Thank you, Bryan Watson. You have created a perfect Rap Sheet. Subscribers who still use Facebook (a criminal enterprise, from my point of view) what to you think of posted it on FB many times a day - as many of you doing so as possible?
It's posted with a brief intro and some modification to reduce the instances of tl;dr. The only comment I've gotten so far is from a Floridian friend and, as you might guess, it was positive but not hopeful in light of that state's senators.
A criminal enterprise that I no longer support, Z is on trump’s payroll or vice versa. Their community standards geared to catch any neg comments about trump. Cult nuts can post all the vitriol they want, and they do.
go for it...but pick the 10-12 who might actually change their vote or be pressured. Join some republican facebook groups in those states if you really want to stir things up and share to those groups. I have a whole list of facebook groups I belong to with different topics that I share things to...usually not politics, but they get shared, viewed and liked. The worst thing that can happen is they shut you down. You post it. I'll share it here...but my reps are all Dems.
Subscribers, Please, You like this idea MAKE IT HAPPEN. I am literally an old anti-Fber. I haven't been on it for years, and I'm not going back. Carry Bryan's Rap Sheet forward. Expose those Republican Senators. They are traitors. Subscribers can be on the front lines by dramatically exposing their actions to suppress the vote and subvert the elections. You can show the people who these traitors are. Cheers!
Great, Steve. You have been working for all of us before now, and I'm thrilled that you are part of this campaign on behalf of easy access to voting for all. Cheers!
Mike there are different ways to do this, which is fine with me. I think one of the ways is to post the entire rape sheet. It makes a very strong impression. It exposes the party as well as the individuals. Continuing to post the Rap Sheet several times a day by a good number of subscribers, day after day -- I like that campaign. If a Senator goes rogue on the Party, they go off the Rap Sheet, but we have to have evidence that they are supporting one or two of the voting Acts before they're released.
Mike, Yes, Do it! I left Facebook many years ago. I wasn't on it long because I thought I could tell what it was growing to be and couldn't get out fast enough.
You elaborate on my idea. You're on FB. I tell you why I smartly left years ago. It is an enemy of democracy. You tell me to go back and work undercover. You're too busy even to encourage the right friends on FB to get it started. Is there anything else you want me to do? Cheers!
Pam, I'm thrilled. Thank you from all the people who want easy access to voting for all. Great, Pam! We'll keep at it to reach many people and gain attention, which highlights these traitors who are acting against free and fair elections.
I’m encouraged, and a little surprised, at the support for my “Name the Villain” comment. And yes, words matter, so changing “the right” to the more personal “my right” or the inclusively personal “our right” would be an improvement.
I had posted this list on my Facebook feed as well. I’m also thinking of a 50-post-long Twitter thread. I’m using #NameTheVillain as primary, with #SayTheirName as secondary - I don’t want to hijack that tag from other BLM uses.
I encourage you to extend the list to include your state legislators and governors who are advancing the #HarderToVote laws.
The messaging behind this is that each Senator is elected one at a time. They are expected to make individual choices and to stand up for those choices. They are not a monolith. I didn’t vote for “the Republicans” or “the Democrats” - I voted for this one Senator, Pat Toomey, or that one Senator, Lisa Murkowski. So we should never let them hide in the crowd - never say “the Republicans did this or that.” Each Senator made a choice and cast a vote, and each Senator must be held to answer for what that vote did. We name Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema every day - why don’t we name Tim Scott or Susan Collins or John Thune, who are just as obstructive as Manchema. If one Republican voted for the bill, Manchin would be irrelevant. If two Republicans voted for the bill, we wouldn’t need Manchema.
As to the name formatting, I chose to use the simple title “Senator” for brevity, simplicity, and clarity. The more elaborate “The Honorable Marco Rubio, U. S. Senator” is too long and, frankly, too formal for this context. And while I have issues with declaring this the act of an honorable person (I frankly believe it’s evidence of dishonor), my real and only concern was brevity.
Thanks for your support of this. Please feel free to adopt it as your own and share freely. And remember these names when election time comes.
An additional note: the list of names does not specify party. That’s intentional. It also doesn’t include Senator Schumer who voted “nay” for procedural reasons.
Also: the list includes names most people have never heard or do not recognize. The junior senator from many states (Alaska, Nebraska, Idaho, Kansas, Wyoming and South Dakota come readily to mind) are unfamiliar names. This list puts a spotlight on what they did, while calling them “the Republicans” lets them slink into the shadowy background. These unknown senators may be the most vulnerable to a bright spotlight and unwelcome notoriety.
Bryan, Shall I ask all subscribers using your #SayTheirName list to contact you with any questions and info about what they are doing, etc. I was very impressed with your work when I saw it in the early morning and commented you when it occurred to me that it would be great for all interested subscribers to post the list on Facebook. Many subscribers replied enthusiastically to the comment, which had been posted to you. I encouraged them to go ahead and post the list on Facebook. As I was a catalyst, subscribers contacted me. I am sorry not to have heard from you and hope my role wasn't problematic. Your list appears to have been a success. I would like to hear from you and know your thoughts. Thanks.
People are welcome to contact me - they can do so here on this comment thread. Your FB suggestion is a good one (as I mentioned, I had originally posted this list on FB just a short while before adding it as a comment here). I encourage people to adopt the list as their own and share it freely. Not a problem at all.
I believe it quite important that this list correctly addresses the members. I expect to be slammed, but I revised my list this way to reflect even more importance as to WHY we are naming these legislators and their failure to represent a clear majority of WE THE PEOPLE in favor of passage of Voting Rights Act.
For instance, I will use my state as example. This is how my list revised from what Bryan Watson graciously took time to list for us.
“The following United States senators are blocking my right to vote and to have my vote counted fairly. They have voted to block even discussion of the Freedom to Vote Act. I implore them to reconsider on behalf of the citizens of the United States of America.”
The Honorable Rick Scott
United States Senator from Florida
The Honorable Marco Rubio
United States Senator from Florida
(or could be listed as US Senator from Florida)
Etcetera.
In this way, for me, it reflects my respect of the office and my given expectation that its current occupant will act in a respectful way to honor the responsibility of the office.
Adhering to "standard and proper" is why Democrats keep losing and Republicans keep winning. The time for standard and proper is in the past, if there ever was one. You're either willing to acknowledge reality and fight for it, or you are busy pretending that civil behavior is how to defeat the evil cancer growing in this country.
Let's fight for reality and human progress! Let's fight to end pointless human suffering that benefits morally bankrupt people who demand we pay them homage.
Bossism doesn't appeal to me. Using Honorable, or not has nothing to do with the failures of the Democratic Party. I read your response as making a mountain out of nothing. Salud.
I've not heard that term. If you are insinuating I am trying to tell you what to do, then no. I am making an informed argument that you people should not refer to dishonorable individuals as honorable. In much the same way I would argue that it's counterproductive to call someone who claims to represent the will of an imaginary deity Reverend. Absolutely not. You have not presented the burden of proof needed for me to render that honorific. Semantics matter. So do our default postures about public life. I do not participate in community delusions and that matters as well.
I cannot imagine why you would be slammed, Christine. Subscriber's are free to tailor the Rap Sheet as they believe most appropriate. If a subscriber is in doubt about how he/she are thinking about making changes, reaching out to the forum would be the way to go. The standard to be observed I think is to be respectful -- stick to the facts. It would be natural to receive negative feedback from the 'base'. As long as we keep our communications simple, factual, respectful and not inflammatory, we will honor the role of an engaged citizenry.
Christine, I like your version, but being from MA, I can’t use it. Just letting the #saytheirnames group know that they are being watched and named is important.
I do want to clarify that the list, with the revision in regards to addressing the office of. IS Senator, included ALL the names of senators that Bryan listed originally, not just the two FL senators. This list has been sent to several outlets and to people that have posted on FB and their PAC sites.
Thank you again Bryan for original list. #Say their names.
Calling them out stands the out naked to the world. But! They really do not care and their places in Congress most likely will not change. I have seen the enemy, and there they are.
Yes, BRYAN WATSON: and the Republicans are blocking the right to speak, to talk, to use the congress to debate and educate, the subject, THE RIGHT TO VOTE is OFF Limits. And, what is this about?
Say it, say it, say it.
COLOR.
The Art of Losing Isn’t Hard to Master. Elizabeth Bishop’s most famous!
We are losing our democracy, The Civil War is not over.
Mixed race President Barack H. OBAMA caused this: HE WON TWICE!
Sandy, this is our messaging. Democrats need to amplify that Senate Republicans are turning down the issue being voted on. They’re refusing to do their job and even look at a piece of legislation. They’re abdicating their congressional duties. It’s the same in the House. They consistently make a move to adjourn instead of working. They want to take taxpayer dollars a live in luxury while taking no action to care for the American people. The only people benefiting are the wealthy and there are less of them than hard working people.
Sandy, it's not "color" it's POWER. It's always about power with the GOP. They couldn't give a flying f*ck about the color of your skin.
Everything has come to plan for them. They are setting the table for trump and every other GOP member to rule , certainly for the rest of our lives and generations to come.
Sandy, that poem is beautiful. Thanks for sharing it. I don’t always agree with (or even understand) your posts, but I absolutely defend your right to make them.
So do I, Kathy, and my opinion was that the Elizabeth Bishop poem was not appropriate for children. In addition, I encouraged Sandy to post Bryan's Rap Sheet on FB. Sandy replied with a like to me about posting the Rape Sheet on FB.
Enough negative spiel out of you. Post that Rap Sheet on Facebook that Bryan composed. Act by exposing the traitors against fair and free elections by posting the Rap Sheet, Sandy.
Thank you Bryan. I posted it on my wall and in one of my groups.
Here’s my intro: Today, October 21, 2021 every GOP member of Congress voted to block our right to vote. They voted to let partisan state legislatures decide if MY vote or YOUR vote is valid based on partisan rules.
This is great. I would consider using the word “our” instead of “the”. We’re all in this together. Denying one person’s rights matters to all of us and it is personal. Words matter.
It is pretty simple to send this list to the Senators on here, or at least to the ones who should have been stronger. Just google the Senator you want to send this to, and one of the first links that comes up will make it easy to send it to the senator. I simply expressed my disappointment in their voting to make our right to vote more difficult to exercise.
Great Carol! You are working on behalf of everyone who wants easy access to voting for all. Thank you. I hope you will post the Rap Sheet later and tomorrow, too.
This is enough and more than enough. Pass a rules change now to allow measures dealing with voting rights to bypass the filibuster. Also reform the filibuster for all other legislation not already exempted to restore the talking filibuster and require 41 votes at any time requested by a member to continue debate. This forces the minority to be in attendance and holding the floor with reasonable debate to block legislation.
Yes, there are ways to change the filibuster without deleting it, although I am in favor of that. Hopefully even Manchin can see this. He has to remain a Democrat, even if many are angry with him, or we will have Mitch as the Speaker.Not sure I would trust him as n Independent. If Angus King is ready to change the filibuster, there is some hope.
Mitch the Merciless is in the Senate. You can bet he’d never go backward, rub elbows with the peasants in the House. Therefore, fairly conclusive evidence …
One thing that's clear to me that I don't think is getting enough (any?) press is the idea of moderate Republicans. Susan Collins and Mitt Romney sure reaped a lot of press when the former president was around, but where are they now? Voting in lock-step with Mitch and his minions. Where is the character? Who in that cult will stand up at a 90-degree angle and show us their profile in courage? You know the answer.
You're right. "Moderate" is misleading. Actions speak louder than words, and votes against democratic process are destructively reactionary. "Republican" now means anti-democratic, with disregard for the will of the majority of the people--outright contempt for the people. Republicans answer to PAC dollars waved as tickets to power-tripping and self-aggrandizement.
I don't give Republicans credit for thinking it through, and if asked, "Are you pro-authoritarian?" who would answer "yes."
As HCR traces the history of the Republican Party, McCarthy started the factless accusations, Gingrich tutored Republican members of Congress to use a set of buzz words attacking Democrats, McConnell legislates by "just say no" obstructionism, and trump amped up Republican victim-rage to stand in for policy and reason.
And our democracy has always been plagued by a moneyed faction of privilege gaming the system to gain and retain power, more money, and more privilege. Once upon a time they holed up in the Democratic Party. Then they switched to the Republican Party.
Ellie, Give it another thought. I cannot cull the multitude of sources, think tanks, political-pacs, books (Dark Money, Democracy in Chains, just a couple among others) studies and articles to provide you with a concise history, which may begun, in this latest cycle, in the late '70's or early '80's. Organizing the money and clout to seize local, state and national apparatuses as a means to control governmental functions, the courts; legislative bodies; elected representatives and policies is their mode of operation. That has been their strength, unlike the Democratic Party. Right-wing conservatives and libertarians have thought this through and been organized. Trump was a tool and now, perhaps, both a tool and an obstacle.
I was meaning, who has thought through a path to a goal of authoritarianism per se. The all too plentiful sinister thought to gaming the system to gain power and money is laid out in your multitude of sources. The strategists have spent lots of time and effort to exploit the cracks in the system and to use emotionalized messaging that requires no thought, just reactivity.
'The strategists have spent lots of time and effort to exploit the cracks in the system and to use emotionalized messaging that requires no thought, just reactivity.'
Well into the long nights, even after we had sobered up, did we continue to debate while history marked our grave with a footnote:'Twas a grand idea, that thing they called freedom.
Cracks that have shown up especially now when politicians have ceased being civil or are determined to keep the power and money in the hands of white people.
It's like a private club - only they want to dominate the whole field so anyone who does not buy into their game and play by their rules has no option but to surrender or die - yet they cry foul when anyone protests or supports alternative agendas ... so, if you don't like it, you can lump it - or prepare to be run like cattle down the chute into prison, psych units for the "mentally ill", global "big box" sex trafficking industries, or the front line in the latest war to be blown away. I am so great-full I did not bring a child into this sick, twisted world ....
Collins always votes with the majority so it doesn't matter what she says about anything. Romney hasn't changed his status as scum since 2012, he just looks better compared to the guy who came along and made his 1,420 lies in the whole campaign (a record at the time) look like nothing. Murkowski even claimed to work with Manchin to find the 10 Republians.
It's only more true today than it was when President Truman said it back in 1948: "The only 'good Republicans' are pushing up daisies."
HST knew them, so did Adlei Stevenson, “… if they will stop telling lies about Democrats, we will stop telling the truth about them.” Then there is the attempted coup of 1933 (Google Gen. Smedley Butler)
"Smedley Butler and the 1930s Plot to Overthrow the President:"
"Quickly becoming known as the “White House Coup” and “Wall Street Putsch,” many major news sources derided Butler’s claims, as the committee’s final report was not made available publicly. Those implicated, ranging from the DuPont family to Prescott Bush, the grandfather of future President George W. Bush, laughed off Butler’s claims. Evidence of the validity of Butler’s testimony was not released until the 21st century, when the committee’s papers were published in the Public Domain. No one was ever prosecuted in connection to the plot."
Yes! Murkowski, too. I knew there was at least another. And here's one other thing, why is it all these people in these states are voting (for the time being) for these persons who are actively against their own interests? I've read the book, "What's the Matter with Kansas?", but I just can't wrap my mind around it on such existential things like the actual right to vote, access to healthcare, the climate, etc. It boggles the mind to a numbing resignation.
Those are 2 who need to be pressured in their own states. That's where it matters most. Join Republican facebook groups in those states and speak out...see if you get traction
Olympia Snowe was moderate and got out before the circus showed up. Susan Collins has NEVER been moderate, she just speaks out of both sides of her mouth and hopes to fool the masses, which she has done! Mitt Romney might have been appeared moderate so that he could win in MA but definitely drifts which ever way the prevailing wind is blowing
Collins (now in her fifth senate term) campaigned the first time on a promise to self-limit her senate career to two terms. Lying bi--- er, Witch, comes to mind thinking of her. From the get-go.
Right? And because I have no doubt that she fully understood this historical fact way back then (1997), I feel confident that it was her forked tongue speaking even then: “I found that Maine very rarely votes out an incumbent.”
And in our CD2 with the exception of using Ranked Choice Voting to successfully unseat incumbent, Trumplican-light Representative Poliquin the last time an incumbent was voted out was 1916.
Four times a week, for my work as a truck driver, I get to drive through Kevin McCarthy’s district. And Devin Nunes’s district. And most of the residual Republican districts in California, there aren’t many left. That includes Katie Hill’s district, which flipped back to red. 43% white, that’s why it’s on the fence between blue and red, the blue outweighs the red but there’s enough red left, barely, to compete.
Wow! Roland! That sounds like an opportunity 😁we need to get you two big banners. One for each side. Hmmm?
How about STOP THE LIES! And TURN OFF FOX! 🤩 Maybe a sound cruiser for Katie Hill’s district? That was a painful loss. How did that ever happen? Nothing like a handsome truck driver to draw attention 😁
As a constituent, I phoned the Bangor office of Sen. Susan Collins (R, Maine) about her opposition to the voting bill. As expected, the young GOP automaton, rattled off a hash of half truths. The message was 'Be afraid, be very afraid, Democrats are going to destroy Maine's voting laws.' He didn't even know Maine's voting laws.
Here is the irony. Or the height of Collins' hypocrisy. The proposed legislation has low bar national minimum requirements. Maine has some of the most progressive voting laws in the nation - weeks of early voting, same day registration, no voter ID, absentee ballots, mail in ballots, drop boxes, ballots counted after election day, clean election campaign options, voting while in prison *and* Ranked Choice Voting. We also split our Electoral College votes. We have just joined a consortium of states sharing electronic records to keep the registration data up to date. In fact, it's said that our state motto DIRIGO (we lead) refers to our progressive voting laws. We also lead in voter participation.(I think often 3rd in the nation.)
Republicans claim that voters' rights protections and high voter turnout means Republican candidates won't ever get elected. Sadly, Collins disproves their assertions.
The big lie isn’t the only one republicans tell. Just got a fund-raising letter from Kay Granger in Texas. Such a load of crap I have rarely seen. I’m an old retired counselor Democrat and resemble not at all the evil democrat described in that letter. However, it did describe congressional republicans
You are the folks who can really pressure her. She has to FEEL the heat. If she doesn't come around organize a movement to change enough registrations to R for her next primary and vote for someone else. Defeat her in the primary. All's fair...
Golly Gee, now why didn't we think of that? Easy peasy.
First let me dismiss your "all's fair" trivialization of dirty tricks politics. The point *is* to play fair and smart. Better to be Stacey Abrams than Roger Stone.
Collins wraps herself in the courageous Margaret Chase Smith's mantle. Collins is in fact a craven Mitch McConnell in skirts.
Collins is in the catbird seat. She steps out of lock step GOP party line barely enough to appear bipartisan but not enough to attract Republican ire. She is coy and calculating to a degree which is cringeworthy but works for her.
Despite her 'civility in politics' brand, Collins is very nasty. She once let loose on me outside her DC office, screaming so loudly that traffic stopped and heads swiveled in the halls of Congress - all for a very mildly stated request (when will we see Trump's tax returns?)
She's brushed off GOP primary challengers and eaten her Democratic opponents for breakfast and then eaten their lunch.
We've elected Angus King, Chellie Pingree, and Jared Golden to Congress, elected Janet Mills and a slew of state representatives. And yet Susan Collins persists. It says how labile the electorate is. In 2022 do we hold on or does it all fall apart? Keep watching the skies.
Thanks for your local observation. When I say "all's fair" I don't mean "dirty"...I mean use the rules and the playing field to your advantage. We had a Dem State Senator here in Baltimore who felt very comfortable in her seat. She was chair of the environmental & education committee, but would not allow anti-fracking bills to come out of her committee. She stone walled and did a great smoke & mirrors routine. We organized and worked around her to ban fracking. It took a lot of work, but we did it. Then we focused on her and beat her in the primary. I'm not saying this is easy, but I know from experience, the seemingly impossible can be achieved in politics. Don't give up.
You wrote "organize a movement to change enough registrations to R for her next primary and vote for someone else. Defeat her in the primary. All's fair..."
It may be "by the rules but that is a dirty trick to use the rules to undermine fair play.
Georgia elected Warnock and Ossoff by fair play - it is possible.
Maine has Ranked Choice Voting - Collins had the votes.
If she's "untouchable" or un-moveable then it's a waste of time even talking about her. We need targets that we can affect don't we ? That's why I said initially target the 10-11 R Senators we have a chance with.
I'm sorry, I should not even have mentioned that lousy example, that mouth or the bacward street kid's verbiage that comes out from it.
The crimes we face are not "sad", they are not "depressing" unless we are so world-weary that we're only half alive.
I am not "saddened", I am REVOLTED. And hard put to express my indignation at the filth we have to put up with, filth uttered by those who would rule over you and me. Would-be lords and masters who have thrown away the key to their own conscience.
We have a big problem, in that the sight, the sound, the stink, the touch, the very thought of evil can stain innocent victims and even befoul the beholder.
We need to turn our minds to building the bright world we want to see and get on with doing away with the barricades erected against the service of people and country.
Wowza!! You go girl!! I hear you!! Yup. As the Met Council on Housing used to say of landlords 'they're not the lords of the land, they're the scum of the earth.'
You are so kind to say Repubs have consciences. It does not seem to be standard issue on all human models.
Exactly. Those who choose to let Trump drive them out of their native language and start another do have that option. I have no intention of walking on eggshells, and as shown above, I am fine quoting another person who isn't walking on egshells either.
I wish I understood what you've just said. I wasn't walking on eggshells, I was dancing on them, no doubt because of my wretched professional hangups. I'm a wordsmith, and now it's I who feel I'm being driven out of my native language -- not by that unmentionable creep, I'm trying to reclaim and redeem a word YOU and too many others have been misusing.
Well, kinda reminds me of Trump who has the irritating habit of saying everything twice, as if it added credibility (like shouting in all caps), and presuming his is the only voice that matters and all around him should walk on eggshells. If someone actually feels, sad, he presumes they need his permission to say it or feel it because it is not what he feels. Good grief.
Hancock County Democratic Committee volunteers worked really hard to elect Gideon. Many of us almost full time. I made tens of thousands of phone calls. My sense of Collins win was: voter inertia (oh we always vote for her; buying into her 'bipartisan moderate' brand (more PR packaging than truth); pork barrels rolling into Maine (both candidates had equally obscene amounts of campaign money); good constituent services; and seniority (even the otherwise astute Bangor Daily News bought that one.) Also there was residual resentment that Gideon was more anointed by the party than selected by voters.
Incumbency, incumbency. That and being polished at the art of politicking. Susan brings home the pork to her constituents and knows perfectly how to flaunt that pork in the 2 months preceding an election. And I know people don’t like to hear it but Maine is a state where it matters if you’re a hometown gal and that Susan was and her competitor wasn’t. That mattered a lot more than people want to admit. “You can’t understand us, if you’re not from here”. There may not be “good” reasons but there are plenty of reasons why Suzy got the prize.
One person commenting on current events yesterday spoke of what she called "human nature" (and I'd call the built-in flaws of human nature). Things like ignorance, cruelty, selfish greed, the lust for money and power.
I countered that the relative proportions of these things vary, in persons, countries, historical periods.
Some, for instance, focus exclusively on amassing wealth (and the cruelty this may entail, the political power too, are secondary) while for others, power is the prime motivation.
We tend to neglect motives that were of central importance to our predecessors until very recently and still are important in other cultures. One cause of incompetence in our management of foreign affairs.
A crucial factor in 17th and 18th century European societies was honor, and consequently, one's word of honor. At the very least, appearances of honorability... The drafters of the Constitution could not have conceived of a society like ours, in which there's no longer even honor among thieves (omertà depending only on terror).
Consequently, the constitutional compact has become meaningless in a society that no longer has any idea of what honor means and in which truth itself has been undermined, both deliberately, by abusers of power, and as a consequence of the sudden upsurge of "virtual reality", a new cuckoo in our nest.
I am struck -- thunderstruck -- by the blindness of Americans to what is upon them NOW -- and therefore about to fall on all heads everywhere. Either too busy on the treadmill to be able to think anything through or passive-aggressive ruminants with colic, tethered to a telescreen...
Zuckerberg's plans are potentially more disastrous even than McConnell's. Fbook needs to be taken down -- but above all Z and his archetypal "mad scientists" with their "Metaverse" must be stopped Urgently.
What an obscene mess.
It feels as though our civilization has died -- as every civilization must -- but hasn't yet understood that it is dead and in chaotic transition to... something else...
Supposing this were so -- hard for us to get our minds around around the agony and passing of what's so much more long-lasting than ourselves -- ours is a time when bold determination must transcend fear. Our responsibility as human beings could hardly be greater than it is now.
Thunderstruck is an apt term, Peter. My take, however, is that Americans aren't as blind as we think. Most Republican politicians who maintain that the election was stolen from Trump in privately acknowledge that Biden did indeed win. It's political posturing, plain and simple. My guess is that most Americans, in their heart of hearts, know Trump lost. Republicans have come to accept that the only way they can win is to cheat. In the meantime, we wait and wait and wait for our better angels to emerge and accept the actual truth. Unfortunately, those angels flew the coop when Trump was elected in 2016.
I get a bitter laugh from your angels fly/fleeing(?) the coop. Somehow reminds me of Malcolm X's apt phrase about "chickens coming in to roost" that so shocked me at a time when I thought I was already shocked enough.
I doubt if this transcription of a fragment written about thirty years ago is going to work, but let's see:
then we drew a hundredthousand blank checks on heaven and miscellaneous graffiti
almost all in English
pointed rude fingers
took potshots [just commies just a rabs]
upwards
any angels there might have been flew out of range
You can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make him drink. And it’s true. In 1990, when i heard some public person say, “Lead, follow, or get out of the way!” I tried leading, which didn’t work, couldn’t follow, so got out of the way.
I kept out of the way for much of my life, Susan. Just watching. (I've done some activism, but it just isn't my thing.) I've made an end to fence sitting but mean simply to be myself, which means some following when I know it's right.
However, there's something missing from your public personage's somewhat brusque injunction.
There are those who get up front and lead, there are those who follow, but there's a third, maybe more subtle function. Maybe you can call it "mediator". This one's in the middle of the group and has the peculiarity of relating to everyone in it, regardless of differences and affinities.
The basis might be knowing what's going on. Listening, attending to what people are doing and saying, taking it all in. Not judging -- or at the very least suspending comment and judgment. When you get to know people and they know that you know, they're less likely to try to fool you. It can make for respect.
I tend to be skeptical when women put themselves down. So often the outcome of conditioning. Told "You're like this..." and coming to believe what they've been told. Yet, put-downs tell plenty about the person who makes them rather than the one who's being targeted.
Maybe I'm more with you than you think, Jim. I'm all for "biting back" hard. If we are responsible citizens, we have to do just that.
It's just that, for me, and no doubt for others, this business of viewing current events in the context of history (and vice versa) is not just thought-provoking, it leads me to headache-provoking contemplation of vast issues of change and stasis, continuity, discontinuities, notions of "progress" and their consequences...
How could it be otherwise when most urban human beings in advanced countries have been disconnecting from the rhythms of the seasons, quite unable to keep up with accelerating change and, for most of the past sixty or seventy years, we've been resisting change only after it has already happened?
Let's leave such absurdities as "stopping" or reversing change to the grotesques who have hijacked the Republican Party. What's for certain is that adapting to and making the best of the state we are now in is going to be immensely demanding -- especially when it comes to AI and contamination by pseudo-realities. With luck we may, by dint of determined persistence, build up a grand remnant like the Byzantine Empire or a great pocket of resistance like the Venetian Republic.
I certainly agree, Peter. I have been so overwhelmed that I adopt a manic positive mantra like “Buck up!” to quell all the other voices in my head. I know way less than most of the responders to this column about politics and current events and have been a passive adapter to change as well. Headaches everywhere, grotesques a-plenty, and yet, something makes me keep grasping for the last ounce of hope.
I’m in awe of your thinking and wonder where you place the demand of adapting to AI & pseudo-realities on a scale in comparison to adapting to the effects of global warming 🤷🏻♀️
Thanks, Christy. I fear I’m trying to say too much, over 80 and trying to open my mouth while I still can after watching from the wings all my life. Anxiety—because we have reached a turning point, perhaps THE turning point in human history—and hoping to network with people, exchange ideas and put them to the test.
But you’re asking far too much of me—I am not a polymath. All I can say is that the climate issue is primordial. It is of a different order to any other question, while so much current activity in the world is not only intrinsically irrelevant but raving mad, and diametrically opposed to the needs of the time. Mass psychosis is complicating and confusing all attempts to cope with current threats, and those we face now, however serious, are almost certainly minor compared to those to come.
So, all that we do or don’t do—obviously including every kind of innovation—must surely be considered in the light of this overarching imperative.
Can we pause here and continue the discussion tomorrow—or later? I don’t think this is the kind of question anyone can tackle off the top of their head… and it’s way past my bedtime. It is, however, highly relevant to issues under discussion in this thread; but context rather than detail.
I’m getting a little fed up with drafting comments directly on this website… which disappear when I’m on the point of sending them. Enough to make one wonder if I’m not being hacked.
I just wrote something in response to the part of your question that concerns AI and what I called “pseudo-realities”. Here’s the substance.
An extreme case. I cannot find an adjective for such extravagant stupidity...
We do face great risks owing to very short-term views—often simply the outcome of fascination with doing something that technology lets us do, without the least concern for the effects of that action in terms of ANY timescale—against a background of a lazy belief that “everything will work out in the long term”.
People like these so-called philosophers need to be locked up and harnessed to some kind of intellectual treadmill that will provide community service. That, or a well-padded cell.
I’m particularly struck by the phrase she cites about consciousness being like a wind. “You can’t see it but you can see its impact.” Reminds me of John 3:8. Or of this:
“You hear the wind blowing in the sky
only when it touches something.”
Emperor Meiji
Or again:
“What is the Heart?
It can feel the sound of the wind in a pine tree calligraphy.
Not seeing—feeling.”
You’ll have guessed it already. My general position is reactionary: deeply skeptical of what I regard as irrelevant techno-tinkering, the attempts to build the ultimate Tower of Babel—artificial intelligence—on foundations of quicksands, natural ignorance and stupidity. This, before exploring and developing what’s innate. Investing in… exploration of the galaxy… when we don’t know ourselves, when western psychology is still so backward in relation to the natural sciences. Even after the very necessary progress of the past quarter century.
“Not ignorance, but ignorance of ignorance, is the death of knowledge.”
I don’t have the time I need to fully read this at this moment but am grateful for your reply plan to spend some time on it. I do want you to know when I’m on my phone my comments disappear all the time. I think my screen is super touchy and I accidentally touch it in a specific place and everything disappears.
Pretty sure no one is going to take the time to censor my comments.
"A crucial factor in 17th and 18th century European societies was honor, and consequently, one's word of honor. "
Note, in the 17th Century, London Tower was a prison where people, exclusively of the lower classes, were routinely tortured to death without any hint of due process.
In fact, John Adams knowledge of England's legal problems led directly to our current legal system which, although mostly resulting in locking up black people of the lower classes, most of them are no longer (they used to be) tortured to death.
And, if you are white in the US, you actually get a trial by jury.
So, I am not so sure about "honor" in Europe. John Adams spent many years thinking about how to avoid the trapdoors of England's class system before he wrote the MA Constitution which basically set the outline for the US Constitution.
Mike, you're interpreting history in terms of today's views and prejudices.
I never said anything about the cruel, absurd and hypocritical contradictions and paradoxes of English or any other European society in the 17th and 18th centuries (all of which are, alas, part of the current American continuum despite the safeguards of the Constitution and John Adams' nobler efforts). And it simply is not true that injustice and cruelty were exclusively visited on "the lower orders" -- Acts of Attainder, in effect the judicial murder of VIPs, were passed by Parliament, both at the behest of and despite monarchs.
The fact remains that "honor" was a central tenet of society both in Europe and in the early American Republic. Consider only the many duels seconded by Alexander Hamilton and his death at the hands of Aaron Burr, dueling over an affair of political honor.
As for Andrew Jackson, the president most admired by the last man to hold presidential office, no one seems to know how many duels that man fought. Maybe it is Jackson's example that led your former president to claim that he could get away with shooting someone in the middle of 5th avenue... and his lawyer's claim that, during his term of office he could actually get away with doing just that...
Thank you, Kathleen, for posting this. May many discover Joanna Macy speaking her inspiration, her total commitment, her passion. Mine too. With this difference: she enunciates clearly and roundly the inchoate confidence that is mine despite and beyond the pessimism that comes of seeing what we have to see, even transforming it into a bright vision of perfection.
A vision very different from our society’s untested, unexplored belief that we are “free” and have freedom of choice, when we don’t even know what freedom means or the nature of choice, our blind faith in a fetish we call “progress”, our belief that we are the agents of progress.
Thank you, Jeri. I didn't know of this book, but the idea is good. And the title fits "The Land of the Free" rather too uncomfortably.
I've deliberately spent much time in Germany, with German friends. It wasn't always easy for me -- or for them. My friends are thoughtful, highly responsible people, sometimes ahead of our time. I hope I have learned from them.
Conformism and complacent beliefs are surrogates; they are a threat to survival. Nothing could be more demanding than real freedom, but free men are far rarer than we like to think. I try to free myself, but I'm under no illusions about this. Maybe just a little freer in my attitude to all the junk I'm still carrying around -- like the tin cans they attach to the cars of newly married couples. Only, those are a better joke...
I can only read here at the wee hours of the morning, but i haven ‘t finished mining it and Dr. Richardson’s next appears! I’m so lucky to read all your comments.
“… Omertà implies "the categorical prohibition of cooperation with state authorities or reliance on its services, even when one has been victim of a crime."[5] A person should absolutely avoid interfering in the business of others and should not inform the authorities of a crime under any circumstances, but if it is justified, he may personally avenge a physical attack on himself or on his family by vendetta, literally a taking of revenge, a feud. …”
Wow ... that seems to be the guiding cultural ethic on the ground ... dare not be a snitch/fink/whistleblower at cost of great retribution - so victims of 'circumstance' can go to 12 step meetings, 'let go and let god', but dare not turn to government for support ....
I read this and am struck once again, Heather, by your calm and measured writing voice. I am so put out with the elected federal level GOP's shenanigans that I cannot see straight. Your tone, Heather, helps me keep from screaming in outrage and scaring the dog.
Thank you J. L. (if I may)_ You have gotten to the core of what is so special about Heather's writing---she is calm and measured about things that must stir her up as much as they often do her readers. That is the key to what makes these daily reads so crucial. A calm voice in the midst of an increasing storm of unknown proportions. Thanks for pointing that out. And now on with the work that needs to be done.
It's the voice of an historian...not a "news" person. It's about research & facts, with educated perspective, not drama of the day. This is the best forum I've seen....and yes, we all need to do the work, out there.
Interesting. The first private review of it that I read says it has a 70 page index. I am planning on having an extensive index as well. Other than that, the intent and approach is different than mine. Perec appears to be describing and cataloguing the human condition. A worthy project, hence the honors and accolades. My story project is a “sci-fi” story of its own that includes a magical book called Life: A Field Manual. Each of the human characters is gifted one of these magical books, and it is custom designed for that human individual. So Perec’s book and my magical book with the similar title serve a similar purpose: to guide and educate.
When my book and movie script comes out, if that ever happens, you will see the similarities between the two books, but also some significant differences.
Indeed, it is an ability I don’t have, having watched and gnashed my teeth over for most of my long life. One step forward, five back. And it’s not just the federal level “GOP.” The rank and file are giddy with anticipation of permanent political power. Haven’t you heard Karl Rove and Hugh Hewitt opine about such since way before trump. Machiavelli rules. My cats are perpetually on edge…
Sorry to hear about your edgy cats...the entire reason Fox "News" came into existence was because Roger Ailes understood how to use TV propaganda and Murdock could finance it. Ailes was a part of Reagans success...so he knew how to write and produce for actors in front of cameras. Add Rush Limbaugh...stir and mix and here we are.
Republicans - as a herd - continue to put party power over country. I’ve rarely been so spitting mad at my country. Refusing to even deliberate is NOT governing. I write to Reps and Senators, but basically feel helpless. Democrats in Congress need to stop being Charlie Brown and letting Republicans play Lucy with the football. 😡😢
I totally agree. I am losing my mind over this debacle. I am so very, very tired of the Republicans blocking every good thing the democrats are trying to do. I am furious at Sinema and Manchin for enabling them. I am terrified that the Democrats will lose the House and the Senate in 2022 and we will all be back where we were before we all voted Trump and his ilk out of office. How in the world do they continue to wield such power???
Early tonight for you, Dr. R. Thank you! I hope you get some good rest tonight!
Thank you for more insight and history, Dr. R. It looks to me as if almost all the Republicans in the House and the Senate want only to follow rules they will make up. They all took an oath to support and defend the Constitution. And they are all breaking their oaths. Some of them could be rightly accused of sedition. They are disgusting and dangerous.
Actually Suzette, from an "originalist" viewpoint, they are defending the Constitution that favors wealthy white male landowners (in a land they have no right to own, buy or sell, by the way,) denies full human worth to people of color, has no role for women other than servitude in marriage and justifies murder, rape and robbery toward all who oppose it's rule. Any changes to that paradigm are attributed to wayward souls who must be suppressed.
Exactly. Originalists perpetuate the Founders' injustices while ignoring their radical call for equal justice - and their invitation to make progress on civil rights by amending the Constitution, revising legislation, and overturning decisions.
Jamie Raskin did a marvelous job on Gaetz and Jordan. It was quite a pleasure to watch. It's a shame his mother, who I knew, is not around to see how far he's come.
He was outstanding during the impeachment trial too. I still cannot get over Dershowitz getting away with those lies. Dershowitz: Not quid pro quo if president 'does something that he believes will help him get elected in the public interest'
So, Manchin was stalling, deliberately running out the clock? I believe in the rule of law, and in Procedure, but when one group is using every cheat anybody ever thought of, & the other is scrupulously playing by the rules something is going to break somewhere, and I worry that it’s going to be our democracy.
It has been broke. One example, among many, is the Supreme Court. Time Magazine printed an article about how the Republicans have packed the court. I could not open it
because I am passed my free limit. I hope that you are able to. Links to articles on this subject are below:
Thank you FERN, I was able to open the "Spotlight Story" in TIME authored by Jackie Calmes outlining "Republican's ruthless success in the judicial wars ...." "Republicans have stocked the federal bench at all levels with conservatives who share the right's support for whacking at the wall between church & sate & at the powers of federal regulatory agencies, banning abortion & expanding gun rights." I would add that the "judicial wars " are not limited to those four (4) types of federal cases or bedrock U.S. constitutional law.
Bryan, Thank you. Can you link the article here? Some subscribers will be able to open it. If you don't mind, copy a few informative lines from it above the link. This is very enjoyable teamwork! Thanks, again.
Bryan, Terrific, thanks. I cannot open it, but subscribers try the link that Bryan posted. If you can open it, it will tell you how the Republican Party has been packing the courts.
I am very confused. I might be off base in my thinking. Could someone or a few someones help me out here?
From what I understand, we're stuck with the filibuster because certain Democrats don't want to do away with it since democrats may want to use it when Republicans are the majority. Can Democrats vote to alter or do away with the filibuster with no support from Republicans? If the Dems. can, then Republicans will be able to do it once they are the majority. I'm pretty sure that as soon as they get the opportunity, they will vote to do away with it, so the Democrats are unable to take advantage of it.
Do I not understand something? Am I way off base? If I am correct, why do the few Dems. who are against any changes in the filibuster not see the logic of eliminating it now before it bites us in the butt.
The problem is that there are two Democratic Senators who -- for reasons suspected but unproven -- are not acting like Democrats. In fact, they might as well not be Democrats at all.
manchin and Sinema are from red states and all they care about is getting reelected, or trading their votes for a some pork. these two are the acid test for the old saw, 'there is no such thing as bad publicity.'
I understand that right now there are two senators that won't vote for changes to the filibuster. I think what I'm asking is if it would be possible for just 50 senators, and the vice president, to change the filibuster or could the remaining senators filibuster a change to the filibuster. Sinema once stated that she didn't want to get rid of the filibuster because the Democrats would need it when the Republicans came back into power. But that argument, in my mind, doesn't hold water because if the Republicans thought the Democrats would filibuster they'd have no problem at all getting rid of it instantly as soon as they took power of the Senate. I'm just wondering that if the situation we're such that all 50 Democrats wanted to get rid of the filibuster, would they be able to do it on their own.
Spot on, Wendy ... maybe those few Dems are not really Dems - or maybe the 2 party system is outmoded ... maybe the coming clash of partisan interest groups will give rise to a more just, equitable consensus oriented form of government ...?
It is far worse than you are stating -- if the filibuster rule isn't modified for voting rights it's because of two senators who had 1,484,510 votes COMBINED to earn their positions, which is fewer than 1% of the number of 2020 voters. The combined populations of West Virgina (1.8 million) and Arizona (7.9 million) is less than that of Los Angeles County. So it is NOT Senators representing 21% of the country that will block voting rights and turn this into one party rule, it's two Senators representing less than 3% of the country.
I've been reading Caro's LBJ biographies. (I was born in 1980, so it is all new to me.) The similarities are distressing; we have made so little progress on voting in 50 years. And the filibuster was at the heart of it then, too. What on earth is it going to take?
There is no bill more important than the "Freedom to Vote Act". None. With minority GQP rule every positive step to fight the Climate Crisis will be crushed. The rich will get richer. The poor will get poorer. There will be too much water and not enough to drink (unless you are rich and sipping your Fiji water on your yacht).
Whites will continue to dominate society at every level. So will men. People other than whites, men, and straights will continue to be persecuted and suppressed. Democracy will be eviscerated to make that permanent.
1) I wonder if Joe Manchin is "surprised" that the Republicans are blocking the voting rights legislation that he deliberately watered down because he insisted that he could find 10 Republican Senators to support it? I somehow doubt it.
2) The House Republicans are simply attempting to run out the clock on this congressional investigation of the 1/6 insurrection. In that goal, they are actually succeeding. Things are moving much too slowly and we all know that once the new Congress is sworn in, this inquiry will be halted immediately because the Republicans will then control the House.
Manchin was just running out the clock on the For the People act; he never intended to get 10 Republicans. Schumer and his pals don't understand what they're up against.
Say their names. Not “the Republicans.” Name them.
Senator Richard Shelby of ALABAMA is blocking the right to vote.
Senator Tommy Tuberville of ALABAMA is blocking the right to vote.
Senator Dan Sullivan of ALASKA is blocking the right to vote.
Senator Lisa Murkowski of ALASKA is blocking the right to vote.
Senator John Boozman of ARKANSAS is blocking the right to vote.
Senator Tom Cotton of ARKANSAS is blocking the right to vote.
Senator Marco Rubio of FLORIDA is blocking the right to vote.
Senator Rick Scott of FLORIDA is blocking the right to vote.
Senator Jim Risch of IDAHO is blocking the right to vote.
Senator Mike Crapo of IDAHO is blocking the right to vote.
Senator Mike Braun of INDIANA is blocking the right to vote.
Senator Todd Young of INDIANA is blocking the right to vote.
Senator Chuck Grassley of IOWA is blocking the right to vote.
Senator Joni Ernst of IOWA is blocking the right to vote.
Senator Jerry Moran of KANSAS is blocking the right to vote.
Senator Roger Marshall of KANSAS is blocking the right to vote.
Senator Mitch McConnell of KENTUCKY is blocking the right to vote.
Senator Rand Paul of KENTUCKY is blocking the right to vote.
Senator Bill Cassidy of LOUISIANA is blocking the right to vote.
Senator John Kennedy of LOUISIANA is blocking the right to vote.
Senator Susan Collins of MAINE is blocking the right to vote.
Senator Cindy Hyde-Smith of MISSISSIPPI is blocking the right to vote.
Senator Roger Wicker of MISSISSIPPI is blocking the right to vote.
Senator Josh Hawley of MISSOURI is blocking the right to vote.
Senator Roy Blunt of MISSOURI is blocking the right to vote.
Senator Steve Daines of MONTANA is blocking the right to vote.
Senator Ben Sasse of NEBRASKA is blocking the right to vote.
Senator Deb Fischer of NEBRASKA is blocking the right to vote.
Senator Richard Burr of NORTH CAROLINA is blocking the right to vote.
Senator Thom Tillis of NORTH CAROLINA is blocking the right to vote.
Senator John Hoeven of NORTH DAKOTA is blocking the right to vote.
Senator Kevin Cramer of NORTH DAKOTA is blocking the right to vote.
Senator Rob Portman of OHIO is blocking the right to vote.
Senator James Lankford of OKLAHOMA is blocking the right to vote.
Senator Jim Inhofe of OKLAHOMA is blocking the right to vote.
Senator Pat Toomey of PENNSYLVANIA is blocking the right to vote.
Senator Lindsey Graham of SOUTH CAROLINA is blocking the right to vote.
Senator Tim Scott of SOUTH CAROLINA is blocking the right to vote.
Senator John Thune of SOUTH DAKOTA is blocking the right to vote.
Senator Mike Rounds of SOUTH DAKOTA is blocking the right to vote.
Senator Bill Hagerty of TENNESSEE is blocking the right to vote.
Senator Marsha Blackburn of TENNESSEE is blocking the right to vote.
Senator John Cornyn of TEXAS is blocking the right to vote.
Senator Ted Cruz of TEXAS is blocking the right to vote.
Senator Mike Lee of UTAH is blocking the right to vote.
Senator Mitt Romney of UTAH is blocking the right to vote.
Senator Shelley Moore Capito of WEST VIRGINIA is blocking the right to vote.
Senator Ron Johnson of WISCONSIN is blocking the right to vote.
Senator Cynthia Lummis of WYOMING is blocking the right to vote.
Senator John Barrasso of WYOMING is blocking the right to vote.
#namethevillain
#SayTheirName
Thank you, Bryan Watson. You have created a perfect Rap Sheet. Subscribers who still use Facebook (a criminal enterprise, from my point of view) what to you think of posted it on FB many times a day - as many of you doing so as possible?
Works for me.
Sensational, Dave. You are working for all of us! I hope you post again tomorrow.
It's posted with a brief intro and some modification to reduce the instances of tl;dr. The only comment I've gotten so far is from a Floridian friend and, as you might guess, it was positive but not hopeful in light of that state's senators.
A criminal enterprise that I no longer support, Z is on trump’s payroll or vice versa. Their community standards geared to catch any neg comments about trump. Cult nuts can post all the vitriol they want, and they do.
edit: 'what do you think of 'posting' it on FB....?
I posted it.
Great, Janet. Think about doing it again tomorrow. Cheers!
Me too. Received a response from a very distant cousin who I know is a republican. She asked a question and was respectful. I am grateful.
Good going. You touched family, Martha, and other people, too. Cheers!
go for it...but pick the 10-12 who might actually change their vote or be pressured. Join some republican facebook groups in those states if you really want to stir things up and share to those groups. I have a whole list of facebook groups I belong to with different topics that I share things to...usually not politics, but they get shared, viewed and liked. The worst thing that can happen is they shut you down. You post it. I'll share it here...but my reps are all Dems.
Subscribers, Please, You like this idea MAKE IT HAPPEN. I am literally an old anti-Fber. I haven't been on it for years, and I'm not going back. Carry Bryan's Rap Sheet forward. Expose those Republican Senators. They are traitors. Subscribers can be on the front lines by dramatically exposing their actions to suppress the vote and subvert the elections. You can show the people who these traitors are. Cheers!
Hi Fern, done and dusted. Put the whole list on my Fbook page. I'll keep re-posting it until I'm kicked off Fbook. :)
Great, Steve. You have been working for all of us before now, and I'm thrilled that you are part of this campaign on behalf of easy access to voting for all. Cheers!
Steve, I would gladly share this on my Facebook page, but I'm not sure which Steve Abbott you are. Can you give a clue?
Posted it 💙
Done.
"Expose those Republican Senators." Another Freudian slip.
OK, I'm a computer dolt, so tell me how to do it.
Copy the rap sheet from Bryan's comment. Open FB and paste it to your page. Easier on a computer in my opinion.
Mike there are different ways to do this, which is fine with me. I think one of the ways is to post the entire rape sheet. It makes a very strong impression. It exposes the party as well as the individuals. Continuing to post the Rap Sheet several times a day by a good number of subscribers, day after day -- I like that campaign. If a Senator goes rogue on the Party, they go off the Rap Sheet, but we have to have evidence that they are supporting one or two of the voting Acts before they're released.
Rape sheet. Perfect Freudian slip.
Nancy, I just noticed the 'rape' for the first time. It's funny and apt. Calling myself a master of typos is well earned.
Mike, Yes, Do it! I left Facebook many years ago. I wasn't on it long because I thought I could tell what it was growing to be and couldn't get out fast enough.
I think it's a great idea. I don't have the time. I have work to do. Go back to FB and stir things up...or find someone. Good luck
You elaborate on my idea. You're on FB. I tell you why I smartly left years ago. It is an enemy of democracy. You tell me to go back and work undercover. You're too busy even to encourage the right friends on FB to get it started. Is there anything else you want me to do? Cheers!
I did.
Melinda, you did? You put Bryan's Rap Sheet on Facebook?
I did, too. "Say their names."
Pam, I'm thrilled. Thank you from all the people who want easy access to voting for all. Great, Pam! We'll keep at it to reach many people and gain attention, which highlights these traitors who are acting against free and fair elections.
Although the posting sites might be shut down for posting "fake news" given the prevailing algorithmic trends.
A small price to pay and I would probably benefit from a FB vacation anyway.
Humor is priceless, thank you.
Done.
I’m encouraged, and a little surprised, at the support for my “Name the Villain” comment. And yes, words matter, so changing “the right” to the more personal “my right” or the inclusively personal “our right” would be an improvement.
I had posted this list on my Facebook feed as well. I’m also thinking of a 50-post-long Twitter thread. I’m using #NameTheVillain as primary, with #SayTheirName as secondary - I don’t want to hijack that tag from other BLM uses.
I encourage you to extend the list to include your state legislators and governors who are advancing the #HarderToVote laws.
The messaging behind this is that each Senator is elected one at a time. They are expected to make individual choices and to stand up for those choices. They are not a monolith. I didn’t vote for “the Republicans” or “the Democrats” - I voted for this one Senator, Pat Toomey, or that one Senator, Lisa Murkowski. So we should never let them hide in the crowd - never say “the Republicans did this or that.” Each Senator made a choice and cast a vote, and each Senator must be held to answer for what that vote did. We name Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema every day - why don’t we name Tim Scott or Susan Collins or John Thune, who are just as obstructive as Manchema. If one Republican voted for the bill, Manchin would be irrelevant. If two Republicans voted for the bill, we wouldn’t need Manchema.
As to the name formatting, I chose to use the simple title “Senator” for brevity, simplicity, and clarity. The more elaborate “The Honorable Marco Rubio, U. S. Senator” is too long and, frankly, too formal for this context. And while I have issues with declaring this the act of an honorable person (I frankly believe it’s evidence of dishonor), my real and only concern was brevity.
Thanks for your support of this. Please feel free to adopt it as your own and share freely. And remember these names when election time comes.
An additional note: the list of names does not specify party. That’s intentional. It also doesn’t include Senator Schumer who voted “nay” for procedural reasons.
Also: the list includes names most people have never heard or do not recognize. The junior senator from many states (Alaska, Nebraska, Idaho, Kansas, Wyoming and South Dakota come readily to mind) are unfamiliar names. This list puts a spotlight on what they did, while calling them “the Republicans” lets them slink into the shadowy background. These unknown senators may be the most vulnerable to a bright spotlight and unwelcome notoriety.
Bryan, Shall I ask all subscribers using your #SayTheirName list to contact you with any questions and info about what they are doing, etc. I was very impressed with your work when I saw it in the early morning and commented you when it occurred to me that it would be great for all interested subscribers to post the list on Facebook. Many subscribers replied enthusiastically to the comment, which had been posted to you. I encouraged them to go ahead and post the list on Facebook. As I was a catalyst, subscribers contacted me. I am sorry not to have heard from you and hope my role wasn't problematic. Your list appears to have been a success. I would like to hear from you and know your thoughts. Thanks.
People are welcome to contact me - they can do so here on this comment thread. Your FB suggestion is a good one (as I mentioned, I had originally posted this list on FB just a short while before adding it as a comment here). I encourage people to adopt the list as their own and share it freely. Not a problem at all.
https://www.facebook.com/bryan.watson.37853/posts/1957927744382622
Great to hear from you, Bryan. You stirred us today, and your work will be employed in the days going forward. Thank you.
I shortened the repetitive descriptions and will post after this. Thank you. Great point about Manchin/Sinema and naming the rest of the naysayers.
I believe it quite important that this list correctly addresses the members. I expect to be slammed, but I revised my list this way to reflect even more importance as to WHY we are naming these legislators and their failure to represent a clear majority of WE THE PEOPLE in favor of passage of Voting Rights Act.
For instance, I will use my state as example. This is how my list revised from what Bryan Watson graciously took time to list for us.
“The following United States senators are blocking my right to vote and to have my vote counted fairly. They have voted to block even discussion of the Freedom to Vote Act. I implore them to reconsider on behalf of the citizens of the United States of America.”
The Honorable Rick Scott
United States Senator from Florida
The Honorable Marco Rubio
United States Senator from Florida
(or could be listed as US Senator from Florida)
Etcetera.
In this way, for me, it reflects my respect of the office and my given expectation that its current occupant will act in a respectful way to honor the responsibility of the office.
I do believe that messaging must be strategic.
Please don't refer to them as honorable. That's just holding up a lie.
Christine’s choice of address to the Senators is standard and proper. I think subscribers may use it or simply stick with Bryan’s as is.
Adhering to "standard and proper" is why Democrats keep losing and Republicans keep winning. The time for standard and proper is in the past, if there ever was one. You're either willing to acknowledge reality and fight for it, or you are busy pretending that civil behavior is how to defeat the evil cancer growing in this country.
Thank you.
Let's fight for reality and human progress! Let's fight to end pointless human suffering that benefits morally bankrupt people who demand we pay them homage.
Bossism doesn't appeal to me. Using Honorable, or not has nothing to do with the failures of the Democratic Party. I read your response as making a mountain out of nothing. Salud.
I've not heard that term. If you are insinuating I am trying to tell you what to do, then no. I am making an informed argument that you people should not refer to dishonorable individuals as honorable. In much the same way I would argue that it's counterproductive to call someone who claims to represent the will of an imaginary deity Reverend. Absolutely not. You have not presented the burden of proof needed for me to render that honorific. Semantics matter. So do our default postures about public life. I do not participate in community delusions and that matters as well.
I cannot imagine why you would be slammed, Christine. Subscriber's are free to tailor the Rap Sheet as they believe most appropriate. If a subscriber is in doubt about how he/she are thinking about making changes, reaching out to the forum would be the way to go. The standard to be observed I think is to be respectful -- stick to the facts. It would be natural to receive negative feedback from the 'base'. As long as we keep our communications simple, factual, respectful and not inflammatory, we will honor the role of an engaged citizenry.
Christine, I like your version, but being from MA, I can’t use it. Just letting the #saytheirnames group know that they are being watched and named is important.
I do want to clarify that the list, with the revision in regards to addressing the office of. IS Senator, included ALL the names of senators that Bryan listed originally, not just the two FL senators. This list has been sent to several outlets and to people that have posted on FB and their PAC sites.
Thank you again Bryan for original list. #Say their names.
United! ✊🏻✊🏻✊🏼✊🏽✊🏾✊🏿
Calling them ALL out certainly matters and is appropriate.
Calling them out stands the out naked to the world. But! They really do not care and their places in Congress most likely will not change. I have seen the enemy, and there they are.
So, one, so far, came forward to slam. As Biden says, something like, 'Okay, it's a Democracy'.
Adding mug shots would be good, too!
Yes, BRYAN WATSON: and the Republicans are blocking the right to speak, to talk, to use the congress to debate and educate, the subject, THE RIGHT TO VOTE is OFF Limits. And, what is this about?
Say it, say it, say it.
COLOR.
The Art of Losing Isn’t Hard to Master. Elizabeth Bishop’s most famous!
We are losing our democracy, The Civil War is not over.
Mixed race President Barack H. OBAMA caused this: HE WON TWICE!
We are losing now.
The Art of Losing Isn’t Hard to Master.
Lose something every day.
Sandy, this is our messaging. Democrats need to amplify that Senate Republicans are turning down the issue being voted on. They’re refusing to do their job and even look at a piece of legislation. They’re abdicating their congressional duties. It’s the same in the House. They consistently make a move to adjourn instead of working. They want to take taxpayer dollars a live in luxury while taking no action to care for the American people. The only people benefiting are the wealthy and there are less of them than hard working people.
Sandy, it's not "color" it's POWER. It's always about power with the GOP. They couldn't give a flying f*ck about the color of your skin.
Everything has come to plan for them. They are setting the table for trump and every other GOP member to rule , certainly for the rest of our lives and generations to come.
It’s COLOR - equally it’s power, but the gut cause is color based prejudice. You know this.
I think the "color" is just a casualty of power.
Sandy, that poem is beautiful. Thanks for sharing it. I don’t always agree with (or even understand) your posts, but I absolutely defend your right to make them.
So do I, Kathy, and my opinion was that the Elizabeth Bishop poem was not appropriate for children. In addition, I encouraged Sandy to post Bryan's Rap Sheet on FB. Sandy replied with a like to me about posting the Rape Sheet on FB.
Fern, I beg to differ. Right below, you say “enough negative spiel out of you.” I don’t think it’s right to try to silence people on this forum.
Enough negative spiel out of you. Post that Rap Sheet on Facebook that Bryan composed. Act by exposing the traitors against fair and free elections by posting the Rap Sheet, Sandy.
Shove it, Fern.
I was happy to delete your reply from my mail. Unfortunately, it stays on the forum, marking of our first negative exchange.
FB is for illiterate fascist faggots.
A rogue’s gallery, if there ever was one. Destruction of the republic is the goal.
Thank you Bryan. I posted it on my wall and in one of my groups.
Here’s my intro: Today, October 21, 2021 every GOP member of Congress voted to block our right to vote. They voted to let partisan state legislatures decide if MY vote or YOUR vote is valid based on partisan rules.
I changed “the vote” to “our vote”.
I used 2 hashtags. namethatvillain and
NoRepublicanHeroesLeftInCongress.
Thank you.
Just trying to be helpful- the vote was yesterday-the 20th 😊
How sad it is that ONE political Party has become so destructive, while the other Party dawdles and fumbles and mumbles.
This is great. I would consider using the word “our” instead of “the”. We’re all in this together. Denying one person’s rights matters to all of us and it is personal. Words matter.
Yes, Christy, exactly right. “Our” or even “my” personalizes it. “YOU, Mitt Romney, are blocking my ability to vote. Why are you doing this to me?”
Done!
Bryan thank you for amassing the list.I have posted it on my FB sheet just now.
It is pretty simple to send this list to the Senators on here, or at least to the ones who should have been stronger. Just google the Senator you want to send this to, and one of the first links that comes up will make it easy to send it to the senator. I simply expressed my disappointment in their voting to make our right to vote more difficult to exercise.
Thank you. I posted that list on my own FB page.
Great, Ellen. I just posted a comment that I think is just your style. Salud!
Done.
Great Carol! You are working on behalf of everyone who wants easy access to voting for all. Thank you. I hope you will post the Rap Sheet later and tomorrow, too.
Done!
Great, Cathy. I hope that you can do it again today and tomorrow.
Where were Sentors Cheney and Kitzenbzerg when this was going down?
They are not Senators. Both are members of the House of Representatives, separate legislative body.
Not Senators....Reps
and they were busy with the House Select Committee investigating Jan 6
This is enough and more than enough. Pass a rules change now to allow measures dealing with voting rights to bypass the filibuster. Also reform the filibuster for all other legislation not already exempted to restore the talking filibuster and require 41 votes at any time requested by a member to continue debate. This forces the minority to be in attendance and holding the floor with reasonable debate to block legislation.
No more minority rule for American democracy.
But the Trojan Horses won’t Allow it, it’s not minority so much as Manchin rule.
Manchin, Sinema, and 50 Republicans. And the problem is the electorate, not the politicians who exploit it.
Yes, there are ways to change the filibuster without deleting it, although I am in favor of that. Hopefully even Manchin can see this. He has to remain a Democrat, even if many are angry with him, or we will have Mitch as the Speaker.Not sure I would trust him as n Independent. If Angus King is ready to change the filibuster, there is some hope.
Mitch will never be Speaker.
I agree with you, SL Weston, but there is no evidentiary basis. Somehow I just know that he will never be Speaker.
Mitch the Merciless is in the Senate. You can bet he’d never go backward, rub elbows with the peasants in the House. Therefore, fairly conclusive evidence …
Mitch will never be Speaker.
You got me there. I wasn’t paying close attention. I was thinking McCarthy. This is what happens when I try to mix work with LFAA. 😉
At some point the legal system has to start putting these people in actual prison instead of just making it look like they might
Yes!
That would certainly make it easier to "clean out" some GOP votes in the House and the Senate. If only.
One thing that's clear to me that I don't think is getting enough (any?) press is the idea of moderate Republicans. Susan Collins and Mitt Romney sure reaped a lot of press when the former president was around, but where are they now? Voting in lock-step with Mitch and his minions. Where is the character? Who in that cult will stand up at a 90-degree angle and show us their profile in courage? You know the answer.
You're right. "Moderate" is misleading. Actions speak louder than words, and votes against democratic process are destructively reactionary. "Republican" now means anti-democratic, with disregard for the will of the majority of the people--outright contempt for the people. Republicans answer to PAC dollars waved as tickets to power-tripping and self-aggrandizement.
Not just anti-democratic. Pro-authoritarian.
I don't give Republicans credit for thinking it through, and if asked, "Are you pro-authoritarian?" who would answer "yes."
As HCR traces the history of the Republican Party, McCarthy started the factless accusations, Gingrich tutored Republican members of Congress to use a set of buzz words attacking Democrats, McConnell legislates by "just say no" obstructionism, and trump amped up Republican victim-rage to stand in for policy and reason.
And our democracy has always been plagued by a moneyed faction of privilege gaming the system to gain and retain power, more money, and more privilege. Once upon a time they holed up in the Democratic Party. Then they switched to the Republican Party.
Ellie, Give it another thought. I cannot cull the multitude of sources, think tanks, political-pacs, books (Dark Money, Democracy in Chains, just a couple among others) studies and articles to provide you with a concise history, which may begun, in this latest cycle, in the late '70's or early '80's. Organizing the money and clout to seize local, state and national apparatuses as a means to control governmental functions, the courts; legislative bodies; elected representatives and policies is their mode of operation. That has been their strength, unlike the Democratic Party. Right-wing conservatives and libertarians have thought this through and been organized. Trump was a tool and now, perhaps, both a tool and an obstacle.
I was meaning, who has thought through a path to a goal of authoritarianism per se. The all too plentiful sinister thought to gaming the system to gain power and money is laid out in your multitude of sources. The strategists have spent lots of time and effort to exploit the cracks in the system and to use emotionalized messaging that requires no thought, just reactivity.
'The strategists have spent lots of time and effort to exploit the cracks in the system and to use emotionalized messaging that requires no thought, just reactivity.'
THIS.
I’m old, I remember. Will history write that we waited too late?
Well into the long nights, even after we had sobered up, did we continue to debate while history marked our grave with a footnote:'Twas a grand idea, that thing they called freedom.
To me the failure, as many have said, is the cracks in our institutions, and laws.
Cracks that have shown up especially now when politicians have ceased being civil or are determined to keep the power and money in the hands of white people.
It's like a private club - only they want to dominate the whole field so anyone who does not buy into their game and play by their rules has no option but to surrender or die - yet they cry foul when anyone protests or supports alternative agendas ... so, if you don't like it, you can lump it - or prepare to be run like cattle down the chute into prison, psych units for the "mentally ill", global "big box" sex trafficking industries, or the front line in the latest war to be blown away. I am so great-full I did not bring a child into this sick, twisted world ....
Collins always votes with the majority so it doesn't matter what she says about anything. Romney hasn't changed his status as scum since 2012, he just looks better compared to the guy who came along and made his 1,420 lies in the whole campaign (a record at the time) look like nothing. Murkowski even claimed to work with Manchin to find the 10 Republians.
It's only more true today than it was when President Truman said it back in 1948: "The only 'good Republicans' are pushing up daisies."
HST knew them, so did Adlei Stevenson, “… if they will stop telling lies about Democrats, we will stop telling the truth about them.” Then there is the attempted coup of 1933 (Google Gen. Smedley Butler)
"Smedley Butler and the 1930s Plot to Overthrow the President:"
"Quickly becoming known as the “White House Coup” and “Wall Street Putsch,” many major news sources derided Butler’s claims, as the committee’s final report was not made available publicly. Those implicated, ranging from the DuPont family to Prescott Bush, the grandfather of future President George W. Bush, laughed off Butler’s claims. Evidence of the validity of Butler’s testimony was not released until the 21st century, when the committee’s papers were published in the Public Domain. No one was ever prosecuted in connection to the plot."
https://www.arcadiapublishing.com/Navigation/Community/Arcadia-and-THP-Blog/September-2018/Smedley-Butler-and-the-1930s-Plot-to-Overthrow-the
Of interest may be Butler's very short book "War is a Racket". It is in the public domain, therefore a PDF is available for download, free.
https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=inu.32000014248506&view=1up&seq=1
Thanks for this, Ellie. I plan to learn more about this.
Yes! Murkowski, too. I knew there was at least another. And here's one other thing, why is it all these people in these states are voting (for the time being) for these persons who are actively against their own interests? I've read the book, "What's the Matter with Kansas?", but I just can't wrap my mind around it on such existential things like the actual right to vote, access to healthcare, the climate, etc. It boggles the mind to a numbing resignation.
Veterans on Sinema's advisory council quit with a scathing letter to her: https://www.huffpost.com/entry/veterans-quit-sinema-advisory-council-protest_n_61716abee4b066de4f5f0e30
Thanks, Annette. The video in this article is very good! I hope she pays attention.
Those are 2 who need to be pressured in their own states. That's where it matters most. Join Republican facebook groups in those states and speak out...see if you get traction
Olympia Snowe was moderate and got out before the circus showed up. Susan Collins has NEVER been moderate, she just speaks out of both sides of her mouth and hopes to fool the masses, which she has done! Mitt Romney might have been appeared moderate so that he could win in MA but definitely drifts which ever way the prevailing wind is blowing
Collins (now in her fifth senate term) campaigned the first time on a promise to self-limit her senate career to two terms. Lying bi--- er, Witch, comes to mind thinking of her. From the get-go.
Right? And because I have no doubt that she fully understood this historical fact way back then (1997), I feel confident that it was her forked tongue speaking even then: “I found that Maine very rarely votes out an incumbent.”
https://www.pressherald.com/2020/11/11/guest-column-the-incumbency-factor-in-maine/
And in our CD2 with the exception of using Ranked Choice Voting to successfully unseat incumbent, Trumplican-light Representative Poliquin the last time an incumbent was voted out was 1916.
Sounds exactly like Kevin McCarthy. Wind sock.
Not to disagree but I would rather say, McCarthy only blows one way and that’s up tfg’s you know what!
Four times a week, for my work as a truck driver, I get to drive through Kevin McCarthy’s district. And Devin Nunes’s district. And most of the residual Republican districts in California, there aren’t many left. That includes Katie Hill’s district, which flipped back to red. 43% white, that’s why it’s on the fence between blue and red, the blue outweighs the red but there’s enough red left, barely, to compete.
Wow! Roland! That sounds like an opportunity 😁we need to get you two big banners. One for each side. Hmmm?
How about STOP THE LIES! And TURN OFF FOX! 🤩 Maybe a sound cruiser for Katie Hill’s district? That was a painful loss. How did that ever happen? Nothing like a handsome truck driver to draw attention 😁
Handsome?! Puh-leeeez. . .
😂😂
You had me until “handsome“
🤣🤣
I’ve known it for longer than Democrat pols have
Fear of the base and death threats.
As a constituent, I phoned the Bangor office of Sen. Susan Collins (R, Maine) about her opposition to the voting bill. As expected, the young GOP automaton, rattled off a hash of half truths. The message was 'Be afraid, be very afraid, Democrats are going to destroy Maine's voting laws.' He didn't even know Maine's voting laws.
Here is the irony. Or the height of Collins' hypocrisy. The proposed legislation has low bar national minimum requirements. Maine has some of the most progressive voting laws in the nation - weeks of early voting, same day registration, no voter ID, absentee ballots, mail in ballots, drop boxes, ballots counted after election day, clean election campaign options, voting while in prison *and* Ranked Choice Voting. We also split our Electoral College votes. We have just joined a consortium of states sharing electronic records to keep the registration data up to date. In fact, it's said that our state motto DIRIGO (we lead) refers to our progressive voting laws. We also lead in voter participation.(I think often 3rd in the nation.)
Republicans claim that voters' rights protections and high voter turnout means Republican candidates won't ever get elected. Sadly, Collins disproves their assertions.
The big lie isn’t the only one republicans tell. Just got a fund-raising letter from Kay Granger in Texas. Such a load of crap I have rarely seen. I’m an old retired counselor Democrat and resemble not at all the evil democrat described in that letter. However, it did describe congressional republicans
You are the folks who can really pressure her. She has to FEEL the heat. If she doesn't come around organize a movement to change enough registrations to R for her next primary and vote for someone else. Defeat her in the primary. All's fair...
Golly Gee, now why didn't we think of that? Easy peasy.
First let me dismiss your "all's fair" trivialization of dirty tricks politics. The point *is* to play fair and smart. Better to be Stacey Abrams than Roger Stone.
Collins wraps herself in the courageous Margaret Chase Smith's mantle. Collins is in fact a craven Mitch McConnell in skirts.
Collins is in the catbird seat. She steps out of lock step GOP party line barely enough to appear bipartisan but not enough to attract Republican ire. She is coy and calculating to a degree which is cringeworthy but works for her.
Despite her 'civility in politics' brand, Collins is very nasty. She once let loose on me outside her DC office, screaming so loudly that traffic stopped and heads swiveled in the halls of Congress - all for a very mildly stated request (when will we see Trump's tax returns?)
She's brushed off GOP primary challengers and eaten her Democratic opponents for breakfast and then eaten their lunch.
We've elected Angus King, Chellie Pingree, and Jared Golden to Congress, elected Janet Mills and a slew of state representatives. And yet Susan Collins persists. It says how labile the electorate is. In 2022 do we hold on or does it all fall apart? Keep watching the skies.
Thanks for your local observation. When I say "all's fair" I don't mean "dirty"...I mean use the rules and the playing field to your advantage. We had a Dem State Senator here in Baltimore who felt very comfortable in her seat. She was chair of the environmental & education committee, but would not allow anti-fracking bills to come out of her committee. She stone walled and did a great smoke & mirrors routine. We organized and worked around her to ban fracking. It took a lot of work, but we did it. Then we focused on her and beat her in the primary. I'm not saying this is easy, but I know from experience, the seemingly impossible can be achieved in politics. Don't give up.
You wrote "organize a movement to change enough registrations to R for her next primary and vote for someone else. Defeat her in the primary. All's fair..."
It may be "by the rules but that is a dirty trick to use the rules to undermine fair play.
Georgia elected Warnock and Ossoff by fair play - it is possible.
Maine has Ranked Choice Voting - Collins had the votes.
She was just re-elected to a new 6 year term. She doesn't need to do anything for quite some time.
2020. 1 down 5 to go! 😠
then the only chance is to make her very uncomfortable
Ha! Good luck with that! If you figure out what that is let us know! Many people have tried repeatedly.
If she's "untouchable" or un-moveable then it's a waste of time even talking about her. We need targets that we can affect don't we ? That's why I said initially target the 10-11 R Senators we have a chance with.
She is untouchable. There is an extremely strong coalition of activists that have tried and tried. She is 💯 a lost cause
Maine is well known for loving their incumbents and Collins knows exactly how to use that to her advantage.
"Sadly" is right, and that is depressing.
Excuse me, Ed, nothing personal about this, but...
I AM FED UP TO THE TEETH WITH AMERICANS' STUPID USE OF THE WORDS "SAD" AND "SADLY".
WORDS MUCH USED BY TRUMP.
THERE IS NOTHING "SAD" ABOUT CRIME.
I understand, but I can't let Trump own the lexicon. We need to reclaim and redeem the words.
I'm sorry, I should not even have mentioned that lousy example, that mouth or the bacward street kid's verbiage that comes out from it.
The crimes we face are not "sad", they are not "depressing" unless we are so world-weary that we're only half alive.
I am not "saddened", I am REVOLTED. And hard put to express my indignation at the filth we have to put up with, filth uttered by those who would rule over you and me. Would-be lords and masters who have thrown away the key to their own conscience.
We have a big problem, in that the sight, the sound, the stink, the touch, the very thought of evil can stain innocent victims and even befoul the beholder.
We need to turn our minds to building the bright world we want to see and get on with doing away with the barricades erected against the service of people and country.
Wowza!! You go girl!! I hear you!! Yup. As the Met Council on Housing used to say of landlords 'they're not the lords of the land, they're the scum of the earth.'
You are so kind to say Repubs have consciences. It does not seem to be standard issue on all human models.
Exactly. Those who choose to let Trump drive them out of their native language and start another do have that option. I have no intention of walking on eggshells, and as shown above, I am fine quoting another person who isn't walking on egshells either.
I wish I understood what you've just said. I wasn't walking on eggshells, I was dancing on them, no doubt because of my wretched professional hangups. I'm a wordsmith, and now it's I who feel I'm being driven out of my native language -- not by that unmentionable creep, I'm trying to reclaim and redeem a word YOU and too many others have been misusing.
Can't find any excuse for that here: https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/sad
Or should we use euphemisms for your last Administration, like "a pity" or "a mistake"?
Pardon me for putting all so rudely.
Well, kinda reminds me of Trump who has the irritating habit of saying everything twice, as if it added credibility (like shouting in all caps), and presuming his is the only voice that matters and all around him should walk on eggshells. If someone actually feels, sad, he presumes they need his permission to say it or feel it because it is not what he feels. Good grief.
I quoted the term, and you can take a hike with your child's screaming tantrum caps.
Hancock County Democratic Committee volunteers worked really hard to elect Gideon. Many of us almost full time. I made tens of thousands of phone calls. My sense of Collins win was: voter inertia (oh we always vote for her; buying into her 'bipartisan moderate' brand (more PR packaging than truth); pork barrels rolling into Maine (both candidates had equally obscene amounts of campaign money); good constituent services; and seniority (even the otherwise astute Bangor Daily News bought that one.) Also there was residual resentment that Gideon was more anointed by the party than selected by voters.
Incumbency, incumbency. That and being polished at the art of politicking. Susan brings home the pork to her constituents and knows perfectly how to flaunt that pork in the 2 months preceding an election. And I know people don’t like to hear it but Maine is a state where it matters if you’re a hometown gal and that Susan was and her competitor wasn’t. That mattered a lot more than people want to admit. “You can’t understand us, if you’re not from here”. There may not be “good” reasons but there are plenty of reasons why Suzy got the prize.
My understanding from something I read was that people were turned off by the over the top, in your face tactics used by pro Gideon people.
Huh? As someone who lives here Gideon’s ads were not “over the top”, especially compared to the literal 💩💩💩we were inundated with by Collins et al
Sadly, this was published. I don't remember which paper, but it made an impression on me, so it probably did on others as well.
Yes, publishing something makes it true and not just more propaganda
Thank you for sharing this.
One person commenting on current events yesterday spoke of what she called "human nature" (and I'd call the built-in flaws of human nature). Things like ignorance, cruelty, selfish greed, the lust for money and power.
I countered that the relative proportions of these things vary, in persons, countries, historical periods.
Some, for instance, focus exclusively on amassing wealth (and the cruelty this may entail, the political power too, are secondary) while for others, power is the prime motivation.
We tend to neglect motives that were of central importance to our predecessors until very recently and still are important in other cultures. One cause of incompetence in our management of foreign affairs.
A crucial factor in 17th and 18th century European societies was honor, and consequently, one's word of honor. At the very least, appearances of honorability... The drafters of the Constitution could not have conceived of a society like ours, in which there's no longer even honor among thieves (omertà depending only on terror).
Consequently, the constitutional compact has become meaningless in a society that no longer has any idea of what honor means and in which truth itself has been undermined, both deliberately, by abusers of power, and as a consequence of the sudden upsurge of "virtual reality", a new cuckoo in our nest.
I am struck -- thunderstruck -- by the blindness of Americans to what is upon them NOW -- and therefore about to fall on all heads everywhere. Either too busy on the treadmill to be able to think anything through or passive-aggressive ruminants with colic, tethered to a telescreen...
Zuckerberg's plans are potentially more disastrous even than McConnell's. Fbook needs to be taken down -- but above all Z and his archetypal "mad scientists" with their "Metaverse" must be stopped Urgently.
What an obscene mess.
It feels as though our civilization has died -- as every civilization must -- but hasn't yet understood that it is dead and in chaotic transition to... something else...
Supposing this were so -- hard for us to get our minds around around the agony and passing of what's so much more long-lasting than ourselves -- ours is a time when bold determination must transcend fear. Our responsibility as human beings could hardly be greater than it is now.
Thunderstruck is an apt term, Peter. My take, however, is that Americans aren't as blind as we think. Most Republican politicians who maintain that the election was stolen from Trump in privately acknowledge that Biden did indeed win. It's political posturing, plain and simple. My guess is that most Americans, in their heart of hearts, know Trump lost. Republicans have come to accept that the only way they can win is to cheat. In the meantime, we wait and wait and wait for our better angels to emerge and accept the actual truth. Unfortunately, those angels flew the coop when Trump was elected in 2016.
Randy,
Remember, the average Republican is trained to believe that when they die they will rise up to heaven where everything is wonderful and great.
They are trained to believe that dead bodies can rise from that dead state.
They are trained to believe that people they don't agree with will go to hell.
IF they can believe in heaven, hell and resurrection, then, believing that Trump won is pretty banal.
I think they truly do "believe" Trump won.
many do, pols don't
76% of Republicans believe the election was stolen. Or at least that's what they tell polsters.
I get a bitter laugh from your angels fly/fleeing(?) the coop. Somehow reminds me of Malcolm X's apt phrase about "chickens coming in to roost" that so shocked me at a time when I thought I was already shocked enough.
I doubt if this transcription of a fragment written about thirty years ago is going to work, but let's see:
then we drew a hundredthousand blank checks on heaven and miscellaneous graffiti
almost all in English
pointed rude fingers
took potshots [just commies just a rabs]
upwards
any angels there might have been flew out of range
The poem was called IN HOC $IGNO VINCES.
You can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make him drink. And it’s true. In 1990, when i heard some public person say, “Lead, follow, or get out of the way!” I tried leading, which didn’t work, couldn’t follow, so got out of the way.
I kept out of the way for much of my life, Susan. Just watching. (I've done some activism, but it just isn't my thing.) I've made an end to fence sitting but mean simply to be myself, which means some following when I know it's right.
However, there's something missing from your public personage's somewhat brusque injunction.
There are those who get up front and lead, there are those who follow, but there's a third, maybe more subtle function. Maybe you can call it "mediator". This one's in the middle of the group and has the peculiarity of relating to everyone in it, regardless of differences and affinities.
Yes, that is a valuable skill. If i were good at it, i’d be more usefull. I was so startled when he said that that i ducked for cover!
The basis might be knowing what's going on. Listening, attending to what people are doing and saying, taking it all in. Not judging -- or at the very least suspending comment and judgment. When you get to know people and they know that you know, they're less likely to try to fool you. It can make for respect.
I tend to be skeptical when women put themselves down. So often the outcome of conditioning. Told "You're like this..." and coming to believe what they've been told. Yet, put-downs tell plenty about the person who makes them rather than the one who's being targeted.
Buck up! Civilizations are revived by remnants, and you are part of that. I certainly share your feelings about virtual life, but we can bite back.
Here's to the Renaissance of the Remnants!
Maybe I'm more with you than you think, Jim. I'm all for "biting back" hard. If we are responsible citizens, we have to do just that.
It's just that, for me, and no doubt for others, this business of viewing current events in the context of history (and vice versa) is not just thought-provoking, it leads me to headache-provoking contemplation of vast issues of change and stasis, continuity, discontinuities, notions of "progress" and their consequences...
How could it be otherwise when most urban human beings in advanced countries have been disconnecting from the rhythms of the seasons, quite unable to keep up with accelerating change and, for most of the past sixty or seventy years, we've been resisting change only after it has already happened?
Let's leave such absurdities as "stopping" or reversing change to the grotesques who have hijacked the Republican Party. What's for certain is that adapting to and making the best of the state we are now in is going to be immensely demanding -- especially when it comes to AI and contamination by pseudo-realities. With luck we may, by dint of determined persistence, build up a grand remnant like the Byzantine Empire or a great pocket of resistance like the Venetian Republic.
I certainly agree, Peter. I have been so overwhelmed that I adopt a manic positive mantra like “Buck up!” to quell all the other voices in my head. I know way less than most of the responders to this column about politics and current events and have been a passive adapter to change as well. Headaches everywhere, grotesques a-plenty, and yet, something makes me keep grasping for the last ounce of hope.
You are a much more positive commenter and force than your realize. Thank you, Jim.
I’m in awe of your thinking and wonder where you place the demand of adapting to AI & pseudo-realities on a scale in comparison to adapting to the effects of global warming 🤷🏻♀️
Thanks, Christy. I fear I’m trying to say too much, over 80 and trying to open my mouth while I still can after watching from the wings all my life. Anxiety—because we have reached a turning point, perhaps THE turning point in human history—and hoping to network with people, exchange ideas and put them to the test.
But you’re asking far too much of me—I am not a polymath. All I can say is that the climate issue is primordial. It is of a different order to any other question, while so much current activity in the world is not only intrinsically irrelevant but raving mad, and diametrically opposed to the needs of the time. Mass psychosis is complicating and confusing all attempts to cope with current threats, and those we face now, however serious, are almost certainly minor compared to those to come.
So, all that we do or don’t do—obviously including every kind of innovation—must surely be considered in the light of this overarching imperative.
Can we pause here and continue the discussion tomorrow—or later? I don’t think this is the kind of question anyone can tackle off the top of their head… and it’s way past my bedtime. It is, however, highly relevant to issues under discussion in this thread; but context rather than detail.
Goodnight Peter ❤️ May you sleep well.
Hello again, Christy.
I’m getting a little fed up with drafting comments directly on this website… which disappear when I’m on the point of sending them. Enough to make one wonder if I’m not being hacked.
I just wrote something in response to the part of your question that concerns AI and what I called “pseudo-realities”. Here’s the substance.
Yesterday, a friend sent me this item:
https://aeon.co/essays/why-longtermism-is-the-worlds-most-dangerous-secular-credo?utm_source=Aeon+Newsletter&utm_campaign=0d691568e2-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2021_10_18_05_31&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_411a82e59d-0d691568e2-69089169
An extreme case. I cannot find an adjective for such extravagant stupidity...
We do face great risks owing to very short-term views—often simply the outcome of fascination with doing something that technology lets us do, without the least concern for the effects of that action in terms of ANY timescale—against a background of a lazy belief that “everything will work out in the long term”.
People like these so-called philosophers need to be locked up and harnessed to some kind of intellectual treadmill that will provide community service. That, or a well-padded cell.
This lady may give clues to countering such techno-crap: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AE_QHLShLHY&list=RDCMUCsT0YIqwnpJCM-mx7-gSA4Q&index=1
I’m particularly struck by the phrase she cites about consciousness being like a wind. “You can’t see it but you can see its impact.” Reminds me of John 3:8. Or of this:
“You hear the wind blowing in the sky
only when it touches something.”
Emperor Meiji
Or again:
“What is the Heart?
It can feel the sound of the wind in a pine tree calligraphy.
Not seeing—feeling.”
You’ll have guessed it already. My general position is reactionary: deeply skeptical of what I regard as irrelevant techno-tinkering, the attempts to build the ultimate Tower of Babel—artificial intelligence—on foundations of quicksands, natural ignorance and stupidity. This, before exploring and developing what’s innate. Investing in… exploration of the galaxy… when we don’t know ourselves, when western psychology is still so backward in relation to the natural sciences. Even after the very necessary progress of the past quarter century.
“Not ignorance, but ignorance of ignorance, is the death of knowledge.”
(Alfred North Whitehead)
I don’t have the time I need to fully read this at this moment but am grateful for your reply plan to spend some time on it. I do want you to know when I’m on my phone my comments disappear all the time. I think my screen is super touchy and I accidentally touch it in a specific place and everything disappears.
Pretty sure no one is going to take the time to censor my comments.
Thanks for the quick acknowledgment. Plenty of the time we don’t have is needed for handling this kind of material!
"A crucial factor in 17th and 18th century European societies was honor, and consequently, one's word of honor. "
Note, in the 17th Century, London Tower was a prison where people, exclusively of the lower classes, were routinely tortured to death without any hint of due process.
In fact, John Adams knowledge of England's legal problems led directly to our current legal system which, although mostly resulting in locking up black people of the lower classes, most of them are no longer (they used to be) tortured to death.
And, if you are white in the US, you actually get a trial by jury.
So, I am not so sure about "honor" in Europe. John Adams spent many years thinking about how to avoid the trapdoors of England's class system before he wrote the MA Constitution which basically set the outline for the US Constitution.
Mike, you're interpreting history in terms of today's views and prejudices.
I never said anything about the cruel, absurd and hypocritical contradictions and paradoxes of English or any other European society in the 17th and 18th centuries (all of which are, alas, part of the current American continuum despite the safeguards of the Constitution and John Adams' nobler efforts). And it simply is not true that injustice and cruelty were exclusively visited on "the lower orders" -- Acts of Attainder, in effect the judicial murder of VIPs, were passed by Parliament, both at the behest of and despite monarchs.
The fact remains that "honor" was a central tenet of society both in Europe and in the early American Republic. Consider only the many duels seconded by Alexander Hamilton and his death at the hands of Aaron Burr, dueling over an affair of political honor.
As for Andrew Jackson, the president most admired by the last man to hold presidential office, no one seems to know how many duels that man fought. Maybe it is Jackson's example that led your former president to claim that he could get away with shooting someone in the middle of 5th avenue... and his lawyer's claim that, during his term of office he could actually get away with doing just that...
Joanna Macy thinks the splitting of the atom was a tipping point to the unravelling of the whole manifest field ...: Vessels of the Holy - Joanna Macy
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=4HfQbUg1rS0
Thank you, Kathleen, for posting this. May many discover Joanna Macy speaking her inspiration, her total commitment, her passion. Mine too. With this difference: she enunciates clearly and roundly the inchoate confidence that is mine despite and beyond the pessimism that comes of seeing what we have to see, even transforming it into a bright vision of perfection.
A vision very different from our society’s untested, unexplored belief that we are “free” and have freedom of choice, when we don’t even know what freedom means or the nature of choice, our blind faith in a fetish we call “progress”, our belief that we are the agents of progress.
Milton Mayer knew this “They Thought They Were Free”
Thank you, Jeri. I didn't know of this book, but the idea is good. And the title fits "The Land of the Free" rather too uncomfortably.
I've deliberately spent much time in Germany, with German friends. It wasn't always easy for me -- or for them. My friends are thoughtful, highly responsible people, sometimes ahead of our time. I hope I have learned from them.
Conformism and complacent beliefs are surrogates; they are a threat to survival. Nothing could be more demanding than real freedom, but free men are far rarer than we like to think. I try to free myself, but I'm under no illusions about this. Maybe just a little freer in my attitude to all the junk I'm still carrying around -- like the tin cans they attach to the cars of newly married couples. Only, those are a better joke...
Stoney stuff!
I can only read here at the wee hours of the morning, but i haven ‘t finished mining it and Dr. Richardson’s next appears! I’m so lucky to read all your comments.
Jaw droppingly true - thank you Peter!!
I had to google “omertà:
“… Omertà implies "the categorical prohibition of cooperation with state authorities or reliance on its services, even when one has been victim of a crime."[5] A person should absolutely avoid interfering in the business of others and should not inform the authorities of a crime under any circumstances, but if it is justified, he may personally avenge a physical attack on himself or on his family by vendetta, literally a taking of revenge, a feud. …”
Wow ... that seems to be the guiding cultural ethic on the ground ... dare not be a snitch/fink/whistleblower at cost of great retribution - so victims of 'circumstance' can go to 12 step meetings, 'let go and let god', but dare not turn to government for support ....
Now you know more than I do -- an extract from the Rulebook...
Act of Attainder :
Maybe we should bring this back in some form…
I read this and am struck once again, Heather, by your calm and measured writing voice. I am so put out with the elected federal level GOP's shenanigans that I cannot see straight. Your tone, Heather, helps me keep from screaming in outrage and scaring the dog.
Thank you J. L. (if I may)_ You have gotten to the core of what is so special about Heather's writing---she is calm and measured about things that must stir her up as much as they often do her readers. That is the key to what makes these daily reads so crucial. A calm voice in the midst of an increasing storm of unknown proportions. Thanks for pointing that out. And now on with the work that needs to be done.
It's the voice of an historian...not a "news" person. It's about research & facts, with educated perspective, not drama of the day. This is the best forum I've seen....and yes, we all need to do the work, out there.
“This is the best forum I’ve seen“
May I suggest Georges Perec's Life a User's Manual.
Interesting. The first private review of it that I read says it has a 70 page index. I am planning on having an extensive index as well. Other than that, the intent and approach is different than mine. Perec appears to be describing and cataloguing the human condition. A worthy project, hence the honors and accolades. My story project is a “sci-fi” story of its own that includes a magical book called Life: A Field Manual. Each of the human characters is gifted one of these magical books, and it is custom designed for that human individual. So Perec’s book and my magical book with the similar title serve a similar purpose: to guide and educate.
When my book and movie script comes out, if that ever happens, you will see the similarities between the two books, but also some significant differences.
Indeed, it is an ability I don’t have, having watched and gnashed my teeth over for most of my long life. One step forward, five back. And it’s not just the federal level “GOP.” The rank and file are giddy with anticipation of permanent political power. Haven’t you heard Karl Rove and Hugh Hewitt opine about such since way before trump. Machiavelli rules. My cats are perpetually on edge…
Sorry to hear about your edgy cats...the entire reason Fox "News" came into existence was because Roger Ailes understood how to use TV propaganda and Murdock could finance it. Ailes was a part of Reagans success...so he knew how to write and produce for actors in front of cameras. Add Rush Limbaugh...stir and mix and here we are.
Republicans - as a herd - continue to put party power over country. I’ve rarely been so spitting mad at my country. Refusing to even deliberate is NOT governing. I write to Reps and Senators, but basically feel helpless. Democrats in Congress need to stop being Charlie Brown and letting Republicans play Lucy with the football. 😡😢
I totally agree. I am losing my mind over this debacle. I am so very, very tired of the Republicans blocking every good thing the democrats are trying to do. I am furious at Sinema and Manchin for enabling them. I am terrified that the Democrats will lose the House and the Senate in 2022 and we will all be back where we were before we all voted Trump and his ilk out of office. How in the world do they continue to wield such power???
Elizabeth, we let them.
They have help from Russia
Kay, that is exactly what the Democrats are doing. Well put.
Right there with you.
Early tonight for you, Dr. R. Thank you! I hope you get some good rest tonight!
Thank you for more insight and history, Dr. R. It looks to me as if almost all the Republicans in the House and the Senate want only to follow rules they will make up. They all took an oath to support and defend the Constitution. And they are all breaking their oaths. Some of them could be rightly accused of sedition. They are disgusting and dangerous.
Actually Suzette, from an "originalist" viewpoint, they are defending the Constitution that favors wealthy white male landowners (in a land they have no right to own, buy or sell, by the way,) denies full human worth to people of color, has no role for women other than servitude in marriage and justifies murder, rape and robbery toward all who oppose it's rule. Any changes to that paradigm are attributed to wayward souls who must be suppressed.
So back we go, good point. 200 years of blood, sweat and tears mean nothing to this crowd
Yup, not to mention so many are addicted to the blood, sweat and tears - how dare anyone deprive them of their 'entertainment' ...?!
indeed, current cult doesn't mince words
Exactly. Originalists perpetuate the Founders' injustices while ignoring their radical call for equal justice - and their invitation to make progress on civil rights by amending the Constitution, revising legislation, and overturning decisions.
Jamie Raskin did a marvelous job on Gaetz and Jordan. It was quite a pleasure to watch. It's a shame his mother, who I knew, is not around to see how far he's come.
He was outstanding during the impeachment trial too. I still cannot get over Dershowitz getting away with those lies. Dershowitz: Not quid pro quo if president 'does something that he believes will help him get elected in the public interest'
Dersh is bought, I fear. What other excuse, maybe dementia, or that old bugaboo, power.
Jamie Raskin is an exemplary human being. Nothing like these lawless times to shine a light on our heros and heroines
So, Manchin was stalling, deliberately running out the clock? I believe in the rule of law, and in Procedure, but when one group is using every cheat anybody ever thought of, & the other is scrupulously playing by the rules something is going to break somewhere, and I worry that it’s going to be our democracy.
It has been broke. One example, among many, is the Supreme Court. Time Magazine printed an article about how the Republicans have packed the court. I could not open it
because I am passed my free limit. I hope that you are able to. Links to articles on this subject are below:
https://time.com/6074707/republicans-courts-congress-mcconnell/
https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2019/12/9/20962980/trump-supreme-court-federal-judges
https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2020/10/26/court-packing-republicans-states/
https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2020/10/29/republicans-packed-supreme-court-expand-repair-damage-column/6054522002/
Thank you FERN, I was able to open the "Spotlight Story" in TIME authored by Jackie Calmes outlining "Republican's ruthless success in the judicial wars ...." "Republicans have stocked the federal bench at all levels with conservatives who share the right's support for whacking at the wall between church & sate & at the powers of federal regulatory agencies, banning abortion & expanding gun rights." I would add that the "judicial wars " are not limited to those four (4) types of federal cases or bedrock U.S. constitutional law.
Bryan, Thank you. Can you link the article here? Some subscribers will be able to open it. If you don't mind, copy a few informative lines from it above the link. This is very enjoyable teamwork! Thanks, again.
https://time.com/6074707/republicans-courts-congress-mcconnell/
Bryan, Terrific, thanks. I cannot open it, but subscribers try the link that Bryan posted. If you can open it, it will tell you how the Republican Party has been packing the courts.
Not a surprise, Ginni Thomas runs the court now.
... already looks broken to me ...
Here is a piece about him. He is also considering leaving the Democratic Party. https://www.facebook.com/OccupyDemocrats/videos/1230404767474000
I am very confused. I might be off base in my thinking. Could someone or a few someones help me out here?
From what I understand, we're stuck with the filibuster because certain Democrats don't want to do away with it since democrats may want to use it when Republicans are the majority. Can Democrats vote to alter or do away with the filibuster with no support from Republicans? If the Dems. can, then Republicans will be able to do it once they are the majority. I'm pretty sure that as soon as they get the opportunity, they will vote to do away with it, so the Democrats are unable to take advantage of it.
Do I not understand something? Am I way off base? If I am correct, why do the few Dems. who are against any changes in the filibuster not see the logic of eliminating it now before it bites us in the butt.
The problem is that there are two Democratic Senators who -- for reasons suspected but unproven -- are not acting like Democrats. In fact, they might as well not be Democrats at all.
I suspect both of them are corrupt.
One of them certainly is.
There you go again, thinking seriously and logically. That'll get you in trouble every time! :-)
manchin and Sinema are from red states and all they care about is getting reelected, or trading their votes for a some pork. these two are the acid test for the old saw, 'there is no such thing as bad publicity.'
I understand that right now there are two senators that won't vote for changes to the filibuster. I think what I'm asking is if it would be possible for just 50 senators, and the vice president, to change the filibuster or could the remaining senators filibuster a change to the filibuster. Sinema once stated that she didn't want to get rid of the filibuster because the Democrats would need it when the Republicans came back into power. But that argument, in my mind, doesn't hold water because if the Republicans thought the Democrats would filibuster they'd have no problem at all getting rid of it instantly as soon as they took power of the Senate. I'm just wondering that if the situation we're such that all 50 Democrats wanted to get rid of the filibuster, would they be able to do it on their own.
Wendy, the answer is yes, 50 senators + the VEEP are enough.
were
Spot on, Wendy ... maybe those few Dems are not really Dems - or maybe the 2 party system is outmoded ... maybe the coming clash of partisan interest groups will give rise to a more just, equitable consensus oriented form of government ...?
Two Trojan Horses rule
There has to be a better way ...
It is far worse than you are stating -- if the filibuster rule isn't modified for voting rights it's because of two senators who had 1,484,510 votes COMBINED to earn their positions, which is fewer than 1% of the number of 2020 voters. The combined populations of West Virgina (1.8 million) and Arizona (7.9 million) is less than that of Los Angeles County. So it is NOT Senators representing 21% of the country that will block voting rights and turn this into one party rule, it's two Senators representing less than 3% of the country.
Not even that many. They represent the 1% of richest spread throughout the US.
I've been reading Caro's LBJ biographies. (I was born in 1980, so it is all new to me.) The similarities are distressing; we have made so little progress on voting in 50 years. And the filibuster was at the heart of it then, too. What on earth is it going to take?
Formidable project you've taken on. You also might like to go to the CSpan archives and listen to the LBJ tapes.
There is no bill more important than the "Freedom to Vote Act". None. With minority GQP rule every positive step to fight the Climate Crisis will be crushed. The rich will get richer. The poor will get poorer. There will be too much water and not enough to drink (unless you are rich and sipping your Fiji water on your yacht).
Carve this out of the filibuster rule. Do it now!
Whites will continue to dominate society at every level. So will men. People other than whites, men, and straights will continue to be persecuted and suppressed. Democracy will be eviscerated to make that permanent.
1) I wonder if Joe Manchin is "surprised" that the Republicans are blocking the voting rights legislation that he deliberately watered down because he insisted that he could find 10 Republican Senators to support it? I somehow doubt it.
2) The House Republicans are simply attempting to run out the clock on this congressional investigation of the 1/6 insurrection. In that goal, they are actually succeeding. Things are moving much too slowly and we all know that once the new Congress is sworn in, this inquiry will be halted immediately because the Republicans will then control the House.
Manchin was just running out the clock on the For the People act; he never intended to get 10 Republicans. Schumer and his pals don't understand what they're up against.
I can't disagree. And we as a nation will pay a huge price for their naivete.
Schumer is an inept manager and bad leader. Poor leadership in every respect. Shameful.