I am bemused by those who are now grumbling that the country’s sun is not shining brightly under President Biden. Biden only beat Trump by a narrow margin in the 2020 election and has razor-thin margins in the House and the Senate.
He had an Augean-stables-challenge to clean out the muck, turn around the vaccine-and mask muddle, get money into the hands of major pandemic sufferers, and restore ethics, integrity, humanity, and professionalism to a presidential administration.
In only nine months I applaud President Biden for taking command of a ship of state in frightening distress and swiftly setting it on a positive course. The Delta virus has been an unexpected ice berg. I expect a much sunnier voyage in 2022.
I applaud with you, Keith. It might not speak to the polls, but navigating through gloomy and stormy seas has been in the right hands. The fact that a sunnier voyage is, in fact, ahead gives me much to be grateful for. Wallowing in darkness throughout the previous presidency is much different than moving out of that darkness. Onward!
Hello, Cynthia. Much too early to tell. The national voting rights acts must get passed. Even if both infrastructure bills are passed, there will not be enough time for voters to even get a sense of how there lives will be positively effected. Even great messaging wouldn't make a big impact, nevertheless, it would help a bit. The midterms will be very difficult. The odds are not good for the Democratic Party, particularly, to hold the Senate. So mountains ahead before the presidential election. Biden's polls are not good.
Cynthia, We understand each other. You need to rest and do activities you enjoy. We are no good to ourselves, families, friends and the principles we support when we are dead tired and worried to death. I was very happy to see you on the forum tonight. Yes we absolutely have a chance. Rest, nourishment, play, mutual support and engagement. Salud!
Correct me if I am wrong, but I thought Biden won with 81,283,098 votes to Trump's 74,222,958, making him the first president to ever win by more than 80,000,000. And he won the electoral college votes by 306 to Trump's 232. I had to look these numbers up, so if they are incorrect, my source was incorrect! To me, the narrow margin existed in Congress, with both the House and Senate struggling not to cut themselves to shreds on that razor!
Not if you are among the millions of delusionary Americans who still believe the election was stolen from Trump. And they can back it up with "facts" they got from someone on Fox News, or OAN or Newsmax rather than the lies they sincerely believe the country is being fed by NBC, CBS, ABC, MSNBC, CNN, NPR, etc.
Hope you had a lovely birthday! Mine is on Monday. I told my students I’m celebrating my birthday Monday so we’re all taking the day off! My daughter and her fiancé are coming tomorrow for my birthday, haven’t been here since thanksgiving 2019. So excited! Hope everybody takes Monday off and enjoy my day! Lol!
Sounds wonderful. One thing Covid and the nasty politics has done is to make many of us much more appreciative of the (big) little things. Have a great day!
Denise, so glad you will celebrate your natal day with family. I hope the "day off" and the celebration fill you with renewed energy for the battles ahead.
WASHINGTON — Ordinarily staid and silent Supreme Court justices have become whirling dervishes of late, spinning madly to rebut the idea that Americans are beginning to regard the court as a dangerous cabal of partisan hacks.
They need not fret and wring their hands. No one is beginning to think that.
Many of us have thought that for a long time.
Supremes are often Shakespeare fans, so of course they are familiar with the phrase “doth protest too much, methinks.”
The once august court’s approval ratings on fairness were already falling two decades ago. The bloom came off the robe in 2000, when the court threw the game on Bush v. Gore, voting 5 to 4 to stop the Florida recount and anoint a Republican president.
If we conjure an alternative-history look at America, consider all the things that the Supreme Court brought down on our heads by pre-emptively purloining that victory for George W. Bush: two interminable and inexplicable wars, costing so many lives and so many trillions; a descent into torture; the villainous Dick Cheney.
As some on Twitter noted, our 20 years of quicksand in Afghanistan was capped Friday with this headline: “Son of Afghanistan’s Former Defense Minister Buys $20.9 Million Beverly Hills Mansion.”
I was about to post this column but see that someone beat me to it. Please read it with the intensity with which you follow HCR's words in Letters From an American. Things will eventually get better, but first they will be getting a lot worse. Pass the column on. It can be found at
You're welcome. If you play your cards right, you can get digital NYT for $1 a week for a year. I think that's fair pricing as I spend about $1's worth of time reading it mostly for the opinion pieces.
Their news content is unnerving with biased and inaccurate reporting.
Don't forget you can get 5 free articles every month.
I hope that Maureen Dowd is historically correct. The ‘whirling dervishes’ in the Sudan frought the British at the Battle of Omdurman in 1898. The whirling dervishes, with their faith in the Mahdi, cameled and ran straight into the British machine guns. The score was over 15,000 dead dervishes and a very few Brits. In 1954 I visited the Omdurman Battle Museum, while making a documentary on the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan. Alas, the museum is long closed, since it was a relic of colonialism.
Never, NEVER apologize for taking a day off in favor of family and friends! Why have we decided that work represents the highest and best use of our time and everything else is subordinate to it? Been there, done that, got the t-shirt and eventually a stay in the sanatorium.
Here's a little something to fill the gap - a seed dropping into season's soils from ripened fruit falling to ground ...:
From Toko-Pa Turner
"Death is the most active and fertile state of nature's life cycle. I think of the trees in autumn, who undergo a dramatic shedding, dropping their leaves and pine needles, in what’s called an abscission process. Abscission comes from the same Latin root as scissors, scindere, meaning "to cut," and is a way of conserving energy and resources for the harsh winter ahead. But also in that shedding are the reproductive fruits, seeds, and cones that are the hope for new life being sent out into the world."
"There is a seed sown in loss, that comes directly out of our competency with death. "I know the world is bruised and bleeding," writes Toni Morrison, "and though it is important not to ignore its pain, it is also critical to refuse to succumb to its malevolence. Like failure, chaos contains information that can lead to knowledge -- even wisdom. Like art.""
"It is the word chaos that strikes me as the jewel of this quote, because nature always contains phases of dissolution, disease, and decline. In many Indigenous cosmogonies, chaos is the mythological state that precedes the creation of the cosmos. Chaos, sometimes described as the infinite void or abyss, was the first thing to exist. And it was from that primordial state that life emerged."
"Interestingly, the final Hexagram in the I-Ching’s sequence of 64, Wei Chi, roughly translates to "Before Completion." Even though it's the last in the series, it is interpreted as the stage when chaos begins to organise itself into new growth. And it reminds us that we have a responsibility in helping to shape events.".
"It feels important to make a distinction here, between being productive and being generative. The first implies an expectation from and for society, while the other is, like a plant, a natural giving forth as a result of favourable conditions. So how do we topple the controlling power of productivity that so many of us are held captive by? What can we do but keep defying and escaping its demands in favour of life-giving practices?"
"When you're initiated in the way of death, you develop an abiding recognition of the value of life. No single moment can be wasted on the charade of living someone else's story for your life. But civilisation itself seems to be in a death rattle, goading us constantly to dance to its pace. And, save for a few daring souls who abandon the grid, we remain captive to its rhythm. Knowing this, what can we do but slip new narratives into its matrix. Seed bundles, dropped into the codes of culture."
"There is a heritage seed living in every one of us, a gift from a long line of ancestors. A tightly packed bundle of original instructions, ways of living well and in reciprocity. But it lies dormant unless favourable conditions fertilise it. Like reforesting a clearcut, I believe we have a chance to rewild the collective psyche. And there is no more opportune a moment than in throes of chaos, when old structures are crumbling and we can't yet see the horizon. We can't see it, because we haven't yet seeded it."
"Like an old tree who topples to make room in the canopy for light to reach the young sprouts, let us ask what needs to die for this new life to thrive? What are the favourable conditions your seed needs to grow? What ancient instructions are contained within your precious bundle?"
Thank you too, Christine ... yes, enough to go around if people are willing to let go and let flow ... not covet, cling to, grasp and grapple for more and more - with never enough to satisfy even one ... can you imagine, if all people had the humility and grace to acquiesce and surrender to each other - what a world this could be ...?
I truly believe that we are in chaos. The battle by the old to hold on while the new, filled with higher consciousness is blooming. On a different note, as many do in Japan, I take seeds from the fruits I eat and cast them into the soil of the parks and roadways nearby. Replanting the earth.
I save seeds too - though hesitate to put in the ground if unable to foster their growth - quite a collection by now, mixed in a jar ... who knows, might wind up in a mosaic some day ...
That is so cool ... the way real estate expands around here, I hesitate to start anything growing (especially trees) only to see them uprooted or cut down in due time. We do have a lot of blackberries growing along the road where I live - soot from traffic renders them inedible ... I really am wonder struck at the adaptability of life, and amazed that anything survives in this environment!!
This whole earth could be one big beautiful garden ... how can we communicate that to people who are so desperate to 'get ahead' they sacrifice the foundational living world to feed their appetites?
Thank you too Carla - it seems like a good fit for the moment - especially since the good professor is out for the night - I don't have to feel like I'm changing the subject.
How wonderful! So glad you could enjoy it all! And this sunrise is stunningly beautiful and worth waiting for! Hope you had a deep restorative slumber! Thank you for all you do for us night after night, to keep us informed and sane!
I am thinking that certain GOP members with fealty to DJT have not thought things through. The only person who lives more freely than everyone else in an authoritarian regime, is the president. Even Mitch would be looking over his shoulder every minute of every day. Yet, this seems to be what they wish for.
Have you ever thought of being a national spokesperson for the Biden admin. They certain could use one. Why are the Democrats so bad at getting their message across??
So glad you had a great day with family and friends.
Kudos to Buddy for this spectacular photo and I hope you know how much I appreciate all you do for us to broaden our knowledge and keep us between the guardrails.
Glad you took the day off to be with friends and family. Please give me an address where I can send you a birthday present- I wove it while listening to your podcasts. Suzanne.
I am bemused by those who are now grumbling that the country’s sun is not shining brightly under President Biden. Biden only beat Trump by a narrow margin in the 2020 election and has razor-thin margins in the House and the Senate.
He had an Augean-stables-challenge to clean out the muck, turn around the vaccine-and mask muddle, get money into the hands of major pandemic sufferers, and restore ethics, integrity, humanity, and professionalism to a presidential administration.
In only nine months I applaud President Biden for taking command of a ship of state in frightening distress and swiftly setting it on a positive course. The Delta virus has been an unexpected ice berg. I expect a much sunnier voyage in 2022.
I applaud with you, Keith. It might not speak to the polls, but navigating through gloomy and stormy seas has been in the right hands. The fact that a sunnier voyage is, in fact, ahead gives me much to be grateful for. Wallowing in darkness throughout the previous presidency is much different than moving out of that darkness. Onward!
Have a beautiful Sunday, all!
Agreed!
So many here appreciate what Joe Biden and his administration are facing for our benefit and to keep the country free.
But are there enough of us to carry him on to the finishing line?
Hello, Cynthia. Much too early to tell. The national voting rights acts must get passed. Even if both infrastructure bills are passed, there will not be enough time for voters to even get a sense of how there lives will be positively effected. Even great messaging wouldn't make a big impact, nevertheless, it would help a bit. The midterms will be very difficult. The odds are not good for the Democratic Party, particularly, to hold the Senate. So mountains ahead before the presidential election. Biden's polls are not good.
I am so exhausted... I will do everything I can .., but do we stand a chance?
Cynthia, We understand each other. You need to rest and do activities you enjoy. We are no good to ourselves, families, friends and the principles we support when we are dead tired and worried to death. I was very happy to see you on the forum tonight. Yes we absolutely have a chance. Rest, nourishment, play, mutual support and engagement. Salud!
Correct me if I am wrong, but I thought Biden won with 81,283,098 votes to Trump's 74,222,958, making him the first president to ever win by more than 80,000,000. And he won the electoral college votes by 306 to Trump's 232. I had to look these numbers up, so if they are incorrect, my source was incorrect! To me, the narrow margin existed in Congress, with both the House and Senate struggling not to cut themselves to shreds on that razor!
I believe the vote difference Biden to Trump was 4.5% and over 7 million more popular votes for Biden.
Not if you are among the millions of delusionary Americans who still believe the election was stolen from Trump. And they can back it up with "facts" they got from someone on Fox News, or OAN or Newsmax rather than the lies they sincerely believe the country is being fed by NBC, CBS, ABC, MSNBC, CNN, NPR, etc.
Carole, you are correct!
Carole You are correct, but our cockimannie system (Republicans and small states) rendered in a horse race.
Agree not a razor thin victory but a cockamamie horse race.
From your mouth to God's ear.
Can we please drown the ppl on the last ship of state?
Hope you had a lovely birthday! Mine is on Monday. I told my students I’m celebrating my birthday Monday so we’re all taking the day off! My daughter and her fiancé are coming tomorrow for my birthday, haven’t been here since thanksgiving 2019. So excited! Hope everybody takes Monday off and enjoy my day! Lol!
Happy Birthday Heather!
Sounds wonderful. One thing Covid and the nasty politics has done is to make many of us much more appreciative of the (big) little things. Have a great day!
Sounds as though it will be the best Monday in a long time. Happy Birthday, Denise.
Thanks!
And to you! Bonne anniversaire!
Merci!
Fabulous Denuse! Enjoy your very special day with famiky! Happy birthday!🌷
Denise, so glad you will celebrate your natal day with family. I hope the "day off" and the celebration fill you with renewed energy for the battles ahead.
Happy Birthday, Denise! Wishing you a day filled with joy and a year replete with peace and happiness!
Thanks!
Happy Birthday to our glorious leader, Heather, and to you, Denise!
Thanks!
🎂🙋🏽Happy Birthday, Denise. Cheers!
🥂
Thank God for you Dr. HCR, a gift to the world.
OPINION
MAUREEN DOWD
The Supreme Court v. Reality
Oct. 9, 2021
WASHINGTON — Ordinarily staid and silent Supreme Court justices have become whirling dervishes of late, spinning madly to rebut the idea that Americans are beginning to regard the court as a dangerous cabal of partisan hacks.
They need not fret and wring their hands. No one is beginning to think that.
Many of us have thought that for a long time.
Supremes are often Shakespeare fans, so of course they are familiar with the phrase “doth protest too much, methinks.”
The once august court’s approval ratings on fairness were already falling two decades ago. The bloom came off the robe in 2000, when the court threw the game on Bush v. Gore, voting 5 to 4 to stop the Florida recount and anoint a Republican president.
If we conjure an alternative-history look at America, consider all the things that the Supreme Court brought down on our heads by pre-emptively purloining that victory for George W. Bush: two interminable and inexplicable wars, costing so many lives and so many trillions; a descent into torture; the villainous Dick Cheney.
As some on Twitter noted, our 20 years of quicksand in Afghanistan was capped Friday with this headline: “Son of Afghanistan’s Former Defense Minister Buys $20.9 Million Beverly Hills Mansion.”
More: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/09/opinion/supreme-court-conservative.html?unlocked_article_code=AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAACEIPuonUktbfqohlSFUbCibSRdkhrxqAwuPS2KYxg3K7Jy-IUyoHxOMTGIWa5U7RZLRuIdsv2jDRDPlwDIgSft0ghOlOIx4qDACyvpqPnJlCLnk894jjAWpzjs3BBvVl-G_hK2C0Jbg6mefk5BmLb2TgDafbwmRhcFg-2eZtdVyt0XEMxKzAA7Q1joE4haF9c8g8ETQQZyCKv-3rCgF9ObiFbhLf4wo0WYJJSG2Z3I7cu_9bLlIkWR-RR2h_4G0_9NteJNgRWa78JBYqc8P46q4DDO2eww0XVTfNn5YRbVpnTw&smid=url-share
I was about to post this column but see that someone beat me to it. Please read it with the intensity with which you follow HCR's words in Letters From an American. Things will eventually get better, but first they will be getting a lot worse. Pass the column on. It can be found at
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/09/opinion/supreme-court-conservative.html?campaign_id=2&emc=edit_th_20211010&instance_id=42507&nl=todaysheadlines®i_id=78918068&segment_id=71274&user_id=02fa158150d34dc186b01b1b8ec7a224
FYI, the link in my post is a gifted link, but you have to expand the comment to see it.
Thank you for the gifted link, Christopher. Living below the poverty line, I appreciate it!
You're welcome. If you play your cards right, you can get digital NYT for $1 a week for a year. I think that's fair pricing as I spend about $1's worth of time reading it mostly for the opinion pieces.
Their news content is unnerving with biased and inaccurate reporting.
Don't forget you can get 5 free articles every month.
Thank you Christopher. Most people cannot get behind paywall for NYTimes articles. I’ve never considered having a subscription to that particular rag.
You're welcome. I'll pay $1 a week to have access. When the special runs out I cancel and they cave and give it to me for another year. ;-)
I gladly pay more for indy journalism as the budget allows for TPM and TAP and some others.
I hope that Maureen Dowd is historically correct. The ‘whirling dervishes’ in the Sudan frought the British at the Battle of Omdurman in 1898. The whirling dervishes, with their faith in the Mahdi, cameled and ran straight into the British machine guns. The score was over 15,000 dead dervishes and a very few Brits. In 1954 I visited the Omdurman Battle Museum, while making a documentary on the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan. Alas, the museum is long closed, since it was a relic of colonialism.
Thank you, Christopher!
You're welcome!
Never, NEVER apologize for taking a day off in favor of family and friends! Why have we decided that work represents the highest and best use of our time and everything else is subordinate to it? Been there, done that, got the t-shirt and eventually a stay in the sanatorium.
Here's a little something to fill the gap - a seed dropping into season's soils from ripened fruit falling to ground ...:
From Toko-Pa Turner
"Death is the most active and fertile state of nature's life cycle. I think of the trees in autumn, who undergo a dramatic shedding, dropping their leaves and pine needles, in what’s called an abscission process. Abscission comes from the same Latin root as scissors, scindere, meaning "to cut," and is a way of conserving energy and resources for the harsh winter ahead. But also in that shedding are the reproductive fruits, seeds, and cones that are the hope for new life being sent out into the world."
"There is a seed sown in loss, that comes directly out of our competency with death. "I know the world is bruised and bleeding," writes Toni Morrison, "and though it is important not to ignore its pain, it is also critical to refuse to succumb to its malevolence. Like failure, chaos contains information that can lead to knowledge -- even wisdom. Like art.""
"It is the word chaos that strikes me as the jewel of this quote, because nature always contains phases of dissolution, disease, and decline. In many Indigenous cosmogonies, chaos is the mythological state that precedes the creation of the cosmos. Chaos, sometimes described as the infinite void or abyss, was the first thing to exist. And it was from that primordial state that life emerged."
"Interestingly, the final Hexagram in the I-Ching’s sequence of 64, Wei Chi, roughly translates to "Before Completion." Even though it's the last in the series, it is interpreted as the stage when chaos begins to organise itself into new growth. And it reminds us that we have a responsibility in helping to shape events.".
"It feels important to make a distinction here, between being productive and being generative. The first implies an expectation from and for society, while the other is, like a plant, a natural giving forth as a result of favourable conditions. So how do we topple the controlling power of productivity that so many of us are held captive by? What can we do but keep defying and escaping its demands in favour of life-giving practices?"
"When you're initiated in the way of death, you develop an abiding recognition of the value of life. No single moment can be wasted on the charade of living someone else's story for your life. But civilisation itself seems to be in a death rattle, goading us constantly to dance to its pace. And, save for a few daring souls who abandon the grid, we remain captive to its rhythm. Knowing this, what can we do but slip new narratives into its matrix. Seed bundles, dropped into the codes of culture."
"There is a heritage seed living in every one of us, a gift from a long line of ancestors. A tightly packed bundle of original instructions, ways of living well and in reciprocity. But it lies dormant unless favourable conditions fertilise it. Like reforesting a clearcut, I believe we have a chance to rewild the collective psyche. And there is no more opportune a moment than in throes of chaos, when old structures are crumbling and we can't yet see the horizon. We can't see it, because we haven't yet seeded it."
"Like an old tree who topples to make room in the canopy for light to reach the young sprouts, let us ask what needs to die for this new life to thrive? What are the favourable conditions your seed needs to grow? What ancient instructions are contained within your precious bundle?"
Dream well,
Toko-Pa
dreamwork@toko-pa.com
In my precious bundle is always what I treasure as an original download from the creator..
“We are all in this together. There is enough to go around.”
Thank you for a beautiful piece from Toko-Pa for this Sunday, Kathleen.
Salud!
Thank you too, Christine ... yes, enough to go around if people are willing to let go and let flow ... not covet, cling to, grasp and grapple for more and more - with never enough to satisfy even one ... can you imagine, if all people had the humility and grace to acquiesce and surrender to each other - what a world this could be ...?
Saying that simple phrase once, every single person on the planet, all would be healed.
There is enough to go around.
The Creator made sure of such details. No need for us to fuss about it.
Peace!
Thank you for the insight Christine - let's do it people!!
I truly believe that we are in chaos. The battle by the old to hold on while the new, filled with higher consciousness is blooming. On a different note, as many do in Japan, I take seeds from the fruits I eat and cast them into the soil of the parks and roadways nearby. Replanting the earth.
Thank you Gailee - Love it!!
I save seeds too - though hesitate to put in the ground if unable to foster their growth - quite a collection by now, mixed in a jar ... who knows, might wind up in a mosaic some day ...
They do take hold and grow in Japan.
That is so cool ... the way real estate expands around here, I hesitate to start anything growing (especially trees) only to see them uprooted or cut down in due time. We do have a lot of blackberries growing along the road where I live - soot from traffic renders them inedible ... I really am wonder struck at the adaptability of life, and amazed that anything survives in this environment!!
This whole earth could be one big beautiful garden ... how can we communicate that to people who are so desperate to 'get ahead' they sacrifice the foundational living world to feed their appetites?
Thought provoking and oh my, how important! Thank you for sharing this.
Thank you too Carla - it seems like a good fit for the moment - especially since the good professor is out for the night - I don't have to feel like I'm changing the subject.
Kathleen, what a beautiful meditation for this glorious fall day. Thank you.
Thank you too Diane, I completely agree ... really deep ....
Wow, gorgeous photo. Get some well earned rest, we need you in our lives.
How wonderful! So glad you could enjoy it all! And this sunrise is stunningly beautiful and worth waiting for! Hope you had a deep restorative slumber! Thank you for all you do for us night after night, to keep us informed and sane!
I am thinking that certain GOP members with fealty to DJT have not thought things through. The only person who lives more freely than everyone else in an authoritarian regime, is the president. Even Mitch would be looking over his shoulder every minute of every day. Yet, this seems to be what they wish for.
https://vtdigger.org/2021/10/08/haviland-smith-are-we-on-the-cusp-of-authoritarianism/
Sleep well Heather.
Have you ever thought of being a national spokesperson for the Biden admin. They certain could use one. Why are the Democrats so bad at getting their message across??
Thank you Heather.
So glad you had a great day with family and friends.
Kudos to Buddy for this spectacular photo and I hope you know how much I appreciate all you do for us to broaden our knowledge and keep us between the guardrails.
Be safe, be well.
Glad you took the day off to be with friends and family. Please give me an address where I can send you a birthday present- I wove it while listening to your podcasts. Suzanne.
Try sending Heather a picture of it on her Twitter:
https://twitter.com/HC_Richardson
How lovely, Suzanne! One option is to send it to her work address. --History Department at Boston College. Call BC and ask for the address.
Happy birthday from a Portlander who shares your birthday! Cheers:)
The best kind of worn out. Happy birthday!
Your Maine photos make my heart happy. I grew up in Maine, moved on to Alaska, now Oregon. Maine will always be my beautiful first home..
And the sun will come out, tomorrow.
Bet ur bottom $ 😍