President Joe Biden has tried to move the country beyond the partisanship of the current Republican Party by focusing on making government work so that people forget their differences and direct their attention to rebuilding the country. It is not an easy task, especially when the Republicans illustrate, as they did with their votes on raising the debt ceiling, that they would happily tank the country if it means regaining power.
Dr. Richardson is doing a better job of strategic communications with the American public than Democrats. One of the smartest comments I have heard about Democratic messaging lately came recently from Laurence O’Donnell. He said, “Democrats need to stop selling the recipe and start selling the brownies.”
Please Democrats stop talking about the process and start talking about the actual benefits to people and families.
Thanks for this- so much has fallen on Joe Biden's shoulders. I wonder if people appreciate how much difference he has made- that he and his administration are the bulwarks that stand in the way of a potentially irreversible authoritarianism. It's always so much harder to offer hope than to peddle fear.
I love hearing all this positivity about Joe Biden and his very difficult missions on many fronts. It is especially refreshing to hear he's making some progress because I continue to read how his favorability is plummeting. I'm rooting hard for Joe Biden and the Dems to break through and show the country that we can make big differences.
I’m an artist-its a second career for me that grew from my hobby of beadweaving learned as a child. This year, for the first time in more than 30 years, I have struggled to source multiple items such as glass beads and clasps. I had a brief conversation with my best wholesale supplier last June who explained the supply chain issue and bemoaned how much it was affecting his bottom line.
Rohit and his wife are originally from India. Both of them grew up in families that operated wholesale and retail jewelry supply businesses. I found them more than 20 years ago after searching high and low for a company that could say for certain it did not use child labor to finish its materials such as ear wires- a huge problem worldwide and one I’ve tried very hard to avoid.
My business is not even blip compared with the Home Depots of the world but I get how much the Port of Los Angeles’s backlog has affected businesses across this country and how much revenue has been lost by small business- who may need one box from one container that is God knows where either in LA or still sitting offshore.
For those businesses that depend on the supply chain to operate quickly and efficiently- and I’m talking Main Street, not Wall Street- this news is a god send. And while I will eat and have a solid roof over my head whether my jewelry sells or not, I know dozens of artists for whom that is not a given- they need to be able to make enough inventory, sell their wares at art fairs that don’t cancel last minute because of Covid and continue to be able to submit large wholesale orders for materials that arrive in a timely manner. They haven’t had that for several years and some of them are really hurting.
The Biden Administration has done an incredible job of focusing on the dozens of problems caused by COVID. They have had to do a million and one things on every front to fix the former guys’s incompetence and his continuing focus on destroying our democratic Republic. I have a much simpler job- work to get out the vote, and make and sell high-end beadwoven jewelry so I have more money to send to good candidates and organizations. I had two record setting weekends in a row sales wise in September. With today’s news, I’m hoping my wait- and the wait of millions of small businesses like mine- will return to weeks, not months. 2022 is looming….
Tonight's letter demonstrates to perfection our global interconnectedness and the ties that bind us, whether on socio-economic or political levels. It reminds me of the words of the brave and radical journalist Anna Politkovskay who was assassinated in 2006. It's as though she is addressing our blinkered, destructive, and self-centered, right-wing politicians:
“Do you still think the world is vast? That if there is a conflagration in one place it does not have a bearing on another, and that you can sit it out in peace on your veranda admiring your absurd petunias?”
John Adams on George Washington: ‘That Washington was not a scholar is certain. That he was illiterate, unlearned, unread for his station is equally beyond dispute.”
ThomasJefferson on John Adams: “He is distrustful, obstinate, excessively vain, and takes no counsel from anyone.”
James Buchanan on John Quincy Adams: “His disposition is as perverse and mulish as that of his father.”
Thomas Jefferson on Andrew Jackson: “He is the most unfit man I know for such a place…he is a dangerous man.”
Abraham Lincoln on James Polk: “A bewildered, confounded, and miserably perplexed man.”
Woodrow Wilson on Theodore Roosevelt: “He is the most dangerous man of our age. What’s the use of wasting good serviceable indignation on him?”
Theodore Roosevelt on Woodrow Wilson: “A damned Presbyterian hypocrite and a Byzantine logothete….An infernal skunk in the White House.”
Calvin Coolidge on Herbert Hoover: “That man has offered me unsolicited advice for the past six years, all of It bad.”
Lyndon Johnson on Dwight Eisenhower: “I don’t know how many times I pulled that bubbling, brainlack bubblehead’s chestnuts out of the fire and he never thanked me once.”
Lyndon Johnson on John F. Kennedy: “The enviably attractive nephew who sings an Irish ballad for the company and then winsomely disappears before the table clearing and dishwashing begin.”
Dwight Eisenhower on Lyndon Johnson: “He is a small man. He doesn’t have the depth of mind nor the breadth of vision to carry great responsibilities.”
Harry Truman on Richard Nixon: “Richard Nixon is a no-good lying bastard. He can lie out of both sides of his mouth at the same time, and if he ever caught himself telling the truth, he’d lie just to keep his hand in it.”
John F. Kennedy on Nixon: “He is a filthy, lying son of a bitch, and a very dangerous man.”
Lyndon Johnson on Gerald Ford: ‘Jerry Ford is so dumb that he can’t fart and chew gum at the same time.”
Gerald Ford on Jimmy Carter: “Jimmy Carter wants to speak loudly and carry a fly swatter.”
Next time ex-presidents assemble for a state funeral, you might wish to scrutinize the genuineness of their photo-op smiles. The ex-presidents would be prudent to recall John 8:7: “He that is without sin….”
Have a friend that refused to get vaccinated, was depending on strong vitamins, caught covid. Yes despite vitamins. She was suppose to return to work yesterday and had to go for a check up at the hospital. She’s home, on antibiotics, and using an inhaler. She has underlying health issues, as well. I wonder if she still thinks covid is “just a cold.”
With what seems like we’re surrounded by set backs and bad news, your letter gives hope! I know it doesn’t seem popular in Texas, but I love Biden! He had me at shut up during the debates!
Reagan's anti government Big Lie paved the way for Trump's insurrection.
Reagan had political and policy motives. Amplifying anti government sentiments attracted unreconstructed Confederate populists to elect Republicans to serve the unconscionable plutocrats small government agenda. Under the McConnell regime, destroying the institutions of government itself -essentially opting out of the Constitution - gained momentum.
As we consider - and let's face it, judge - the Biden administration, it is good to keep listing its accomplishments. Yes, on policy objectives, but very importantly on restoring and renewing a working government.
There is no substitute for Skill and Experience.I really feel bad for Biden . Not in my life time has our Country been so destabilized. There is a lot of Ppl that read this page and send letters and such to their Congressmen/Women . Might I suggest we send our encouragement and appreciation to President Biden.A little gratitude can go a long way. And it’s clear to me that this is going to be a ‘Up Hill’ for the remainder of 3yrs and 3 months. I’m really enjoying the ‘No Drama ‘. Not to mention my confidence level is higher.Thank you HCR also for helping us to stay grounded when others just want to seek and destroy.
US Americans are still stuck in front of the latest iteration of the tube. Now more than ever. Things never change
Howard Beale monologue from Network, 1976:
Directed by Sidney Lumet. Written by Paddy Chayefsky.
"Edward George Ruddy died today! Edward George Ruddy was the Chairman of the Board of the Union Broadcasting Systems and he died at eleven o'clock this morning of a heart condition, and woe is us, we're in a lot of trouble! So, a rich little man with white hair died. What does that got to do with the price of rice, right? And why is that woe to us? Because you people and sixty-two million other Americans are listening to me right now. Because less than three percent of you people read books! Because less than fifteen percent of you read newspapers! Because the only truth you know is what you get over this tube! Right now, there is a whole, an entire generation that never knew anything that didn't come out of this tube! This tube is the Gospel, the ultimate revelation! This tube can make or break Presidents, Popes, Prime Ministers! This tube is the most awesome goddamn force in the whole godless world! And woe is us if it ever falls into the hands of the wrong people, and that's why woe is us that Edward George Ruddy died! Because this company is now in the hands of CCA, the Communication Corporation of America. There's a new chairman of the board, a man called Frank Hackett sitting in Mr. Ruddy's office on the 20th floor. And when the twelfth largest company in the world controls the most awesome goddamn propaganda force in the whole godless world, who knows what shit will be peddled for truth on this network?! So, you listen to me. Listen to me! Television is not the truth. Television's a goddamned amusement park! Television is a circus, a carnival, a traveling troupe of acrobats, storytellers, dancers, singers, jugglers, sideshow freaks, lion tamers, and football players. We're in the boredom-killing business! So if you want the truth, go to God! Go to your gurus! Go to yourselves! Because that's the only place you're ever gonna find any real truth! But man, you're never gonna get any truth from us. We'll tell you anything you wanna hear. We lie like hell. We'll tell you that, uh, Kojak always gets the killer, and that nobody ever gets cancer at Archie Bunker's house. And no matter how much trouble the hero is in, don't worry, just look at your watch, at the end of the hour he's gonna win. We'll tell you any shit you want to hear. We deal in illusions, man! None of it is true! But you people sit there day after day, night after night, all ages, colors, creeds. We're all you know! You're beginning to believe the illusions we're spinning here! You're beginning to think that the tube is reality and that your own lives are unreal! You do whatever the tube tells you, you dress like the tube, you eat like the tube, you raise your children like the tube. You even think like the tube. This is mass madness, you maniacs! In God's name, you people are the real thing! We are the illusion! So turn off your television sets! Turn them off now! Turn them off right now! Turn them off and leave them off! Turn them off right in the middle of this sentence I am speaking to you now! Turn them off!"
Than stand up, open your window and shout, "I'm mad as he'll and I'm not going to take this anymore!"
So.....this morning I read that tRump is advising rethuglicans to not vote in 2022 or 2024 unless the "fraud of the 2020 election" is cleaned up. I'd like to believe that his base will do just that, clearing the way for getting more Dems into Congress, and more locally.
“Biden is trying to move the country past the partisan battles of the past several years. He is also trying to show Americans Biden is trying to move the country past the partisan battles of the past several years. He is also trying to show Americans that the government is often not the problem, but rather a solution to one.that the government is often not the problem, but rather a solution to one.” Amen, Dr. R.! Amen! This letter of yours gives me hope! Thank you, as always, for your time, research, and letters!
I’m about to begin my third winter reading Heather’s remarkable letters. I haven’t commented often because I usually read these letters first thing, on my phone, in bed, still half asleep. But I’ve been thinking about this long string of morning meetings with Heather. Through those first wintry months of 2019-2020, I found a glimmer of hope in Heather’s lucidity. Rational people would see what she has seen, I thought, and rational people will move forward. Gradually that hope turned into my watching Heather, the brilliant historian, show us how the country had emerged from messes and mistakes in the past. On the best days, Heather showed us how the story might end and how we might move on. During these last weeks, though, I think we’ve taken a third and different turn—not how history helps us see our way out of the present crisis but rather how history sounds alarms—signals that warn us that we are headed into a rat’s nest.
But today’s letter takes history’s long view. So thank you, Heather, for slowing us down.
Mainstream Media seems to be reporting very little of the good things Biden is doing to put government back in the drivers seat of regulating corporations. Mainstream media is all corporate. They want corporations to regulate government and to essentially destroy it. Mainstream media had their most desirable president--one beyond their wildest imagination-- in Donald Trump. He destroyed government and people alike, and mainstream media got very rich selling "news" based on outrage and fear.
I had heard of the minimum global tax of 15% which I hope will be passed by Congress quickly, but I did not know about the Supply Chain Disruption Task Force and Biden's efforts to alleviate that problem. Good for Biden! And thank you, Dr. Richardson.
"But Biden’s push forward is bearing fruit." Seven of the most welcome words I've heard.
The story has been mostly about how effective the Republicans have been at jamming the doors, spilling glue on the floor, and generally gumming up the works. Just to hear that the basic Biden Plan is starting to bear fruit is wonderfully uplifting. Nothing succeeds like success.
If I've heard about the 130-nation minimum tax before, it simply didn't register. That's wonderful news.....
Dr. Richardson is doing a better job of strategic communications with the American public than Democrats. One of the smartest comments I have heard about Democratic messaging lately came recently from Laurence O’Donnell. He said, “Democrats need to stop selling the recipe and start selling the brownies.”
Please Democrats stop talking about the process and start talking about the actual benefits to people and families.
Thanks for this- so much has fallen on Joe Biden's shoulders. I wonder if people appreciate how much difference he has made- that he and his administration are the bulwarks that stand in the way of a potentially irreversible authoritarianism. It's always so much harder to offer hope than to peddle fear.
I love hearing all this positivity about Joe Biden and his very difficult missions on many fronts. It is especially refreshing to hear he's making some progress because I continue to read how his favorability is plummeting. I'm rooting hard for Joe Biden and the Dems to break through and show the country that we can make big differences.
I’m an artist-its a second career for me that grew from my hobby of beadweaving learned as a child. This year, for the first time in more than 30 years, I have struggled to source multiple items such as glass beads and clasps. I had a brief conversation with my best wholesale supplier last June who explained the supply chain issue and bemoaned how much it was affecting his bottom line.
Rohit and his wife are originally from India. Both of them grew up in families that operated wholesale and retail jewelry supply businesses. I found them more than 20 years ago after searching high and low for a company that could say for certain it did not use child labor to finish its materials such as ear wires- a huge problem worldwide and one I’ve tried very hard to avoid.
My business is not even blip compared with the Home Depots of the world but I get how much the Port of Los Angeles’s backlog has affected businesses across this country and how much revenue has been lost by small business- who may need one box from one container that is God knows where either in LA or still sitting offshore.
For those businesses that depend on the supply chain to operate quickly and efficiently- and I’m talking Main Street, not Wall Street- this news is a god send. And while I will eat and have a solid roof over my head whether my jewelry sells or not, I know dozens of artists for whom that is not a given- they need to be able to make enough inventory, sell their wares at art fairs that don’t cancel last minute because of Covid and continue to be able to submit large wholesale orders for materials that arrive in a timely manner. They haven’t had that for several years and some of them are really hurting.
The Biden Administration has done an incredible job of focusing on the dozens of problems caused by COVID. They have had to do a million and one things on every front to fix the former guys’s incompetence and his continuing focus on destroying our democratic Republic. I have a much simpler job- work to get out the vote, and make and sell high-end beadwoven jewelry so I have more money to send to good candidates and organizations. I had two record setting weekends in a row sales wise in September. With today’s news, I’m hoping my wait- and the wait of millions of small businesses like mine- will return to weeks, not months. 2022 is looming….
Dear Heather,
Tonight's letter demonstrates to perfection our global interconnectedness and the ties that bind us, whether on socio-economic or political levels. It reminds me of the words of the brave and radical journalist Anna Politkovskay who was assassinated in 2006. It's as though she is addressing our blinkered, destructive, and self-centered, right-wing politicians:
“Do you still think the world is vast? That if there is a conflagration in one place it does not have a bearing on another, and that you can sit it out in peace on your veranda admiring your absurd petunias?”
What did past presidents think of one another?
John Adams on George Washington: ‘That Washington was not a scholar is certain. That he was illiterate, unlearned, unread for his station is equally beyond dispute.”
ThomasJefferson on John Adams: “He is distrustful, obstinate, excessively vain, and takes no counsel from anyone.”
James Buchanan on John Quincy Adams: “His disposition is as perverse and mulish as that of his father.”
Thomas Jefferson on Andrew Jackson: “He is the most unfit man I know for such a place…he is a dangerous man.”
Abraham Lincoln on James Polk: “A bewildered, confounded, and miserably perplexed man.”
Woodrow Wilson on Theodore Roosevelt: “He is the most dangerous man of our age. What’s the use of wasting good serviceable indignation on him?”
Theodore Roosevelt on Woodrow Wilson: “A damned Presbyterian hypocrite and a Byzantine logothete….An infernal skunk in the White House.”
Calvin Coolidge on Herbert Hoover: “That man has offered me unsolicited advice for the past six years, all of It bad.”
Lyndon Johnson on Dwight Eisenhower: “I don’t know how many times I pulled that bubbling, brainlack bubblehead’s chestnuts out of the fire and he never thanked me once.”
Lyndon Johnson on John F. Kennedy: “The enviably attractive nephew who sings an Irish ballad for the company and then winsomely disappears before the table clearing and dishwashing begin.”
Dwight Eisenhower on Lyndon Johnson: “He is a small man. He doesn’t have the depth of mind nor the breadth of vision to carry great responsibilities.”
Harry Truman on Richard Nixon: “Richard Nixon is a no-good lying bastard. He can lie out of both sides of his mouth at the same time, and if he ever caught himself telling the truth, he’d lie just to keep his hand in it.”
John F. Kennedy on Nixon: “He is a filthy, lying son of a bitch, and a very dangerous man.”
Lyndon Johnson on Gerald Ford: ‘Jerry Ford is so dumb that he can’t fart and chew gum at the same time.”
Gerald Ford on Jimmy Carter: “Jimmy Carter wants to speak loudly and carry a fly swatter.”
Next time ex-presidents assemble for a state funeral, you might wish to scrutinize the genuineness of their photo-op smiles. The ex-presidents would be prudent to recall John 8:7: “He that is without sin….”
Have a friend that refused to get vaccinated, was depending on strong vitamins, caught covid. Yes despite vitamins. She was suppose to return to work yesterday and had to go for a check up at the hospital. She’s home, on antibiotics, and using an inhaler. She has underlying health issues, as well. I wonder if she still thinks covid is “just a cold.”
With what seems like we’re surrounded by set backs and bad news, your letter gives hope! I know it doesn’t seem popular in Texas, but I love Biden! He had me at shut up during the debates!
Thank you Heather!
Reagan's anti government Big Lie paved the way for Trump's insurrection.
Reagan had political and policy motives. Amplifying anti government sentiments attracted unreconstructed Confederate populists to elect Republicans to serve the unconscionable plutocrats small government agenda. Under the McConnell regime, destroying the institutions of government itself -essentially opting out of the Constitution - gained momentum.
As we consider - and let's face it, judge - the Biden administration, it is good to keep listing its accomplishments. Yes, on policy objectives, but very importantly on restoring and renewing a working government.
There is no substitute for Skill and Experience.I really feel bad for Biden . Not in my life time has our Country been so destabilized. There is a lot of Ppl that read this page and send letters and such to their Congressmen/Women . Might I suggest we send our encouragement and appreciation to President Biden.A little gratitude can go a long way. And it’s clear to me that this is going to be a ‘Up Hill’ for the remainder of 3yrs and 3 months. I’m really enjoying the ‘No Drama ‘. Not to mention my confidence level is higher.Thank you HCR also for helping us to stay grounded when others just want to seek and destroy.
US Americans are still stuck in front of the latest iteration of the tube. Now more than ever. Things never change
Howard Beale monologue from Network, 1976:
Directed by Sidney Lumet. Written by Paddy Chayefsky.
"Edward George Ruddy died today! Edward George Ruddy was the Chairman of the Board of the Union Broadcasting Systems and he died at eleven o'clock this morning of a heart condition, and woe is us, we're in a lot of trouble! So, a rich little man with white hair died. What does that got to do with the price of rice, right? And why is that woe to us? Because you people and sixty-two million other Americans are listening to me right now. Because less than three percent of you people read books! Because less than fifteen percent of you read newspapers! Because the only truth you know is what you get over this tube! Right now, there is a whole, an entire generation that never knew anything that didn't come out of this tube! This tube is the Gospel, the ultimate revelation! This tube can make or break Presidents, Popes, Prime Ministers! This tube is the most awesome goddamn force in the whole godless world! And woe is us if it ever falls into the hands of the wrong people, and that's why woe is us that Edward George Ruddy died! Because this company is now in the hands of CCA, the Communication Corporation of America. There's a new chairman of the board, a man called Frank Hackett sitting in Mr. Ruddy's office on the 20th floor. And when the twelfth largest company in the world controls the most awesome goddamn propaganda force in the whole godless world, who knows what shit will be peddled for truth on this network?! So, you listen to me. Listen to me! Television is not the truth. Television's a goddamned amusement park! Television is a circus, a carnival, a traveling troupe of acrobats, storytellers, dancers, singers, jugglers, sideshow freaks, lion tamers, and football players. We're in the boredom-killing business! So if you want the truth, go to God! Go to your gurus! Go to yourselves! Because that's the only place you're ever gonna find any real truth! But man, you're never gonna get any truth from us. We'll tell you anything you wanna hear. We lie like hell. We'll tell you that, uh, Kojak always gets the killer, and that nobody ever gets cancer at Archie Bunker's house. And no matter how much trouble the hero is in, don't worry, just look at your watch, at the end of the hour he's gonna win. We'll tell you any shit you want to hear. We deal in illusions, man! None of it is true! But you people sit there day after day, night after night, all ages, colors, creeds. We're all you know! You're beginning to believe the illusions we're spinning here! You're beginning to think that the tube is reality and that your own lives are unreal! You do whatever the tube tells you, you dress like the tube, you eat like the tube, you raise your children like the tube. You even think like the tube. This is mass madness, you maniacs! In God's name, you people are the real thing! We are the illusion! So turn off your television sets! Turn them off now! Turn them off right now! Turn them off and leave them off! Turn them off right in the middle of this sentence I am speaking to you now! Turn them off!"
Than stand up, open your window and shout, "I'm mad as he'll and I'm not going to take this anymore!"
So.....this morning I read that tRump is advising rethuglicans to not vote in 2022 or 2024 unless the "fraud of the 2020 election" is cleaned up. I'd like to believe that his base will do just that, clearing the way for getting more Dems into Congress, and more locally.
“Biden is trying to move the country past the partisan battles of the past several years. He is also trying to show Americans Biden is trying to move the country past the partisan battles of the past several years. He is also trying to show Americans that the government is often not the problem, but rather a solution to one.that the government is often not the problem, but rather a solution to one.” Amen, Dr. R.! Amen! This letter of yours gives me hope! Thank you, as always, for your time, research, and letters!
I’m about to begin my third winter reading Heather’s remarkable letters. I haven’t commented often because I usually read these letters first thing, on my phone, in bed, still half asleep. But I’ve been thinking about this long string of morning meetings with Heather. Through those first wintry months of 2019-2020, I found a glimmer of hope in Heather’s lucidity. Rational people would see what she has seen, I thought, and rational people will move forward. Gradually that hope turned into my watching Heather, the brilliant historian, show us how the country had emerged from messes and mistakes in the past. On the best days, Heather showed us how the story might end and how we might move on. During these last weeks, though, I think we’ve taken a third and different turn—not how history helps us see our way out of the present crisis but rather how history sounds alarms—signals that warn us that we are headed into a rat’s nest.
But today’s letter takes history’s long view. So thank you, Heather, for slowing us down.
Mainstream Media seems to be reporting very little of the good things Biden is doing to put government back in the drivers seat of regulating corporations. Mainstream media is all corporate. They want corporations to regulate government and to essentially destroy it. Mainstream media had their most desirable president--one beyond their wildest imagination-- in Donald Trump. He destroyed government and people alike, and mainstream media got very rich selling "news" based on outrage and fear.
I had heard of the minimum global tax of 15% which I hope will be passed by Congress quickly, but I did not know about the Supply Chain Disruption Task Force and Biden's efforts to alleviate that problem. Good for Biden! And thank you, Dr. Richardson.
"But Biden’s push forward is bearing fruit." Seven of the most welcome words I've heard.
The story has been mostly about how effective the Republicans have been at jamming the doors, spilling glue on the floor, and generally gumming up the works. Just to hear that the basic Biden Plan is starting to bear fruit is wonderfully uplifting. Nothing succeeds like success.
If I've heard about the 130-nation minimum tax before, it simply didn't register. That's wonderful news.....