana decision basically makes all other cases irrelevant?
Heather answers your good Q, "pilgrim," quoting Jamie Raskin.
This quote comes in her third-to-last sentence, where Jamie R. refers to "right-wingers in black robes."
BUMMER.
You might loose your bet Ned. Just in case, bet the minimum 😉
Well, I hope I LOSE that bet 'bigly'.
😅
‘Is This the End of the Road for the Heritage Foundation?’
“Péter Magyar’s first press conference after winning the Hungarian election wasn’t about domestic policy.
It was about the receipts.
https://amberbateman.substack.com/p/is-this-the-end-of-the-road-for-the?r=kxzps&utm_medium=ios
❇️ The Pipeline
MCC has worked with Jordan Peterson, Tucker Carlson, Dennis Prager, Heritage’s Kevin Roberts, and representatives of the Federalist Society, the Manhattan Institute, and Project Veritas. The entire ecosystem of the American right has been taking meetings, and influence, and money in some form, from an institution built on Hungarian taxpayer money and Russian oil revenue.
Heritage Foundation president K-K-Kevin Roberts called Hungary “not just a model for conservative statecraft but the model,” then used that model to build Project 2025.
Son-of-a-bitch.
❇️ What Magyar Is Actually Doing
He’s pulling the financial floor out from under the whole operation. Halleluiah!
Sixteen years of Viktor Orbán didn’t just hollow out Hungarian democracy, it built an international infrastructure for dismantling democracy everywhere.
And now that infrastructure has a new owner, and he’s coming for it.”
A.EEVIE BATEMAN
APR 19 2026 | Substack
https://amberbateman.substack.com/p/is-this-the-end-of-the-road-for-the?r=kxzps&utm_medium=ios
This outing is delicious. I'm grinning. Thanks JaKsaa!
THX Jaksaa! Interesting. I shared this to my feed.
Several musings on this morning:
.Racism is America’s original sin.
.The Confederacy is back.
.Grifting and sexual assaults are honorable if you are a white guy
.Stabbing allies in the back and stabbing fellow citizens in the back are good moves if they make you and your buddies wealthy
.A bad environment is good business
Seems like a good list, Steve. At the top, you recognize that this country was settled via the theft and extermination of the Indigenous Peoples and on the backs of kidnapped Black slaves; the Confederacy never really left us. Your other three musings are of a different category, but I am insufficiently caffeinated to be able to articulate it clearly.
THE CALL FOR GOOD CANDIDATES
If you are interested in an examples of good candidates who would help take back our democracy (if they win in the 2026 election), here are some mostly new ones. You can listen to what they say in the provided links and decide for your self. Heather has a policy of not endorsing any specific political candidates so I am not presenting them to imply that they have any kind of endorsement from me or anyone else.
(1)Graham Platner, Democratic US Senate candidate in Maine. “Graham Platner Holds a PACKED Town Hall in Biddeford, Maine - YouTube”. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GFxav3SPzfI and “Graham Platner On Service, Messaging & the Future for Democrats | The Weekly Show with Jon Stewart - YouTube”. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-itNjgCJDxU. N.B. Governor Janet Mills who was endorsed and financially supported by the DNC, Chuck Schumer, the AIPAC, etc. has dropped out so Platner will run against Susan Collins.
(2) Ryan Busy, Democratic US Representative candidate in Montana
was interviewed on The Contrarian:
“He Was A Top Gun Executive. Now He’s Flipping Montana Blue. - YouTube”. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z1PJl6cKWiI
(3) Dr. Amy Acton, MD., Democratic candidate for governor in Ohio primary victory speech: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yTZ9OYHhzNc
She is an American physician and researcher, a volunteer in the presidential campaign of Barack Obama and prior director of the Ohio Department of Health (the first woman to hold the post) who led Ohio’s COVID-19 pandemic response. She is a child of divorce and has described childhood experiences of neglect, abuse and periods of homelessness until she moved in with her father in 7th grade. She payed her own way through college.
(4) James Talarico, Democratic candidate for the U.S. Senate in Texas, is a Presbyterian seminarian, a former educator and has served since 2018 as a member of the Texas House of Representatives. “James Talarico gives commencement address at Paul Quinn College - YouTube”. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yEgjjBPFzNA and. “Rep. James Talarico On Confronting Christian Nationalism, And Strange Days In The Texas Legislature - YouTube”. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oiTJ7Pz_59A
(5) John Ossoff, Democratic US Senator up for reelection in Georgia, “American Conversations: Senator Jon Ossoff - YouTube”. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VSKKjD3H6Ho and “Sen. Ossoff hosts town hall meeting in Marietta (4/26/25) - YouTube”. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LF2xsYOi9H8
(6) Randy Villegas, Ph.D. is an educator and small business owner from a working-class family who is running for U.S. Representative in U.S. District 22 in California’s Central Valley. “The race for District 22: A one-on-one with Randy Villegas - YouTube” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L80we90hGRE and. an interview by Indivisible: https://ezralevin.substack.com/p/how-to-build-a-democratic-party-that?r=1d2cea&utm_medium=ios
(7) Peggy Flanagan is an American politician and Ojibwe activist serving as the 50th lieutenant governor of Minnesota since 2019. A member of the Minnesota Democratic–Farmer–Labor Party (DFL), Flanagan served in the Minnesota House of Representatives from 2015 to 2019. She is running for US Senator in MN. “LIVE: Fighting Oligarchy in Rochester, MN with Peggy Flanagan, Tina Smith and Keith Ellison - YouTube”. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E9k0OR8N6AQ
(8) Julie Gonzales is an American lawyer and politician serving as a member of the Colorado Senate from the 34th district in the City and County of Denver since her election in 2018. She is a progressive member of the Democratic Party. She has served as Senate majority whip and supported progressive causes including death penalty repeal, abortion rights, and immigrant protections. She is running for US Senator in Colorado. “Full conversation: State Sen. Julie Gonzales announces run for US Senate - YouTube”. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_tlwRWPp5fI
(9) Anthony Davis of Meidas Touch interviews Saikat Chakrabarti, an American political advisor, climate policy advocate, and software engineer. A progressive Democrat, Chakrabarti co-founded Justice Democrats, which powered Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez's successful insurgent challenge to Representative Joe Crowley, and Chakrabarti served as her campaign manager. He then served as chief of staff to Ocasio-Cortez, who became the U.S. representative from New York's 14th congressional district, until 2019. Chakrabarti left Ocasio-Cortez's office to run New Consensus, a group promoting the Green New Deal, whose development he led. He is running to succeed former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi as the representative for California's 11th congressional district in the 2026 U.S House election. He is highly intelligent and has a lot of good ideas about how to win elections with candidates who will work for the people rather than the billionaires. Enjoy.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K6qm1X4vRyw
(10) We also have a number of prominent Democrats giving town halls and other talks around the country to educate the populace: Governor Andy Beshear of Kentucky, US Representative AOC, US Senator Bernie Sanders, former Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg who gave a town hall in dark red Tulsa, OK. (“Pete Takes Questions, Live from Tulsa - YouTube”. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MCc-ipWVShY and “AOC LIVE - YouTube”. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nbzYO_e9xnw )
I would add Callie Barr, running for Michigan's 1st Congressional district (Upper Peninsula and Northern "Mitt." Local (born here unlike Big Oil's plant, Jack Bergman). Veteran, military spouse, attorney, NOT owned by Big Oil:
https://callieforcongress.com/?fbclid=IwVERDUARr_vFleHRuA2FlbQIxMABzcnRjBmFwcF9pZAwzNTA2ODU1MzE3MjgAAR5V8NWyv34EO1ad4PYZdG3oLK4ybodhY82ZIJmlAw6Urcsm2e0EjO4VaH8RpA_aem_IWVOecK8YzO8p3o9tSFpGQ
Excellent information in your posting Fred. Any hope to have that kind of candidates in Florida........? Please...🥲🤞
Excellent list of good candidates, Fred! Thank You. Makes me hopeful and proud just to read them! Now to $upport them.
How are we ever going to have the will of the people if a small number of ugly old white men do nothing but cheat?
Sort of sounds like Thom Paine.
I'm honored by the comparison. Lately, things have been looking more like Hobbes. I'm definitely in the Locke/Paine camp.
By voting in huge numbers against the ugly old white men.
OUR ‘PRESIDENT’ IS A MOUSE MEETING WITH XI, A CAT
Joyce, what a despicable catalogue of Trumpian chicken shit less than a week before Bone Spur meets President Xi.
As a former Foreign Service Officer, the thought that Trump is representing the United States in a head of state summit with China makes me want to puke.
The United States once was indispensable on the global scene. I was proud to represent the United States. I welcomed the respect that we had earned throughout much of the world.
Under Trump’s AMERICA FIRST we have become insufferable and AMERICA ALMOST ALONE.
During the Cold War, I was proud how our presidents confronted Stalin, Khrushchev, Mao, and other authoritarians who opposed what America and her allies stood for.
Now I imagine Trump as a mouse going to meet Xi, a hungry cat. We are in an interminable conflict with China over coming years and decades. I can only imagine how Xi, a tough and focused bastard, must see Trump as a weak and pathetic foe.
Your catalogue of Trump’s daily horror stories highlights why I fear that, in a futile effort to ‘win’ in Peking, he will take a further slice out of America’s heritage in yet another narcissistic folly.
Maybe we get lucky Keith and he falls asleep all the time and nothing is lost or gained on either side.
Sleep?? Pfft…I want him to fall dead.
That fat narcissistic fuck has been a waste of air his entire life.
And it will be perpetrated by his descendants.....maybe we need to do voodoo!!!!
Ricardo Even when he is asleep, evidently his fingers keep moving on Untruth Social. Perhaps take him to a golf course—the Mao Tse Tung—and leave him there?
Poor guy, he'll be so disoriented that he would spend the rest of his miserable life looking for an exit, as with his stupid war with Iran.
Well, it seems there is absolutely no low to which Trumplandia will not go. The VA Supreme Court told VA voters in a sense, "we don't give a damn what you want, our loyalty is to Donald Trump and we will do whatever we can to make sure he wins." What a bunch of stooges! The people of VA need to get that Supreme Court out of power and in November, vote Democratic in every single state and federal election to show that the American people have rights that no court should be able to eliminate! We will have to work on our Supreme Court and other federal courts too over time!
Make sure the voters in your communities know about Trump's impounding of FEMA money to Democratic states.
The PAC "One Nation" has been sending out weekly paper mailings to Maine voters. They talk about how Susan Collins is saving the hospitals and supporting firefighters and teachers.
https://www.onenationamerica.org They are 100% in support of Trump's agenda, whatever that is that day.
Everything in the weekly flyers is bullshit.
And they are funded by the wealthy Republicans. Thanks so much Robert's for Citizen's United.
GJ, I knew it when I wrote my 1600. premium payment to FEMA in July that he'd never declare a state of emergency in MA. Meaning FEMA would never pay out a loss due me. Writing these checks feels like a big fat waste of my hard earned money!
Gerrymandering presupposes ‘normal’ turnout numbers. This is NOT going to be a normal turnout year. All the GOP bets are off. There is a chance that it will backfire in all the counties that are being robbed in the process of altering the count. The smell in the air is corruption, a party that has been rotting since Reagan’s time.
Republicans know they cannot win by fair votes.
So, first step, have Republican legislatures – or Republican courts – cancel elections, cancel democracy, gerrymander everywhere so even if by obviously rank cheating all districts go to Republicans only.
Second step – but there is no second step. If democracy’s dead, there are no real choices by any of us “We the people.” Despots only rule. No alternatives to that.
In such a climate, how many American schools can teach essay writing for seeing “others” as individuals in their cultures? How many students can read whole books teachers choose for them – and discuss them? And how many rule out all of that – rule out any students or teachers looking closely at things and questioning well?
If we’re submitting to despotism as the Republicans are arranging – for the moneyed classes, for the commodifiers, the nationalist white supremacists – do we have a name for what has schools packaging all instead?
There are two Substacks you need to look at today, back to back, to know what we have to do to win at the midterms despite Trump and the courts' election interference amid the gerrymandering wars:
https://roberthubbell.substack.com/p/dont-believe-the-doomsayers-keep
https://www.againstallenemies.net/p/gerrymander-harder-daddy-throw-pillow
The messages are simple in the face of the Republican onslaught: we can still win seats despite the gerrymandering, and we have to bring our own guns to the gunfight and redistrict Republican seats out of every Democratic state in response by using the same argument to the courts that got the “wins” for Republicans.
My list for what you have to do to protect individual Democratic votes hasn’t changed (see below), and it’s even more imperative now. But there is something else you MUST do today. Write to your state representatives and shame them if they are Republicans, and if they are Democrats in a blue state, tell them you are wholeheartedly behind their doing an emergency redistricting before the midterms. If you don’t like the take guns to a gunfight analogy, say we need to fight fire with fire. You light backfires to burn the land, preventing a larger fire from spreading and destroying more valuable property by creating a buffer zone with no fuel.
DEMOCRACY is the valuable property. Democratic redistricting is the backfire. There is no choice here—non-partisan maps can be rebuilt to be indestructible when we win veto-proof majorities. They aren’t now—and that is a brutal lesson we are having to learn this minute.
**********************************************************************************
Make sure your vote will count. Remember that last-minute changes to the rules could occur--the Trump plan is to maximize chaos.
1. Check that you are registered and that your name on the voter roll matches your required photo ID and passport. Do it now, in 3 months and two weeks before Election Day.
2. Be sure you have documentation proving citizenship easily available- a copy of your birth certificate, a US passport, proof of name changes. A marriage certificate may not be sufficient. If SAVE America is passed by Congress, or a clone is passed by your state, you could be required to provide proof of citizenship as well as a valid photo ID. Student IDs may not be considered a valid photo ID.
3. Know what district you will now be voting in and who the candidates are, given the massive last-minute redistricting efforts that may be occurring.
4. Make sure you know where and how you will vote in case mail-in ballots are suddenly disallowed.
5. Join community outreach groups to get people registered and to the polls. The next few weeks have a lot of groups registering soon-to-be high school graduates.
6. Talk to your neighbors who lean Republican, or who are uninvolved or undecided, or who are just leaning Dem about what is at stake. Give yourself a goal of getting one other person to vote Democratic in the midterms.
7. Talk to your college-age kids who live at school and help them decide where and how they will vote. They need to have a plan for registration and voting, and their documentation assembled.
8. When you vote in the primaries, vote for the Democratic candidate who will be most electable. The more of your neighbors you talk to, the better you will be able to identify that person. Hold your nose if you have to. I know that is a big ask. But the time to fix the broken system with ranked-choice voting isn't here yet. R's are counting on us to splinter and worry about purity tests on a few controversial issues. In the meantime, Indiana just showed us that they are choosing to be monolithic behind the money.
WE CAN DO THIS. Hungary did. But we have to work our butts off for the primaries and the midterms. EVERY VOTE in EVERY ELECTION!!!
#8 is so hard to inform people about. In California the governor primary results in two with the most votes advancing to November. Party affiliation plays no role. There are two Republicans and a half dozen Democrats; so stupid! One of two font runners is a Democrat. Voting has already begun and the attack adds against by some of those other Democrats are still on the air. They have no chance in hell and will not let a dead horse lie. Also, California is perhaps the most plural State and those other candidates are a sample of that thus there is the bias vote being lost for the front runner. We could actually have two Republicans on the Nov. ballot and need top vote against the worst one.
The fact that those CA democrats are so non-stragegic and crowding the primary field is so distressing.
That is absolutely why we have to vote strategically—and that is for the Dem most likely to be elected. Nuance is for the time when we are in the majority, not when we are fighting to still be able to vote.
"The more of your neighbors you talk to . . .."
That, Georgia, maybe your most key bit here.
Got to spread the passion, the humane urgency, the can-do, will-do.
Oh yes Robert Hubble. Alwasys liked him even after he banned me for disagreeing with him on events leading up to Russia invasion. He needed to have the last word. But I still, like him but no longer read him.
How many pictures of people with signs on overpasses can we liverals see? How effective are they? How many people could they inform and convince it they were close enough to look into their neighbors eyes and ask about their concerns instead of spending all those hours standing behind their signs. At best the Trump supporters believe that they are a tiny group of cranks because none of hte legacy media or the right wing commentators are taking any notice.
These are sincere people who are trying their best but there is no A for effort in politics, there are only winners of elections and losers.
Politics in times like these requires personal, extended, one-on-one interactions about shared concerns. That is scary. There is no safety in numbers, unless you are standing up against the lawless perpetrators of crimes against the people, like the Minnesoatans did. The opposition won in Hungary because they spoke to people individually over two years.
Go to your local diner and sit down at the counter next to the man wearing the MAGA hat or talk to the waitress in the Trump T-shirt and start a conversation about the price of the scrambled eggs and toast and a cup of coffee breakfast special. And really listen to them first and find some common ground, and then tell them what you are worried about. Tell them about one Democrat you strongly support and what they would be doing to fix your mutual problem and ask them who they favor to fix the issue. No judgement calls, just shared information.
And keep doing it. If we each influenced one more person to move left in one election on the ballot on every primary and regular election day it would be enough to take the majority in the Senate, and possibly the House. If we could each get 3 shifted in each election we would be making on our way to veto-proof majorities in 2028.
It will take a while to find a Trump supporter who is not yet identity fused with Trump and will still be amenable to the truth. Keep trying. Nobody is saying this is easy.
The Pew report shows that solid Democrats and lean Democrats have eroded slightly since 2020 while Republicans in those categories increased slightly with Rs now having a less than 1% edge in those combined categores. There are 7-8% with no registered opinion.
Do we have a choice? There are other voter suppression shoes that will drop between now and the midterms—Trump and his minions are facing an existential crisis. They are desperate and will try everything they can, and they have a complicit judiciary to aid and abet them. We have to strengthen our base, and convert who we can. And most of all, we have to start selling what we intend to do to make things better where we can—and that may be locally first while SCOTUS betrays us on a national level.
Georgia, I get it. Once when our current governor ran for senate in 2006, I posed a plan to his manager. I was already embarking on this. I told him if he asked every confirmed supporter to only fund one person they knew who was probably likely to vote for him but was simply to that motivated to vote (we all know those people), and work on them little by little. I knew such a person. She wasn’t that motivated. So I periodically called her and casually worked into the conversation Ned Lamont. It was a 3-way race and the 3rd candidate was a republican in disguise. On Election Day I called Maryland and asked if she needed a ride to the polls but she told me she had already voted. I never told her my strategy that I had picked her and worked on her. When I posed this the Ned Lamont’s manager, his response was “Why only one person why not 10 people to get to the polls.” It was at that moment I knew he didn’t take my plan seriously. And his candidate lost. End of story.
Just as important on Election Day, I once advised a grassroots group to:
1. Tell voters to be sure which polling station is for them
2. Don’t drink coffee day of since the line may be long.
3. Take Imodium the night before.
4. Bring a small chair to sit on as the line might be long
5. Bring ID
6. Bring water bottle
Simple right? I’m certain they didn’t take notice. They just wanted my donation. But I gave something even more valuable than money.
Republicans are palming off enshitification of our culture and future, and so must do so with obfuscation and distraction.
Most importantly, let us never forget this "enshitification" is in fact intentionally genocidal. How and why? Poverty kills -- particularly poverty deliberately reinforced by deadly disease vectored by anti-vax murderousness. Whatever the disaster, the rule outside the aristocracy is the death toll rises as income decreases. And by exterminating lower-income groups -- particularly people of color and single mothers -- the ChristoNazis are slaying the groups most likely to rise against them, whether with ballots or more powerful weapons.
Thus the terrible truth behind the statement of Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D/Rhode Island), pointedly quoted by Dr. Richardson, that the regime's policy is to "damn the health consequences for Americans.”
But of course most USians remain oblivious to the magnitude of Evil that assails us. Though I have pondered this fatal blindness for decades, it finally comes to me that to see the Absolute Evil personified by the failed United States of America and declared the sole national purpose of its successor the "Unified" ChristoNazi "Reich," one must have endured life in the South as a hated "yankee" or a person of color -- because only then do we realize our national Evil has literally no conceivable limit. And only then are we psychologically positioned to do what must be done if we are to have even one chance in one million of achieving Liberation.
But Loren, doesn't the aristocracy require a steady supply of low-level workers to keep their machinery (farms, factories, prisons) going? So setting the poor up for early death would leave them with no slaves (literal or figurative). But even as I type this, I remember: they (the wealthy) are mostly stupid.
As a Yankee living in the South, I am amazed at the perpetual ill will that still exists towards Northern USians, Loren. Even my friends seldom fail to comment on my « pahking », « khakey » « scahrf » …
Anne Marie...Because of my father's rather significant involvement in the war effort, we moved from New York City to Jacksonville, Fla., in the late summer of 1943. I was three years old. We rented an apartment in a very upscale complex on the St. Johns River, a gated "community" complete with a locked playground. Less than a month later, three of our aristocratic neighbors, white male Southron spawn ages six and seven, tried to kill me by holding me upside-down and burying my head in the playground sandbox. I was rescued by a fellow Yankee who had befriended me, Mary Alice Shotwell, the notably fierce five-year-old daughter of a naval officer who was one of my father's colleagues; Mary Alice grabbed a child-sized garden hoe and attacked my assailants, sending them home bleeding and screaming for their mothers. Four years later, also in Jacksonville, a gang of my fellow Norwood Elementary School students -- I a second grader, most of my assailants third-grader Southron males -- tried to stone me to death at a school-bus stop, leaving me unconscious in a pool of blood when two fellow Yankees, both military kids, chased them off; that incident required a trip to St. Luke's Hospital and left me with permanent facial scars. Years later, other white Southrons tried three times to murder me in retaliation for my support of the Civil Rights Movement: https://lorenbliss-outsideagitatorsnotebook.blogspot.com/2025/10/censorship-lessons-from-nader-and.html
Thus was I primed to recognize -- and never make the common error of fearfully under-estimating or delusionally denying the truly infinite magnitude of the Absolute Evil that now besets us in the form of the "Republican" (sic) ChristoNazi/Neoconfederate Party and its "Democratic" (sic) Fifth Column. Thus too my conviction that -- just as our too-brief interval of civil-rights justice mandated two northern invasions of the South -- now that the Southrons have (as Dr. Richardson points out), won the Civil War, our (only) hope of rescue is invasion by Liberators from without, supported of course by a strong internal Resistance movement. But given our craven refusal to move even one inch in that direction -- first essential step the creation of a shadow government in a militarily secure city abroad -- I cannot doubt the ChristoNazi conquest is forever.
Dismal prospect indeed, Phil.
Sad to say, Anne-Louise, I saw this as a U.S. Army Viet translator/interpreter years ago.
If we'd followed the model of Frenchman Paul Mus, who literally walked over Nam in the early 1950s, and conversed with many, many, we'd have seen how the people genuinely backed Ho Chi Minh's love of the U.S. Declaration of Independence.
Instead we backed the rich, the followers, hangers-on, and profiteers of French colonialism.
The only thing our "best and brightest" understood then was materiel, quantity, supplies, ordnance: Hueys, razor wire, concertina wire, mortars, frags, Agent Orange, napalm, B-52s, motorbikes for Saigon Viet guys, cases of beer, pounds of steak, and ammo, ammo, ammo for the 500,000 U.S. troops. And body bags.
Such an old story for U.S. bureaucracies: always trust numbers, supplies, materiel -- never even begin to know the human.
I’m curious, Phil. Do you regret serving in Vietnam? From childhood, I knew it was wrong and by 14 I was already on the streets protesting. Why did you go? I’m not asking to be insulting. I’m curious how young people make decisions.
I served in the U.S. Army, Bill, 2 Sept 1969 to 4 Apr. 72. Never was "in" Nam.
True, I was a Viet translator/interpreter. Of the year-long cycle when I was based at the old South Post, Fort Myer (Arlington Memoria Cemetery), there were ten classes, each made up of 12 students, half who'd been in Nam already, half officers, half enlisted, all mixed.
I finished with the top score -- and the army had me at overseas replacement, in tropical uniform, awaiting my flight to Nam, but then diverted me to Germany.
I spoke fluent Viet, French, and Russian -- not a word of German.
It was the country, Bill. I loved the U.S. Its land, its peoples, its cuisines, its traditions and culture. I'd wanted to see close-up what we were doing.
I saw. Especially in that year full-time learning the language, from native teachers and from those already who'd been on tours in Nam.
In Germany I learned the language and got an army job based on using it. I learned much, first in an office of congressional correspondence, where I saw the corruption close-up (all tied to uses of the passive voice), later that job based on using German, making a social program between German youth and U.S. army personnel.
Who profited from the Vietnam War? Same entities that profit from the Iraq "war"?
The U.S. standardized testing industry profited, MaryPat.
Corporate America then had -- still more has had since -- insatiable need for programming all to fit unquestioningly into its packaging priorities. Testing winnows that. It reduces all life to the conceits of linear-only cause-&-effect, and an ur-rational concentration on fitting all thinking to groups and categories.
And a vicious determination to have all teachers and students learn they may never question anything -- just keep deferring to the anonymous elites who, for the moneyed classes, are ever the only ones to ask any questions.