Thank you HCR...as always, I learn something EVERY TIME you put pen to paper, so to speak, I am glad you actually got to write about history tonight but the lesson, as many are, was very sobering. So much appreciate your dedication and commitment to this very long rabbit trail off your history highway.Ever think you would personally have such a role to play in the history of this nation you spent so many years studying? And now you are a big part of the whole that future generations will be using to learn the truth. THANK YOU 🇺🇲🇺🇲🇺🇲😪😪😪
Who would have thought that -- some 175 years after the fact -- a cynical cabal of violent insurrectionists led by a dumb criminal would try to make us re-litigate the 14th Amendment all over again and pretend it didn't really mean exactly what it did? Who would have imagined that the Party of Lincoln would one day sound and act like the Party of Hitler?
The political party of Greed, Hate and Fear, the Republicans, hate the Fourteenth Amendment. Yet they are so stupid they forget the corporate personhood doctrine they depend upon to win elections began in 1886 in Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad Company, 118 US 394 which held our Fourteenth Amendment which secures to all persons the equal protection of the laws applies to corporations also. That Court dared to not leave any analysis of the facts, legal issues, applicable laws or citations of supporting law, or any explanation that guided it’s publication of it’s decision written as a mere headnote of a case decided on totally different issue. That headnote reads, “The Court does not wish to hear argument on the question whether the provision in the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution which forbids a state to deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws applies to these corporations. We are all of opinion that it does." The Fourteenth Amendment was a direct response to the Court's 1857 holding in Dred Scott v. Sandford, 60 U.S. 393 decision which pushed America into Civil War saying that a person, a slave, is property with no rights. That Santa Clara headnote essentially says property, a corporation, is a person with rights. In 2011 that brought us Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, 558 U.S. 310. That is where the Court held that political communications by corporations during elections is a form of a corporation’s free speech rights under our First Amendment by way of the Fourteenth Amendment. Citizens United resulted in a rapid concentration of force in terms of tens of billions of dollars in corporate Super PAC money in election advertising for candidates supportive of entities with such money (mostly corporations) and against non-supportive candidates. It gave us Donald Trump twice. Citizens United is the single most paramount threat to We the People, our democracy and our Earth. Yet Republicans hate the Fourteenth Amendment. We need to Amend with, among other things, a repeal of corporate personhood doctrine.
Modern "Republicans" are battling to ditch our republican form of government. The current label of "Republican" is as Orwellian as the title "Citizens United".
Someday I hope to find the time to write every term Republicans use to sell their B.S. All of it is Orwellian / Alice in Wonderland lies meaning the opposite; Truth Social, Right to work, Family values, Pro-life, Prosperity (Oh yeah, for who?), Law and Order, Make America Great Again!, We built it, Drain the swamp, Party of personal responsibility (yet they love the corporation’s shield providing they have no personal responsibility for the bad acts of the corporation which is what having the charter, a creature of the state, is all about)... Hey, Democrats might use "Drain the Cesspit" in 2026 and 2028.
Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness meant liberty from paying taxes to Britain. Pursuit of Happiness was the wealth generated by enslavement and all men are created equal was noted that Blacks from Africa weren’t men. So no ambiguity here. If only Ralph Nader hadn’t run for president in 2000 and President Al Gore ( remember Al?) had become our leader there would be no Strump, and the East Wing would still be a place to sit down and have chow.
Now I’m just wondering how much a tree branch and rope could bear with Orange Wet Pants weighted on one end in Lafayette Square Park for a Friday night entertainment special.
Ralph Nader wasn’t the problem. Gore lost his own state which would have given him 11 more electoral college votes than Bush and would have made him president. Nader had every right to run for the presidency; had he won (unlikely as it was) the nation would very well be in much better state.
Bill Katz, as I look at the face of the party you are referring to and listen to the voice quality, it seems doubtful that you need Lafayette Square Park—particularly after the reference to the “little heart” of Zelenskyy, who stayed in Kyiv to face the Russians of Putin. We forget the Orange Revolution was very recent history and that Putin wants to negate it as Johnson wanted to negate the Civil War as do Trump and Vought.
Gore is a good example of why the Elector system must be repealed. The national razor is on my mind every day. Not just for the 80 year old hoax blond Nazi either but also for his whole can of mixed nuts he calls a cabinet. Make the Potomac run red just as the Seine once did.
I can't entirely blame Nader; Nader 'knew' a lot about what was really going on. He had knowledge and warnings to share with us all. So did Ross Perot. The largest measure of blame lies with the Koolaid consumers. You know that Bill.
Exactly. Not only did we see a reawakening of 1984, which surged off shelves after his two elections, but now, maybe Animal Farm, too, with the "quiet piggy" comment. How can anyone condone his seditious remarks and calls for the execution of six legislators? Although he still has admirers, I believe more of them will wake up after this. Orwell's books are still banned in some high schools.
Ally, I had a look at Linda-Dissolve-the-Department-of-Education this morning. Thinking it was already dissolved wherever she was as a child. What kind of education did these non-patriots have? And even more: What are their children learning?
Funny you chose that phrase. I have seen a massive increase in social media chatter about the Lost Cause and how proponents got it right and the detractors are all libturds and commies. An educated mind is a terrible thing to lose.
Continued manipulation of principle. Wondering how many times we.the.people.will be ‘fooled ‘ (by or with) or at least misrepresented by obfuscation . Bondi’s refusal to answer direct questioning of her job by deflecting the question..is but one mere and prime example. And yet …it goes on and on and on …hundreds ,if not thousands , of people have disappeared w/o any trace …parents of children -or perhaps even those children-and w/o due process or proof of their alleged ‘crime’.
In some countries this would be kidnapping.
But in America or Russia or …it’s argued …never answered, still done, and sanctioned by the highest court…this is me , Pat “yielding my time”
Imagine Chief Justice John Marshall in 1801 holding the East India Company, which owned those three ships full of tea docked in Boston Harbor in 1773, was a person with equal protection of the laws. It’s very likely his entire Court would have been hot tarred, feathered and run out of town on a rail by the Sons of Liberty. Chief Justice John Marshall, of course, never wrote such lies. He was deeply influenced by Enlightenment ideals like those written by Thomas Jefferson into our Declaration of Independence. He also invited legal briefs and oral argument before deciding important matters and used constitutional law and principles to guide his sound decisions.
I'll believe corporations are people when they are thrown in jail for life without the chance of parole or put in the electric chair for some of the truly heinous crimes that they commit (in some case way more destructive and/or violent than anything any one person has done). It's funny, we seemingly don't punish corporations because they are not really people while at the same time, we don't punish the people in the corporations who make the heinous decisions because it was the corporation that did that! They have MORE rights than actual persons and less responsibilities and obligations..
Sometimes the fines imposed are so high it amounts to a death sentence. That means the shareholders need to establish a new charter under a new name and laugh all the way to the bank.
In hindsight, I often think *that* was where we went wrong. Maybe the legislature should have to spell out exactly what a law means instead of giving god-like powers to nine unelected kings appointed for life with literally no code that is enforceable against them.
Elections have consequences. GOP victories gave us a Supreme Court that, if it hasn't destroyed the country outright, has enabled Trump—which amounts to the same thing. Rebuilding will take generations. Christian nationalists have undermined the very foundations that made America great. Perhaps MAGA should become the Democrats' rallying cry—to actually make America great again.
I thought we are. We're a big tent party concentrating on freedom from fascism. We welcome allies and converts. We grant total absolution even to ex-MAGATS.
Trump/Russia stole 2016 and 2024 elections. Did Trump admit that Musk stole Pennsylvania?
“He’s a popular guy and he was very effective and he knows those computers better than anybody. All those computers, those vote counting computers and we ended up winning Pennsylvania in a landslide.”
Democrats have allowed the Republicans to BOX THEM IN - so that Democrats are terrified to question election results. The Democrats continue to believe it is more important to be the party of STABILITY and COMMON SENSE rather than the party that questions the most foundational element of any functioning democracy: public elections. No one can overstate the importance of STABILITY to a functioning society - it is the minimum that a government, of any type can offer to its citizens/subjects. (N.b. Trump has failed to deliver on this front & the corporate elite are not happy.). Still - when the "inconsistencies" and "abnormalities" are GLARING, it is cowardice and reckless to ignore them.
That’s for history books, Dana. It’s a good slogan to memorize these days. Corporations are NOT people and money is NOT speech unless We the People allow it.
Citizens United was indeed detrimental, but the reasoning behind it is more complicated than what first appears. The challenge is how to make campaign finance laws consistent with the First Amendment.
CU covered far more than corporations; it included PACs, Unions, non-profits, and anyone else wanting to have a say.
Consider this, if you and I and some of our friends wanted to pool our money and rent a billboard that said, "Dump Trump", it's CU that protects our 1A right to do so. Collective speech is also protected by the 1A.
And de facto bribery is every bit as corrupting no matter what you call it. Hydrogen cyanide is infamously lethal, but nitrogen is more than 3/4 of what we breathe when we take in a breath, and is not nominally a poison. yet is is being used to kill people. In either case, the result is death, and that is what most matters. If money is free speech, some people's speech is so, so much freer that others.
Corporations are a legal way of doing business. Nothing else, and what is legal is not always just. CF Dredd Scott. Corporate protocols are a tool of a group of people. Noting else. Those people make the choices that affect other people, and in a democratic republic, we all bear the responsibility to recognize and protect each other's inherent rights, irrespective if you join in a corporation or not. The driver of a car has responsibilities. The car itself does not. There is a kind of insurance value, if you will, in the fact that if a corporation goes bankrupt, shareholders will not lose their homes, but corporate negligence or misconduct is due to the decisions of a person or persons. The corporation per se is capable of nothing. That seems to be a secret hiding in the plainest of sight.
And this may fly in the "as if" land of lawyers, but is just plain at odds with empirical reality:
"But it remains true that, at some institutions that engaged in inappropriate conduct before, and may yet again, the buck still stops nowhere. Responsibility remains so diffuse, and top executives so insulated, that any misconduct could again be considered more a symptom of the institution’s culture than a result of the willful actions of any single individual. "
- Former AG Eric Holder
Culture? A crime without a perpetrator? I think not.
"A crime without a perpetrator" - not necessarily so. Remember.. the famous energy company, where the women in accounting finally blew the whistle - ah yes, ENRON. It was most definitely a cultural where unethical behavior was accepted if not encouraged. And MANY in the C-Suites at ENRON were sent to prison. Eric Holder was correct, "it takes a village" at corrupt companies to keep everything "looking fine" - never a single individual. What I will add here, because I've studied this issue is, sadly almost every C-Suite corporate executive now gets an "Executive Employment Agreement" - & these contracts offer all sorts of "protection" to the executive if said executive is investigated or sued for wrong doing. It's so bad that an executive can be embezzling from the company BUT their legal fees are paid for by the company and only if the said executive is CONVICTED is he/she responsible to pay back these enormous sums. Meanwhile the black / brown skinned young man get caught selling weed and he gets a year in prison. There really is a 2-tier system of justice in this country.
Human individuals are limited in the amount they can contribute to a campaign -- I never understood why limits don't also apply to Corporations and the PACs they (and humans) fund -- it seems a glaring oversight (or plan?). The billions of dollars in contributions has poisoned our country.
The first activities of the far-right foundations ensuant to the 1971 Powell memo all focused on ridding, excising humanities from all education, K-12 to "higher."
The commercial and corporate interests (none really human in any sense) all hated the ways Americans relied on novels, movies, and songs for the late '60s anti-war, feminist, environmental, and civil rights campaigns. They wanted a nation where all were abstracted only to money, consumer demographics, or other group identity packages.
Greed and treachery are, I think, as human as love and a passion for justice. Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. I think that humanities are an essential means of the experiential side of human existence. which is, when all is said and done, where we all live. I EXPERIENCE, therefor I am. Malignant narcissists and our own narcissistic impulses dismiss or attack the impediments of empathy and conscience to pursue exclusively self-serving goals. The Humanities as a category of human communication are naturally part of that rejection. I believe that some component of self-interest is indispensable, yet overindulged it becomes seductive and addictive, and when taken to extremes can be identical to evil.
JHC, Balla, when will you stop displaying the total nonsense, formulated of whole cloth, brayed about periodically that 'ensuant to the Powell memo', the far-right foundations 'focused on ridding, excising humanities from all education, K-12 to "higher."'? (At least this time you didn't blame the schools for their perfidy as you usually do, or display your ignorance of about how and why standardized testing came about, what their construction entails, or the denouement of how the results of that testing have been used, for good and ill, by policy-makers across the land in some 14000 school districts, 50 States, and the Congress.) More recently, now, the cruel, autocratic, ignoramus in the White House thinks so little of education that he feels free to savage science and higher education and destroy the Department responsible for national attention to education matters.
The historians of education I was privileged to work with -- Larry Cremin, Bernard Bailyn, Ted Sizer, Fred Rudolph, Robert Ulich -- roll over in their graves every time you spout your tired, erroneous formulation. It's clear you believe it; unfortunately it only displays your ignorance. Please, at last, can't you stop?
That testing anesthetizes. It replaces skills to see human subtleties, nuances, and complications with focus instead on abstractions, rationalizing reduced to groups, and linearity.
The reality is a nation divided. Into groups. Fed by social media tuned to abstracted hatreds and real hurt by millions of offshored jobs by corporate predators. Illiterate as to humanities. Vulnerable to corruption. And hurt by elites confident in being protected by far-right ideology on the highest court in the land and the lowest vulgarities for raping underage girls.
Citizens United was indeed detrimental, but the reasoning behind it is more complicated than what first appears. The challenge is how to make campaign finance laws consistent with the First Amendment.
CU covered far more than corporations; it included PACs, Unions, non-profits, and anyone else wanting to have a say.
Consider this, if you and I and some of our friends wanted to pool our money and rent a billboard that said, "Dump Trump", it's CU that protects our 1A right to do so. Collective speech is also protected by the 1A.
Let's be more specific- conservatives. Conservatives were loyalists in the 1700s, slave owners in the 1800s, Jim Crow supporters in the 1900s, TEA party members of the 2000s and now the trumpers of today.
Yet if the loyalists of the 1700's were successful we would be like Canada, with strict campaign finance laws, single payer health care, reasonable gun laws, and no such thing as government shut downs...
You forgot Klan members in the 20s and 30s, workers party members in the 30s and 40s, mcCathyites in the 50s and 60s, and Conservative Christian Moral majority members and Baker supporters in the 80s (Jim and Tammy Faye)
I seems to me that political "Conservatives" in the most used sense of the word are anything but conservative, or they are, it in an extremely narrow sense. In any case, it is also instructive to notice how many wealthy "Conservatives" were sympathetic to or even helpful to Nazi party in Germany. Toxic narcissism on a roll.
Conservatives got that name in the USA because they were the people who wanted to preserve the selfish form of government that was dominated by the power of individual wealth. Somehow it stuck. I think we all would agree that there is nothing conservative about the behavior of the current administration beyond its impetus to conserve and protect their individual wealth and power; however radical their strategies and tactics may be.
The only things in humans that seems to have changed is their physical size in some nations where there is more than enough to eat. The selfish 1/3 of the population is still there.
I think it is complicated and I wonder how much is human nature and how much nurture, though it seems to be some combination of both, but some people really yearn to dominate others. That might have had an evolutionary use at some point in the origin of the species, but given human intelligence and agency, it seems historically to be the source of the preponderance of avoidable human suffering, and has increasing potential to enslave or kill us all. Assuming we don't get way smarter about it.
I read "...in 2011 that brought us Citizen s United v. Federal Election Commission" as "...in 2011 that BOUGHT us Citizens United..." I think both are true.
It is interesting to note that today there are a rapidly growing number of corporations the not only have zero employees, but zero executives as well. They completely circumvent any possibility of personal accountability … there’s simply no one home. Yet currently that corporation is a person. What a ballot box stuffing wonder that could be! Instead, it creates a somewhat different situation according to SCOTUS. Judge John Roberts put it so eloquently when he claimed that, after all, dollars are votes.
MSM keeps insisting (but in my experience never explaining) that they fill some important legitimate need, but from what I can tell, shell corporations and crypto are dominantly of crooks, by crooks, for crooks, and we are fools to put up with it.
Corporate personhood is an oxymoron. Does a corporation get married when there's a merger? How is it consummated—by screwing customers? Do they have children by spinning off subsidiaries? Do they defecate on their employees? They consume not food but raw materials. I guess corporations are just like people after all.
Personhood for corporations! Give each corporation a single vote in the state where it was incorporated. This would be a wonderful subject for college students to expand on.
There are few limits to human creative thinking. It's the realm where the laws of physics, among other rules, don't count.
A corporation can be drafted also by the President under the Defense Production Act (DPA) of 1950 which has been amended and allows the President a broad set of authorities to influence domestic industry in the interest of national defense.
Citizens United was indeed detrimental, but the reasoning behind it is more complicated than what first appears. The challenge is how to make campaign finance laws consistent with the First Amendment.
CU covered far more than corporations; it included PACs, Unions, non-profits, and anyone else wanting to have a say.
Consider this, if you and I and some of our friends wanted to pool our money and rent a billboard that said, "Dump Trump", it's CU that protects our 1A right to do so. Collective speech is also protected by the 1A.
Get the @#$%& excess money out of politics. Sanders has been saying that for years and a lot of Democrats, including the DNC, mock it, but it's central and has always been central to good government and all those things we claim to revere in our system of governance. People seem to think it's one of the things that cant be changed, but while the problem probably cannot be eliminated, it can definitely be improved. Since the "Reagan Revolution" it just keeps getting worse. If enough people thought it was a priority, it could be greatly improved.
And change of this magnitude is likely to require a long term strategy as well as tactics. First we have to want it enough, and then we have to clarify an actionable plan, around which support may gather. And never let up.
That is the best argument to amend the Constitution to reform all election laws to institute public financing for all elected positions local, State, and national outlawing all other forms of financing. The electoral college should be done away with as part of such an amendment. Politicians should be forced to answer to all of the citizens that they represent not just the ultra-rich and corporations. We the people used to mean something.
The Oligarchs have to much say in everyone's lives, the majority of citizens should have political control over the Oligarchs and the corporations to regulate them from harming the rest of us in any way.
I love what you say here, Mystic, but please notice one thing.
You quote no public officials. This owes to our schools, where addiction to standardized testing has killed off literacy for broader quoting of real people on issues where personal hurt is involved.
That onerous fact has in turn produced our public officials who now all, as a rule, do not quote each other and cannot model the arts we've lost.
Citizens United was indeed detrimental, but the reasoning behind it is more complicated than what first appears. The challenge is how to make campaign finance laws consistent with the First Amendment.
CU covered far more than corporations; it included PACs, Unions, non-profits, and anyone else wanting to have a say.
Consider this, if you and I and some of our friends wanted to pool our money and rent a billboard that said, "Dump Trump", it's CU that protects our 1A right to do so. Collective speech is also protected by the 1A.
Electoral college wins despite the popular vote in Presidential elections in 2000 and 2016 resulted in Supreme Court appointments that brought us Citizens United, Dobbs, and ongoing anti democracy decisions that now threaten our democracy and give our criminal President carte blanche to commit unlimited crimes in the name of official Presidential duties and pardon his co-conspirators and fellow travelers with no limits.
Admittedly, I am no expert on the Electoral College, but I have always heard that it was also a tool to give slaveholders more political power.
I would like to know how it has ever benefited black people or any other minority group. I support Presidential election winners determined by the popular vote alone.
Agreed! We need to make it the law, to restrict donations to campaigns. It would be a good start. Then to bring back into social media on all levels, fact checking!
If we do not accomplish that one task before we lose power again, if it isn’t already too late, we will never be able to do it. Money has so polluted and corrupted the institutions of government that no real change on behalf of the people can be effected until enough of our politicians are willing to “kill” their own golden goose.
Tom Moore and American Progress have mounted a well organized project with a workable plan that would emasculate the Citizens United decision without going back to SCOTUS. States determine the poweres of corporations. Most states include everything legal in those powers, but they don’t have to, and they haven’t always done so. Montana broke the stranglehold mining corporations had on their government by limiting the powers of corporations. The Moore project plans to do the same with Citizens United by eliminating corporate power to spend money to influence elections. This would eliminate such spending not just in Montana but anywhere in the US by corporations operating in Montana. This project is worth following and supporting in my judgment.
I read that and it is wrong. In Pembina Consolidated Silver Mining Co. v. Pennsylvania, 25 U.S. 181 (1888), the Court held as to the Fourteenth Amendment, “Under the designation of person there is no doubt that a private corporation is included. Such corporations are merely associations of individuals united for a special purpose,...” To put the Court’s analysis of law and facts in perspective the Court worked like a street hustler playing a fast shell game. They used the non-transferable rights endowed in individual persons as a pea under shell #1, an individual person. Then as they quickly move the shells (words) around they steel the pea from shell #1 and load it under shell #2, an assembly now having rights separate and distinguishable from it’s attendees. Then finally they move the shells a last time, steel the pea again and load it under shell #3, a State’s charter, a certificate of incorporation, a shield against lawsuits for it’s shareholders, now having equal protection of the laws the same as individual Americans endowed with natural rights. Thus it is wrong to believe any state law saying a corporation is not a person with rights will survive the U.S. Supreme Court’s application of the first and Fourteenth Amendments as to corporations. The above is what was continued in Citizens United.
They really believe it too. Look at the way Romney is dressed and how he has his foot up on a bail of hay. Robert Preston in “The Music Man” has nothing over Romney and his plain folk style, my friend. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FxUsRedO4UY
Trouble is, Rex, ALEC (the American Legislative Exchange Council).
This monstrous far-right foundation, created in the wake of 1971's Powell memo, has since its incorporation in early 1973 lobbied in all 50 state legislatures, and even more so at the federal level, to keep money and especially dark money ruling over all.
If you’re arguing that the Montana project has no chance of success, my response is that I know a little about the people involved and believe they are competent and well organzed. They think they might succeed (far from guaranteed, like most such projects), and I trust them on that point. If you think otherwise, then of course you are free to ignore the project entirely.
Agreed. Citizens United gave us Donald Trump twice. The Roberts court will be infamous for that decision and the presidential immunity bestowed on Trump in July 2024. His cabinet sycophants need to be reminded that he has immunity from criminal prosecution but they don't.
Serious and again ‘educated’ responses…. I am unable to articulate what HOPE The Bulwark FAMILY brings…. Thank ‘US’ is a start! Who ‘woulda thunk’…. My guess… nobody…. Wheeeee…. (-:
Albert, thank you for bringing up the issue of Citizens United. In my opinion, it is one of the worst Supreme Court decisions in history. The idea that dollars represent "freedom of speech" is ludicrous. The concept that an individual with a million dollars has one hundred thousand times the free speech as someone with ten dollars, flies in the face of democracy. The that someone can *legally* donate 257 million dollars to the election of one candidate is obscene. In my opinion, a Constitutional Amendment to overthrow Citizens United is essential to the full restoration of our democracy!
Thank you. I agree, Citizens United is as stupid as Dred Scott v. Sandford and Plessy v. Ferguson. The 1st. Amend secures the right of individuals to assemble with other individuals and petition the government for a redress of grievances; an expression in writing. That does no make the assembly itself an individual with rights. Also, petitions are signed by individuals, not simply the whim of a CEO, and cash is not a petition!
Einsenhower was the last good Republican. He would be labelled a communist and/or socialist by the Republicans today and most certainly, a 'RINO'. This has been a gradual stream towards fascism, anti-democracy, anti-civility and an open embrace of all the isms by that party.
"Modern Conservatives" have butchered their own name. There was a time when the terms liberal and conservative were not pejoratives. Just descriptors. To "conserve" our country and our world would be a fine thing. To be "liberal minded" - open to new ideas and continuous discussion for the purposes of growth. Good.
The Republican Party no longer exists. There is just the MAGA NAZI Fascist Cult. Their Bible is Project 2025. They are the heir apparent of the KKK, Joe McCarthy and ultra elitists like William F. Buckley, Jr.
Their goal is the annihilation of the nation as it has aspired to be. A country stumbling but moving forward with science and true universal suffrage as guide posts.
When I was 18, I considered myself a "conservative". That meant following the rule of law, working hard to achieve goals, respecting every person as an individual with equal rights, saving more than borrowing, "conserving" nature (Earth), loving the advances of science and medical research.
But then I realized I was sharing the label with money grubbers, war machinery and hate mongers. To make things even worse, they joined forces with the really irritating uber bigoted Evangelicals who pledged to return us to the Middle Ages.
And Nixon.
I voted for McGovern. "I'm from Massachusetts, so don't blame me" :)
Never looked back. My heroes now are Mamdani, Bernie and AOC. But I am extremely impressed with the language coming from James Talarico. An eloquent minister with a practical platform of progress and tolerance.
Is there anything wrong with wanting to conserve our Earth? Is there anything wrong with being liberal minded enough to listen to other points of view (if not fascist :) ?
The MAGA "conservatives" of today are brutal beasts and anarchists. The word is ruined.
MAGA doesn’t mind being called Nazis because they believe the left is both the Nazi and communist parties.
That’s despite the fact that they are all over social media saying that the Democrats who made the Don’t Give Up the Ship told people to disobey orders. What is more concerning is that they are saying soldiers must follow orders without question, and they get a little touchy when you point out who else believed that.
Still since they ignore being called Nazis, I’ve started calling the GOP “Guardians Of Pedophiles,”
I didn’t think of it but they deserve it, and it gets through.
But the relationship isn’t necessarily causal. While I don’t often agree with their policies, there have been many conservatives who didn’t try to be kings, who didn’t go insane and take so much of the country with them. Trump led the Republican Party from conservative, to MAGA, to being Guardians of Pedophiles; which is really quite a radical political take.
Name one good thing 'conservatives' have ever given us. The USA? Nope. The conservatives were the Tories. An end to slavery? Nope. The conservatives were the Confederates. Labor laws that ended child labor, protected workers, gave us a 40 hour workweek and weekends? Nope. All progressives. Social security and unemployment protections? Nope. The conservatives strongly opposed all that and still do. Voting rights for women and POC? Nope. The conservatives were strongly opposed. There is literally nothing good about this country or even the promise of this country that was or is conservative!
Why get caught up in the trump era name calling? I have rebelled at adopting this thing he brought with him down the escalator in 2016. I believe this has greatly diminished our national discourse, stoked angry division and maybe even allowed the fact that we are victims of a propaganda of sorts.
Name calling and insults are very much a part of American politics and has been since the beginning. Ugliness did not start with Trump. Let's not forget that it was Cheney who first publically told an opponent to go 'f^ck yourself' on the Senate floor. I think it was Truman who called Eisenhower a pig. Adams said that Washington was basically a dumb simpleton. I couldn't find a good website but here's a little starter. https://www.merriam-webster.com/wordplay/are-presidential-campaigns-getting-nastier-not-really
I disagree. As I argued above, this was not a sudden turn by the Republican Party. It was a DELIBERATE evolution by them to become the Party that they are today. But for Nixon, we don't get Reagan. But for Reagan, we don't get Bush Jr. But for Bush Jr, and Trump does not happen. They deliberately embraced racism/sexism/homephobia to get voters because they decided that they only care about and work for the rich (and to enrich themselves). They deliberately embraced lawlessness to win at all costs because they decided power is the only important thing. They deliberately embraced divide and conquer politics for that same power. They deliberately decided that they would stand for nothing but entrenching their own power while lying about 'family values' and such. We might not like it but THIS IS The Republican Party and it evolved into this cult over decades. It did not just happen overnight in 2016. I also want to point out that Trump could die tomorrow and the evil rot that is the Republican Party will not end with him.
"Johnson was a southern Democrat who hated the congressional Republicans who wanted to protect Black rights and rebuild the nation on the basis of free labor." Throughout history both parties have traded intent. Even names have changed.
“Republican” and “Democrat” are really just meaningless terms. How about the Greedy Rich party and the Everybody Else party? Republicans of today are the Southern Democrats of the 1800’s. The morbidly rich of today and tech bros have the same kind of thinking that the southern planters had. Some people always want a distinction that they are better than others, hence aristocrats. Kleptocrats is more like it. They employ strategies like Citizens United, etc. to steal the resources, power, and opportunities from everyone else. HCR gave us the historical version of the narrative today.
Because nobody imagined that situation, we are into it full time at full speed. Maybe this time we'll learn to make the adjustments necessary to prevent a repetition and those responsible within the fascist regime, are held accountable as an example.
It is partly the purpose of attorneys who serve as political flaks to invent scenarios that were previously unimagined and so provide methods to skirt the law. There are rafts of these people in politics.
Exactly- thank this stupid idea of originalism for this as well. The most Recent Atlantic has some great articles that destroy that argument in great fashion.
In a way, ICTT, you bring up a main point: this no longer is the party of Lincoln. As I had recently posted on a Facebook page for one of my friends, it’s now the MAGA party. The republican party no longer exists in its previous power. Not that republicans before MAGA were necessarily terrific; they at least saw some value in negotiating issues. Today, the successor to the republicans are in cowardly fear of moving one step without the supposed “orange Jesus” giving his OK. Save for a few brave souls who are now bucking the Fuhrer, the Republican Party is now
well into arrears in their responsibility to make amends to this nation. Whether they will ever be able to function legitimately, will be a question for the ages.
It's, and a Supreme Court that acts like it can't read and understand the 14th Amendment. The racism of the 19th century has never died and now prejudice includes women, immigrants, those who are not heterosexual, those who are not Christian, basically anyone who is not a straight white Christian male. And we might as well not have civil service standards as death star's appointments show. Be a certain kind of criminal and a pardon is waiting for you and maybe even a position in the regime.
Why not? Taking a look at the past few decades alone is telling. Racism, misogyny and homophobia have never been dealt with in this Country providing fertile ground for the fascists to rise up after they had been percolating decades since McCarthy and before. Then we had the Reagan days of homophobia to such an extent he ignored the AIDS epidemic and cost many lives, his creation of the "welfare queen" lie, the adulation of a small government then on to Newt Gingrich introducing the zero sum game of lying about everything in politics, the American Enterprise Institute, Heritage Foundation and the Christian Nationalists doing their sabotage of democracy mostly behind the scenes and add in the adulation of Americans to sports heroes, cars and fashion over voting and here we are.
When I re-read Dr. Richardson's excellent teaching this morning in the context of today's America none of this is a surprise. Not one thing.
Up until trump's election in 2016 I would have said we'd never hear the Party of Lincoln sound like the Nazi Party. But after watching that hate-filled campaign where trump demeaned & insulted a disabled reporter, a former POW, the Gold Star parents, women & was still elected I realized that all bets were off. The night of the election I joined the ACLU as I could see the handwriting on the wall. How unfortunate that I was right in reading those particular tea leaves.
How really unfortunate the Democratic Party was not reading the tea leaves. This Party has been on its back foot for 9 years pretending bi-partisanship and acting better than would save the day. Oops.. Meanwhile up until recently (it took a coup) the American voter knew more about their sports scores, fashion and cars than politics.
The left tried to bring back fairness so that all could compete in political fairness. Every time I heard Michelle Obama cry out “ when they go low, we go high” I believed the left would win back what was lost. No longer!! Nice try Mrs. O; however, the gloves clearly must now come off. We have too much to lose.
Who would have thought that? Well, anyone who read the political writing of Henry David Thoreau would have thought that. In the run up to the Civil War, Thoreau diagnosed correctly that there was something rotten, not in Denmark, but in America. Thoreau's disdain, almost hatred really, for the Founding Fathers and those who enabled them is clear. He saw that their committment to freedom was based on the quiet lie, held by the majority, that "All men" did not mean what it said.
I don't hate America. Every Country has its demons- some worse than others. Looking at the long view we have always tried to right our wrongs. The Amendments to the Constitution alone tells us this. Thoreau was an out of touch snob. As to Thoreau hating the Founding Fathers. Too bad he didn't have the courage they did. These men lost much. Many of them died penniless having lost their homes and land. Thoreau spun the quiet lie. He contributed nothing to society just as the oligarchs are doing today.
I recommend The American Revolution by Ken Burns et al now showing on PBS.
Yes, I am watching the Ken Burns series. Excellent. Please not that I said Thoreau "disdained" and "almost hated" the Founding Fathers. That's my assessment only. Thoreau never said he hated them. If you read carefully about Thoreau's life you will learn that he sacrificed a great deal for his ideals and for his friends, and risked a great deal as an operative on the Underground Railroad. I admire the good accomplished by the Founding Fathers, but refuse, and recommend that you also refuse, to ignore that many were slave owners. How bad does one's snobbery need to be to believe you are so much better than another person that you believe you can own them? They stole people's livelihoods, lives, and famlies from them, they frequently murdered and/or raped them. There is good proof that Jefferson began to rape Sally Hemming when she was only 14 years old and continued for decades. Thoreau did nothing of this sort. Rather he spoke and wrote on behalf of the enslaved, and risked his life smuggling some of those who escaped. He loved America for what it could be. Furthermore his books and essays are magnificent inspiring gifts to Americans and all people of the world who will read them.
"Thoreau's disdain, almost hatred really, for the Founding Fathers and those who enabled them is clear." These folks started America. Isn't this same thing? Imperfect people founded the longest standing Democracy in history. I wonder if, someday, we will be discredited because of our rape and destruction of this planet thus causing ecological refugees everywhere. And also denying millions of food while we feast at Thanksgiving driving our vehicles of destruction over the polluted rivers and through the trashed dales to Grandma's house even though we stuck her and our aged population in a nursing home.
Each time has its darkness and mores than are hard to deal with.
I have always disliked Thoreau from the time I had to read him in school. It's ironic I taught at a school called Walden School. I'm glad you like him. Isn't it funny how different authors strike the reader?
Thanks for the good discussion, Paul. Have a lovely week.
True, trump and the today's GOP are nothing if not bizarre, outrageous and un-American. Today's Supreme Court is poised to end the last vestiges of the Civil Rights Amendment and will join the Justices that issued the Dread Scott decision as the worst SCOTUS Justices in American history.
They will likely make it possible to flip twelve or more house districts from blue to red in southern States. Blue States should continue gerrymandering to fight the corrupt right-wing Justices move to give the GOP (fascist party) permanent power to undermine every citizens civil rights.
Started a comment thanking Dr. Richardson for not only keeping us well informed but providing the graduate-level education in history and sociology I always sought but could never afford to formalize. But the site disappeared my thanks, and in my hopeful but disappointed search for that half-finished paragraph of gratitude, I discovered Ricky the Regurgitater has (again) disrupted our discussion by projectile-vomiting his morally-imbecilic, hate-tainted, pridefully perpetuated ignorance directly into our faces.
Hence, with applause for and a respectful salute to our professor, and a supportive nod for those her epic sensibility leads, firstly, to unflinching realizations of our assailants' Evil intent, and thence to our ever-more-militant mobilization against their ever-more-desperately tyrannical scheming, I'll sign off for the night with a quote: "Don't Give Up the Ship"; not now, not ever.
Loren, I absolutely hate it when my comments go awry. I can NEVER recall the precise language I used (which is always better than what I try and recreate).
My favorite shirt for a long time was a pelican swallowing a frog; the frog's head was in the pelican's mouth, but the frog's hands were wrapped around its neck. "Never Give Up" was the wording. I agree: Not now, not ever.
I remember that drawing, I think from my too-old-to-court-the-coeds final undergraduate year, 1975-76. (Obviously ain't none of us here spring chickens.) Reason I remember it, it was above the home desk of a woman my own age, a local artist and traditional folksinger, and one night it somehow inspired, probably with some herbal assistance, her and me and a few others to imagine improbable hybrids, the most outrageous of which was a "pelligator," a flying predator resulting from the cross-breeding of a pelican and an alligator.
Good morning Linda, I agree, wholeheartedly-Heather holds a crucial role in our lives!
For a quick reference, here’s the 14th:
Fourteenth Amendment
Section 1
All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.
Section 2
Representatives shall be apportioned among the several States according to their respective numbers, counting the whole number of persons in each State, excluding Indians not taxed. But when the right to vote at any election for the choice of electors for President and Vice-President of the United States, Representatives in Congress, the Executive and Judicial officers of a State, or the members of the Legislature thereof, is denied to any of the male inhabitants of such State, being twenty-one years of age, and citizens of the United States, or in any way abridged, except for participation in rebellion, or other crime, the basis of representation therein shall be reduced in the proportion which the number of such male citizens shall bear to the whole number of male citizens twenty-one years of age in such State.
Section 3
No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice-President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any State, who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any State legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any State, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof. But Congress may by a vote of two-thirds of each House, remove such disability.
Section 4
The validity of the public debt of the United States, authorized by law, including debts incurred for payment of pensions and bounties for services in suppressing insurrection or rebellion, shall not be questioned. But neither the United States nor any State shall assume or pay any debt or obligation incurred in aid of insurrection or rebellion against the United States, or any claim for the loss or emancipation of any slave; but all such debts, obligations and claims shall be held illegal and void.
Section 5
The Congress shall have power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article.
The current crisis began, as these things often do, with Donald Trump discovering a new all-caps setting on his social media app and deciding that the only reasonable use for it was to call members of Congress traitors. The man has the subtlety of a marching band in a library and the self-control of a raccoon in a donut shop, so naturally his next step was to demand trials, convictions, and a faintly medieval set of punishments for lawmakers whose real offense was defending the Constitution. The country sighed. The world sighed. Even his own legal team sighed, although they insisted they were merely “breathing deeply for health.”
As the days passed, Trump continued hammering away at the idea that elected officials who challenge him are enemies of the state. It played well with the usual crowd, the ones who think the phrase checks and balances refers to their bank app. But for the rest of the nation, the whole spectacle felt like a mash-up of Nixon’s final days and a reality show reunion episode where everyone has finally lost the will to pretend they like each other.
The House, sensing that the line between “spirited disagreement” and “authoritarian cosplay” had been crossed yet again, began quietly drafting what can only be described as Impeachment Season Five. No one wanted another season, but the writers kept getting fresh material, and the showrunner in Mar-a-Lago refused to retire. Soon enough, the articles of impeachment were drawn up in language so stern that one representative reportedly sprained a finger typing the phrase high crimes and misdemeanors.
When the trial reached the Senate, the mood was brisk. Senators had already been through this rodeo, and some were prepared this time with comfortable shoes and crossword puzzles. The prosecution presented Trump’s posts, videos, and threats, while the defense insisted he was merely using creative metaphors for civic togetherness. The jury was not impressed.
The conviction vote arrived with all the suspense of a weather report. The Senate, in a rare moment of clarity, voted to convict, remove, and permanently disqualify him from serving again. Some even applauded, although decorum rules required them to claim they were swatting imaginary flies.
In the aftermath, the nation discovered something quietly reassuring. When a president tries to label legislators as traitors, demand their punishment, and bend the republic to his impulses, the Constitution has a remarkable tendency to wake up, stretch its arms, and remind everyone who actually runs the place. https://essayx.substack.com/p/the-republic-shrugs-then-sends-a
Did you ever see the series, Designated Survivor? Sometimes I think it would take that kind of scenario to make any real change…of course that would only be because the entire government but one basically, would be dead. I like how your POV turns out. I like it a lot!!👍🇺🇲
I did see it, and I understand why that idea sticks with people. The show taps into a real frustration that nothing seems to change unless everything collapses first. In reality, I think progress comes from many people choosing decency over fear, clarity over chaos, and courage over resignation. We do not need a catastrophe to reset our course. We only need enough people deciding that democracy and compassion are worth defending every day. Here’s my latest on this exact theme: https://essayx.substack.com/p/a-republic-reclaimed-a-nation-reborn
I read your essay and appreciate your thoughts. I watched The American Revolution and many times throughout (the oft sobering revelations that were new to me), I thought...sounds just like today....You are so right in saying basically, that it was a long and very difficult process. If I didn't know part 6, I would have been certain it was a lost cause. Thank you for your insight and reminder that a reborn republic may not come about until many involved at the moment, have died, in actuality.
I will read it. And believe me I am not really in favor of the Designated Survivor scenario. I think the only reason it sticks out in my mind sometimes is that if the verbal and rhetorical Civil War turned into a literal military Civil War.. yes there are many more of"us" than "them" but it all would depend on the military went because no matter how many of us there are one of them, within AK-47 automatic or grenades or drones or anything else, the odds would not favor a democracy coming out on top or so it seems to me. And I will make a note to read your link if I can find my way back LOL older, not real tech savvy.
It's a tough call. I mean seriously good old ICE QUEEN killed a her puppy for some puppy like Behavior that she didn't like and then went into the barn and killed a goat. That's pretty bad. Pretty boy Pete.. well, if he were kept in great stock of anything alcoholic, maybe even antifreeze would do who knows, he could be subdued LOL
Hmmm right🤔. Well, little Marco used to be...well, he just so flip flopped...now he has power behind him. Maybe with no power, he'd revert back to a seemingly almost once deceny guy? One could hope🙏🤷♀️. Scott Turner, if he were to play the role that his counterpart did in DS...maybe another possible but then again as a former football player, he may have "legitimate" Brain damage, unlike his comrades who are just insane and malevolent cosplayers. Well you think and please let me know what you think. Maybe with such organizational obliterated chaos that must go on, if we got lucky they may instead put one of the janitors in the bunker and I think we'd be okay!👍🇺🇸👍. We have to be okay...or we will be nothing in this world worth mentioning 🇺🇸😪
I certainly second this thought…like much of history I do not know the details and these matter a lot. It is sad that the voting rights act has been decimated…so many states still don’t have practices that support voting rights, nor public information. Jim Crow lives on! That said, what about the sad reality of 70,000,000 potential voters not bothering in the last election! This is an indication of a civil illness and disconnect…
I know the reality and the excuses…we need new federal laws that assure clear voting opportunities and have the goal of 100% participation.
First, if you are over 18 you should be registered to vote and given a state voter ID card…motor-voter laws help too…and the federal election should be a holiday...Veteran’s Day? And all voters should be able to get a mail-in ballot if requested or just go with ‘Vote By Mail’. Postmarked by the day of the election. And each vote should produce a paper ballot as a record so you can see what you voted for as you turn it in…and for all recounts and records! No electronic-only systems for federal elections.
And there should be a non-partisan voter’s pamphlet— League of Women Voters?
I live in PA and on the 4th, in my county, the voter rolls prepared did not include Independents. It was almost mid afternoon before the proper records were delivered to the polling centers. All Independents had to vote by provisional ballot or return later to vote. I made a comment which was replied to by a long time poll worker in another county. She explained step by step what she could see had possibly happened and how things would be handled. The polls stayed open till 10pm here consequently and just last week read my newsletter from county commissioners saying they had hired a lawfirm to do a complete investigation of what happened. I learned A LOT that day and as much as your ideas sound good..and I agree…what I learned from that very patient pollworker is that as with Heather's ongoing lessons opening my blind eyes to so much in history…hardly anyone knows…I know nothing about the intricacies and protocol involved in elections🤷♀️🤷♀️
Yes! people! I’m a bit amazed the system works as well as it does and yes it’s the people working at the polls, keeping records, making it happen! I just wish there was less of a headwind to making it fair and transparent in too many states and locations…and while state workers are the stars if some aspects were standardized for federal elections, with the some money, the local folks would appreciate the standardization. Too many don’t have the support, the funds, and too few have voter’s pamphlets. And polls need to be available for more time and that too takes more people. And I will say that my state has a great, the best, system and still some don’t vote…and will not say can’t because with vote by mail you have a week to complete and mail/drop off.
Perfectly said, Linda. You summed up my thoughts better than I could state them. I learn something every day from Heather’s letters. She makes history so much more interesting than I found it in high school. ;) And I agree she will remain a big part of our nation’s history. As she writes each day about our country’s history, she becomes a part of our history. And our county is better for her contribution.
Between reading your letter, and your books, and watching Ken Burns series, American Revolution, I’m finally getting the history education I should have gotten in high school.
It’s a very sobering lesson in light of today’s events.
Ben Franklin was right in two statements; “ unite or die”, and “A republic, if you can keep it.”
(Hi, sub stack is an odd thing. I know you meant this comment for Heather but it ended up as a comment to me and as of yet, I have not written any books or nightly letter, LOL)
How America Can Rise From the Authoritarian Tide and Build a Fairer Democracy
The American republic is at a crossroads. As authoritarian pressure rises, Americans face a historic chance to restore and refine the ideals first fought for in the eighteenth century. Renewal begins now, if citizens choose courage, accountability, and a democracy worthy of everyone. https://essayx.substack.com/p/a-republic-reclaimed-a-nation-reborn
We have criminals in the Oval Office and these Patriots, true to our constitution, being threatened with hanging.
The longer this goes on the more sure I am that we slipped through a wormhole into an alternate universe. And, somewhere in the multiverse, President Harris just signed the First Time Homebuyers Act.
I wish there was a Star Trek style “Q” to blame, but all I see is us.
Hello Annabel... Calling for the Execution of these 6-Patriots who reminded those that Serve Our Country of their Oath to Our Constitution, is deeply Ironic coming from a 5X Draft Dodger who has called the Fallen 'Suckers, and Losers'... I was in the Army in '73 when Word came from Command that We in the Military Swore an Oath to the Constitution, and not to a Man... At that point, 'Watergate' was raging, and Nixon was Spiraling... In '21, I was with the DoD, and that Word was reiterated.... It was Post January 6th, and DJT's Attempted Insurrection had failed... This proves to me that DJT doesn't care about the Rule-Of-Law, or the USA... DJT Just Wants Personal Power... OBW: Stephen Miller is less than a Cretin, and should be prosecuted during the next Administration for Incitement, and Treason...
I was aware of the rotten elements of this man as far back as the late 1980s. Why or how could I see and only a few others see what I saw. He came to my city of Hartford, CT wanting to build a casino but our governor was already making an exclusive deal with our Native tribes the Massatucket Pequots. And he wanted city support and received it from my friend at the time mayor Carrie Saxon Perry. As he left empty-handed, he remarked, “They don’t look like Indians to me.” That was in reference to Chief Skip Hayward, who I guess Trump felt had to have a feather in his cap to look like an Indian. It’s all in my book, “Donald’s Vanity Tantrums.” You might like to pick up a copy and enjoy the reading. I just added 10 more stories.
When I saw him on an entertainment tonight type show in the late 1970's I could see he was Sociopathic and never imagined he would ever be considered to be politically relevant.
Thanks, Apache. I was unaware that in '73 that Military Command issued a statement reminding all service members that their oath was to the constitution. That is encouraging.
I swore an oath upon becoming a deputy sheriff; our Department Manual (later General Orders) had a section on that to disobey an unlawful or illegal order was specifically NOT insubordination. The defense to a charge of insubordination had, foundationally, that a clear articulation of the unlawful/illegal component was sufficient defense to a charge of insubordination.
I remember hearing that as Nixon's Watergate and other corruption spiraled out of his control, there were reports that any military orders from Nixon would have to be run by the Military before acting on the orders. There was a fear that he might start a nuclear war or another atrocity.
Ally. I’m cheered to find another Oregonian in the mix.. my husband also took the oath as a US airman and as deputy sheriff in Marion County Oregon. Thank you for your service to your county and Oregon.!
I was still a few years shy of military service in 1973 and I never heard of that reminder being issued. Thanks for sharing that, and thank you for your service.
It’s perhaps not surprising that so many members of MAGA believe that what the Democrats said was seditious because, they say, ‘it would be chaos if members of the armed forces questioned orders.’
They get really touchy when you suggest who else “was just following orders.” One person went so far as to say that it would be disastrous if soldiers had “free will,” as if that somehow precludes following orders.
You have to accept that the right wing mind operates only in Black or White. Added to that is a reluctance to change or analyze new information. Life to them has to be clearly one thing or the other,and once a stance is accepted, no new information……or logic…….can make them grow or change. Nuance scares the hell out of them.
Well it has taken nigh on 10 years for "us" to face the fact that 'we' have been lied to, fed mis/dis-information and cajoled, by a certain number of persons who have managed to position puppets in the Oval Office. For that job, we had Nixon, Reagan, Bush & Bush. And, for the past ten years it's been shit-for-brains who is doing the bidding for those un-named "persons", whom we can now pretty-much name. So, all of "us" have been fooled in one way or another. Hindsight is sure 20/20. I've said ten years, but it has really been more like 70,,. our lifetime. Is it "us"? Welp.. (to quote) "It's Come To This" (un-quote). Sure has. May as well look into the mirror. Somebody mention 'reconstruction'? We're gonna have a Ball with this one.
just read tonight on the Parnas Prospective on Substack that Secretary Rubio told Senator Angus King and Senator Round and one other that Trump's peace proposal for the Russian Ukraine war wasn't our proposal at all, but a list of Russian Demands. The Russians actually leaked it to Axios ,and of course Trump ran with it. All this means that Trump and Vance are Russian Assets like we all thought!
At this point, only very naive 6-year-olds need more evidence on that score. "Why is it with you all paths lead to the Kremlin?" -- (said directly to his face), Speaker Nancy Pelosi, October 2019.
Yes.., "naive 6-year-olds"..., and welcome to Red Square.., watch your step as you debark from the bus, so much history here. Lubyanka Square, home of the famous prison is next. Bring your lunch....,, heh heh.. but, you have already arrived!
ICTT, assuming you get this would you e-mail me @ gideonse@midmaine.com? I have a puzzle I want to ask you but not here. It's just too weird to post. You liked something I wrote, that now appears to have completely disappeared despite three slow trips through the whole tranche of same. Thanks.
I had the same thing happen on Robert Reich's site where he was taking a poll on how his readers thought would or could be the Dem. Nominee in 2028. Every time I tried to like a post or add a positive comment about my Governor Gretchen Whitmer, the post would disappear before my eyes as would the post I was just liking about her. I figured it was a person with a grudge against her who coincidently was reading behind me!
Indeed, what other reason would Trump have to sell out the US and Ukraine. All makes sense. And analysis of wording in the 'Peace Proposal' indicates it's a translation from Russian into English. So much for it being a deal worked out between Trump & Putin. Trump had his orders.
I don't think it was "orders" Donald had, geo, but invitations.
Invitations to dear Donald that he please fondle the underage lovelies Jeffrey and Ghislaine trafficked to him and all the other rich and powerful graduates of U.S. neutered "higher" education and all the other elites as so classified by the billionaires of standardized testing.
The humor in the Parnas post was just what I needed after watching "Seven Pounds" - a bit of downer, but an Oscar-worthy performance by Will Smith. Seeing those cretins (T****, Vance, Rubio, and Witcoff) called out as Putin's tools was too funny for words.
And the appearance of the Christi Noem commercials (PSAs?) that warn undocumented immigrants on the showing of "Silence of the Lambs" is just too perfect.
I read that as well, Louise. Particularly the stipulation(?) regarding NOT 'joining NATO' as a condition. Freedom? Better get over it, Ukrainsky's.., the US-of-TrumpCo has blown a right-front tire and is headed into the ditch. Don't look for AAA-Europe for assistance..., huh? Certainly not Brexit, where the castle toilets are over-flowing with so-much bucolic babble (BS). Trump & Co is interested in one thing, plastering that name "the Brand" everywhere.., and he's doing it, as he craps-in-his-pants right in front of us. The smell...,ohh that smell!
If Donald Trump were to be "certified" as officially working for Putin as an agent of Russia's oligarchs...what would he be doing now that would be different?
Frankly, I have no patience with people who moan about feeling ashamed of the U.S. because of Trump.
Did you vote for Kamala? Did you donate to other Democrats' campaign? Did you volunteer--as far as you were able--to canvass door to door, phone bank, send postcards?
Then shame and guilt over Trump are just performative nonsense. You did what you could, along with millions of others. If it wasn't enough, it wasn't for lack of trying.
Feel determined, feel angry, feel like you're "mad as hell and not going to take it anymore!" Shame and regret are a waste of time and energy.
I understand your point, but regret and shame have been given a bad rap.
It's regret and shame that causes us to reflect and act to correct our behavior. Guilt is different, it implies one did wrong.
Shame is the acknowledgement of an inconsistency between one's behavior and one's ideal. Yes, we should be ashamed of America's behavior in making this poor excuse for a man president; it is inconsistent with the ideal of America.
Regret is a feeling of disappointment. Can one be disappointed we have sunk this low while having done all we could personally? Sure.
Shame and regret aren't necessarily personal, it can be collective. Did an individual do all they were capable of and still feel shame and regret about what we have wrought? Yes.
I am ashamed, at what we are presenting to the world, and I regret that we are in this position.
These responses of regret and shame are what keep us motivated, without them there would be satisfaction regarding the status quo. The are necessary elements to initiate change.
In all fairness, the financial elite has had more power than ordinary citizens since the beginning of our Republic, when only men of property had the right to vote. With every amendment to give voting rights to men of other races and women, the wealthy elite have always managed to rig the system so that they always have more power than the average citizen. And with every effort to give every citizen equal political power, they whine about socialism. The federal government today is the natural result of government of the wealthy by the wealthy for the wealthy.
In the eyes of the wealthy, the ordinary people are only here to provide cheap labor that will pay taxes to support their interests, while they give themselves loopholes to avoid paying their fair share of taxes.
As AI and robotics advance to replace human employees, they will see no value in the rest of us. The future looks bleak for the average citizen if we don't take control now.
@MysticShadow: The overlords are absolutely the ones driving this. The "us" I mentioned is to distinguish between human agency and some meddling deity.
It should be clear to anyone paying attention that our elections have rarely been "free and fair". But saying so often draws the wrath of the left, who think I am referring to election fraud, when it is the STRUCTURE that is wanting.
One of the problems with being the first nation state to try out the new-fangled system of government now known as democracy is that the framers were creatures of their time. There are much better systems that have been developed in the last 250 years, but if we try to tamper with the founding documents their are evil forces that would seize the opportunity to give us something much worse.
No--the rank and file is not generally at fault for this mess. With one exception: The "lesser of two evils" left, who have contributed greatly to the consistent loss of power by Democrats who do respect the will of the people. They gave us Trump. Twice.
As for the overlords, there is not enough room to explore that in a comment, but I have several posts here that cover it. The most concise being "Meet the New Boss."
The plan for the current coup had been in the hopper for at least 50 years.
Agree! “Q” counsld be held responsible for EVERYTHING nepharious….but I forget….where was “Q” when the series ended? Responsible for everything… but was he ever held accountable?🤔🤔
I thought I’d been shocked enough about what Trump could say, and now this. Our reality is not ok. Please speak up if you aren’t already.
There’s a calendar on my spreadsheet so we can target our calls/letters/emails/faxes to flood offices in an organized manner.
Use/share this spreadsheet (bit.ly/Nokings) as a resource to contact members of Congress, the Cabinet and news organizations. Call. Write. Email. Protest. Unrelentingly. We deserve better ❤️🩹🤍💙
Reach out (beyond your own) to as many in the Senate and House as you can. All of this is bigger than “I only represent my constituents” issues.
Trump is so obviously crazy. Truly, completely nuts. It's probably a result of his dementia, but whatever it is, the people in his administration are plainly using him to advance their agendas.
They are sick and manipulating monsters, and they are the ones who need to be thrown in prison.
Dementia, a criminal mindset, malignant narcissism, and a long, ugly life filled with shabby cruelty, constant prevarication, business failure, and psychosexual perversions to compensate for a raging inferiority complex. Yes, such a brilliant idea to give this sick wretch access to our country's nuclear launch codes, a bully pulpit and watch while his Team of Morons and Misfits carry out fantasies of violence and retribution against us all.
I'm happy to see Democrats keep talking about 'the economy, stupid' because there's plenty there to talk about, but the real issue remains the social disease within us that brought these terrible people to power in the first place.
Maybe "obviously crazy," Karen, but also part of a continuous history Heather often cites.
This is the history of rich slave owners, or, after the Civil War, aristocratic southern former slave owners seeking ways to firm up their rule -- and to shut down U.S. democratic threads to enfranchise and empower more of we the people.
Andrew Johnson, as Heather shows today, meant to serve these aristocratic thugs then, as Donald does now.
It's continuous. Our for-the-people leaders, in resisting it, get the massive voter turnout in mass support of the republic and our people that we saw the first Tuesday of this month.
So thank you Karen, and thank all commenting here to keep up this good, needed energy.
I suggest everyone see/hear this piece by Dr John Gartner, clinical psychologist at Johns Hopkins. It is the best explanation I have found by an expert of trump's severe personality disorder which is now complicated by dementia. https://youtu.be/9OtO-cypKmY?si=33yBlHcxD9_MMnCV
And the South is still in need of Radical Reconstruction because nothing has changed there politically since. The white descendants of the traitors are still largely traitors.
And guess what TC I put this post out the other day I thought you would enjoy it. The south was all Democrats all Democrats. They were the cause of the civil war. They were the cause of slavery. Civil War losing 700,000 lives. Black Lives Matter.
The history of the Democratic Party, has been one of the biggest hindrances of black progress. Its history includes fighting to retain slavery, the creation of Jim Crow laws, and under FDR the creation of “redlining” to prevent the federal government from giving housing loans to areas (mostly minority) deemed too risky, which today has morphed into limiting school choice for blacks. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 was filibustered by Democrats but eventually passed because a much higher percentage of Republicans voted for the bill than Democrats in both the House and Senate. The 1994 crime bill, passed by Democrats and signed by President Bill Clinton, resulted in a disproportionate increase in the number of blacks being incarcerated.
George Wallace and Ardent Democrat. You might want to check history instead of whatever distortion is in your mind.
All well and good, except you leave out the long-standing racism of the Republicans for much of the 20th century, culminating in Nixon’s Southern Strategy. 1968, the most pivotal year of the post-WWII part of the 20th century, was a turning point for the Democrats. While everyone remembers the police riot in Chicago during the Democratic National Convention, the events of the week before during delegate credentialing meetings. In the cavernous main Ballroom of the Conrad Hilton Hotel, the Dixiecrats fought to keep as few Black or anti-Vietnam War delegates from being seated. It was a stark contrast: the old Southern whites, sweating despite the air conditioning, having to publicly display their racism and contempt for these new delegates—young and Black and white and anti-war—were unknowingly making their last stand. A critical moment took place when a young Black delegate from Georgia rose to speak. Julian Bond had been rejected by the Georgia committee, which was loyal to segregationist Gov. Lester Maddox. Bond was the 28-year-old leader of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee. Bond challenged his denial of a credential in an impassioned speech. His challenge, unsurprisingly, failed. He would lead a counter-delegation to mount a floor challenge to the Georgia Delegation. Delegate selection would change to ban racism and open selection up to a broader representation.
The GOPs use the southern strategy in 1968 was the beginning of the migration of racists from the Democratic Party to the Republican Party and has led to the fascist majoritys in the Executive Branch, Congressional Branch and Supreme Court today.
This lady was indicating that the south whites have not changed. I was merely pointing out how delusional she is. And it doesn’t change his history as to what I said about the white South. I guess the best and most recent example would be a guy by the name of George Wallace.
I didn’t make any stand on the republican issue at all. It wasn’t mentioned nor does it have to be because almost every single attempt to free the blacks from slavery and give them equality was shunned, defeated, and refused by southern Democrats.
I appreciate you mentioned the tiny one offs, but we are talking about an entire population of 10-15 entire states. Not just a speech made by somebody not just a little congregation somewhere but by an entire body politic.
The major bone of contention for me would be the civil war, and if you wanted to deny what happened and why it happened go bark up another tree
700,000 people died for what? Because the white Democrats refused to yield to free slaves, refused to give them equal rights until Abraham Lincoln came along, which by the way didn’t affect a speech by some one off guy in Chicago, but affected the entire country. I do believe he was a Republican. And was shot for his beliefs hmmmmm You have a nice day
Julian Bond’s courage was hardly a one off. The challenge to Lester Maddox’s racist cohort was a challenge to every Southern state’s racist and exclusionary delegate selection process. That process drew its last, despicable breath in 1968 Chicago.
You more than brought up Republicans, and ignored their history in the 20th and thus century. Nobody is disputing the cause of the Civil War, the motive for Lincoln’s assassination, nor the role of Democrats in the 19th and 20th century.
The Dixiecrats fled the party at the polls in 1968, giving George Wallace the last third-party Electoral College votes.
You do a great disservice to Bond and his group as a force for change.
Instead, you place all credit on a white Republican, paint the modern Democratic Party as no different from the Jim Crow and KKK barbarians of a century ago. Many Southern whites have not changed and to pretend otherwise is foolish.
You can’t make a legitimate argument by ignoring a large swath of history, denying what has taken place over the last half century.
Gosh Rick. I'm so sorry that Mr. Netto called you a moron. Such rudeness. But since he spoke the truth, you'll just have to live with that reality. But keep up the good work. Your lies are doing a great service. Thank you!
By the way, please I forgot to mention that it seems that Democrats have been trying to solve black poverty for over 100 years. How’s that working out? And all they do is keep them enslaved.
Mr. Neto has a problem even wiping himself so please we don’t talk with Mr. Neto. He’s out there in Zorbon somewhere. Just like all the other losers tell me about the lies go ahead come on give it a shot. But here’s the big question for you. You could be the 1112th. Person that can’t answer a simple question and here’s the question.
WHY IS UKRAINE IN THE POSITION THAT IT’S IN TODAY AND IT HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH OBAMA AND IT HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH BIDEN AND IT HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH TRUMP.
I don’t go on Truth Social. I don’t think you understand the profoundness of your ignorance when it comes to Ukraine, Russia. Trump has been in office nine months. Biden was in office for four years. Kind of lol
Obama was an office for eight years.. and yet Russia Ukraine battle still exists. Of all the people that have added their comments here you are by far, unfortunately, the most ignorant of all of them when it comes to history of Russia, Ukraine. It almost defies credulity
ANSWER THIS QUESTION WHY IS UKRAINE IN THE POSITION THAT IT’S IN RIGHT NOW AND IT’S WAR WITH RUSSIA ? The question doesn’t get any simpler the answer isn’t any easier if you have any clue about history at all.
And here you go, Mr. Burnham, here’s your man here’s the man I count on to use the term U people. Where he actually is blaming President Trump for Russia Ukraine, when I make the points above, how hysterical is that? Like I said, it almost defies credulity.
So Bob, here’s your chance to free yourself from your current Monica of Russia, Ukraine, ignorance And would love to be the one to help you deliberate yourself from your misguided opinion
See the problem is I know you have a clue, but you just don’t want to let it out of the bag so that everybody knows why Ukraine and Russia are fighting right now. Because it was caused by a democrat a well intended Democrat, but yet a democrat.
Why is it that you people continue to try to put words in someone else’s mouth rather than answering a fucking question
Answer the question James. Or I will simply add you to the list of the 1112 people that have already refused to answer.
In English, we call that a surrender. No wonder when you’re in charge shit happens. Would you like to discuss Vietnam or maybe you’d like to discuss Joe Biden sending $100 billion to kill more people. An Obama and Biden allowing Russia to take over parts of Ukraine and you can’t even answer the question James.
YOU PEOPLE !?!? Oh, thank you again, Rick. I get it now! It's you against the world. Pure genius. Just like Dear Leader. I'm going to go burn my copy of Common Sense and join you, Rick. Were do we meet? I always thought that the problem isn't the Democrats, it's the Fascists who want to kill them. I understand now, Rick, thanks to you! Should I bring my Tiki Torch, or would an AR 15 be better? We gotta smoke them Wokies, ya know.
It becomes more important every day to make sure that during the midterms, we, the people, vote to take back Congress so that we can nullify the damage that the current Congress has allowed the current regime to perpetrate on our country. Learning our history is an essential reminder that we, the people, have triumphed over adversity and corruption and greed in the past. We can triumph again. As we fight, we must support those who remind us of the distinction between legal and illegal directives from those in power.
There is a way that Democrats can become the majority just after January 25, 2026, a year ahead of the midterms, if 3 or more Republicans join Marjorie Taylor Greene and resign early. Only two more are required if the special election in Tennessee flips the Republican seat blue.
Four Republicans who are not seeking higher office have already announced they will not seek re-election. They are Reps. Morgan Luttrell (R-TX), Jodey Arrington (R-TX), Don Bacon (R-NE), and Michael McCaul(R-TX).
Trump is getting more dangerous by the day, and these representatives have already shown they are separating from Trump. Perhaps they can be persuaded to be true patriots and walk away early from Trump's madness if enough of their constituents demonstrate in their districts.
Congress will only be in session for around 6 weeks through then. They will be spending much of the holidays back in their home districts listening to their constituents talk about saving the ACA, which has to be done before the continuing resolution expires on January 30, 2026.
January 25, 2026, is the date of the run-off special election in Texas for the seat of Sylvester Turner, who passed away in March. It is between two democrats.
The typical time between a vacancy and a special election is around 7 months. That gets 7 months of Democratic control ahead of the midterms, following the continuing resolution deadline, when it will be abundantly clear how Trump and his oligarchic bros care nothing for the American people.
You may think this is a pipe dream, but Trump has never been weaker. The Epstein files will not go away by January 25, 2026, neither will the economy turn, and only now are we seeing how completely Trump is selling not only Ukraine but America to line his pockets in the corrupt "peace plan."
If there is any peaceful, legal way to flip the House early, it needs to be pursued.
It's important we not forget that government is set to shut down again in January, for the deal reached a few weeks ago was only temporary. Schumer was promised a vote on Obamacare subsidies yet again in mid-December. It is likely this vote will fail again, as it did when Big Ugly got passed by ONE vote, when JD Wanker broke the tie, but it is entirely possible more Republican Senators scared by the appropriate lessons from the blue wave of November 4 might entertain second thoughts.
When government stops again, people will get a *second* chance to re-acquaint themselves with what, exactly, Republicans stand for. Not even a 'splendid little war' against Venezuela will be able to change that backdrop, and we will have had even more opportunities to review all the sordid cover-ups and bizarre associations with a pedophile Trump so desperately wants us not to talk about. All while his dementia accelerates and escalates.
It was Rahm Emanuel, I think, who said 'never let a good crisis go to waste.' Let's hope we're smart enough not to waste this one.
There is another way for Democrats to gain control of the House--if the retiring 4 Rs change their party affiliation to independent. They would lose their committee assignments but gain enormous power to broker terms that are fairer to the average American. That gives less power to Dems who would then be in the majority and presumably take over the Speakership and rework Committee assignments. If the R's became I's, D's would have to negotiate on every item and amendment in each bill. But it is better than having Mike Johnson as Speaker and controlling the legislative agenda and calendar.
I haven't found an example of this happening during a legislative session, so there may be issues with the House rules not addressing this situation.
The other new information is that Georgia has a faster-track special-election law, which could fill MTG's vacancy in March, but the actual dates for the primary and election will be set by Kemp, and he has mixed feelings about Trump.
A combination of early resignations and changes in party affiliation would also work, but the resignation route gives a new Democratic speaker more control.
That leaves the Senate. Thune's rebuke of Trump by passing the Epstein Files Transparency Act by unanimous consent shows he is willing to stand up to Trump. He wants a functioning Congress, and he will only get it with bipartisanship.
The bottom line is MTG's resignation opens up new possibilities for out-of-the-box thinking. Trump's power grabs are so wild and unpopular that Republicans are looking for a lifejacket to survive the coming blue wave. I hope Democratic leadership will be open to all the possibilities.
Go right ahead. I was gagging as I wrote it—I use Feedly as my news aggregator and there is little that appears from the sclerotic formal leadership. And it almost always seems to be in reaction. They think that getting up in front of cameras for legacy media and saying something once is enough when Trump gets asked in the gaggles and repeats and repeats and repeats so the topic stays alive. Totally maddening.
I think Raskin would make a great Speaker with Slotkin as Leader in the Senate. At least they know more about new media. I can dream.
The unanimous consent on the Epstein files in the Senate was to keep Senators from having to register individual votes and give right-wingers deniability when confronted by voters.
Congressional representatives and senators may be spending much of the holidays back in their home districts, but they won't be listening to their constituents talk about saving the ACA.
I live in Indiana (a state so red it's maroon) and I'm more in touch with Hoosiers than any of the Republican politicians. That's not saying much, because the Republicans in office do not hold town halls, do not respond to emails or "snail mail," and do not answer phone calls.
Still, it may be a small factor if, as you say, Democrats can get ahead of special elections and flipping seats.
As soon as the House turns Dem, Dems can hold a vote enforcing Article 14, section 3.
If criminal, murderer, rapist, mobster, and protector of underage girl trafficking Donald does not get 2/3 vote even just in the House to approve of his Jan. 6 insurrection, he is automatically immediately disqualified from any public office in the U.S., including the glitzy gold oval office his vulgarity has desecrated.
The Constitution mandates this procedure -- with no interference from any corrupted "Supreme Court."
The right-wingers in Congress will claim innocence because they have avoided taking votes on anything but the big betrayal bill. The Senate avoided having Senators individually voting on the Epstein files.
Betsy and not sure you were aware but here’s something you should probably know And please tell all your friends here so they’re not surprised
Five times in recent history the president of the United States has taken office With control of both houses of Congress. AND ALL FIVE TIMES THAT PRESIDENT HAS LOST EITHER ONE OR BOTH HOUSES of congress. …AKA THE HOUSE AND THE SENATE….. so it would be absolutely no surprise that this pattern continues.
However There is a chance, however, remote the Trump might be the first president to hold both houses coming up on what happens this coming year. But the outlook is good with a 14% estimate by S&P for increase in profits and Trump gets his own federal chair with which you can pretty much bet on there’s gonna be a couple of pretty good rate cuts.
So hold onto your britches
When I see the Jorge, below is just as ignorant, not knowing history when you guys are supposed to be educated bunch here.
You would have thought we'd have learned. But here we are again anyhow. We must not let Trimp off the hook for his un-American and rash statements. Look at what he's angry about! Any one of those six House Reps has more virtue and patriotism in their big toe than Guilty Donnie has in his entire body. And what he said wasn't casual, and it cannot be handwaved away. It wasn't pique or an old man's dementia - it was a broadcast piece of stochastic terrorism,
Write or call your senators and representative to demand he be held to account.
But we haven’t learned at all and one of the major reasons is that the vast majority of of Americans are completely ignorant about the history of this country. Unless you are a student of American history, who else knows any of this unless you read Heather’s columns and also the other wonderful postings about history from the Indiana woman who has now been posting for about six months on Facebook (I’m having a brain freeze and can’t remember her name but she is terrific).
When was the last time any of you studied American history and civics? Maybe you’ve watched Ken Burns’ documentaries but the last time I “studied” American history was when I was a junior in high school in 1965 and in addition to - or maybe because of - having a real crackpot teacher who reveled in showing us slides of how many windows there were in the Capitol dome (!) I was bored to death. Yes, I do read books and have subsequently on my own learned more but I have still only scratched the surface as it were. A major reason I feel so indebted to Heather.
When the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution were read aloud one year over a holiday at a public radio station people called in to complain about communist propaganda being broadcast on the radio. That is a true story and I doubt it would be much different today.
We are a country with a huge deficit not only in critical thinking skills but in even knowing anything except the most crude outlines of our own history. Ergo - Donald Trump, JD Vance, ad nauseam and the entire GOP. There are people who believe that the U.S. was fighting WWII allied with Hitler against the communists and Russia.
Maybe in the face of DJT’s repeated self-inflicted wounds around the economy, Epstein, tariffs etc none of this will matter and we will continue to stumble along as a nation of ignoramuses led by our pocketbooks and our fears. Or maybe there is a sea change coming. Obviously I hope for the latter. And indeed I am something of a cynic about the ability to break out of this capitalism vs democracy cyclical struggle. Or maybe Mandami is actually going to be a light for the future.
I haven’t given up so far and I don’t have any intention of doing so now. But the older I get the less patience I have with putting any faith for actual change in the traditional two-party system of “liberal” Democrat sell-outs who when push comes to shove always dependably put their own interests above everything else. Hopefully after the midterms we will see an appreciable growth in the number of members of the Squad who will displace some of these old farts and begin the long process of at the minimum rebuilding the old pretense that we live in a liberal democracy while continuing to fight any genuine fundamental institutional change in the meantime.
True. These days, many school districts are required to teach only subjects on students receive testing, and some students never receive the education they need in American government and civics. Political activists on the right want to educate children in a triumphalist version of American history which omits our killing and capture of Native Americans, the harshness of enslavement, and the continuing evils of Jim Crow and the de facto discrimination which still exists today. No one is saying the United States is a totally evil and rotten place, but our students need a more nuanced history of our nation so they receive a fuller picture of our country.
Some states are requiring students to be indoctrinated with Prager U and are even teaching the false history developed by people like David Barton, who is a Christian Nationalist activist. Trump gives every sign of wanting to return us to the Gilded Age and even to undermine civil rights for anyone who isn’t a white Christian male. The shenanigans the Republicans are pulling with making it more difficult for certain citizens to vote, to be represented by candidates of their choice, and to have their votes counted are evidence of this. John Roberts originally started as a lawyer in the Reagan administration tasked with the job of making voting more difficult, and he has never respected the idea that all citizens should have the right to vote, and that money isn’t speech.
We have a lovely neighbor in our building in Brooklyn who is originally from Taiwan. Last week she took the Naturalization test to become an American citizen. She passed with flying colors. She showed the test to her native-born American friends who, though smart and educated, all failed miserably. The education system based on testing has failed us. We must bring real civics and history back to the classrooms.
I know. It’s propaganda written by Dennis Prager. Since his viewpoint aligns with Republicans, they want to see it used in all schools to indoctrinate students.
I cannot get that through the thick skulls of my former work cohort who believe with all their stony hearts that it is a real university, and that the information being fed them is scholarly (and gospel) truth.
I have thought that many of our modern (i.e., 20th century onwards) problems in government are due to the "dumbing down" of America.
Our public school system was one of the best in the world. I went to a small (six classrooms, one for each grade) rural elementary, and we learned the basics of our country's governance. In high school we learned not only about the philosophies followed by Adams, Jefferson, et al., but also about the ensuing development of the Constitution. We learned about major SC decisions such as Dred Scott and Brown vs the Board of Education.
We had access to a solid grounding of both American and international history with learning how to read, analyze, and question subjects with critical thinking. I fear the public educations of the last two or three generations are falling short.
It is to the advantage of the GOP to keep the public uneducated. As Trump once said, "I love the uneducated" -- and it's because they will believe whatever slop he tells them. Tragic.
Sorry but your take on why NPR stopped reading the DoI is inaccurate.
NPR did not stop reading it because some thought it was 'communist propaganda'.
NPR stopped reading it due to complaints from the left that it was racist and full of 'flaws'. Many left wing supporters were offended by a statement written over 240 years ago in a different context. It was left wing cancel culture. We did it to ourselves.
I don’t think I said anything about why NPR stopped reading the DoI. What I said was that when they did read it they got a lot of complaints that they were reading commmunist propaganda and Steve Inskeep notwithstanding I also heard this information firsthand from NPR on the radio. I’m sorry to hear about your comment which I have never heard before.
And I regret that you - like too many others - lump “the Left” together as if it were one big unified monolith, something that could not be farther from reality. I don’t know who called the station to complain, but they certainly did not represent “The Left” - they represented themselves and whatever tiny little idiotic ultra-left corner of the enormously broad spectrum of people on the “the Left”, whatever that even means.
Does Netanyahu represent Jews? He says he does and is treated pretty much by the mainstream as if does though he absolutely does not. Does Whoopi Goldberg represent Black people, “her race”, her community? Is Barack Obama “a credit to his race”?.
Who is the Left these days? Bernie Sanders? AOC? The Squad? Mamdani? Heather and her followers among whom I bet if you asked 20 different people you’d get 20 different answers? The progressive trade unions? I completely reject your blanket statement about “the Left” cancelling itself “again”.
The “left” as ever defined by its enemies and self-designated leaders gets regularly cancelled by its opponents of every stripe - who have so much better organized into a cohesive movement in this country than the Left has ever been since the 1930’s.
If we actually did have a real Left in this country, and not a disparate unorganized chorus of voices ranging from Marxists of all stripes to socialists to social democrats to progressive liberals etc. we might actually be a force to be reckoned; we might actually have a real political party, a third party that has muscled into the system to challenge the corpses of the democratic system that pretend to govern now.
So, this set me off on an unexpected rant because I guess, given everything that’s going on, to read yet another comment blaming some amorphous “Left” for self-cancelling in an atmosphere just waiting for the opportunity to attribute its own actions to the Left really just pushed me over. And by the way, I think Steve Inskeep is a jerk, and no friend to anything progressive.
Did you even read the statement from NPR itself? Again, I work at an NPR station.
Of course there are different degrees of 'the left'; just as there are different degrees of 'the right'. Just as if I said 'that person leans left [or right], you know what that means. That said one can't deny that it accurately described why NPR stopped reading the DoI. There are the extremists 'progressives', the liberals, and slightly left of center Democrats.
Is there nuance sure? But that doesn't change the fact.
FYI, a flaw in your argument, being a member of a group is not the same as representing that group. Whoopi is certainly not a representative of all Black people, but to say she isn't Black would be silly. To say Black people reacted to the Floyd killing with mass protests isn't to say every Black person hit the streets.
There's nuance in MAGA, but we all know what it means when we speak of MAGA.
The left is defined by its enemies? That's absurd, I'm pretty sure most folks here know they are on the left without any enemy defining what that means.
The fact remains that NPR stopped reading the DoI due to complaints from the left. It's a fact. NPR caved to cancel culture. Read the statement from NPR.
Your point that people called to complain about the DoI as communist is simply an urban myth with no evidence to back that up. That you hadn't heard why NPR caved doesn't mean it didn't happen. And even so, that's not the point made here.
I get pushed over too; when my fellow group members on the left don't seem to understand they are their own worst enemy with their purity tests and cancel culture. My views are liberal in nature; I am frustrated with the so-called progressives who drag us down.
Think about this; there are many here that 'block' others when they disagree. That doesn't come from the right wingers here. It's cancel culture.
A 'real left'? Sorry many of us here on the left want nothing to do with Marxists or Socialists. They are as inane as MAGA.
That certaily nails where we are today, but I would ask all who were alive on this day in 1963 to think of where this nation would be at this time had JFK not been killed.
An interesting thought. I'm an admirer and well remember that day. He had high ideals and admirable goals. Would he have done civil rights legislation as Johnson did? And what about Vietnam?
He had this wonderful plan for the Great Society, but then it all crashed on the shores of Southeast Asia. He spent all the funds on the war in Vietnam that should have gone to domestic policies and bettered the lives of countless Americans, rather than send 58,000 Americans and millions of Vietnamese to their deaths for no sound reasons.
Like the majority of national leaders anywhere in the world, LBJ got trapped in following the advice of advisors from his predecessor.* It took him a long time to learn how wrong his policy was, the damage it did. He woke up and chose not to run again. It is all very sad because his domestic record is very good and his replacement went down that same entrenched rabbit hole. As PP&M sang, 'when will we ever learn".
* This is why I admire Zelenskyy - he stayed true to his north star, not what was the norm, and he stayed in his country...and fought. Damn the Felon.
we can only speculate, but to this day I don't quite know why risked and lost so much, for so little in Vietnam. It tore America apart, cost many, many lives, and arguably swung US politics toward the right. For what?
I remember the blather about the domino effect, and the carnage on tv over dinner. Until Walter went to see for himself. Sadly, Nixon nixed LBJ’s peace initiatives and managed to make bad matters worse. That is the Republican go-to. Make bad matters worse.
IMHO on steroids. Vietnam had few natural resources. When I was there, we had numerous appraisals. E.G. my unit moved, worked with laterite, an ore. Were constantly looking for oil. Never found any.
Venezuela has 4 x the oil as the US. Other significant resources are coal, iron ore, bauxite, gold, and nickel, and the country also has large hydropower potential
I had no interest in Vietnam when the war was going on. I had 3 children, a low budget so I had many projects: refinishing old furniture, sewing everything, cooking, going to Rutgers 2 courses a semester, besides fascination with the Bloomsbury artist/intellectuals .
You say your unit was looking for oil and working with laterite. What did the USA do with the laterite? Ship it back for..? I had never heard of it but Angkor used it for building blocks. Cut it up while fresh from the ground and it gets hard as iron. No wonder that site has held up so long.
I thought we saving them from Communism. In 2005, I spent a month solo traveling in Vietnam and they were, compared to other SE Asia countries: really getting it together. French colonization and contact with us made them strong. From what I see on youtube, Vietnam has made amazing progress. Besides all the industry: Traffic lights!
So, the goal in Venezuela is looting. Kill, destroy, ruin and steal. WTF is the matter with the USA??? Anyone ever considered trade?
I remember that day so well. I was in 8th grade and the news of Kennedy's death came over the loudspeaker in the classroom. We were all immediately sent home. A very dark day.
Or Lincoln, among others. But in the end we the living, and all who follow, have to make wise choices. No leader can do it all, and any who claim otherwise are perpetrating fraud. Or worse.
Of course, but the 22nd, yesterday, was the day of reflection on an event that changed history, like Johnson pardoning the Confederacy while Lincoln would not have and would have imposed accountability. The ones elected by the people to be the administrator have historical impact by the manner and thrust of their actions.
People outside the US are watching us go from a premier Constitutional Republic to a country in an upheaval not seen except in countries that descend into anarchy and dissolution. The blue states must have a soft succession.
If by "premier", you mean "best", I think people living in other democracies have understood for a while that the US's democracy is more flawed than quite a number of other democracies (acknowledging that no democracy is perfect).
For me, one of the things Heather's history lessons and daily reports do is emphasise that exceptionalism creates ignorance, arrogance and weakness, and that is an important lesson for this democracy fighting for its life and the currently stable democracies all over the world.
I find myself wondering if that is just one of the reasons Heather's letters and videos generate an international audience.
Yes of course , you are correct we have had moments of great innovation and success but underneath there has always been groups of stubborn, arrogant, uneducated and racist people that no one wanted to acknowledge or deal with. Getting an education was one of the things that should have help level the field but many people would not take advantage of it and the US has an overall rate of illiteracy of 21% but pockets that are much higher exist especially in the southern US. These problems will have to have greater importance after the Fascists in the government are gone or we will remain as divided as ever.
#HoldFast for the moment we can try to make us the country we really want!!!
Many of us couldn't get a Collage education, not wouldn't. In my case, life blow after life blow prevented my return to college, but that didn't mean I stopped reading and experiencing to learn. It is just that our system and society doesn't value my type of learning. Only the paper degree was recognized for any job or position I ever applied for, and I am sure that applies to thousands like me!
There are indeed many ways of learning. My grandmother was educated by French nuns, who taught her French and good manners. She and my grandfather lost all their money in the crash of 1929 - and that was the end of 'hired help' So she learned to cook by watching Julia Child and audited classes at the University of Michigan - she was one of the most educated people I knew, albeit by a different path than college.
But as you say, Louise, people like us (you and me) still continued to read and learn. While I agree that we were held back, so to speak, for lack of formal degrees, we still can engage on an informed level. Michelangelo was in his 80s when he said "Ancora imparo" - "I am still learning."
I read more outside of collage than I did for college. I started when I had small children and ended up with a Literature major because I wanted primary sources, not text books. I didn't go to get employed but for "an education" not just the promiscuous reading I was doing. I never had to show my B.A. because I went into sales. If I had known better, I would have only taken courses from great teachers. I didn't need a degree.
So, back to promiscuous reading. If one has a curious mind, education never stops.
Interesting, Louise. I was able to go to college (on a 5 year plan, but mostly do to athletic eligibility and the fact that 5th year was paid for by athletic scholarship money). My degree was in Criminology, and while it took some time to get hired (Oregon's timber industry died, and with it lots of timber money to the state and local coffers) I was eventually hired by a county Sheriff's Department. The college degree was not required, but fast-tracked me to higher certifications.
The only educational requirements were for Sergeant (2 year degree) and for command staff (Lieutenant, Captain, Sheriff; the state certifying agency required a 4 year degree for executive certifications). We have a local community college (for the 2 year degrees) and two universities; the University of Oregon and Bushnell University (formerly Northwest Christian College) that offered 4 year degrees. To my knowledge, all of our "home grown" Command Staff got their degrees from NCC/Bushnell in "Public Policy Management".
I have always had a love of learning. At age 8 I started reading the World Book set of encyclopedia set my parents had after reading everything else in the house including a volumn of Shakespeare and the complete Collection of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. After attending a very fine College Prep School, I accidentally got pregnant. My husband turned out to be mentally ill, and my one one and only son was born with all three learning disabilities. Needless to say, I was buried at home trying to keep life for others together. In that I was successful, my son started a Tech small business and has been in business more than 20 years and now working on a second career as a recording engineer. I kept my husband in treatment for his bipolar disorder, and he was able to finish out an engineering career. After that was over, I was never able to get much more than a minimum wage job, and too poor and emotionally exhausted and devastated to get beyond tries at college coping with PTSD well into my 50s. After that, I decided not to take on the debt of achieving a college degree, figuring I never could pay it off. I just keep reading everything I can get my hands on plus now over 70 years of experience, going from a princess to a low income peasant and having walked in the shoes of everyone in between. My one regret is never having written a book about all of it.
It's never too late to start. Yours sounds like an intriguing journey, that YOU'LL get a lot out of just fhe framing, something to leave behind to your son, and even if you never publish it, as I said, it will do something for YOU. I'm swiftly approaching 90 (in just days, to be exact), and Substack in the last two years has been a huge awakening for me; it has obliged me to write new things and link parts of my life through the exercising of framing posts like this I never thought about doing, or would have even realized had I not been moved to add this last chapter to my life trying to support the continuing of the American democratic experiment. "Try it. I think Louise will like it!" Good luck with it! ;-)
I meant in the sense that you are a thinking individual and can make an informed opinion as opposed to letting others think for you. Had a conversation with anyone ignorant lately?
We have been disinvesting in primary and secondary education, and it shows. In some states, like my own state of Ohio, public school funding is used to fund private voucher systems, in violation of the Ohio Constitution. Our state is gerrymandered in the extreme to keep Republicans in power in the Statehouse. They listen only to their lobbyists and certainly not to their voters.
That was indeed a turbulent time and America managed to emerge from the Civil War with a transcendent vision enshrined in the constitution. What then, comes after the inevitable demise of Trump and his inner sanctum in this time? In my view, we need to get money out of politics. We need to reform elections. The two major parties’ monopoly on the system needs to be ended. The two major parties need to be split into at least 4. Representation needs to be proportional. Lobbying needs to be made transparent by strict regulation. If we don’t start visualizing what comes next to prevent demagoguery and authoritarianism, we’ll be right back in the same hateful culture wars that led us to this awful place.
Public financing, transparency in who is paying for political advertising,and taking the profit motive out of lobbying would go long way in making our democracy more representative of the population.
Thank you for putting the Reconstruction Era in your history lesson for tonight! I feel like we have been going through a new Civil War the last few years, just without quite the level of actual violence as the last.
I was so proud of my Senator Elissa Slotkin for her timely PSA advising those in service to protect themselves legally. From the Nuremberg Trials, we know that' just following orders' isn't a legal excuse in International Law! The fact that Trump's world is imploding before our eyes,. makes the Veteran Senators message so timely. By the way, she and her family faced a bomb threat last night, not to mention the thousands of death threats on line and by phone! Like Heather, I am sure she would appreciate a thank you message of thanks and support.
Yes, so proud of our Senator Slotkin. She looked and acted downright PRESIDENTIAL! I am so sorry to hear, but not surprised, that she and her family have been threatened. Will thank her for her courageous service.
Thank you for providing this history of a complex series of events at the time of the civil war. However, my response to this history is to wonder , how well these machinations and aggressions of politicians brought to power during this time reflects well the temperament of southerners struggling to survive a war and then to survive the aftermath of the war. When I read about reactions among my own ancestors, I find several who are more than willing to join the war and also to show great anger and resentment toward the conquerers. But I also find ancestors who were probably forcefully recruited into the civil war ( based on proximity of the recruiting station ) and who deserted to return to their families, to "never fight war again". I have a letter from a grandfather urging his son to leave the war, that it was time to turn away from war. The county where most of my paternal family lived, in south Alabama, had voted against secession. The county near my relatives in Mississippi, initially voted against secession. Alas, it was a 3 way vote, and a vote where voters had to stand and state their votes. The tie breaker vote went to secession, but had far fewer voters. Do you think it might be possible that the henchmen and head bashers of the great plantations along the Mississippi, with hundreds of slaves, went out to make sure the second vote went their way?
I am obviously no historian, but I see indications that the large majority of southerners who were not wealthy and had no armies of slaves, had no stomach for war in the first place and were loath to protect an economic slavery based system that did not serve them. We don't have opinion pollsters from these times. And the evidence of a general populace who were not served by war, and their actions and beliefs can at best be found by in the records of these families - - an overwhelming task, but one that I believe would cast a much different light on the political scenes of the civil war era.
Yes, there are violent Republicans today, but what are the true demographics? Can it really be judged by votes?? Listen to the republicans who are finally in large numbers realizing that they voted for their dreams, not the reality of a highly corrupt Donald Trump.
Thank you HCR...as always, I learn something EVERY TIME you put pen to paper, so to speak, I am glad you actually got to write about history tonight but the lesson, as many are, was very sobering. So much appreciate your dedication and commitment to this very long rabbit trail off your history highway.Ever think you would personally have such a role to play in the history of this nation you spent so many years studying? And now you are a big part of the whole that future generations will be using to learn the truth. THANK YOU 🇺🇲🇺🇲🇺🇲😪😪😪
Who would have thought that -- some 175 years after the fact -- a cynical cabal of violent insurrectionists led by a dumb criminal would try to make us re-litigate the 14th Amendment all over again and pretend it didn't really mean exactly what it did? Who would have imagined that the Party of Lincoln would one day sound and act like the Party of Hitler?
The political party of Greed, Hate and Fear, the Republicans, hate the Fourteenth Amendment. Yet they are so stupid they forget the corporate personhood doctrine they depend upon to win elections began in 1886 in Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad Company, 118 US 394 which held our Fourteenth Amendment which secures to all persons the equal protection of the laws applies to corporations also. That Court dared to not leave any analysis of the facts, legal issues, applicable laws or citations of supporting law, or any explanation that guided it’s publication of it’s decision written as a mere headnote of a case decided on totally different issue. That headnote reads, “The Court does not wish to hear argument on the question whether the provision in the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution which forbids a state to deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws applies to these corporations. We are all of opinion that it does." The Fourteenth Amendment was a direct response to the Court's 1857 holding in Dred Scott v. Sandford, 60 U.S. 393 decision which pushed America into Civil War saying that a person, a slave, is property with no rights. That Santa Clara headnote essentially says property, a corporation, is a person with rights. In 2011 that brought us Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, 558 U.S. 310. That is where the Court held that political communications by corporations during elections is a form of a corporation’s free speech rights under our First Amendment by way of the Fourteenth Amendment. Citizens United resulted in a rapid concentration of force in terms of tens of billions of dollars in corporate Super PAC money in election advertising for candidates supportive of entities with such money (mostly corporations) and against non-supportive candidates. It gave us Donald Trump twice. Citizens United is the single most paramount threat to We the People, our democracy and our Earth. Yet Republicans hate the Fourteenth Amendment. We need to Amend with, among other things, a repeal of corporate personhood doctrine.
Modern "Republicans" are battling to ditch our republican form of government. The current label of "Republican" is as Orwellian as the title "Citizens United".
Yes, more like corporations united against We the People.
Unlimited spending equals corruption.
Fight Back.
Every day.
YUP!!!!
TRY LETTING Democrats have a real VOTE in the primaries
unlike 2016, 2020, and 2024
before you lecture ANYONE. You don't believe in the RIGHT when it comes to your own brethen.
Someday I hope to find the time to write every term Republicans use to sell their B.S. All of it is Orwellian / Alice in Wonderland lies meaning the opposite; Truth Social, Right to work, Family values, Pro-life, Prosperity (Oh yeah, for who?), Law and Order, Make America Great Again!, We built it, Drain the swamp, Party of personal responsibility (yet they love the corporation’s shield providing they have no personal responsibility for the bad acts of the corporation which is what having the charter, a creature of the state, is all about)... Hey, Democrats might use "Drain the Cesspit" in 2026 and 2028.
Frank Luntz was one who helped the Republican Party use language to turn our world upside down. Don’t forget that scum.
I had to look him up. Scum indeed!
Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness meant liberty from paying taxes to Britain. Pursuit of Happiness was the wealth generated by enslavement and all men are created equal was noted that Blacks from Africa weren’t men. So no ambiguity here. If only Ralph Nader hadn’t run for president in 2000 and President Al Gore ( remember Al?) had become our leader there would be no Strump, and the East Wing would still be a place to sit down and have chow.
Now I’m just wondering how much a tree branch and rope could bear with Orange Wet Pants weighted on one end in Lafayette Square Park for a Friday night entertainment special.
I'm rooting for the Big Macs, fries, and diet Cokes to relieve us of that responsibility.
Nader? How about the SC??? And the painfully ignorant public? Always motivated by fear and hate.
Ralph Nader wasn’t the problem. Gore lost his own state which would have given him 11 more electoral college votes than Bush and would have made him president. Nader had every right to run for the presidency; had he won (unlikely as it was) the nation would very well be in much better state.
Bill Katz, as I look at the face of the party you are referring to and listen to the voice quality, it seems doubtful that you need Lafayette Square Park—particularly after the reference to the “little heart” of Zelenskyy, who stayed in Kyiv to face the Russians of Putin. We forget the Orange Revolution was very recent history and that Putin wants to negate it as Johnson wanted to negate the Civil War as do Trump and Vought.
Gore is a good example of why the Elector system must be repealed. The national razor is on my mind every day. Not just for the 80 year old hoax blond Nazi either but also for his whole can of mixed nuts he calls a cabinet. Make the Potomac run red just as the Seine once did.
I can't entirely blame Nader; Nader 'knew' a lot about what was really going on. He had knowledge and warnings to share with us all. So did Ross Perot. The largest measure of blame lies with the Koolaid consumers. You know that Bill.
I have migrated directly to Stop the Shit
Here's what MSM missed yesterday.
FULL SPEECHES: Massive Anti-Trump Protest at Lincoln Memorial Rocks DC, Demands Removal
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GgxpNxhwd4w
At the core, they use maximum projection with a whopping dose of hypocrisy as their MO.
....I would add "Christian" to your list, Albert.
Oh ‘son of a bear’!!!!!!
Exactly. Not only did we see a reawakening of 1984, which surged off shelves after his two elections, but now, maybe Animal Farm, too, with the "quiet piggy" comment. How can anyone condone his seditious remarks and calls for the execution of six legislators? Although he still has admirers, I believe more of them will wake up after this. Orwell's books are still banned in some high schools.
So far, the "admirers" in my world have not. More and more I am believing they are a lost cause.
Ally, I had a look at Linda-Dissolve-the-Department-of-Education this morning. Thinking it was already dissolved wherever she was as a child. What kind of education did these non-patriots have? And even more: What are their children learning?
Funny you chose that phrase. I have seen a massive increase in social media chatter about the Lost Cause and how proponents got it right and the detractors are all libturds and commies. An educated mind is a terrible thing to lose.
All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.
Continued manipulation of principle. Wondering how many times we.the.people.will be ‘fooled ‘ (by or with) or at least misrepresented by obfuscation . Bondi’s refusal to answer direct questioning of her job by deflecting the question..is but one mere and prime example. And yet …it goes on and on and on …hundreds ,if not thousands , of people have disappeared w/o any trace …parents of children -or perhaps even those children-and w/o due process or proof of their alleged ‘crime’.
In some countries this would be kidnapping.
But in America or Russia or …it’s argued …never answered, still done, and sanctioned by the highest court…this is me , Pat “yielding my time”
TY Heather 💙
Amazing isn't it, thought we actually have our own Ministry of Truth and it couldn't be anything further from it most of the time
We would have a completely different country if it was understood that corporations are not people and money is not speech!
Imagine Chief Justice John Marshall in 1801 holding the East India Company, which owned those three ships full of tea docked in Boston Harbor in 1773, was a person with equal protection of the laws. It’s very likely his entire Court would have been hot tarred, feathered and run out of town on a rail by the Sons of Liberty. Chief Justice John Marshall, of course, never wrote such lies. He was deeply influenced by Enlightenment ideals like those written by Thomas Jefferson into our Declaration of Independence. He also invited legal briefs and oral argument before deciding important matters and used constitutional law and principles to guide his sound decisions.
I'll believe corporations are people when they are thrown in jail for life without the chance of parole or put in the electric chair for some of the truly heinous crimes that they commit (in some case way more destructive and/or violent than anything any one person has done). It's funny, we seemingly don't punish corporations because they are not really people while at the same time, we don't punish the people in the corporations who make the heinous decisions because it was the corporation that did that! They have MORE rights than actual persons and less responsibilities and obligations..
Sometimes the fines imposed are so high it amounts to a death sentence. That means the shareholders need to establish a new charter under a new name and laugh all the way to the bank.
Among which was Marbury v Madison which gave the Supreme Court a power not envisioned by Jefferson or the other founders.
In hindsight, I often think *that* was where we went wrong. Maybe the legislature should have to spell out exactly what a law means instead of giving god-like powers to nine unelected kings appointed for life with literally no code that is enforceable against them.
Elections have consequences. GOP victories gave us a Supreme Court that, if it hasn't destroyed the country outright, has enabled Trump—which amounts to the same thing. Rebuilding will take generations. Christian nationalists have undermined the very foundations that made America great. Perhaps MAGA should become the Democrats' rallying cry—to actually make America great again.
I thought we are. We're a big tent party concentrating on freedom from fascism. We welcome allies and converts. We grant total absolution even to ex-MAGATS.
Trump/Russia stole 2016 and 2024 elections. Did Trump admit that Musk stole Pennsylvania?
This is what I fear the most.
“He’s a popular guy and he was very effective and he knows those computers better than anybody. All those computers, those vote counting computers and we ended up winning Pennsylvania in a landslide.”
donald trump talking about elon musk
DC Capital One Arena
January 19, 2025
https://www.cnn.com/2025/10/09/politics/dominion-voting-systems-bought-election-ballots
https://electiontruthalliance.org
Democrats have allowed the Republicans to BOX THEM IN - so that Democrats are terrified to question election results. The Democrats continue to believe it is more important to be the party of STABILITY and COMMON SENSE rather than the party that questions the most foundational element of any functioning democracy: public elections. No one can overstate the importance of STABILITY to a functioning society - it is the minimum that a government, of any type can offer to its citizens/subjects. (N.b. Trump has failed to deliver on this front & the corporate elite are not happy.). Still - when the "inconsistencies" and "abnormalities" are GLARING, it is cowardice and reckless to ignore them.
https://electiontruthalliance.org
The decision that was meant to tip the scales. And it did with a vengeance
That’s for history books, Dana. It’s a good slogan to memorize these days. Corporations are NOT people and money is NOT speech unless We the People allow it.
Citizens United was indeed detrimental, but the reasoning behind it is more complicated than what first appears. The challenge is how to make campaign finance laws consistent with the First Amendment.
CU covered far more than corporations; it included PACs, Unions, non-profits, and anyone else wanting to have a say.
Consider this, if you and I and some of our friends wanted to pool our money and rent a billboard that said, "Dump Trump", it's CU that protects our 1A right to do so. Collective speech is also protected by the 1A.
That's the rub.
And de facto bribery is every bit as corrupting no matter what you call it. Hydrogen cyanide is infamously lethal, but nitrogen is more than 3/4 of what we breathe when we take in a breath, and is not nominally a poison. yet is is being used to kill people. In either case, the result is death, and that is what most matters. If money is free speech, some people's speech is so, so much freer that others.
Corporations are a legal way of doing business. Nothing else, and what is legal is not always just. CF Dredd Scott. Corporate protocols are a tool of a group of people. Noting else. Those people make the choices that affect other people, and in a democratic republic, we all bear the responsibility to recognize and protect each other's inherent rights, irrespective if you join in a corporation or not. The driver of a car has responsibilities. The car itself does not. There is a kind of insurance value, if you will, in the fact that if a corporation goes bankrupt, shareholders will not lose their homes, but corporate negligence or misconduct is due to the decisions of a person or persons. The corporation per se is capable of nothing. That seems to be a secret hiding in the plainest of sight.
And this may fly in the "as if" land of lawyers, but is just plain at odds with empirical reality:
"But it remains true that, at some institutions that engaged in inappropriate conduct before, and may yet again, the buck still stops nowhere. Responsibility remains so diffuse, and top executives so insulated, that any misconduct could again be considered more a symptom of the institution’s culture than a result of the willful actions of any single individual. "
- Former AG Eric Holder
Culture? A crime without a perpetrator? I think not.
"A crime without a perpetrator" - not necessarily so. Remember.. the famous energy company, where the women in accounting finally blew the whistle - ah yes, ENRON. It was most definitely a cultural where unethical behavior was accepted if not encouraged. And MANY in the C-Suites at ENRON were sent to prison. Eric Holder was correct, "it takes a village" at corrupt companies to keep everything "looking fine" - never a single individual. What I will add here, because I've studied this issue is, sadly almost every C-Suite corporate executive now gets an "Executive Employment Agreement" - & these contracts offer all sorts of "protection" to the executive if said executive is investigated or sued for wrong doing. It's so bad that an executive can be embezzling from the company BUT their legal fees are paid for by the company and only if the said executive is CONVICTED is he/she responsible to pay back these enormous sums. Meanwhile the black / brown skinned young man get caught selling weed and he gets a year in prison. There really is a 2-tier system of justice in this country.
Human individuals are limited in the amount they can contribute to a campaign -- I never understood why limits don't also apply to Corporations and the PACs they (and humans) fund -- it seems a glaring oversight (or plan?). The billions of dollars in contributions has poisoned our country.
A plan, Laurie (or, laurie).
The first activities of the far-right foundations ensuant to the 1971 Powell memo all focused on ridding, excising humanities from all education, K-12 to "higher."
The commercial and corporate interests (none really human in any sense) all hated the ways Americans relied on novels, movies, and songs for the late '60s anti-war, feminist, environmental, and civil rights campaigns. They wanted a nation where all were abstracted only to money, consumer demographics, or other group identity packages.
The more I learn about the Powell Memo, Phil Balla, the more I recognize the Southern slave owner in Lewis Powell.
And Nixon put him on the Supreme Court for that damn paper.
Very same old serpent in different guise.
Greed and treachery are, I think, as human as love and a passion for justice. Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. I think that humanities are an essential means of the experiential side of human existence. which is, when all is said and done, where we all live. I EXPERIENCE, therefor I am. Malignant narcissists and our own narcissistic impulses dismiss or attack the impediments of empathy and conscience to pursue exclusively self-serving goals. The Humanities as a category of human communication are naturally part of that rejection. I believe that some component of self-interest is indispensable, yet overindulged it becomes seductive and addictive, and when taken to extremes can be identical to evil.
JHC, Balla, when will you stop displaying the total nonsense, formulated of whole cloth, brayed about periodically that 'ensuant to the Powell memo', the far-right foundations 'focused on ridding, excising humanities from all education, K-12 to "higher."'? (At least this time you didn't blame the schools for their perfidy as you usually do, or display your ignorance of about how and why standardized testing came about, what their construction entails, or the denouement of how the results of that testing have been used, for good and ill, by policy-makers across the land in some 14000 school districts, 50 States, and the Congress.) More recently, now, the cruel, autocratic, ignoramus in the White House thinks so little of education that he feels free to savage science and higher education and destroy the Department responsible for national attention to education matters.
The historians of education I was privileged to work with -- Larry Cremin, Bernard Bailyn, Ted Sizer, Fred Rudolph, Robert Ulich -- roll over in their graves every time you spout your tired, erroneous formulation. It's clear you believe it; unfortunately it only displays your ignorance. Please, at last, can't you stop?
Reality, unfortunately Hendrik, intrudes.
That testing anesthetizes. It replaces skills to see human subtleties, nuances, and complications with focus instead on abstractions, rationalizing reduced to groups, and linearity.
The reality is a nation divided. Into groups. Fed by social media tuned to abstracted hatreds and real hurt by millions of offshored jobs by corporate predators. Illiterate as to humanities. Vulnerable to corruption. And hurt by elites confident in being protected by far-right ideology on the highest court in the land and the lowest vulgarities for raping underage girls.
Plan
PACs and Corporation ARE people, just people joined in a privileged club, to which a different set laws apply. Are they not?
They are, of course, entirely incompatible with "liberty and justice for all".
Citizens United was indeed detrimental, but the reasoning behind it is more complicated than what first appears. The challenge is how to make campaign finance laws consistent with the First Amendment.
CU covered far more than corporations; it included PACs, Unions, non-profits, and anyone else wanting to have a say.
Consider this, if you and I and some of our friends wanted to pool our money and rent a billboard that said, "Dump Trump", it's CU that protects our 1A right to do so. Collective speech is also protected by the 1A.
That's the rub.
lauriemcf, YES IT HAS!!!
Let's be more specific- conservatives. Conservatives were loyalists in the 1700s, slave owners in the 1800s, Jim Crow supporters in the 1900s, TEA party members of the 2000s and now the trumpers of today.
Yet if the loyalists of the 1700's were successful we would be like Canada, with strict campaign finance laws, single payer health care, reasonable gun laws, and no such thing as government shut downs...
Would we be eating croissants or fish and chips?
Poutine.
Fish and chips, that was settled in the Seven Years War.
Beavertails rather than croissants; and that cheese and gravy over fries thing JL mentioned.
You forgot Klan members in the 20s and 30s, workers party members in the 30s and 40s, mcCathyites in the 50s and 60s, and Conservative Christian Moral majority members and Baker supporters in the 80s (Jim and Tammy Faye)
Same groups, different hats.
I seems to me that political "Conservatives" in the most used sense of the word are anything but conservative, or they are, it in an extremely narrow sense. In any case, it is also instructive to notice how many wealthy "Conservatives" were sympathetic to or even helpful to Nazi party in Germany. Toxic narcissism on a roll.
Conservatives got that name in the USA because they were the people who wanted to preserve the selfish form of government that was dominated by the power of individual wealth. Somehow it stuck. I think we all would agree that there is nothing conservative about the behavior of the current administration beyond its impetus to conserve and protect their individual wealth and power; however radical their strategies and tactics may be.
Also factor in the religious right, Ed.
The only things in humans that seems to have changed is their physical size in some nations where there is more than enough to eat. The selfish 1/3 of the population is still there.
I think it is complicated and I wonder how much is human nature and how much nurture, though it seems to be some combination of both, but some people really yearn to dominate others. That might have had an evolutionary use at some point in the origin of the species, but given human intelligence and agency, it seems historically to be the source of the preponderance of avoidable human suffering, and has increasing potential to enslave or kill us all. Assuming we don't get way smarter about it.
I read "...in 2011 that brought us Citizen s United v. Federal Election Commission" as "...in 2011 that BOUGHT us Citizens United..." I think both are true.
The 2011 date, however, MaryPat, is wrong. It was 2010.
Definitely 2010
It is interesting to note that today there are a rapidly growing number of corporations the not only have zero employees, but zero executives as well. They completely circumvent any possibility of personal accountability … there’s simply no one home. Yet currently that corporation is a person. What a ballot box stuffing wonder that could be! Instead, it creates a somewhat different situation according to SCOTUS. Judge John Roberts put it so eloquently when he claimed that, after all, dollars are votes.
Roberts was, is, and will be a traitor to one man, one vote. Our cosmic joke…
History will not be kind to John Roberts.
Can’t be sure of that. The victors write the history.
Yup! It saddens me too. I can’t get behind capital punishment.
Capital punishment says more about the state than the criminal.
Follow the money; find the perpetrator.
MSM keeps insisting (but in my experience never explaining) that they fill some important legitimate need, but from what I can tell, shell corporations and crypto are dominantly of crooks, by crooks, for crooks, and we are fools to put up with it.
Corporate personhood is an oxymoron. Does a corporation get married when there's a merger? How is it consummated—by screwing customers? Do they have children by spinning off subsidiaries? Do they defecate on their employees? They consume not food but raw materials. I guess corporations are just like people after all.
People are subject to the death penalty so why not corporations?
Personhood for corporations! Give each corporation a single vote in the state where it was incorporated. This would be a wonderful subject for college students to expand on.
There are few limits to human creative thinking. It's the realm where the laws of physics, among other rules, don't count.
Harvey: very well said! Your words should be quoted often, to people who don’t get it.
A corporation can be drafted also by the President under the Defense Production Act (DPA) of 1950 which has been amended and allows the President a broad set of authorities to influence domestic industry in the interest of national defense.
Yes, I would think overturning Citizen's United is one of most important things we need to do to take back our government.
Citizens United was indeed detrimental, but the reasoning behind it is more complicated than what first appears. The challenge is how to make campaign finance laws consistent with the First Amendment.
CU covered far more than corporations; it included PACs, Unions, non-profits, and anyone else wanting to have a say.
Consider this, if you and I and some of our friends wanted to pool our money and rent a billboard that said, "Dump Trump", it's CU that protects our 1A right to do so. Collective speech is also protected by the 1A.
That's the rub.
Get the @#$%& excess money out of politics. Sanders has been saying that for years and a lot of Democrats, including the DNC, mock it, but it's central and has always been central to good government and all those things we claim to revere in our system of governance. People seem to think it's one of the things that cant be changed, but while the problem probably cannot be eliminated, it can definitely be improved. Since the "Reagan Revolution" it just keeps getting worse. If enough people thought it was a priority, it could be greatly improved.
#*@% "Divide and Conquer.
And change of this magnitude is likely to require a long term strategy as well as tactics. First we have to want it enough, and then we have to clarify an actionable plan, around which support may gather. And never let up.
That is the best argument to amend the Constitution to reform all election laws to institute public financing for all elected positions local, State, and national outlawing all other forms of financing. The electoral college should be done away with as part of such an amendment. Politicians should be forced to answer to all of the citizens that they represent not just the ultra-rich and corporations. We the people used to mean something.
The Oligarchs have to much say in everyone's lives, the majority of citizens should have political control over the Oligarchs and the corporations to regulate them from harming the rest of us in any way.
I love what you say here, Mystic, but please notice one thing.
You quote no public officials. This owes to our schools, where addiction to standardized testing has killed off literacy for broader quoting of real people on issues where personal hurt is involved.
That onerous fact has in turn produced our public officials who now all, as a rule, do not quote each other and cannot model the arts we've lost.
Citizens United was indeed detrimental, but the reasoning behind it is more complicated than what first appears. The challenge is how to make campaign finance laws consistent with the First Amendment.
CU covered far more than corporations; it included PACs, Unions, non-profits, and anyone else wanting to have a say.
Consider this, if you and I and some of our friends wanted to pool our money and rent a billboard that said, "Dump Trump", it's CU that protects our 1A right to do so. Collective speech is also protected by the 1A.
That's the rub.
Actual history matters, Gary.
The full decade following the 1971 issuance of Citizens United saw well-funded, organized strategies to kill humanities K-12 through higher ed.
Then began the longer period of offshoring working-class jobs.
Then, stuffing the courts, gerrymandering, and suppressing non-white voters, and standardized testing.
Please consider the ramifications of the elimination of the Electoral College.
What would take its place, a strictly popular vote election?
What would happen to the interests of the smaller states? Of minorities.
The framers created the college as a hedge against populism, the tyranny of the majority.
If we had direct democracy at the federal level Black people would be riding at the back of bus on the way to mandated Bible class.
Electoral college wins despite the popular vote in Presidential elections in 2000 and 2016 resulted in Supreme Court appointments that brought us Citizens United, Dobbs, and ongoing anti democracy decisions that now threaten our democracy and give our criminal President carte blanche to commit unlimited crimes in the name of official Presidential duties and pardon his co-conspirators and fellow travelers with no limits.
Admittedly, I am no expert on the Electoral College, but I have always heard that it was also a tool to give slaveholders more political power.
I would like to know how it has ever benefited black people or any other minority group. I support Presidential election winners determined by the popular vote alone.
Agreed! We need to make it the law, to restrict donations to campaigns. It would be a good start. Then to bring back into social media on all levels, fact checking!
If we do not accomplish that one task before we lose power again, if it isn’t already too late, we will never be able to do it. Money has so polluted and corrupted the institutions of government that no real change on behalf of the people can be effected until enough of our politicians are willing to “kill” their own golden goose.
Albert, thank you for this excellent post and the thinking behind Citizen's United.
Tom Moore and American Progress have mounted a well organized project with a workable plan that would emasculate the Citizens United decision without going back to SCOTUS. States determine the poweres of corporations. Most states include everything legal in those powers, but they don’t have to, and they haven’t always done so. Montana broke the stranglehold mining corporations had on their government by limiting the powers of corporations. The Moore project plans to do the same with Citizens United by eliminating corporate power to spend money to influence elections. This would eliminate such spending not just in Montana but anywhere in the US by corporations operating in Montana. This project is worth following and supporting in my judgment.
https://www.americanprogress.org/article/the-corporate-power-reset-that-makes-citizens-united-irrelevant/
I read that and it is wrong. In Pembina Consolidated Silver Mining Co. v. Pennsylvania, 25 U.S. 181 (1888), the Court held as to the Fourteenth Amendment, “Under the designation of person there is no doubt that a private corporation is included. Such corporations are merely associations of individuals united for a special purpose,...” To put the Court’s analysis of law and facts in perspective the Court worked like a street hustler playing a fast shell game. They used the non-transferable rights endowed in individual persons as a pea under shell #1, an individual person. Then as they quickly move the shells (words) around they steel the pea from shell #1 and load it under shell #2, an assembly now having rights separate and distinguishable from it’s attendees. Then finally they move the shells a last time, steel the pea again and load it under shell #3, a State’s charter, a certificate of incorporation, a shield against lawsuits for it’s shareholders, now having equal protection of the laws the same as individual Americans endowed with natural rights. Thus it is wrong to believe any state law saying a corporation is not a person with rights will survive the U.S. Supreme Court’s application of the first and Fourteenth Amendments as to corporations. The above is what was continued in Citizens United.
They really believe it too. Look at the way Romney is dressed and how he has his foot up on a bail of hay. Robert Preston in “The Music Man” has nothing over Romney and his plain folk style, my friend. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FxUsRedO4UY
Trouble is, Rex, ALEC (the American Legislative Exchange Council).
This monstrous far-right foundation, created in the wake of 1971's Powell memo, has since its incorporation in early 1973 lobbied in all 50 state legislatures, and even more so at the federal level, to keep money and especially dark money ruling over all.
If you’re arguing that the Montana project has no chance of success, my response is that I know a little about the people involved and believe they are competent and well organzed. They think they might succeed (far from guaranteed, like most such projects), and I trust them on that point. If you think otherwise, then of course you are free to ignore the project entirely.
Agreed. Citizens United gave us Donald Trump twice. The Roberts court will be infamous for that decision and the presidential immunity bestowed on Trump in July 2024. His cabinet sycophants need to be reminded that he has immunity from criminal prosecution but they don't.
Serious and again ‘educated’ responses…. I am unable to articulate what HOPE The Bulwark FAMILY brings…. Thank ‘US’ is a start! Who ‘woulda thunk’…. My guess… nobody…. Wheeeee…. (-:
Albert, thank you for bringing up the issue of Citizens United. In my opinion, it is one of the worst Supreme Court decisions in history. The idea that dollars represent "freedom of speech" is ludicrous. The concept that an individual with a million dollars has one hundred thousand times the free speech as someone with ten dollars, flies in the face of democracy. The that someone can *legally* donate 257 million dollars to the election of one candidate is obscene. In my opinion, a Constitutional Amendment to overthrow Citizens United is essential to the full restoration of our democracy!
Thank you. I agree, Citizens United is as stupid as Dred Scott v. Sandford and Plessy v. Ferguson. The 1st. Amend secures the right of individuals to assemble with other individuals and petition the government for a redress of grievances; an expression in writing. That does no make the assembly itself an individual with rights. Also, petitions are signed by individuals, not simply the whim of a CEO, and cash is not a petition!
Einsenhower was the last good Republican. He would be labelled a communist and/or socialist by the Republicans today and most certainly, a 'RINO'. This has been a gradual stream towards fascism, anti-democracy, anti-civility and an open embrace of all the isms by that party.
PLEASE STOP CALLING THEM REPUBLICANS!!!!!!!!!!!!! They're a cult, The maga cult.
And please don’t call them conservative— It’s the most radical party since the secessionists.
Yes. But even "radical" is too kind.
"Modern Conservatives" have butchered their own name. There was a time when the terms liberal and conservative were not pejoratives. Just descriptors. To "conserve" our country and our world would be a fine thing. To be "liberal minded" - open to new ideas and continuous discussion for the purposes of growth. Good.
The Republican Party no longer exists. There is just the MAGA NAZI Fascist Cult. Their Bible is Project 2025. They are the heir apparent of the KKK, Joe McCarthy and ultra elitists like William F. Buckley, Jr.
Their goal is the annihilation of the nation as it has aspired to be. A country stumbling but moving forward with science and true universal suffrage as guide posts.
When I was 18, I considered myself a "conservative". That meant following the rule of law, working hard to achieve goals, respecting every person as an individual with equal rights, saving more than borrowing, "conserving" nature (Earth), loving the advances of science and medical research.
But then I realized I was sharing the label with money grubbers, war machinery and hate mongers. To make things even worse, they joined forces with the really irritating uber bigoted Evangelicals who pledged to return us to the Middle Ages.
And Nixon.
I voted for McGovern. "I'm from Massachusetts, so don't blame me" :)
Never looked back. My heroes now are Mamdani, Bernie and AOC. But I am extremely impressed with the language coming from James Talarico. An eloquent minister with a practical platform of progress and tolerance.
Is there anything wrong with wanting to conserve our Earth? Is there anything wrong with being liberal minded enough to listen to other points of view (if not fascist :) ?
The MAGA "conservatives" of today are brutal beasts and anarchists. The word is ruined.
Bill, thank you for mentioning Talarico. He’s impressive.
MAGA doesn’t mind being called Nazis because they believe the left is both the Nazi and communist parties.
That’s despite the fact that they are all over social media saying that the Democrats who made the Don’t Give Up the Ship told people to disobey orders. What is more concerning is that they are saying soldiers must follow orders without question, and they get a little touchy when you point out who else believed that.
Still since they ignore being called Nazis, I’ve started calling the GOP “Guardians Of Pedophiles,”
I didn’t think of it but they deserve it, and it gets through.
Bill: ❤️. Except I don’t believe the world is ruined. Yet.
Amen
But Tim, it always seems that the roots of movements like this are in the conservatives.....
But the relationship isn’t necessarily causal. While I don’t often agree with their policies, there have been many conservatives who didn’t try to be kings, who didn’t go insane and take so much of the country with them. Trump led the Republican Party from conservative, to MAGA, to being Guardians of Pedophiles; which is really quite a radical political take.
Name one good thing 'conservatives' have ever given us. The USA? Nope. The conservatives were the Tories. An end to slavery? Nope. The conservatives were the Confederates. Labor laws that ended child labor, protected workers, gave us a 40 hour workweek and weekends? Nope. All progressives. Social security and unemployment protections? Nope. The conservatives strongly opposed all that and still do. Voting rights for women and POC? Nope. The conservatives were strongly opposed. There is literally nothing good about this country or even the promise of this country that was or is conservative!
I've taken to calling them RepubliKKKans. Or Republican'ts.
Why get caught up in the trump era name calling? I have rebelled at adopting this thing he brought with him down the escalator in 2016. I believe this has greatly diminished our national discourse, stoked angry division and maybe even allowed the fact that we are victims of a propaganda of sorts.
Never adopt the habits of the enemy.
I do not want to denigrate the historical Republican party by referring to this iteration as Republicans; they are fascists.
Name calling and insults are very much a part of American politics and has been since the beginning. Ugliness did not start with Trump. Let's not forget that it was Cheney who first publically told an opponent to go 'f^ck yourself' on the Senate floor. I think it was Truman who called Eisenhower a pig. Adams said that Washington was basically a dumb simpleton. I couldn't find a good website but here's a little starter. https://www.merriam-webster.com/wordplay/are-presidential-campaigns-getting-nastier-not-really
I call them magrats.
They will pretend to be the Grand Old Party til hell freezes over. Identity theft.
GOP = Guardians Of Pedophiles, I saw somewhere...
I disagree. As I argued above, this was not a sudden turn by the Republican Party. It was a DELIBERATE evolution by them to become the Party that they are today. But for Nixon, we don't get Reagan. But for Reagan, we don't get Bush Jr. But for Bush Jr, and Trump does not happen. They deliberately embraced racism/sexism/homephobia to get voters because they decided that they only care about and work for the rich (and to enrich themselves). They deliberately embraced lawlessness to win at all costs because they decided power is the only important thing. They deliberately embraced divide and conquer politics for that same power. They deliberately decided that they would stand for nothing but entrenching their own power while lying about 'family values' and such. We might not like it but THIS IS The Republican Party and it evolved into this cult over decades. It did not just happen overnight in 2016. I also want to point out that Trump could die tomorrow and the evil rot that is the Republican Party will not end with him.
"Johnson was a southern Democrat who hated the congressional Republicans who wanted to protect Black rights and rebuild the nation on the basis of free labor." Throughout history both parties have traded intent. Even names have changed.
WHAT A STUPID POST
When a majority of the voters, 77,300,000, VOTED FOR A TRUMP, its NOT a CULT. Its called a MAJORITY.
You are the cult. Know it all leftist who are out of POWER at every level with
a 28% approval rating. THAT's A CULT
Yet, until a majority of Republican identified politicians repudiate Trump and MAGA, they are Republicans.
Yes. The GOP died with Ike.
And who was Ike's vice president? It started right there.
Funny thing is the story goes that Ike didn't care for Nixon.
“Republican” and “Democrat” are really just meaningless terms. How about the Greedy Rich party and the Everybody Else party? Republicans of today are the Southern Democrats of the 1800’s. The morbidly rich of today and tech bros have the same kind of thinking that the southern planters had. Some people always want a distinction that they are better than others, hence aristocrats. Kleptocrats is more like it. They employ strategies like Citizens United, etc. to steal the resources, power, and opportunities from everyone else. HCR gave us the historical version of the narrative today.
Eisenhower is the very definition of great leadership.
Because nobody imagined that situation, we are into it full time at full speed. Maybe this time we'll learn to make the adjustments necessary to prevent a repetition and those responsible within the fascist regime, are held accountable as an example.
It is partly the purpose of attorneys who serve as political flaks to invent scenarios that were previously unimagined and so provide methods to skirt the law. There are rafts of these people in politics.
Exactly- thank this stupid idea of originalism for this as well. The most Recent Atlantic has some great articles that destroy that argument in great fashion.
You may be interested in Jonathan Gienapp's work, Against Constitutional Originalism.
In a way, ICTT, you bring up a main point: this no longer is the party of Lincoln. As I had recently posted on a Facebook page for one of my friends, it’s now the MAGA party. The republican party no longer exists in its previous power. Not that republicans before MAGA were necessarily terrific; they at least saw some value in negotiating issues. Today, the successor to the republicans are in cowardly fear of moving one step without the supposed “orange Jesus” giving his OK. Save for a few brave souls who are now bucking the Fuhrer, the Republican Party is now
well into arrears in their responsibility to make amends to this nation. Whether they will ever be able to function legitimately, will be a question for the ages.
It would be interesting to hear what Lincoln would think of Trump.
Lincoln enjoyed and himself told many funny dog stories, Gary.
He had imaginative room for all strange varieties of life -- and loved having a country protecting, encouraging, schooling that diversity.
It's, and a Supreme Court that acts like it can't read and understand the 14th Amendment. The racism of the 19th century has never died and now prejudice includes women, immigrants, those who are not heterosexual, those who are not Christian, basically anyone who is not a straight white Christian male. And we might as well not have civil service standards as death star's appointments show. Be a certain kind of criminal and a pardon is waiting for you and maybe even a position in the regime.
Why not? Taking a look at the past few decades alone is telling. Racism, misogyny and homophobia have never been dealt with in this Country providing fertile ground for the fascists to rise up after they had been percolating decades since McCarthy and before. Then we had the Reagan days of homophobia to such an extent he ignored the AIDS epidemic and cost many lives, his creation of the "welfare queen" lie, the adulation of a small government then on to Newt Gingrich introducing the zero sum game of lying about everything in politics, the American Enterprise Institute, Heritage Foundation and the Christian Nationalists doing their sabotage of democracy mostly behind the scenes and add in the adulation of Americans to sports heroes, cars and fashion over voting and here we are.
When I re-read Dr. Richardson's excellent teaching this morning in the context of today's America none of this is a surprise. Not one thing.
Up until trump's election in 2016 I would have said we'd never hear the Party of Lincoln sound like the Nazi Party. But after watching that hate-filled campaign where trump demeaned & insulted a disabled reporter, a former POW, the Gold Star parents, women & was still elected I realized that all bets were off. The night of the election I joined the ACLU as I could see the handwriting on the wall. How unfortunate that I was right in reading those particular tea leaves.
How really unfortunate the Democratic Party was not reading the tea leaves. This Party has been on its back foot for 9 years pretending bi-partisanship and acting better than would save the day. Oops.. Meanwhile up until recently (it took a coup) the American voter knew more about their sports scores, fashion and cars than politics.
The left tried to bring back fairness so that all could compete in political fairness. Every time I heard Michelle Obama cry out “ when they go low, we go high” I believed the left would win back what was lost. No longer!! Nice try Mrs. O; however, the gloves clearly must now come off. We have too much to lose.
Who would have thought that? Well, anyone who read the political writing of Henry David Thoreau would have thought that. In the run up to the Civil War, Thoreau diagnosed correctly that there was something rotten, not in Denmark, but in America. Thoreau's disdain, almost hatred really, for the Founding Fathers and those who enabled them is clear. He saw that their committment to freedom was based on the quiet lie, held by the majority, that "All men" did not mean what it said.
I don't hate America. Every Country has its demons- some worse than others. Looking at the long view we have always tried to right our wrongs. The Amendments to the Constitution alone tells us this. Thoreau was an out of touch snob. As to Thoreau hating the Founding Fathers. Too bad he didn't have the courage they did. These men lost much. Many of them died penniless having lost their homes and land. Thoreau spun the quiet lie. He contributed nothing to society just as the oligarchs are doing today.
I recommend The American Revolution by Ken Burns et al now showing on PBS.
Yes, I am watching the Ken Burns series. Excellent. Please not that I said Thoreau "disdained" and "almost hated" the Founding Fathers. That's my assessment only. Thoreau never said he hated them. If you read carefully about Thoreau's life you will learn that he sacrificed a great deal for his ideals and for his friends, and risked a great deal as an operative on the Underground Railroad. I admire the good accomplished by the Founding Fathers, but refuse, and recommend that you also refuse, to ignore that many were slave owners. How bad does one's snobbery need to be to believe you are so much better than another person that you believe you can own them? They stole people's livelihoods, lives, and famlies from them, they frequently murdered and/or raped them. There is good proof that Jefferson began to rape Sally Hemming when she was only 14 years old and continued for decades. Thoreau did nothing of this sort. Rather he spoke and wrote on behalf of the enslaved, and risked his life smuggling some of those who escaped. He loved America for what it could be. Furthermore his books and essays are magnificent inspiring gifts to Americans and all people of the world who will read them.
"Thoreau's disdain, almost hatred really, for the Founding Fathers and those who enabled them is clear." These folks started America. Isn't this same thing? Imperfect people founded the longest standing Democracy in history. I wonder if, someday, we will be discredited because of our rape and destruction of this planet thus causing ecological refugees everywhere. And also denying millions of food while we feast at Thanksgiving driving our vehicles of destruction over the polluted rivers and through the trashed dales to Grandma's house even though we stuck her and our aged population in a nursing home.
Each time has its darkness and mores than are hard to deal with.
I have always disliked Thoreau from the time I had to read him in school. It's ironic I taught at a school called Walden School. I'm glad you like him. Isn't it funny how different authors strike the reader?
Thanks for the good discussion, Paul. Have a lovely week.
Oh My…. To the sad point….
And…. HOPE…. That “thing with feathers”….. WE are HERE…. And we are picking ourselves up, dusting ourselves off….. A N D…….
True, trump and the today's GOP are nothing if not bizarre, outrageous and un-American. Today's Supreme Court is poised to end the last vestiges of the Civil Rights Amendment and will join the Justices that issued the Dread Scott decision as the worst SCOTUS Justices in American history.
They will likely make it possible to flip twelve or more house districts from blue to red in southern States. Blue States should continue gerrymandering to fight the corrupt right-wing Justices move to give the GOP (fascist party) permanent power to undermine every citizens civil rights.
Who indeed? Perhaps John Roberts, Chief Justice of the US Supreme Court, and his fellow toady Justices?
And with a Supreme Court majority to rubber stamp the totalitarian hatred…
HITLER? Shame on you.
Hitler murdered 6 Million JEWS.
Started a comment thanking Dr. Richardson for not only keeping us well informed but providing the graduate-level education in history and sociology I always sought but could never afford to formalize. But the site disappeared my thanks, and in my hopeful but disappointed search for that half-finished paragraph of gratitude, I discovered Ricky the Regurgitater has (again) disrupted our discussion by projectile-vomiting his morally-imbecilic, hate-tainted, pridefully perpetuated ignorance directly into our faces.
Hence, with applause for and a respectful salute to our professor, and a supportive nod for those her epic sensibility leads, firstly, to unflinching realizations of our assailants' Evil intent, and thence to our ever-more-militant mobilization against their ever-more-desperately tyrannical scheming, I'll sign off for the night with a quote: "Don't Give Up the Ship"; not now, not ever.
Loren, I absolutely hate it when my comments go awry. I can NEVER recall the precise language I used (which is always better than what I try and recreate).
My favorite shirt for a long time was a pelican swallowing a frog; the frog's head was in the pelican's mouth, but the frog's hands were wrapped around its neck. "Never Give Up" was the wording. I agree: Not now, not ever.
I had a drawing of that pelican and frog on my desk for years! The caption was, "Never, ever, ever Give Up!"
l love good stories, especially when embellished well! ;-)
I remember that drawing, I think from my too-old-to-court-the-coeds final undergraduate year, 1975-76. (Obviously ain't none of us here spring chickens.) Reason I remember it, it was above the home desk of a woman my own age, a local artist and traditional folksinger, and one night it somehow inspired, probably with some herbal assistance, her and me and a few others to imagine improbable hybrids, the most outrageous of which was a "pelligator," a flying predator resulting from the cross-breeding of a pelican and an alligator.
Hahahahee! I love the "herbal assistance."
Good morning Linda, I agree, wholeheartedly-Heather holds a crucial role in our lives!
For a quick reference, here’s the 14th:
Fourteenth Amendment
Section 1
All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.
Section 2
Representatives shall be apportioned among the several States according to their respective numbers, counting the whole number of persons in each State, excluding Indians not taxed. But when the right to vote at any election for the choice of electors for President and Vice-President of the United States, Representatives in Congress, the Executive and Judicial officers of a State, or the members of the Legislature thereof, is denied to any of the male inhabitants of such State, being twenty-one years of age, and citizens of the United States, or in any way abridged, except for participation in rebellion, or other crime, the basis of representation therein shall be reduced in the proportion which the number of such male citizens shall bear to the whole number of male citizens twenty-one years of age in such State.
Section 3
No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice-President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any State, who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any State legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any State, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof. But Congress may by a vote of two-thirds of each House, remove such disability.
Section 4
The validity of the public debt of the United States, authorized by law, including debts incurred for payment of pensions and bounties for services in suppressing insurrection or rebellion, shall not be questioned. But neither the United States nor any State shall assume or pay any debt or obligation incurred in aid of insurrection or rebellion against the United States, or any claim for the loss or emancipation of any slave; but all such debts, obligations and claims shall be held illegal and void.
Section 5
The Congress shall have power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article.
https://constitution.congress.gov/constitution/amendment-14/
The Republic Shrugs, Then Sends a Memo
The current crisis began, as these things often do, with Donald Trump discovering a new all-caps setting on his social media app and deciding that the only reasonable use for it was to call members of Congress traitors. The man has the subtlety of a marching band in a library and the self-control of a raccoon in a donut shop, so naturally his next step was to demand trials, convictions, and a faintly medieval set of punishments for lawmakers whose real offense was defending the Constitution. The country sighed. The world sighed. Even his own legal team sighed, although they insisted they were merely “breathing deeply for health.”
As the days passed, Trump continued hammering away at the idea that elected officials who challenge him are enemies of the state. It played well with the usual crowd, the ones who think the phrase checks and balances refers to their bank app. But for the rest of the nation, the whole spectacle felt like a mash-up of Nixon’s final days and a reality show reunion episode where everyone has finally lost the will to pretend they like each other.
The House, sensing that the line between “spirited disagreement” and “authoritarian cosplay” had been crossed yet again, began quietly drafting what can only be described as Impeachment Season Five. No one wanted another season, but the writers kept getting fresh material, and the showrunner in Mar-a-Lago refused to retire. Soon enough, the articles of impeachment were drawn up in language so stern that one representative reportedly sprained a finger typing the phrase high crimes and misdemeanors.
When the trial reached the Senate, the mood was brisk. Senators had already been through this rodeo, and some were prepared this time with comfortable shoes and crossword puzzles. The prosecution presented Trump’s posts, videos, and threats, while the defense insisted he was merely using creative metaphors for civic togetherness. The jury was not impressed.
The conviction vote arrived with all the suspense of a weather report. The Senate, in a rare moment of clarity, voted to convict, remove, and permanently disqualify him from serving again. Some even applauded, although decorum rules required them to claim they were swatting imaginary flies.
In the aftermath, the nation discovered something quietly reassuring. When a president tries to label legislators as traitors, demand their punishment, and bend the republic to his impulses, the Constitution has a remarkable tendency to wake up, stretch its arms, and remind everyone who actually runs the place. https://essayx.substack.com/p/the-republic-shrugs-then-sends-a
Did you ever see the series, Designated Survivor? Sometimes I think it would take that kind of scenario to make any real change…of course that would only be because the entire government but one basically, would be dead. I like how your POV turns out. I like it a lot!!👍🇺🇲
I did see it, and I understand why that idea sticks with people. The show taps into a real frustration that nothing seems to change unless everything collapses first. In reality, I think progress comes from many people choosing decency over fear, clarity over chaos, and courage over resignation. We do not need a catastrophe to reset our course. We only need enough people deciding that democracy and compassion are worth defending every day. Here’s my latest on this exact theme: https://essayx.substack.com/p/a-republic-reclaimed-a-nation-reborn
I read your essay and appreciate your thoughts. I watched The American Revolution and many times throughout (the oft sobering revelations that were new to me), I thought...sounds just like today....You are so right in saying basically, that it was a long and very difficult process. If I didn't know part 6, I would have been certain it was a lost cause. Thank you for your insight and reminder that a reborn republic may not come about until many involved at the moment, have died, in actuality.
(Okay copied the link and I will read it out of my email soon. Thx)
I will read it. And believe me I am not really in favor of the Designated Survivor scenario. I think the only reason it sticks out in my mind sometimes is that if the verbal and rhetorical Civil War turned into a literal military Civil War.. yes there are many more of"us" than "them" but it all would depend on the military went because no matter how many of us there are one of them, within AK-47 automatic or grenades or drones or anything else, the odds would not favor a democracy coming out on top or so it seems to me. And I will make a note to read your link if I can find my way back LOL older, not real tech savvy.
I have thought about a Designated Survivor scenario often. But which cabinet officer would I trust to run the country?
My vote for the worst possible “designated survivor” would be Pete Hegseth.
It's a tough call. I mean seriously good old ICE QUEEN killed a her puppy for some puppy like Behavior that she didn't like and then went into the barn and killed a goat. That's pretty bad. Pretty boy Pete.. well, if he were kept in great stock of anything alcoholic, maybe even antifreeze would do who knows, he could be subdued LOL
Hmmm right🤔. Well, little Marco used to be...well, he just so flip flopped...now he has power behind him. Maybe with no power, he'd revert back to a seemingly almost once deceny guy? One could hope🙏🤷♀️. Scott Turner, if he were to play the role that his counterpart did in DS...maybe another possible but then again as a former football player, he may have "legitimate" Brain damage, unlike his comrades who are just insane and malevolent cosplayers. Well you think and please let me know what you think. Maybe with such organizational obliterated chaos that must go on, if we got lucky they may instead put one of the janitors in the bunker and I think we'd be okay!👍🇺🇸👍. We have to be okay...or we will be nothing in this world worth mentioning 🇺🇸😪
So well said. I can't really can't add any more.
I certainly second this thought…like much of history I do not know the details and these matter a lot. It is sad that the voting rights act has been decimated…so many states still don’t have practices that support voting rights, nor public information. Jim Crow lives on! That said, what about the sad reality of 70,000,000 potential voters not bothering in the last election! This is an indication of a civil illness and disconnect…
I know the reality and the excuses…we need new federal laws that assure clear voting opportunities and have the goal of 100% participation.
First, if you are over 18 you should be registered to vote and given a state voter ID card…motor-voter laws help too…and the federal election should be a holiday...Veteran’s Day? And all voters should be able to get a mail-in ballot if requested or just go with ‘Vote By Mail’. Postmarked by the day of the election. And each vote should produce a paper ballot as a record so you can see what you voted for as you turn it in…and for all recounts and records! No electronic-only systems for federal elections.
And there should be a non-partisan voter’s pamphlet— League of Women Voters?
And states may/will follow these practices.
I live in PA and on the 4th, in my county, the voter rolls prepared did not include Independents. It was almost mid afternoon before the proper records were delivered to the polling centers. All Independents had to vote by provisional ballot or return later to vote. I made a comment which was replied to by a long time poll worker in another county. She explained step by step what she could see had possibly happened and how things would be handled. The polls stayed open till 10pm here consequently and just last week read my newsletter from county commissioners saying they had hired a lawfirm to do a complete investigation of what happened. I learned A LOT that day and as much as your ideas sound good..and I agree…what I learned from that very patient pollworker is that as with Heather's ongoing lessons opening my blind eyes to so much in history…hardly anyone knows…I know nothing about the intricacies and protocol involved in elections🤷♀️🤷♀️
Yes! people! I’m a bit amazed the system works as well as it does and yes it’s the people working at the polls, keeping records, making it happen! I just wish there was less of a headwind to making it fair and transparent in too many states and locations…and while state workers are the stars if some aspects were standardized for federal elections, with the some money, the local folks would appreciate the standardization. Too many don’t have the support, the funds, and too few have voter’s pamphlets. And polls need to be available for more time and that too takes more people. And I will say that my state has a great, the best, system and still some don’t vote…and will not say can’t because with vote by mail you have a week to complete and mail/drop off.
Perfectly said, Linda. You summed up my thoughts better than I could state them. I learn something every day from Heather’s letters. She makes history so much more interesting than I found it in high school. ;) And I agree she will remain a big part of our nation’s history. As she writes each day about our country’s history, she becomes a part of our history. And our county is better for her contribution.
Very true. We are ALL the better for her gift…just …more people need to read the truth!!
Yes Kudos HCR for this informational piece…very enlightening!
Yes . Thank you so very much !
Very well said, thank you.
Between reading your letter, and your books, and watching Ken Burns series, American Revolution, I’m finally getting the history education I should have gotten in high school.
It’s a very sobering lesson in light of today’s events.
Ben Franklin was right in two statements; “ unite or die”, and “A republic, if you can keep it.”
(Hi, sub stack is an odd thing. I know you meant this comment for Heather but it ended up as a comment to me and as of yet, I have not written any books or nightly letter, LOL)
A Republic Reclaimed, a Nation Reborn
How America Can Rise From the Authoritarian Tide and Build a Fairer Democracy
The American republic is at a crossroads. As authoritarian pressure rises, Americans face a historic chance to restore and refine the ideals first fought for in the eighteenth century. Renewal begins now, if citizens choose courage, accountability, and a democracy worthy of everyone. https://essayx.substack.com/p/a-republic-reclaimed-a-nation-reborn
Yes thank you!
We have criminals in the Oval Office and these Patriots, true to our constitution, being threatened with hanging.
The longer this goes on the more sure I am that we slipped through a wormhole into an alternate universe. And, somewhere in the multiverse, President Harris just signed the First Time Homebuyers Act.
I wish there was a Star Trek style “Q” to blame, but all I see is us.
Hello Annabel... Calling for the Execution of these 6-Patriots who reminded those that Serve Our Country of their Oath to Our Constitution, is deeply Ironic coming from a 5X Draft Dodger who has called the Fallen 'Suckers, and Losers'... I was in the Army in '73 when Word came from Command that We in the Military Swore an Oath to the Constitution, and not to a Man... At that point, 'Watergate' was raging, and Nixon was Spiraling... In '21, I was with the DoD, and that Word was reiterated.... It was Post January 6th, and DJT's Attempted Insurrection had failed... This proves to me that DJT doesn't care about the Rule-Of-Law, or the USA... DJT Just Wants Personal Power... OBW: Stephen Miller is less than a Cretin, and should be prosecuted during the next Administration for Incitement, and Treason...
Apache, you may not hear it often, or you may tire of hearing it, but I respect your military service and appreciate your comment.
Thank You Janet... I grew-up with Proud Veterans of WW2, and Korea... My Family's Military Service Continues...
I was aware of the rotten elements of this man as far back as the late 1980s. Why or how could I see and only a few others see what I saw. He came to my city of Hartford, CT wanting to build a casino but our governor was already making an exclusive deal with our Native tribes the Massatucket Pequots. And he wanted city support and received it from my friend at the time mayor Carrie Saxon Perry. As he left empty-handed, he remarked, “They don’t look like Indians to me.” That was in reference to Chief Skip Hayward, who I guess Trump felt had to have a feather in his cap to look like an Indian. It’s all in my book, “Donald’s Vanity Tantrums.” You might like to pick up a copy and enjoy the reading. I just added 10 more stories.
When I saw him on an entertainment tonight type show in the late 1970's I could see he was Sociopathic and never imagined he would ever be considered to be politically relevant.
Thanks, Apache. I was unaware that in '73 that Military Command issued a statement reminding all service members that their oath was to the constitution. That is encouraging.
I swore an oath upon becoming a deputy sheriff; our Department Manual (later General Orders) had a section on that to disobey an unlawful or illegal order was specifically NOT insubordination. The defense to a charge of insubordination had, foundationally, that a clear articulation of the unlawful/illegal component was sufficient defense to a charge of insubordination.
I remember hearing that as Nixon's Watergate and other corruption spiraled out of his control, there were reports that any military orders from Nixon would have to be run by the Military before acting on the orders. There was a fear that he might start a nuclear war or another atrocity.
Ally. I’m cheered to find another Oregonian in the mix.. my husband also took the oath as a US airman and as deputy sheriff in Marion County Oregon. Thank you for your service to your county and Oregon.!
I'm just to the south of you in Lane County. If your husband knows Jerry Wollenschlaeger, he rode with me as both an explorer and a reserve.
Your years of employment may not have crossed. Larry Seeley retired in 2009 as after 28 years with MCSO. Cheers!
We're close; I retired in 2013 after 27 years... Wally started there in the early 00's I think.
I was still a few years shy of military service in 1973 and I never heard of that reminder being issued. Thanks for sharing that, and thank you for your service.
It’s perhaps not surprising that so many members of MAGA believe that what the Democrats said was seditious because, they say, ‘it would be chaos if members of the armed forces questioned orders.’
They get really touchy when you suggest who else “was just following orders.” One person went so far as to say that it would be disastrous if soldiers had “free will,” as if that somehow precludes following orders.
You have to accept that the right wing mind operates only in Black or White. Added to that is a reluctance to change or analyze new information. Life to them has to be clearly one thing or the other,and once a stance is accepted, no new information……or logic…….can make them grow or change. Nuance scares the hell out of them.
True, It makes throwing absurdism at them effective. And funny.
"Nip the shoots of arbitrary power in the bud, is the only maxim which can ever preserve the liberties of any people." - John Adams
Well it has taken nigh on 10 years for "us" to face the fact that 'we' have been lied to, fed mis/dis-information and cajoled, by a certain number of persons who have managed to position puppets in the Oval Office. For that job, we had Nixon, Reagan, Bush & Bush. And, for the past ten years it's been shit-for-brains who is doing the bidding for those un-named "persons", whom we can now pretty-much name. So, all of "us" have been fooled in one way or another. Hindsight is sure 20/20. I've said ten years, but it has really been more like 70,,. our lifetime. Is it "us"? Welp.. (to quote) "It's Come To This" (un-quote). Sure has. May as well look into the mirror. Somebody mention 'reconstruction'? We're gonna have a Ball with this one.
just read tonight on the Parnas Prospective on Substack that Secretary Rubio told Senator Angus King and Senator Round and one other that Trump's peace proposal for the Russian Ukraine war wasn't our proposal at all, but a list of Russian Demands. The Russians actually leaked it to Axios ,and of course Trump ran with it. All this means that Trump and Vance are Russian Assets like we all thought!
At this point, only very naive 6-year-olds need more evidence on that score. "Why is it with you all paths lead to the Kremlin?" -- (said directly to his face), Speaker Nancy Pelosi, October 2019.
Epstein is in there.
Yes.., "naive 6-year-olds"..., and welcome to Red Square.., watch your step as you debark from the bus, so much history here. Lubyanka Square, home of the famous prison is next. Bring your lunch....,, heh heh.. but, you have already arrived!
Sen. Armed Services chair Wicker R. MS. on Ukraine peace plan: https://www.wicker.senate.gov/2025/11/chairman-wicker-statement-on-ukraine
ICTT, assuming you get this would you e-mail me @ gideonse@midmaine.com? I have a puzzle I want to ask you but not here. It's just too weird to post. You liked something I wrote, that now appears to have completely disappeared despite three slow trips through the whole tranche of same. Thanks.
I had the same thing happen on Robert Reich's site where he was taking a poll on how his readers thought would or could be the Dem. Nominee in 2028. Every time I tried to like a post or add a positive comment about my Governor Gretchen Whitmer, the post would disappear before my eyes as would the post I was just liking about her. I figured it was a person with a grudge against her who coincidently was reading behind me!
Indeed, what other reason would Trump have to sell out the US and Ukraine. All makes sense. And analysis of wording in the 'Peace Proposal' indicates it's a translation from Russian into English. So much for it being a deal worked out between Trump & Putin. Trump had his orders.
I don't think it was "orders" Donald had, geo, but invitations.
Invitations to dear Donald that he please fondle the underage lovelies Jeffrey and Ghislaine trafficked to him and all the other rich and powerful graduates of U.S. neutered "higher" education and all the other elites as so classified by the billionaires of standardized testing.
How about "Bubba?"
The humor in the Parnas post was just what I needed after watching "Seven Pounds" - a bit of downer, but an Oscar-worthy performance by Will Smith. Seeing those cretins (T****, Vance, Rubio, and Witcoff) called out as Putin's tools was too funny for words.
And the appearance of the Christi Noem commercials (PSAs?) that warn undocumented immigrants on the showing of "Silence of the Lambs" is just too perfect.
A recent Facebook post alerted me to the two past genocides Russia visited on Ukraine. It makes today’s news all the more disturbing.
I read that as well, Louise. Particularly the stipulation(?) regarding NOT 'joining NATO' as a condition. Freedom? Better get over it, Ukrainsky's.., the US-of-TrumpCo has blown a right-front tire and is headed into the ditch. Don't look for AAA-Europe for assistance..., huh? Certainly not Brexit, where the castle toilets are over-flowing with so-much bucolic babble (BS). Trump & Co is interested in one thing, plastering that name "the Brand" everywhere.., and he's doing it, as he craps-in-his-pants right in front of us. The smell...,ohh that smell!
If Donald Trump were to be "certified" as officially working for Putin as an agent of Russia's oligarchs...what would he be doing now that would be different?
If that is true coming out of Rubio, why isn't he pushing back? Never mind, I know.....
If only, we ALL faced the fact. Or at least 80%. Anything else is embarrassing…
For me, it was 70 years and our government/rich guy involvement in bananas.
I’ll see your Q and raise you a Mon Mothma imperial senate speech (Andor season 2).
Frankly, I have no patience with people who moan about feeling ashamed of the U.S. because of Trump.
Did you vote for Kamala? Did you donate to other Democrats' campaign? Did you volunteer--as far as you were able--to canvass door to door, phone bank, send postcards?
Then shame and guilt over Trump are just performative nonsense. You did what you could, along with millions of others. If it wasn't enough, it wasn't for lack of trying.
Feel determined, feel angry, feel like you're "mad as hell and not going to take it anymore!" Shame and regret are a waste of time and energy.
I understand your point, but regret and shame have been given a bad rap.
It's regret and shame that causes us to reflect and act to correct our behavior. Guilt is different, it implies one did wrong.
Shame is the acknowledgement of an inconsistency between one's behavior and one's ideal. Yes, we should be ashamed of America's behavior in making this poor excuse for a man president; it is inconsistent with the ideal of America.
Regret is a feeling of disappointment. Can one be disappointed we have sunk this low while having done all we could personally? Sure.
Shame and regret aren't necessarily personal, it can be collective. Did an individual do all they were capable of and still feel shame and regret about what we have wrought? Yes.
I am ashamed, at what we are presenting to the world, and I regret that we are in this position.
These responses of regret and shame are what keep us motivated, without them there would be satisfaction regarding the status quo. The are necessary elements to initiate change.
Just my take...I could be wrong.
It DOES feel like an alternate universe! I frequently tell friends that I feel I'm living in the Matrix.
In all fairness, the financial elite has had more power than ordinary citizens since the beginning of our Republic, when only men of property had the right to vote. With every amendment to give voting rights to men of other races and women, the wealthy elite have always managed to rig the system so that they always have more power than the average citizen. And with every effort to give every citizen equal political power, they whine about socialism. The federal government today is the natural result of government of the wealthy by the wealthy for the wealthy.
In the eyes of the wealthy, the ordinary people are only here to provide cheap labor that will pay taxes to support their interests, while they give themselves loopholes to avoid paying their fair share of taxes.
As AI and robotics advance to replace human employees, they will see no value in the rest of us. The future looks bleak for the average citizen if we don't take control now.
@MysticShadow: The overlords are absolutely the ones driving this. The "us" I mentioned is to distinguish between human agency and some meddling deity.
It should be clear to anyone paying attention that our elections have rarely been "free and fair". But saying so often draws the wrath of the left, who think I am referring to election fraud, when it is the STRUCTURE that is wanting.
One of the problems with being the first nation state to try out the new-fangled system of government now known as democracy is that the framers were creatures of their time. There are much better systems that have been developed in the last 250 years, but if we try to tamper with the founding documents their are evil forces that would seize the opportunity to give us something much worse.
No--the rank and file is not generally at fault for this mess. With one exception: The "lesser of two evils" left, who have contributed greatly to the consistent loss of power by Democrats who do respect the will of the people. They gave us Trump. Twice.
As for the overlords, there is not enough room to explore that in a comment, but I have several posts here that cover it. The most concise being "Meet the New Boss."
The plan for the current coup had been in the hopper for at least 50 years.
Agree! “Q” counsld be held responsible for EVERYTHING nepharious….but I forget….where was “Q” when the series ended? Responsible for everything… but was he ever held accountable?🤔🤔
I thought I’d been shocked enough about what Trump could say, and now this. Our reality is not ok. Please speak up if you aren’t already.
There’s a calendar on my spreadsheet so we can target our calls/letters/emails/faxes to flood offices in an organized manner.
Use/share this spreadsheet (bit.ly/Nokings) as a resource to contact members of Congress, the Cabinet and news organizations. Call. Write. Email. Protest. Unrelentingly. We deserve better ❤️🩹🤍💙
Reach out (beyond your own) to as many in the Senate and House as you can. All of this is bigger than “I only represent my constituents” issues.
Add a comment to help keep this bumped ✊
Direct link if you prefer -
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/13lYafj0P-6owAJcH-5_xcpcRvMUZI7rkBPW-Ma9e7hw/edit?usp=drivesdk
Thank you.
You’re welcome! Thanks for being aware and active right now!
Thanks for reminding us about that organizing tool. It’s important to keep from being overwhelmed.
You’re welcome! I love making some good trouble with it 🙃
Thanks Megan. The time to write your Congresscritter is NOW.
Yes it is! ✊
thanks!
You’re welcome! Thanks for speaking up right now!
Thank you Megan!
You’re welcome! Thanks for speaking up right now!
Thank you for the action items, @Megan Rothery!
❤️🤍💙
You’re welcome! Make some good trouble! ✊
Thank you!
You’re welcome! Thanks for being aware and active right now!
I so appreciate your work on this.
Thank you!
thank you!
Trump is so obviously crazy. Truly, completely nuts. It's probably a result of his dementia, but whatever it is, the people in his administration are plainly using him to advance their agendas.
They are sick and manipulating monsters, and they are the ones who need to be thrown in prison.
Dementia, a criminal mindset, malignant narcissism, and a long, ugly life filled with shabby cruelty, constant prevarication, business failure, and psychosexual perversions to compensate for a raging inferiority complex. Yes, such a brilliant idea to give this sick wretch access to our country's nuclear launch codes, a bully pulpit and watch while his Team of Morons and Misfits carry out fantasies of violence and retribution against us all.
I'm happy to see Democrats keep talking about 'the economy, stupid' because there's plenty there to talk about, but the real issue remains the social disease within us that brought these terrible people to power in the first place.
His "Cabinet" is a can of mixed nuts that should be put on a shelf in a cabinet.
Good point!
Money has a lot to do with it. It always has, even back in days of old.
Nice, ICTT:
" . . . the social disease that brought these terrible people to power in the first place."
Change the words to “The Stupid Economy”!
Absolutely. YES!
Maybe "obviously crazy," Karen, but also part of a continuous history Heather often cites.
This is the history of rich slave owners, or, after the Civil War, aristocratic southern former slave owners seeking ways to firm up their rule -- and to shut down U.S. democratic threads to enfranchise and empower more of we the people.
Andrew Johnson, as Heather shows today, meant to serve these aristocratic thugs then, as Donald does now.
It's continuous. Our for-the-people leaders, in resisting it, get the massive voter turnout in mass support of the republic and our people that we saw the first Tuesday of this month.
So thank you Karen, and thank all commenting here to keep up this good, needed energy.
Trump is pathological and clumsy, but he knows where his bread is buttered, and he does whatever he thinks will benefit him.
The Doctor is In:
A good explainer from a highly qualified expert in the field:
https://youtu.be/9OtO-cypKmY
Agree! Dr John Gartner's piece is a must see to understand trump's severe personality disorder now complicated by dementia. https://youtu.be/9OtO-cypKmY?si=33yBlHcxD9_MMnCV
I suggest everyone see/hear this piece by Dr John Gartner, clinical psychologist at Johns Hopkins. It is the best explanation I have found by an expert of trump's severe personality disorder which is now complicated by dementia. https://youtu.be/9OtO-cypKmY?si=33yBlHcxD9_MMnCV
And the South is still in need of Radical Reconstruction because nothing has changed there politically since. The white descendants of the traitors are still largely traitors.
Texas leads
Rick the Troll now blocked.
And guess what TC I put this post out the other day I thought you would enjoy it. The south was all Democrats all Democrats. They were the cause of the civil war. They were the cause of slavery. Civil War losing 700,000 lives. Black Lives Matter.
The history of the Democratic Party, has been one of the biggest hindrances of black progress. Its history includes fighting to retain slavery, the creation of Jim Crow laws, and under FDR the creation of “redlining” to prevent the federal government from giving housing loans to areas (mostly minority) deemed too risky, which today has morphed into limiting school choice for blacks. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 was filibustered by Democrats but eventually passed because a much higher percentage of Republicans voted for the bill than Democrats in both the House and Senate. The 1994 crime bill, passed by Democrats and signed by President Bill Clinton, resulted in a disproportionate increase in the number of blacks being incarcerated.
George Wallace and Ardent Democrat. You might want to check history instead of whatever distortion is in your mind.
You've missed one great big part of US history, you moron.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XugwohThlyI
Thanks for this link, it’s very helpful.
Don’t feed the troll, Russell.
I think he's had his fill, for now at least.
All well and good, except you leave out the long-standing racism of the Republicans for much of the 20th century, culminating in Nixon’s Southern Strategy. 1968, the most pivotal year of the post-WWII part of the 20th century, was a turning point for the Democrats. While everyone remembers the police riot in Chicago during the Democratic National Convention, the events of the week before during delegate credentialing meetings. In the cavernous main Ballroom of the Conrad Hilton Hotel, the Dixiecrats fought to keep as few Black or anti-Vietnam War delegates from being seated. It was a stark contrast: the old Southern whites, sweating despite the air conditioning, having to publicly display their racism and contempt for these new delegates—young and Black and white and anti-war—were unknowingly making their last stand. A critical moment took place when a young Black delegate from Georgia rose to speak. Julian Bond had been rejected by the Georgia committee, which was loyal to segregationist Gov. Lester Maddox. Bond was the 28-year-old leader of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee. Bond challenged his denial of a credential in an impassioned speech. His challenge, unsurprisingly, failed. He would lead a counter-delegation to mount a floor challenge to the Georgia Delegation. Delegate selection would change to ban racism and open selection up to a broader representation.
The GOPs use the southern strategy in 1968 was the beginning of the migration of racists from the Democratic Party to the Republican Party and has led to the fascist majoritys in the Executive Branch, Congressional Branch and Supreme Court today.
This lady was indicating that the south whites have not changed. I was merely pointing out how delusional she is. And it doesn’t change his history as to what I said about the white South. I guess the best and most recent example would be a guy by the name of George Wallace.
I didn’t make any stand on the republican issue at all. It wasn’t mentioned nor does it have to be because almost every single attempt to free the blacks from slavery and give them equality was shunned, defeated, and refused by southern Democrats.
I appreciate you mentioned the tiny one offs, but we are talking about an entire population of 10-15 entire states. Not just a speech made by somebody not just a little congregation somewhere but by an entire body politic.
The major bone of contention for me would be the civil war, and if you wanted to deny what happened and why it happened go bark up another tree
700,000 people died for what? Because the white Democrats refused to yield to free slaves, refused to give them equal rights until Abraham Lincoln came along, which by the way didn’t affect a speech by some one off guy in Chicago, but affected the entire country. I do believe he was a Republican. And was shot for his beliefs hmmmmm You have a nice day
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Julian Bond’s courage was hardly a one off. The challenge to Lester Maddox’s racist cohort was a challenge to every Southern state’s racist and exclusionary delegate selection process. That process drew its last, despicable breath in 1968 Chicago.
You more than brought up Republicans, and ignored their history in the 20th and thus century. Nobody is disputing the cause of the Civil War, the motive for Lincoln’s assassination, nor the role of Democrats in the 19th and 20th century.
The Dixiecrats fled the party at the polls in 1968, giving George Wallace the last third-party Electoral College votes.
You do a great disservice to Bond and his group as a force for change.
Instead, you place all credit on a white Republican, paint the modern Democratic Party as no different from the Jim Crow and KKK barbarians of a century ago. Many Southern whites have not changed and to pretend otherwise is foolish.
You can’t make a legitimate argument by ignoring a large swath of history, denying what has taken place over the last half century.
Ricky, you are embarrassing yourself and don't even realize it. That is what often happens in dreams. Go back to bed, Ricky.
Have you heard of One trick ponies? If you haven’t just take a quick peek in the mirror. I’m guessing you were the star of your fifth grade class.
Most of what you “guess” is wrong - because you are dreaming. Go back to sleep, Ricky.
it’s not wrong, but it could’ve been fifth and sixth grade for all we know go back to writing your meaningless columns in your community newspaper OK.
Did you read them?
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Gosh Rick. I'm so sorry that Mr. Netto called you a moron. Such rudeness. But since he spoke the truth, you'll just have to live with that reality. But keep up the good work. Your lies are doing a great service. Thank you!
By the way, please I forgot to mention that it seems that Democrats have been trying to solve black poverty for over 100 years. How’s that working out? And all they do is keep them enslaved.
🙄
Mr. Neto has a problem even wiping himself so please we don’t talk with Mr. Neto. He’s out there in Zorbon somewhere. Just like all the other losers tell me about the lies go ahead come on give it a shot. But here’s the big question for you. You could be the 1112th. Person that can’t answer a simple question and here’s the question.
WHY IS UKRAINE IN THE POSITION THAT IT’S IN TODAY AND IT HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH OBAMA AND IT HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH BIDEN AND IT HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH TRUMP.
Now you’re way out on thin ice with oversimplified declarations you want everyone to accept as some wise truth.
Trump is very much to blame for where Ukraine stands today. To say otherwise is a bald-faced lie.
Off you go to Gab or Truth Social.
I don’t go on Truth Social. I don’t think you understand the profoundness of your ignorance when it comes to Ukraine, Russia. Trump has been in office nine months. Biden was in office for four years. Kind of lol
Obama was an office for eight years.. and yet Russia Ukraine battle still exists. Of all the people that have added their comments here you are by far, unfortunately, the most ignorant of all of them when it comes to history of Russia, Ukraine. It almost defies credulity
ANSWER THIS QUESTION WHY IS UKRAINE IN THE POSITION THAT IT’S IN RIGHT NOW AND IT’S WAR WITH RUSSIA ? The question doesn’t get any simpler the answer isn’t any easier if you have any clue about history at all.
And here you go, Mr. Burnham, here’s your man here’s the man I count on to use the term U people. Where he actually is blaming President Trump for Russia Ukraine, when I make the points above, how hysterical is that? Like I said, it almost defies credulity.
So Bob, here’s your chance to free yourself from your current Monica of Russia, Ukraine, ignorance And would love to be the one to help you deliberate yourself from your misguided opinion
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You are correct! I haven't a clue. I really don't know what I'd do without your guidance. Thank you so much!
See the problem is I know you have a clue, but you just don’t want to let it out of the bag so that everybody knows why Ukraine and Russia are fighting right now. Because it was caused by a democrat a well intended Democrat, but yet a democrat.
Why is it that you people continue to try to put words in someone else’s mouth rather than answering a fucking question
Answer the question James. Or I will simply add you to the list of the 1112 people that have already refused to answer.
In English, we call that a surrender. No wonder when you’re in charge shit happens. Would you like to discuss Vietnam or maybe you’d like to discuss Joe Biden sending $100 billion to kill more people. An Obama and Biden allowing Russia to take over parts of Ukraine and you can’t even answer the question James.
So ultimately, yes, you don’t have a clue
YOU PEOPLE !?!? Oh, thank you again, Rick. I get it now! It's you against the world. Pure genius. Just like Dear Leader. I'm going to go burn my copy of Common Sense and join you, Rick. Were do we meet? I always thought that the problem isn't the Democrats, it's the Fascists who want to kill them. I understand now, Rick, thanks to you! Should I bring my Tiki Torch, or would an AR 15 be better? We gotta smoke them Wokies, ya know.
🙄
It becomes more important every day to make sure that during the midterms, we, the people, vote to take back Congress so that we can nullify the damage that the current Congress has allowed the current regime to perpetrate on our country. Learning our history is an essential reminder that we, the people, have triumphed over adversity and corruption and greed in the past. We can triumph again. As we fight, we must support those who remind us of the distinction between legal and illegal directives from those in power.
There is a way that Democrats can become the majority just after January 25, 2026, a year ahead of the midterms, if 3 or more Republicans join Marjorie Taylor Greene and resign early. Only two more are required if the special election in Tennessee flips the Republican seat blue.
Four Republicans who are not seeking higher office have already announced they will not seek re-election. They are Reps. Morgan Luttrell (R-TX), Jodey Arrington (R-TX), Don Bacon (R-NE), and Michael McCaul(R-TX).
Trump is getting more dangerous by the day, and these representatives have already shown they are separating from Trump. Perhaps they can be persuaded to be true patriots and walk away early from Trump's madness if enough of their constituents demonstrate in their districts.
Congress will only be in session for around 6 weeks through then. They will be spending much of the holidays back in their home districts listening to their constituents talk about saving the ACA, which has to be done before the continuing resolution expires on January 30, 2026.
January 25, 2026, is the date of the run-off special election in Texas for the seat of Sylvester Turner, who passed away in March. It is between two democrats.
The typical time between a vacancy and a special election is around 7 months. That gets 7 months of Democratic control ahead of the midterms, following the continuing resolution deadline, when it will be abundantly clear how Trump and his oligarchic bros care nothing for the American people.
You may think this is a pipe dream, but Trump has never been weaker. The Epstein files will not go away by January 25, 2026, neither will the economy turn, and only now are we seeing how completely Trump is selling not only Ukraine but America to line his pockets in the corrupt "peace plan."
If there is any peaceful, legal way to flip the House early, it needs to be pursued.
It's important we not forget that government is set to shut down again in January, for the deal reached a few weeks ago was only temporary. Schumer was promised a vote on Obamacare subsidies yet again in mid-December. It is likely this vote will fail again, as it did when Big Ugly got passed by ONE vote, when JD Wanker broke the tie, but it is entirely possible more Republican Senators scared by the appropriate lessons from the blue wave of November 4 might entertain second thoughts.
When government stops again, people will get a *second* chance to re-acquaint themselves with what, exactly, Republicans stand for. Not even a 'splendid little war' against Venezuela will be able to change that backdrop, and we will have had even more opportunities to review all the sordid cover-ups and bizarre associations with a pedophile Trump so desperately wants us not to talk about. All while his dementia accelerates and escalates.
It was Rahm Emanuel, I think, who said 'never let a good crisis go to waste.' Let's hope we're smart enough not to waste this one.
There is another way for Democrats to gain control of the House--if the retiring 4 Rs change their party affiliation to independent. They would lose their committee assignments but gain enormous power to broker terms that are fairer to the average American. That gives less power to Dems who would then be in the majority and presumably take over the Speakership and rework Committee assignments. If the R's became I's, D's would have to negotiate on every item and amendment in each bill. But it is better than having Mike Johnson as Speaker and controlling the legislative agenda and calendar.
I haven't found an example of this happening during a legislative session, so there may be issues with the House rules not addressing this situation.
The other new information is that Georgia has a faster-track special-election law, which could fill MTG's vacancy in March, but the actual dates for the primary and election will be set by Kemp, and he has mixed feelings about Trump.
A combination of early resignations and changes in party affiliation would also work, but the resignation route gives a new Democratic speaker more control.
That leaves the Senate. Thune's rebuke of Trump by passing the Epstein Files Transparency Act by unanimous consent shows he is willing to stand up to Trump. He wants a functioning Congress, and he will only get it with bipartisanship.
The bottom line is MTG's resignation opens up new possibilities for out-of-the-box thinking. Trump's power grabs are so wild and unpopular that Republicans are looking for a lifejacket to survive the coming blue wave. I hope Democratic leadership will be open to all the possibilities.
"Democratic leadership" -- will you excuse me, Georgia, from guffawing?
Go right ahead. I was gagging as I wrote it—I use Feedly as my news aggregator and there is little that appears from the sclerotic formal leadership. And it almost always seems to be in reaction. They think that getting up in front of cameras for legacy media and saying something once is enough when Trump gets asked in the gaggles and repeats and repeats and repeats so the topic stays alive. Totally maddening.
I think Raskin would make a great Speaker with Slotkin as Leader in the Senate. At least they know more about new media. I can dream.
I don't know much about Slotkin, but it has long been clear to me that Raskin knows more about almost everything. : )
https://jerryweiss.substack.com/
The unanimous consent on the Epstein files in the Senate was to keep Senators from having to register individual votes and give right-wingers deniability when confronted by voters.
Congressional representatives and senators may be spending much of the holidays back in their home districts, but they won't be listening to their constituents talk about saving the ACA.
I live in Indiana (a state so red it's maroon) and I'm more in touch with Hoosiers than any of the Republican politicians. That's not saying much, because the Republicans in office do not hold town halls, do not respond to emails or "snail mail," and do not answer phone calls.
Still, it may be a small factor if, as you say, Democrats can get ahead of special elections and flipping seats.
As soon as the House turns Dem, Dems can hold a vote enforcing Article 14, section 3.
If criminal, murderer, rapist, mobster, and protector of underage girl trafficking Donald does not get 2/3 vote even just in the House to approve of his Jan. 6 insurrection, he is automatically immediately disqualified from any public office in the U.S., including the glitzy gold oval office his vulgarity has desecrated.
The Constitution mandates this procedure -- with no interference from any corrupted "Supreme Court."
The right-wingers in Congress will claim innocence because they have avoided taking votes on anything but the big betrayal bill. The Senate avoided having Senators individually voting on the Epstein files.
Betsy and not sure you were aware but here’s something you should probably know And please tell all your friends here so they’re not surprised
Five times in recent history the president of the United States has taken office With control of both houses of Congress. AND ALL FIVE TIMES THAT PRESIDENT HAS LOST EITHER ONE OR BOTH HOUSES of congress. …AKA THE HOUSE AND THE SENATE….. so it would be absolutely no surprise that this pattern continues.
However There is a chance, however, remote the Trump might be the first president to hold both houses coming up on what happens this coming year. But the outlook is good with a 14% estimate by S&P for increase in profits and Trump gets his own federal chair with which you can pretty much bet on there’s gonna be a couple of pretty good rate cuts.
So hold onto your britches
When I see the Jorge, below is just as ignorant, not knowing history when you guys are supposed to be educated bunch here.
You would have thought we'd have learned. But here we are again anyhow. We must not let Trimp off the hook for his un-American and rash statements. Look at what he's angry about! Any one of those six House Reps has more virtue and patriotism in their big toe than Guilty Donnie has in his entire body. And what he said wasn't casual, and it cannot be handwaved away. It wasn't pique or an old man's dementia - it was a broadcast piece of stochastic terrorism,
Write or call your senators and representative to demand he be held to account.
But we haven’t learned at all and one of the major reasons is that the vast majority of of Americans are completely ignorant about the history of this country. Unless you are a student of American history, who else knows any of this unless you read Heather’s columns and also the other wonderful postings about history from the Indiana woman who has now been posting for about six months on Facebook (I’m having a brain freeze and can’t remember her name but she is terrific).
When was the last time any of you studied American history and civics? Maybe you’ve watched Ken Burns’ documentaries but the last time I “studied” American history was when I was a junior in high school in 1965 and in addition to - or maybe because of - having a real crackpot teacher who reveled in showing us slides of how many windows there were in the Capitol dome (!) I was bored to death. Yes, I do read books and have subsequently on my own learned more but I have still only scratched the surface as it were. A major reason I feel so indebted to Heather.
When the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution were read aloud one year over a holiday at a public radio station people called in to complain about communist propaganda being broadcast on the radio. That is a true story and I doubt it would be much different today.
We are a country with a huge deficit not only in critical thinking skills but in even knowing anything except the most crude outlines of our own history. Ergo - Donald Trump, JD Vance, ad nauseam and the entire GOP. There are people who believe that the U.S. was fighting WWII allied with Hitler against the communists and Russia.
Maybe in the face of DJT’s repeated self-inflicted wounds around the economy, Epstein, tariffs etc none of this will matter and we will continue to stumble along as a nation of ignoramuses led by our pocketbooks and our fears. Or maybe there is a sea change coming. Obviously I hope for the latter. And indeed I am something of a cynic about the ability to break out of this capitalism vs democracy cyclical struggle. Or maybe Mandami is actually going to be a light for the future.
I haven’t given up so far and I don’t have any intention of doing so now. But the older I get the less patience I have with putting any faith for actual change in the traditional two-party system of “liberal” Democrat sell-outs who when push comes to shove always dependably put their own interests above everything else. Hopefully after the midterms we will see an appreciable growth in the number of members of the Squad who will displace some of these old farts and begin the long process of at the minimum rebuilding the old pretense that we live in a liberal democracy while continuing to fight any genuine fundamental institutional change in the meantime.
True. These days, many school districts are required to teach only subjects on students receive testing, and some students never receive the education they need in American government and civics. Political activists on the right want to educate children in a triumphalist version of American history which omits our killing and capture of Native Americans, the harshness of enslavement, and the continuing evils of Jim Crow and the de facto discrimination which still exists today. No one is saying the United States is a totally evil and rotten place, but our students need a more nuanced history of our nation so they receive a fuller picture of our country.
Some states are requiring students to be indoctrinated with Prager U and are even teaching the false history developed by people like David Barton, who is a Christian Nationalist activist. Trump gives every sign of wanting to return us to the Gilded Age and even to undermine civil rights for anyone who isn’t a white Christian male. The shenanigans the Republicans are pulling with making it more difficult for certain citizens to vote, to be represented by candidates of their choice, and to have their votes counted are evidence of this. John Roberts originally started as a lawyer in the Reagan administration tasked with the job of making voting more difficult, and he has never respected the idea that all citizens should have the right to vote, and that money isn’t speech.
We have a lovely neighbor in our building in Brooklyn who is originally from Taiwan. Last week she took the Naturalization test to become an American citizen. She passed with flying colors. She showed the test to her native-born American friends who, though smart and educated, all failed miserably. The education system based on testing has failed us. We must bring real civics and history back to the classrooms.
Prager U material is endorsed by many Republicans. It is not a U as in University.
I know. It’s propaganda written by Dennis Prager. Since his viewpoint aligns with Republicans, they want to see it used in all schools to indoctrinate students.
I cannot get that through the thick skulls of my former work cohort who believe with all their stony hearts that it is a real university, and that the information being fed them is scholarly (and gospel) truth.
I have thought that many of our modern (i.e., 20th century onwards) problems in government are due to the "dumbing down" of America.
Our public school system was one of the best in the world. I went to a small (six classrooms, one for each grade) rural elementary, and we learned the basics of our country's governance. In high school we learned not only about the philosophies followed by Adams, Jefferson, et al., but also about the ensuing development of the Constitution. We learned about major SC decisions such as Dred Scott and Brown vs the Board of Education.
We had access to a solid grounding of both American and international history with learning how to read, analyze, and question subjects with critical thinking. I fear the public educations of the last two or three generations are falling short.
It is to the advantage of the GOP to keep the public uneducated. As Trump once said, "I love the uneducated" -- and it's because they will believe whatever slop he tells them. Tragic.
Too true. I'm sure that has a lot to do with the dismantling of the Department of Education...
The name of the historian to whom I referred is Lindsay Winslow Brown Https://substack.com/@risingfromthered
We are far from an educated electorate. Sadly, most of the MAGAts I know are educated, some overly so it seems.
Sorry but your take on why NPR stopped reading the DoI is inaccurate.
NPR did not stop reading it because some thought it was 'communist propaganda'.
NPR stopped reading it due to complaints from the left that it was racist and full of 'flaws'. Many left wing supporters were offended by a statement written over 240 years ago in a different context. It was left wing cancel culture. We did it to ourselves.
This is from NPR itself... https://www.thewrap.com/npr-morning-edition-steve-inskeep-july-4-reading/
I don’t think I said anything about why NPR stopped reading the DoI. What I said was that when they did read it they got a lot of complaints that they were reading commmunist propaganda and Steve Inskeep notwithstanding I also heard this information firsthand from NPR on the radio. I’m sorry to hear about your comment which I have never heard before.
And I regret that you - like too many others - lump “the Left” together as if it were one big unified monolith, something that could not be farther from reality. I don’t know who called the station to complain, but they certainly did not represent “The Left” - they represented themselves and whatever tiny little idiotic ultra-left corner of the enormously broad spectrum of people on the “the Left”, whatever that even means.
Does Netanyahu represent Jews? He says he does and is treated pretty much by the mainstream as if does though he absolutely does not. Does Whoopi Goldberg represent Black people, “her race”, her community? Is Barack Obama “a credit to his race”?.
Who is the Left these days? Bernie Sanders? AOC? The Squad? Mamdani? Heather and her followers among whom I bet if you asked 20 different people you’d get 20 different answers? The progressive trade unions? I completely reject your blanket statement about “the Left” cancelling itself “again”.
The “left” as ever defined by its enemies and self-designated leaders gets regularly cancelled by its opponents of every stripe - who have so much better organized into a cohesive movement in this country than the Left has ever been since the 1930’s.
If we actually did have a real Left in this country, and not a disparate unorganized chorus of voices ranging from Marxists of all stripes to socialists to social democrats to progressive liberals etc. we might actually be a force to be reckoned; we might actually have a real political party, a third party that has muscled into the system to challenge the corpses of the democratic system that pretend to govern now.
So, this set me off on an unexpected rant because I guess, given everything that’s going on, to read yet another comment blaming some amorphous “Left” for self-cancelling in an atmosphere just waiting for the opportunity to attribute its own actions to the Left really just pushed me over. And by the way, I think Steve Inskeep is a jerk, and no friend to anything progressive.
Did you even read the statement from NPR itself? Again, I work at an NPR station.
Of course there are different degrees of 'the left'; just as there are different degrees of 'the right'. Just as if I said 'that person leans left [or right], you know what that means. That said one can't deny that it accurately described why NPR stopped reading the DoI. There are the extremists 'progressives', the liberals, and slightly left of center Democrats.
Is there nuance sure? But that doesn't change the fact.
FYI, a flaw in your argument, being a member of a group is not the same as representing that group. Whoopi is certainly not a representative of all Black people, but to say she isn't Black would be silly. To say Black people reacted to the Floyd killing with mass protests isn't to say every Black person hit the streets.
There's nuance in MAGA, but we all know what it means when we speak of MAGA.
The left is defined by its enemies? That's absurd, I'm pretty sure most folks here know they are on the left without any enemy defining what that means.
The fact remains that NPR stopped reading the DoI due to complaints from the left. It's a fact. NPR caved to cancel culture. Read the statement from NPR.
Your point that people called to complain about the DoI as communist is simply an urban myth with no evidence to back that up. That you hadn't heard why NPR caved doesn't mean it didn't happen. And even so, that's not the point made here.
I get pushed over too; when my fellow group members on the left don't seem to understand they are their own worst enemy with their purity tests and cancel culture. My views are liberal in nature; I am frustrated with the so-called progressives who drag us down.
Think about this; there are many here that 'block' others when they disagree. That doesn't come from the right wingers here. It's cancel culture.
A 'real left'? Sorry many of us here on the left want nothing to do with Marxists or Socialists. They are as inane as MAGA.
The President of our United States of America threatened to KILL My Senator for speaking the truth. That stunned me to the bone. Lock Trump Up.
Cathedral in Pittsburgh displays the Democratic veterans who Trump called to be hanged.
“THIS IS WHAT COURAGE LOOKS LIKE.”
https://www.instagram.com/p/DRYItOEjYR0/
💙💙💙💙💙💙
That certaily nails where we are today, but I would ask all who were alive on this day in 1963 to think of where this nation would be at this time had JFK not been killed.
An interesting thought. I'm an admirer and well remember that day. He had high ideals and admirable goals. Would he have done civil rights legislation as Johnson did? And what about Vietnam?
Here's the thing about LBJ.
He had this wonderful plan for the Great Society, but then it all crashed on the shores of Southeast Asia. He spent all the funds on the war in Vietnam that should have gone to domestic policies and bettered the lives of countless Americans, rather than send 58,000 Americans and millions of Vietnamese to their deaths for no sound reasons.
This^
Like the majority of national leaders anywhere in the world, LBJ got trapped in following the advice of advisors from his predecessor.* It took him a long time to learn how wrong his policy was, the damage it did. He woke up and chose not to run again. It is all very sad because his domestic record is very good and his replacement went down that same entrenched rabbit hole. As PP&M sang, 'when will we ever learn".
* This is why I admire Zelenskyy - he stayed true to his north star, not what was the norm, and he stayed in his country...and fought. Damn the Felon.
His replacement was a fucking TRAITOR.
He had advisors who were elites, he should have known better than to follow them. Sadly, we all follow some strange paths in life. His was tragic
Well said!!
we can only speculate, but to this day I don't quite know why risked and lost so much, for so little in Vietnam. It tore America apart, cost many, many lives, and arguably swung US politics toward the right. For what?
I remember the blather about the domino effect, and the carnage on tv over dinner. Until Walter went to see for himself. Sadly, Nixon nixed LBJ’s peace initiatives and managed to make bad matters worse. That is the Republican go-to. Make bad matters worse.
Nonstop-crisis Shock Doctrine.
The profits of the Military Industrial Complex.
Venezuela, anyone? Same thing.
IMHO on steroids. Vietnam had few natural resources. When I was there, we had numerous appraisals. E.G. my unit moved, worked with laterite, an ore. Were constantly looking for oil. Never found any.
Venezuela has 4 x the oil as the US. Other significant resources are coal, iron ore, bauxite, gold, and nickel, and the country also has large hydropower potential
I had no interest in Vietnam when the war was going on. I had 3 children, a low budget so I had many projects: refinishing old furniture, sewing everything, cooking, going to Rutgers 2 courses a semester, besides fascination with the Bloomsbury artist/intellectuals .
You say your unit was looking for oil and working with laterite. What did the USA do with the laterite? Ship it back for..? I had never heard of it but Angkor used it for building blocks. Cut it up while fresh from the ground and it gets hard as iron. No wonder that site has held up so long.
I thought we saving them from Communism. In 2005, I spent a month solo traveling in Vietnam and they were, compared to other SE Asia countries: really getting it together. French colonization and contact with us made them strong. From what I see on youtube, Vietnam has made amazing progress. Besides all the industry: Traffic lights!
So, the goal in Venezuela is looting. Kill, destroy, ruin and steal. WTF is the matter with the USA??? Anyone ever considered trade?
Dick Cheney comes to mind. MIC on steroids.
We'll never know.
That is a fact, though we can learn a lot from what didn't work, as well as what did that may apply to our current choices and circumstances.
I remember that day so well. I was in 8th grade and the news of Kennedy's death came over the loudspeaker in the classroom. We were all immediately sent home. A very dark day.
I've often thought the same about RFK Sr - Bobby Kennedy might well have gone on to win the election in 1968.
Yes, most likely.
Or Lincoln, among others. But in the end we the living, and all who follow, have to make wise choices. No leader can do it all, and any who claim otherwise are perpetrating fraud. Or worse.
Of course, but the 22nd, yesterday, was the day of reflection on an event that changed history, like Johnson pardoning the Confederacy while Lincoln would not have and would have imposed accountability. The ones elected by the people to be the administrator have historical impact by the manner and thrust of their actions.
People outside the US are watching us go from a premier Constitutional Republic to a country in an upheaval not seen except in countries that descend into anarchy and dissolution. The blue states must have a soft succession.
If by "premier", you mean "best", I think people living in other democracies have understood for a while that the US's democracy is more flawed than quite a number of other democracies (acknowledging that no democracy is perfect).
For me, one of the things Heather's history lessons and daily reports do is emphasise that exceptionalism creates ignorance, arrogance and weakness, and that is an important lesson for this democracy fighting for its life and the currently stable democracies all over the world.
I find myself wondering if that is just one of the reasons Heather's letters and videos generate an international audience.
Yes of course , you are correct we have had moments of great innovation and success but underneath there has always been groups of stubborn, arrogant, uneducated and racist people that no one wanted to acknowledge or deal with. Getting an education was one of the things that should have help level the field but many people would not take advantage of it and the US has an overall rate of illiteracy of 21% but pockets that are much higher exist especially in the southern US. These problems will have to have greater importance after the Fascists in the government are gone or we will remain as divided as ever.
#HoldFast for the moment we can try to make us the country we really want!!!
Many of us couldn't get a Collage education, not wouldn't. In my case, life blow after life blow prevented my return to college, but that didn't mean I stopped reading and experiencing to learn. It is just that our system and society doesn't value my type of learning. Only the paper degree was recognized for any job or position I ever applied for, and I am sure that applies to thousands like me!
There are indeed many ways of learning. My grandmother was educated by French nuns, who taught her French and good manners. She and my grandfather lost all their money in the crash of 1929 - and that was the end of 'hired help' So she learned to cook by watching Julia Child and audited classes at the University of Michigan - she was one of the most educated people I knew, albeit by a different path than college.
Laurie (or, laurie), if you mom "audited classes at the University of Michigan," can you conclude that she followed "a different path than college"?
But as you say, Louise, people like us (you and me) still continued to read and learn. While I agree that we were held back, so to speak, for lack of formal degrees, we still can engage on an informed level. Michelangelo was in his 80s when he said "Ancora imparo" - "I am still learning."
I read more outside of collage than I did for college. I started when I had small children and ended up with a Literature major because I wanted primary sources, not text books. I didn't go to get employed but for "an education" not just the promiscuous reading I was doing. I never had to show my B.A. because I went into sales. If I had known better, I would have only taken courses from great teachers. I didn't need a degree.
So, back to promiscuous reading. If one has a curious mind, education never stops.
Interesting, Louise. I was able to go to college (on a 5 year plan, but mostly do to athletic eligibility and the fact that 5th year was paid for by athletic scholarship money). My degree was in Criminology, and while it took some time to get hired (Oregon's timber industry died, and with it lots of timber money to the state and local coffers) I was eventually hired by a county Sheriff's Department. The college degree was not required, but fast-tracked me to higher certifications.
The only educational requirements were for Sergeant (2 year degree) and for command staff (Lieutenant, Captain, Sheriff; the state certifying agency required a 4 year degree for executive certifications). We have a local community college (for the 2 year degrees) and two universities; the University of Oregon and Bushnell University (formerly Northwest Christian College) that offered 4 year degrees. To my knowledge, all of our "home grown" Command Staff got their degrees from NCC/Bushnell in "Public Policy Management".
I have always had a love of learning. At age 8 I started reading the World Book set of encyclopedia set my parents had after reading everything else in the house including a volumn of Shakespeare and the complete Collection of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. After attending a very fine College Prep School, I accidentally got pregnant. My husband turned out to be mentally ill, and my one one and only son was born with all three learning disabilities. Needless to say, I was buried at home trying to keep life for others together. In that I was successful, my son started a Tech small business and has been in business more than 20 years and now working on a second career as a recording engineer. I kept my husband in treatment for his bipolar disorder, and he was able to finish out an engineering career. After that was over, I was never able to get much more than a minimum wage job, and too poor and emotionally exhausted and devastated to get beyond tries at college coping with PTSD well into my 50s. After that, I decided not to take on the debt of achieving a college degree, figuring I never could pay it off. I just keep reading everything I can get my hands on plus now over 70 years of experience, going from a princess to a low income peasant and having walked in the shoes of everyone in between. My one regret is never having written a book about all of it.
It's never too late to start. Yours sounds like an intriguing journey, that YOU'LL get a lot out of just fhe framing, something to leave behind to your son, and even if you never publish it, as I said, it will do something for YOU. I'm swiftly approaching 90 (in just days, to be exact), and Substack in the last two years has been a huge awakening for me; it has obliged me to write new things and link parts of my life through the exercising of framing posts like this I never thought about doing, or would have even realized had I not been moved to add this last chapter to my life trying to support the continuing of the American democratic experiment. "Try it. I think Louise will like it!" Good luck with it! ;-)
Knowledge is power.
So far, I haven't found that to be true. Look at all the officials with power who know nothing.
For me: knowledge is knowledge.
I meant in the sense that you are a thinking individual and can make an informed opinion as opposed to letting others think for you. Had a conversation with anyone ignorant lately?
We have been disinvesting in primary and secondary education, and it shows. In some states, like my own state of Ohio, public school funding is used to fund private voucher systems, in violation of the Ohio Constitution. Our state is gerrymandered in the extreme to keep Republicans in power in the Statehouse. They listen only to their lobbyists and certainly not to their voters.
Presumed supremacy = Malignant Narcissism.
👆👆👆
That was indeed a turbulent time and America managed to emerge from the Civil War with a transcendent vision enshrined in the constitution. What then, comes after the inevitable demise of Trump and his inner sanctum in this time? In my view, we need to get money out of politics. We need to reform elections. The two major parties’ monopoly on the system needs to be ended. The two major parties need to be split into at least 4. Representation needs to be proportional. Lobbying needs to be made transparent by strict regulation. If we don’t start visualizing what comes next to prevent demagoguery and authoritarianism, we’ll be right back in the same hateful culture wars that led us to this awful place.
Public financing, transparency in who is paying for political advertising,and taking the profit motive out of lobbying would go long way in making our democracy more representative of the population.
🤞 Dems win both houses with 67%
From your lips to the ears of the voters!
A republic, if you can keep it.
Thank you once again for reminding us how it has never been easy building American democracy. Racism and oligarchy remain enemies of the people.
Thank you for putting the Reconstruction Era in your history lesson for tonight! I feel like we have been going through a new Civil War the last few years, just without quite the level of actual violence as the last.
I was so proud of my Senator Elissa Slotkin for her timely PSA advising those in service to protect themselves legally. From the Nuremberg Trials, we know that' just following orders' isn't a legal excuse in International Law! The fact that Trump's world is imploding before our eyes,. makes the Veteran Senators message so timely. By the way, she and her family faced a bomb threat last night, not to mention the thousands of death threats on line and by phone! Like Heather, I am sure she would appreciate a thank you message of thanks and support.
Yes, so proud of our Senator Slotkin. She looked and acted downright PRESIDENTIAL! I am so sorry to hear, but not surprised, that she and her family have been threatened. Will thank her for her courageous service.
Thank you for providing this history of a complex series of events at the time of the civil war. However, my response to this history is to wonder , how well these machinations and aggressions of politicians brought to power during this time reflects well the temperament of southerners struggling to survive a war and then to survive the aftermath of the war. When I read about reactions among my own ancestors, I find several who are more than willing to join the war and also to show great anger and resentment toward the conquerers. But I also find ancestors who were probably forcefully recruited into the civil war ( based on proximity of the recruiting station ) and who deserted to return to their families, to "never fight war again". I have a letter from a grandfather urging his son to leave the war, that it was time to turn away from war. The county where most of my paternal family lived, in south Alabama, had voted against secession. The county near my relatives in Mississippi, initially voted against secession. Alas, it was a 3 way vote, and a vote where voters had to stand and state their votes. The tie breaker vote went to secession, but had far fewer voters. Do you think it might be possible that the henchmen and head bashers of the great plantations along the Mississippi, with hundreds of slaves, went out to make sure the second vote went their way?
I am obviously no historian, but I see indications that the large majority of southerners who were not wealthy and had no armies of slaves, had no stomach for war in the first place and were loath to protect an economic slavery based system that did not serve them. We don't have opinion pollsters from these times. And the evidence of a general populace who were not served by war, and their actions and beliefs can at best be found by in the records of these families - - an overwhelming task, but one that I believe would cast a much different light on the political scenes of the civil war era.
Yes, there are violent Republicans today, but what are the true demographics? Can it really be judged by votes?? Listen to the republicans who are finally in large numbers realizing that they voted for their dreams, not the reality of a highly corrupt Donald Trump.
Listen to the Republicans whose dreams were twisted by Fox News into this nightmare.
Between right-wing news and social media today's American propaganda machine is something Nazi propagandists could only dream of.
Linda - many good points in your post! Note that an autocorrect feature must have changed the word secession into succession in your text.
Thanks for noticing the word change.
Every single thing that this current despot dt&Co does is unacceptable. A good cleaning out is needed. Then after that total reformation.
I should add that the conduct of this admin is so horrific, that perhaps it too will spur lasting and deep reform. I sure hope so.