The Biden administration's use of the Federal Trade Commission to break up monopolies— suing Amazon, for example, on September 26—resurrects the nation’s traditional antitrust vision. By trying to weaken the economic power of large entities in order to restore competition, innovation, and the rights of workers and consumers, Biden officials are echoing the principles articulated by politicians of all political stripes in the early twentieth century. Those principles were in full flood during the presidential election that took place on November 5, 1912.
“…forcing businesses…to stop funding political campaigns…”. The only difference between then and now is that the businesses fund them through Political Action Committees instead of bringing bags of cash. Maybe someday we will see at least congressional and presidential campaigns publicly funded with no PACS. Then the House of Representatives could focus on legislating instead of soliciting monies for their campaigns every 2 years.
Yes, that is an important difference but not the only one. Here’s another: In those days, the electorate consisted entirely of white men (as a matter of law with respect to women and as a matter of practice with regard to citizens not regarded as white). So, it was relatively straightforward (not easy, but possible, at least, compared to now), to muster progressive forces. Since 1968, Republicans have marshaled the votes of the majority of white voters, especially white voters with no formal education beyond high school, by promising to do everything possible to preserve the systemic advantages held by white Americans over other Americans. That takes away from the progressive ranks the bulk of a natural contingent of people, namely the white working class, who would normally oppose the concentration of power in corporations and excessively wealthy people. Progressives do have a slim majority and can put Democrats in charge of the presidency and both chambers of the legislature, but to do so they will need to get nearly every Democratic-leaning voter to the polls. That is the key. If we do that, democracy is saved, for now at least. If we don’t, democracy (and a livable planet, to boot) are lost.
Absolutely! Way too much time is spent by Congress in the solicitation of campaign dollars to the expense of their jobs. Limit each congressional candidate to the same amount of campaign money, no dark money, and level the playing field.
Aren't there countries where campaigning is limited to a specific time period so that the 'representatives' are actually doing the work needed by their constituencies (theoretically a mix of perspectives from the constituencies requiring some astuteness of judgment)?
However, there is a fuzzy line between what a politician is doing to campaign for reelection and what a politician is doing to serve their constituency. And with todays "news coverage" being all about sound bites...
But a limited time period would certainly make life in "swing states" more enjoyable.
Their Speaker doesn’t even have a bank account. Mike Johnson has never faced a political opponent, so no opposition research. Imo he would never have been elected if his district weren’t so reliably red, and again in my opinion, so thoroughly indoctrinated in fundamentalist stupidity.
Behind it all though, his and his cult's perversion of religion to sanctify and justify their behavior is the very thing that exposes their fraud. In their world view where (their) religion merges with politics into "Christics" and ALL of it is based on the Big Lie,.... well, the one truth he said to "go pick up a Bible off the shelf and read it" for his worldview really does say it all.
Actually, money solves a lot of problems. It’s the love of money that is the root of all evil. I mean, look at 45. He loves money. And he’s definitely up to no good.
Is 45 a problem, without money he would not be a problem. Money can solve problems that is called not problem but problem solving. When money is allocated to solve a problem and the funds are not applied corrected usually due to some greedy SOB. Think of all the things that government tries to do, but there is too often someones who has paid off a bureaucrat to get a contract to screw the gov. Corruption is almost always a matter of money.
I wish the Democrats would use at least some of the money to counter the unbalanced reporting being done, the misleading polls being reported. Take out a full page ad detailing how the economy has improved and how it's on course to continue improving. Describe the world situation in ways that show how they can be managed correctly vs. the reporting of doom and gloom and the sensationalism of bloodshed and cruelty. Talk about what Democrats will do for the country, not about how much we should fear and cower before the Republicans. Stop asking for dollars and tell us how you have and would create legislation. Instead of telling us to panic, tell us how to counter the Republicans and corporations and oligarchs ourselves. We don't have to pay $100/barrel of oil -- we know how to withhold our money from those who harm us or our allies. Stop representing yourselves, and represent us.
And, they often force employees to contribute to the PACs. They send out memos implying that employees who don't contribute are disloyal and may not get promotions or raises, if they're not team players.
Mary, thanks for sharing this article. We must really wake up as citizens. Those who seek power are "playing us like a fiddle" using every opportunity for their advantage.
In all the activity that can consume our lives, others can easily take advantage. We need to slow down, think and thoughtfully ACT, if we are going to protect our freedoms !!!!
If only. I've been receiving requests for contributions since last year, two years before the 2024 election. On average, I'm receiving two and three requests per day from some candidates, whose names I'm sick of reading although I still want them to win their races. I understand why they're doing it, but I delete all their emails -- and now text messages -- without reading them.
Agreed, but I did learn from the spate of messages that Jon Tester is the only real farmer in the senate. Given climate change and the administration farm bill (I come from a farming community and large vegetable gardens!), I send what small checks I can to support him as we need a knowledgeable person to push that bill. If there is fair distribution of food as the climate deteriorates, we should have rationing and price controls as in WWII. For that we will continue to need a spokesman for sane farm bills to fight Big Ag which has been trying to kill US for years (think corn syrup and diabetes).
I donated to Eliz. Warren when she was a candidate for Pres. Since then, it never stops...but, more like 1 a week. I will not donate to candidates any more. I feel bad about that but it's for my own protection. If i could do it anonymously, I would. I pay for a LOT of journalism instead. Democracy Now, Politico, Guardian, etc. and all the "liberal" News sources, even the Christian Science Monitor.
It’s a shame that we have to fear showing our political leanings unless we support TFG. Please list the “liberal” news sources in order of your reliance with #1 being the one on which you rely the most.
Woodrow Wilson was no progressive. A Southern born-and-bred believer in the "Lost Cause," he was known to his associates as "a narrow-minded Southern bigot." Once in the White House, he re-segregated the Federal civil service and used the power of the Federal government to take Jim Crow nation-wide. He held a screening of D.W. Griffith's Confederate revanchist fantasy "Birth of a Nation" in the White House and publicly recommended it. So far as his "liberal" bonafides are concerned internationally, his Fourteen Points applied so far as he was concerned strictly to the new European nations formed out of the German, Astro-Hungarian and Russian empires. Wilson had no problem handing over the remains of the Ottoman empire to Britain and France in accordance with the terms of the secret Sikes-Picot Treaty of 1916, which led directly to the modern Middle East and its problems that still twist things today. Wilson's "League of Nations" was more properly the League of White European Nations, to "take up the white man's burden" and "civilize" the rest of the (non-white) world.
When the Vietnamese patriot Nguyen Ai Quoc tried to petition him to support independence from France for Indochina - Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos - on the grounds of the Fourteen Points, Wilson had him sent away by his chief of staff, Colonel House. Nguyen Ai Quoc then heard the Bolsheviks announce an anti-colonialist policy and support of colonial independence movements, and 50 years later he had the last laugh when, as Ho Chi Minh, he defeated the United States.
Woodrow Wilson was a Confederate white supremacist pig, and 100 years of brain-dead Democrats trying to put lipstick on this pig as a "progressive" makes as much historical sense as writing that Eisenhower nominated Earl Wilson to be Chief Justice on the Supreme Court in order to promote civil rights when all the historical record stands in support of the fact Eisenhower said for the record on numerous occasions that nominating Warren to the court was his "biggest mistake" of his presidency. Because of Brown v Board.
It's time to stop this "oh look, there's another progressive person in our history" when it is so obviously and easily proven that such is not the case.
In making his infamous Declaration, the British Foreign Minister Arthur Balfour declared with typical pomp, circumstance and stiff upper lip, that the United Kingdom would provide land the UK had no inherent claim to (Palestine) as a home for "the Jewish people". Not only did this imperial declaration in the wake of the defeat of the Ottoman empire with the help of the native Arabs including Palestinians, serve as a manner by which the notoriously anti-Semitic British ruling class could salve the growing Zionist movement, it also betrayed the very peoples who joined the British in uprising against the Turks. T.E. Lawrence himself was outraged by the betrayal of his Arab allies.
The uprooting of the native Palestinians so as to pave the way for a mass of Ashkenazi emigres from Europe and refugees from the horrors of the Holocaust ultimately ensued. We would call it ethnic cleansing today. The Palestinians called it the "Nakba", or catastrophe.
In the gorgeously gilded and gleaming halls of Versailles, wherein the victorious British, French and Americans hammered out their imperial edict for the future of peoples they knew so little of, the Palestinian people specifically, and the Arab peoples generally were forgotten.
To this day, the failure of the Treaty of Versailles can be seen primarily in the reflected faces of the Palestinian and Kurdish peoples, neither of whom have a nation of their own, neither of whom have seen relief from the constant predations of the powerful States wherein they reside, and neither of whom have received much more than lip service all these many years later.
Speaking of Versailles, somewhere in the bowels of the famous cafes of Paris in the 20s, wholly unknown to Papa Hemingway as he drank Pernod on the patio and oggled lovely Parisian flappers passing by, the aforementioned Ho Chi Minh toiled as a kitchen worker, biding his time, forging his future, a future that ultimately led to the French defeat by forces aligned with him, at Dien Bien Phu. It was that defeat that led another imperial power to make yet another fateful and hubristic decision to take up the "white man's burden" and prevent the dominoes from falling. We all know how that ended.
A GREAT add to Dr. Richardson's and TC's writings today. I must admit: I was not aware of the long ranging specific origin of the Palestinian displacement as British specifically and did not know the history you wrote.
I found this link which gives more detail about the Balfour Declaration. Daniel, it was TRULY unbelievable what the British did to the Palestinians after WW I.
Apparently, the anti-Semitic Brits found a "solution" to their own "Jewish" problem by exporting them to Palestine after WW I. I should have guessed the origin of such a gigantic mess would be Brits.
Now, understanding better how the mess was created and having worked with some Brits in my career as an engineer (THE most incompetent engineers I ever came across), I see that the Brits set up a mess (again).
Amazing how one country could make such a mess of the globe. It's almost like the water has something that make people retarded in Britain.
Many thanks for post. I really should have guessed that such a gigantic mess could ONLY have been made by the Brits. A nation whose mess made worldwide was simply gigantic.
Yeah, like something in the water made them so mean and murderous to the Native American People too! What is it in men that drives them to bully and take away other people's property and even spiritual beliefs to the point of vicious murder? It's like a disease! Like they never learned to share in kindergarten? I'm flabbergasted that it's still happening in Ukraine and other parts of the world that make the headlines.
What if you never had kindergarten? Watching what has happened to public education in America during my long lifetime I have come to see that what we have lost from kindergarten through four years of college is history, civics, language(s), and etiquette. (The last is required for schools to flourish and to give a basis for peaceful protests.)
"...THE most incompetent engineers I ever came across..."
Off-topic I know, but I just had to laugh when I saw your comment. It reminded me of the silliness over the Stiffkey Bridge and the fight between National Trust engineers and the fairies that I read about in the NYT--
My husband was born in Devon, but has been in the US since 1990s, and there's a reason for that! He'd probably agree about the engineers ... but if you go back far enough, I suppose you could argue for those guys who built the stone circles .... ;-) (Sorry, it's early and I'm being silly.)
The discussion of Wilson’s illusory grasp of reality and the sad results of his efforts that led to America’s great disgrace in Vietnam might have some basis in his racist attitudes.
It would have been abnormal for an white aristocrats of the 19th Century to include people of color like Ho Chi Minh or of any of the brown people of the mid-east in their deliberations.
It seems many of the problems of the 20th Century the threads of which weaken todays fabric of life stem from the certitude of white supremacy in its illusory wisdom. I think Wilson and probably Trump, to his cult are a result of this warped vision.
Given all the sins of commission, can we have a few virtues? It behooves those of us who live to remember that these guys were only human. But I do enjoy learning that Ho Chi Minh washed dishes in Paris. Any woman can identify with plotting while washing dishes, which activity promotes creative thinking!
But she was only counting heads, not planning like the Founding Fathers. I am still laughing at the comparison, however, even as all plots are not equal.
You might want to elaborate on the role played by Theodore Herzl the titular head of the Zionist movement and how he ensnared Prime Minister Lloyd George into supporting the movement. The PM believed that the return of the Jewish people to the Promised Land would lead to the Second Coming.
But most of the Zionists were secular and would have had no interest if Jesus ever came or would come again. I doubt if Lloyd George was that unsophisticated that he fell for that. There were other forces at play.
It might also be worthy taking a look into the reasons behind the British Empire’s creation of Pakistan. Creating Pakistan displaced thousands of people from homes and in areas where their families had lived in for generations.
British, American, French, in general western Imperialism, is one of the primary reasons peoples from other countries have such negative views and feelings about western civilization. Their feelings are not unjustified.
An excellent expose of Wilson. I have been on a thread all day trying to explain how some of the problems we see today in various places, but specifically the middle east have some of their roots in the the interwar years when the British were running the Palestinian Mandate. Think of all the lives lost or ruined by the results of this not seeing the nonwhite world as worthy. I have never regarded Wilson as a progressive.
Just about everything bad today comes out of World War I. None of the issues the war was allegedly fought over was decided by the war, which led directly to World War II, and then for 45 years after that all the issues and ethnic antagonisms were put in the deep freeze by the Cold War, and when they thawed out in the 1990s there was no one left alive who had ever dealt with them even haltingly. And that's just Europe. All of the issues of the Post World War II anti-colonial struggle were the result of decisions made during World War I and at Versailles.
Please come visit That's Another Fine Mess, Michele; you'll find you don't have to argue those arguments too strongly there. :-)
Example: still ongoing trouble with Hungary, stripped of both territory and population by the Trianon Treaty.
Even the very conservative French military commander said of Versailles that it was not a treaty but a twenty-year truce... and that it had multiplied problems in central and eastern Europe.
He died just before his twenty year forecast was borne out.
Just finished a book about the history of Middle Europe. I read it partly to try to understand that region because I have lots of ancestors from various German states. It was quite enlightening not only about the post Versailles, but before that as well.
I always made sure my 8th graders understood that WW II was actually just the "unfinished business" or the "chickens come home to roost" (choose your metaphor) of WW I. And . . . Ho Chi Minh tried again in 1946 with this telegram to Truman: https://www.docsteach.org/documents/document/ho-chi-minh-to-truman.
What if Truman's "The Buck Stops Here" philosophy extended to NOT supporting the French re-acquisition of Indochina after WW II? But the bogus "domino theory" was too powerful for him to resist, politically. Think of the lives that would have been saved and the time-frame achieved for a reliable trading partnership with Vietnam, which we basically now have after all the wasted, intervening years of needless death and destruction from the '50s to the '70s. Hindsight IS 20/20, but the wisdom of the course Truman missed was plenty available to him.
Thank you, Peter. Wish I'd had you for a history teacher, although my 8th grade history teacher (a former Marine) did a fabulous job in introducing things "outside" the normal realm. We spent a 4 week section choosing and researching one of a dozen "suggested" Indigenous tribes. "Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee" was published when I was in 7th grade, and because of Mr. Demmer, I read it prior to the summer I started 8th grade (1971). To this day, I remember writing a line in it that went along the lines of "there was no room for a "Joe Namath" in Kiowa society" to which Mr. Demmer commented "very astute comment".
My high school history curriculum was set in the standard "teach to the test" for AP and SAT knowledge demands, although we spent a month on presidential history in the fall of 1974...
Ally House, thank you for writing of “teaching to the test.” As I’ve always had a horror of that remembering freedom of teachers and students to cover material differently (all classes are as different as the people in them) and maybe never finish the textbook, I appreciate knowing that you had that experience.
Viet Nam always had an adversarial relation ship with China and could have been a a huge wedge, almost ally, for us vis-a-vis Mao. But our racism (at least partly) put them all in one happy package, tied up neatly with a Marxist bow, blinding us to wiser policy ideas and prospects. I remember reading that Ho Chi Minh's favorite piece of writing of his original inspiration to lead a long-term independence movement was our own Declaration of Independence. As someone else said at the time of our involvement there, we were "fighting ourselves in a mirror," as for Viet Nam, we were the "British" and they were the patriotic independence fighters. Sure the Vietnamese were brutal to captives and the like, but our own Revolution was actually a civil war with all kinds of like-atrocities that aren't in the history books. This is not to excuse them or to make a perfect equivalence, but it is a worthy "thought experiment" for seeing things more from Ho Chi Minh's and his cohorts point-of-view.
TCinLA, thanks for your brilliant comments and shared knowledge of past leaders and our world wide struggles.
Surely some of our struggles could be solved if we just respected one another .
After the Jewish people suffered so much because of their heritage and faith....why can they not honor a place for the Palestinians??
This is a simple basic question.
There is no need for this destruction and bloodshed. It only creates more pain...more horror...it is a waste of life and resources....it is completely needless.
Putin is enjoying all of it....all the money wasted....all the resources being used up and the destruction of property, families, children....all with no solution. As a matter of fact ...all of this horror is building up more hatred and anger...it separates allies.
We are destroying ourselves as Putin plays his games with us. He so much wants the US to fight him ....he is playing us like a fiddle...he wants our citizens to give up on Ukraine and their desire to be free ....at least what is left of Ukraine and her freedom-loving citizens who are shedding their blood for the ideals we say we believe in...and what will be left for the Palestinian people. Another world war would be Putin's delight.
Diplomacy needs to continue.....the horror of destruction and bloodshed needs to stop!
You ask why the Jews can't honor a place for the Palestinians. They can and have bargained for peace and a two state solution over the past 75 years, in lieu of the current Israeli administration.
I have wondered where this all began , piecing it together is far from neatly formatted in my mind yet, but this begins to see a light . A maze of tumultuous errors per se but chicken /egg theory not sufficient to me yet.
Do the people over there understand it any better ...I wonder.
Anymore than our own boiling brew here? Are not the ploys all intermixed , lies, promises, meddling, money ...they’re all the same just the names/territory/races changed seems to me. That’s oversimplification perhaps...
being a simple person is not easy😉..but right the wrongs done decades ago.NOT.GOING.TO.HAPPEN....*there OR here.
So.......best solutions are important , complicated, and need all heads at the table...with autocrats dang close to 50% in control?
Have you read Caste The Origins of Our Discontents by Isabel Wilkerson? Defines a beginning in this new country of something that has gone on since the possibility of different skin colors became an actual reality. As it turns out, our biggest test of everything we know as human.
I read Legacy of Violence about the Brits and their Empire. I kept thinking we would not have a lot of the problems we see today if not for their behavior, not only in the interwar years....very eye opening about Palestine, but before that in different areas as well. One of my favorites about the middle east is Lawrence in Arabia which gives info about all the various players in that area at that time. I will have to visit your site. The person I am arguing with has been posting memes that say that the Palestinians have no right to the land at all and go way back to ancient times as proof. She has finally admitted that she should not have posted the meme that she did, but that's all. And she can't seem to understand that Jerusalem is sacred to all three religions. This particular meme said that there was no mention of Jerusalem in the Koran. I say so what.
Michele, I second TC's invite to TAFM. There is good conversation, and there are lots of cats. Plus, I can utilize my 2nd and 3rd languages there.... profanity and sarcasm.
TC, Absolutely GREAT add to Dr. Richardson's letter today.
"When the Vietnamese patriot Nguyen Ai Quoc tried to petition him (Wilson) to support independence from France for Indochina - Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos - on the grounds of the Fourteen Points, Wilson had him sent away by his chief of staff, Colonel House. Nguyen Ai Quoc then heard the Bolsheviks announce an anti-colonialist policy and support of colonial independence movements, and 50 years later he had the last laugh when, as Ho Chi Minh, he defeated the United States."
I was aware of Ho Chi Minh's successful effort to throw of French and American Colonialism but not the background about him approaching Wilson. The US had a chance to be partners with Ho Chi Minh instead of "fighting communism" in Viet Nam. I never knew.
Ho Chi Minh did everything he could to avoid bloodshed, but, then he beat America at its own game. War.
He did everything he could, including the Vietnamese Declaration of Independence is the American declaration, with "Vietnam" substituted where appropriate. And today we have the relationship with Vietnam we could have had in 1946 - with an additional 58,000 Americans and their offspring here participating and doing things we can't even guess as they contribute to the country. Then there's the several million Southeast Asians and their offspring and what they might have contributed to life.
Some aspects may have benefitted war business but the most prepared and capable technocrat in history MacNamara seized the Kennedy’s with his “whiz kid,” computer.reality and he himself was pulled into the vortex of absent goals replaced with progress reports then body counts.
Intelligent people were succumbed by dazzling technology to abandon morality.
I remember an article in the New York Review of Books (1963) in which he was called “the George Washington of Vietnam.” In that context, unforgettable.
A spade can never be a diamond, no matter how often one repeats it. Hmm... peculiar is it not, how familiar we are with such a concept; the repetitive practice / process to create alternative facts from vapor.
After first allowing them to be arrested and subjected to forced feeding with tubes jammed down their throats when they attempted a hunger strike. The bad publicity changed his mind.
Woodrow Wilson was a terrible person in so many ways. There's a moving exhibit at the old Lorton VA prison that brings reality to those force feedings and the struggle, the jailings, the white women chaining themselves to the WH fence. (Black women were excluded from the suffrage movement - shocking, I'm sure. s/) The Lorton grounds are partially preserved and it's now home to a wonderful Arts Center. Just south of DC.
And, if you tour the Woodrow Wilson house here in DC, you learn that after Wilson's stroke, which kept him at home, that Edith may have been a stealth president in the era in which women had no vote and little power. During the tour, this is presented as a bad thing, but, secretly, I was kind of rooting for her. And she was likely the one that supported women's suffrage.
You may want to explore the Edith Bolling Wilson museum in Wytheville, Va. Right across the street is the Bolling Wilson Hotel. Another museum in Wytheville is dedicated to Dr. Haller who came to Wytheville to fight the outbreak of polio. The Haller family included several gifted and dedicated docs.
Not to change the subject, but I would like to know why brain-dead Republicans putting lipstick on white supremacist pig trump as a MAGA-Again is, for the life of me, working in swing states at the moment....
I agree, Michele. They still play it as a horse race, to our peril. It's sickening how much play DeSantis and Haley have gotten, thanks to those "debates." Only Mike Pence couldn't raise the money he needed, because as much as he back-pedaled, he did stand up to Trump on Jan. 6.
We still watch local news and most days national news on NBC. There are days where we know what will be in the news and we skip it. We don't watch R debates. We like to keep our blood pressure where it should be. It's not even 2024 and we have all this nonsense being printed. I want to see the result of trials and I am sure the one we are seeing now is not going to be good for death star or his family.
Thanks for this snippet, TC. I have been gently inserting the detritus from WWI in the Middle East as the groundwork for the problems we are seeing today. I am met (most often) with the "that area has been a mess for centuries" to which I reply, "only when white Christians got in and tried to establish their was as the 'one true way'. "
Ally, one of the problems is that this area is home to three great monotheistic religions and for example, when Christianity came along, they expected Jews to convert. They didn't. Then Islam came along and they expected Jews and Christians to covert and they didn't. My own opinion is that a lot of politics is what is really going on and the religion is just a smoke screen for achieving raw political power. The older I get, the more cynical I become. I am hoping that the person that I am on the thread with decides that she has had enough because hubby and I do know more about the history of that area than she does. She wants to pretend that Islam has nothing to say about the area despite the fact the Islamic states have ruled it for a very long time....up until the creation of Israel in 1948. She also has some weird ideas about what religion has done for women, particularly Christianity.
Wow, this is a real kick in the teeth! I knew that Wilson was privileged racist but didn't know the Vietnam aspect. And, lest we forget, Earl Warren. Ugh. Thank you for such a powerful and much-needed, at least from my POV, clarification!!
The inequality that exists today is approaching that of the Gilded Age. It is a significant reason for the anger that continues to fuel the Trump insanity.
Am I thinking the large Titanic staterooms where people brought their art work with them? The mansions in Newport RI? From the pictures I have seen of Mar a Lago, I think gilded still applies.
In terms of Tsar-a-Loco, I would say gilded in the sense of ostentatious junk covered with gold and in very bad taste, a veneer. When we were visiting the Balkans, we were in a town which had a lot of rich Russians there. The shops were filled with very expensive gauche crap.
I am reading HCR'S first book, "How the South won the Civil War", and history replays the same message over and over, using the same tactics in different ways, to reduce the power of the ordinary working person and to take power from the poor, the unfortunate, the differently oriented, the non white, the women, and consolidate it in the hands of the rich. Oligarchy has been beaten back many times, and we have to do it again. Her book must be on the list of those that DeSantis would forbid to be read in schools, and I'm certainly learning more now than I ever did in high school. Go, HCR! Hit them hard, loyal followers!
Frank Mitchell, whether it was her first book or not, I very much agree with your comment. That book and “Democracy Awakening” can give readers invaluable help with understanding what’s happening in our world right now, in real time. Gaining that understanding is difficult! I’m grateful to Prof. Richardson for her insights.
Hey, Frank. I think "How the South won the Civil War" was not her first book, but the last book she wrote before "Democracy Awakening." I forget which one was her first book. Maybe others know.
Morning, MaryPat! Lots of books, for sure. Thanks for providing them! I was only responding to the suggestion that "How the South Won the Civil War" was her first book.
The link you provided seems to show them in order of publication...well done!
I proobably should have said it's the first book of hers I have decided to read. .:) Won't be the last, for sure. All her others required weeks of waiting at the library, this one, nobody was in front of me.
Ukraine news has slipped from front page to a section in World News. The only other time I have heard about the topic is how the extreme radical republicans do not want to continue aid. These people must not have any historical foundation especially when their dear leader thinks the Revolution began in Concord, New Hampshire. I think republicans ( not all) have no foresight. They do things that satisfy their need for the moment such as repealing environmental laws and making money.
That was Putin's plan when he encouraged Iran to encourage Hamas and now Hezbollah. We are being played by a former KGB chess master. People like Mike Johnson are the down field puppets. The people that support him are clueless robots.
The nation I have big questions about is Qatar who has kept Gaza alive financially - and paid for the rockets Hamas fires at Israel. And yet, we have military facilities in Qatar...8,000 in uniform.
I remarked after services yesterday that prayers for the people and elsewhere in the service, for the dead and injured, neglected Ukraine and Ukrainians entirely, superceded by the Israel and Palestine focus. Not good.
Yesterday, a guest speaker filled the pulpit in my UU church. He had just returned from Ukraine, where he reported on humanitarian aid there, and he reminded us of how many Ukrainians have returned to the country and are doing lots of work among the displaced population. Specifically, he mentioned addressing trauma among children, and he pointed out that Ukrainians are committed to their continuation of democracy. I found it heartening.
That is a such a worthy story and warrants our attention, but the MSM is like crickets and for a month Ukraine has been pushed off the burner altogether . . . . Scrolling through the online "front pages" of the NYTimes, Washington Post, the Atlantic, The New Yorker, I have seen nothing for weeks about Ukraine but lots about trump and Israel . . . and of course how badly Biden is doing in the polls! It is a disgrace. The 3rd lead article today in the online version of the WaPo was "Millennials aren’t having kids. Here are the reasons".
I'll just stop there as I need to finish making a baby present and organize my sewing bins!!
Infuritating. I keep hearing hand-wringing over the low birth rate, too, and yet we are trying to keep immigrants out, and if you dare have a baby without a decent income, there is little future for the poor kid. Because, of course, recourse to abortion is going to be off the table at the very same time they want to reduce health services and nutrition. Adoption by the rich just isn't going to solve this problem. I've been watching Daughter of a Lost Bird about the adoption of a Native girl by an affluent Canadian family, and it's labeled as a documentary. Should be required viewing.
The New York Times is reporting on Ukraine. Zelensky is making certain of that. The MidEast war is charming for Putin (my first thought was Iran drones raining on Ukraine connects to Israel very easily).
Hmm . . . I wonder what Teddy Roosevelt and some of the Progressives of that era would make of present-day Citizens United? Oh to have enough people in government this day and time who had the gumption and fortitude to fight against the special interests and rampant greed in our government. A handful of people 110 years ago recognized it and worked to do something about it. Would that we had that today!! This history lesson from HCR is one of those sagas in our country's history that I find uplifting, and which makes me realize all the more what we are lacking today. Will we ever find it again??
Inequality.org is part of Institute for Policy Studies. Putting excellent economic and environmental projects aside, these organizations include ultra-left anti-Israel terrorist apologists led by Phyllis Bennis. Such policies decry Western hegemony as anti-democratic in the face of today's World War 3-inciting fasccist actions by Russia and by theocratic terrorist nations in the Middle East and elsewhere. This myopic near-blindness refers to Israelis as oppressors, forgetting the long history of the ermergence of Israel in 1948 as a response to overwhelming, centuries-long anti-Semitic oppression and mass murder, and forgetting the long history of terrorist resistance to the state of Israel on a global basis since 1948. No organization is perfect. No side, Left or Right, is perfect. But I for one will not blind myself to the fact that the world will always be plagued by very bad actors who swear death to democratic principles in the name of grotesque wealth and power or in the name of some imaginary, all-ruling god. The threat to democracy by fascists on one side, and by naive ultra-leftists on the other is a recipe for future disaster. The university students and professors who gloat over the success of the Hamas terror campaign against Israel on October 7 disgust me beyond words. Why haven't they been out in the streets since 2016 screaming about the Trump Administration and its criminal fascist traitors who still run the Congress? The United States wielded tragically misguided power in Vietnam and in Iraq. It must not fail to protect democracy in eastern Europe and the Middle East now. Doing away with Western hegemony will not magically turn bad actors into good ones. Bet your life on it.
“But I for one will not blind myself to the fact that the world will always be plagued by very bad actors who swear death to democratic principles in the name of grotesque wealth and power or in the name of some imaginary, all-ruling god.”
You are blind if you don’t think Israel qualifies as a state which spits on democratic principles in the name of power.
And you are blind to believe in false equivalencies or that ANY Arab or Muslim nation is dedicated to democratic principles and peaceful coexistence with Israel. Netanyahu may be a blight on Israeli politics, but so were Nixon, Reagan, Bush 1, Bush 2, and - heaven help us - Trump (1) on our politics. The US has produced world-class war criminals who get away without a war crimes tribunal or even an impeachment conviction. It has also helped the civilized world rid itself of fascists on a massive scale. As I said, the world will always be threatened by bad actors. To aid and abet fascism and terrorism is the wrong way to go. Like it or not, Israel is the only democracy in the Middle East. Imperfect, just like us. Powerful and productive, just like us. Threatened, just like us. Open your eyes.
1) Name the false equivalency I believe in. Be careful.
2) If you believe either the United States or Israel is dedicated to democratic principles at present, you’re as clueless as George Bush rambling about the Axis of Evil.
3) It is readily apparent that you are a tribal sycophant for the Democratic Party, unless of course, you merely forgot to include Obama or Biden on your war criminal list.
4) As a veteran, I hope you weren’t suggesting my critique of American Empire and Israeli Fascism was aiding or abetting either fascism or terrorism. If so, see my reference to Bush up in 2) above.
5) Thanks for closing with an absurd laugh line. Nothing like an apologist defining the oppressor as the ‘threatened’ entity to give me a loller moment.
One final piece of advice; start digging into alternative, independent media and stop reading propagandists like Malcolm Nance. You’ll be better for it, and won’t come across as an empire simp. My eyes are wide open. You are looking through a camera lens with a propaganda filter, and it tints everything you see. Examples abound:
1. Israel is as bad as Hamas is good, or they are equally bad. Both false.
2. If you had read my comments carefully, you would not conclude that I think the US upholds democracy at all times and in all cases.
3. I left out the Democratic war criminal Lyndon Johnson, but my point was made correctly.
4. As a veteran, you surely must know the difference between Israeli democracy and Jihadist anti-Semitic terror.
5. At no time did I excuse Israel or the US for their foreign policy blunders.
Malcolm Nance is proof positive that terrorists and fascists must be resisted, just like Nazis, whether in Third Reich Germany, Russia, or in the Trump Administration. If you think that there is any viable opposition to the Republican Party other than the Democratic Party (with all its faults), then you are deluded. That's why Putin loves the Republican Party so much; he can control our oligarchs just as easily as he can control his own oligarchs and destroy democracy in the process. No point in belaboring this discussion. We both made our positions clear for all to see.
I have learned so much history that I never knew, despite being a student of history at college. Thank you for your concise descriptions of our US history that preceded and parallels the history being made now.
Sadly, the Citizens United SCOTUS decision and other gutting of campaign finance regulations and superPAC guidelines have kept today’s GOP in the ball game, despite being on the wrong side of most issues.
They are not conservative, they are #CORPservative, in servitude to their billionaire and corporate donors.
Conservative without the political baggage means "cautious"' such as a "conservative estimate". There is an implication of humility in it as you tend to hedge your bet. Certainly that is true of a "conservative" investment. It seems to me that a "conservative" would agree with the Oracle at Delphi to avoid excess.
But it's today's "Republican's" that assault balance, promoting monopolies of money and power, attacking checks and balances in government and bipartisanship, sweeping away regulation of business on principle rather than performance, making fantastic claims that lack any basis for verification. It seems to me that beneficially reconciling both conservation and innovation of what proves to be useful is a pillar of wisdom. Plutocracy wants nothing of the sort; the compulsive "love of money" and power overwhelming every other consideration.
The way I like to frame it is that Republicans lie, cheat, and misrepresent because integrity is too restricting. Essentially, they need their basket to be 2 inches wider than the one they have to defend.
Exactly. I recently heard Sheralyn Ifill make the same point in a slightly different way. Paraphrasing, she said something like, “Republicans give their base permission to stop trying to be decent.”
That reflects what I hear from my former work cadre. "We don't have to be politically correct any more. We can say how things really are." I admit, they sometimes squirm when I ask what "politically incorrect" term do they use to refer to me.
Yes. Not being PC or “woke” is easy and, thanks to Donald Trump, popular right now. But, imagining “that’s how things really are” is, I think, definitely not true. Thanks for your good post!
Decent in ways that Joe McCarthy was shown to be devoid of. Modern
"Republicans" have picked up much of his playbook. Entropy, the tendency of energy to dissipate, likely propels time, and it appears that it ultimately will devour the Universe; yet energy eddies and knocks on in very complicated ways. Destruction and intimidation is soo much easier that building and persuasion; it has the propensity for decay on it's side. Negotiating and building rather than threatening, and extorting, takes work; your work; not just those you can exploit. Democracy is herding cats and despotism so much easier:
" I got to go to the Olympic Games in China. It's pretty impressive over there how quickly they can build things, how productive they are as a society. You should see their airport compared to our airports, their highways, their train systems. They're moving quickly in part because the regulators see their job as encouraging private people. It's amazing. " Mitt Romney
Yes. That example is spot on. It does take effort to be human. Patient, reasoned cooperation to build a better future takes self discipline, rational thought, and forbearance. Sometimes, in our better moments, those things come easily, but most often it takes effort. On the other hand, snap judgments, self promotion, anger, intimidation, and threats, all impulses originating largely from our brain stems, are easy and often successful in the short term. Modern Republicans and especially Donald Trump, if they still have higher thoughts arising from their cerebral cortex, haven’t noticed them for years. Thanks for your post!
The narcissistic delusion of inherent entitlement means the rules don't apply to you; just to the "inferior" beings, who you tell yourself you ave the God-given right to command. Monarchical aristocracy was just full of it in the days of absolute monarchy, or rule of any hereditary autocrat. It is ironic that some of those who eloquently opposed it retained slave estates. And who was it who benefited from slavery?
There you have it JL; those twin evils have been root and cause of most our ills. Those underlie the deceits intentionally inherent in all those post war treaties - the revealed and those not that we've discussed here: WW1 is a case in point. The dividing powers only gave back with one hand, knowing there was more they eventually planned to exploit; if not the politicians themselves, certainly the puppet masters pulling their strings 'knew' there was far more to exploit.
In how many jobs, public sector and private, would you be summarily fired for engaging in a patent conflict of interests with your employer? The corporation my father worked for fired high-placed people who accepted substantial gifts from vendors to the company. No quid pro quo needed; just the inappropriate relationship was enough. No intent of bias is needed. Why do scientific researchers use randomization and double blind testing (where neither the subjects nor the researcher knows who is and is not in the control group) not only to demonstrate safeguards against bias, but to reduce opportunities for bias that are not even intentional.
Who is ultimately the boss. and who the employee, in a democratic republic?
The life expectancy of a baby boy born in 1912 was 51.5. For a baby boy born in 2023 it is 81.6.
In part this 30 year difference in life expectancy is due to clean water and healthy food, regulations to improve safety in the work place, immunizations, and antibiotics. All of which were due to government actions.
My maternal grandmother (who I never met) died of sepsis from a cut on her hand with a kitchen knife. I vaguely recall hearing about a relative of FDR who died of an infected blister on his heel. FDR was crippled by polio. In my early childhood, kids were dying of it. I have a subtle scar from a smallpox vaccine. I never got smallpox and neither has anyone else I know of, yet it was once a terrifying scourge. In my youth, if you touched the metal frame of an ordinary table radio you could be electrocuted. There was minimal protection against this, and it did occasionally claim victims. It was an inherently unsafe design. So much for the magic of the marketplace solving all our problems.
Agriculture applies most of our antibiotics. Deadly bugs are becoming immune and thousands die from resistant strains every year. Pharmaceutical companies have made deliberate decisions to neglect antibiotic research because it is not a very profitable product. we could easily be sitting ducks for a virulent bacterial pandemic. As in climate change, researchers warn, yet no remedy is adequately pursuded, and lobbies veto any legislation inconvenient to profit. The press reports it from time to time, and nothing changes.
Thank you, Heather, that was a hopeful romp through history. I especially enjoyed the House Speaker calling anyone in favor of government regulating business and worker protections, wild-eyed radicals. I like that and prefer it over their crazed socialist bs scare tactic. Wild-eyed radicals unite!
I find these polls infuriating, manipulative, and a sign of lazy journalism. Good grief, surely people don’t think Trump will be better on foreign policy and the economy. Tomorrow I will do my own poll: one Democrat and one Republican. My poll will extrapolate that Trump and Biden are running neck and neck.
I couldn't agree more, Annie. I also find these bogus and biased polls infuriating. My opinion is, these polls are taken from such a small percentage of the voters in the USA and are just propaganda for the purpose of being ''scare tactics'' to frighten people. I just cannot believe that Biden and TUMP are tied, or Biden is 2 points down. If these polls were taken from about 50 million voters from all 50 states, i might be inclined to believe them. From what i have read, these polls are taken from a few thousand voters in specific areas and DO NOT represent the entire voting population of the United States. I instantly delete emails that refer to polls. I refuse to believe that a corrupt, arrogant, narcissistic, racist, raging liar like Donald TUMP is tied or ahead of our President Biden who is doing a great job in my opinion. Donald TUMP is the most corrupt asshat on planet earth. He is worse than the most notorious mob boss ever, and he ranks closely, or just as horrible as Adolf Hitler ever was. I am horrified that there are still many who worship the ground he walks on. But, there are more of us than there are of them. I believe the only way he becomes our Dictator in Chief is if the corrupt Secretary of State people keep purging voter rolls like the one here in Georgia. Our corrupt governor, Brian Kemp is just one example. 190,000 voters have already been purged from our voting rolls with more to come if this lying SOB isn't stopped.
John T I have seen no good explanations in the MSM about just HOW one conducts a statistically accurate poll of likely voters in this age of landline phones, cell phones, TV, Cable, texting, Twitter cum X, Facebook, etc. There are simply too many sources of information and methods of contacting "likely voters" from which there are so many who, like myself, refuse to answer most unknown callers or respond to online polls. I think statistically accurate polls are no longer possible.
Thank you, JohnM for your comment, it was very helpful to me. The last sentence of your comment is so accurate, and voters need to stop paying any attention to these so called polls. Right before i responded to your comment. i got an email from the ''New York Times'' that had the heading, '' If the elections were held today, Donald TUMP would win the election'' that was so infuriating to me. I am so dumbfounded by the MSM's obsession with that corrupt and lying SOB i could pull out all of my grey hair. I would guess it's the clicks and the, $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$.
Polling is an art and a science and easily framed in ways that will bias the results. Polls never tell us the whole story, though well crafted polls can tell part of it. Always, always we need context.
No wonder he loves himself so much. How much does a degree from Wharton business school cost these days? Obviously slept during history class if he thought that the Revolutionary War started in Concord NH.
Lowdown : 2 years at Fordham but had a friend of his brother get him into Wharton. In my mind going 2 years to a school doesn't make you equal to the ones who get in for freshman year. You did half the work. You just got a piece of paper that says Wharton on it. The person writing the article described his Fordham years as ghost years.
trump boasted about his Wharton year. He said Fordham was a loser (where did we hear that word loser before?) school.
There are no records of activities, clubs, achievements -nothing.
No school he ever attended— NY Military Academy, Fordham, Wharton School at U Penn—ever considered him a standout. He does not have a "piece of paper" from Wharton. I think we can assume the Fordham diploma was without distinction.
I support the team my Dad supported, and I will always support them.
I'm not going to change to a rival team just because they are reasonable and have humane economic policies, or if they lose and steal money. There is no debate here.
Just disgusted by the incredible outpouring of emotion for the Cowboys and the Rangers and nobody seems to give a crap about the future of our country. Seems a little emotion as we circle the drain would be a good thing.
Oh yeah, Jerry Jones (Cowboys owner is a rich cretin and Repub lover). Only good thing NFL ever did was keep chump from buying in. Like chump, the owners love the adoration, for which others did the work.
Seemingly nice people can become irrationally nasty defending a sports team they have only ever seen on TV, or from a stadium seat. Sport can be engaging, but the degree of purely vicarious identification can get pretty weird, as is the fawning of MAGAs on Trump.
Watching professional athletes from different countries and different states, etc., having very little to do with the city/place they represent. For my part, the Chicago Cubs had Mr. Cub Ernie Banks, a black American, who was my idol, while other cities had Willie Mays, etc., so it always seemed insane to me, to root for a home team while holding racist attitudes.
Sometimes seems the same degree of bat-Schitt crazy. Just sad seeing the folderol about a sports win at the time so many hunker down and ignore the mess we’re in. Just hit me the wrong way last weekend.
Certainly I think commercial mass media tends to covert the negotiations that determine our society's future into a seeming spectator sport. Democracy can't work that way.
Polls have always said more about the pollsters than the pol-lees. The more responsible pollsters work very hard to be unbiased, but the very act of polling is inherently biased, as measuring something changes it. Reporting the results changes it even more.
The less responsible pollsters just make s--t up, and use them to sway public opinion, rather than to gauge it.
That was Trump's favorite book at Wharton (he paid an upper classman to read it to him). Then he found Hitler's speeches which Steve Bannon recorded for him to listen to at bedtime. Bannon read them in German, but that didn't stop Trump from understanding ever word.
Sidney Powell (an former federal prosecutor) tried to tell a judge that (in effect) all political speech is lies, so she did nothing wrong in spreading lies about the election. The judge didn't buy it.
Cheers JL ! I suggest you keep your footnote to that and similarly descriptive narratives regarding "free speech" - I have a sense that they will come in handy in the coming days as we enter the fog of war surrounding what is and what is not "free speech" comes into wide debate, both legal, illegal, and / or consequential under law - and how it may or may not apply to "political" speech. I'm pretty eager to engage in all that should come. Bravo new friend !
Homo sapiens biggest downfall is greed. And only enforced regulation can control greed. Thank you Dr. Richardson for reminding us; America only prospers when the out of control greed of the few is securely regulated. Lack of regulation may allow a few persons to gain more and more wealth, but that wealth never "trickles down" with out enforced regulation.
That worst ever still photo (videos are even worse) of trump-who would try to make money on that and be proud? If it were for charity, it would be extremely generous, but it is not. I am reminded of some politician who dressed up in a pink tutu and tights. Of course, he was raked over the coals for it. Shouldn't have been since he was raising money for cancer organization. He was a good sport.
Thank you for this banking and monopolies related history lesson up through 1912. My memory is fuzzy, but I hope you’ll soon add what happened in the years after. I’ve been told the Federal Reserve which I think was created in 1914 gave banks control of economic matters in a way that was beyond what politicians could control. In other words, banks controlled politicians instead of the other way around.
I think there are conspiracies that claim people who died on The Titanic wanted to prevent this from happening. But putting that dramatic embellishment aside, I’d like to learn the real history of who’s running out financial system: the banks or us through our politicians. After all, in 2008 it’s the banks that said to the Federal Government “You’d better save us or we will take the economy down with us”, and George W and then Barack Obama dutifully took many many billions of our dollars and bailed out the banks... violating IMHO the principle of capitalism that says “If you make really bad business decisions then you should go out of business”. I am still angry (in case you couldn’t tell) that Bush and Obama bailed Wall Street out instead of letting that dysfunctional system collapse. I am confident that a new banking system run by people with the public interest in mind would have risen out of the ashes of the 2008 collapse if that collapse had been allowed to happen. Then we American would probably not be paying 25 % interest or more on our credit cards today.
We kind of got one. What we needed was at least the level of investigation and prosecution (under Bush the First, I believe) that followed the smaller "Savings and Loan" scandal (compare and contrast with the Subprime disaster), let alone the scale of reforms that followed the Great Depression, and were, in the interim, substantially wiped away.
And who suffered, and who made out like bandits, in the "Great Recession"?
A hostage taker usually gets what they demand, in the short term. But in the longer term, a sensible law enforcement should take great pains to ensure that the crime does not pay.
When growing up I was told that my state had usury laws that capped how much anyone could charge for interest.
The 2008 collapse had to be humanely manged, and like a plane crash, studied as a basis for reform. Instead "austerity" was prescribed for suffering Main St. and bonuses enabled for bankrupted Wall St. AG Eric Holder put it this way:
" I am concerned that the size of some of these institutions becomes so large that it does become difficult for us to prosecute them when we are hit with indications that if you do prosecute, if you do bring a criminal charge, it will have a negative impact on the national economy, perhaps even the world economy. "
Too me, that screams "Too Big", but they only got larger. Who's in charge here?
"And the banks -- hard to believe in a time when we're facing a banking crisis that many of the banks created -- are still the most powerful lobby on Capitol Hill. And they frankly own the place," - Sen. Dick Durbin
I like the Kylers' style in naming their sons after the Presidents. A century earlier, my 4G Grandfather, Levi Buchanan, named his two sons George Washington Buchanan (born 1807) and John Adams Buchanan (born 1809).
“…forcing businesses…to stop funding political campaigns…”. The only difference between then and now is that the businesses fund them through Political Action Committees instead of bringing bags of cash. Maybe someday we will see at least congressional and presidential campaigns publicly funded with no PACS. Then the House of Representatives could focus on legislating instead of soliciting monies for their campaigns every 2 years.
Yes, that is an important difference but not the only one. Here’s another: In those days, the electorate consisted entirely of white men (as a matter of law with respect to women and as a matter of practice with regard to citizens not regarded as white). So, it was relatively straightforward (not easy, but possible, at least, compared to now), to muster progressive forces. Since 1968, Republicans have marshaled the votes of the majority of white voters, especially white voters with no formal education beyond high school, by promising to do everything possible to preserve the systemic advantages held by white Americans over other Americans. That takes away from the progressive ranks the bulk of a natural contingent of people, namely the white working class, who would normally oppose the concentration of power in corporations and excessively wealthy people. Progressives do have a slim majority and can put Democrats in charge of the presidency and both chambers of the legislature, but to do so they will need to get nearly every Democratic-leaning voter to the polls. That is the key. If we do that, democracy is saved, for now at least. If we don’t, democracy (and a livable planet, to boot) are lost.
Thank you, particularly for the last line!
Absolutely! Way too much time is spent by Congress in the solicitation of campaign dollars to the expense of their jobs. Limit each congressional candidate to the same amount of campaign money, no dark money, and level the playing field.
Aren't there countries where campaigning is limited to a specific time period so that the 'representatives' are actually doing the work needed by their constituencies (theoretically a mix of perspectives from the constituencies requiring some astuteness of judgment)?
However, there is a fuzzy line between what a politician is doing to campaign for reelection and what a politician is doing to serve their constituency. And with todays "news coverage" being all about sound bites...
But a limited time period would certainly make life in "swing states" more enjoyable.
Their Speaker doesn’t even have a bank account. Mike Johnson has never faced a political opponent, so no opposition research. Imo he would never have been elected if his district weren’t so reliably red, and again in my opinion, so thoroughly indoctrinated in fundamentalist stupidity.
The stories of his accounts and secret scandals are just beginning to unfold.
https://www.palmerreport.com/analysis/speaker-mike-johnsons-personal-and-financial-scandals-are-exploding-already/53014/
Behind it all though, his and his cult's perversion of religion to sanctify and justify their behavior is the very thing that exposes their fraud. In their world view where (their) religion merges with politics into "Christics" and ALL of it is based on the Big Lie,.... well, the one truth he said to "go pick up a Bible off the shelf and read it" for his worldview really does say it all.
"Thou shalt not Lie",....Mike.
🤣🔨
Problem = money. Show me a problem that is not caused by money. That maybe a bit oversimplified, but mostly true.
Actually, money solves a lot of problems. It’s the love of money that is the root of all evil. I mean, look at 45. He loves money. And he’s definitely up to no good.
Is 45 a problem, without money he would not be a problem. Money can solve problems that is called not problem but problem solving. When money is allocated to solve a problem and the funds are not applied corrected usually due to some greedy SOB. Think of all the things that government tries to do, but there is too often someones who has paid off a bureaucrat to get a contract to screw the gov. Corruption is almost always a matter of money.
My dad taught me early that money is only a tool. It's how you use it that makes the difference.
I wish the Democrats would use at least some of the money to counter the unbalanced reporting being done, the misleading polls being reported. Take out a full page ad detailing how the economy has improved and how it's on course to continue improving. Describe the world situation in ways that show how they can be managed correctly vs. the reporting of doom and gloom and the sensationalism of bloodshed and cruelty. Talk about what Democrats will do for the country, not about how much we should fear and cower before the Republicans. Stop asking for dollars and tell us how you have and would create legislation. Instead of telling us to panic, tell us how to counter the Republicans and corporations and oligarchs ourselves. We don't have to pay $100/barrel of oil -- we know how to withhold our money from those who harm us or our allies. Stop representing yourselves, and represent us.
I agree completely and, just to put a slightly different spin on this idea, would say that greed is the driver.
And, they often force employees to contribute to the PACs. They send out memos implying that employees who don't contribute are disloyal and may not get promotions or raises, if they're not team players.
....a looong time practice, as I recall.....again, all done indirectly, by implication.
That’s terrible. Does management collect checks or credit card slips to prove payment?
Payroll deductions.
Dave, thanks for enlightening me about this practice. This article explains it well: https://rollcall.com/2010/10/25/pacs-collect-millions-from-workers-paychecks/
Mary, thanks for sharing this article. We must really wake up as citizens. Those who seek power are "playing us like a fiddle" using every opportunity for their advantage.
In all the activity that can consume our lives, others can easily take advantage. We need to slow down, think and thoughtfully ACT, if we are going to protect our freedoms !!!!
Guilty as charged; trump was the wake up shot and the overwhelming MAGA response was the chaser.
Still feel guilt over the assumption America would never change this radically and blind that it had w/o my seeing it.
If only. I've been receiving requests for contributions since last year, two years before the 2024 election. On average, I'm receiving two and three requests per day from some candidates, whose names I'm sick of reading although I still want them to win their races. I understand why they're doing it, but I delete all their emails -- and now text messages -- without reading them.
Agreed, but I did learn from the spate of messages that Jon Tester is the only real farmer in the senate. Given climate change and the administration farm bill (I come from a farming community and large vegetable gardens!), I send what small checks I can to support him as we need a knowledgeable person to push that bill. If there is fair distribution of food as the climate deteriorates, we should have rationing and price controls as in WWII. For that we will continue to need a spokesman for sane farm bills to fight Big Ag which has been trying to kill US for years (think corn syrup and diabetes).
I donated to Eliz. Warren when she was a candidate for Pres. Since then, it never stops...but, more like 1 a week. I will not donate to candidates any more. I feel bad about that but it's for my own protection. If i could do it anonymously, I would. I pay for a LOT of journalism instead. Democracy Now, Politico, Guardian, etc. and all the "liberal" News sources, even the Christian Science Monitor.
It’s a shame that we have to fear showing our political leanings unless we support TFG. Please list the “liberal” news sources in order of your reliance with #1 being the one on which you rely the most.
Mary, I do not have time to list all my news sources...I do not support that POS TFG.
I was just interested in the top three or four. No pressure.
AMEN Sister Mary!
It might make a more fair and just campaign.
Woodrow Wilson was no progressive. A Southern born-and-bred believer in the "Lost Cause," he was known to his associates as "a narrow-minded Southern bigot." Once in the White House, he re-segregated the Federal civil service and used the power of the Federal government to take Jim Crow nation-wide. He held a screening of D.W. Griffith's Confederate revanchist fantasy "Birth of a Nation" in the White House and publicly recommended it. So far as his "liberal" bonafides are concerned internationally, his Fourteen Points applied so far as he was concerned strictly to the new European nations formed out of the German, Astro-Hungarian and Russian empires. Wilson had no problem handing over the remains of the Ottoman empire to Britain and France in accordance with the terms of the secret Sikes-Picot Treaty of 1916, which led directly to the modern Middle East and its problems that still twist things today. Wilson's "League of Nations" was more properly the League of White European Nations, to "take up the white man's burden" and "civilize" the rest of the (non-white) world.
When the Vietnamese patriot Nguyen Ai Quoc tried to petition him to support independence from France for Indochina - Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos - on the grounds of the Fourteen Points, Wilson had him sent away by his chief of staff, Colonel House. Nguyen Ai Quoc then heard the Bolsheviks announce an anti-colonialist policy and support of colonial independence movements, and 50 years later he had the last laugh when, as Ho Chi Minh, he defeated the United States.
Woodrow Wilson was a Confederate white supremacist pig, and 100 years of brain-dead Democrats trying to put lipstick on this pig as a "progressive" makes as much historical sense as writing that Eisenhower nominated Earl Wilson to be Chief Justice on the Supreme Court in order to promote civil rights when all the historical record stands in support of the fact Eisenhower said for the record on numerous occasions that nominating Warren to the court was his "biggest mistake" of his presidency. Because of Brown v Board.
It's time to stop this "oh look, there's another progressive person in our history" when it is so obviously and easily proven that such is not the case.
Excellent points, TC.
In making his infamous Declaration, the British Foreign Minister Arthur Balfour declared with typical pomp, circumstance and stiff upper lip, that the United Kingdom would provide land the UK had no inherent claim to (Palestine) as a home for "the Jewish people". Not only did this imperial declaration in the wake of the defeat of the Ottoman empire with the help of the native Arabs including Palestinians, serve as a manner by which the notoriously anti-Semitic British ruling class could salve the growing Zionist movement, it also betrayed the very peoples who joined the British in uprising against the Turks. T.E. Lawrence himself was outraged by the betrayal of his Arab allies.
The uprooting of the native Palestinians so as to pave the way for a mass of Ashkenazi emigres from Europe and refugees from the horrors of the Holocaust ultimately ensued. We would call it ethnic cleansing today. The Palestinians called it the "Nakba", or catastrophe.
In the gorgeously gilded and gleaming halls of Versailles, wherein the victorious British, French and Americans hammered out their imperial edict for the future of peoples they knew so little of, the Palestinian people specifically, and the Arab peoples generally were forgotten.
To this day, the failure of the Treaty of Versailles can be seen primarily in the reflected faces of the Palestinian and Kurdish peoples, neither of whom have a nation of their own, neither of whom have seen relief from the constant predations of the powerful States wherein they reside, and neither of whom have received much more than lip service all these many years later.
Speaking of Versailles, somewhere in the bowels of the famous cafes of Paris in the 20s, wholly unknown to Papa Hemingway as he drank Pernod on the patio and oggled lovely Parisian flappers passing by, the aforementioned Ho Chi Minh toiled as a kitchen worker, biding his time, forging his future, a future that ultimately led to the French defeat by forces aligned with him, at Dien Bien Phu. It was that defeat that led another imperial power to make yet another fateful and hubristic decision to take up the "white man's burden" and prevent the dominoes from falling. We all know how that ended.
Daniel,
A GREAT add to Dr. Richardson's and TC's writings today. I must admit: I was not aware of the long ranging specific origin of the Palestinian displacement as British specifically and did not know the history you wrote.
I found this link which gives more detail about the Balfour Declaration. Daniel, it was TRULY unbelievable what the British did to the Palestinians after WW I.
https://www.aljazeera.com/features/2018/11/2/more-than-a-century-on-the-balfour-declaration-explained#:~:text=The%20Balfour%20Declaration%2C%20which%20resulted,for%20the%20Jewish%20people%E2%80%9D%20there.
Apparently, the anti-Semitic Brits found a "solution" to their own "Jewish" problem by exporting them to Palestine after WW I. I should have guessed the origin of such a gigantic mess would be Brits.
Now, understanding better how the mess was created and having worked with some Brits in my career as an engineer (THE most incompetent engineers I ever came across), I see that the Brits set up a mess (again).
Amazing how one country could make such a mess of the globe. It's almost like the water has something that make people retarded in Britain.
Many thanks for post. I really should have guessed that such a gigantic mess could ONLY have been made by the Brits. A nation whose mess made worldwide was simply gigantic.
Yeah, like something in the water made them so mean and murderous to the Native American People too! What is it in men that drives them to bully and take away other people's property and even spiritual beliefs to the point of vicious murder? It's like a disease! Like they never learned to share in kindergarten? I'm flabbergasted that it's still happening in Ukraine and other parts of the world that make the headlines.
What if you never had kindergarten? Watching what has happened to public education in America during my long lifetime I have come to see that what we have lost from kindergarten through four years of college is history, civics, language(s), and etiquette. (The last is required for schools to flourish and to give a basis for peaceful protests.)
Agreed, Mike. This thread alone makes the annual subscription fee worth it. Thanks for the Al Jazeera link.
"...THE most incompetent engineers I ever came across..."
Off-topic I know, but I just had to laugh when I saw your comment. It reminded me of the silliness over the Stiffkey Bridge and the fight between National Trust engineers and the fairies that I read about in the NYT--
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/10/31/world/europe/norfolk-fairy-bridge-uk-national-trust.html
I'm not interested in subscribing to the NYT, but I am interested in folklore and had to find out what this was about. My (English) husband found this article, which isn't behind a paywall: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12693423/amp/villagers-war-national-trust-bridge-fairies-Norfolk-marshes.html
My husband was born in Devon, but has been in the US since 1990s, and there's a reason for that! He'd probably agree about the engineers ... but if you go back far enough, I suppose you could argue for those guys who built the stone circles .... ;-) (Sorry, it's early and I'm being silly.)
The discussion of Wilson’s illusory grasp of reality and the sad results of his efforts that led to America’s great disgrace in Vietnam might have some basis in his racist attitudes.
It would have been abnormal for an white aristocrats of the 19th Century to include people of color like Ho Chi Minh or of any of the brown people of the mid-east in their deliberations.
It seems many of the problems of the 20th Century the threads of which weaken todays fabric of life stem from the certitude of white supremacy in its illusory wisdom. I think Wilson and probably Trump, to his cult are a result of this warped vision.
Agreed.
Given all the sins of commission, can we have a few virtues? It behooves those of us who live to remember that these guys were only human. But I do enjoy learning that Ho Chi Minh washed dishes in Paris. Any woman can identify with plotting while washing dishes, which activity promotes creative thinking!
Ha!
I like that, Virginia. Ala Madame Defarge, still knitting.
🤣🤣🤣 Daniel, you get lots of points for that one! Thank you.
But she was only counting heads, not planning like the Founding Fathers. I am still laughing at the comparison, however, even as all plots are not equal.
Wow. Excellent clear recap of the tragedies that brought us here.
I wonder who is toiling in American kitchens now who will upend the fine mess in 20 years.
Thank you kindly, Jen!
I wonder indeed
See my comment on the preceding page. It will likely be a woman! There are more of us and more of us washing dishes.
You might want to elaborate on the role played by Theodore Herzl the titular head of the Zionist movement and how he ensnared Prime Minister Lloyd George into supporting the movement. The PM believed that the return of the Jewish people to the Promised Land would lead to the Second Coming.
But most of the Zionists were secular and would have had no interest if Jesus ever came or would come again. I doubt if Lloyd George was that unsophisticated that he fell for that. There were other forces at play.
It might also be worthy taking a look into the reasons behind the British Empire’s creation of Pakistan. Creating Pakistan displaced thousands of people from homes and in areas where their families had lived in for generations.
British, American, French, in general western Imperialism, is one of the primary reasons peoples from other countries have such negative views and feelings about western civilization. Their feelings are not unjustified.
An excellent expose of Wilson. I have been on a thread all day trying to explain how some of the problems we see today in various places, but specifically the middle east have some of their roots in the the interwar years when the British were running the Palestinian Mandate. Think of all the lives lost or ruined by the results of this not seeing the nonwhite world as worthy. I have never regarded Wilson as a progressive.
Just about everything bad today comes out of World War I. None of the issues the war was allegedly fought over was decided by the war, which led directly to World War II, and then for 45 years after that all the issues and ethnic antagonisms were put in the deep freeze by the Cold War, and when they thawed out in the 1990s there was no one left alive who had ever dealt with them even haltingly. And that's just Europe. All of the issues of the Post World War II anti-colonial struggle were the result of decisions made during World War I and at Versailles.
Please come visit That's Another Fine Mess, Michele; you'll find you don't have to argue those arguments too strongly there. :-)
Accurate comment, TC.
Example: still ongoing trouble with Hungary, stripped of both territory and population by the Trianon Treaty.
Even the very conservative French military commander said of Versailles that it was not a treaty but a twenty-year truce... and that it had multiplied problems in central and eastern Europe.
He died just before his twenty year forecast was borne out.
Exactly right, Peter.
Just finished a book about the history of Middle Europe. I read it partly to try to understand that region because I have lots of ancestors from various German states. It was quite enlightening not only about the post Versailles, but before that as well.
What was the name of the book? Sounds interesting.
The Middle Kingdoms by Martyn Rady.
I always made sure my 8th graders understood that WW II was actually just the "unfinished business" or the "chickens come home to roost" (choose your metaphor) of WW I. And . . . Ho Chi Minh tried again in 1946 with this telegram to Truman: https://www.docsteach.org/documents/document/ho-chi-minh-to-truman.
What if Truman's "The Buck Stops Here" philosophy extended to NOT supporting the French re-acquisition of Indochina after WW II? But the bogus "domino theory" was too powerful for him to resist, politically. Think of the lives that would have been saved and the time-frame achieved for a reliable trading partnership with Vietnam, which we basically now have after all the wasted, intervening years of needless death and destruction from the '50s to the '70s. Hindsight IS 20/20, but the wisdom of the course Truman missed was plenty available to him.
Thank you, Peter. Wish I'd had you for a history teacher, although my 8th grade history teacher (a former Marine) did a fabulous job in introducing things "outside" the normal realm. We spent a 4 week section choosing and researching one of a dozen "suggested" Indigenous tribes. "Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee" was published when I was in 7th grade, and because of Mr. Demmer, I read it prior to the summer I started 8th grade (1971). To this day, I remember writing a line in it that went along the lines of "there was no room for a "Joe Namath" in Kiowa society" to which Mr. Demmer commented "very astute comment".
My high school history curriculum was set in the standard "teach to the test" for AP and SAT knowledge demands, although we spent a month on presidential history in the fall of 1974...
Ally House, thank you for writing of “teaching to the test.” As I’ve always had a horror of that remembering freedom of teachers and students to cover material differently (all classes are as different as the people in them) and maybe never finish the textbook, I appreciate knowing that you had that experience.
i have often thought of what would have happened had we supported Ho Chi Minh instead of the French. So sad in retrospect.
Viet Nam always had an adversarial relation ship with China and could have been a a huge wedge, almost ally, for us vis-a-vis Mao. But our racism (at least partly) put them all in one happy package, tied up neatly with a Marxist bow, blinding us to wiser policy ideas and prospects. I remember reading that Ho Chi Minh's favorite piece of writing of his original inspiration to lead a long-term independence movement was our own Declaration of Independence. As someone else said at the time of our involvement there, we were "fighting ourselves in a mirror," as for Viet Nam, we were the "British" and they were the patriotic independence fighters. Sure the Vietnamese were brutal to captives and the like, but our own Revolution was actually a civil war with all kinds of like-atrocities that aren't in the history books. This is not to excuse them or to make a perfect equivalence, but it is a worthy "thought experiment" for seeing things more from Ho Chi Minh's and his cohorts point-of-view.
TCinLA, thanks for your brilliant comments and shared knowledge of past leaders and our world wide struggles.
Surely some of our struggles could be solved if we just respected one another .
After the Jewish people suffered so much because of their heritage and faith....why can they not honor a place for the Palestinians??
This is a simple basic question.
There is no need for this destruction and bloodshed. It only creates more pain...more horror...it is a waste of life and resources....it is completely needless.
Putin is enjoying all of it....all the money wasted....all the resources being used up and the destruction of property, families, children....all with no solution. As a matter of fact ...all of this horror is building up more hatred and anger...it separates allies.
We are destroying ourselves as Putin plays his games with us. He so much wants the US to fight him ....he is playing us like a fiddle...he wants our citizens to give up on Ukraine and their desire to be free ....at least what is left of Ukraine and her freedom-loving citizens who are shedding their blood for the ideals we say we believe in...and what will be left for the Palestinian people. Another world war would be Putin's delight.
Diplomacy needs to continue.....the horror of destruction and bloodshed needs to stop!
You ask why the Jews can't honor a place for the Palestinians. They can and have bargained for peace and a two state solution over the past 75 years, in lieu of the current Israeli administration.
I have wondered where this all began , piecing it together is far from neatly formatted in my mind yet, but this begins to see a light . A maze of tumultuous errors per se but chicken /egg theory not sufficient to me yet.
Do the people over there understand it any better ...I wonder.
Anymore than our own boiling brew here? Are not the ploys all intermixed , lies, promises, meddling, money ...they’re all the same just the names/territory/races changed seems to me. That’s oversimplification perhaps...
being a simple person is not easy😉..but right the wrongs done decades ago.NOT.GOING.TO.HAPPEN....*there OR here.
So.......best solutions are important , complicated, and need all heads at the table...with autocrats dang close to 50% in control?
‘Good luck’ is lip service.
While the web weaves on ....
Really interesting reading Heather/folks
💙💙VOTE💙💙
Have you read Caste The Origins of Our Discontents by Isabel Wilkerson? Defines a beginning in this new country of something that has gone on since the possibility of different skin colors became an actual reality. As it turns out, our biggest test of everything we know as human.
Salud.
🗽
No I haven’t, the to do list lengthens 🤦♀️
Thanks. Really! 🤣
It is a bit discouraging to realize at this age how much I don’t know...few left older to say “oh that’s normal!”😬
I read Legacy of Violence about the Brits and their Empire. I kept thinking we would not have a lot of the problems we see today if not for their behavior, not only in the interwar years....very eye opening about Palestine, but before that in different areas as well. One of my favorites about the middle east is Lawrence in Arabia which gives info about all the various players in that area at that time. I will have to visit your site. The person I am arguing with has been posting memes that say that the Palestinians have no right to the land at all and go way back to ancient times as proof. She has finally admitted that she should not have posted the meme that she did, but that's all. And she can't seem to understand that Jerusalem is sacred to all three religions. This particular meme said that there was no mention of Jerusalem in the Koran. I say so what.
Michele, I second TC's invite to TAFM. There is good conversation, and there are lots of cats. Plus, I can utilize my 2nd and 3rd languages there.... profanity and sarcasm.
I will have to visit it. I have a routine in the am and I will have to add TC. Just not today as I am on a schedule.
I think his was my 2nd Substack subscription…
🤣 humor 👏
Ditto.
TC, Absolutely GREAT add to Dr. Richardson's letter today.
"When the Vietnamese patriot Nguyen Ai Quoc tried to petition him (Wilson) to support independence from France for Indochina - Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos - on the grounds of the Fourteen Points, Wilson had him sent away by his chief of staff, Colonel House. Nguyen Ai Quoc then heard the Bolsheviks announce an anti-colonialist policy and support of colonial independence movements, and 50 years later he had the last laugh when, as Ho Chi Minh, he defeated the United States."
I was aware of Ho Chi Minh's successful effort to throw of French and American Colonialism but not the background about him approaching Wilson. The US had a chance to be partners with Ho Chi Minh instead of "fighting communism" in Viet Nam. I never knew.
Ho Chi Minh did everything he could to avoid bloodshed, but, then he beat America at its own game. War.
My hat is off to Ho Chi Minh.
He did everything he could, including the Vietnamese Declaration of Independence is the American declaration, with "Vietnam" substituted where appropriate. And today we have the relationship with Vietnam we could have had in 1946 - with an additional 58,000 Americans and their offspring here participating and doing things we can't even guess as they contribute to the country. Then there's the several million Southeast Asians and their offspring and what they might have contributed to life.
Yes. A chance lost … to war profit.
Some aspects may have benefitted war business but the most prepared and capable technocrat in history MacNamara seized the Kennedy’s with his “whiz kid,” computer.reality and he himself was pulled into the vortex of absent goals replaced with progress reports then body counts.
Intelligent people were succumbed by dazzling technology to abandon morality.
I remember an article in the New York Review of Books (1963) in which he was called “the George Washington of Vietnam.” In that context, unforgettable.
A spade can never be a diamond, no matter how often one repeats it. Hmm... peculiar is it not, how familiar we are with such a concept; the repetitive practice / process to create alternative facts from vapor.
Wilson did however allow
Women’s suffrage access to the WhiteHouse to gain traction in D.C.
After first allowing them to be arrested and subjected to forced feeding with tubes jammed down their throats when they attempted a hunger strike. The bad publicity changed his mind.
Woodrow Wilson was a terrible person in so many ways. There's a moving exhibit at the old Lorton VA prison that brings reality to those force feedings and the struggle, the jailings, the white women chaining themselves to the WH fence. (Black women were excluded from the suffrage movement - shocking, I'm sure. s/) The Lorton grounds are partially preserved and it's now home to a wonderful Arts Center. Just south of DC.
Somewhere I read that he was impressed with the efforts of women in WW1. Dying for your country does get one’s attention.
His wife Edith may have pushed suffrage.
And, if you tour the Woodrow Wilson house here in DC, you learn that after Wilson's stroke, which kept him at home, that Edith may have been a stealth president in the era in which women had no vote and little power. During the tour, this is presented as a bad thing, but, secretly, I was kind of rooting for her. And she was likely the one that supported women's suffrage.
You may want to explore the Edith Bolling Wilson museum in Wytheville, Va. Right across the street is the Bolling Wilson Hotel. Another museum in Wytheville is dedicated to Dr. Haller who came to Wytheville to fight the outbreak of polio. The Haller family included several gifted and dedicated docs.
Not to change the subject, but I would like to know why brain-dead Republicans putting lipstick on white supremacist pig trump as a MAGA-Again is, for the life of me, working in swing states at the moment....
Is this the result of polling? I always read polls with a grain of salt.
I agree, but when all swing states except Wisconsin are polling the same I do give it a grain of salt (trump's ahead in Nevada by 11 points)....
I refuse to be pulled in by this. It smacks of the MSM trying to get clicks.
I agree, Michele. They still play it as a horse race, to our peril. It's sickening how much play DeSantis and Haley have gotten, thanks to those "debates." Only Mike Pence couldn't raise the money he needed, because as much as he back-pedaled, he did stand up to Trump on Jan. 6.
We still watch local news and most days national news on NBC. There are days where we know what will be in the news and we skip it. We don't watch R debates. We like to keep our blood pressure where it should be. It's not even 2024 and we have all this nonsense being printed. I want to see the result of trials and I am sure the one we are seeing now is not going to be good for death star or his family.
Thanks for this snippet, TC. I have been gently inserting the detritus from WWI in the Middle East as the groundwork for the problems we are seeing today. I am met (most often) with the "that area has been a mess for centuries" to which I reply, "only when white Christians got in and tried to establish their was as the 'one true way'. "
Ally, one of the problems is that this area is home to three great monotheistic religions and for example, when Christianity came along, they expected Jews to convert. They didn't. Then Islam came along and they expected Jews and Christians to covert and they didn't. My own opinion is that a lot of politics is what is really going on and the religion is just a smoke screen for achieving raw political power. The older I get, the more cynical I become. I am hoping that the person that I am on the thread with decides that she has had enough because hubby and I do know more about the history of that area than she does. She wants to pretend that Islam has nothing to say about the area despite the fact the Islamic states have ruled it for a very long time....up until the creation of Israel in 1948. She also has some weird ideas about what religion has done for women, particularly Christianity.
Gee, Ally, like what's happening with the current GOP in the U.S.
Pretty much!
A vibrant rebuttal! Very much appreciated....
TC does it best.
Wow, this is a real kick in the teeth! I knew that Wilson was privileged racist but didn't know the Vietnam aspect. And, lest we forget, Earl Warren. Ugh. Thank you for such a powerful and much-needed, at least from my POV, clarification!!
The truth really will make you free. :-)
Thanks for the history lesson. Well done and prescient of what’s happening today.
Thanks. Topics like these are where one hates being right.
I had always read that WWilson was a thoroughgoing bigot.
The inequality that exists today is approaching that of the Gilded Age. It is a significant reason for the anger that continues to fuel the Trump insanity.
Am I thinking the large Titanic staterooms where people brought their art work with them? The mansions in Newport RI? From the pictures I have seen of Mar a Lago, I think gilded still applies.
In terms of Tsar-a-Loco, I would say gilded in the sense of ostentatious junk covered with gold and in very bad taste, a veneer. When we were visiting the Balkans, we were in a town which had a lot of rich Russians there. The shops were filled with very expensive gauche crap.
Speaking of bad taste, how bout the gilded statue that was made for him at a conference?
Gag a maggot.
I am reading HCR'S first book, "How the South won the Civil War", and history replays the same message over and over, using the same tactics in different ways, to reduce the power of the ordinary working person and to take power from the poor, the unfortunate, the differently oriented, the non white, the women, and consolidate it in the hands of the rich. Oligarchy has been beaten back many times, and we have to do it again. Her book must be on the list of those that DeSantis would forbid to be read in schools, and I'm certainly learning more now than I ever did in high school. Go, HCR! Hit them hard, loyal followers!
Frank Mitchell, whether it was her first book or not, I very much agree with your comment. That book and “Democracy Awakening” can give readers invaluable help with understanding what’s happening in our world right now, in real time. Gaining that understanding is difficult! I’m grateful to Prof. Richardson for her insights.
Hey, Frank. I think "How the South won the Civil War" was not her first book, but the last book she wrote before "Democracy Awakening." I forget which one was her first book. Maybe others know.
LOTS of books by HCR!
https://www.thriftbooks.com/a/heather-cox-richardson/334456/?utm_source=google&utm_medium=cpc&utm_campaign=us_dsa_general_customer_acquisition&utm_adgroup=&utm_term=&utm_content=664239405774&gad_source=1&gclid=Cj0KCQiAuqKqBhDxARIsAFZELmKwir_ujjGjIJUej_18VHbaEY8gpBIP9xaTmd0s_MFwNYeKXYxGgpsaArRIEALw_wcB#AuthorBooks
Morning, MaryPat! Lots of books, for sure. Thanks for providing them! I was only responding to the suggestion that "How the South Won the Civil War" was her first book.
The link you provided seems to show them in order of publication...well done!
Yes double thanks, I also posted it on FB encouraging read to ‘Letters’ also.
I proobably should have said it's the first book of hers I have decided to read. .:) Won't be the last, for sure. All her others required weeks of waiting at the library, this one, nobody was in front of me.
Thanks, Frank...No worries!
I have an observation that is off-topic . . . but as far as I can see the MSM has stopped covering Ukraine; at least it is not on the "front page".
Zelensky was on Meet the Press yesterday (11/5/23). His cause - our cause - needs to be on the front burner, IMO.
https://www.mediaite.com/tv/watch-zelensky-rebukes-trump-and-fcking-terrorist-putin-in-fiery-appearance-on-meet-the-press/
I can only imagine the conflicting feelings that Zelensky, as a Jew, must be experiencing....
Agreed, Sophia.
The fate of Ukraine currently pretty relevant to a great many of our current circumstances.
The big distraction
THAT IN A NUTSHELL.🔨
Ukraine news has slipped from front page to a section in World News. The only other time I have heard about the topic is how the extreme radical republicans do not want to continue aid. These people must not have any historical foundation especially when their dear leader thinks the Revolution began in Concord, New Hampshire. I think republicans ( not all) have no foresight. They do things that satisfy their need for the moment such as repealing environmental laws and making money.
It is governing to the end of your nose and no further. MeMeMeMe.
That was Putin's plan when he encouraged Iran to encourage Hamas and now Hezbollah. We are being played by a former KGB chess master. People like Mike Johnson are the down field puppets. The people that support him are clueless robots.
The nation I have big questions about is Qatar who has kept Gaza alive financially - and paid for the rockets Hamas fires at Israel. And yet, we have military facilities in Qatar...8,000 in uniform.
Mmm. Didn't know any of that.
Diane Francis explains it much better than I ever could.
https://substack.com/home/post/p-138554805
I remarked after services yesterday that prayers for the people and elsewhere in the service, for the dead and injured, neglected Ukraine and Ukrainians entirely, superceded by the Israel and Palestine focus. Not good.
Yesterday, a guest speaker filled the pulpit in my UU church. He had just returned from Ukraine, where he reported on humanitarian aid there, and he reminded us of how many Ukrainians have returned to the country and are doing lots of work among the displaced population. Specifically, he mentioned addressing trauma among children, and he pointed out that Ukrainians are committed to their continuation of democracy. I found it heartening.
That is a such a worthy story and warrants our attention, but the MSM is like crickets and for a month Ukraine has been pushed off the burner altogether . . . . Scrolling through the online "front pages" of the NYTimes, Washington Post, the Atlantic, The New Yorker, I have seen nothing for weeks about Ukraine but lots about trump and Israel . . . and of course how badly Biden is doing in the polls! It is a disgrace. The 3rd lead article today in the online version of the WaPo was "Millennials aren’t having kids. Here are the reasons".
I'll just stop there as I need to finish making a baby present and organize my sewing bins!!
Infuritating. I keep hearing hand-wringing over the low birth rate, too, and yet we are trying to keep immigrants out, and if you dare have a baby without a decent income, there is little future for the poor kid. Because, of course, recourse to abortion is going to be off the table at the very same time they want to reduce health services and nutrition. Adoption by the rich just isn't going to solve this problem. I've been watching Daughter of a Lost Bird about the adoption of a Native girl by an affluent Canadian family, and it's labeled as a documentary. Should be required viewing.
The New York Times is reporting on Ukraine. Zelensky is making certain of that. The MidEast war is charming for Putin (my first thought was Iran drones raining on Ukraine connects to Israel very easily).
Hmm . . . I wonder what Teddy Roosevelt and some of the Progressives of that era would make of present-day Citizens United? Oh to have enough people in government this day and time who had the gumption and fortitude to fight against the special interests and rampant greed in our government. A handful of people 110 years ago recognized it and worked to do something about it. Would that we had that today!! This history lesson from HCR is one of those sagas in our country's history that I find uplifting, and which makes me realize all the more what we are lacking today. Will we ever find it again??
Here are some of the people,
https://inequality.org/
Inequality.org is part of Institute for Policy Studies. Putting excellent economic and environmental projects aside, these organizations include ultra-left anti-Israel terrorist apologists led by Phyllis Bennis. Such policies decry Western hegemony as anti-democratic in the face of today's World War 3-inciting fasccist actions by Russia and by theocratic terrorist nations in the Middle East and elsewhere. This myopic near-blindness refers to Israelis as oppressors, forgetting the long history of the ermergence of Israel in 1948 as a response to overwhelming, centuries-long anti-Semitic oppression and mass murder, and forgetting the long history of terrorist resistance to the state of Israel on a global basis since 1948. No organization is perfect. No side, Left or Right, is perfect. But I for one will not blind myself to the fact that the world will always be plagued by very bad actors who swear death to democratic principles in the name of grotesque wealth and power or in the name of some imaginary, all-ruling god. The threat to democracy by fascists on one side, and by naive ultra-leftists on the other is a recipe for future disaster. The university students and professors who gloat over the success of the Hamas terror campaign against Israel on October 7 disgust me beyond words. Why haven't they been out in the streets since 2016 screaming about the Trump Administration and its criminal fascist traitors who still run the Congress? The United States wielded tragically misguided power in Vietnam and in Iraq. It must not fail to protect democracy in eastern Europe and the Middle East now. Doing away with Western hegemony will not magically turn bad actors into good ones. Bet your life on it.
“But I for one will not blind myself to the fact that the world will always be plagued by very bad actors who swear death to democratic principles in the name of grotesque wealth and power or in the name of some imaginary, all-ruling god.”
You are blind if you don’t think Israel qualifies as a state which spits on democratic principles in the name of power.
And you are blind to believe in false equivalencies or that ANY Arab or Muslim nation is dedicated to democratic principles and peaceful coexistence with Israel. Netanyahu may be a blight on Israeli politics, but so were Nixon, Reagan, Bush 1, Bush 2, and - heaven help us - Trump (1) on our politics. The US has produced world-class war criminals who get away without a war crimes tribunal or even an impeachment conviction. It has also helped the civilized world rid itself of fascists on a massive scale. As I said, the world will always be threatened by bad actors. To aid and abet fascism and terrorism is the wrong way to go. Like it or not, Israel is the only democracy in the Middle East. Imperfect, just like us. Powerful and productive, just like us. Threatened, just like us. Open your eyes.
1) Name the false equivalency I believe in. Be careful.
2) If you believe either the United States or Israel is dedicated to democratic principles at present, you’re as clueless as George Bush rambling about the Axis of Evil.
3) It is readily apparent that you are a tribal sycophant for the Democratic Party, unless of course, you merely forgot to include Obama or Biden on your war criminal list.
4) As a veteran, I hope you weren’t suggesting my critique of American Empire and Israeli Fascism was aiding or abetting either fascism or terrorism. If so, see my reference to Bush up in 2) above.
5) Thanks for closing with an absurd laugh line. Nothing like an apologist defining the oppressor as the ‘threatened’ entity to give me a loller moment.
One final piece of advice; start digging into alternative, independent media and stop reading propagandists like Malcolm Nance. You’ll be better for it, and won’t come across as an empire simp. My eyes are wide open. You are looking through a camera lens with a propaganda filter, and it tints everything you see. Examples abound:
Gaza - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yxensYM2R40
Gaza - https://peoplesdispatch.org/2023/11/04/craig-mokhiber-on-uns-failures-in-palestine-and-why-he-quit/
Gaza - https://scheerpost.com/2023/11/03/palestines-obituary/
Gaza - https://www.caitlinjohnst.one/p/we-dont-think-hard-enough-about-what
Gaza - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nCn4XGZeFsk&t=1743s
Gaza - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BDfi6-l1Aec
1. Israel is as bad as Hamas is good, or they are equally bad. Both false.
2. If you had read my comments carefully, you would not conclude that I think the US upholds democracy at all times and in all cases.
3. I left out the Democratic war criminal Lyndon Johnson, but my point was made correctly.
4. As a veteran, you surely must know the difference between Israeli democracy and Jihadist anti-Semitic terror.
5. At no time did I excuse Israel or the US for their foreign policy blunders.
Malcolm Nance is proof positive that terrorists and fascists must be resisted, just like Nazis, whether in Third Reich Germany, Russia, or in the Trump Administration. If you think that there is any viable opposition to the Republican Party other than the Democratic Party (with all its faults), then you are deluded. That's why Putin loves the Republican Party so much; he can control our oligarchs just as easily as he can control his own oligarchs and destroy democracy in the process. No point in belaboring this discussion. We both made our positions clear for all to see.
Thanks for the link!! Looks like an amazing resource.
Marc Elias democracydocket.com
Thanks from me too!
Share this and information like it with anyone who is able and willing to understand what's causing some of the worst of our woes.
Excellent link!
Thank you for this link!
Wonderful link PAJR ! Thank you.
I have learned so much history that I never knew, despite being a student of history at college. Thank you for your concise descriptions of our US history that preceded and parallels the history being made now.
Where did you go to college?
“November 5, 1912, turned out to be a crucial day in the history of our country.”
But the presidential election of 1912 pales in comparison to the election that is scheduled for Tuesday, November 5, 2024. God save this Republic.
Sadly, the Citizens United SCOTUS decision and other gutting of campaign finance regulations and superPAC guidelines have kept today’s GOP in the ball game, despite being on the wrong side of most issues.
They are not conservative, they are #CORPservative, in servitude to their billionaire and corporate donors.
Conservative without the political baggage means "cautious"' such as a "conservative estimate". There is an implication of humility in it as you tend to hedge your bet. Certainly that is true of a "conservative" investment. It seems to me that a "conservative" would agree with the Oracle at Delphi to avoid excess.
But it's today's "Republican's" that assault balance, promoting monopolies of money and power, attacking checks and balances in government and bipartisanship, sweeping away regulation of business on principle rather than performance, making fantastic claims that lack any basis for verification. It seems to me that beneficially reconciling both conservation and innovation of what proves to be useful is a pillar of wisdom. Plutocracy wants nothing of the sort; the compulsive "love of money" and power overwhelming every other consideration.
The way I like to frame it is that Republicans lie, cheat, and misrepresent because integrity is too restricting. Essentially, they need their basket to be 2 inches wider than the one they have to defend.
Exactly. I recently heard Sheralyn Ifill make the same point in a slightly different way. Paraphrasing, she said something like, “Republicans give their base permission to stop trying to be decent.”
That reflects what I hear from my former work cadre. "We don't have to be politically correct any more. We can say how things really are." I admit, they sometimes squirm when I ask what "politically incorrect" term do they use to refer to me.
Yes. Not being PC or “woke” is easy and, thanks to Donald Trump, popular right now. But, imagining “that’s how things really are” is, I think, definitely not true. Thanks for your good post!
Decent in ways that Joe McCarthy was shown to be devoid of. Modern
"Republicans" have picked up much of his playbook. Entropy, the tendency of energy to dissipate, likely propels time, and it appears that it ultimately will devour the Universe; yet energy eddies and knocks on in very complicated ways. Destruction and intimidation is soo much easier that building and persuasion; it has the propensity for decay on it's side. Negotiating and building rather than threatening, and extorting, takes work; your work; not just those you can exploit. Democracy is herding cats and despotism so much easier:
" I got to go to the Olympic Games in China. It's pretty impressive over there how quickly they can build things, how productive they are as a society. You should see their airport compared to our airports, their highways, their train systems. They're moving quickly in part because the regulators see their job as encouraging private people. It's amazing. " Mitt Romney
But is China currently a "free society"?
Yes, remember China's "Women hold up half the sky"? Last week the government told women to go back home and take care of their families.
Yes. That example is spot on. It does take effort to be human. Patient, reasoned cooperation to build a better future takes self discipline, rational thought, and forbearance. Sometimes, in our better moments, those things come easily, but most often it takes effort. On the other hand, snap judgments, self promotion, anger, intimidation, and threats, all impulses originating largely from our brain stems, are easy and often successful in the short term. Modern Republicans and especially Donald Trump, if they still have higher thoughts arising from their cerebral cortex, haven’t noticed them for years. Thanks for your post!
The narcissistic delusion of inherent entitlement means the rules don't apply to you; just to the "inferior" beings, who you tell yourself you ave the God-given right to command. Monarchical aristocracy was just full of it in the days of absolute monarchy, or rule of any hereditary autocrat. It is ironic that some of those who eloquently opposed it retained slave estates. And who was it who benefited from slavery?
There you have it JL; those twin evils have been root and cause of most our ills. Those underlie the deceits intentionally inherent in all those post war treaties - the revealed and those not that we've discussed here: WW1 is a case in point. The dividing powers only gave back with one hand, knowing there was more they eventually planned to exploit; if not the politicians themselves, certainly the puppet masters pulling their strings 'knew' there was far more to exploit.
The press is complicit in using fig leaves to designate what the parties ... and esp the rabid factions ... are really about.
Would that mean no more jet rides and expensive vacations or Thomas?
In how many jobs, public sector and private, would you be summarily fired for engaging in a patent conflict of interests with your employer? The corporation my father worked for fired high-placed people who accepted substantial gifts from vendors to the company. No quid pro quo needed; just the inappropriate relationship was enough. No intent of bias is needed. Why do scientific researchers use randomization and double blind testing (where neither the subjects nor the researcher knows who is and is not in the control group) not only to demonstrate safeguards against bias, but to reduce opportunities for bias that are not even intentional.
Who is ultimately the boss. and who the employee, in a democratic republic?
I like that turn of phrase.
The life expectancy of a baby boy born in 1912 was 51.5. For a baby boy born in 2023 it is 81.6.
In part this 30 year difference in life expectancy is due to clean water and healthy food, regulations to improve safety in the work place, immunizations, and antibiotics. All of which were due to government actions.
Just saying.
There it is again, those pesky facts about government benefits! Thanks for the reminder, how quickly we all forget.
Rats, roaches and allegedly, vampires, are much annoyed by light.
Whoops, I meant to reply to the comment on "wild eyed radicals" below, but your remark as well relates to the need to see clearly.
My maternal grandmother (who I never met) died of sepsis from a cut on her hand with a kitchen knife. I vaguely recall hearing about a relative of FDR who died of an infected blister on his heel. FDR was crippled by polio. In my early childhood, kids were dying of it. I have a subtle scar from a smallpox vaccine. I never got smallpox and neither has anyone else I know of, yet it was once a terrifying scourge. In my youth, if you touched the metal frame of an ordinary table radio you could be electrocuted. There was minimal protection against this, and it did occasionally claim victims. It was an inherently unsafe design. So much for the magic of the marketplace solving all our problems.
Agriculture applies most of our antibiotics. Deadly bugs are becoming immune and thousands die from resistant strains every year. Pharmaceutical companies have made deliberate decisions to neglect antibiotic research because it is not a very profitable product. we could easily be sitting ducks for a virulent bacterial pandemic. As in climate change, researchers warn, yet no remedy is adequately pursuded, and lobbies veto any legislation inconvenient to profit. The press reports it from time to time, and nothing changes.
Thank you, Heather, that was a hopeful romp through history. I especially enjoyed the House Speaker calling anyone in favor of government regulating business and worker protections, wild-eyed radicals. I like that and prefer it over their crazed socialist bs scare tactic. Wild-eyed radicals unite!
I find these polls infuriating, manipulative, and a sign of lazy journalism. Good grief, surely people don’t think Trump will be better on foreign policy and the economy. Tomorrow I will do my own poll: one Democrat and one Republican. My poll will extrapolate that Trump and Biden are running neck and neck.
I couldn't agree more, Annie. I also find these bogus and biased polls infuriating. My opinion is, these polls are taken from such a small percentage of the voters in the USA and are just propaganda for the purpose of being ''scare tactics'' to frighten people. I just cannot believe that Biden and TUMP are tied, or Biden is 2 points down. If these polls were taken from about 50 million voters from all 50 states, i might be inclined to believe them. From what i have read, these polls are taken from a few thousand voters in specific areas and DO NOT represent the entire voting population of the United States. I instantly delete emails that refer to polls. I refuse to believe that a corrupt, arrogant, narcissistic, racist, raging liar like Donald TUMP is tied or ahead of our President Biden who is doing a great job in my opinion. Donald TUMP is the most corrupt asshat on planet earth. He is worse than the most notorious mob boss ever, and he ranks closely, or just as horrible as Adolf Hitler ever was. I am horrified that there are still many who worship the ground he walks on. But, there are more of us than there are of them. I believe the only way he becomes our Dictator in Chief is if the corrupt Secretary of State people keep purging voter rolls like the one here in Georgia. Our corrupt governor, Brian Kemp is just one example. 190,000 voters have already been purged from our voting rolls with more to come if this lying SOB isn't stopped.
John T I have seen no good explanations in the MSM about just HOW one conducts a statistically accurate poll of likely voters in this age of landline phones, cell phones, TV, Cable, texting, Twitter cum X, Facebook, etc. There are simply too many sources of information and methods of contacting "likely voters" from which there are so many who, like myself, refuse to answer most unknown callers or respond to online polls. I think statistically accurate polls are no longer possible.
Thank you, JohnM for your comment, it was very helpful to me. The last sentence of your comment is so accurate, and voters need to stop paying any attention to these so called polls. Right before i responded to your comment. i got an email from the ''New York Times'' that had the heading, '' If the elections were held today, Donald TUMP would win the election'' that was so infuriating to me. I am so dumbfounded by the MSM's obsession with that corrupt and lying SOB i could pull out all of my grey hair. I would guess it's the clicks and the, $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$.
Polling is an art and a science and easily framed in ways that will bias the results. Polls never tell us the whole story, though well crafted polls can tell part of it. Always, always we need context.
Trump once said at one of his rallies "You know, I love the uneducated"
And they all cheered "yeah ME, thats me".
Be afraid of those polls, Annie - it runs no deeper than sports team support mentality.
No wonder he loves himself so much. How much does a degree from Wharton business school cost these days? Obviously slept during history class if he thought that the Revolutionary War started in Concord NH.
Trump has a gift for demagoguery, and a lot of money, but is is an astonishing lazy thinker by any measure, but his money lets him get away with it.
He has many things, but he does not have a Wharton degree. He left without it, and graduated from Fordham.
Lowdown : 2 years at Fordham but had a friend of his brother get him into Wharton. In my mind going 2 years to a school doesn't make you equal to the ones who get in for freshman year. You did half the work. You just got a piece of paper that says Wharton on it. The person writing the article described his Fordham years as ghost years.
trump boasted about his Wharton year. He said Fordham was a loser (where did we hear that word loser before?) school.
There are no records of activities, clubs, achievements -nothing.
No school he ever attended— NY Military Academy, Fordham, Wharton School at U Penn—ever considered him a standout. He does not have a "piece of paper" from Wharton. I think we can assume the Fordham diploma was without distinction.
Sports team support runs deep. Should be so for our political future.
I support the team my Dad supported, and I will always support them.
I'm not going to change to a rival team just because they are reasonable and have humane economic policies, or if they lose and steal money. There is no debate here.
My team
Is that what you mean Jeri?
Just disgusted by the incredible outpouring of emotion for the Cowboys and the Rangers and nobody seems to give a crap about the future of our country. Seems a little emotion as we circle the drain would be a good thing.
I am guessing the Cowboys and Rangers are sports teams. It truly boggles the mind. Money, power, period
Football and Baseball respectively; the Rangers just won their first World Series.
Oh yeah, Jerry Jones (Cowboys owner is a rich cretin and Repub lover). Only good thing NFL ever did was keep chump from buying in. Like chump, the owners love the adoration, for which others did the work.
Seemingly nice people can become irrationally nasty defending a sports team they have only ever seen on TV, or from a stadium seat. Sport can be engaging, but the degree of purely vicarious identification can get pretty weird, as is the fawning of MAGAs on Trump.
Watching professional athletes from different countries and different states, etc., having very little to do with the city/place they represent. For my part, the Chicago Cubs had Mr. Cub Ernie Banks, a black American, who was my idol, while other cities had Willie Mays, etc., so it always seemed insane to me, to root for a home team while holding racist attitudes.
Sometimes seems the same degree of bat-Schitt crazy. Just sad seeing the folderol about a sports win at the time so many hunker down and ignore the mess we’re in. Just hit me the wrong way last weekend.
Certainly I think commercial mass media tends to covert the negotiations that determine our society's future into a seeming spectator sport. Democracy can't work that way.
Polls have always said more about the pollsters than the pol-lees. The more responsible pollsters work very hard to be unbiased, but the very act of polling is inherently biased, as measuring something changes it. Reporting the results changes it even more.
The less responsible pollsters just make s--t up, and use them to sway public opinion, rather than to gauge it.
There is a book I read in a statistics class in college titled “How to Lie with Statistics”.
That was Trump's favorite book at Wharton (he paid an upper classman to read it to him). Then he found Hitler's speeches which Steve Bannon recorded for him to listen to at bedtime. Bannon read them in German, but that didn't stop Trump from understanding ever word.
I have often wondered if Republicans mistook "1984" for an instruction manual.
I read that one. They say figures don't lie but liars figure. Just listen any day to the "GOP".
I suspect you're right.
No less than another tool for propaganda Annie. "Lies, damn lies, statistics, - and polls."
Sidney Powell (an former federal prosecutor) tried to tell a judge that (in effect) all political speech is lies, so she did nothing wrong in spreading lies about the election. The judge didn't buy it.
Cheers JL ! I suggest you keep your footnote to that and similarly descriptive narratives regarding "free speech" - I have a sense that they will come in handy in the coming days as we enter the fog of war surrounding what is and what is not "free speech" comes into wide debate, both legal, illegal, and / or consequential under law - and how it may or may not apply to "political" speech. I'm pretty eager to engage in all that should come. Bravo new friend !
Homo sapiens biggest downfall is greed. And only enforced regulation can control greed. Thank you Dr. Richardson for reminding us; America only prospers when the out of control greed of the few is securely regulated. Lack of regulation may allow a few persons to gain more and more wealth, but that wealth never "trickles down" with out enforced regulation.
Greed, and the urge to dominate. Ego gone metastatic.
Agreed
I can't be sure that overpopulation isn't mankind's greatest failing.
Why is the media NOT covering the Colorado court case about Trump's ineligibility to run for President?
Rhetorical question. DJT sells and gets eyeballs. Con law cases generally don't. Importance politically is irrelevant. Importance financially is key.
That worst ever still photo (videos are even worse) of trump-who would try to make money on that and be proud? If it were for charity, it would be extremely generous, but it is not. I am reminded of some politician who dressed up in a pink tutu and tights. Of course, he was raked over the coals for it. Shouldn't have been since he was raising money for cancer organization. He was a good sport.
Isn't this an interesting case!
Thank you for this banking and monopolies related history lesson up through 1912. My memory is fuzzy, but I hope you’ll soon add what happened in the years after. I’ve been told the Federal Reserve which I think was created in 1914 gave banks control of economic matters in a way that was beyond what politicians could control. In other words, banks controlled politicians instead of the other way around.
I think there are conspiracies that claim people who died on The Titanic wanted to prevent this from happening. But putting that dramatic embellishment aside, I’d like to learn the real history of who’s running out financial system: the banks or us through our politicians. After all, in 2008 it’s the banks that said to the Federal Government “You’d better save us or we will take the economy down with us”, and George W and then Barack Obama dutifully took many many billions of our dollars and bailed out the banks... violating IMHO the principle of capitalism that says “If you make really bad business decisions then you should go out of business”. I am still angry (in case you couldn’t tell) that Bush and Obama bailed Wall Street out instead of letting that dysfunctional system collapse. I am confident that a new banking system run by people with the public interest in mind would have risen out of the ashes of the 2008 collapse if that collapse had been allowed to happen. Then we American would probably not be paying 25 % interest or more on our credit cards today.
Yep, I suppose We needed another Oct 29, 1929,
We kind of got one. What we needed was at least the level of investigation and prosecution (under Bush the First, I believe) that followed the smaller "Savings and Loan" scandal (compare and contrast with the Subprime disaster), let alone the scale of reforms that followed the Great Depression, and were, in the interim, substantially wiped away.
And who suffered, and who made out like bandits, in the "Great Recession"?
Money made money
A hostage taker usually gets what they demand, in the short term. But in the longer term, a sensible law enforcement should take great pains to ensure that the crime does not pay.
I agree
When growing up I was told that my state had usury laws that capped how much anyone could charge for interest.
The 2008 collapse had to be humanely manged, and like a plane crash, studied as a basis for reform. Instead "austerity" was prescribed for suffering Main St. and bonuses enabled for bankrupted Wall St. AG Eric Holder put it this way:
" I am concerned that the size of some of these institutions becomes so large that it does become difficult for us to prosecute them when we are hit with indications that if you do prosecute, if you do bring a criminal charge, it will have a negative impact on the national economy, perhaps even the world economy. "
Too me, that screams "Too Big", but they only got larger. Who's in charge here?
"And the banks -- hard to believe in a time when we're facing a banking crisis that many of the banks created -- are still the most powerful lobby on Capitol Hill. And they frankly own the place," - Sen. Dick Durbin
I like the Kylers' style in naming their sons after the Presidents. A century earlier, my 4G Grandfather, Levi Buchanan, named his two sons George Washington Buchanan (born 1807) and John Adams Buchanan (born 1809).
My great grandfather was named Franklin Pierce Abbott. My dad was named Chester Arthur Abbott (though everyone called him Bob, for some reason) :)
Too funny! 😂
😂😂😂😂
😂😂😂