A bombshell story last night from the Wall Street Journal reported that billionaire Elon Musk, one of the richest men in the world, who is backing the election of Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump with a daily million-dollar sweepstakes giveaway and gifts of tens of millions to the campaign, has been in regular contact with Russian president Vladimir Putin since late 2022.
Hard to believe that the paper that published the Pentagon Papers and exposed the Nixon corruption with Woodward and Bernstein had been bought by such a little man as Jeff Bezos, who prostrated himself before a demented sociopath Fascist Trump.
We are, and only we can prevent it with our votes. We are seeing that out civil institutions will not save us, so we must save ourselves. I would love for VP Harris to take on monopolies and start enforcing our antimonopoly laws again. Amazon, local cell, internet and cable monopolies are one big way for monopolies to suck money out of us for mediocre or poor service. Our internet speeds are laughably slow compared to those in Europe, or in places like South Korea or Japan.
Lina Khan, Biden Harris administration chair of the Federal Trade Commission, has been taking on monopolies since she was a student.
"While a student at Yale Law School, she became known for her work in antitrust and competition law in the United States after publishing the influential essay "Amazon's Antitrust Paradox".[1]"
I could actually see a place for Liz Cheney to work with Lina Khan, Rohit Chopra (chair of the Consumer Financial Bureau), and Sen. Elizabeth Warren. To strengthen American capitalism by mitigating the abuses of American capitalism. Employing the government to care for the general welfare of the people and to protect the planet by regulating industry. Both Roosevelt presidents would agree. Liz Cheney could remodel herself as a Teddy Roosevelt regulator and environmentalist.
I respect Liz Cheney, but I believe her voting record was more pro-Trump than Stefanik's. Harris will be a good, perhaps great president. But would a Lincolnesque "Team of Rivals" be ... Actually, I answered my own question. It might be just the ticket!
...To strengthen American capitalism by mitigating the abuses of American capitalism. Employing the government to care for the general welfare of the people and to protect the planet by regulating industry. Yes! Well said.
No, you can't mitigate capitalism and make it better.bthats like begging everyone to have policeman monitoring everything they do. Capitalism devours notions like that. Sorry. I guess youndint know what we're up against.
I like police stopping drunk drivers and people driving the wrong way on one-way streets or against traffic on freeways. We need some order and guard rails.
No, no, no, and no. We need to realize that capitalism flaunts the laws, it's in its nature, and it can't be controlled. Case-in-point: RIGHT FUCK__G NOW.
Check out Lina Khan, Chair of the Federal Trade Commission. Though she was appointed by President Biden, I can imagine a President Harris keeping her on the job.
"Under President Biden, however, the FTC [Lina Khan] and Justice Department have unleashed a crackdown and sued scores of big companies, including TicketMaster, Nvidia, Meta, Microsoft, Apple and Amazon."
Khan, Lina M. (January 2017). "Amazon's Antitrust Paradox". Yale Law Journal. 126 (3): 564–907. Archived from the original on April 5, 2017. Retrieved July 18, 2022.
Big donors are urging Harris to fire Lina Khan, and I think she is walking a tightrope to keep them on board. We must make sure she understands that Khan is exactly what this country needs!
2. Please repeatedly post "not suckers or losers" comments in social media. According to Facebook, there are 4 million veterans and active duty members on Facebook, as well as 12.5 million family members and 242 million friends with veterans or active duty members. Military sites, veterans; organizations, historical sites.
Vote vets has already flipped many 2016 and 2020 Trump voters.
"We are seeing that our civil institutions will not save us, so we must save ourselves."
Thank you for showing the way so clearly.
Forty years ago in the Philippines I met a man, a journalist from a rather conservative background whose world view had a deep influence on mine. It could be expressed in terms similar to this phrase of yours.
Mao Chanco looked back to the Second World War when, during the Japanese occupation, ordinary people could expect nothing but trouble from the invader and no help from their own authorities. They had nothing to fall back on, only themselves.
Nothing to fall back on. Only ourselves.
Turning to our times, he saw our world in terms of economic war and turned to the main victims, dwellers in Manila’s vast shantytowns, the country’s peasant population. Green politics before they caught on elsewhere—of course, they never did catch on in America, not even fire and flood can deliver the message… Seed banks to save the country’s traditional rice varietals, projects to turn slum dwellers with no hope from drugs and crime to growing their own food. Utopian. Like military war itself, the economic war economy overwhelms and destroys all such efforts, moving on to dealers, then death squads and mass murder…
*
This brings me back to the words of another prescient writer, Ananda Coomaraswamy, in 1946:
An aphorism several times repeated in Buddhist scripture runs “war breeds hatred, because the conquered are unhappy”; and that is even more true of economic than of military wars, for in the former no holds whatever are barred, and there are no traces of any intention to make peace.
#
It might be no exaggeration to say that modern civilization is fundamentally a “racket”, needless to name the gangsters.
#
Cain, who killed his brother Abel, the herdsman, and built himself a city, prefigures modern civilization.
*
This morning, thinking of another election, thinking, too, of war in Ukraine, I scribbled these words:
“A promise of blood, sweat and tears is no way to win an election but, when the issue is survival, is there, was there, any other way forward?
When it comes to Ukraine's war of survival, there was no other way. And so, false promises, the propaganda of false expectations, have gravely undermined the country's war effort. Tragic.”
*
Let’s relax together now, and do some small thing we really enjoy doing.
While I appreciate your comments, I notice, again, that nowhere does it point out the obvious fact that it's male violence and aggression, the extreme being war, that causes most of the chaos, suffering and destruction in this world. I contend that male violence is a public health calamity. And before anyone tries to counter with 'women can be violent too" which is of course true, as we all belong to the same species, it's men by far who declare war, fight in wars, assault and kill women and girls, and act as if other people's lives are disposable. And in present day this aggression is often expressed in the pursuit of wealth at all costs. While evolution has produced this more violent tendency in males, our societies have not been good at being clear that much of this violent behavior is anathema to a well-functioning society.
J. Nol, I was a Male in high school, enjoying Art, Writing, and not interested in male competitive sports, hated gym class. Then in 1962, I turned 18 & was REQUIRED BY LAW to register for the Draft. Male Violence & Aggression are built into our society against the will of many of us. A few months later in the US Air Force, reciting “I am an American fighting man” from the Code of Conduct for Members of the United States Armed Forces, I was forced to lie - I had never been into fighting.
Don't forget that it is males (usually white) who are behind all the mass shootings. ...I could be wrong on that. Has a woman *ever* conducted a mass shooting?
I'm not sure, but it's more likely that men will want to punish others and externalize their anger and women tend to turn that anger toward themselves, through self-destructive behaviors, either directly hurting themselves, or selecting and staying with abusive partners. Our society, of course, reinforces male violence.
See, thus is part of N the problem. Why is this nation so obsessed with gender? It's frankly vulgar. I contend American violence is enemy number one. Or you, for making it a gender issue. You do about Gaza, yes? I then the Biden administration are all men, or am I missing something complex beneath the simpicity.
Wow. This tendency people have of jumping onto one thing left out, just to take a poke at someone is so exhausting. Of course I am opposed to assault of anyone, including boys. My point was that the majority of violence is committed by men and of course, unfortunately children (of both sexes) are often targets of this aggression. My point is, it's time to recognize this as a public health crisis, and it's time to reevaluate how societies deal with or don't deal with it to help men in particular develop more prosocial ways of managing their aggressive impulses.
Kathy, when I post Heather's letters on Facebook, I always end with vote D. We do not buy anything from Amazon unless we absolutely must. I have an ex-student who writes romance novels and she absolutely hates them. We just cut our cable service, Comcast, because they refused to carry Big 10 sports events and we now have an antenna which gets the local stations we want to watch. Mostly we stream series made elsewhere as acting here is often insipid and other places have actors who have challenges of various kinds. Yesterday we watched the second episode of Miss Merkel where one of the characters had a prothesis. Yesterday I read Eugene Robinson's column about the letter he and others signed in protest at the refusal to endorse. (Yes, we subscribe to the WaPo, but are considering dropping it.) I took some time to read a few of the over 500 comments and most of them were people who were cancelling their subscriptions.
Louis Giglio, I just discovered that when I tried to go to the familiar WAPO dot com, it has changed to washingtonpost dot com. Wonder why. (I am still a subscriber to WAPO. Thinking. They've definitely gone steeply down hill in the past few months.)
Kathy yes, you are speaking about an issue that these rob ber barons should be ashamed of. Instead they simply count the money. We need competition for cable, internet, and we need to destroy amazon. The only way is with a Democratic sweep of both houses of Congress along with Madam President Kamala Harris and Vice President Tim Walz.
I refuse to buy a Tesla because of Musk. His rise to prominence as the richest person in the world, a social media platform owner and political influencer, Federal contracts holder, and now ties to Russia should have us all stopped cold in our tracks. How deep does this rabbit hole go?
It may be we’re all already sold out, we just don’t know it yet. And, yes, of course I’ve voted, but all the current press, polling, and handwringing about the U.S. election has us so divided and distracted when the real levers of world power are being pulled on dark and smoky Zoom calls chaired by Putin, with Trump sitting at his feet like the good little (albeit greedy) lap dog that he is.
I think we might also add “developers” to the list of corporate America who are “sucking money out of us mediocre and poor service.”
These developers and the city councils who green-light them in the name of growth are providing high rent housing costs and buildings with no design and truly utilitarian housing at best while setting aside meeker offerings of affordable housing.
Kathy, I am doing research on Elon Musk's control of the Starlight satellite system. The U.S. Army War College (think tank) has published RON GANTZ' monograph about the use & abuse of satellites in the Russian attack on Ukraine.
The monograph is copyrighted & subject to Title 17 U.S.C. Sections 101 & 105 so I cannot copy and/or republish the content without the permission of the U.S. Army Director of the SSI, Dr. C. Anthony Pfaff.
More later if NASA's investigation of the Moscow Muskite does not reveal relevant national security data first.
Sunday Update: I submitted a FOIA request to SSI-Director, Dr. C. Anthony Pfaff this morning
Somebody potential first about making capitalism better by mitigating it.bthat weak ass approach is why dems lose so much. Mitigate capitalism, hah, you guys, it's really, really bad. What dint you get? At this point the N only way if "mitigating" capital would be to have a policeman inside everyone skull all the time. Is that really what you wwant. I thought you were against authoritarianism? I'm cinfused.
"Still harder, Molly, for citizens of the Land of the Free to believe that THEY are being bought and sold. Just like slaves in the "good old days" when America was "Great"."
This hyperbolic assertion is an example of fallacious rhetoric. Our situation is not analogous to that of enslaved persons. And we ought not believe it is.
Citizens are not 'being sold just like slaves."
American citizens are being sold out - by officials, to plutocrats and populists, and for the Republican fascist agenda. Based on racist right wing religious extremism in service of unmitigated greed and unregulated power.
Lin-IMHO Molly’s analogy of the American people being sold like slaves is not hyperbolic. Slaves were bought by “owners” who controlled their bodies, freedoms, living standards, food sources, housing, livelihoods and more.
What we’re experiencing now is a war between which oligarchs (and foreign dictators) will control us through their presidential choices.
One good thing about this is each of them is clearly revealing exactly who they are and what they want to do in relation to our lives and world affairs.
We’re also seeing who the cowards are-it’s unbelievable that they’re afraid of Trump and are “obeying in advance” like good subjects of fascism. American style capitalism requires control of the masses-especially our labor and allegiances. Let’s show them that the power is really with we the people by voting for Harris-Walz.
I never mentioned slaves, however if you cannot control your own body because other people have rules that control your body than you are a slave and you can die.
Molly, I was replying to Peter Burnett's reply to your comment. I quoted Peter's reply - your name appears in his reply . I did not in my initial comment attribute anything to you, nor did I originally critique your comment. I hope this clears that up.
But No Molly, partial controls on your bodily autonomy - positive and negative controls, official and social controls - Are Not Equivalent to Enslavement. It is specious rhetoric to suggest otherwise. It elides the particular and absolute atrocity of enslavement.
Lin*, you are correct to reserve the word "slavery" to the traditional definition as illustrated by the experiences of many Americsn Blacks ancestors' experiences on the 17-19th centuries. However, a new word or term is needed for the many ways modern politicians and business owner use to control citizens' and workers' lives and decisions.
Here, Kathy, I am taking issue with Lin, Tom and everyone who finds the use of metaphor objectionable in relation to the particularly vile practice of chattel slavery in the Americas.
I am even taking issue with your use of the word "serfs", despite the fact that, when, in 2008, I was asked about my political stance, I said that I was against "the new feudalism".
Now, cattle and slaves were housed, fed and exploited to the limit... and beyond. Under the new dispensation, the underclass has no place in the economy, no place in the OIKOS -- the household -- unless it be that of vermin.
Our new would-be masters of the universe recognize no responsibility to or for anyone or anything, they answer only to their own whims. And, occasionally, to the pecking order among fellow vultures. (More metaphor...)
What awaits the underclass under an American Nazi regime may be even worse than chattel slavery. Under feudalism, even under racketeers, some reciprocity -- protection in exchange for services.
Under the New Normal, the promise of none.
Now, I know that many readers here are wide awake. Yet, as Tom rightly points out, many will never have seen a truly repressive society. And, even if they have, they may not have understood the reality of what they were seeing with their eyes...
And it is my horror at the deep sleep of so much of society today, especially in America, that impels me to write such emotional warnings. After all, a people which failed so totally to understand even the most dreadful warnings like 9/11 -- so totally that I have some reason to doubt that anyone here will understand what I have just written -- may wake up only when thrust into the promised Project 2025 nightmare. After which all mankind will suffer.
*
For my part, main conditioning was:
1. under bombing as a 4-year old;
2. living in South Africa when the Apartheid regime came to power -- yes, I saw chain gangs in the fields, slavery, but -- as in Angola -- not necessarily for life;
3. meeting survivors of Auschwitz; talks with my father's first cousin, a senior officer in the British medical corps who opened two Nazi concentration camps;
4. witnessing the "freedoms" vouchsafed to citizens, in particular the poor, under the Franco regime... and the accompanying unfreedom;
5. friends among those who managed to flee Chile after Pinochet's putsch (much admired by Putin and his regime) and those who escaped Argentina during the murderous rule of the military junta
6. travel in Africa and Asia, witnessing extreme poverty... cheek by jowl with extreme wealth;
7. a promising microproject in Guatemala financed by a group of which I was a member... wiped out by death squads when oil was found across the nearby Mexican border...
That's for starters, and I'm saying nothing about Russia or Ukraine since the beginning of Putin's absurd war, though I visited Russia many times before that horror. Ukraine too, where we have friends today.
And no, Tom, I have never been a slave or a prisoner. Even so... just seeing a model of a slave ship is plenty, if you feel for fellow human beings. I have seen far too much evil.
Quoting, to close, my own rather harsh version of Saadi Shirazi's famous lines:
They *have* made us their slaves. Look at the wealth transfer from the middle class and poorer segment of Americans to the one per cent - the top one percent of American own more than the American middle class.
Clearly you have never lived in a genuinely repressive society, and just as clearly you lack any notion—gained through empathy or imagination—of what slavery is like.
Do you have the freedom to vote? Can you make your own choices about where to live and what to buy? Do you choose whether or not to have a family? And where to educate your children? Can you cross a state line-or for that matter travel anywhere you can afford? Can you quit your job and choose to work elsewhere?
These posts, frankly, are a terrible insult to the generations before us who were enslaved, and to those who worked and fought and died to end slavery.
Part of the problem is that no language exists that could even begin to express the hell on earth that we human beings have so often created in our midst.
Metaphor. Gradgrindean "facts". Statistics. Damned lies and statistics. All utterly inadequate.
You speak of one of the most hellish aspects of America's heritage; As though there were no competing circles in that hell. As though the destruction of the original inhabitants of the land throughout the Americas was in no way comparable. So many atrocities come to mind, worldwide. Mention Tasmania... where the entire indigenous population was wiped out. Everywhere, everywhere -- and at this very moment -- unspeakable evils. Those of us who have lived a long and very active life may have seen too much, may even, however unintentionally, have added to the weight of human misery.
We have an absolute duty of kindness to one another -- without neglecting the hard forms of kindness and compassion, forms which are absolutely necessary when addressing evil.
I hope we'll all come to understand one another at this crucial moment in history, and do all that is in our power to ensure that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.
lin-, once again stating things so well. They are also being sold out by companies who look at employees as metrics, easily substituted when unpaid overtime (salaried employees) or ever-changing shifts (part-time hourly employees) destroy health.
Lin. We can all understand what you are getting at, but should we not beware of creating hierarchies of evil?
Just because my mind is incapable of imagining any historical evil comparable to the Shoah, this does not in any way separate or obscure other evils, let alone justify them. Besides, Hitler's racial policies were, as we know, influenced by America's history of slavery and the horrors of Jim Crow.
I feel sick just thinking of these things. Or the unspeakable cruelty of Leopold II's Congo company that did so much to enrich the city of Brussels in which I spent decades of my life.
If you read what I have written elsewhere, you may come to understand better what lies behind how I sometimes express myself. I think I understand something of what makes for your restrained and disciplined approach to the threats that now face America and the world.
Yes, we are being sold out in the manner of boiling a frog. Keep raising the temperature just enough, a little at a time, and before we realize it, the deed is done.
This is misinformation. If you read about Bezos ( on Wikipedia for instance). Bezos has been at odds with Trump. He's just showing spinelessness and it's harmful and being called out. But look at how many "likes" you get for this. TSK TSK....
Having Trump publicly attack him. As we’ve seen, this encourages Trump’s groupies to openly threaten death or violence on the targets of Trump’s wrath.
I simply communicate directly with Michael Schmidt or tune-in to Schmidt's many appearances on "Deadline: White House". Michael is often a guest on his close friend, NICOLLE WALLACE's, MSNBC afternoon show at 4 PM Eastern.
Studio 3A in Rockefeller Center to be exact ... so not much of a commute for Michael with the advantage of a news cycle has matured with additional facts.
Yes he is, Potter. Bezos has no love for Trump. But his editorial decision for “his paper” demonstrates fealty to the authoritarian power that is Trump in this election and pleases Trump with all its dark intentions. I liken it to a sign crafted and branded in the brains of tycoons everywhere….”Bow to me or beware.”
Bezos is no "toady" to Trump because he is not standing up to him with regard to the WAPO decision. He is being spineless and is an example of what Snyder is talking about but he is NOT doing Trump's bidding. There is a difference.
I'll do a "bothsides" here. There is name calling-- useless---- and misinformation here too. Not to the extent, but people do this here as well. We don't do disinformation however, that I can see, as a rule. People should check there info before they go public for their "likes".
Christine: I liken it to a sign crafted and branded in the brains of tycoons everywhere….”Bow to me or beware.”
-----
This is hyperbole. Prove to me that Trump is threatening Bezos somehow and that this is not Bezos himself fearful deciding to not antagonize the monster ( in case he wins)... as the NYTimes had to courage to do. Bezos is showing spinelessness in this instant. He is calculating about his space competition with Musk probably too. There is a rivalry FYI. But bowing to Trump? Tycoons everywhere? Fealty? LOL
Potter, yet here we are, spinelessly obeying Trump ala a Tim Snyder reference, ahead of time, so as not to be in his crosshairs afterward. Classic Authoritarianism
Using fear this way convincingly, gets a ball rolling. The more people fear you the more they fear you as you collect this power that you supposedly have command of.
Bezos and the others, the LA Times and the rest, play it so that they are going to be safe in a close election. THIS election is not normal and they are abdicating their responsibility as news organizations that have an editorial voice ( along with their diverse opinions). Bezos is now getting whacked around with criticism for this poor decision. I bet he is surprised.
So, David Gagne, in this thread that relates to Heather’s article about WAPO and Bezos, you’re promoting this video that relates to making money through Amazon??
Several people whose views I greatly respect have taken strong exception to that second sentence, "Just like slaves..."
It is not in fact necessary, since the first sentence contains all that needs be said.
Free people cannot be bought and sold. To the extent that they can be, they are no longer free.
For what it is worth, the second sentence referred only to the commodification of human beings, not to their consequent treatment as beasts of burden. About the only limit on the horrendous treatment of black slaves and their descendants is that, unlike cattle, they were not eaten.
I strongly recommend readers to look up what two great French thinkers, Montesquieu and Condorcet, had to say about slavery and the treatment of Africans. Also Abbé Grégoire, who wrote a powerful essay condemning slavery and the slave trade in 1815 and campaigned for the abolitionist cause until his death in 1831.
Montesquieu could hardly have been more scathing in presenting the arguments of white supremacists...
"It is impossible to believe that these people are human beings, for, if we did believe them to be human beings, we would have to wonder whether we ourselves are Christians."
I subscribe to the Globe ONLY because I live here. They have, at LEAST, endorsed Harris. The Globe’s owners, the Henry’s, are also super wealthy, and we should question what they choose not to cover as well as how they cover what they do write about. I very much miss the days of Ellen Goodman and Molly Ivins.
I dropped my Guardian sub when they published a pathetic piece on the “report” about Joe Biden’s age. Sadly, I’ve found it better just to limit my exposure to any of this to Heather’s daily letters. On most days, it’s more than enough.
In defense of the Guardian: They have the best coverage of the American far-right, on the top level with Pro Publica. You might want to give the Guardian another chance. There's no subscription pay wall.
Well, the truth is that I’ve cut so far back on any current events that the Guardian (or anything else) is no longer necessary. Their arts coverage was fantastic though, but I get that in other places.
Thank you for that information. Oh no, something else to worry about — losing C-SPAN. I no longer subscribe to cable but when I did , C-SPAN was incredibly valuable, and ahead of other networks with captioning!
When I dropped my WaPo subscription this past spring, I began a search for a good replacement. I tried The Guardian for a couple months, but I found their online format unfriendly to navigate and their willingness to accommodate right-biased reporting off-putting. I highly respect The Inquirer's philosophy and policy, but found their coverage too Philadelphia-centric, which it really should be. I assume The Globe would be much the same. Those are the reasons I've invested my money in HCR's effort. But I still mourn the loss of WaPo to Bezos and his Murdoch protégé, Will Lewis.
The Guardian is British, so has nothing to fear from Trump. It also is not owned by one wealthy person. The thing about the Post and the LA Times is that they have been bought by already wealthy people. Not a good situation.
Lots of folks here looking for alternative news media. Perhaps check out www.StatesNewsroom to see if your state has a local press group. I’m very impressed with the reporters at Florida Phoenix. I’ve also read, and supported, the Guardian for several years.
I dropped the Sunday times due to the cost, but I am not a fan of the way they have made Trump sound less venal and vile than he actually is, and they try to put down the VP as if she is on Trump’s low level. Tim Snyder is right, you do NOT obey in advance.
I am truly heartbroken and torn to cancel my subscription. I feel I am abandoning and endangering the journalists I most respect and depend on. But I cannot support Bezos and Lewis in suppressing the Post endorsement of Kamala Harris for President.
Democracy Has Died in The Post C Suite
This is not the venerable Post returning to its roots. (As falsely claimed by Lewis.) This is new Post bosses helping fascism take root in the United States - by killing off independent journalism. This is Jeff Bezos joining Elon Musk in perverting American media - preemptively capitulating and placing their bets and putting their fists on the scale for a TrumpProject2025ChristianNationalist win. Or worse.
Please Fact Check William Lewis' assertions concerning his decision to suppress the Editorial Board's endorsement of Kamala Harris for president.
Lewis asserts that his decision is:
1. "consistent with the values The Post has always stood for"
His decision is demonstrably inconsistent with the Post's past values and actions.
2. " Our job at The Washington Post is to provide through the newsroom nonpartisan news for all Americans, and thought-provoking, reported views from our opinion team to help our readers make up their own minds."
2a. Lewis elides the job of the Editorial Board
2b. Suppressing the Editorial Board's endorsement actually impedes readers' ability to make up our own minds by denying us the opinion of knowledgeable and trusted journalists.
3. "...our job as the newspaper of the capital city of the most important country in the world is to be independent.
And that is what we are and will be."
Certainly it is WaPo's job to be independent.
Even presenting the appearance of self-policing as capitulation to threats by fascist powers is exactly the opposite of independence. And seeming to adopt the methods and advance to agenda of fascists is even worse.
I understand, that coming from Murdoch media, Lewis expects his consumers to swallow any swill wrapped in high minded sounding rhetoric. In this, Lewis reveals his: Murdochian modus operandi; disdain for journalistic ethics; ignorance of the notion of an independent press; and disregard for Washington Post journalists and readers. Most damning, Lewis asserts and appropriates the language and ideals of an independent press, while in fact negating those exact ideals. I believe George Orwell termed what Lewis is doing newspeak.
The WAPO is like a multi-armed body. One arm has great opinion writing and another arm that spouts “both-sider” excuse for Trump’s insanity. Another arm for news coverage that buries real news about the administration's accomplishments and another arm that pretends that Project 2025 has no meaning. Another arm ignores the radicalization of the Supreme Court while another goes ape$hit over Biden’s age
Unfortunately, the Head has no ethical or Moral Compass. Its inability to recognize the monster staring it down as “unfit for service” validates half of its writers as “unbiased” and condemns the other as cheerleaders for Harris
Democracy Dies in Bezos. Bezos defines Authoritarianism. He understands Fascism and fears it not
*lin, I always enjoy reading your info-packed comments, and I agree with your decision to drop the WaPo, as I did yesterday as well. I'll be writing my email to Matt Murray today, but it will be much more brief.
I also intend to call Customer Service and ask for 75% of my subscription cost refunded, as I had re-upped in July. I have no expectations they'll agree to it, but I also have no interest in continuing to find them until next July. I only feel bad for the staff who may be economically affected by these cancellations (although I think a Bezos-owned publication can weather a loss of 2000 subscribers, which must have been his calculation.)
Thank you for sharing this—I’ve subscribed to WaPo for so many years that I can’t remember when I first subscribed? However, last night before I could go to sleep I canceled my subscription (I slept better). I feel sad because of so many wonderful journalists who I will miss 😢
I canceled the WAPO and Times years ago. My local paper is wall to wall MAGA and the Pittsburgh Post Gazette has always been a right wing partisan rag. I’m so delighted I found Substack with Heather, Robert Hubble, Joyce Vance, Lucian Truscott, Jeff Tiedrich, and so many others! I spend a lot of time and money here but kept my sanity! Worth every penny!
I agree Karen. I read no newspapers, mostly, unless there is need to see local news & events. I rarely watch any network news. All these substacks give me all I need to know.
Susan, I stopped all subscriptions I had with newspapers and have never watched (and I mean since the concept of cable news channels) what I've called "bought news". Because if you pay for it, they're only gonna tell you what you want to hear.
I used to watch the Sunday morning news shows on CBS, ABC, and occasionally NBC. Had to stop that in 2021. I spend my subscription money here on Substack and hear the good with the bad commonly known as mostly the truth. I'm voting Monday for Kamala Harris and Tim Walz.
The Post Gazette was better before they decided to fire Rob Rogers. That and the erratic behavior that one of the members of the Block family that owns the paper were reasons why I canceled my Post Gazette subscription.
There is never ONE writer or media entity to trust. It must be a mix. ALL individuals and organizations have an Achilles Heel of sorts, including the very best including those absent of financially vested interests.
Please avoid any word with “-tard”. The derivative is a word that is cruel and discriminatory to cognitively-impaired humans, and deprives some people of their dignity, and there right to be accepted in the colorful
Spectrum of humanity. I’m not being “politically correct”. I’ve seen how beloveds have been hurt by this kind of vocabulary.
We are always called lib****s by the wingnuts who infest X. It is respectful to avoid terms that are insulting to people with cognitive problems. They have the right to full acceptance in society.
Trumptards get NO QUARTER. They follow the rules and worship a sick, demented diaper claude fellon cult leader. "Belovides"...do not purchase a blasphamous bible...do not wear sanitary napkins on their ears...do not wear diapers over their pants in public...do not urinate in public in large pots......do not take away a womens rights to control her own body......do not risk the loss of democracy....do not call the Jan 6 traitors "hostages"......."colourful spectrum of humanity??" The colour int the Trumpt#&D world is brown and found in a used depends.
Get rid of Citizens United and maybe we'll eventually get something along those lines -- though the fragmentation of cable and the plethora of alternative sources makes it unlikely. At least in my lifetime the U.S. has never had a "topline news source" that adequately covered the country. For instance, the African American press flourished for a reason (and is still hanging in in some places).
The Guardian is run by a trust, not by a single owner or as part of a hedge fund that squeezes the profits out of newspapers while ignoring the public interest. We need to change our media ownership laws to break up media monopolies, especially those of Rupert Murdoch and Sinclair Media, as well as terrestrial (as opposed to subscription) radio. Failure to have local radio outlets available presents a serious risk to public safety, as we’ve seen in the past.
I dropped the NY Times after 2016. My WaPo sub is running out now. I've been subscribing to the Guardian, both US and UK editions, for several years now. That, plus several outlets (Slate and the Atlantic top the list) and a bunch of Substacks, keeps me pretty well informed.
I dropped my WaPo subscription as soon as I saw the announcement. Also, since 2020 I use Amazon as a search engine, I find what I want, read the reviews, and then buy the product I want from the company website, not amazon. I’ve had a subscription to the Boston Globe for over 5 years because my daughter started college in Boston then. It’s still a good one. I’ll replace WaPo with the Philadelphia Enquirer. Have been a Guardian subscriber for a while now too.
No. The Henry's bought it from the NYT years ago. John is the publisher and is wife, Linda, is CEO. John owns the Red Sox, the Pittsburgh Penguins, Liverpool Football Club, and part of a NASCAR team. They are also billionaires.
I dropped the NYT last summer when they began the drumbeat of questioning Biden's fitness for office while saying very little about Trump's then obvious raving decline. I gave my reason for dropping it as journalistic negligence. I find The Guardian to be a good, solid, balanced paper. It's doesn't have the breadth of US coverage that the NYT has and I miss my favorite columnists but, for now, I need a media diet to preserve my sanity, so it works for me.
A sideways reply: Democracy Now, though not a newspaper; Substack’s Thom Hartmann; Contribute to Greg Palast who is trying to get us ready for the massive voter rolls purge that BIPOC voters will face when they try to vote
I responded to a recent article in the online WaPo about our supposed need to rely on and expand nuclear energy if we want to meet CO2 emissions goals in the next decade or so, and I mentioned that the owner of the Post, Jeff Bezos, had a personal interest in this (as described in the article itself). I then opined we ought not let our oligarchs set climate change policy, especially when their personal financial interests are involved. I compared it with the mafia's interference with government in Italy, where I live. When I clicked "submit", my comment immediately disappeared, replaced by a notice that I had violated the WaPo's policies.
So now the chicken-hearted Bezos has refused to let his newspaper's editors endorse Kamala Harris! I am not in the least surprised.
I began reading the WaPo as a little kid living in DC in the early 60's (first the cartoons, then the sports pages, me and my dad getting our daily info at the breakfast table. I was a politics junkie by the age of 12, and I read every article about the Bay of Pigs, Kennedy's assassination, the Vietnam war, Johnson, Nixon, Watergate, Ford's pardon of Nixon, and so much more. When I moved away from DC as a young adult I lost track of the Post and became a daily NYT reader and then later an International Herald Tribune reader when I got out into the world and finally a La Repubblica reader when my Italian was up to speed.
I am currently subscribed to NYT, WaPo, La Repubblica and The Atlantic, but I will wait to see how the election turns out before unsubscribing from anything.
If you’re thinking about canceling your newspaper subscription, Rolf Dobelli’s book “Stop Reading the News” might resonate with you. He argues that daily news tends to be sensational and distracting, offering shallow insights that can increase stress and misinformation. Instead, Dobelli advocates for focusing on in-depth articles, long-form journalism, and books, which provide more thoughtful, detailed analysis.
For long-form articles, here are some excellent sources:
1. The Atlantic – Known for comprehensive and well-researched pieces on politics, culture, and society.
2. The New Yorker – Offers deep dives into current events, culture, and profiles of interesting figures.
3. Longreads – Curates long-form content from various sources, covering a wide range of topics.
4. The Guardian’s Long Read – Offers detailed articles on global issues, politics, and culture.
5. Aeon – Focuses on philosophy, culture, and science, with thought-provoking essays and articles.
These sources will help you stay informed without the overwhelm of daily news.
Two months ago, after reading “Stop Reading the News.” I gave up daily news except for Heather Cox Richardson. My constant thirst for “what more does NYT have to say every minute???!!!” subsided quickly and I’ve had more time for novels, non fiction, and hearing my own thoughts.
Thanks, Shawn, for the advice. I have noticed that I have become smart-phone dependent, dedicating far less time to reading books than I used to and feeling constantly dissatisfied about the quality of information I get from the internet. HCR is a notable exception, and the Atlantic is the first of my subscriptions I check every day, but I really do need more than mere news and opinion to satisfy me, so I had better get my ass in gear. Bezos' refusal to endorse Kamala Harris is very revealing. Wealth is no guarantee of intelligence or good character.
Dad always said, “That’s what happens when you have more money than brains”. Bezos is living proof.
Musk has no business inserting himself in politics, that’s gonna lay him low. He taking huge risks with his business. Tesla cars WERE great, at first. Now all car companies are making EV’s and by what I see doing well with them. I know his cars are a drop in the bucket for him, he’s a genius in that category. Other than that, he deserves to be locked up in a cell with erasable markers and a whiteboard.
No one person should have billions and billions of dollars at their whim. The economic havoc they alone are capable of creating has the potential to interfere with and topple small governments across the globe. I’m not suggesting hand over anything to anyone else. But an appropriate tax code and deductions to meet these unusual circumstances as 98% of us pay their (the billionaires) share of taxes. It’s almost impossible not to become so self absorbed that your reality isn’t the same as 99% of your fellow human beings.
He’s also wrecking social media with his takeover of what used to be Twitter. X now ignores it when you report blatantly racist and ant-Semitic comments to them, and Musk feels free to spread his own lies, conspiracy theories, deepfake videos, racism and the pseudoscience of eugenics on X. He only believes in “free speech” if it’s something he agrees with.
Musk and Trump are both sociopaths, and a sensible society would never allow people like them in any proximity to power. Fascist and Communist societies like Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union empowered sociopaths like Hitler, Lenin and Stalin to come to power, and the consequences were both brutal and lethal. I have every reason to believe empowering sociopaths like Musk, Trump and Stephen Miller will be equally brutal and lethal. Absolutely no one will be immune.
That's absolutely true about the value of long-form journalism (and book-length background info and commentary). I learned this during the breakup of the former Yugoslavia. My knowledge of eastern Europe was sketchy, and I could not figure it out from the day-to-day reporting. Long-form writing and books helped a lot.
Shawn, I subscribe to both the Atlantic and the New Yorker, but when Substack exploded, I don’t have time to read them. I get up three hours before my wife just to get through my Substacks and related comments
Same here, Dave. LFAA is my first read, and occupies most of my early hours. Beginning in June, I have to cut out at 7:00 a.m. to go water, and am lucky if I get to come back and complete my read. I feel like I'm sitting here having coffee with my fellow Readers. It's a nice way to start the day.
Ally, Its always good to see your comments. Of the thousands of commenters, I recognize a few every day and scroll past a lot of others in search of my Breakfast Club
Seeing you (and others) pop up in other Subs is a confirmation of sorts that values are aligned and there is strength building
My second Sub subscription was Mr Irreverence TCinLA; so refreshingly poignant
I think that YLE was my first, LFAA my second. I did hit TAFM a bit later, but boy, does he write some good stuff. I've been enjoying his Leyette Gulf posts lately.
Me too Ally. I'm awake at 4 a.m., read HCR, Kiev Times, Jeruselem Post, breakfast at 7 a.m., stable chores at 8 a.m. , two hours weeding and bushwhacking, make lunch, feed Handsome, feed me, go back and read commentary on HCR.
Dave, I find that when I skip the comments I can get through all my substacks....I have a small group of substacks where I read/scan the first bunch of comments. I wish I could shrink them down by the lines on the left so that it was easier to find the beginning of threads.
Thank you for this! I toyed with a subscription to the Atlantic — they let you trial for a long time — but decided I wasn’t smart enough. Maybe erudite is the word. You make a good argument. I’ll have a rethink. Atul Gawande was at the New Yorker, so they must be good!
Shawn, thank you for these suggestions. I'm a former hardcopy newspaper junkie, preferring the actual item to digital versions and I appreciate your suggestions!!
What about your local news? I have a friend who compulsively follows several news sources on national media, but she doesn't know what is happening in her own city and state.
Good point. I subscribe to my local paper, The Peninsula Daily News, both on-line and print copy. They are not so hot on international or national news (they get most of that from the NYT, to which I subscribe anyway), but great on the local coverage. And the print version has comics and Dear Abby!
I also subscribe to the Seattle Times (on-line), mainly for restaurant reviews and local obituaries. Also, I listen to CBC radio, though recently they seem to be overly fixated on the US elections, as if they don't have enough of their own political drama to deal with!
I was a CBC reporter for many years and feel really saddened when I try to read their online news. There is still some excellent journalism going on there but also way too many "human interest" click-bait stories and peek-a-boo headlines that are irritating. Most video reports of interest are behind two, three or sometimes four ads. It can take more than a minute of ads to get to the story. The Canadian government is slowing starving the CBC for funds and CBC News has had to turn to ads and click bait to fund their programming.
It's off-putting because CBC funds come from Canadians' taxes so we shouldn't have to put up with the ads since we already paid for it with our taxes. Newsrooms have been doing more and more with less and less since the early nineties. The leader of the Conservative Party is a Trump wannabe who might be our next Prime Minister and he promises to get rid of the CBC altogether. Strange days.
I have been a CBC listener for only the past five years, since I relocated from Seattle to the Olympic Peninsula, so I do not have much in the way of "legacy" experience with Canadian media.
I don't often access their online content, but what you are describing sounds familiar. The thing about that, as you point out, is the apparent lack of support from the Canadian government. I don't how it compares with the BBC in that regard, but certainly there is (or should be) a clear and unassailable mandate for government support, especially as taxpayer $$ are used for that purpose. That mandate does not exist in any meaningful way for our Public Broadcasting System, which is mostly privately funded.
I do enjoy listening to CBC because of the alternative perspective it provides on world affairs, and I like knowing what our neighbors to the north are concerned with. I take note of the critical state of the health care system, which used to be a model to look up to. And the cost of living issues ring all too familiar. All under the banner of trying to do more with less. And when it comes to making amends for the treatment of native peoples . . . well, let's just say there is much to be answered for on both sides of the border. We haven't had to boot any diplomatic staff back to India yet, but there are others who could be sent packing with little provocation, in my view.
I can see what you mean about the political scene; I've heard the rhetoric of the various parties, especially the Conservatives via their presumptive Trump sound alike, Pierre What'shisname. He adds nothing new or creative to the conversation, as far as I can tell. Of course your political/electoral system is different than ours in some ways that ours could take a lesson from. You have more than two parties with an opportunity to make a meaningful difference. I think that, at times, coalition-building can strengthen a democratic government.
The WaPo has suddenly become comment sensitive. It rejected one of my comments because I had described a Trump claim on tariffs, the economy and being a "Wharton graduate" as "bullshit."
Consider subscribing to the Guardian--most reliable mainstream source I can find right now. I cancelled my Post subscription yesterday. I keep the NYT primarily for the crossword.
Hey, it gets better. When I was in 5th grade in Alexandria VA my teacher was interested in ancient history and that was the special thing she brought to her teaching, and she really knew her ancient civilizations and wanted us kids to know them, too. So, one sunny morning in the autumn of 1963 we all rode a school bus into Washington to check out the neo-classical architecture. I mean, I can still distinguish Greek from Roman from Doric from Ionic from Corinthian columns, and DC is just full of that stuff. As it happened, the main road (I-395?) from DC back to our school went right past the Pentagon, and as we passed by on our way to lunch we noticed there were 3 helicopters with their rotors whirling in the parking lot and a whole lot of people in uniform (and not) running here and there, and my friend Susie -- always a laugh riot -- said "I'll bet the President forgot his toothbrush," which is just the sort of thing the children of government bureaucrats know about, and so we all knew that Jack Kennedy was supposed to be in Dallas, Texas that day . Well we giggled about that for another ten minutes before we got back to school and found everyone in tears.
I've had a couple of Forrest Gump moments in my life, I guess.
I was a sophomore at the Univ. of Miami in 1966. I took a course, Art History 232 because it was a guaranteed good grade with minimal work. It was the best course I ever took in undergraduate or graduate school. Talk about expanding horizons. Now if I go to the Louvre, Florence, or the great museums in New York or Boston I feel at home.
Bill Gates is founder and leader of Terra Power, a nuclear energy provider with an approach that permits on-site up-or-down scaling. The waste continues to be a challenge but some promising approaches are emerging in (I think) Scandinavia. Oligarchs are no better or worse than the rest of us as people. They have the same virtues and vices as any other. The difference lies in the consequences of amplified flaws, quirks, and noble impulses.
TCM just played "All the President's Men" last night. What Woodward & Bernstein pulled off was incredible journalism...and WAPO had balls...now they abdicate their responsibility...this is beyond sad...it's dangerous.
Again, I believe the non-endorsements are moving the needle more in favor of *President Harris than ordinary endorsements would. As people watch Elon Musk indulge his narcissism awkwardly as nerds do -- and, yes, I know this because I am deemed by many as a nerd -- Jeff Bezos and the L.A. Times billionaire are shrewd. They can say, "Hey, I was a quisling per the specs of your trumper tantrums, Mr candidate and your nebulous nerd." All the while, the staff and *readership endorse President Harris by agitprop.
It's amazing that the Wrath of Trump can affect the richest of the rich like this...I thought they were powerful independent people...guess not. I hope their friends and family are calling and saying WTF ? You're afraid of that ?
Trump can twist the tails of the richest who were also victims of Epstein's game. Trump's got the list. I wish someone would unearth Maxwell and let her spill the beans.
I was just hopeful that folks who are close to Bezos will call him out for being a coward...I agree with you that they are now getting a lot of push back from us,
Agreed. I have had to cancel my subscription to WaPo, LA Times, and NYT. I do not want my money going to these publications when they are not treating this election with the gravitas it deserves. It is easier to eschew these things not living in the US, but many of the people I know rely on those corporate US press to keep up with what is going on back in the States.
I am currently living in Germany. A local television station interviewed some members of Democrats Abroad in our region in Germany. For balance she struggled to find a Republican. There are Republicans living in Germany, but not a lot. All of the Americans I know are voting Blue all the way, and are doing various things to help get the vote out, and help people abroad to vote.
That speaks to Tim Snyder on "obeying in advance", the most harmful self defeating ( ultimately) thing that people with power and money can do to bring about what they fear. This rewards the power grabbers.
There ought to be a law against being an oligarch! It seems these men have more dollars than neurons in their brains. It amazes me how the world's richest men (Musk, Bezos, Putin) are so far removed from the essential qualities of humanity.
Raising income taxes on billionaires and corporations, eliminating stock options and buybacks, reregulating the financial industry and enforcing antimonopoly laws would all be a start, but these are unlikely to happen.
Molly, I think that your statement about hard to believe the paper that published the Pentagon Papers is spot on; I don't think that there's exactly a "prostrated himself" as much as there is "hedging his bets".
I abhor the decision made by the Post and the LA Times as being full blown 🐔💩
Let’s remember that when Bezos bought the WaPo, it was in decline and about to follow many of its peers into oblivion. Because no one subscribed anymore. A lot of us who seem to operate as part-time journalism critics who know exactly what editors, headline writers and reporters should and shouldn’t say either get by on free articles or a heavily discounted subscription.
Here’s a thought. Subscribe. And then offer criticism to the paper. Often. Then tell us about it if you want. But these fancy carom shots that come from mostly non-subscribers as criticism through Substack comments are worse than useless.
There’s one frequent critic of the NYT and WAPO here in these comments who has said at least ten times that I have noticed, that he’s cancelled his subscription to one or the other. What a bs-er!
If you want a better paper, subscribe and offer criticism.
I’m a former journalist. I canceled my subscription. I wrote to the exec ed of the Post explaining exactly why I did. I commented frequently about the shortcomings I saw in the news and commentary after Bezos bought the paper and after he brought on Murdoch minion Will Lewis. I also lived in Seattle for 30 years as Bezos began amassing billions while doing nothing for the community or state. His predatory business practices are also far less than exemplary. His spiking an editorial endorsement of Vice President Harris that was already prepared was cowardice and journalistic incompetence. Bezos has no business owning a nationally prominent newspaper.
Not to mention it was a total lie. It was all about the Benjamins. Amazon lost a big government contract to Microsoft because he pissed off Trump. In case the worst happened again, he didn’t want to piss off Trump again. As if Bezos isn’t rich enough already.
The Washington Post and Los Angeles Times refusing to endorse Kamala Harris is a 911 alert to the American people. This kind of "obeying in advance," as Timothy Snyder calls it, shows how media silence, especially under ownership influence, enables anti democratic forces and threatens the free press essential to democracy.
MAGA reflects the cruelty of fascism, reducing everything to transactional exchanges — buying, selling, and bartering even human beings. People, their votes, and their lives are commodified, priced, and traded in a ruthless landscape where power is purchased, and individuals are mere currency in a marketplace of control.
Selling newspapers and print advertising has been a dying business ever since the advent of television. Major newspapers are no more self sustaining now than your small town one that closed its doors twelve years ago. They are therefore vulnerable to the richest of the rich who seek to own them merely for purposes ofacquiring greater power and influence. It's not the ad revenue. It's the mouthpiece. Or for vanity, like owning basketball teams. Check the pitiful ad lineage of these papers. They are dying dogs.
Compare this with the hay days of journalism, when men like William Randolph Hearst grew rich, influential, and powerful through ownership of successful newspapers. Sons of Murdoch, eat your hearts out.
Hearst had a bad influence on American politics and News. For one thing, he started the Spanish American war to enable Americans to capture a decaying Spain’s remaining colonies. Murdoch’s influence is infinitely worse because he has wrecked journalism in his native Australia, the United Kingdom, and the United States. His son Lachlan is in charge of Fox ”News” and wants to carry on his father’s mission of misinforming its audience.
I'm aware of the role of Hearst newspapers in generating support for the war.. But I suspect that saying he started it is to credit his newspaper empire with too much power. Did he fan the flames ? Certainly. Was not the US predisposed to intervention ? I am going back to study it. I e forgotten a good deal. . But there are certain points to keep in mind that I can recall.
1. His was not the only newspaper chain. .There were others. They had opposing editorial positions on many things and were in competition with each other for readers and influence. Indeed they were engaged in newspaper wars. .And there was this thing called Yellow Journalism and differentiated them. I forget which side of that Hearst was on and I am not going to assume. What I can say for the reasons infra, is that all was not black and white.
2. Item. America by then already had a long experience in dealing with Spanish Imperialism and it was not good. It was not liked. And one aspect of it was slavery. . Spain has a long history of making slaves of people. Cuba was one of Spanish Kings oldest colonial possessions. It lasted there for hundreds of years. And it's effects were slow to wear off. To put it mildly, Spanish upper class society was and is conservative and averse to change.
3. There was a rebellion ongoing in Cuba at the time. It was aimed at achieving independence from Spain. And it was not going so well.
4. The battleship Maine -built at Bath Iron Works I think, was ordered to make a port call in Havana, and stay there indefinitely. This effort at intimidation was aimed at preventing the Spanish military from gaining the upper hand there. This was without invitation.
And 5, we might say that it succeeded beyond the wildest of all expectations. Because surely no one thought that the battleship might just explode at rest in the harbor.
WRH was not alone in blaming this on the Spaniards. In any case, my point was that his power, wealth, and influence grew out of the newspaper business and hence the American publics hungry demands for information. Whereas today a newspaper is a sinkhole for wealth. No judgment on character, motives or principles was intended.
As for the Murdoch's, they are the vomit running after the dogs of American public opinion. The unspeakable in pursuit of the inedible.
B.L.U.F. (bottom-line, up front): help me, an erstwhile Republican, vote President Harris into the White House and candidate Trump into jail, a.s.a.p & s.v.p.⚖️
On my first swing through Iraq in the earlier phase of Operations Iraqi Freedom, I trusted most "The L.A. Times", among U.S. media outlets, in its coverage of that invasion and occupation. Those days are gone. As are the days, as Ms Ciliberti observes, of Woodellstein at "The Washington Post".🤢
Incidentally, many thanks to President Harris for making, at least some, of politics fun again. My wishful conviction born of necessity: inasmuch as candidate Trump landed some blows the week, President Harris will win by five to seven percentage points complemented by well over three hundred Electoral College votes.🚀
EDIT: the good Mr David Brooks, a conservative thinker whom I trust, makes a powerful argument of a misalignment of President Harris's stars in the progression from the Maoist qualitative change (i.e., cultural shift and social movements) catalyzing a quantitative (i.e., political reform).😯
Not only am I arguably a wishful thinker I am but also a stubborn lrishman; gritting my teethe in conviction is in my Jacobin D.N.A.🤭
The every bit as good good Mr L.Z. Granderson expressed mightily his frustration with his employer; That takes courage. He also obliquely reinforced a thought vibing from the conspiracy corner of my wretched little mind: that these non-endorsement and the reactions they are provoking are the most resounding calls-to-action of all.✌🏽
PLEASE NOTE: I have reversed the wording and associated changes of the Maoist thinking (as far as I can figure it out); I can not grasp the idea of cultural and social changes being "quantitative" and the actual and visible change being "qualitative". Of course, I may have reflected Mao rightly out of the sheer accident of stupidity.👻
It's always darkest before the dawn. Really, really looking forward to that dawn. Thank you, Professor Richardson, for shining a light on the pathway so we all get there safely.
Also--Looking forward to Musk being prosecuted for breaking election laws with his million dollar bribes.
I think he should be, but I really question whether our system is able to hold Trump and his fellow plotters to justice. He gets away with far too much, and the spineless SCOTUS majority is willing to give him an unconstitutional immunity from his acts that would have appalled the Founders. The Founders believed that the President was not above the law, and six justices just trashed this idea in U.S. v. Trump. Justice Sotomayor’s dissent was completely correct. You should fear for your country if the Supreme Court of the United States is willing to grant this sort of unconstitutional immunity to the President.
I don’t think SCOTUS is spineless. They don’t shirk from standing up for Democracy. They are actively undermining it. Their spines are buttressed by the church and as rigid as the Religious Right.
Since Trump is immune from prosecution for official actions, questions are being raised as to POTUS Biden's not taking a similar path and dealing with Trump in the here and now. His crimes have been delineated. Is decency the issue here even as our republic is under fire and the election outcome is in question?
Unfortunately, this is also correct. Where I refer to their being spineless, it’s a reference to their failure to uphold the Constitution and the rule of law.
Ah, so, finally the Sith are finally revealed, the master and the apprentice? Darth Putin and Darth Musk in a bid to finally rule the world together? Seeking to end western civilization and start an almighty worldwide empire under their control? It sure would fit their megalomaniac, own-legend-believing, narcissistic personalities.
and to think, a friend and I, happen to be planning a re-watch of the Lord of the Rings trilogy. By the time we get to the end, Election Day will already be upon us. "one Ring to rule them all".... God, let Harris win at the final poll that counts.
Indeed they don’t. Musk, Thiel and their dubious protégés Trump and Vance are sociopaths. Thiel bought Vance for us in Ohio, and Vance immediately turned around and began singing Trump’s praises. I don’t appreciate Vance’s misrepresentation of our state, his profound misogyny, and his willingness to lie about Haitians or other people to gain a political advantage. The Springfield (Ohio) News-Sun has aptly criticized Vance as unready to be a senator, let alone a VP candidate.
The bigger problems are Senator Brown’s risky polls and Issue 1. We stand to lose our decent senator, Sherrod Brown, to Trump endorsed car salesman Bernie Moreno, who has engaged in sexual discrimination in employment and was successfully sued for cheating his employees out of overtime pay. We also have Issue 1 on the ballot, which proposes to allow citizen redistricting. Unfortunately the Supreme Court of Ohio allowed our soon to be former Secretary of State, to write a confusing and misleading ballot summary for the Yes position, which is designed to deliberately confuse voters into voting No. Voting No will allow Ohio’s General Assembly and Senate to continue their shameless gerrymandering of our state.
It's not just narcissism, not by a long bit, Dutch.
Putin-Trump-Musk-even-Vance-included is just a smaller part of the larger Orban, Xi, Kim, Modi, Netanyahu, Erdogan, Sisi, Mohammed bin Salman, Iranian mullah, and massive U.S. billionaire phalanx.
Their single common denominator: all prostrating themselves to groups, all led by demagogues replicating each other.
Worse -- and most key of all -- no schools in any of these countries center humanities in them, or any essaying programs to explore facets of individuals in complicated lives.
Do we dread something in Trump? Please, Dutch, get how it's not just some psychological kink in one weirdo, but something deeper, something ensnarling U.S. schools in similar poisons as rule oligarch and autocrat countries worldwide.
Susan-Human beings who don’t care about all of humanity are delusional and dangerous. As a concept white supremacy is doing damage to our world. Misogyny is also at play. Imagine if they didn’t have racism and misogyny as tools. Every human being matters-regardless of skin color or gender. Isn’t that what the “Christians” are supposed to believe? Everyone is precious…
As a woman, I loathe Vance’s misogyny and contempt for women. Vance’s own wife, Usha, has an advanced degree herself, although Vance’s income allows her to be a stay at home parent. Vance fails to understand that thanks to the gorging of billionaires, both parents have to work to support a family, and the very economic policies he endorses continues the economic wreckage of the American middle class. Creating a middle class took long economic effort, and then many white Americans didn’t want to allow African American, Latino and other groups to join the middle class. The working class people who vote for Trump have been propagandized for forty years into voting against their economic interests and encouraged to blame other people for the very problems their favored candidates cause.
I don't think 'fail to realize' is the issue. It is cultural war rhetoric that is designed to make us long for an era that no longer exists. Where I grew up, grocery store sackers supported their families on their income. I put myself through college with a part-time job. This era of affordability no longer exists...but to invoke stay at home mothering as a choice is a narrative based in fantasy. Therein lies the gotcha...somehow it is a morale failing to not choose a lifestyle that is impossible. But that is the nature of the Republican position. Tell the citizenry that they should seek a lifestyle the Republicans are making impossible and blame it on the Democrats.
The sickness of the GOP is bottomless.......Moses Mike and Senile McConell begging that Trumptards do not try to assasinate their cult leader for the third time? Deploying their "go to" projection ploy once again and blame the Democratic party?? Little wonder the melting pumpkin "likes the uneducated."
Oh, I got that long ago, Phil... Trump is just a symptom of the disease, it runs much deeper. Racism runs like a big, red thread through this, as does supremacy (be it white, christian, or whatever), as does fascism - these were never away, but buried themselves until the time was ripe to rear their ugly heads again. The only thing they desire is power, and the only thing they have to do is to destroy. It's never about building something up, and that's why their job is so infinitely more easy than ours. A sand castle that took hours to build can be brought down in a second with one kick. The long goal: destroying the fabric of our society, and rule over the rubble that remains.
Today was one wild day, however I'm encouraged by the passionate reaction of the LA Times and the Wash. Post subscribers. Thousands stepped up to say were not pleased and were VERY succinct as to why. They weren't fooled into believing that editorial silence meant anything other than a refusal to endorse Harris. Also encouraging was that among all that feedback there was very little white-knighting of Bezos, Lewis, or Patrick Soon-Shiong for their pusillanimous actions.
I somewhat suspect that in the end their ploy will have done them more harm than good. If the electorate is roused by this kind of betrayal, maybe more people will be energised to vote.
Imagine if the tens of thousands of us that had already cancelled our subscriptions to the WAPO and the LA Times had waited until yesterday to cancel our subscriptions.
Of course, Bezos is just another power hungry narcissist like Trump and Musk. No surprise here.
I hope that after the election Jennifer Rubin, Ruth Marcus, Dana Milbank, Catherine Rampell, Eugene Robinson and a few others move to substack or do their own daily blogs or podcasts.
I agree -- I think it's time for a new paper of record and there are enough excellent journalists at the LA Times, WaPo and NYT to create a new paper together - one that doesn't bow to Bezos, Musk, Putin or Trump. I would subscribe on day 1.
I read somewhere, maybe a month ago (Gimme a break on the citation. I'm old), that LFAA was approaching the subscription levels of WaPo. If that's true, I wonder if this recent loss of subscribers would drop WaPo below LFAA. We know HCR would be among the first tossed into the camps if Agent Orange wins, but she's braver than Bezos.
You're reading and commenting on it. I like to call it "LFAA University". Fells like I'm auditing a great History and Politics class, then going out after class with other students and discussing the "lecture" here in the comments section.
Gary, the reason I have not cancelled our WaPo subscription today is because of those journalists you mentioned. If most of them departed, so would I.
Sometimes a boycott of an enterprise can be counter productive. I WANT to cancel that subscription because of my rage. But if it deprives me of Jennifer Rubin, who am I hurting?
An analogy is Home Depot. There are those that are furious because one of the founders, Bernie Marcus, is big supporter of Trump. Bernie and Arthur Blank were brilliant merchants who retired from the company over 20 years ago. If we don't shop at Home Depot, Bernie will still have his billions - but the store might have to lay off some workers. Who have we delivered a "payback" to? BTW, Arthur Blank is a solid Democrat.
We still might cancel. But it is not a simple or black and white decision.
Perhaps a new digital news source making itself known without billionaire control. Guardian is subscription based in its financing. Why can't that happen in America?
This is a good idea. I subscribe to the .fr version of Amazon. But honestly I am trying to source my things from independent vendors… France recently slapped a three euro fee on amazon sales of books that didn’t reach a threshold… of like 60 euros… in order to use that money to subsidize the MANY MANY independent book sellers…
I can pay for shipping when I really cannot find the stuff elsewhere. Almost always I can.
Although I hate using Amazon if I don't have to, Amazon almost always offers a free one-week trial of Prime when I am placing an order -- which I accept and then immediately cancel after completing the order with no shipping fees. There is truly no good reason to pay for Amazon Prime.
The only thing that Bezos and Soon-Shiong have shown is that they are craven greedheads and can be easily intimidated. They are appeasers and even though Trump appreciates the feeling of power and strength their appeasement gives him, he despises them as well and, should he win (he won't), they won't escape anything he chooses to do to impede or impact their wealth.
If we can elect Harris, a top priority must be breaking up monopolies. She has already said she wants the very rich to pay their fair share of taxes. I don't think that's sufficient because people who become billionaires are too powerful.
"Letters From An American" says it all. Living in Alaska I can get to bed at an almost reasonable hour after reading your daily take on the "American Pulse". When I was young we got our daily evening news from Walter Cronkite, we trusted him, he reported news and not opinion. His humanity was on full display the day John Kennedy was shot. HCR, I want you to know how much I respect your news analysis. You are truly an AMERICAN, speaking to AMERICANS.
Cancelled my subscription to the Wash Post and added one to The Atlantic (I mainly read the New York Times). IF the Post had published this editorial 6 months ago, I would have accepted it. However, less than 2 weeks before the election it sends a message which is far from their weak reasoning about their 'historic' practice. Very predictably, it is being seen and touted as a slap at Harris (they endorsed Clinton in 2016 and Biden in 2020). It might also be that they have concluded that Trump will actually win (I live in fear) and want to avoid any more of his rancor. It makes all the articles in their pages about how dangerous Trump is and the dangers to democracy ring hollow. When the chips are down, the Washington Post has chosen to focus on its own profit - funny how that behavior precisely echoes who Trump has been his whole life!
The NYT is the king of the lamestream media, and they are masters of false equivalency and normalizing trump. Their political coverage has been sanewashing trump and critical of Harris. I got rid of my NYT subscription prior to dumping WaPo, some months ago (both papers have had terrible political reporting for a few years now). My life is so much better knowing I don't support either paper.
As uncomfortable as some of the NYT coverage is for me, I still trust it to be the view from the other side. Understanding both sides is important. Reading only material in our silos is what gets us into this polarization. I hope some Republicans now voting for Harris will read beyond the New York Post and watch beyond Fox News. Some of HCR's sources are NYT articles.
I did the same David. I ended up subscribing to the Chicago Tribune, but their political reporting is very regional and they don't report on Trump very much. Plus, the subscription was $1 for a year so I took a chance. It may still be overpriced.
I have the Atlantic. They feature some good articles, especially those from Anne Applebaum and Adam Serwer. Serwer wrote both a column and a book titled “The Cruelty Is the Point,” which sums up why so many people vote for Trump. What they and Trump will learn the hard way is that personal vengeance is no justification for governing a country, and they will wreck our nation in doing so.
Sure—six months ago or six months from now. But to do that NOW inthe most important election if not in the country’s history certainly in the 80-90 years at least.
How many votes would a WaPo endorsement move toward Harris? I don't think that it would move many. Most of us have chosen. The influence of mainstream corporate media is in steep decline. I don't know about the Fox "News" bubble, though. I also wonder whether the LA Times and WaPo refusals to endorse will have the opposite effect of increasing the feeling of urgency of those of us who are fighting to save democracy.
Heather perfectly gets both the R corruption, and the Dem momentum.
What are they together? David Remnick called it constant nightmare on the most recent Seth Meyers.
Why do so many Americans so welcome, gush for, egg on the orange felon’s vulgarity, lies, vituperative personal attacks, daily immigration black hysteria, continued Remnick, editor of The New Yorker?
His best guess for them: “Nothing really registers.”
None of this registers except as mad mob joy for the cult base, schemes of ambition for congressional Republicans, and medieval fantasyland for the corrupt of the Clarence court (blind to the simplest of facts, such as how Article 14, section three, bans any insurrectionist from any public office).
Abstractions float untethered, like gases. Unlike facts, which “register” as we personally connect to others, open to other persons & families. Maybe mixed race. Maybe gender partnerships with children and stepchildren beyond Ozzie & Harriett.
Diverse facts, multiple possibilities, real life cannot “really register” for those shoehorned in time, in a past ever only abstraction anyway -- abstraction plus the rank corruption Heather so well attends, too.
Don’t forget the Holy Double Standard. According to the Extreme Court, Article 14 simply won’t apply to Rump because he is “our saviour”, but will apply to Harris, for defending women’s and LGBTQ rights.
It certainly describes the shameless six Republican justices. The problem is that Democrats do not control enough states to get a majority of senators and representatives, so nothing gets done that needs to be done, including Supreme Court, campaign finance, or tax reforms.
Interestingly, I don't think Trump has any ideology beyond enriching himself and the Trump brand. We should have zero doubt that JD Vance, Peter Thiel, Elon Musk, and others, if successful will employ fascist/authoritarian tools to silence media (which you've already evidenced in the silencing of the Washington Post, the LA Times, and other news outlets) and implement many of the most horrific elements of Project 2025. Anyone who believes this cabal intends to improve the lives of the majority of American families, the economic standing of workers, or strengthen justice, democracy, and equality is deeply immersed in what is effectively a rabid cult. They seek to enrich themselves, concentrating more wealth by stealing from all of us, and robbing our children of their future.
People will be appalled at the consequences once they hit. For example, estimates of Trump and Miller’s plan to deport undocumented immigrants are expected to be $100-300 billion, and the ordinary taxpayers rather than the billionaires will pay. Trump also fails to understand that tariffs will never make up for lost income tax revenues. Trump doesn’t understand that ordinary consumers pay the costs of the tariffs as retailers pass the costs on to the consumer. Fewer people will be able to afford new appliances or other goods, and inflation will get worse.
You can also expect serious damage to governmental functions if Trump eliminates a professional civil service to replace it with people who swear personal loyalty to him. They will be incompetent and ruin the proper functioning of government, and they will fail to regulate and protect people from harms from big businesses. The whole purpose of the regulatory system is to protect the public from harm by unregulated businesses. Americans do not take oaths of personal loyalty to an individual, and we have seen on more than one occasion that Trump expects people to be personally loyal to him, but he doesn’t feel he has to reciprocate their loyalty and has no qualms about stabbing his lackeys in the back.
It sure does seem to be working. My retired cop cadre who had trouble spelling words like "tariff" are now suddenly experts on tariffs and how wonderful and good they will be for the country.
Trump understands exactly what he is doing. Not understand tariffs? Of course he does. Trump is a master of creating false narratives repeated enough times that it becomes truth in the minds of those that have made him and the MAGAts a religion.
He may appear unhinged but that is of no consequence. He represents what his followers want as their truth, their reality. It is their torch to bear, however precarious and measly a flame as it appears to a sane mind.
I know, but I really am convinced he has dementia that is not necessarily Alzheimer’s type. Michael Cohen believes Trump has Lewy body dementia (the same type Robin Williams and one of my aunts has) and I think if Trump is elected, it won’t be long before Vance and the Cabinet invoke the 25th Amendment to remove Trump from office.
All my life I have lived with the reality that I quite likely would never have even been born. My grandparents escaped from Germany with their two teenage kids in late 1935, soon after they lost their right to German citizenship. So fascism is not a vague concept to me, but a matter of life and death. Dozens of my relatives in Ukraine, Lithuania and Germany died under Nazi rule.
Hitler too was a dictator from Day 1. He too had his pet industrialists to help him gain power and then make millions from the military contracts for bombs, U Boats, freeways and the technology to design and build V1 and V2 high tech rockets that we still use for cruise missiles, nuclear missiles and moon shots.
The millions of refugees Trump plans to throw into concentration camps and then deport remind me of my dad at thirteen, waiting to see if his father would be arrested by the Gestapo at the Belgian border, knowing he was already on an arrest list back home in Cologne.
These days we need more than talk, we need action. Knocking on doors, making calls to voters, giving rides to the polls, whatever you can do so if Trump wins at least you will know you did your best to stop him.
If Trump is in the White House on Jan 20 we will need to organise a resistance, just like what happened in places like France, Norway, Poland and Holland in WW2. Just like then many will collaborate, like Bezos and Musk are already doing out of their own self interest and greed.
It all reminds me of the words of Pastor Martin Niemoller, the German theologian who after being imprisoned for 8 years by the nazis wrote:
First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out— Because I was not a Socialist. Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I did not speak out— Because I was not a Trade Unionist. Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out— Because I was not a Jew. Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.
I've been thinking in ways that made your post resonate with me. To begin with, I'll point to your ending quote. In my lifetime I've learned of that need for folks of different causes to work together- it's fine to have your own deep passion (enviro, health care, edu, social & civic justice...whatever), but they/we need to pool mental, spiritual, & financial resources.
The other thing I see in these responses here that focus on billionaires...money is just a symptom of the larger disease of ego. The dictators and billionaires are working completely on their individual islands of self aggrandizement. Basically, they are operating at the absolute polar opposite of the truth within the first point. And if allowed, will be the last group still standing, fighting amongst themselves.
The non-endorsements by the WAPo and the LA Times demonstrates that Fascism is already having its effects. Let’s hope that those who have yet to vote can read the tea leaves and vote accordingly!
I just canceled my subscription because yes, democracy does die in darkness. The Washington Post has decided this year, of all years, to not endorse a candidate for the presidency. The Washington Post is not endorsing Kamala Harris, even though Donald Trump threatens to rule as a dictator. Donald Trump has managed to intimidate even Jeff Bezos.
It’s particularly heartbreaking that the paper that broke the story on the criminality of Watergate which led to the resignation of President Nixon is now folding in anticipation — in anticipation!— of retribution by Donald Trump.
We all used to wonder how Hitler came to power— now we know first hand — as our papers of record remain silent on who should become President of the United States.
The Washington Post has no opinion whatsoever on which person would be a better president of the United States: the person who runs on freedom and upholding the Constitution (Harris), or the person who wants to have generals like Hitler and use the military on “the enemy within” (Trump)???! Former owner Katharine Graham is rolling over in her grave.
Wonderful letter. I would point out that at least in post-WW1 Germany, inflation was over 300% a month, so the Germans had a justifiable excuse to hire an incompetent sociopath. The Mark was worthless, and used as fuel for fires to keep warm. The German people were forced to barter all their belongings just to stay alive. Unemployment was the worst in their modern history.
What’s America’s excuse? We had 9% inflation for a year, while the rest of the world was in a recession with inflation much higher than ours? Really???
Not to mention, fascism never existed before Mussolini in Italy, and Hitler’s Germany, so the Germans had no modern day example of an anti-Christ to compare it with! We teach the Holocaust to every student in America.
This is what scares me the most! We are not experiencing a terrible economy, as our GDP is growing at 2.5%, even higher than Trump who averaged 2.3% before COVID hit. Our unemployment rate is the lowest in 50 years, and almost no one is starving, yet here we are!….:)
Well said, Robyn. Especially this: "It’s particularly heartbreaking that the paper that broke the story on the criminality of Watergate which led to the resignation of President Nixon is now folding in anticipation — in anticipation!— of retribution by Donald Trump."
Musk and his ilk think they can buy the entire country. Hang the Constitution in the guest bathroom. Maybe rule the world. These are the folks Reagan said would save us, his "Supply Side". But what do they really supply? We got to the moon and back half a century ago with the help of Musk, but Republicans insisted on defunding the government to give to the rich. Now space is a rich man's playground and Musk gets to say who uses his satellites. As it was in Germany, many of the ultra wealthy are pulling strings to install a fascist. What's in it for us?
Musk did not help us get to the moon, & contrary to the beliefs of many, he wasn't even the founder of Tesla! That was the engineers Martin Eberhard & Marc Tarpenning in 2003.
Musk just used his huge profits from selling PayPal to EBay to buy lots of stock in Tesla, becoming its largest shareholder. Then he took over as its CEO in 2008.
This is true, and he wound up ousting the original owners, and then taking credit for Tesla which he didn’t deserve. Musk also has a bad reputation for allowing hostile work environments for African American employees and for putting his employees at risk for injuries incurred in building his automobiles. He insisted he be allowed to keep his plants open when the state of California ordered them to be closed due to the pandemic, and he decided to move to Texas, where Greg Abbott is designing a personal court system for Musk alone.
It also explains why the anti corruption and anti bribery laws, as well as high taxes on obscenely wealthy individuals are essential. It prevents them from using their wealth to buy our government, which is what they have been doing for the last 45 years. The problems with wrecking of campaign finance laws go all the way back to bad decisions in Buckley v. Valeo in 1976, and First National Bank v. Bellotti in 1978. The Supreme Court in both cases under Rehnquist set the stage for Citizens United. Our elected officials have to waste considerable amounts of time in fundraising instead of governing.
Citizens United was an especially lousy and pernicious decision. The Roberts Court will go down in history as one of the most corrosive courts in our nation's efforts to sustain a democracy.
I think the Roberts Court has surpassed the Taney Court as the worst ever. Taney was a racist; Roberts is turning us away from democracy to authoritarianism which is a direct path to fascism.
Definitely. Their names will live in infamy, and unlike the 4 horsemen, the justices hostile to FDR’s reforms, these justices will never change their minds and will destroy all the gains women and other marginalized citizens made during the twentieth century.
It’s not on their radar to feed hungry children. Increasing the numbers of the poor, defeated,and hungry is their objective. Keeping people desperate and poor…enslavement without having to bid.
Trump's visit to here in Traverse City last night conflicted with The Big Event, Traverse City West vs. Traverse City Central football game, called "The Patriot Game", which "honors our military veterans, first responders, active duty troops and fallen heroes who died while serving America." (TC Record Eagle, 10-24-24). Methinks Trump's delay may have been intentional?
Hope you enjoyed the game. I loved the WS and Freddie Freeman’s heroic grand slam. As a Yankee fan first and a baseball fan and participant in the great game ( forever) there is nothing like a moment like a Grand Slam walkoff homer. So, kudos to the Dodgers and Freddie the Great. Game 2 soon.
As a native New Englander and lifetime Red Sox and baseball fan, I have to make a confession. I haven't hated the Yankees since Mariano Rivera's ironic tip of the cap to the Fenway crowd that cheered him during his first 2005 appearance there. I'm cheering for the Dodgers, but it's because of Mookie and Shohei, not because they're playing the Yankees. Of course, the Yankee hatred virus may be lying dormant, like chicken pox, only to reappear under the right circumstances. But I hope it doesn't.
I've been a Giants fan since I learned about baseball when I was single digits old. (SF 49ers as well). While I will never root for the Rams (regardless of where they play), I can bring myself to root for the Dodgers, especially this year as they honor Fernando Valenzuela's passing. My Dad hated the Yankees (he'd been a NL stalwart, and was thrilled when the Giants moved to SF); that said, I loved Derek Jeter and Joe Girardi as players.
Smart, intelligent, are defined by a deeper look into emotional intelligence and that has to be included. That makes billionaires as a class really really stupid. With emotional intelligence you would figure out that what you were doing had an effect on other people, on millions of people, on the climate, on whether you were being fair with your policies and actions.
These guys and their ilk are superficial beyond belief except that we have to believe what we're seeing and not let it continue to happen as we go along. I'm pretty convinced by now that this narcissism malady besides most likely being a product of the manner of their upbringing and their reaction to it, is way over-fed by the system that these jerks do everything to insulate themselves with. Insulation from being an equal person among equals - with everyday ordinary equal attention to responsibilities. We are so at the end of ‘boys will be boys’. Not. The actual smart ones coming along are way more free and full, I meet them every day.
Musk like Trump lacks a conscience and does not care about the people harmed by his quest for unlimited power. They are both sociopaths and have moral voids at their innermost core.
I can't see a problem with Musk controlling our military's communications can you? He'll pre-clear things with Putin and make sure everything is working fine. Until it isn't.
Hard to believe that the paper that published the Pentagon Papers and exposed the Nixon corruption with Woodward and Bernstein had been bought by such a little man as Jeff Bezos, who prostrated himself before a demented sociopath Fascist Trump.
Still harder, Molly, for citizens of the Land of the Free to believe that THEY are being bought and sold.
Just like slaves in the "good old days" when America was "Great".
We are, and only we can prevent it with our votes. We are seeing that out civil institutions will not save us, so we must save ourselves. I would love for VP Harris to take on monopolies and start enforcing our antimonopoly laws again. Amazon, local cell, internet and cable monopolies are one big way for monopolies to suck money out of us for mediocre or poor service. Our internet speeds are laughably slow compared to those in Europe, or in places like South Korea or Japan.
Lina Khan, Biden Harris administration chair of the Federal Trade Commission, has been taking on monopolies since she was a student.
"While a student at Yale Law School, she became known for her work in antitrust and competition law in the United States after publishing the influential essay "Amazon's Antitrust Paradox".[1]"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lina_Khan
I could actually see a place for Liz Cheney to work with Lina Khan, Rohit Chopra (chair of the Consumer Financial Bureau), and Sen. Elizabeth Warren. To strengthen American capitalism by mitigating the abuses of American capitalism. Employing the government to care for the general welfare of the people and to protect the planet by regulating industry. Both Roosevelt presidents would agree. Liz Cheney could remodel herself as a Teddy Roosevelt regulator and environmentalist.
I respect Liz Cheney, but I believe her voting record was more pro-Trump than Stefanik's. Harris will be a good, perhaps great president. But would a Lincolnesque "Team of Rivals" be ... Actually, I answered my own question. It might be just the ticket!
Thank God, however, that Kamala Harris's VP pick isn't Andrew Johnson.
...To strengthen American capitalism by mitigating the abuses of American capitalism. Employing the government to care for the general welfare of the people and to protect the planet by regulating industry. Yes! Well said.
Lin, yes, yes yes!
Amen
Si, oui, yes!
No, you can't mitigate capitalism and make it better.bthats like begging everyone to have policeman monitoring everything they do. Capitalism devours notions like that. Sorry. I guess youndint know what we're up against.
I like police stopping drunk drivers and people driving the wrong way on one-way streets or against traffic on freeways. We need some order and guard rails.
You would need a policeman inside your soul and your head to make work a system that will devour the entire ends of the universe, if it could.
No, no, no, and no. We need to realize that capitalism flaunts the laws, it's in its nature, and it can't be controlled. Case-in-point: RIGHT FUCK__G NOW.
Check out Lina Khan, Chair of the Federal Trade Commission. Though she was appointed by President Biden, I can imagine a President Harris keeping her on the job.
"Under President Biden, however, the FTC [Lina Khan] and Justice Department have unleashed a crackdown and sued scores of big companies, including TicketMaster, Nvidia, Meta, Microsoft, Apple and Amazon."
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/federal-trade-commission-lina-khan-60-minutes/
This CNN article makes me wonder if this has anything to do with Bezos' non-endorsement of Harris:
https://www.cnn.com/2023/10/16/tech/lina-khan-risk-takers/index.html
Khan, Lina M. (January 2017). "Amazon's Antitrust Paradox". Yale Law Journal. 126 (3): 564–907. Archived from the original on April 5, 2017. Retrieved July 18, 2022.
Big donors are urging Harris to fire Lina Khan, and I think she is walking a tightrope to keep them on board. We must make sure she understands that Khan is exactly what this country needs!
It is a tightrope Biden has walked successfully. Harris should be able to.
A Harris Walz administration will essentially and ultimately be the result of their good work and the good work of millions of people like us.
This is the dilemma that has changed the Democratic Party away from the working people's party to one beholden to big money. Thanks to
Bill Clinton who sold out with NAFTA and slashed welfare. Looks like his net worth did well.
Thanks for the links, Lynell. Oh, and good morning!
Morning, Ally!
Bingo!
On my card too!
We are the greatest at POP, i.e. profit over people.
1. Uncle Sam needs you! https://www.mobilize.us/ (And me.)
2. Please repeatedly post "not suckers or losers" comments in social media. According to Facebook, there are 4 million veterans and active duty members on Facebook, as well as 12.5 million family members and 242 million friends with veterans or active duty members. Military sites, veterans; organizations, historical sites.
Vote vets has already flipped many 2016 and 2020 Trump voters.
Too bad Jeffrey Goldamith made that story up
Made the story up? And who in the heck is Goldamith?
"We are seeing that our civil institutions will not save us, so we must save ourselves."
Thank you for showing the way so clearly.
Forty years ago in the Philippines I met a man, a journalist from a rather conservative background whose world view had a deep influence on mine. It could be expressed in terms similar to this phrase of yours.
Mao Chanco looked back to the Second World War when, during the Japanese occupation, ordinary people could expect nothing but trouble from the invader and no help from their own authorities. They had nothing to fall back on, only themselves.
Nothing to fall back on. Only ourselves.
Turning to our times, he saw our world in terms of economic war and turned to the main victims, dwellers in Manila’s vast shantytowns, the country’s peasant population. Green politics before they caught on elsewhere—of course, they never did catch on in America, not even fire and flood can deliver the message… Seed banks to save the country’s traditional rice varietals, projects to turn slum dwellers with no hope from drugs and crime to growing their own food. Utopian. Like military war itself, the economic war economy overwhelms and destroys all such efforts, moving on to dealers, then death squads and mass murder…
*
This brings me back to the words of another prescient writer, Ananda Coomaraswamy, in 1946:
An aphorism several times repeated in Buddhist scripture runs “war breeds hatred, because the conquered are unhappy”; and that is even more true of economic than of military wars, for in the former no holds whatever are barred, and there are no traces of any intention to make peace.
#
It might be no exaggeration to say that modern civilization is fundamentally a “racket”, needless to name the gangsters.
#
Cain, who killed his brother Abel, the herdsman, and built himself a city, prefigures modern civilization.
*
This morning, thinking of another election, thinking, too, of war in Ukraine, I scribbled these words:
“A promise of blood, sweat and tears is no way to win an election but, when the issue is survival, is there, was there, any other way forward?
When it comes to Ukraine's war of survival, there was no other way. And so, false promises, the propaganda of false expectations, have gravely undermined the country's war effort. Tragic.”
*
Let’s relax together now, and do some small thing we really enjoy doing.
Just to clear our mind.
Before joining battle.
While I appreciate your comments, I notice, again, that nowhere does it point out the obvious fact that it's male violence and aggression, the extreme being war, that causes most of the chaos, suffering and destruction in this world. I contend that male violence is a public health calamity. And before anyone tries to counter with 'women can be violent too" which is of course true, as we all belong to the same species, it's men by far who declare war, fight in wars, assault and kill women and girls, and act as if other people's lives are disposable. And in present day this aggression is often expressed in the pursuit of wealth at all costs. While evolution has produced this more violent tendency in males, our societies have not been good at being clear that much of this violent behavior is anathema to a well-functioning society.
J. Nol, I was a Male in high school, enjoying Art, Writing, and not interested in male competitive sports, hated gym class. Then in 1962, I turned 18 & was REQUIRED BY LAW to register for the Draft. Male Violence & Aggression are built into our society against the will of many of us. A few months later in the US Air Force, reciting “I am an American fighting man” from the Code of Conduct for Members of the United States Armed Forces, I was forced to lie - I had never been into fighting.
Don't forget that it is males (usually white) who are behind all the mass shootings. ...I could be wrong on that. Has a woman *ever* conducted a mass shooting?
I'm not sure, but it's more likely that men will want to punish others and externalize their anger and women tend to turn that anger toward themselves, through self-destructive behaviors, either directly hurting themselves, or selecting and staying with abusive partners. Our society, of course, reinforces male violence.
April 3, 2018: Youtube HQ mass shooting
Yes... but rarely. Two times I can think of. Both in California.
I've not forgotten visiting a big political family in the third world.
The old matriarch handed out cakes and radiated influence.
The politician's wife handed out cash.
And after lunch all the young men went and cleaned their guns. It was in the open and will have been visible to any passers-by.
People needed to be shown the family could look after itself. And them.
See, thus is part of N the problem. Why is this nation so obsessed with gender? It's frankly vulgar. I contend American violence is enemy number one. Or you, for making it a gender issue. You do about Gaza, yes? I then the Biden administration are all men, or am I missing something complex beneath the simpicity.
Mushrooms or Ambien??
Russia troll you are
LSD to be specific. Ambien for bad-trips or for sleep.
"Assault women and girls." So, no concern for the abuse of boys, huh? ZING!
Wow. This tendency people have of jumping onto one thing left out, just to take a poke at someone is so exhausting. Of course I am opposed to assault of anyone, including boys. My point was that the majority of violence is committed by men and of course, unfortunately children (of both sexes) are often targets of this aggression. My point is, it's time to recognize this as a public health crisis, and it's time to reevaluate how societies deal with or don't deal with it to help men in particular develop more prosocial ways of managing their aggressive impulses.
The he following recent Maureen Doed piece addresses exactly what we are discussing:
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/10/26/opinion/donald-trump-gender-election.html?unlocked_article_code=1.VE4.eha-.IWSEOoe0W7vA&smid=url-share
Kathy, when I post Heather's letters on Facebook, I always end with vote D. We do not buy anything from Amazon unless we absolutely must. I have an ex-student who writes romance novels and she absolutely hates them. We just cut our cable service, Comcast, because they refused to carry Big 10 sports events and we now have an antenna which gets the local stations we want to watch. Mostly we stream series made elsewhere as acting here is often insipid and other places have actors who have challenges of various kinds. Yesterday we watched the second episode of Miss Merkel where one of the characters had a prothesis. Yesterday I read Eugene Robinson's column about the letter he and others signed in protest at the refusal to endorse. (Yes, we subscribe to the WaPo, but are considering dropping it.) I took some time to read a few of the over 500 comments and most of them were people who were cancelling their subscriptions.
Urge u to cancel WaPo !
Louis Giglio, I just discovered that when I tried to go to the familiar WAPO dot com, it has changed to washingtonpost dot com. Wonder why. (I am still a subscriber to WAPO. Thinking. They've definitely gone steeply down hill in the past few months.)
Not my decision as I rarely read it. My husband, who does, talked about cancelling it.
I did.
Well, aren't you high and mighty. How many Amazon employees do you know . Andnwhen you "must" use them, how big of a tip doyou leave. Just asking..
I do not like Amazon, period. Sorry that you are offended/s.
Kathy yes, you are speaking about an issue that these rob ber barons should be ashamed of. Instead they simply count the money. We need competition for cable, internet, and we need to destroy amazon. The only way is with a Democratic sweep of both houses of Congress along with Madam President Kamala Harris and Vice President Tim Walz.
I refuse to buy a Tesla because of Musk. His rise to prominence as the richest person in the world, a social media platform owner and political influencer, Federal contracts holder, and now ties to Russia should have us all stopped cold in our tracks. How deep does this rabbit hole go?
It may be we’re all already sold out, we just don’t know it yet. And, yes, of course I’ve voted, but all the current press, polling, and handwringing about the U.S. election has us so divided and distracted when the real levers of world power are being pulled on dark and smoky Zoom calls chaired by Putin, with Trump sitting at his feet like the good little (albeit greedy) lap dog that he is.
We just leased a Hyundai Ioniq 5. We were considering the Chevy Equinox as well, but not a Tesla for the same reason.
I like ‘Rob her’ barons as I think women’s order to Amazon are higher than men’s. It’s ‘safer.’
I think we might also add “developers” to the list of corporate America who are “sucking money out of us mediocre and poor service.”
These developers and the city councils who green-light them in the name of growth are providing high rent housing costs and buildings with no design and truly utilitarian housing at best while setting aside meeker offerings of affordable housing.
Kathy, I am doing research on Elon Musk's control of the Starlight satellite system. The U.S. Army War College (think tank) has published RON GANTZ' monograph about the use & abuse of satellites in the Russian attack on Ukraine.
The monograph is copyrighted & subject to Title 17 U.S.C. Sections 101 & 105 so I cannot copy and/or republish the content without the permission of the U.S. Army Director of the SSI, Dr. C. Anthony Pfaff.
More later if NASA's investigation of the Moscow Muskite does not reveal relevant national security data first.
Sunday Update: I submitted a FOIA request to SSI-Director, Dr. C. Anthony Pfaff this morning
As much as I support the Harrison-Walz ticket, I remind myself that Dems have also been doing what we accuse Bezos of doing, on an analogous level.
I'd appreciate it if you'd explain this contention rather than state it as if it were fact.
Maybe the NYT would be interested in a spot for you.
C. what do you (not "we") accuse "Dems" "of doing on an analogous level". Seems to be odd timing for a vague comment. Zero protein.
I am a slave… because my local cell service is slow. I getcha.
Somebody potential first about making capitalism better by mitigating it.bthat weak ass approach is why dems lose so much. Mitigate capitalism, hah, you guys, it's really, really bad. What dint you get? At this point the N only way if "mitigating" capital would be to have a policeman inside everyone skull all the time. Is that really what you wwant. I thought you were against authoritarianism? I'm cinfused.
"Still harder, Molly, for citizens of the Land of the Free to believe that THEY are being bought and sold. Just like slaves in the "good old days" when America was "Great"."
This hyperbolic assertion is an example of fallacious rhetoric. Our situation is not analogous to that of enslaved persons. And we ought not believe it is.
Citizens are not 'being sold just like slaves."
American citizens are being sold out - by officials, to plutocrats and populists, and for the Republican fascist agenda. Based on racist right wing religious extremism in service of unmitigated greed and unregulated power.
Lin-IMHO Molly’s analogy of the American people being sold like slaves is not hyperbolic. Slaves were bought by “owners” who controlled their bodies, freedoms, living standards, food sources, housing, livelihoods and more.
What we’re experiencing now is a war between which oligarchs (and foreign dictators) will control us through their presidential choices.
One good thing about this is each of them is clearly revealing exactly who they are and what they want to do in relation to our lives and world affairs.
We’re also seeing who the cowards are-it’s unbelievable that they’re afraid of Trump and are “obeying in advance” like good subjects of fascism. American style capitalism requires control of the masses-especially our labor and allegiances. Let’s show them that the power is really with we the people by voting for Harris-Walz.
I never mentioned slaves, however if you cannot control your own body because other people have rules that control your body than you are a slave and you can die.
Molly, I was replying to Peter Burnett's reply to your comment. I quoted Peter's reply - your name appears in his reply . I did not in my initial comment attribute anything to you, nor did I originally critique your comment. I hope this clears that up.
But No Molly, partial controls on your bodily autonomy - positive and negative controls, official and social controls - Are Not Equivalent to Enslavement. It is specious rhetoric to suggest otherwise. It elides the particular and absolute atrocity of enslavement.
Lin*, you are correct to reserve the word "slavery" to the traditional definition as illustrated by the experiences of many Americsn Blacks ancestors' experiences on the 17-19th centuries. However, a new word or term is needed for the many ways modern politicians and business owner use to control citizens' and workers' lives and decisions.
They would make us their serfs.
Here, Kathy, I am taking issue with Lin, Tom and everyone who finds the use of metaphor objectionable in relation to the particularly vile practice of chattel slavery in the Americas.
I am even taking issue with your use of the word "serfs", despite the fact that, when, in 2008, I was asked about my political stance, I said that I was against "the new feudalism".
Now, cattle and slaves were housed, fed and exploited to the limit... and beyond. Under the new dispensation, the underclass has no place in the economy, no place in the OIKOS -- the household -- unless it be that of vermin.
Our new would-be masters of the universe recognize no responsibility to or for anyone or anything, they answer only to their own whims. And, occasionally, to the pecking order among fellow vultures. (More metaphor...)
What awaits the underclass under an American Nazi regime may be even worse than chattel slavery. Under feudalism, even under racketeers, some reciprocity -- protection in exchange for services.
Under the New Normal, the promise of none.
Now, I know that many readers here are wide awake. Yet, as Tom rightly points out, many will never have seen a truly repressive society. And, even if they have, they may not have understood the reality of what they were seeing with their eyes...
And it is my horror at the deep sleep of so much of society today, especially in America, that impels me to write such emotional warnings. After all, a people which failed so totally to understand even the most dreadful warnings like 9/11 -- so totally that I have some reason to doubt that anyone here will understand what I have just written -- may wake up only when thrust into the promised Project 2025 nightmare. After which all mankind will suffer.
*
For my part, main conditioning was:
1. under bombing as a 4-year old;
2. living in South Africa when the Apartheid regime came to power -- yes, I saw chain gangs in the fields, slavery, but -- as in Angola -- not necessarily for life;
3. meeting survivors of Auschwitz; talks with my father's first cousin, a senior officer in the British medical corps who opened two Nazi concentration camps;
4. witnessing the "freedoms" vouchsafed to citizens, in particular the poor, under the Franco regime... and the accompanying unfreedom;
5. friends among those who managed to flee Chile after Pinochet's putsch (much admired by Putin and his regime) and those who escaped Argentina during the murderous rule of the military junta
6. travel in Africa and Asia, witnessing extreme poverty... cheek by jowl with extreme wealth;
7. a promising microproject in Guatemala financed by a group of which I was a member... wiped out by death squads when oil was found across the nearby Mexican border...
That's for starters, and I'm saying nothing about Russia or Ukraine since the beginning of Putin's absurd war, though I visited Russia many times before that horror. Ukraine too, where we have friends today.
And no, Tom, I have never been a slave or a prisoner. Even so... just seeing a model of a slave ship is plenty, if you feel for fellow human beings. I have seen far too much evil.
Quoting, to close, my own rather harsh version of Saadi Shirazi's famous lines:
*
Men are members of one body
From one essence they were made
If one single member suffers
The whole body feels the pain.
Those who do not feel for others
Are but beasts, and not our brothers.
They *have* made us their slaves. Look at the wealth transfer from the middle class and poorer segment of Americans to the one per cent - the top one percent of American own more than the American middle class.
https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/2023/12/06/top-1-american-earners-more-wealth-middle-class/71769832007/#
Clearly you have never lived in a genuinely repressive society, and just as clearly you lack any notion—gained through empathy or imagination—of what slavery is like.
Do you have the freedom to vote? Can you make your own choices about where to live and what to buy? Do you choose whether or not to have a family? And where to educate your children? Can you cross a state line-or for that matter travel anywhere you can afford? Can you quit your job and choose to work elsewhere?
These posts, frankly, are a terrible insult to the generations before us who were enslaved, and to those who worked and fought and died to end slavery.
Tom, there's much misunderstanding here.
Part of the problem is that no language exists that could even begin to express the hell on earth that we human beings have so often created in our midst.
Metaphor. Gradgrindean "facts". Statistics. Damned lies and statistics. All utterly inadequate.
You speak of one of the most hellish aspects of America's heritage; As though there were no competing circles in that hell. As though the destruction of the original inhabitants of the land throughout the Americas was in no way comparable. So many atrocities come to mind, worldwide. Mention Tasmania... where the entire indigenous population was wiped out. Everywhere, everywhere -- and at this very moment -- unspeakable evils. Those of us who have lived a long and very active life may have seen too much, may even, however unintentionally, have added to the weight of human misery.
We have an absolute duty of kindness to one another -- without neglecting the hard forms of kindness and compassion, forms which are absolutely necessary when addressing evil.
I hope we'll all come to understand one another at this crucial moment in history, and do all that is in our power to ensure that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.
Enslavement, slavery, slave are useful and meaningful words. And for the United States, of specific significance.
Using them
metaphorically dilutes their meaning and obscures their historic significance.
Misusing them metaphorically obscures their meaning and also obscures the phenomenon you want to illuminate.
lin-, once again stating things so well. They are also being sold out by companies who look at employees as metrics, easily substituted when unpaid overtime (salaried employees) or ever-changing shifts (part-time hourly employees) destroy health.
"Hyperbolic assertion", Lin?
Metaphor.
Yet, I fail to see the material difference between being sold and sold out when the consequence is the loss of freedom.
"Yet, I fail to see the material difference between being sold and sold out when the consequence is the loss of freedom."
Please look closer.
Partial controls on your bodily autonomy - positive and negative controls, official and social controls are not equivalent to enslavement.
Partial and even draconian government restrictions on your civil rights, are not equivalent to enslavement.
It is specious rhetoric to suggest otherwise. It elides the particular and absolute atrocity of enslavement.
Lin. We can all understand what you are getting at, but should we not beware of creating hierarchies of evil?
Just because my mind is incapable of imagining any historical evil comparable to the Shoah, this does not in any way separate or obscure other evils, let alone justify them. Besides, Hitler's racial policies were, as we know, influenced by America's history of slavery and the horrors of Jim Crow.
I feel sick just thinking of these things. Or the unspeakable cruelty of Leopold II's Congo company that did so much to enrich the city of Brussels in which I spent decades of my life.
If you read what I have written elsewhere, you may come to understand better what lies behind how I sometimes express myself. I think I understand something of what makes for your restrained and disciplined approach to the threats that now face America and the world.
Then what do you call it?
Economic exploitation.
Social oppression,
Disenfranchisement- for starts.
Yes, we are being sold out in the manner of boiling a frog. Keep raising the temperature just enough, a little at a time, and before we realize it, the deed is done.
By Putin’s toady. Bezos is Trump’s toady.
This is misinformation. If you read about Bezos ( on Wikipedia for instance). Bezos has been at odds with Trump. He's just showing spinelessness and it's harmful and being called out. But look at how many "likes" you get for this. TSK TSK....
Bezos bowed to Trump. He is a toady.
What is Bezos afraid of? Not being yet wealthier?
He’s being a coward at a time that the country is in need of courage.
Having Trump publicly attack him. As we’ve seen, this encourages Trump’s groupies to openly threaten death or violence on the targets of Trump’s wrath.
Well dig into the name calling if it makes yo happy.
Yo,No!
Blame it on Lina Kahn! Biden's FTC Chair has sued Amazon. As I stated above, it may be a reason for his withholding WaPo's endorsement of Harris:
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/federal-trade-commission-lina-khan-60-minutes/
Their…not there
"His" not "their" & not "there". Do I have to call the Syntax S.W.A.T. Squad?
I can’t do correction my iPhone while in transit
No
When you cut yourself off from the NYT and or WAPO you are cutting yourself off from often excellent reporting and even opinion.
I simply communicate directly with Michael Schmidt or tune-in to Schmidt's many appearances on "Deadline: White House". Michael is often a guest on his close friend, NICOLLE WALLACE's, MSNBC afternoon show at 4 PM Eastern.
Studio 3A in Rockefeller Center to be exact ... so not much of a commute for Michael with the advantage of a news cycle has matured with additional facts.
Schmidt is married to Wallace
He has not been.
Yes he is, Potter. Bezos has no love for Trump. But his editorial decision for “his paper” demonstrates fealty to the authoritarian power that is Trump in this election and pleases Trump with all its dark intentions. I liken it to a sign crafted and branded in the brains of tycoons everywhere….”Bow to me or beware.”
May We the People prevail.
Salud!
🗽
Bezos is no "toady" to Trump because he is not standing up to him with regard to the WAPO decision. He is being spineless and is an example of what Snyder is talking about but he is NOT doing Trump's bidding. There is a difference.
I'll do a "bothsides" here. There is name calling-- useless---- and misinformation here too. Not to the extent, but people do this here as well. We don't do disinformation however, that I can see, as a rule. People should check there info before they go public for their "likes".
LOL. Who are you telling people to check their info? Hahahahahaha. People post opinion.
https://www.thedailybeast.com/top-editors-eviscerate-jeff-bezos-decision-to-kill-washington-post-kamala-harris-endorsement/
Christine: I liken it to a sign crafted and branded in the brains of tycoons everywhere….”Bow to me or beware.”
-----
This is hyperbole. Prove to me that Trump is threatening Bezos somehow and that this is not Bezos himself fearful deciding to not antagonize the monster ( in case he wins)... as the NYTimes had to courage to do. Bezos is showing spinelessness in this instant. He is calculating about his space competition with Musk probably too. There is a rivalry FYI. But bowing to Trump? Tycoons everywhere? Fealty? LOL
Potter, yet here we are, spinelessly obeying Trump ala a Tim Snyder reference, ahead of time, so as not to be in his crosshairs afterward. Classic Authoritarianism
Exactly.
Salud, Dave.
🗽
Using fear this way convincingly, gets a ball rolling. The more people fear you the more they fear you as you collect this power that you supposedly have command of.
Bezos and the others, the LA Times and the rest, play it so that they are going to be safe in a close election. THIS election is not normal and they are abdicating their responsibility as news organizations that have an editorial voice ( along with their diverse opinions). Bezos is now getting whacked around with criticism for this poor decision. I bet he is surprised.
Read Margaret Sullivan here on substack about this too. https://margaretsullivan.substack.com/p/we-needed-courage-we-got-cowardice
You are sowing hate.
https://youtu.be/Gc11mJGre10?si=4cCQuYWLzNy5mbSS
So, David Gagne, in this thread that relates to Heather’s article about WAPO and Bezos, you’re promoting this video that relates to making money through Amazon??
🎯👍
Clearly, you have never been a slave. Your rhetoric is overwrought to the point of meaninglessness.
So if my newspaper lets me down because its owner is predictably cowardly, that’s just like being a slave?
An Idea: search Tickets for Trump at Madison Square tomorrow and of course don’t show. Pass it globally. I’ll be on the street protesting.
Several people whose views I greatly respect have taken strong exception to that second sentence, "Just like slaves..."
It is not in fact necessary, since the first sentence contains all that needs be said.
Free people cannot be bought and sold. To the extent that they can be, they are no longer free.
For what it is worth, the second sentence referred only to the commodification of human beings, not to their consequent treatment as beasts of burden. About the only limit on the horrendous treatment of black slaves and their descendants is that, unlike cattle, they were not eaten.
I strongly recommend readers to look up what two great French thinkers, Montesquieu and Condorcet, had to say about slavery and the treatment of Africans. Also Abbé Grégoire, who wrote a powerful essay condemning slavery and the slave trade in 1815 and campaigned for the abolitionist cause until his death in 1831.
Montesquieu could hardly have been more scathing in presenting the arguments of white supremacists...
"It is impossible to believe that these people are human beings, for, if we did believe them to be human beings, we would have to wonder whether we ourselves are Christians."
Elon Musk worked illegally in the US. Can the country deport him and seize his illegal assets?
https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2024/10/26/elon-musk-immigration-status/
I was sorry to leave, but I dropped my Post subscription last night. Still have NYT. Looking for another paper to subscribe to. Any suggestions?
The Guardian, The Philadelphia Inquirer, Boston Globe are three I can think of who have not yet bowed to the threat of authoritarianism.
I subscribe to the Globe ONLY because I live here. They have, at LEAST, endorsed Harris. The Globe’s owners, the Henry’s, are also super wealthy, and we should question what they choose not to cover as well as how they cover what they do write about. I very much miss the days of Ellen Goodman and Molly Ivins.
I miss them both as well.
It would have been a pleasure to see Molly Ivins chew up Trump. And I was cheered by Ruth Marcus's remarks about the Post's cowardice.
I dropped my Guardian sub when they published a pathetic piece on the “report” about Joe Biden’s age. Sadly, I’ve found it better just to limit my exposure to any of this to Heather’s daily letters. On most days, it’s more than enough.
In defense of the Guardian: They have the best coverage of the American far-right, on the top level with Pro Publica. You might want to give the Guardian another chance. There's no subscription pay wall.
Well, the truth is that I’ve cut so far back on any current events that the Guardian (or anything else) is no longer necessary. Their arts coverage was fantastic though, but I get that in other places.
CSpan!!!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C-SPAN
With cable industry profits dropping, CSpan is asking for donations.
https://donate.c-span.org/support-c-span
Thank you for that information. Oh no, something else to worry about — losing C-SPAN. I no longer subscribe to cable but when I did , C-SPAN was incredibly valuable, and ahead of other networks with captioning!
C-SPAN has a youtube channel.
Oh thanks. But one has to pay, right?
I’m a huge fan of C-Span—worried about the diminishing cable subscribers.
Thank you for the information and link, lin. I just made a donation
The Nation will NEVER bend over for right wing extremism.....been doing the fight since 1865
When I dropped my WaPo subscription this past spring, I began a search for a good replacement. I tried The Guardian for a couple months, but I found their online format unfriendly to navigate and their willingness to accommodate right-biased reporting off-putting. I highly respect The Inquirer's philosophy and policy, but found their coverage too Philadelphia-centric, which it really should be. I assume The Globe would be much the same. Those are the reasons I've invested my money in HCR's effort. But I still mourn the loss of WaPo to Bezos and his Murdoch protégé, Will Lewis.
I have been drawn to the Guardian lately.
The Guardian has 3 Platforms, UK, Australia & United States.
The Guardian is British, so has nothing to fear from Trump. It also is not owned by one wealthy person. The thing about the Post and the LA Times is that they have been bought by already wealthy people. Not a good situation.
The Guardian is non-profit.
Lots of folks here looking for alternative news media. Perhaps check out www.StatesNewsroom to see if your state has a local press group. I’m very impressed with the reporters at Florida Phoenix. I’ve also read, and supported, the Guardian for several years.
I dropped the Sunday times due to the cost, but I am not a fan of the way they have made Trump sound less venal and vile than he actually is, and they try to put down the VP as if she is on Trump’s low level. Tim Snyder is right, you do NOT obey in advance.
My cancellation letter to WaPo
To: matt.murray@washpost.com
Subject: Independent journalism
I am truly heartbroken and torn to cancel my subscription. I feel I am abandoning and endangering the journalists I most respect and depend on. But I cannot support Bezos and Lewis in suppressing the Post endorsement of Kamala Harris for President.
Democracy Has Died in The Post C Suite
This is not the venerable Post returning to its roots. (As falsely claimed by Lewis.) This is new Post bosses helping fascism take root in the United States - by killing off independent journalism. This is Jeff Bezos joining Elon Musk in perverting American media - preemptively capitulating and placing their bets and putting their fists on the scale for a TrumpProject2025ChristianNationalist win. Or worse.
Please Fact Check William Lewis' assertions concerning his decision to suppress the Editorial Board's endorsement of Kamala Harris for president.
Lewis asserts that his decision is:
1. "consistent with the values The Post has always stood for"
His decision is demonstrably inconsistent with the Post's past values and actions.
2. " Our job at The Washington Post is to provide through the newsroom nonpartisan news for all Americans, and thought-provoking, reported views from our opinion team to help our readers make up their own minds."
2a. Lewis elides the job of the Editorial Board
2b. Suppressing the Editorial Board's endorsement actually impedes readers' ability to make up our own minds by denying us the opinion of knowledgeable and trusted journalists.
3. "...our job as the newspaper of the capital city of the most important country in the world is to be independent.
And that is what we are and will be."
Certainly it is WaPo's job to be independent.
Even presenting the appearance of self-policing as capitulation to threats by fascist powers is exactly the opposite of independence. And seeming to adopt the methods and advance to agenda of fascists is even worse.
I understand, that coming from Murdoch media, Lewis expects his consumers to swallow any swill wrapped in high minded sounding rhetoric. In this, Lewis reveals his: Murdochian modus operandi; disdain for journalistic ethics; ignorance of the notion of an independent press; and disregard for Washington Post journalists and readers. Most damning, Lewis asserts and appropriates the language and ideals of an independent press, while in fact negating those exact ideals. I believe George Orwell termed what Lewis is doing newspeak.
Democracy has died in the Post C suite.
And that death threatens democracy itself.
lin,
My comment to them
The WAPO is like a multi-armed body. One arm has great opinion writing and another arm that spouts “both-sider” excuse for Trump’s insanity. Another arm for news coverage that buries real news about the administration's accomplishments and another arm that pretends that Project 2025 has no meaning. Another arm ignores the radicalization of the Supreme Court while another goes ape$hit over Biden’s age
Unfortunately, the Head has no ethical or Moral Compass. Its inability to recognize the monster staring it down as “unfit for service” validates half of its writers as “unbiased” and condemns the other as cheerleaders for Harris
Democracy Dies in Bezos. Bezos defines Authoritarianism. He understands Fascism and fears it not
*lin, I always enjoy reading your info-packed comments, and I agree with your decision to drop the WaPo, as I did yesterday as well. I'll be writing my email to Matt Murray today, but it will be much more brief.
I also intend to call Customer Service and ask for 75% of my subscription cost refunded, as I had re-upped in July. I have no expectations they'll agree to it, but I also have no interest in continuing to find them until next July. I only feel bad for the staff who may be economically affected by these cancellations (although I think a Bezos-owned publication can weather a loss of 2000 subscribers, which must have been his calculation.)
I think Customer Service will be swamped. They were yesterday.
Thank you for sharing this—I’ve subscribed to WaPo for so many years that I can’t remember when I first subscribed? However, last night before I could go to sleep I canceled my subscription (I slept better). I feel sad because of so many wonderful journalists who I will miss 😢
Obeying in advance is appeasement, and appeasement NEVER, EVER works. If trump were to win, there would be NO free press.
Yes, and I would worry about public television and radio, both of which I support.
I’m thinking that for now it’s Letters From an American. And we can recalibrate after the election dust settles.
I canceled the WAPO and Times years ago. My local paper is wall to wall MAGA and the Pittsburgh Post Gazette has always been a right wing partisan rag. I’m so delighted I found Substack with Heather, Robert Hubble, Joyce Vance, Lucian Truscott, Jeff Tiedrich, and so many others! I spend a lot of time and money here but kept my sanity! Worth every penny!
Thom Hartman , Robert Reich
Karen, and for the snarky radical and sometimes profane, there’s TCinLA
I, too, enjoy TAFM, and not just for the snark and profane.
He’s great! We often interact and agree in many comments sections of other authors along with his own page. I also think Wonkette is hilarious
I agree Karen. I read no newspapers, mostly, unless there is need to see local news & events. I rarely watch any network news. All these substacks give me all I need to know.
Susan, I stopped all subscriptions I had with newspapers and have never watched (and I mean since the concept of cable news channels) what I've called "bought news". Because if you pay for it, they're only gonna tell you what you want to hear.
I used to watch the Sunday morning news shows on CBS, ABC, and occasionally NBC. Had to stop that in 2021. I spend my subscription money here on Substack and hear the good with the bad commonly known as mostly the truth. I'm voting Monday for Kamala Harris and Tim Walz.
The Post Gazette was better before they decided to fire Rob Rogers. That and the erratic behavior that one of the members of the Block family that owns the paper were reasons why I canceled my Post Gazette subscription.
Democracy Docket, Judd Legum, Aaron Rupar
This is a dark turn in the election contest. America is on the verge of bowing
down to fascism and the corporate "free press" is blatantly complicit! ...
A dark day in deed.
There is never ONE writer or media entity to trust. It must be a mix. ALL individuals and organizations have an Achilles Heel of sorts, including the very best including those absent of financially vested interests.
The Guardian
Yes, The Guardian and The Meidas Touch Network.
And Tyler Cohan Bryan
IHIPNEWS....Stephanie Miller.......Progressive, heroic women fighting Trumptardism in the front line trenches every single day!!!!
Please avoid any word with “-tard”. The derivative is a word that is cruel and discriminatory to cognitively-impaired humans, and deprives some people of their dignity, and there right to be accepted in the colorful
Spectrum of humanity. I’m not being “politically correct”. I’ve seen how beloveds have been hurt by this kind of vocabulary.
We are always called lib****s by the wingnuts who infest X. It is respectful to avoid terms that are insulting to people with cognitive problems. They have the right to full acceptance in society.
Trumptards get NO QUARTER. They follow the rules and worship a sick, demented diaper claude fellon cult leader. "Belovides"...do not purchase a blasphamous bible...do not wear sanitary napkins on their ears...do not wear diapers over their pants in public...do not urinate in public in large pots......do not take away a womens rights to control her own body......do not risk the loss of democracy....do not call the Jan 6 traitors "hostages"......."colourful spectrum of humanity??" The colour int the Trumpt#&D world is brown and found in a used depends.
* “their” not “there”
I enjoy the Guardian, but remember its homeland is the UK, not USA.
So what? Its US edition does a very good job, and it actually acknowledges that Europe and the rest of the world exist.
True enough, but I'm saying this is what American needs. Topline news source which is not beholden to the billionaire class, such as they are.
Get rid of Citizens United and maybe we'll eventually get something along those lines -- though the fragmentation of cable and the plethora of alternative sources makes it unlikely. At least in my lifetime the U.S. has never had a "topline news source" that adequately covered the country. For instance, the African American press flourished for a reason (and is still hanging in in some places).
The Guardian is run by a trust, not by a single owner or as part of a hedge fund that squeezes the profits out of newspapers while ignoring the public interest. We need to change our media ownership laws to break up media monopolies, especially those of Rupert Murdoch and Sinclair Media, as well as terrestrial (as opposed to subscription) radio. Failure to have local radio outlets available presents a serious risk to public safety, as we’ve seen in the past.
The Atlantic magazine is excellent.
ProPublica. Mother Jones.
THE NATION
Pro Publica is excellent 👌
I dropped the NY Times after 2016. My WaPo sub is running out now. I've been subscribing to the Guardian, both US and UK editions, for several years now. That, plus several outlets (Slate and the Atlantic top the list) and a bunch of Substacks, keeps me pretty well informed.
I dropped my WaPo subscription as soon as I saw the announcement. Also, since 2020 I use Amazon as a search engine, I find what I want, read the reviews, and then buy the product I want from the company website, not amazon. I’ve had a subscription to the Boston Globe for over 5 years because my daughter started college in Boston then. It’s still a good one. I’ll replace WaPo with the Philadelphia Enquirer. Have been a Guardian subscriber for a while now too.
Isn’t The Globe owned by NYTimes? But guardian subscription is a good idea.
No. The Henry's bought it from the NYT years ago. John is the publisher and is wife, Linda, is CEO. John owns the Red Sox, the Pittsburgh Penguins, Liverpool Football Club, and part of a NASCAR team. They are also billionaires.
AP - I put the free app on my phone. Also Reuters and NPR. Not regular newspapers but excellent journalistic coverage of national and int’l news.
Not a paper, but the best donation I make is Democracy Docket.
The Guardian.
I cancelled mine along with a snarky comments as to exactly why
Democracy Dies in Bezos
Yes. Subscribe to every Substack author that reflects the essence of We the People.
Salud!
🗽
I dropped the NYT last summer when they began the drumbeat of questioning Biden's fitness for office while saying very little about Trump's then obvious raving decline. I gave my reason for dropping it as journalistic negligence. I find The Guardian to be a good, solid, balanced paper. It's doesn't have the breadth of US coverage that the NYT has and I miss my favorite columnists but, for now, I need a media diet to preserve my sanity, so it works for me.
I personally like Axios, Vox, The Guardian, The Atlantic and ProPublica
A sideways reply: Democracy Now, though not a newspaper; Substack’s Thom Hartmann; Contribute to Greg Palast who is trying to get us ready for the massive voter rolls purge that BIPOC voters will face when they try to vote
I responded to a recent article in the online WaPo about our supposed need to rely on and expand nuclear energy if we want to meet CO2 emissions goals in the next decade or so, and I mentioned that the owner of the Post, Jeff Bezos, had a personal interest in this (as described in the article itself). I then opined we ought not let our oligarchs set climate change policy, especially when their personal financial interests are involved. I compared it with the mafia's interference with government in Italy, where I live. When I clicked "submit", my comment immediately disappeared, replaced by a notice that I had violated the WaPo's policies.
So now the chicken-hearted Bezos has refused to let his newspaper's editors endorse Kamala Harris! I am not in the least surprised.
I began reading the WaPo as a little kid living in DC in the early 60's (first the cartoons, then the sports pages, me and my dad getting our daily info at the breakfast table. I was a politics junkie by the age of 12, and I read every article about the Bay of Pigs, Kennedy's assassination, the Vietnam war, Johnson, Nixon, Watergate, Ford's pardon of Nixon, and so much more. When I moved away from DC as a young adult I lost track of the Post and became a daily NYT reader and then later an International Herald Tribune reader when I got out into the world and finally a La Repubblica reader when my Italian was up to speed.
I am currently subscribed to NYT, WaPo, La Repubblica and The Atlantic, but I will wait to see how the election turns out before unsubscribing from anything.
If you’re thinking about canceling your newspaper subscription, Rolf Dobelli’s book “Stop Reading the News” might resonate with you. He argues that daily news tends to be sensational and distracting, offering shallow insights that can increase stress and misinformation. Instead, Dobelli advocates for focusing on in-depth articles, long-form journalism, and books, which provide more thoughtful, detailed analysis.
For long-form articles, here are some excellent sources:
1. The Atlantic – Known for comprehensive and well-researched pieces on politics, culture, and society.
2. The New Yorker – Offers deep dives into current events, culture, and profiles of interesting figures.
3. Longreads – Curates long-form content from various sources, covering a wide range of topics.
4. The Guardian’s Long Read – Offers detailed articles on global issues, politics, and culture.
5. Aeon – Focuses on philosophy, culture, and science, with thought-provoking essays and articles.
These sources will help you stay informed without the overwhelm of daily news.
Two months ago, after reading “Stop Reading the News.” I gave up daily news except for Heather Cox Richardson. My constant thirst for “what more does NYT have to say every minute???!!!” subsided quickly and I’ve had more time for novels, non fiction, and hearing my own thoughts.
Thanks, Shawn, for the advice. I have noticed that I have become smart-phone dependent, dedicating far less time to reading books than I used to and feeling constantly dissatisfied about the quality of information I get from the internet. HCR is a notable exception, and the Atlantic is the first of my subscriptions I check every day, but I really do need more than mere news and opinion to satisfy me, so I had better get my ass in gear. Bezos' refusal to endorse Kamala Harris is very revealing. Wealth is no guarantee of intelligence or good character.
Dad always said, “That’s what happens when you have more money than brains”. Bezos is living proof.
Musk has no business inserting himself in politics, that’s gonna lay him low. He taking huge risks with his business. Tesla cars WERE great, at first. Now all car companies are making EV’s and by what I see doing well with them. I know his cars are a drop in the bucket for him, he’s a genius in that category. Other than that, he deserves to be locked up in a cell with erasable markers and a whiteboard.
No one person should have billions and billions of dollars at their whim. The economic havoc they alone are capable of creating has the potential to interfere with and topple small governments across the globe. I’m not suggesting hand over anything to anyone else. But an appropriate tax code and deductions to meet these unusual circumstances as 98% of us pay their (the billionaires) share of taxes. It’s almost impossible not to become so self absorbed that your reality isn’t the same as 99% of your fellow human beings.
He’s also wrecking social media with his takeover of what used to be Twitter. X now ignores it when you report blatantly racist and ant-Semitic comments to them, and Musk feels free to spread his own lies, conspiracy theories, deepfake videos, racism and the pseudoscience of eugenics on X. He only believes in “free speech” if it’s something he agrees with.
Musk and Trump are both sociopaths, and a sensible society would never allow people like them in any proximity to power. Fascist and Communist societies like Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union empowered sociopaths like Hitler, Lenin and Stalin to come to power, and the consequences were both brutal and lethal. I have every reason to believe empowering sociopaths like Musk, Trump and Stephen Miller will be equally brutal and lethal. Absolutely no one will be immune.
Kathy, yes, yes, yes. Will we ever wake up. For insane beings to have this much power is detrimental to the human race.
Karen, yes, yes, yes.
That's absolutely true about the value of long-form journalism (and book-length background info and commentary). I learned this during the breakup of the former Yugoslavia. My knowledge of eastern Europe was sketchy, and I could not figure it out from the day-to-day reporting. Long-form writing and books helped a lot.
Shawn, I subscribe to both the Atlantic and the New Yorker, but when Substack exploded, I don’t have time to read them. I get up three hours before my wife just to get through my Substacks and related comments
Same here, Dave. LFAA is my first read, and occupies most of my early hours. Beginning in June, I have to cut out at 7:00 a.m. to go water, and am lucky if I get to come back and complete my read. I feel like I'm sitting here having coffee with my fellow Readers. It's a nice way to start the day.
Ally, Its always good to see your comments. Of the thousands of commenters, I recognize a few every day and scroll past a lot of others in search of my Breakfast Club
Seeing you (and others) pop up in other Subs is a confirmation of sorts that values are aligned and there is strength building
My second Sub subscription was Mr Irreverence TCinLA; so refreshingly poignant
I think that YLE was my first, LFAA my second. I did hit TAFM a bit later, but boy, does he write some good stuff. I've been enjoying his Leyette Gulf posts lately.
Me too Ally. I'm awake at 4 a.m., read HCR, Kiev Times, Jeruselem Post, breakfast at 7 a.m., stable chores at 8 a.m. , two hours weeding and bushwhacking, make lunch, feed Handsome, feed me, go back and read commentary on HCR.
Dave, I find that when I skip the comments I can get through all my substacks....I have a small group of substacks where I read/scan the first bunch of comments. I wish I could shrink them down by the lines on the left so that it was easier to find the beginning of threads.
Thanks for the reading suggestions, especially the Longreads options.
May I add The Christian Science Monitor as another great source for the journalism that Donelli is advocating.
Thank you for this! I toyed with a subscription to the Atlantic — they let you trial for a long time — but decided I wasn’t smart enough. Maybe erudite is the word. You make a good argument. I’ll have a rethink. Atul Gawande was at the New Yorker, so they must be good!
I have found some interesting writing on Vanity Fair.
Very thoughtful suggestions! Thank you. 😊
Shawn, thank you for these suggestions. I'm a former hardcopy newspaper junkie, preferring the actual item to digital versions and I appreciate your suggestions!!
Spot on!!
What about your local news? I have a friend who compulsively follows several news sources on national media, but she doesn't know what is happening in her own city and state.
Good point. I subscribe to my local paper, The Peninsula Daily News, both on-line and print copy. They are not so hot on international or national news (they get most of that from the NYT, to which I subscribe anyway), but great on the local coverage. And the print version has comics and Dear Abby!
I also subscribe to the Seattle Times (on-line), mainly for restaurant reviews and local obituaries. Also, I listen to CBC radio, though recently they seem to be overly fixated on the US elections, as if they don't have enough of their own political drama to deal with!
I was a CBC reporter for many years and feel really saddened when I try to read their online news. There is still some excellent journalism going on there but also way too many "human interest" click-bait stories and peek-a-boo headlines that are irritating. Most video reports of interest are behind two, three or sometimes four ads. It can take more than a minute of ads to get to the story. The Canadian government is slowing starving the CBC for funds and CBC News has had to turn to ads and click bait to fund their programming.
It's off-putting because CBC funds come from Canadians' taxes so we shouldn't have to put up with the ads since we already paid for it with our taxes. Newsrooms have been doing more and more with less and less since the early nineties. The leader of the Conservative Party is a Trump wannabe who might be our next Prime Minister and he promises to get rid of the CBC altogether. Strange days.
Strange days indeed!
Thank you for your well-considered reply.
I have been a CBC listener for only the past five years, since I relocated from Seattle to the Olympic Peninsula, so I do not have much in the way of "legacy" experience with Canadian media.
I don't often access their online content, but what you are describing sounds familiar. The thing about that, as you point out, is the apparent lack of support from the Canadian government. I don't how it compares with the BBC in that regard, but certainly there is (or should be) a clear and unassailable mandate for government support, especially as taxpayer $$ are used for that purpose. That mandate does not exist in any meaningful way for our Public Broadcasting System, which is mostly privately funded.
I do enjoy listening to CBC because of the alternative perspective it provides on world affairs, and I like knowing what our neighbors to the north are concerned with. I take note of the critical state of the health care system, which used to be a model to look up to. And the cost of living issues ring all too familiar. All under the banner of trying to do more with less. And when it comes to making amends for the treatment of native peoples . . . well, let's just say there is much to be answered for on both sides of the border. We haven't had to boot any diplomatic staff back to India yet, but there are others who could be sent packing with little provocation, in my view.
I can see what you mean about the political scene; I've heard the rhetoric of the various parties, especially the Conservatives via their presumptive Trump sound alike, Pierre What'shisname. He adds nothing new or creative to the conversation, as far as I can tell. Of course your political/electoral system is different than ours in some ways that ours could take a lesson from. You have more than two parties with an opportunity to make a meaningful difference. I think that, at times, coalition-building can strengthen a democratic government.
But as we both agree: strange days.
Shawn I only read the NewYorker and Heather. I do listen to All Things Considered and watch the Newshour on PBS. More then enough.
The WaPo has suddenly become comment sensitive. It rejected one of my comments because I had described a Trump claim on tariffs, the economy and being a "Wharton graduate" as "bullshit."
Try replacing "bullshit" with "baloney" or "hogwash" or some other phrase that passed muster with 1950's TV censors.
As to 1950’s TV censors, fuck them all 💥
It is bullshit Michael as lame as he is there’s no way he is a legitimate graduate of Wharton.
Consider subscribing to the Guardian--most reliable mainstream source I can find right now. I cancelled my Post subscription yesterday. I keep the NYT primarily for the crossword.
The Guardian has a good crossword, too,
How much are costs of these subscription’s? I’m curious, but not enough to go looking elsewhere…which probably means I’m lazy too!!
I think that's a great idea.
You can subscribe to NYT games only, which I did after tiring of all the "news." The cost is about $8/month.
Wow, on your story, David.
Hey, it gets better. When I was in 5th grade in Alexandria VA my teacher was interested in ancient history and that was the special thing she brought to her teaching, and she really knew her ancient civilizations and wanted us kids to know them, too. So, one sunny morning in the autumn of 1963 we all rode a school bus into Washington to check out the neo-classical architecture. I mean, I can still distinguish Greek from Roman from Doric from Ionic from Corinthian columns, and DC is just full of that stuff. As it happened, the main road (I-395?) from DC back to our school went right past the Pentagon, and as we passed by on our way to lunch we noticed there were 3 helicopters with their rotors whirling in the parking lot and a whole lot of people in uniform (and not) running here and there, and my friend Susie -- always a laugh riot -- said "I'll bet the President forgot his toothbrush," which is just the sort of thing the children of government bureaucrats know about, and so we all knew that Jack Kennedy was supposed to be in Dallas, Texas that day . Well we giggled about that for another ten minutes before we got back to school and found everyone in tears.
I've had a couple of Forrest Gump moments in my life, I guess.
I was a sophomore at the Univ. of Miami in 1966. I took a course, Art History 232 because it was a guaranteed good grade with minimal work. It was the best course I ever took in undergraduate or graduate school. Talk about expanding horizons. Now if I go to the Louvre, Florence, or the great museums in New York or Boston I feel at home.
David and Frank,
Bill Gates is founder and leader of Terra Power, a nuclear energy provider with an approach that permits on-site up-or-down scaling. The waste continues to be a challenge but some promising approaches are emerging in (I think) Scandinavia. Oligarchs are no better or worse than the rest of us as people. They have the same virtues and vices as any other. The difference lies in the consequences of amplified flaws, quirks, and noble impulses.
TCM just played "All the President's Men" last night. What Woodward & Bernstein pulled off was incredible journalism...and WAPO had balls...now they abdicate their responsibility...this is beyond sad...it's dangerous.
Katharine Graham is no doubt turning over in her grave.
Again, I believe the non-endorsements are moving the needle more in favor of *President Harris than ordinary endorsements would. As people watch Elon Musk indulge his narcissism awkwardly as nerds do -- and, yes, I know this because I am deemed by many as a nerd -- Jeff Bezos and the L.A. Times billionaire are shrewd. They can say, "Hey, I was a quisling per the specs of your trumper tantrums, Mr candidate and your nebulous nerd." All the while, the staff and *readership endorse President Harris by agitprop.
So shall we refer to you as Nerd McDoodle?
¡Haha!😉 If we absolutely have to go there, I would much prefer 'Dood McNerdle'.😉
Nice, McNerdle. Dood it is. As in "The".
It's amazing that the Wrath of Trump can affect the richest of the rich like this...I thought they were powerful independent people...guess not. I hope their friends and family are calling and saying WTF ? You're afraid of that ?
Trump can twist the tails of the richest who were also victims of Epstein's game. Trump's got the list. I wish someone would unearth Maxwell and let her spill the beans.
You may have missed my thought here, Mike.
I was just hopeful that folks who are close to Bezos will call him out for being a coward...I agree with you that they are now getting a lot of push back from us,
Okay. Yes, I agree with you on the calling out by those close to Mr Bezos. Thank you for the clarification, Mike.
The WP decision is just unconscionable! Guess it’s easier to cave than take a responsible position!
Agreed. I have had to cancel my subscription to WaPo, LA Times, and NYT. I do not want my money going to these publications when they are not treating this election with the gravitas it deserves. It is easier to eschew these things not living in the US, but many of the people I know rely on those corporate US press to keep up with what is going on back in the States.
I am currently living in Germany. A local television station interviewed some members of Democrats Abroad in our region in Germany. For balance she struggled to find a Republican. There are Republicans living in Germany, but not a lot. All of the Americans I know are voting Blue all the way, and are doing various things to help get the vote out, and help people abroad to vote.
That speaks to Tim Snyder on "obeying in advance", the most harmful self defeating ( ultimately) thing that people with power and money can do to bring about what they fear. This rewards the power grabbers.
There ought to be a law against being an oligarch! It seems these men have more dollars than neurons in their brains. It amazes me how the world's richest men (Musk, Bezos, Putin) are so far removed from the essential qualities of humanity.
Raising income taxes on billionaires and corporations, eliminating stock options and buybacks, reregulating the financial industry and enforcing antimonopoly laws would all be a start, but these are unlikely to happen.
Molly, I think that your statement about hard to believe the paper that published the Pentagon Papers is spot on; I don't think that there's exactly a "prostrated himself" as much as there is "hedging his bets".
I abhor the decision made by the Post and the LA Times as being full blown 🐔💩
Those actions may turn out to be the best endorsements President Harris could ever hope for . . . look at the reaxions.🤞
Let’s remember that when Bezos bought the WaPo, it was in decline and about to follow many of its peers into oblivion. Because no one subscribed anymore. A lot of us who seem to operate as part-time journalism critics who know exactly what editors, headline writers and reporters should and shouldn’t say either get by on free articles or a heavily discounted subscription.
Here’s a thought. Subscribe. And then offer criticism to the paper. Often. Then tell us about it if you want. But these fancy carom shots that come from mostly non-subscribers as criticism through Substack comments are worse than useless.
There’s one frequent critic of the NYT and WAPO here in these comments who has said at least ten times that I have noticed, that he’s cancelled his subscription to one or the other. What a bs-er!
If you want a better paper, subscribe and offer criticism.
Tom,
I’m a former journalist. I canceled my subscription. I wrote to the exec ed of the Post explaining exactly why I did. I commented frequently about the shortcomings I saw in the news and commentary after Bezos bought the paper and after he brought on Murdoch minion Will Lewis. I also lived in Seattle for 30 years as Bezos began amassing billions while doing nothing for the community or state. His predatory business practices are also far less than exemplary. His spiking an editorial endorsement of Vice President Harris that was already prepared was cowardice and journalistic incompetence. Bezos has no business owning a nationally prominent newspaper.
I just cancelled my subscription. William Lewis's BS word salad defense of the decision is alarming. Who would've thought....
Not to mention it was a total lie. It was all about the Benjamins. Amazon lost a big government contract to Microsoft because he pissed off Trump. In case the worst happened again, he didn’t want to piss off Trump again. As if Bezos isn’t rich enough already.
The Washington Post and Los Angeles Times refusing to endorse Kamala Harris is a 911 alert to the American people. This kind of "obeying in advance," as Timothy Snyder calls it, shows how media silence, especially under ownership influence, enables anti democratic forces and threatens the free press essential to democracy.
"Neo-Slavery"
MAGA reflects the cruelty of fascism, reducing everything to transactional exchanges — buying, selling, and bartering even human beings. People, their votes, and their lives are commodified, priced, and traded in a ruthless landscape where power is purchased, and individuals are mere currency in a marketplace of control.
Selling newspapers and print advertising has been a dying business ever since the advent of television. Major newspapers are no more self sustaining now than your small town one that closed its doors twelve years ago. They are therefore vulnerable to the richest of the rich who seek to own them merely for purposes ofacquiring greater power and influence. It's not the ad revenue. It's the mouthpiece. Or for vanity, like owning basketball teams. Check the pitiful ad lineage of these papers. They are dying dogs.
Compare this with the hay days of journalism, when men like William Randolph Hearst grew rich, influential, and powerful through ownership of successful newspapers. Sons of Murdoch, eat your hearts out.
....
Hearst had a bad influence on American politics and News. For one thing, he started the Spanish American war to enable Americans to capture a decaying Spain’s remaining colonies. Murdoch’s influence is infinitely worse because he has wrecked journalism in his native Australia, the United Kingdom, and the United States. His son Lachlan is in charge of Fox ”News” and wants to carry on his father’s mission of misinforming its audience.
I'm aware of the role of Hearst newspapers in generating support for the war.. But I suspect that saying he started it is to credit his newspaper empire with too much power. Did he fan the flames ? Certainly. Was not the US predisposed to intervention ? I am going back to study it. I e forgotten a good deal. . But there are certain points to keep in mind that I can recall.
1. His was not the only newspaper chain. .There were others. They had opposing editorial positions on many things and were in competition with each other for readers and influence. Indeed they were engaged in newspaper wars. .And there was this thing called Yellow Journalism and differentiated them. I forget which side of that Hearst was on and I am not going to assume. What I can say for the reasons infra, is that all was not black and white.
2. Item. America by then already had a long experience in dealing with Spanish Imperialism and it was not good. It was not liked. And one aspect of it was slavery. . Spain has a long history of making slaves of people. Cuba was one of Spanish Kings oldest colonial possessions. It lasted there for hundreds of years. And it's effects were slow to wear off. To put it mildly, Spanish upper class society was and is conservative and averse to change.
3. There was a rebellion ongoing in Cuba at the time. It was aimed at achieving independence from Spain. And it was not going so well.
4. The battleship Maine -built at Bath Iron Works I think, was ordered to make a port call in Havana, and stay there indefinitely. This effort at intimidation was aimed at preventing the Spanish military from gaining the upper hand there. This was without invitation.
And 5, we might say that it succeeded beyond the wildest of all expectations. Because surely no one thought that the battleship might just explode at rest in the harbor.
WRH was not alone in blaming this on the Spaniards. In any case, my point was that his power, wealth, and influence grew out of the newspaper business and hence the American publics hungry demands for information. Whereas today a newspaper is a sinkhole for wealth. No judgment on character, motives or principles was intended.
As for the Murdoch's, they are the vomit running after the dogs of American public opinion. The unspeakable in pursuit of the inedible.
You do mean Elon Musk, right? He's the one talking with putinhead.
B.L.U.F. (bottom-line, up front): help me, an erstwhile Republican, vote President Harris into the White House and candidate Trump into jail, a.s.a.p & s.v.p.⚖️
On my first swing through Iraq in the earlier phase of Operations Iraqi Freedom, I trusted most "The L.A. Times", among U.S. media outlets, in its coverage of that invasion and occupation. Those days are gone. As are the days, as Ms Ciliberti observes, of Woodellstein at "The Washington Post".🤢
Incidentally, many thanks to President Harris for making, at least some, of politics fun again. My wishful conviction born of necessity: inasmuch as candidate Trump landed some blows the week, President Harris will win by five to seven percentage points complemented by well over three hundred Electoral College votes.🚀
https://www.pbs.org/video/brooks-and-granderson-on-the-presidential-race-deadlock-1729898137/ 🤔
EDIT: the good Mr David Brooks, a conservative thinker whom I trust, makes a powerful argument of a misalignment of President Harris's stars in the progression from the Maoist qualitative change (i.e., cultural shift and social movements) catalyzing a quantitative (i.e., political reform).😯
Not only am I arguably a wishful thinker I am but also a stubborn lrishman; gritting my teethe in conviction is in my Jacobin D.N.A.🤭
The every bit as good good Mr L.Z. Granderson expressed mightily his frustration with his employer; That takes courage. He also obliquely reinforced a thought vibing from the conspiracy corner of my wretched little mind: that these non-endorsement and the reactions they are provoking are the most resounding calls-to-action of all.✌🏽
PLEASE NOTE: I have reversed the wording and associated changes of the Maoist thinking (as far as I can figure it out); I can not grasp the idea of cultural and social changes being "quantitative" and the actual and visible change being "qualitative". Of course, I may have reflected Mao rightly out of the sheer accident of stupidity.👻
It's always darkest before the dawn. Really, really looking forward to that dawn. Thank you, Professor Richardson, for shining a light on the pathway so we all get there safely.
Also--Looking forward to Musk being prosecuted for breaking election laws with his million dollar bribes.
Don't count on DoJ. A-G won't step up.
If Trump wins he promised this week to nominate Aileen Cannon as the AG. Won't that be fun?
Grrrr! She's shown us who she is and will continue to be. Trump must be put asunder.
I think he should be, but I really question whether our system is able to hold Trump and his fellow plotters to justice. He gets away with far too much, and the spineless SCOTUS majority is willing to give him an unconstitutional immunity from his acts that would have appalled the Founders. The Founders believed that the President was not above the law, and six justices just trashed this idea in U.S. v. Trump. Justice Sotomayor’s dissent was completely correct. You should fear for your country if the Supreme Court of the United States is willing to grant this sort of unconstitutional immunity to the President.
I don’t think SCOTUS is spineless. They don’t shirk from standing up for Democracy. They are actively undermining it. Their spines are buttressed by the church and as rigid as the Religious Right.
Shawn-Don’t forget the money (“gratuities) which stiffen their spines too.
Since Trump is immune from prosecution for official actions, questions are being raised as to POTUS Biden's not taking a similar path and dealing with Trump in the here and now. His crimes have been delineated. Is decency the issue here even as our republic is under fire and the election outcome is in question?
Shawn, I think your assessment is spot on. There's a "spine" there, and what it is holding up is beyond awful.
Unfortunately, this is also correct. Where I refer to their being spineless, it’s a reference to their failure to uphold the Constitution and the rule of law.
I had speculated that he had offered her Supreme Court. Quid pro quo is certain, whatever she gets.
Kind of proves that Trump actually hires only the weakest, most incompetent, and biggest boot lickers.
You must be kidding
That made me feel physically ill Gary, I had not seen that before. It’s things like that that might bring about a civil war.
GAAACK‼
! geeez
Hopefully, whoever Harris appoints will be more courageous. It'd be ideal if it happened today, but I can wait until February if necessary.
Money keeps them from being accountable.
Precisely!
👍👍👍
UGGGly. 😡 ¿Any questions on the treason of candidate Trump? 🤬 With friends -- or fiends -- like these, ¿who needs Halloween? 🤢
https://x.com/Gerashchenko_en/status/1850127201636692074
Ah, so, finally the Sith are finally revealed, the master and the apprentice? Darth Putin and Darth Musk in a bid to finally rule the world together? Seeking to end western civilization and start an almighty worldwide empire under their control? It sure would fit their megalomaniac, own-legend-believing, narcissistic personalities.
It’s their extreme greed that binds them all.
I wonder who is the richest: Musk, Bezos, or Putin? Trump will never get to play with the big boys, unless we let him.
We won’t know what Putin is worth until he is taken down, and that looks unlikely. Trump is known for spending more billions than any of the others.
and to think, a friend and I, happen to be planning a re-watch of the Lord of the Rings trilogy. By the time we get to the end, Election Day will already be upon us. "one Ring to rule them all".... God, let Harris win at the final poll that counts.
Just like in the 1890's as Heather outlined yesterday.
There is not enough money or power to sate their greed for more, and they are trashing our planet while indulging their greed.
Not exactly. A lot in the 18.90s were philanthropists.. This lot it's " Mine! All mine!"
Exactly so. Even if they were only scrubbing their consciences. This later bunch do not have consciences.
Indeed they don’t. Musk, Thiel and their dubious protégés Trump and Vance are sociopaths. Thiel bought Vance for us in Ohio, and Vance immediately turned around and began singing Trump’s praises. I don’t appreciate Vance’s misrepresentation of our state, his profound misogyny, and his willingness to lie about Haitians or other people to gain a political advantage. The Springfield (Ohio) News-Sun has aptly criticized Vance as unready to be a senator, let alone a VP candidate.
The bigger problems are Senator Brown’s risky polls and Issue 1. We stand to lose our decent senator, Sherrod Brown, to Trump endorsed car salesman Bernie Moreno, who has engaged in sexual discrimination in employment and was successfully sued for cheating his employees out of overtime pay. We also have Issue 1 on the ballot, which proposes to allow citizen redistricting. Unfortunately the Supreme Court of Ohio allowed our soon to be former Secretary of State, to write a confusing and misleading ballot summary for the Yes position, which is designed to deliberately confuse voters into voting No. Voting No will allow Ohio’s General Assembly and Senate to continue their shameless gerrymandering of our state.
I’ve been saying for some time, Kathy, that Ohio is the fascist incubator. Once it works here, it’s exported to other willing states.
It's not just narcissism, not by a long bit, Dutch.
Putin-Trump-Musk-even-Vance-included is just a smaller part of the larger Orban, Xi, Kim, Modi, Netanyahu, Erdogan, Sisi, Mohammed bin Salman, Iranian mullah, and massive U.S. billionaire phalanx.
Their single common denominator: all prostrating themselves to groups, all led by demagogues replicating each other.
Worse -- and most key of all -- no schools in any of these countries center humanities in them, or any essaying programs to explore facets of individuals in complicated lives.
Do we dread something in Trump? Please, Dutch, get how it's not just some psychological kink in one weirdo, but something deeper, something ensnarling U.S. schools in similar poisons as rule oligarch and autocrat countries worldwide.
It's called white supremacy. Nothing more than white supremacy whose idea is that one class of people are ordained to rule the rest.
Susan-Human beings who don’t care about all of humanity are delusional and dangerous. As a concept white supremacy is doing damage to our world. Misogyny is also at play. Imagine if they didn’t have racism and misogyny as tools. Every human being matters-regardless of skin color or gender. Isn’t that what the “Christians” are supposed to believe? Everyone is precious…
As a woman, I loathe Vance’s misogyny and contempt for women. Vance’s own wife, Usha, has an advanced degree herself, although Vance’s income allows her to be a stay at home parent. Vance fails to understand that thanks to the gorging of billionaires, both parents have to work to support a family, and the very economic policies he endorses continues the economic wreckage of the American middle class. Creating a middle class took long economic effort, and then many white Americans didn’t want to allow African American, Latino and other groups to join the middle class. The working class people who vote for Trump have been propagandized for forty years into voting against their economic interests and encouraged to blame other people for the very problems their favored candidates cause.
I don't think 'fail to realize' is the issue. It is cultural war rhetoric that is designed to make us long for an era that no longer exists. Where I grew up, grocery store sackers supported their families on their income. I put myself through college with a part-time job. This era of affordability no longer exists...but to invoke stay at home mothering as a choice is a narrative based in fantasy. Therein lies the gotcha...somehow it is a morale failing to not choose a lifestyle that is impossible. But that is the nature of the Republican position. Tell the citizenry that they should seek a lifestyle the Republicans are making impossible and blame it on the Democrats.
Which is why we need to vote against these candidates in the U.S.
The sickness of the GOP is bottomless.......Moses Mike and Senile McConell begging that Trumptards do not try to assasinate their cult leader for the third time? Deploying their "go to" projection ploy once again and blame the Democratic party?? Little wonder the melting pumpkin "likes the uneducated."
Oh, I got that long ago, Phil... Trump is just a symptom of the disease, it runs much deeper. Racism runs like a big, red thread through this, as does supremacy (be it white, christian, or whatever), as does fascism - these were never away, but buried themselves until the time was ripe to rear their ugly heads again. The only thing they desire is power, and the only thing they have to do is to destroy. It's never about building something up, and that's why their job is so infinitely more easy than ours. A sand castle that took hours to build can be brought down in a second with one kick. The long goal: destroying the fabric of our society, and rule over the rubble that remains.
All of them aren't revealed yet Mike and strive to keep their fingerprints off.
Hm, so maybe it is more like Sauron revealing his nine Ring Wraiths one by one, huh...
Ain't going to happen.
Today was one wild day, however I'm encouraged by the passionate reaction of the LA Times and the Wash. Post subscribers. Thousands stepped up to say were not pleased and were VERY succinct as to why. They weren't fooled into believing that editorial silence meant anything other than a refusal to endorse Harris. Also encouraging was that among all that feedback there was very little white-knighting of Bezos, Lewis, or Patrick Soon-Shiong for their pusillanimous actions.
I somewhat suspect that in the end their ploy will have done them more harm than good. If the electorate is roused by this kind of betrayal, maybe more people will be energised to vote.
VOTE BLUE!!
Imagine if the tens of thousands of us that had already cancelled our subscriptions to the WAPO and the LA Times had waited until yesterday to cancel our subscriptions.
Of course, Bezos is just another power hungry narcissist like Trump and Musk. No surprise here.
I hope that after the election Jennifer Rubin, Ruth Marcus, Dana Milbank, Catherine Rampell, Eugene Robinson and a few others move to substack or do their own daily blogs or podcasts.
I agree -- I think it's time for a new paper of record and there are enough excellent journalists at the LA Times, WaPo and NYT to create a new paper together - one that doesn't bow to Bezos, Musk, Putin or Trump. I would subscribe on day 1.
Me too
I read somewhere, maybe a month ago (Gimme a break on the citation. I'm old), that LFAA was approaching the subscription levels of WaPo. If that's true, I wonder if this recent loss of subscribers would drop WaPo below LFAA. We know HCR would be among the first tossed into the camps if Agent Orange wins, but she's braver than Bezos.
What is the LFAA?
You're reading and commenting on it. I like to call it "LFAA University". Fells like I'm auditing a great History and Politics class, then going out after class with other students and discussing the "lecture" here in the comments section.
That’s a good analogy, Ally. The substacks I’m on are loaded with good writing, good ideas, and intelligent commentary from readers. Few trolls.
Duh!
Well put!
Letters From An American—right here.
Gary, the reason I have not cancelled our WaPo subscription today is because of those journalists you mentioned. If most of them departed, so would I.
Sometimes a boycott of an enterprise can be counter productive. I WANT to cancel that subscription because of my rage. But if it deprives me of Jennifer Rubin, who am I hurting?
An analogy is Home Depot. There are those that are furious because one of the founders, Bernie Marcus, is big supporter of Trump. Bernie and Arthur Blank were brilliant merchants who retired from the company over 20 years ago. If we don't shop at Home Depot, Bernie will still have his billions - but the store might have to lay off some workers. Who have we delivered a "payback" to? BTW, Arthur Blank is a solid Democrat.
We still might cancel. But it is not a simple or black and white decision.
Bill, once again you’ve voiced what I am thinking. I, too, will be supporting Rubin, et al, as long as they stay there.
Jen Rubin has a YouTube podcast called “The Green Room.”
Perhaps a new digital news source making itself known without billionaire control. Guardian is subscription based in its financing. Why can't that happen in America?
So hope those wonderful Post folks will find a way to keep their voices alive, active and heard.
This is a good idea. I subscribe to the .fr version of Amazon. But honestly I am trying to source my things from independent vendors… France recently slapped a three euro fee on amazon sales of books that didn’t reach a threshold… of like 60 euros… in order to use that money to subsidize the MANY MANY independent book sellers…
I can pay for shipping when I really cannot find the stuff elsewhere. Almost always I can.
Although I hate using Amazon if I don't have to, Amazon almost always offers a free one-week trial of Prime when I am placing an order -- which I accept and then immediately cancel after completing the order with no shipping fees. There is truly no good reason to pay for Amazon Prime.
Here in the States, Abe Books nearly always has whatever title/author I'm looking for and their used book prices & shipping are low.
Is one click cancellation available? JK
And not shop at Whole Foods.
The only thing that Bezos and Soon-Shiong have shown is that they are craven greedheads and can be easily intimidated. They are appeasers and even though Trump appreciates the feeling of power and strength their appeasement gives him, he despises them as well and, should he win (he won't), they won't escape anything he chooses to do to impede or impact their wealth.
If we can elect Harris, a top priority must be breaking up monopolies. She has already said she wants the very rich to pay their fair share of taxes. I don't think that's sufficient because people who become billionaires are too powerful.
I had already let the LAT subscription go due to cost.
"Letters From An American" says it all. Living in Alaska I can get to bed at an almost reasonable hour after reading your daily take on the "American Pulse". When I was young we got our daily evening news from Walter Cronkite, we trusted him, he reported news and not opinion. His humanity was on full display the day John Kennedy was shot. HCR, I want you to know how much I respect your news analysis. You are truly an AMERICAN, speaking to AMERICANS.
Well said, Charles. I'm in Hawaii, so my evening is not complete until I can read LFAA.
I choose to go to bed early on the west coast, and start my day with coffee and LFAA.
Same here Ally. Coffee, Colo mountains, and Heather.
I start my day here in Pennsylvania the same way that you do Ally!
Well said Charles, & I miss Walter Cronkite too.
Cancelled my subscription to the Wash Post and added one to The Atlantic (I mainly read the New York Times). IF the Post had published this editorial 6 months ago, I would have accepted it. However, less than 2 weeks before the election it sends a message which is far from their weak reasoning about their 'historic' practice. Very predictably, it is being seen and touted as a slap at Harris (they endorsed Clinton in 2016 and Biden in 2020). It might also be that they have concluded that Trump will actually win (I live in fear) and want to avoid any more of his rancor. It makes all the articles in their pages about how dangerous Trump is and the dangers to democracy ring hollow. When the chips are down, the Washington Post has chosen to focus on its own profit - funny how that behavior precisely echoes who Trump has been his whole life!
The NYT is the king of the lamestream media, and they are masters of false equivalency and normalizing trump. Their political coverage has been sanewashing trump and critical of Harris. I got rid of my NYT subscription prior to dumping WaPo, some months ago (both papers have had terrible political reporting for a few years now). My life is so much better knowing I don't support either paper.
As uncomfortable as some of the NYT coverage is for me, I still trust it to be the view from the other side. Understanding both sides is important. Reading only material in our silos is what gets us into this polarization. I hope some Republicans now voting for Harris will read beyond the New York Post and watch beyond Fox News. Some of HCR's sources are NYT articles.
I did the same David. I ended up subscribing to the Chicago Tribune, but their political reporting is very regional and they don't report on Trump very much. Plus, the subscription was $1 for a year so I took a chance. It may still be overpriced.
Try the Philadelphia Inquirer. I just did. Dropped WAPO 3 mths ago
The Tribune, in terms of national news, mostly prints stuff from sources like NYT news service and Wash Post news service.
I have the Atlantic. They feature some good articles, especially those from Anne Applebaum and Adam Serwer. Serwer wrote both a column and a book titled “The Cruelty Is the Point,” which sums up why so many people vote for Trump. What they and Trump will learn the hard way is that personal vengeance is no justification for governing a country, and they will wreck our nation in doing so.
Sure—six months ago or six months from now. But to do that NOW inthe most important election if not in the country’s history certainly in the 80-90 years at least.
Called for at the top against the expectations and wishes of its most critical news makers. Journalists! NOT billionaires.
How many votes would a WaPo endorsement move toward Harris? I don't think that it would move many. Most of us have chosen. The influence of mainstream corporate media is in steep decline. I don't know about the Fox "News" bubble, though. I also wonder whether the LA Times and WaPo refusals to endorse will have the opposite effect of increasing the feeling of urgency of those of us who are fighting to save democracy.
Your last sentence sums it all up very nicely Anne-Marie.
Heather perfectly gets both the R corruption, and the Dem momentum.
What are they together? David Remnick called it constant nightmare on the most recent Seth Meyers.
Why do so many Americans so welcome, gush for, egg on the orange felon’s vulgarity, lies, vituperative personal attacks, daily immigration black hysteria, continued Remnick, editor of The New Yorker?
His best guess for them: “Nothing really registers.”
None of this registers except as mad mob joy for the cult base, schemes of ambition for congressional Republicans, and medieval fantasyland for the corrupt of the Clarence court (blind to the simplest of facts, such as how Article 14, section three, bans any insurrectionist from any public office).
Abstractions float untethered, like gases. Unlike facts, which “register” as we personally connect to others, open to other persons & families. Maybe mixed race. Maybe gender partnerships with children and stepchildren beyond Ozzie & Harriett.
Diverse facts, multiple possibilities, real life cannot “really register” for those shoehorned in time, in a past ever only abstraction anyway -- abstraction plus the rank corruption Heather so well attends, too.
Don’t forget the Holy Double Standard. According to the Extreme Court, Article 14 simply won’t apply to Rump because he is “our saviour”, but will apply to Harris, for defending women’s and LGBTQ rights.
That's because in MAGA and white Christian Nationalist worlds the Constitution doesn't include the 11th - 27th amendments to the Constitution.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/opinion/donald-trump-s-usa-themed-bible-doesn-t-even-include-the-right-to-vote-for-black-people-women/ar-BB1mvxCo
The same is obviously true for the SCOTUS Republicans since the Dobbs decision doesn't take into account the 14th amendment.
well, a lot of fine minds behing Project 2025 are counting on the 25th ...
Liked for the phrase "Extreme Court". This was the first time I heard it. Maybe I lead too sedate a life. I'll probably steal it.
It certainly describes the shameless six Republican justices. The problem is that Democrats do not control enough states to get a majority of senators and representatives, so nothing gets done that needs to be done, including Supreme Court, campaign finance, or tax reforms.
Stealing is allowed!
I think it's in the public domain by now.... because it is so appropriate.
Thanks - I just watched: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TrX5kwAlSxs
Thanks for that link Beatrice.
Thank you Professor Richardson.
Interestingly, I don't think Trump has any ideology beyond enriching himself and the Trump brand. We should have zero doubt that JD Vance, Peter Thiel, Elon Musk, and others, if successful will employ fascist/authoritarian tools to silence media (which you've already evidenced in the silencing of the Washington Post, the LA Times, and other news outlets) and implement many of the most horrific elements of Project 2025. Anyone who believes this cabal intends to improve the lives of the majority of American families, the economic standing of workers, or strengthen justice, democracy, and equality is deeply immersed in what is effectively a rabid cult. They seek to enrich themselves, concentrating more wealth by stealing from all of us, and robbing our children of their future.
People will be appalled at the consequences once they hit. For example, estimates of Trump and Miller’s plan to deport undocumented immigrants are expected to be $100-300 billion, and the ordinary taxpayers rather than the billionaires will pay. Trump also fails to understand that tariffs will never make up for lost income tax revenues. Trump doesn’t understand that ordinary consumers pay the costs of the tariffs as retailers pass the costs on to the consumer. Fewer people will be able to afford new appliances or other goods, and inflation will get worse.
You can also expect serious damage to governmental functions if Trump eliminates a professional civil service to replace it with people who swear personal loyalty to him. They will be incompetent and ruin the proper functioning of government, and they will fail to regulate and protect people from harms from big businesses. The whole purpose of the regulatory system is to protect the public from harm by unregulated businesses. Americans do not take oaths of personal loyalty to an individual, and we have seen on more than one occasion that Trump expects people to be personally loyal to him, but he doesn’t feel he has to reciprocate their loyalty and has no qualms about stabbing his lackeys in the back.
Very true Kathy. I’m uncertain as to whether Trump doesn’t understand tariffs or simply doesn’t care. Probably both.
He found a shiny concept, tariffs, to dangle in front of his low information supporters and it seems to be working.
It sure does seem to be working. My retired cop cadre who had trouble spelling words like "tariff" are now suddenly experts on tariffs and how wonderful and good they will be for the country.
Trump understands exactly what he is doing. Not understand tariffs? Of course he does. Trump is a master of creating false narratives repeated enough times that it becomes truth in the minds of those that have made him and the MAGAts a religion.
He may appear unhinged but that is of no consequence. He represents what his followers want as their truth, their reality. It is their torch to bear, however precarious and measly a flame as it appears to a sane mind.
Salud, Kathy!
🗽
I know, but I really am convinced he has dementia that is not necessarily Alzheimer’s type. Michael Cohen believes Trump has Lewy body dementia (the same type Robin Williams and one of my aunts has) and I think if Trump is elected, it won’t be long before Vance and the Cabinet invoke the 25th Amendment to remove Trump from office.
All my life I have lived with the reality that I quite likely would never have even been born. My grandparents escaped from Germany with their two teenage kids in late 1935, soon after they lost their right to German citizenship. So fascism is not a vague concept to me, but a matter of life and death. Dozens of my relatives in Ukraine, Lithuania and Germany died under Nazi rule.
Hitler too was a dictator from Day 1. He too had his pet industrialists to help him gain power and then make millions from the military contracts for bombs, U Boats, freeways and the technology to design and build V1 and V2 high tech rockets that we still use for cruise missiles, nuclear missiles and moon shots.
The millions of refugees Trump plans to throw into concentration camps and then deport remind me of my dad at thirteen, waiting to see if his father would be arrested by the Gestapo at the Belgian border, knowing he was already on an arrest list back home in Cologne.
These days we need more than talk, we need action. Knocking on doors, making calls to voters, giving rides to the polls, whatever you can do so if Trump wins at least you will know you did your best to stop him.
If Trump is in the White House on Jan 20 we will need to organise a resistance, just like what happened in places like France, Norway, Poland and Holland in WW2. Just like then many will collaborate, like Bezos and Musk are already doing out of their own self interest and greed.
It all reminds me of the words of Pastor Martin Niemoller, the German theologian who after being imprisoned for 8 years by the nazis wrote:
First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out— Because I was not a Socialist. Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I did not speak out— Because I was not a Trade Unionist. Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out— Because I was not a Jew. Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.
I've been thinking in ways that made your post resonate with me. To begin with, I'll point to your ending quote. In my lifetime I've learned of that need for folks of different causes to work together- it's fine to have your own deep passion (enviro, health care, edu, social & civic justice...whatever), but they/we need to pool mental, spiritual, & financial resources.
The other thing I see in these responses here that focus on billionaires...money is just a symptom of the larger disease of ego. The dictators and billionaires are working completely on their individual islands of self aggrandizement. Basically, they are operating at the absolute polar opposite of the truth within the first point. And if allowed, will be the last group still standing, fighting amongst themselves.
The non-endorsements by the WAPo and the LA Times demonstrates that Fascism is already having its effects. Let’s hope that those who have yet to vote can read the tea leaves and vote accordingly!
My letter to the Washington Post:
Dear Washington Post,
I just canceled my subscription because yes, democracy does die in darkness. The Washington Post has decided this year, of all years, to not endorse a candidate for the presidency. The Washington Post is not endorsing Kamala Harris, even though Donald Trump threatens to rule as a dictator. Donald Trump has managed to intimidate even Jeff Bezos.
It’s particularly heartbreaking that the paper that broke the story on the criminality of Watergate which led to the resignation of President Nixon is now folding in anticipation — in anticipation!— of retribution by Donald Trump.
We all used to wonder how Hitler came to power— now we know first hand — as our papers of record remain silent on who should become President of the United States.
The Washington Post has no opinion whatsoever on which person would be a better president of the United States: the person who runs on freedom and upholding the Constitution (Harris), or the person who wants to have generals like Hitler and use the military on “the enemy within” (Trump)???! Former owner Katharine Graham is rolling over in her grave.
Such a good letter! Thank you for writing it. My husband & I also cancelled our WP subscription today, & your letter spoke for us, too.
An excellent letter, well done!
Wonderful letter. I would point out that at least in post-WW1 Germany, inflation was over 300% a month, so the Germans had a justifiable excuse to hire an incompetent sociopath. The Mark was worthless, and used as fuel for fires to keep warm. The German people were forced to barter all their belongings just to stay alive. Unemployment was the worst in their modern history.
What’s America’s excuse? We had 9% inflation for a year, while the rest of the world was in a recession with inflation much higher than ours? Really???
Not to mention, fascism never existed before Mussolini in Italy, and Hitler’s Germany, so the Germans had no modern day example of an anti-Christ to compare it with! We teach the Holocaust to every student in America.
This is what scares me the most! We are not experiencing a terrible economy, as our GDP is growing at 2.5%, even higher than Trump who averaged 2.3% before COVID hit. Our unemployment rate is the lowest in 50 years, and almost no one is starving, yet here we are!….:)
Well said, Robyn. Especially this: "It’s particularly heartbreaking that the paper that broke the story on the criminality of Watergate which led to the resignation of President Nixon is now folding in anticipation — in anticipation!— of retribution by Donald Trump."
Musk and his ilk think they can buy the entire country. Hang the Constitution in the guest bathroom. Maybe rule the world. These are the folks Reagan said would save us, his "Supply Side". But what do they really supply? We got to the moon and back half a century ago with the help of Musk, but Republicans insisted on defunding the government to give to the rich. Now space is a rich man's playground and Musk gets to say who uses his satellites. As it was in Germany, many of the ultra wealthy are pulling strings to install a fascist. What's in it for us?
Musk did not help us get to the moon, & contrary to the beliefs of many, he wasn't even the founder of Tesla! That was the engineers Martin Eberhard & Marc Tarpenning in 2003.
Musk just used his huge profits from selling PayPal to EBay to buy lots of stock in Tesla, becoming its largest shareholder. Then he took over as its CEO in 2008.
This is true, and he wound up ousting the original owners, and then taking credit for Tesla which he didn’t deserve. Musk also has a bad reputation for allowing hostile work environments for African American employees and for putting his employees at risk for injuries incurred in building his automobiles. He insisted he be allowed to keep his plants open when the state of California ordered them to be closed due to the pandemic, and he decided to move to Texas, where Greg Abbott is designing a personal court system for Musk alone.
Absolutely, he is not creative!
I don’t think Musk helped get us to the moon and back 60 years ago. Did you mean to say “without” the help of Musk?
Who's the richest? Putin, Musk, or Bezos?
Their combined wealth, (probably about $600 billion combined,) would feed a lot of hungry children.
Probably also more than the GDP of some of the world's poorest countries. Riches beyond the dreams of avarice
It also explains why the anti corruption and anti bribery laws, as well as high taxes on obscenely wealthy individuals are essential. It prevents them from using their wealth to buy our government, which is what they have been doing for the last 45 years. The problems with wrecking of campaign finance laws go all the way back to bad decisions in Buckley v. Valeo in 1976, and First National Bank v. Bellotti in 1978. The Supreme Court in both cases under Rehnquist set the stage for Citizens United. Our elected officials have to waste considerable amounts of time in fundraising instead of governing.
Citizens United was an especially lousy and pernicious decision. The Roberts Court will go down in history as one of the most corrosive courts in our nation's efforts to sustain a democracy.
Clarence Thomas, the tie-breaking vote that "gifted" us Citizen's United, was bought off by wealthy oligarchs.
So the greed of ONE MAN brought us where we are today.
I think the Roberts Court has surpassed the Taney Court as the worst ever. Taney was a racist; Roberts is turning us away from democracy to authoritarianism which is a direct path to fascism.
Definitely. Their names will live in infamy, and unlike the 4 horsemen, the justices hostile to FDR’s reforms, these justices will never change their minds and will destroy all the gains women and other marginalized citizens made during the twentieth century.
It’s not on their radar to feed hungry children. Increasing the numbers of the poor, defeated,and hungry is their objective. Keeping people desperate and poor…enslavement without having to bid.
WaPo helped democracy on its way to dying in darkness by turning off the lights on its way out of the real journalism room. Absolutely shameful.
Agreed.
Trump's visit to here in Traverse City last night conflicted with The Big Event, Traverse City West vs. Traverse City Central football game, called "The Patriot Game", which "honors our military veterans, first responders, active duty troops and fallen heroes who died while serving America." (TC Record Eagle, 10-24-24). Methinks Trump's delay may have been intentional?
Hope you enjoyed the game. I loved the WS and Freddie Freeman’s heroic grand slam. As a Yankee fan first and a baseball fan and participant in the great game ( forever) there is nothing like a moment like a Grand Slam walkoff homer. So, kudos to the Dodgers and Freddie the Great. Game 2 soon.
Kamala looks better and better, too.
As a native New Englander and lifetime Red Sox and baseball fan, I have to make a confession. I haven't hated the Yankees since Mariano Rivera's ironic tip of the cap to the Fenway crowd that cheered him during his first 2005 appearance there. I'm cheering for the Dodgers, but it's because of Mookie and Shohei, not because they're playing the Yankees. Of course, the Yankee hatred virus may be lying dormant, like chicken pox, only to reappear under the right circumstances. But I hope it doesn't.
I've been a Giants fan since I learned about baseball when I was single digits old. (SF 49ers as well). While I will never root for the Rams (regardless of where they play), I can bring myself to root for the Dodgers, especially this year as they honor Fernando Valenzuela's passing. My Dad hated the Yankees (he'd been a NL stalwart, and was thrilled when the Giants moved to SF); that said, I loved Derek Jeter and Joe Girardi as players.
It was also going to be the worst traffic jam in "Traffic City" history.
For smart guy, Elon sure seems really dumb.
Smart, intelligent, are defined by a deeper look into emotional intelligence and that has to be included. That makes billionaires as a class really really stupid. With emotional intelligence you would figure out that what you were doing had an effect on other people, on millions of people, on the climate, on whether you were being fair with your policies and actions.
Wouldn't you?
Musk is Trump....his success funded by his daddy's money. Tesla's profit coming from the environmental credits it was able to sell.
These guys and their ilk are superficial beyond belief except that we have to believe what we're seeing and not let it continue to happen as we go along. I'm pretty convinced by now that this narcissism malady besides most likely being a product of the manner of their upbringing and their reaction to it, is way over-fed by the system that these jerks do everything to insulate themselves with. Insulation from being an equal person among equals - with everyday ordinary equal attention to responsibilities. We are so at the end of ‘boys will be boys’. Not. The actual smart ones coming along are way more free and full, I meet them every day.
He's a rich guy for sure, but a smart guy? Hmmmmmm. Not sure about that.
Musk like Trump lacks a conscience and does not care about the people harmed by his quest for unlimited power. They are both sociopaths and have moral voids at their innermost core.
“Dumb” is unavoidable. But “Stupid”? That’s a choice.
Elon’s actions are calculated antics that fall flat to me. He is a caricature.
Salud, Ted.
🗽
I can't see a problem with Musk controlling our military's communications can you? He'll pre-clear things with Putin and make sure everything is working fine. Until it isn't.