Yesterday, Senator Mitt Romney (R-UT) announced he would not run for reelection. That announcement came just as The Atlantic published an excerpt from a forthcoming biography of Romney by McKay Coppins in which Romney expressed disgust with his Republican colleagues for feeding Trump’s lies to their voters in exchange for power and acknowledged that “[a] very large portion of my party really doesn’t believe in the Constitution.”
President Biden is right. I lament again that the media reports every shameful, stupid, criminal, appalling thing the former president and his supporters do and say. Yet, for one of the best president's we've had-crickets, except when they comment about his age.
Or when something negative happens. Why don’t they go into Greene’s or Gaetz’s district and report on what is happening there. What is the employment rate, what infrastructure improvements are being done because of the infrastructure bill that the President signed. How about a detailed expose. What have they actually accomplished for their districts.
You’re right about the raucous Freedom Caucus. Behind the blather, no substance whatsoever. Nor representation of Nation or constituents. Only a relentless effort to earn, in 2024, their long sought-for pardons for trying to overturn the 2020 election. And it’s a long list - Trump GA conspirator Meadows, Jeffrey Clark’s groomer Scott Perry, wanna-be Biden impeacher Matt Gaetz, wanna-be Trump pardoner Ted Cruz, say-anything MTG, meritless Congressional chair Jim Jordan, each a fervent election denier, devoted to earning that pardon for betraying Nation and us all.
Everything is pointing to the most explosive election season in my lifetime. In 2020 Biden was a mere figure fun (mainly for verbal gaffes) to the MAGA crowd. The election revolves around huge rallies for Trump and persistent attempts to deter Democratic voters. Trump supporters were stunned by his defeat, perplexed and angry that all the subsequent legal machinations failed. Ultimately they were persuaded into taking the law into their own hands. Many of them are paying dearly for their criminality now, but it’s not as if January 6 2021 is a dead issue. It could become a defiant symbol of resistance eventually in the history of this movement. It has the potency to rekindle emotions and that is a concern.
I think it is possible that a nightmarish stew of events could put Biden’s back to the wall in 2024. This is worrying and should spark a renewal of energy among even the most torpid Democrats to vote and to appeal tirelessly to others to vote.
1. We have no idea what Trump’s legal standing will be when Election Day arises. It is pretty safe to say that the best guess is that one trial may have reached a verdict. If Trump is found innocent there will be an upswell of support for him. Exactly the same if he is found guilty. Lose lose. He may well be out on appeal.
The objectives of the trial(s) of Trump are important - to save democracy and to finally get him out of the public arena forever. The on first is theoretical. The second is practical, but it seems likely to be not in time to keep him out of the White House in 2024. The Republicans have devolved into a band of occasionally Machiavellian schemers, more often bewilderingly stupid ones. But they will be hard at work throughout campaign season.
2.
Elie Honig wrote today about a third special counsel, Robert Hur. In 8 months of investigating Biden for mismanaging classified documents, he has maintained total radio silence. Not a word. Pence had the same investigation and has long since been unambiguously cleared. Personally I have no doubt that the same result should have long since come to pass for Hur. It seems at least possible that Hur will delay longer and then, as if on cue, release a report that kinda sorta *doesn’t* clear Biden. This will fuel the election fervor of the Republicans who will interpret the report in the most make malevolent ways and stir up their side to an even greater pitch of anger as campaigning goes on. Remember: he has a sterling record of governance. Republicans will pick at inflation, but the world knows it would have occurred regardless of party.
3.
Those with the will to impeach are going to do it. Haters are going to hate. Regardless of the lack of evidence, they will run a long and gruesome spectacle, filled with innuendo masked as justice being served. Marjorie Greene has promised this. We will be down to the short and curlies of the campaign and it wouldn’t surprise me to see the Republicans break precedent and drag it out to the bitter end. Or they will be playing endless ads based on the “Biden crime family” to the same effect.
Republicans have nothing to offer but poison. It has now become their stock in trade, their most easily recognizable characteristic. They are going to run a campaign awash in sleaze. There may be outbreaks of violence to intimidate voters.
I said earlier that Biden cannot be attacked in his record. That is not entirely true. He picked the most feckless head of the DOJ in my memory. Had Mr. Garland been less concerned in proving he was independent (that gained him nothing) and that he would pursue justice against justice against possibly wayward Democrats (a lame attempt to mollify the unmollifiable), he might have move 12-18 months sooner in Trump. As far as I can see it is he who is responsible for the impossible calendar the justice system has available to it in 2024 to, well, serve justice to the most egregious actors in trying to overturn democracy. His tenure has been marred by either devotion to the loftiest principles of justice or fear. Meantime the house continues to burn.
Much can happen in a year, but it seems obvious that democracy can only be saved by sane, determined Americans who have had enough of being jerked around by wannabe revolutionaries who gyrate between puerile and pathological.
Good must triumph. Americans who care for America must vote with resounding clarity and fearlessness on November 4 2024. There may not be a second chance.
“ Republicans will pick at inflation, but the world knows it would have occurred regardless of party.” The world may know, but Republicans do not want to know anything that does not implicate Biden as the culprit behind anything they will point to.
It would help if more Americans knew just what any US president has in his/her power to do, under the Constitution. But Trump showed how the Constitution was no significant check on his actions, when twice his impeachments failed to convict. Trump still trots out his “I alone can fix it” one-day solution to the war on Ukraine. His followers believe him, and think Biden could, say, bring down gas prices with a snap of his fingers, but is too weak and/or corrupt to do it. Besides, the Constitution is just a piece of paper, except when judges interpret it in their favor.
True, the pandemic caused shortages and inflation around the world. While we had more deaths per capita (thanks to Trump's delay) our inflation rate along with gas prices are the lowest in the industrialized world. Do the MAGA folks know this? Not really. They're gonna blame Biden and the "socialists liberals" for the problem.
Democrats don’t know (40%) think unemployment is high, not at its lowest since 1969. Lots of people think the S&P stock market is down, not up 16%. Same for GDP per capita. A Guardian piece just out discusses a Harris poll taken Sept. 1. “US economy going strong under Biden—Americans don’t believe it” by Dominic Rushe
Excellent point. The President’s powers have been obscured by Trump. But I fear there is a significant number of weak people who would want the President to be all powerful, Republican, and magnetic in a darkly threatening way. Nothing will disabuse them of this fantasy. The reality would.
We don’t know what trump’s situation will be on Election Day, as you point out even if convicted in one of his trials he will be out on appeal. Despite his current hold on the Republican Party, getting rid of him will be the easy part. Stopping what he started will not be as easy. As they say, the genie is out of the bottle.
Some say that January 6, 2021 was a warm up. I’m sure trump was not counting on it being a warm up. When President Biden wins reelection the saving grace should there be another attempted coup that the President won’t hesitate to act. Hopefully also the media will not cover the blatant lies of the loser that instigated the first attempt.
But I have to ask once again what I have a few times previously, where is our Proud Boys and Oath Keepers? I very much do not want violence. However I think it’s inevitable based on current circumstances. So if it’s inevitable, where is our guys?
Those who vote Democratic are not bully boy types. Americans, I believe, have already chosen their side of the circle to stand on. As well as that the Democratic Party is a bigger tent and often suffers from inner turmoil. Republicans get into line.
Your question is excellent. I’ve worried about it many times and have concluded that the law, enforced justly, is our defense. We don’t have the guns, wouldn’t have the incentive or foolish bravado to attack and would be crushed in a confrontation.
I understand your viewpoint, as I said, I’m not into violence. I just hate being bullied by these thugs. We sit and worry about another insurrection. An expert said that a civil war would not look like the last one. It will be regionalized. Will our local law enforcement going to be able to respond to such an attack? Are we just supposed to sit back and take it?
I look back at Nazi Germany in the 30’s. Jews took a non-violent approach. Look where it got them. We need to stop going high while they go low.
Under item 1 Eric, I'll grant you that what you say there is important, however - there are larger issues at stake here with those outcomes / objectives regardless the outcome. He (it) will have to stand and account - a thing that creature has never had to do his entire lifetime. Big money and an army of shyster lawyers, threats and intimidation won the day for him throughout his life. The concerted shenanigans and maneuvering by several parties and all the lawyers may get him or others off again - who knows ? But he will have to face the consequence of having to account, just as you or I would have to do without an army of lawyers, at least speaking for myself. Thanks for your thoughts and input.
I have family in Gaetz's district. As far as I am aware, he has not done anything for his district, although Eglin Air Force Base is there. But that base was there way before Gaetz. It's a pretty rural district with lots of tRump supporters. Big Friday night lights country too.
Not certain I want to imitate them with caps. How about blue tee shirts with photos of the president beside an American flag. Do you know a shirt design person? They can be very clever.
Tuberville messed up getting Space Force in Alabama. I guess the military figured there was too much "risk" to move it. Goes to show you that soldiers aren't just pretty guys in a uniform.
So, they're proud of Gaetz? They should be embarrassed. I was thinking he would be voted out. Their thinking is outrageous, and full of crap - and if they crash the economy, dangerous. But if our representatives can't face Trump, and the false information, then get ready for a crash. Who going to pick up the pieces?
The "rump", or derriere, is a body part--an oft-attractive secondary sex characteristic. Please don't conflate it with the worst president the US has ever had.
Our lamestreet media is a conglomerate monopoly owned by a few billionaires who want to rule America and has been for decades and we don't enforce the laws we have.
They’re granted broadcast licenses by the FCC. When they’re up for renewal they are supposed to announce that and there’s to be a comment period. Groups of people should be writing letters opposing the renewal.
I dearly wish it were the airwaves that mattered anymore. It's unfettered cable entertainment (never have they claimed to produce news) channels wrecking the scene. Thanks to intense and deep pocket lobbying, our fearless leaders have never made any effort to rein in cable programming, and therein lie the lies.
Yes, you and I own the broadcast spectrum and the FCC (troubled as it is by a nearly kneecapped board) is supposed to make an effort to represent us. They have all but failed to do that already and left cable to enrich its monopolistic owners and pervert the course of justice as algorithms apply truly bizarre advertising, i.e. the lifeblood of cable, trends.
The late 20th century tragedy of the AM band becoming primarily reich-wing talk radio plus automated ClearChannel stations has now gotten worse. Christian nationalist giant Salem Media owns or provides programming for nearly every remaining station. If it's not Salem messing with people's information stream, it's Sinclair.
I don't know what the endgame is here. As long as large numbers of people get their information from cable and social media, how do we pull out of this downward spiral? If we have any shot at improving US healthcare and education, and rolling back decades of inequity, we need Ranked Choice Voting, stat. Nearly no one on your teevee is going to explain what it is, let alone how it could help us out of this mess.
That works for the over-the-air stations. Take those away, and the billionaires will still own and control their cable networks, which have no permitting process and no public accountability.
If you have the cash, you can buy one too, and influence whoever will tune in and listen.
One thing though is that cable networks are subject to subscription. I think that may limit how people watch. Billionaires can spend as much money as they like on cable, I believe they will not have the same reach as with over the air networks.
We are way beyond curtailing any news source’s ability to be regulated. The FCC stopped enforcing licensing of the airwaves under the Reagan Administration. Cable news was never subject to federal licensing, but only state and local. As long as they had one pathetic local access channel for “diverse programming” they could do anything they like. Radio and tv moved to satellite band, which is not regulated by the government. Social media movd to internet, which is thoroughly unregulated. Feds stopped enforcing the rules against monopolies under Reagan Administration as well, which forbade any one television, radio or newspaper company from buying up any other media in their region, to ensure a diversity of information and a healthy competition for advertising dollars and the news. In the 80s and 90s, when I worked in the daily newspaper industry, Gannett and other big newspapers began buying up all the little community weeklies that were their competitors, as well as small radio stations and local television stations. By the 2000s, there was no diversity. Then internet came and now entities like Breitbart, Alex Jones, Newsmax, and Christian Broadcasting and of course Fox/Murdoch are basically beyond the reach of any regulatory authority. What’s needed are new laws, but that will never happen in such a divided country and Congress.
You want to censor the press for reporting what Republican traitors say? Blame the damn traitors. Blame human nature for allowing sociopaths to exist. What you’re really upset about is the ability of propaganda to control huge numbers of stupid people and the inability of ample good journalism to bring those morons to their senses. Rush Limbaugh is dead. His lies live on. While we could and should criminalize commercial lying, it can’t stop the fascists. Be prepared for worse to come. The Founders knew they were handing down no guarantees.
She is implying an imbalanced media when the real problem is fascist propaganda. The remark about censorship was a question not an accusation. Our problem is much deeper than imbalanced reporting.
While what you say is quite true...the reverse is also true: that if the journalism and media reporting was more even-handed, perhaps our problems wouldn't be quite so dire.
That makes sense. But it won’t exorcise fear and hatred. Nor will it penetrate mass ignorance in time to prevent the worst outcomes. FDR succeeded because the damage was done. He reacted accordingly. President Biden is trying to prevent the worst from happening. As brilliant as he is, that’s an uphill battle and one he just might lose. I see the danger to the republic as existential.
The problem is both sides journalism, and you want more "even-handed" reporting; it's what is causing the distorted picture we see every day of Trump and his acolytes as politics as usual.
I meant my remark to apply to the media which isn't covering Biden's accomplishments and speeches but rather ignores his news making and instead follows the clownish antics of Trump because more clicks and more eyes means more money. Money bias as opposed to "both sides have valid arguments" journalism. I think we may be talking about two different phenomena.
I do agree that normalizing what the R's are doing as "politics as usual" is very bad for the country.
Dude. You literally said, "She wants to censor the press." And when called on it, you try to change the subject. As for "the real problem," both contextually inaccurate (not "imbalanced") media and fascist propaganda are real problems, and they're not the only ones.
This is true. And we’ve been doing that. But the Reagan revolution is in the driver’s seat. Our calls are falling on deaf ears. There is no groundswell of protest. Maggots are still spewing their filth on the floors of Congress. There are no students taking over administration buildings at Columbia. There seems to be no law by which to prosecute the Musk-ovite for war crimes. This is Third Reich stuff, and too many millions support it.
Unfortunately, with social media, every wing nut now has a platform. If you believe what people post, times are just awful. I have seen a person who lives at the end of the street behind us stir the pot on Nextdoor about her neighbor. Nobody knows the full story, but there were all kinds of ignorant comments. We took screen shots to show the neighbor in case some wing nuts showed up. Last night I was on a thread about a proposed tax in the city of Salem. I can't vote on it as we don't live in the city. But there was the usual comment about "they" doing something nefarious. This "they" is responsible for lots of things. Then there were no proposals about exactly what to cut. A lot of this in just anti tax. It took three votes in our local fire district which is large and partly rural for us to have 24 hour service. I was amazed at what some of the people used as an excuse for not voting for it. I will also not the most of the time, the people who complain the most about the government are first in line for services or in some cases, fraudulent asks for handouts. As for the Rs, Biden is correct. They stand for nothing. They haven't done a thing for ordinary people and they have made clear that if they prevail, they will finish the destruction of our democracy that death star did each and every day of his regime. Believe them and vote D. No third party nonsense either.
Did you read Paul Krugman's Opinion yesterday: 'America Betrays Its Children Again'.
'But the latest census report on income and poverty made me angry. It showed that child poverty more than doubled between 2021 and 2022. That’s 5.1 million children pushed into misery, for it really is miserable to be poor in America.'
'And the thing is, this didn’t have to happen. Soaring child poverty wasn’t caused by inflation or other macroeconomic problems. It was instead a political choice. The story is in fact quite simple: Republicans and a handful of conservative Democrats blocked the extension of federal programs that had drastically reduced child poverty over the previous two years, and as a result just about all of the gains were lost.'
Or have you listened to what the auto workers are saying,
‘Doc Killian, who has worked in a Ford assembly plant in Wayne, Michigan, for 26 years, says he can no longer afford the cars he helps build, crystallizing how the nation’s middle class has been squeezed.’ (AP)
Plenty of Americans are having a tough time. While there is a lot of concentration on the this forum about the 'weaknesses' of the press, the accomplishments of Biden, Trump's ownership of the 'Republican' Party, its betrayal of the principles of Democracy...what about the American people? How are we doing, and how well is President Biden and the Democratic Party communicating with us?
Bingo Fern ! The party is "Not" listening, has "not been" listening, and they don't listen still. I personally can attest to that from very long personal experience. I can also attest more accurately regarding the positions of the auto workers, from first hand study / insight, and many life long friends hourly and salary that made their careers in the auto industry. What you quote from Doc Killian is at least true; they can no longer afford the vehicles they 'help' build. UAW wages and benefits are no longer a meaningful share of the price of vehicles. The real labor and material costs are from outside parts and assemblies the automakers have jobbed out to other vendor companies; some that they have ownership positions in.
Go to MSNBC where there are bright former prosecutors, judges, professors of law, members of both parties in Congress, some of the best judicial and political minds in the country, top journalists, authors and book reviews, plus just enough DT to see his perfidy. It has flaws, but is the best this ABD has found. Coupled with NY Times and what RSN highlights, plus HCR, and you’ve got a fairly good picture of what’s really happening. Of course I think of Goebbels every time I see Fox. He was, after all, a genius about propaganda.
Yes, he was, and consequently much studied. You do know what the nazi party through back at the U.S. opposition to their persecutions of jews, gypsy's, and others ? Our Jim Crow laws and other repressions in the south, elsewhere.
Linda, seems almost all the news platforms do so to a degree. I agree w/ Virginia that MSNBC does a better job than many platforms, tho I am selective which segments I watch (eg; those that voice less hyperbole). Personally, I like to view a few platforms to see what/how they are covering news/issues.
Barbara, I don't disagree. I think MSNBC has the most concise lineup. I will watch and read a number of sources. I think that is the fairest way to oversea current events
Stupidity and ignorance do not imply low IQ. What Krugman illustrates is precisely my point. Vast numbers of people were so clueless and indoctrinated that they voted for Trump, an obvious imbecile. Have you looked at the faces of his supporters at his rallies? Have you heard them talk? Yes, they are reachable. FDR reached them just in time to avert a fascist takeover here. And that was due to immense international crises. His genius worked only after the damage was done. Now we await further damage, which surely will come. Putin. Musk-ovite.
I wish people would stop referring to Trump as "an imbecile". For one, it gives him cover in that he provides the appearance of being an imbecile so that he can play the ignorance card. Also, he has been able to play the system so efficiently over many years, and has never ended up in jail, not to mention that he successfully duped millions of people into voting for him. And lastly, he continues to hold sway over the GOP despite the fear and contempt many of its members have for him. This is why he is dangerous. He may not know history, but he knows how to play the con and he's winning at it.
He's no imbecile when it comes to plotting to get what he wants. If he were stupid he wouldn't be the leader of a very large and dangerous cult. He's a grifter, a con man, an adept liar, and a showman who knows how to play to a crowd.
What few of those wailin’ n bitchin’ realize is that they will be amongst the first sliddin’ under the bus . Before OUR very eyes , proof positive , the complicit and their ludicrous leader have plainly played their cards , the game, as further advertised -the future plan, in fact -started continues being put in place. 2025? I apologize for barely listening to the BS! I laugh frequently at it, praying for some semblance of sanity to reappear in a party I once...ONCE...thought was American.
I hope everyone complicit comes to realize what a fool they’ve been taken for...and we know who ‘those’ are.
But now/to duration/and after ...I will support the Biden/Harris terms for the hopeful 8 years ...with my vote, and applause, while I herald decency ...of a job those few respected ...the oath they gave honor to.
But......
Eventually this sordid stupidity will end , will come to the complicit...it always has.
Many years ago I saw this coming, I labeled it a lesson needing taught (the hard way obviously) many heard, being patient may be painful. But it isn’t us who sold out.
Our times prove the old saw attributed to President Lincoln: “you can fool some of the people all of the time and you can fool all of the people some of the time, but you can’t fool all of the people all of the time.” I’m hopeful the “Trump Trials” will be a coda to “Trumpism” for a significant part of his base while the rest of his base will retreat to the woodwork and we, the majority of Americans, can go back to political discourse, sometimes heated to be sure, but based in fact and reality.
I think she was calling for equal coverage. News reporting via instant access has become competitive to the point that ratings, or which news outlet gets the most hits, matters more to corporate owners of news media. Sensationalism attracts the most internet hits, and corporate investors, who likely have no concept of ethical reporting and are driven by attracting advertiser revenue (based on the ratings) do not care. I expect most reporters were taught about ethical reporting, but unfortunately they no longer seem to rise to the top in order to enforce fairness. Yes, everything should be reported, and everything includes all viewpoints.
Margaret, it’s the “if it bleeds, it leads” reporting—a term first “coined by journalist Eric Pooley, in 1989, for an article he did in the New York Magazine – “Grins, Gore and Videotape. The trouble with Local TV News” (quote popped from online search), as did this interesting article:
Judith, I sometimes have a hard time easily discerning who a comment is directed to as well! That’s why I often put the name of the commenter at the beginning of my comment…figure it might lessen confusion since some of the comments actually appear down-thread.
Guess Joe’s reward will have to come in heaven, he sure ain’t getting one on this planet. Chump and his gang of traitors will see to that. You are right, so is James, Lex and T.L
Stephanie, I too lament that the press in many feeds the drama/trauma of #45 and his cult followers specifically because it isn’t balanced. I emailed NPR and asked them to give Biden equal press even though he is not the drama king. And remind listeners how much he has done. It isn’t about hushing anyone.
We the American people do not deserve Joseph Biden as our president. He is a decent and hard working competent man. And the lies and slander and threats that are thrown at this man and his family. America land of the greed and home of the mean.
That’s what they do, that’s why my mute button is ever ready, they lie, they brainwash, they sensationalize , the wear down people’s hopes . Tactical drip drip drip.
Once again, HCR, a masterful weaving together in one post of all these appalling developments I've been reading about for a couple of hours, now, over several newspapers.
That last line of President Biden's about the ideal of the nation made me cry, and I'm not a crier:
“We’ve never fully lived up to it,’’ but “[w]e’ve never walked away from it. These other guys are trying to walk away from it.”
It's worse than walking away from it. They're trying to blow it up. Today's stories make that even more clear than usual.
I'm with you. How can we be unmoved and skeptical when people must put their lives on the line to avoid chaos? Mitt Romney is braver than I knew. Fortunately, he can afford to pay for the security his family needs, but not many people could. (What happened to Paul Pelosi should have made that clear.) Mitch McConnell has failed his party and the American people, and Speaker McCarthy can't control the people he sold out to. Complaints about Joe Biden's age are a distraction.
I am so coldly angry at Mitch McConnell, knowing the damage that his Machiavellian maneuvers have done to the Supreme Court and to all women in this country. He could have pushed the GOP Senators to convict Trump, and we would be free of him running for office ever again. The GOP would likely be healthier because they would have excised the cancer that is Trump.
Of course he left Romney hanging when Romney warned him of the danger about to descend on DC on Jan6. Of course he never responded to him. He does not know how to care for anyone else.
I see the health issues McConnell is having now, and I smile. I see people say how they pity him; I do not.
This man has done so much damage to our country. He will be reviled in history.
He is reviled in the present by many, for the sniveling, Machiavellian coward he is. While I won’t take pleasure in the health challenges he is experiencing, I hold neither pity nor empathy for him.
McConnell is an example of the selfish, Machiavellian politician who obstructs and plays dangerous political games for fun. Now the joke could very well be on him. I picture him dropping dead at his desk because he just won't give up his office even though he's even older than Biden, and in lousy health.
Like the CEO's of the major industries McConnell is beholden to the oligarchs; they are all compensated with unlimited money and power to look the other way, discard their humanity and kneel before their minders as they trod over the working people on the way to enriching the real ruling class.
yeah, but Mittens is still a hypocrite and has been one ever since his college days. He is not the man--or leader--that his father was. If he was contemptuous and disgusted by the party that he witnessed the Republicans devolving into... He could--at any time--have stepped away or declared himself to be an Independent.
Agreed. Why didn't Mitt volunteer to testify for the Jan 6th House Committee? There are enough breadcrumbs to follow that suggest there was inside help. Why didn't he make headlines with his revelations about Senator King's warnings in January of 2021? Why wait until your book comes out? Really?
The story of the rot inside the House and Senate has only had a prologue, a forward, so to speak. The attempted coup (which continues to this day) will eventually show complicity by more than a few Proud Boys and a sitting president.
I have to believe that as prosecutions continue, there will be more and more "flippers" who will provide clues as to how all this came to pass. Why? Because despite my anger and frustration, I am an optimist. And that optimism is fueled by the fact that when a person is facing hard time in a jumpsuit, they usually do whatever they can to minimize or escape that fate.
That is becoming a common maneuver, consistent with the "Chicago School" notion that personal profit trumps the National Interest. It's a vile, sociopathic concept.
Rot is everywhere and has a function, but a healthy organism or society resists rot, and arrests it's spread into living tissue. America was gaining health (and in some ways, still is), despite serious bouts of illness, prior to the plutocratic capture of the public narrative that Reagan was the face of. Nixon spread rot, but was repelled by our societal "immune system" until Ford abused the power of pardon to hold him above the law. Not that that's a new idea. but I think that perhaps that pardon signaled a turning point in our current rash we are seeing the law used to sabotage the intended functions of the law, perhaps comparable to how a virus commandeers our own genetic processes to increase it's spread.
Trump made many Orwellian appointment designed to sabotage the very functions the appointees were pledged to fulfill, but perhaps the apex of this perversion was the plan to twist the mechanics of the Electoral College in order to negate the empirical, real world election result. That is really a crime worth a chapter in any reasonable history book; and with the RNC resolution, branding the rioters "ordinary citizens engaged in in legitimate political discourse", and condemning all efforts to hold them accountable, the whole "Republican" Party signaled it's ownership of the crime. We have let them get away with far too much "rot" already, and cannot afford to lose the "patient"; which is us, and even our posterity.
By "history," I mean "historians," who, as a group, do a pretty good job of research and of self-correcting. HCR is a wonderful example, but far from the only one.
It seemed to me that Mitt tries to have it both ways. He published an "Open Letter" to President Obama in USA Today, urging Obama to copy the heath plan he supervised, and Obama basically did so; but then as a presidential candidate, Mitt had to distance himself from all that and claim that while the plan was right for his state, it was wrong for America. That was very "Republican" of him.
Well he does have a book coming out,after all. I give him very little credit for FINALY growing a pair,sorry. I do give him credit for voting to impeach T***P, but then he didn't push hard enough!!!
Notice how many politicians spill the beans after they've decided to leave politics. While in office, they keep their mouths shut out of self preservation.
We never asked for perfection. We asked for honesty. We asked for loyalty. We asked for help, consistent betterment , getting represented fairly, our share of the pie.
Thank you President Biden , Kamala, and #Staff.....
They serve those who would be feudal lords and the stratified society that goes with it. And yes, we have never fully lived up to our ideals, and frankly blown it big time in a number of ways, but much of American History displays salient progress against injustice and tyranny. The creation of the Constitution (not an American king), abolition, women's suffrage, workers rights, civil rights, gay rights, and so on. Though it all the plutocrats fought to retain slavery, for laissez faire and the right to monopolize markets, and now, quite frankly, against democracy itself.
"It is the eternal struggle between these two principles -- right and wrong -- throughout the world. They are the two principles that have stood face to face from the beginning of time, and will ever continue to struggle. The one is the common right of humanity and the other the divine right of kings." - Lincoln
Thanks for that, JL. Progress has been shamefully slow, but it has been progressing. I have not the slightest doubt that Biden, Harris and their whole team know better than anyone what is at stake here, and how close we are to complete free fall.
It's hard to take the long view in times like this. Thanks for your perspective. I needed that today.
We have had many moments in our history where the Republic was assailed. There were other tipping points. The American fascists and bigots were quite evident and powerful just before WWII. FDR had them in his cabinet.
But in the grand scheme, we are going to prevail. Sadly, there will be casualties.
I deeply hope so. I think that around they world most people just want a fair shake, but the tricks those who wish to dominate use are effective, as history demonstrates, and today we are turning the stability of our own environment against us and have potentially oppressive technologies Orwell never dreamed of. So some of the tipping points are pretty scary. I never would have believed how many in our society love Big Brother.
But I also see a turning point in the "resistance is futile" apathy that empowers corruption, and modern "Republicans" are going further and further out on a limb. Unfortunately there are always many innocent casualties of these malignantly narcissistic power games. That's why public awareness and engagement is so important, since usually people who are least advantaged who suffer most from our foolish choices. What hath "Reaganomics" wrought? Connect the dots and something monstrous emerges.
Bill, as a gardener I’ve always liked the saying that is something like this: gardeners “plant trees in the shade of which they will never sit”. It is suitable for so many occasions….doing the work & effort that you may never fully benefit from or see come to fruition, but it is worth it.
I read this particular issue and my stomach turned and my blood boiled at the same time. If you check their legislative records I bet Greene, Gaetz, Boebert, Jordan and others have not introduced one bill intended to help the American people. I’m not counting the ridiculous impeachment resolutions. They are not there, as Boebert admitted, to do anything but disrupt.
Mike, they are too busy running around to get their media hits and "likes" in their social media accounts.
I'm sure you heard about Boebert and the Beetlejuice incident this past week. The photo that appeared in many articles was kind--the clip showed her barely keeping her dress up (constant tugging) and I couldn't help but think that if that was AOC the howls from the GQP would have gone viral.
Her ta-tas were falling out of her dress. There is video of her obnoxious behavior, including vaping, which is why people in the theater wanted her removed. She's a sociopath and a narcissist. AOC is a class act - she does her job and knows how to act in public.
They don't believe in the US Constitution, just as these supposed Christians don't believe in the New Testament. Dangerous people - some are throwbacks to Italian, Hungarian and German fascists, while most are old-fashioned far-right autocrats propping up oligarchic rule (think Francisco Franco, whose troops were bankrolled by Texaco and who in turn supported the oligarchs of his time).
Makes me wonder if they even know or understand the Constitution. They seem short-sighted, and narcissistically interested only in themselves and their macabre theater.
It isn’t important to know what they think, it’s important to vote them out. We know what they aren’t ...leaders, honest, worthy.
If the public isn’t willing to vote them out , and in some cases I realize they aren’t able, then most will go down with the ship and they’ll still be pointing the fingers at us.
The majority of ‘us’ know.
Will we take it to the ballot box is the ONLY question Nd the ONLY answer all wrapped into one.
Didn’t know about Texaco and Franco. Just wouldn’t go to Spain to see the Goyas until he was gone. Never got there as it turned out, but the Spanish Civil War haunts more than any other. No sooner climbing out of the Middle Ages than along come the fascists. Now to learn that Big Oil way supported Franco as Big Oil supported Iraq and Afghanistan... Will we wake up and put our energy into growing gardens, enjoying our world, and opening our minds instead of pursuing more money than we need to live? When do we stop worshipping our cars in order to protect the planet, ours and others’ lives? The current strike would be a wonderful moment for capital and labor to come together and agree on not only fair wages, but also retraining to build hybrids until a water proof electric car is possible and to plan electric trolleys in cities.
Alexandra, you know who should be willing to walk away from it? Anyone in a position of public trust/responsibility/authority who KNOWS something is wrong and is willing to give up power and control to do the right thing….if these folks in Congress lived up to their oath, TFFG would have been overwhelmingly impeached and convicted in the Senate.
Barbara, yes. And it's clear from just some of the excerpts from Romney's book that there were dozens of R senators who could have agreed to stand together, form a coalition with Dems, and stop this monster. They had plenty of safety in numbers and they STILL wouldn't do it. Contemptible.
A large percentage of people who voted for Trump in 2016, and then again in 2020 simply seek to burn down democratic institutions of the United States in retribution for all they have heard reported by Fox 'News'. Cries of 'government out of my health care' by those depending upon Medicare or Medicaid. Those directed to worry about immigrants taking 'good American jobs' -that no other American would take -back breaking work, exploitation, and abuse in the agricultural farmlands or dangerous exploitative work in meatpacking plants. They are told that a solar farm in Nevada is why gasoline prices are so high (without questioning record profits at Exxon or Chevron -or the billions of taxpayer-funded oil company subsidies). They are told to laugh at the climate hoax while the world burns and floods. They are told that journalists are enemies of the people and they are still anxiously waiting for the Obama administration to 'take their guns'.
These voters, initially driven by Rupert Murdoch and Fox 'News' blame everything and everyone around them for their narrow lives. They have long ago given up on the 'American Dream' and now seek to destroy the few shreds that remain for everyone else -without regard for the impact upon themselves, their families, and their own communities. These voters send incompetent 'D-list' entertainers to Congress like Greene, Boebert, Gaetz, and Jordan (and why not? -they elevated Trump, and prior to that made a President out of a co-star to Bonzo the chimp.)
It is brutally ironic that so many Dreamers and others seek a path to citizenship and what was the American Dream, while so many who gained citizenship simply by being born at the right latitude and longitude seek to burn it all down.
These people who hate government will really hate it when the government stops working. Those who have given up on the 'American Dream' will not remember there ever was an 'American Dream' when they see how fascists rule. MAGAS will suffer the same as everyone. I pray there are enough of us to stop them.
So well expressed. These are bottom feeders. They are hangers on, they want to stay in Congress long enough to be eligible for lifetime benefits at our expense.
Amen and thank you. The Farm Workers Union always needs funding. Did you see the film of the workers being beaten when Reagan was governor. I saw it on TV one night in 1998. It still haunts.
I've had the honor of meeting lawyers and others who have dedicated themselves to farmworkers and worker rights, and they have done so sacrificing much of the income they might have otherwise generated on the employer side of the fence.
It says a great deal about a country as affluent as the United States, when the legal system must be used to simply ensure laborers under a hot central California sun, or in the desert have access to drinking water.
Thank you for noticing. I would like to have generated a bit of income for the union. Getting their mailings and being capable of only small donations, I wish them more power because they will be the ones to help feed US as climate change makes crop-growing and harvesting ever more difficult.
And yes, it says a lot about our stupidity and racism that it takes lawyers to ensure water for those who feed US.
Having grown up in a small community of small farmers and large dairy farmers, with my father’s large garden, I know that food isn’t made in the grocery store. Is that rare knowledge these days?
Sadly, it is rare knowledge. If more people knew that so-called "happy meals" didn't just suddenly appear, there might be more compassion for all (including more people ordering veggie burgers).
I’ll never forget my first portobello burger. Have only found one since, but would think it could become as popular as the national staple it needs to replace. (Mushrooms don’t fart.)
I wonder if Mitt Romney would be willing to testify at Trump's January 6 trial? What Romney related to Mitch McConnell about extreme violence coming to the capital is explosive. It completely debunks the MAGA narrative of J6 being "a peaceful protest that spontaneously got out of control." That attack was as "spontaneous" as a Kardashian plotline.
[[Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA), who has led calls to impeach Biden, told the reporters that she told Trump she wanted the impeachment inquiry to be “long and excruciatingly painful for Joe Biden.” Ultimately, she says, she wants a “long list of names” of those she claims are involved in crimes with the Bidens, and when Trump wins the presidency in 2024, she wants “to go after every single one of them and use the Department of Justice to prosecute them.”]]
These people are Leninists. They just want to burn it all down so that in the ensuing chaos, they can seize absolute power. They are both psychopaths and incredibly stupid. And yet people keep electing them. Racism is a helluva drug.
MTG and company are the shiny objects meant to distract and they are stupid. But the real threat is from the very deviously smart billionaire-backed Heritage Foundation and Federalist Society and the 70+ other conservative organizations aligned with them. They have published a manifesto in Project 2025 for all to see. If they win, there is no question they will implement it. It will morph the purpose of EVERY government department and agency from benefiting the American people into protecting the authoritarians and the big moneyed interests.
These are the same folk who brought us the current conservative SCOTUS--the initial step necessary to be sure they will have a rubber stamp decision against any attempts to declare their plans unconstitutional.
I'm well aware of the billionaire threat. As a journalist back in the day, and later as a blogger, I wrote about it -- and was called panicky and biased for doing so. Turns out I was right, although I take no pleasure in that.
Bravi to both of you. Yesterday I remembered meeting the first Bush and Barbara and how I was so unimpressed by both and their new house that I forgot until he was two years into the presidency that I had actually met the president. We know what he did to the Kurds (first betrayal of that minority by the US).
Yes, these are the dangerous ones because they finance the GOP political campaigns, not the hoi polloi who we see slobbering over Trump at his rallies. They're the foot soldiers who cast the votes for MAGA candidates, but they don't keep the machine working on a long term basis.
Thank you, Alexandra. As Mitt Romney said in The Atlantic yesterday, most of the Republican Party no longer believes in the Constitution. (He said he had only recently realized this. I figured it out when they circled the wagons around the Iran-contra defendants and Bush 41 pardoned them.) From there it's only a short step to the bat-guano psychopathy we're seeing, and pretty much every Congressional Republican has taken that step. I was a Republican for 40 years, so to a certain extent it pains me. But at this point I'd be surprised if I ever vote for a Republican again.
I was also a Republican in an "I like Ike" family. By the time I could vote, I had switched. Watching the insanity of Vietnam sent me over.
But over time, my political philosophy rolled around a lot. There were libertarian ideas that were attractive. (Government: stay out of my bedroom). There were revelations about the Military Industrial Complex that both parties fed off.
For a while, I was like millions of others. Consumed by my personal dramas. Politics? Meh. Then I was awakened by Al Gore and his warnings. What could possibly be more important? And then...the hanging chads of Florida! The stolen election. The phony invasion of two countries that were NO threat to the US. Good grief.
There is no perfect political party. But I am going to stick with the one that wants to save the planet and democracy. The one that wants kids to have food and healthcare. The party that really believes in the Constitution and the right to vote. It's now a no brainer. The Republican party of my parents died decades ago. It is now the party of cruel cowards and neo-Nazis. It must be outvoted until it recedes under the cold dark rock it emerged from.
Absolutely right. I stayed a Republican as long as I did partly out of inertia -- I stopped supporting the party nationally after the Gingrich wave, and in the state after it went bat-guano crazy in 2010. What pushed me to move was watching the reception that they gave TFG when he rode down the gold-plated escalator in 2015. I knew immediately that they were going to nominate him, that it would be tantamount to Nazism, and (from having lived in NYC in the '80s) that any government he led would be a functional disaster. I did not want to wake up one day and hear my grandkids asking me, "Pop, why do people call you a 'good German'?" So I walked away and haven't looked back.
Lex I too was a Republican through the first term of GW. It’s hard to believe looking back that I was. I also believe though that we were republicans of a different party. The one we were part of died.
I was a Democrat until 1976 when I was kicked out of the Aroostock County (Maine) Democratic committee because I was seen working a booth for John Anderson at the county fair. I then became an Independent who for years and years was as likely to vote for a (moderate) Republican as a Democrat. But no more and not for a long time. The Republican Party has been morphing into what it is today for many years prior to TFG and I cannot see any Republican, locally or nationally, whose views come close to intersecting with mine anymore. As an aside, while I was truly impressed with John Anderson, I do wish that I had had the foresight to recognize that working for and helping re-elect Jimmy Carter would have resulted in a far better outcome for our country, then and up until now!
I think Carter was painted as a strange person. As I recall wearing sweaters and turning down the thermostats in the White House. He was that peanut farmer with the hick brother. My point being that this portrayal tainted the world view of him. I liked John Anderson as well. I also liked John McCain. But like you, I can’t see myself voting for a Republican ever. As much as Romney comes off as reasonable because of his opposition to the maga culture, looking at his position on important issues, I couldn’t vote for him either.
True, but in hindsight I think I should have seen it even on the state level no later than 1994, and I didn't. I thought the reasonable Republicans would continue to hold sway. I was wrong.
As a native Tar Heel, I understand the comment. The state has changed after McCrory and Art Pope did their thing. I recall a trip there years ago, when I heard an announcement on the radio that Rush Limbaugh was coming to NC. Made my blood run cold. Friends and family are virtual strangers now. Beyond sad.
Same here. My outrage is over the top just thinking about what that lowly, sub-human goon said. What can we expect from someone that dropped out of Kindergarten is wailing about? She should be in cage in a zoo by the way she acts, like a wild animal.
I am beginning to think that MTG is not a woman. She is a horrific insult to women in my opinion. I honestly have never ever seen or heard of a woman that is so arrogant, ignorant and full of hate as MTG is. If there is a ''hell'' i think MTG must have emerged from it. To me, Donald TUMP is a horrific insult to human beings in general, just as MTG is.
Couldn’t agree more. Not an iota of humanity in either one, or many of the cult nuts. People like this used to be recognized for what they are and most elected to stay under their rocks. Now they are proud cretins/clowns whose hatred flows like the worst flood, threatening to drown us all
I totally agree with you. I am beyond sick of all of their hatred. I keep thinking how things would be ifHillary Clinton had won the election in 2016? We would not even be thinking about Donald TUMP and his cult followers right now. I think we would be way above all of his theme of hate, violence, and the senseless shootings that have killed hundreds of innocent citizens, and innocent little children. Oh what a huge blunder that TUMP has been. Just thinking about what i just wrote here drives me nuts.
Well, no, not a Leninist in the sense that she subscribes to all Lenin's ideas. I'm pretty sure she doesn't know them and wouldn't understand them. But in the limited sense I described, yes.
Yeah. It makes a lot of white folks do irrational things, even bat-guano insane things, personally and politically. I watched it happen from the time I was 10 and the school system in which I grew up started busing for integration. It's still happening today, more than 50 years later.
“We’re the only nation based on an idea—an idea. We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men and women are created equal, endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights. Look,” Biden said, “we’ve never fully lived up to it,’’ but “[w]e’ve never walked away from it.”
“These other guys are trying to walk away from it.”
The President is right on point. Our noble beliefs about equality, and liberty and justice for All, are aspirational. We've been working toward those goals since the founding of the nation. We are not going to quit.
Sounds to me like the ‘Pubbies are now supporters of gun control. Look at the charges against Hunter Biden. Two counts of lying on a firearms application and being a drug addict. One count of being a drug addict in possession of a firearm. Never mind he owned said firearm for all of 11 days, never put any ammo in it or fired it.
Sounds like gun control to me.
And then there’s the case of Kyle Rittenhouse. In possession of weapons while underage, carrying those weapons across state lines, murdering 2 people—one of whom was mentally ill, the other was threatening him with a skateboard.
But what do I know? I’m just a simple girl from the country.
From my understanding, these charges are rarely brought by themselves. They are usually added on to more serious charges involving gun violence. This whole thing with Hunter Biden is a sham. All of it is for the benefit of trump. My heart goes out to Hunter. Many, many people have issues with drug or alcohol abuse. Imagine trying to get healthy in his reality? The gun charge should be thrown out of court. It's ridiculous. Maybe we should investigate MAGA family members just because. No. We're better than that.
BC I agree with you. The Hunter Biden charges are a sham that would never be brought of his name wasn’t Hunter Biden. I think they were brought on so quickly by the special prosecutor DW. I think he was threatened. I don’t understand how this can be happening.
Nor do I. I'm thinking, with all the legal experience I've obtained by reading Joyce Vance, that maybe the judge hearing the case will throw it out. I'm not sure, though. I don't think Joyce wrote about this yet. I'm being silly about knowing law. Obviously, I don't. But, this scenario is what I'm hoping to happen. It seems like politics is moving this case.
Seems to me that the Republicans p, illegitimate Supreme Court and NRA should be rallying around Hunter. They say there is no license required, okay for concealing, etc. so according to them he did nothing wrong. As I recall, Boebert carries a gun on the floor of the House.
Marla, the hypocrisy slays me. I lived in the South for a while and I went to slews of parties and events where at least half the attendees could've been convicted for 'Two counts of lying on a firearms application and being a drug addict. One count of being a drug addict in possession of a firearm."
I am in the north and had a coworker with family in a red state. She attended a family party, I think it was a hs graduation, and mentioned that as everyone arrived, they all put their handguns on top of the refrigerator. I thought she was joking. She was not. I guess drinking and tempers were common, and "if the guns were on top of the fridge, anyone going for it could get tackled before they reached it"
Did anyone see the news that the Governor of NM tried to ban the carrying of guns in that state? They have had a lot of mass shootings - altho at this point - so has every other state. I think it got "shot down" . Law officers said they would not enforce it & I believe a judge put a stop to it. I have to admit - for any law officer to have to enforce it where people are presently carrying and concealed carrying might be a pretty scary situation. Imagine the current crowd of MAGAs at that point.
How sad is it that the bottom line is that nobody DARES to try that?
Republicans support the strict enforcement of gun laws for everyone . . .
. . . named Hunter Biden. If you're named Hunter Biden, you will By God and By GOP be prosemecuted! Anyone else ... eh, not so much.
Their insistence that "we have to prosecute Hunter because nobody is above the law" is laughable considering how much they lurrrrrrve Trump, and considering that when they controlled the federal government they didn't prosecute more than a literal handful of the tens of thousands of people caught lying on their federal gun purchase forms. Talk about a witch hunt; if they could burn Hunter at the stake at midnight, Margie Three Names would light the match.
What you said about Kyle Rittenhouse is inaccurate, but I have no wish to open that ancient debate again, so I will instead wish you a happy weekend out in the country :-)
This column is part of what appears to be shift toward recognizing and publicizing Joe Biden's extraordinary accomplishments and the Republicans' despicable approach to dealing with America's public policy toward what are, to me, inexplicable goals. Every reporter. Every columnist. Every leader of the media in the country has to choose between a false even-handedness and integrity as they report in the run up to the election. That choice will chart the direction of the country. If they choose integrity, they will follow Heather Cox Richardson's lead.
I suspect that news media fears losing followers if they Woodward and Bernsteined the epically corrupt "GOP", but they may lose a whole lot more than subscribers if they don't.
Exactly. The news media both creates and needs a country with integrity. Without it, the news media loses its independence. Consider, by the way, my free newsletter - Len's Political Notes. Subscribe at https://lenspoliticalnotes.com.
With respect, Heather isn't "shifting" toward anything. From the beginning of Biden's term, she not only has reported straightforwardly on Biden's successes and failures, she also has provided deep historical context for what he is doing and trying to do.
Also her motivation for what she is documenting: creating a historical record for some future historian to read and assess this time in our nation’s history.
I am sorry that Mitt Romney is walking away, but I don't blame him. When the majority of party succumbed to trump's fascism in pursuit of power, the Republican Party of Lincoln died. I am also sorry that Hunter Biden turned to drugs and wealth to prop up his sagging ego, but Hunter is 53 years old, hardly a child. President Biden has neither legal, nor moral responsibility for his son's behavior. I hope when all this mess is behind us Hunter can receive the mental health treatment he so obviously needs.
As to the trumpian maggots in the House of Representatives, their stupid ploy of impeaching President Biden on spurious charges with NO evidence is such a waste of taxpayer dollars and time that could be better put to working for the American public as they were elected to do. I still wish we could sue them for all the wasted taxpayer money.
I would not agree that Hunter Biden is propping up a sagging ego. As a retired mental health therapist,I would say he is still suffering from the severe trauma he experienced in early childhood. I too hope that someday Hunter Biden will receive the help he needs to finally bring him peace.
Do you think, like I do, that he may have purchased that gun because he had suicidal thoughts.....? As a person in recovery for 19 years, I have heard many stories from the rooms of AA that give me pause about the reasons he may have had in obtaining the gun.......I pray for him, for he is a sick man.
I didn’t think that, but it seems like a real possibility. Actually, it crossed my mind that all this pressure might be putting him at risk for suicide.
I share your assessment, though I’m not a therapist. First he survived a violent crash that killed his mother and sister and then later in life lost that brother too.
I defer to you expertise, I am not a psychology major, but I'm glad you concur that Hunter needs some treatment to relieve what ever is causing him the mental anguish.
I'd love to throw Gaetz and Greene into a Florida swamp and let gators do what gators do, but those two are so saturated with the toxic waste of MAGA even gators would spit them out.
The gators would probably die a horrific death if they consumed that much toxic poison. The poison those two would produce would be hundreds times worse than Cyanide. It doesn't get much worse than those two creeps.
They are also so slippery they'd slide out from between the gators' jaws, thus annoying and humiliating the gators and so PETA would charge in and . . .
“We’re the only nation based on an idea—an idea. We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men and women are created equal, endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights. Look,” Biden said, “we’ve never fully lived up to it,’’ but “[w]e’ve never walked away from it.”
“These other guys are trying to walk away from it.”
Those are the words of our doddering President. It would be nice if we all were so doddering at his age; indeed, at any age.
Republicans are out of ideas, empathy, and ethics. It is incumbent upon us all to do what Chesley Sullenberger III urged; please watch this clip:
So we'll get a book of puffery on Mitt Romney. Sorry, I'm not buying it. My father had no use for Mitt's father when he was governor of Michigan (I grew up there) and I had no use, years later, for Mitt when he became governor of Massachusetts. Yes, he had the courage to stand up to Trump while all of his Republican colleagues in the Senate cowered in fear. That only makes clearer the depths to which the Republican party has sunk - to the point where doing the right thing elevates you to the top of their dung heap: the dung heap is still there.
And he has the money to protect his family from the traitors. We see, we fear, we cower. Only money can save us. Billionaires only, the rest of us are toast.
Interesting that Romney’s book came out 9/12, the day after the 9/11/2012 anniversary of his launching his verbal bomb at Obama and Hillary Clinton about Benghazi. It’s important that he calls out his Republican colleagues, but it’s also important to remember his role in contributing to their behavior.
I woke up just a little while ago feeling so sad for the President. He must be so devastated about what is happening to his son. Yet somehow he keeps getting up everyday and doing what he believes is right for Americans. I can’t believe his resilience in the face of such terrible malice. I am not surprised that Senator Romney is not running again. He was our governor and although I did not vote for him, I always thought he was a good person and a competent leader. I fear that very soon, good, decent people will no longer run for office and we will lose our republic and end up like Germany in the 1930s. The Republicans have been playing a very long game to take over America and tonight I feel they are winning.
Biden is like men of my dad’s generation. Many were WWII vets. They didn’t complain, they didn’t point fingers. They got up every day and lived their lives and supported their families.
“We’re the only nation based on an idea—an idea. We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men and women are created equal, endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights. Look,” Biden said, “we’ve never fully lived up to it,’’ but “[w]e’ve never walked away from it.”
Yeah! Right on, Mr President! What you're quoting there is the American Creed, the justification for our very existence as a nation and the source of our strength.
President Biden is right. I lament again that the media reports every shameful, stupid, criminal, appalling thing the former president and his supporters do and say. Yet, for one of the best president's we've had-crickets, except when they comment about his age.
Or when something negative happens. Why don’t they go into Greene’s or Gaetz’s district and report on what is happening there. What is the employment rate, what infrastructure improvements are being done because of the infrastructure bill that the President signed. How about a detailed expose. What have they actually accomplished for their districts.
You’re right about the raucous Freedom Caucus. Behind the blather, no substance whatsoever. Nor representation of Nation or constituents. Only a relentless effort to earn, in 2024, their long sought-for pardons for trying to overturn the 2020 election. And it’s a long list - Trump GA conspirator Meadows, Jeffrey Clark’s groomer Scott Perry, wanna-be Biden impeacher Matt Gaetz, wanna-be Trump pardoner Ted Cruz, say-anything MTG, meritless Congressional chair Jim Jordan, each a fervent election denier, devoted to earning that pardon for betraying Nation and us all.
Everything is pointing to the most explosive election season in my lifetime. In 2020 Biden was a mere figure fun (mainly for verbal gaffes) to the MAGA crowd. The election revolves around huge rallies for Trump and persistent attempts to deter Democratic voters. Trump supporters were stunned by his defeat, perplexed and angry that all the subsequent legal machinations failed. Ultimately they were persuaded into taking the law into their own hands. Many of them are paying dearly for their criminality now, but it’s not as if January 6 2021 is a dead issue. It could become a defiant symbol of resistance eventually in the history of this movement. It has the potency to rekindle emotions and that is a concern.
I think it is possible that a nightmarish stew of events could put Biden’s back to the wall in 2024. This is worrying and should spark a renewal of energy among even the most torpid Democrats to vote and to appeal tirelessly to others to vote.
1. We have no idea what Trump’s legal standing will be when Election Day arises. It is pretty safe to say that the best guess is that one trial may have reached a verdict. If Trump is found innocent there will be an upswell of support for him. Exactly the same if he is found guilty. Lose lose. He may well be out on appeal.
The objectives of the trial(s) of Trump are important - to save democracy and to finally get him out of the public arena forever. The on first is theoretical. The second is practical, but it seems likely to be not in time to keep him out of the White House in 2024. The Republicans have devolved into a band of occasionally Machiavellian schemers, more often bewilderingly stupid ones. But they will be hard at work throughout campaign season.
2.
Elie Honig wrote today about a third special counsel, Robert Hur. In 8 months of investigating Biden for mismanaging classified documents, he has maintained total radio silence. Not a word. Pence had the same investigation and has long since been unambiguously cleared. Personally I have no doubt that the same result should have long since come to pass for Hur. It seems at least possible that Hur will delay longer and then, as if on cue, release a report that kinda sorta *doesn’t* clear Biden. This will fuel the election fervor of the Republicans who will interpret the report in the most make malevolent ways and stir up their side to an even greater pitch of anger as campaigning goes on. Remember: he has a sterling record of governance. Republicans will pick at inflation, but the world knows it would have occurred regardless of party.
3.
Those with the will to impeach are going to do it. Haters are going to hate. Regardless of the lack of evidence, they will run a long and gruesome spectacle, filled with innuendo masked as justice being served. Marjorie Greene has promised this. We will be down to the short and curlies of the campaign and it wouldn’t surprise me to see the Republicans break precedent and drag it out to the bitter end. Or they will be playing endless ads based on the “Biden crime family” to the same effect.
Republicans have nothing to offer but poison. It has now become their stock in trade, their most easily recognizable characteristic. They are going to run a campaign awash in sleaze. There may be outbreaks of violence to intimidate voters.
I said earlier that Biden cannot be attacked in his record. That is not entirely true. He picked the most feckless head of the DOJ in my memory. Had Mr. Garland been less concerned in proving he was independent (that gained him nothing) and that he would pursue justice against justice against possibly wayward Democrats (a lame attempt to mollify the unmollifiable), he might have move 12-18 months sooner in Trump. As far as I can see it is he who is responsible for the impossible calendar the justice system has available to it in 2024 to, well, serve justice to the most egregious actors in trying to overturn democracy. His tenure has been marred by either devotion to the loftiest principles of justice or fear. Meantime the house continues to burn.
Much can happen in a year, but it seems obvious that democracy can only be saved by sane, determined Americans who have had enough of being jerked around by wannabe revolutionaries who gyrate between puerile and pathological.
Good must triumph. Americans who care for America must vote with resounding clarity and fearlessness on November 4 2024. There may not be a second chance.
“ Republicans will pick at inflation, but the world knows it would have occurred regardless of party.” The world may know, but Republicans do not want to know anything that does not implicate Biden as the culprit behind anything they will point to.
It would help if more Americans knew just what any US president has in his/her power to do, under the Constitution. But Trump showed how the Constitution was no significant check on his actions, when twice his impeachments failed to convict. Trump still trots out his “I alone can fix it” one-day solution to the war on Ukraine. His followers believe him, and think Biden could, say, bring down gas prices with a snap of his fingers, but is too weak and/or corrupt to do it. Besides, the Constitution is just a piece of paper, except when judges interpret it in their favor.
True, the pandemic caused shortages and inflation around the world. While we had more deaths per capita (thanks to Trump's delay) our inflation rate along with gas prices are the lowest in the industrialized world. Do the MAGA folks know this? Not really. They're gonna blame Biden and the "socialists liberals" for the problem.
Democrats don’t know (40%) think unemployment is high, not at its lowest since 1969. Lots of people think the S&P stock market is down, not up 16%. Same for GDP per capita. A Guardian piece just out discusses a Harris poll taken Sept. 1. “US economy going strong under Biden—Americans don’t believe it” by Dominic Rushe
It is difficult to rectify intentional ignorance.
Nothing to do with the Saudis or the Russian attack on Ukraine, affecting the price of oil, I suppose?
True, it’s all Biden’s fault.
Excellent point. The President’s powers have been obscured by Trump. But I fear there is a significant number of weak people who would want the President to be all powerful, Republican, and magnetic in a darkly threatening way. Nothing will disabuse them of this fantasy. The reality would.
We don’t know what trump’s situation will be on Election Day, as you point out even if convicted in one of his trials he will be out on appeal. Despite his current hold on the Republican Party, getting rid of him will be the easy part. Stopping what he started will not be as easy. As they say, the genie is out of the bottle.
Some say that January 6, 2021 was a warm up. I’m sure trump was not counting on it being a warm up. When President Biden wins reelection the saving grace should there be another attempted coup that the President won’t hesitate to act. Hopefully also the media will not cover the blatant lies of the loser that instigated the first attempt.
But I have to ask once again what I have a few times previously, where is our Proud Boys and Oath Keepers? I very much do not want violence. However I think it’s inevitable based on current circumstances. So if it’s inevitable, where is our guys?
Those who vote Democratic are not bully boy types. Americans, I believe, have already chosen their side of the circle to stand on. As well as that the Democratic Party is a bigger tent and often suffers from inner turmoil. Republicans get into line.
Your question is excellent. I’ve worried about it many times and have concluded that the law, enforced justly, is our defense. We don’t have the guns, wouldn’t have the incentive or foolish bravado to attack and would be crushed in a confrontation.
The American system of law must hold.
I understand your viewpoint, as I said, I’m not into violence. I just hate being bullied by these thugs. We sit and worry about another insurrection. An expert said that a civil war would not look like the last one. It will be regionalized. Will our local law enforcement going to be able to respond to such an attack? Are we just supposed to sit back and take it?
I look back at Nazi Germany in the 30’s. Jews took a non-violent approach. Look where it got them. We need to stop going high while they go low.
I'm in.
Under item 1 Eric, I'll grant you that what you say there is important, however - there are larger issues at stake here with those outcomes / objectives regardless the outcome. He (it) will have to stand and account - a thing that creature has never had to do his entire lifetime. Big money and an army of shyster lawyers, threats and intimidation won the day for him throughout his life. The concerted shenanigans and maneuvering by several parties and all the lawyers may get him or others off again - who knows ? But he will have to face the consequence of having to account, just as you or I would have to do without an army of lawyers, at least speaking for myself. Thanks for your thoughts and input.
I have family in Gaetz's district. As far as I am aware, he has not done anything for his district, although Eglin Air Force Base is there. But that base was there way before Gaetz. It's a pretty rural district with lots of tRump supporters. Big Friday night lights country too.
I think it’s time to cut back on Elgin AFB, don’t you?
No cut back, just have President Biden visit. Best way to fight Gaetz.
Trumpers seem to like red baseball hats. How about some blue ones. I'm trying to think of something clever to put on it.
Not certain I want to imitate them with caps. How about blue tee shirts with photos of the president beside an American flag. Do you know a shirt design person? They can be very clever.
Tuberville messed up getting Space Force in Alabama. I guess the military figured there was too much "risk" to move it. Goes to show you that soldiers aren't just pretty guys in a uniform.
So, they're proud of Gaetz? They should be embarrassed. I was thinking he would be voted out. Their thinking is outrageous, and full of crap - and if they crash the economy, dangerous. But if our representatives can't face Trump, and the false information, then get ready for a crash. Who going to pick up the pieces?
The "rump", or derriere, is a body part--an oft-attractive secondary sex characteristic. Please don't conflate it with the worst president the US has ever had.
Our lamestreet media is a conglomerate monopoly owned by a few billionaires who want to rule America and has been for decades and we don't enforce the laws we have.
They’re granted broadcast licenses by the FCC. When they’re up for renewal they are supposed to announce that and there’s to be a comment period. Groups of people should be writing letters opposing the renewal.
I dearly wish it were the airwaves that mattered anymore. It's unfettered cable entertainment (never have they claimed to produce news) channels wrecking the scene. Thanks to intense and deep pocket lobbying, our fearless leaders have never made any effort to rein in cable programming, and therein lie the lies.
Yes, you and I own the broadcast spectrum and the FCC (troubled as it is by a nearly kneecapped board) is supposed to make an effort to represent us. They have all but failed to do that already and left cable to enrich its monopolistic owners and pervert the course of justice as algorithms apply truly bizarre advertising, i.e. the lifeblood of cable, trends.
The late 20th century tragedy of the AM band becoming primarily reich-wing talk radio plus automated ClearChannel stations has now gotten worse. Christian nationalist giant Salem Media owns or provides programming for nearly every remaining station. If it's not Salem messing with people's information stream, it's Sinclair.
I don't know what the endgame is here. As long as large numbers of people get their information from cable and social media, how do we pull out of this downward spiral? If we have any shot at improving US healthcare and education, and rolling back decades of inequity, we need Ranked Choice Voting, stat. Nearly no one on your teevee is going to explain what it is, let alone how it could help us out of this mess.
Absolutely!
Absolutely agree Lee.
EVERYONE READ MIKE'S COMMENT! This is something important that we can do to help uphold DEMOCRACY!
That works for the over-the-air stations. Take those away, and the billionaires will still own and control their cable networks, which have no permitting process and no public accountability.
If you have the cash, you can buy one too, and influence whoever will tune in and listen.
One thing though is that cable networks are subject to subscription. I think that may limit how people watch. Billionaires can spend as much money as they like on cable, I believe they will not have the same reach as with over the air networks.
We are way beyond curtailing any news source’s ability to be regulated. The FCC stopped enforcing licensing of the airwaves under the Reagan Administration. Cable news was never subject to federal licensing, but only state and local. As long as they had one pathetic local access channel for “diverse programming” they could do anything they like. Radio and tv moved to satellite band, which is not regulated by the government. Social media movd to internet, which is thoroughly unregulated. Feds stopped enforcing the rules against monopolies under Reagan Administration as well, which forbade any one television, radio or newspaper company from buying up any other media in their region, to ensure a diversity of information and a healthy competition for advertising dollars and the news. In the 80s and 90s, when I worked in the daily newspaper industry, Gannett and other big newspapers began buying up all the little community weeklies that were their competitors, as well as small radio stations and local television stations. By the 2000s, there was no diversity. Then internet came and now entities like Breitbart, Alex Jones, Newsmax, and Christian Broadcasting and of course Fox/Murdoch are basically beyond the reach of any regulatory authority. What’s needed are new laws, but that will never happen in such a divided country and Congress.
FOX & NewsMax are cable. FOX has more viewers than the over the air networks
Great idea! Thanks.
You want to censor the press for reporting what Republican traitors say? Blame the damn traitors. Blame human nature for allowing sociopaths to exist. What you’re really upset about is the ability of propaganda to control huge numbers of stupid people and the inability of ample good journalism to bring those morons to their senses. Rush Limbaugh is dead. His lies live on. While we could and should criminalize commercial lying, it can’t stop the fascists. Be prepared for worse to come. The Founders knew they were handing down no guarantees.
Go back and read the comment again, this time for comprehension. Where did she say, or even imply, that she wants to censor the press?
She is implying an imbalanced media when the real problem is fascist propaganda. The remark about censorship was a question not an accusation. Our problem is much deeper than imbalanced reporting.
While what you say is quite true...the reverse is also true: that if the journalism and media reporting was more even-handed, perhaps our problems wouldn't be quite so dire.
That makes sense. But it won’t exorcise fear and hatred. Nor will it penetrate mass ignorance in time to prevent the worst outcomes. FDR succeeded because the damage was done. He reacted accordingly. President Biden is trying to prevent the worst from happening. As brilliant as he is, that’s an uphill battle and one he just might lose. I see the danger to the republic as existential.
The problem is both sides journalism, and you want more "even-handed" reporting; it's what is causing the distorted picture we see every day of Trump and his acolytes as politics as usual.
I meant my remark to apply to the media which isn't covering Biden's accomplishments and speeches but rather ignores his news making and instead follows the clownish antics of Trump because more clicks and more eyes means more money. Money bias as opposed to "both sides have valid arguments" journalism. I think we may be talking about two different phenomena.
I do agree that normalizing what the R's are doing as "politics as usual" is very bad for the country.
Dude. You literally said, "She wants to censor the press." And when called on it, you try to change the subject. As for "the real problem," both contextually inaccurate (not "imbalanced") media and fascist propaganda are real problems, and they're not the only ones.
Your absolutism coupled with rudeness are a perfect match.
I live to serve.
No. It was a question. Read it again, this time for comprehension.
It came across as rhetorical, which is exactly what you intended.
Misinformation and disinformation can kill US if the traitors and liars are not called out constantly.
This is true. And we’ve been doing that. But the Reagan revolution is in the driver’s seat. Our calls are falling on deaf ears. There is no groundswell of protest. Maggots are still spewing their filth on the floors of Congress. There are no students taking over administration buildings at Columbia. There seems to be no law by which to prosecute the Musk-ovite for war crimes. This is Third Reich stuff, and too many millions support it.
James Burnham - "What you’re really upset about is the ability of propaganda to control huge numbers of stupid people..."
"𝘍𝘰𝘳 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘳𝘦𝘤𝘰𝘳𝘥, 𝘐 𝘥𝘰𝘯’𝘵 𝘵𝘩𝘪𝘯𝘬 𝘈𝘮𝘦𝘳𝘪𝘤𝘢𝘯𝘴 𝘢𝘳𝘦 𝘴𝘵𝘶𝘱𝘪𝘥. 𝘐 𝘵𝘩𝘪𝘯𝘬 𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘺 𝘩𝘢𝘷𝘦 𝘫𝘰𝘣𝘴 𝘵𝘰 𝘥𝘰 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘤𝘩𝘪𝘭𝘥𝘳𝘦𝘯 𝘵𝘰 𝘳𝘢𝘪𝘴𝘦 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘭𝘪𝘷𝘦𝘴 𝘵𝘰 𝘭𝘪𝘷𝘦. 𝘛𝘩𝘦𝘺 𝘥𝘰𝘯’𝘵 𝘩𝘢𝘷𝘦 𝘵𝘪𝘮𝘦 𝘵𝘰 𝘴𝘵𝘶𝘥𝘺 𝘱𝘰𝘭𝘪𝘤𝘺 𝘪𝘴𝘴𝘶𝘦𝘴, 𝘴𝘰 𝘮𝘰𝘴𝘵 𝘰𝘧 𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘮 𝘨𝘦𝘵 𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘪𝘳 𝘴𝘦𝘯𝘴𝘦 𝘰𝘧 𝘸𝘩𝘢𝘵’𝘴 𝘩𝘢𝘱𝘱𝘦𝘯𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘵𝘰 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘤𝘰𝘶𝘯𝘵𝘳𝘺 𝘧𝘳𝘰𝘮 𝘸𝘩𝘢𝘵 𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘺 𝘴𝘦𝘦 𝘰𝘯 𝘛𝘝 𝘰𝘳 𝘩𝘦𝘢𝘳 𝘧𝘳𝘰𝘮 𝘱𝘰𝘭𝘪𝘵𝘪𝘤𝘪𝘢𝘯𝘴. 𝘜𝘯𝘧𝘰𝘳𝘵𝘶𝘯𝘢𝘵𝘦𝘭𝘺, 𝘴𝘰𝘮𝘦 𝘰𝘧 𝘸𝘩𝘢𝘵 𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘺’𝘳𝘦 𝘵𝘰𝘭𝘥 𝘪𝘴𝘯’𝘵 𝘵𝘳𝘶𝘦." --Paul Krugman
[Late addition]
Why people think things are worse when they’re really getting better.
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/09/12/opinion/crime-inflation-polls-economy.html?unlocked_article_code=e0g7YRtjM6jZ6co-QJ6QgCfol0yDiaRf_yAzanjqMHMzkAAHdeKKK1BRrUsQcoJ1OpZGJLVPP63nBHSdvNfUKB_DQOCYGrvwQ35n_tzj_ff51vBJx3WZEJDjEu4UjHzHfd31KnJLqqjyb5_Fi4aouhwwjQBqqLvMlD1csaRPgXbCml1rPo_0CmGp_mlKVsQyvt6YJrJkPogM286wsXjswx-8V32gf5fTSiLju9hI1uPwPd_jDVdX64lNisOVRg0-bt0JJarlYZMGLWIkZnpEhepboB8uH5leeeoWM9krBrIAMA_9YdCe8UKlgKW8nNjsEg5BCbBNrCNF1rEpKVriUDh68JiOwLA&smid=url-share
Unfortunately, with social media, every wing nut now has a platform. If you believe what people post, times are just awful. I have seen a person who lives at the end of the street behind us stir the pot on Nextdoor about her neighbor. Nobody knows the full story, but there were all kinds of ignorant comments. We took screen shots to show the neighbor in case some wing nuts showed up. Last night I was on a thread about a proposed tax in the city of Salem. I can't vote on it as we don't live in the city. But there was the usual comment about "they" doing something nefarious. This "they" is responsible for lots of things. Then there were no proposals about exactly what to cut. A lot of this in just anti tax. It took three votes in our local fire district which is large and partly rural for us to have 24 hour service. I was amazed at what some of the people used as an excuse for not voting for it. I will also not the most of the time, the people who complain the most about the government are first in line for services or in some cases, fraudulent asks for handouts. As for the Rs, Biden is correct. They stand for nothing. They haven't done a thing for ordinary people and they have made clear that if they prevail, they will finish the destruction of our democracy that death star did each and every day of his regime. Believe them and vote D. No third party nonsense either.
Did you read Paul Krugman's Opinion yesterday: 'America Betrays Its Children Again'.
'But the latest census report on income and poverty made me angry. It showed that child poverty more than doubled between 2021 and 2022. That’s 5.1 million children pushed into misery, for it really is miserable to be poor in America.'
'And the thing is, this didn’t have to happen. Soaring child poverty wasn’t caused by inflation or other macroeconomic problems. It was instead a political choice. The story is in fact quite simple: Republicans and a handful of conservative Democrats blocked the extension of federal programs that had drastically reduced child poverty over the previous two years, and as a result just about all of the gains were lost.'
Or have you listened to what the auto workers are saying,
‘Doc Killian, who has worked in a Ford assembly plant in Wayne, Michigan, for 26 years, says he can no longer afford the cars he helps build, crystallizing how the nation’s middle class has been squeezed.’ (AP)
Plenty of Americans are having a tough time. While there is a lot of concentration on the this forum about the 'weaknesses' of the press, the accomplishments of Biden, Trump's ownership of the 'Republican' Party, its betrayal of the principles of Democracy...what about the American people? How are we doing, and how well is President Biden and the Democratic Party communicating with us?
Bingo Fern ! The party is "Not" listening, has "not been" listening, and they don't listen still. I personally can attest to that from very long personal experience. I can also attest more accurately regarding the positions of the auto workers, from first hand study / insight, and many life long friends hourly and salary that made their careers in the auto industry. What you quote from Doc Killian is at least true; they can no longer afford the vehicles they 'help' build. UAW wages and benefits are no longer a meaningful share of the price of vehicles. The real labor and material costs are from outside parts and assemblies the automakers have jobbed out to other vendor companies; some that they have ownership positions in.
Some? NewsMax & FOX seem to be “All Lies, All the Time” CNN isn’t much better & the rest of the MSM is pretty squishy.
Go to MSNBC where there are bright former prosecutors, judges, professors of law, members of both parties in Congress, some of the best judicial and political minds in the country, top journalists, authors and book reviews, plus just enough DT to see his perfidy. It has flaws, but is the best this ABD has found. Coupled with NY Times and what RSN highlights, plus HCR, and you’ve got a fairly good picture of what’s really happening. Of course I think of Goebbels every time I see Fox. He was, after all, a genius about propaganda.
I would suggest the Guardian. No paywall. Subscriber supported.
Thank you for the teminder. I almost always read it when it pops up and sometimes there are Guardian reporters on MSNBC.
I forgot to mention, no ads. (Occasionally a request to contribute, but not interrupting what you are reading.)
Dont forget Civil Discourse (Joyce Vance)!!
Never. I have not taken time to listen, but really like seeing her on MSNBC.
Yes, he was, and consequently much studied. You do know what the nazi party through back at the U.S. opposition to their persecutions of jews, gypsy's, and others ? Our Jim Crow laws and other repressions in the south, elsewhere.
PBS has the News Hour, which isn’t at all perfect but does air good interviews with experts on whatever the topic. PBS has Frontline. NPR, anyone?
I'm finding that MSNBC is trying to just play the "gotcha" game lately. Not particularly a good look for them.
Linda, seems almost all the news platforms do so to a degree. I agree w/ Virginia that MSNBC does a better job than many platforms, tho I am selective which segments I watch (eg; those that voice less hyperbole). Personally, I like to view a few platforms to see what/how they are covering news/issues.
Barbara, I don't disagree. I think MSNBC has the most concise lineup. I will watch and read a number of sources. I think that is the fairest way to oversea current events
Stupidity and ignorance do not imply low IQ. What Krugman illustrates is precisely my point. Vast numbers of people were so clueless and indoctrinated that they voted for Trump, an obvious imbecile. Have you looked at the faces of his supporters at his rallies? Have you heard them talk? Yes, they are reachable. FDR reached them just in time to avert a fascist takeover here. And that was due to immense international crises. His genius worked only after the damage was done. Now we await further damage, which surely will come. Putin. Musk-ovite.
I wish people would stop referring to Trump as "an imbecile". For one, it gives him cover in that he provides the appearance of being an imbecile so that he can play the ignorance card. Also, he has been able to play the system so efficiently over many years, and has never ended up in jail, not to mention that he successfully duped millions of people into voting for him. And lastly, he continues to hold sway over the GOP despite the fear and contempt many of its members have for him. This is why he is dangerous. He may not know history, but he knows how to play the con and he's winning at it.
He's no imbecile when it comes to plotting to get what he wants. If he were stupid he wouldn't be the leader of a very large and dangerous cult. He's a grifter, a con man, an adept liar, and a showman who knows how to play to a crowd.
Then call him a successful con man. He’s still an imbecile and so are all of his supporters and co-conspirators.
I guess it’s good that he’s good at something!/s Hmmmm….the Gold-plated Greatest-Ever Gifted Grifter?
Right on James👍
What few of those wailin’ n bitchin’ realize is that they will be amongst the first sliddin’ under the bus . Before OUR very eyes , proof positive , the complicit and their ludicrous leader have plainly played their cards , the game, as further advertised -the future plan, in fact -started continues being put in place. 2025? I apologize for barely listening to the BS! I laugh frequently at it, praying for some semblance of sanity to reappear in a party I once...ONCE...thought was American.
It.Is.Dead.
I hope everyone complicit comes to realize what a fool they’ve been taken for...and we know who ‘those’ are.
But now/to duration/and after ...I will support the Biden/Harris terms for the hopeful 8 years ...with my vote, and applause, while I herald decency ...of a job those few respected ...the oath they gave honor to.
But......
Eventually this sordid stupidity will end , will come to the complicit...it always has.
Many years ago I saw this coming, I labeled it a lesson needing taught (the hard way obviously) many heard, being patient may be painful. But it isn’t us who sold out.
💙💙VOTE BLUE IT’S THE ONLY WAY OUT 💙💙
Our times prove the old saw attributed to President Lincoln: “you can fool some of the people all of the time and you can fool all of the people some of the time, but you can’t fool all of the people all of the time.” I’m hopeful the “Trump Trials” will be a coda to “Trumpism” for a significant part of his base while the rest of his base will retreat to the woodwork and we, the majority of Americans, can go back to political discourse, sometimes heated to be sure, but based in fact and reality.
I think she was calling for equal coverage. News reporting via instant access has become competitive to the point that ratings, or which news outlet gets the most hits, matters more to corporate owners of news media. Sensationalism attracts the most internet hits, and corporate investors, who likely have no concept of ethical reporting and are driven by attracting advertiser revenue (based on the ratings) do not care. I expect most reporters were taught about ethical reporting, but unfortunately they no longer seem to rise to the top in order to enforce fairness. Yes, everything should be reported, and everything includes all viewpoints.
Margaret, it’s the “if it bleeds, it leads” reporting—a term first “coined by journalist Eric Pooley, in 1989, for an article he did in the New York Magazine – “Grins, Gore and Videotape. The trouble with Local TV News” (quote popped from online search), as did this interesting article:
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/two-takes-depression/201106/if-it-bleeds-it-leads-understanding-fear-based-media
I have read your comments. You are completely off base but refuse to admit your mistake- comprehension is critical in disputes.
Who are you directing this comment to?
Judith, I sometimes have a hard time easily discerning who a comment is directed to as well! That’s why I often put the name of the commenter at the beginning of my comment…figure it might lessen confusion since some of the comments actually appear down-thread.
Good question.
RL died?
Rush Limbaugh died, but not his influence.
Guess Joe’s reward will have to come in heaven, he sure ain’t getting one on this planet. Chump and his gang of traitors will see to that. You are right, so is James, Lex and T.L
Stephanie, I too lament that the press in many feeds the drama/trauma of #45 and his cult followers specifically because it isn’t balanced. I emailed NPR and asked them to give Biden equal press even though he is not the drama king. And remind listeners how much he has done. It isn’t about hushing anyone.
Real news coverage:
Donnie had another tantrum.
Meanwhile, Joe accomplished these things.
We the American people do not deserve Joseph Biden as our president. He is a decent and hard working competent man. And the lies and slander and threats that are thrown at this man and his family. America land of the greed and home of the mean.
That’s what they do, that’s why my mute button is ever ready, they lie, they brainwash, they sensationalize , the wear down people’s hopes . Tactical drip drip drip.
I totally and completely agree and bitch about it constantly!
Remember… Whatever Democrats say is exactly the opposite of what is true…
Once again, HCR, a masterful weaving together in one post of all these appalling developments I've been reading about for a couple of hours, now, over several newspapers.
That last line of President Biden's about the ideal of the nation made me cry, and I'm not a crier:
“We’ve never fully lived up to it,’’ but “[w]e’ve never walked away from it. These other guys are trying to walk away from it.”
It's worse than walking away from it. They're trying to blow it up. Today's stories make that even more clear than usual.
I'm with you. How can we be unmoved and skeptical when people must put their lives on the line to avoid chaos? Mitt Romney is braver than I knew. Fortunately, he can afford to pay for the security his family needs, but not many people could. (What happened to Paul Pelosi should have made that clear.) Mitch McConnell has failed his party and the American people, and Speaker McCarthy can't control the people he sold out to. Complaints about Joe Biden's age are a distraction.
I am so coldly angry at Mitch McConnell, knowing the damage that his Machiavellian maneuvers have done to the Supreme Court and to all women in this country. He could have pushed the GOP Senators to convict Trump, and we would be free of him running for office ever again. The GOP would likely be healthier because they would have excised the cancer that is Trump.
Of course he left Romney hanging when Romney warned him of the danger about to descend on DC on Jan6. Of course he never responded to him. He does not know how to care for anyone else.
I see the health issues McConnell is having now, and I smile. I see people say how they pity him; I do not.
This man has done so much damage to our country. He will be reviled in history.
He is reviled in the present by many, for the sniveling, Machiavellian coward he is. While I won’t take pleasure in the health challenges he is experiencing, I hold neither pity nor empathy for him.
McConnell is an example of the selfish, Machiavellian politician who obstructs and plays dangerous political games for fun. Now the joke could very well be on him. I picture him dropping dead at his desk because he just won't give up his office even though he's even older than Biden, and in lousy health.
McConnell is not the only one in that "boat".
Like the CEO's of the major industries McConnell is beholden to the oligarchs; they are all compensated with unlimited money and power to look the other way, discard their humanity and kneel before their minders as they trod over the working people on the way to enriching the real ruling class.
I'm ashamed to say I agree with you
Mitt Romney waffled and knuckled under rather more than I like, but I see a trace of old school Republican in him.
yeah, but Mittens is still a hypocrite and has been one ever since his college days. He is not the man--or leader--that his father was. If he was contemptuous and disgusted by the party that he witnessed the Republicans devolving into... He could--at any time--have stepped away or declared himself to be an Independent.
Agreed. Why didn't Mitt volunteer to testify for the Jan 6th House Committee? There are enough breadcrumbs to follow that suggest there was inside help. Why didn't he make headlines with his revelations about Senator King's warnings in January of 2021? Why wait until your book comes out? Really?
The story of the rot inside the House and Senate has only had a prologue, a forward, so to speak. The attempted coup (which continues to this day) will eventually show complicity by more than a few Proud Boys and a sitting president.
I have to believe that as prosecutions continue, there will be more and more "flippers" who will provide clues as to how all this came to pass. Why? Because despite my anger and frustration, I am an optimist. And that optimism is fueled by the fact that when a person is facing hard time in a jumpsuit, they usually do whatever they can to minimize or escape that fate.
"Why wait until your book comes out? Really? "
That is becoming a common maneuver, consistent with the "Chicago School" notion that personal profit trumps the National Interest. It's a vile, sociopathic concept.
Rot is everywhere and has a function, but a healthy organism or society resists rot, and arrests it's spread into living tissue. America was gaining health (and in some ways, still is), despite serious bouts of illness, prior to the plutocratic capture of the public narrative that Reagan was the face of. Nixon spread rot, but was repelled by our societal "immune system" until Ford abused the power of pardon to hold him above the law. Not that that's a new idea. but I think that perhaps that pardon signaled a turning point in our current rash we are seeing the law used to sabotage the intended functions of the law, perhaps comparable to how a virus commandeers our own genetic processes to increase it's spread.
Trump made many Orwellian appointment designed to sabotage the very functions the appointees were pledged to fulfill, but perhaps the apex of this perversion was the plan to twist the mechanics of the Electoral College in order to negate the empirical, real world election result. That is really a crime worth a chapter in any reasonable history book; and with the RNC resolution, branding the rioters "ordinary citizens engaged in in legitimate political discourse", and condemning all efforts to hold them accountable, the whole "Republican" Party signaled it's ownership of the crime. We have let them get away with far too much "rot" already, and cannot afford to lose the "patient"; which is us, and even our posterity.
Yeah, history will judge him unkindly.
If recorded history triumphs over propaganda.
Was "history" appointed by a Republican or a Dem? You be the judge...
By "history," I mean "historians," who, as a group, do a pretty good job of research and of self-correcting. HCR is a wonderful example, but far from the only one.
Maybe there would have been another, and another, and another. But no, he folds
It seemed to me that Mitt tries to have it both ways. He published an "Open Letter" to President Obama in USA Today, urging Obama to copy the heath plan he supervised, and Obama basically did so; but then as a presidential candidate, Mitt had to distance himself from all that and claim that while the plan was right for his state, it was wrong for America. That was very "Republican" of him.
Always talks out of both sides of his mouth. Like ALL repubs
Well he does have a book coming out,after all. I give him very little credit for FINALY growing a pair,sorry. I do give him credit for voting to impeach T***P, but then he didn't push hard enough!!!
Notice how many politicians spill the beans after they've decided to leave politics. While in office, they keep their mouths shut out of self preservation.
We never asked for perfection. We asked for honesty. We asked for loyalty. We asked for help, consistent betterment , getting represented fairly, our share of the pie.
Thank you President Biden , Kamala, and #Staff.....
To the GOP: RIP
💙💙VOTE ALL THE COMPLICIT OUT💙💙
They serve those who would be feudal lords and the stratified society that goes with it. And yes, we have never fully lived up to our ideals, and frankly blown it big time in a number of ways, but much of American History displays salient progress against injustice and tyranny. The creation of the Constitution (not an American king), abolition, women's suffrage, workers rights, civil rights, gay rights, and so on. Though it all the plutocrats fought to retain slavery, for laissez faire and the right to monopolize markets, and now, quite frankly, against democracy itself.
"It is the eternal struggle between these two principles -- right and wrong -- throughout the world. They are the two principles that have stood face to face from the beginning of time, and will ever continue to struggle. The one is the common right of humanity and the other the divine right of kings." - Lincoln
To this very day.
Thanks for that, JL. Progress has been shamefully slow, but it has been progressing. I have not the slightest doubt that Biden, Harris and their whole team know better than anyone what is at stake here, and how close we are to complete free fall.
It's hard to take the long view in times like this. Thanks for your perspective. I needed that today.
We have had many moments in our history where the Republic was assailed. There were other tipping points. The American fascists and bigots were quite evident and powerful just before WWII. FDR had them in his cabinet.
But in the grand scheme, we are going to prevail. Sadly, there will be casualties.
I deeply hope so. I think that around they world most people just want a fair shake, but the tricks those who wish to dominate use are effective, as history demonstrates, and today we are turning the stability of our own environment against us and have potentially oppressive technologies Orwell never dreamed of. So some of the tipping points are pretty scary. I never would have believed how many in our society love Big Brother.
But I also see a turning point in the "resistance is futile" apathy that empowers corruption, and modern "Republicans" are going further and further out on a limb. Unfortunately there are always many innocent casualties of these malignantly narcissistic power games. That's why public awareness and engagement is so important, since usually people who are least advantaged who suffer most from our foolish choices. What hath "Reaganomics" wrought? Connect the dots and something monstrous emerges.
Bill, as a gardener I’ve always liked the saying that is something like this: gardeners “plant trees in the shade of which they will never sit”. It is suitable for so many occasions….doing the work & effort that you may never fully benefit from or see come to fruition, but it is worth it.
As a fellow gardener whose wife is literally a tree hugger...I couldn't agree more.
I read this particular issue and my stomach turned and my blood boiled at the same time. If you check their legislative records I bet Greene, Gaetz, Boebert, Jordan and others have not introduced one bill intended to help the American people. I’m not counting the ridiculous impeachment resolutions. They are not there, as Boebert admitted, to do anything but disrupt.
Mike, they are too busy running around to get their media hits and "likes" in their social media accounts.
I'm sure you heard about Boebert and the Beetlejuice incident this past week. The photo that appeared in many articles was kind--the clip showed her barely keeping her dress up (constant tugging) and I couldn't help but think that if that was AOC the howls from the GQP would have gone viral.
Her ta-tas were falling out of her dress. There is video of her obnoxious behavior, including vaping, which is why people in the theater wanted her removed. She's a sociopath and a narcissist. AOC is a class act - she does her job and knows how to act in public.
No doubt.
They don't believe in the US Constitution, just as these supposed Christians don't believe in the New Testament. Dangerous people - some are throwbacks to Italian, Hungarian and German fascists, while most are old-fashioned far-right autocrats propping up oligarchic rule (think Francisco Franco, whose troops were bankrolled by Texaco and who in turn supported the oligarchs of his time).
Makes me wonder if they even know or understand the Constitution. They seem short-sighted, and narcissistically interested only in themselves and their macabre theater.
It isn’t important to know what they think, it’s important to vote them out. We know what they aren’t ...leaders, honest, worthy.
If the public isn’t willing to vote them out , and in some cases I realize they aren’t able, then most will go down with the ship and they’ll still be pointing the fingers at us.
The majority of ‘us’ know.
Will we take it to the ballot box is the ONLY question Nd the ONLY answer all wrapped into one.
💙💙VOTE ALL THE COMPLICIT OUT💙💙
Didn’t know about Texaco and Franco. Just wouldn’t go to Spain to see the Goyas until he was gone. Never got there as it turned out, but the Spanish Civil War haunts more than any other. No sooner climbing out of the Middle Ages than along come the fascists. Now to learn that Big Oil way supported Franco as Big Oil supported Iraq and Afghanistan... Will we wake up and put our energy into growing gardens, enjoying our world, and opening our minds instead of pursuing more money than we need to live? When do we stop worshipping our cars in order to protect the planet, ours and others’ lives? The current strike would be a wonderful moment for capital and labor to come together and agree on not only fair wages, but also retraining to build hybrids until a water proof electric car is possible and to plan electric trolleys in cities.
Amen! I hurt every time I hear MAGA trying to tear down this country & Constitution! It makes say things that I shouldn’t! When will we ever learn?
Alexandra, you know who should be willing to walk away from it? Anyone in a position of public trust/responsibility/authority who KNOWS something is wrong and is willing to give up power and control to do the right thing….if these folks in Congress lived up to their oath, TFFG would have been overwhelmingly impeached and convicted in the Senate.
Barbara, yes. And it's clear from just some of the excerpts from Romney's book that there were dozens of R senators who could have agreed to stand together, form a coalition with Dems, and stop this monster. They had plenty of safety in numbers and they STILL wouldn't do it. Contemptible.
Yes!
A large percentage of people who voted for Trump in 2016, and then again in 2020 simply seek to burn down democratic institutions of the United States in retribution for all they have heard reported by Fox 'News'. Cries of 'government out of my health care' by those depending upon Medicare or Medicaid. Those directed to worry about immigrants taking 'good American jobs' -that no other American would take -back breaking work, exploitation, and abuse in the agricultural farmlands or dangerous exploitative work in meatpacking plants. They are told that a solar farm in Nevada is why gasoline prices are so high (without questioning record profits at Exxon or Chevron -or the billions of taxpayer-funded oil company subsidies). They are told to laugh at the climate hoax while the world burns and floods. They are told that journalists are enemies of the people and they are still anxiously waiting for the Obama administration to 'take their guns'.
These voters, initially driven by Rupert Murdoch and Fox 'News' blame everything and everyone around them for their narrow lives. They have long ago given up on the 'American Dream' and now seek to destroy the few shreds that remain for everyone else -without regard for the impact upon themselves, their families, and their own communities. These voters send incompetent 'D-list' entertainers to Congress like Greene, Boebert, Gaetz, and Jordan (and why not? -they elevated Trump, and prior to that made a President out of a co-star to Bonzo the chimp.)
It is brutally ironic that so many Dreamers and others seek a path to citizenship and what was the American Dream, while so many who gained citizenship simply by being born at the right latitude and longitude seek to burn it all down.
These people who hate government will really hate it when the government stops working. Those who have given up on the 'American Dream' will not remember there ever was an 'American Dream' when they see how fascists rule. MAGAS will suffer the same as everyone. I pray there are enough of us to stop them.
George, you are so right. "Burn it all down" is the GOP (GQP) platform.
Wish I had said all this. Imagine Bonzo back in the WH with 109% revenge on his pea brain, and Gaetz, Green, Bannon and Jordan at his beck and call…
So well expressed. These are bottom feeders. They are hangers on, they want to stay in Congress long enough to be eligible for lifetime benefits at our expense.
Exactly! Can anyone hold up their paychecks if they shut down the government? This Social Security dependent would like to know.
I am too and would also like to know.
Yes - thats been my question every time they attempted this - remember Cruz (?) I think in 2013?
Amen and thank you. The Farm Workers Union always needs funding. Did you see the film of the workers being beaten when Reagan was governor. I saw it on TV one night in 1998. It still haunts.
I've had the honor of meeting lawyers and others who have dedicated themselves to farmworkers and worker rights, and they have done so sacrificing much of the income they might have otherwise generated on the employer side of the fence.
It says a great deal about a country as affluent as the United States, when the legal system must be used to simply ensure laborers under a hot central California sun, or in the desert have access to drinking water.
Thank you for noticing. I would like to have generated a bit of income for the union. Getting their mailings and being capable of only small donations, I wish them more power because they will be the ones to help feed US as climate change makes crop-growing and harvesting ever more difficult.
And yes, it says a lot about our stupidity and racism that it takes lawyers to ensure water for those who feed US.
Having grown up in a small community of small farmers and large dairy farmers, with my father’s large garden, I know that food isn’t made in the grocery store. Is that rare knowledge these days?
Sadly, it is rare knowledge. If more people knew that so-called "happy meals" didn't just suddenly appear, there might be more compassion for all (including more people ordering veggie burgers).
I’ll never forget my first portobello burger. Have only found one since, but would think it could become as popular as the national staple it needs to replace. (Mushrooms don’t fart.)
I wonder if Mitt Romney would be willing to testify at Trump's January 6 trial? What Romney related to Mitch McConnell about extreme violence coming to the capital is explosive. It completely debunks the MAGA narrative of J6 being "a peaceful protest that spontaneously got out of control." That attack was as "spontaneous" as a Kardashian plotline.
Shane, hilarious last line there, and so perfect!
Agreed
Much appreciate, Ally!
Thanks, Miselle!
[[Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA), who has led calls to impeach Biden, told the reporters that she told Trump she wanted the impeachment inquiry to be “long and excruciatingly painful for Joe Biden.” Ultimately, she says, she wants a “long list of names” of those she claims are involved in crimes with the Bidens, and when Trump wins the presidency in 2024, she wants “to go after every single one of them and use the Department of Justice to prosecute them.”]]
These people are Leninists. They just want to burn it all down so that in the ensuing chaos, they can seize absolute power. They are both psychopaths and incredibly stupid. And yet people keep electing them. Racism is a helluva drug.
MTG and company are the shiny objects meant to distract and they are stupid. But the real threat is from the very deviously smart billionaire-backed Heritage Foundation and Federalist Society and the 70+ other conservative organizations aligned with them. They have published a manifesto in Project 2025 for all to see. If they win, there is no question they will implement it. It will morph the purpose of EVERY government department and agency from benefiting the American people into protecting the authoritarians and the big moneyed interests.
These are the same folk who brought us the current conservative SCOTUS--the initial step necessary to be sure they will have a rubber stamp decision against any attempts to declare their plans unconstitutional.
I'm well aware of the billionaire threat. As a journalist back in the day, and later as a blogger, I wrote about it -- and was called panicky and biased for doing so. Turns out I was right, although I take no pleasure in that.
Same here
Bravi to both of you. Yesterday I remembered meeting the first Bush and Barbara and how I was so unimpressed by both and their new house that I forgot until he was two years into the presidency that I had actually met the president. We know what he did to the Kurds (first betrayal of that minority by the US).
Yes, these are the dangerous ones because they finance the GOP political campaigns, not the hoi polloi who we see slobbering over Trump at his rallies. They're the foot soldiers who cast the votes for MAGA candidates, but they don't keep the machine working on a long term basis.
Absolutely, Georgia. They are the man behind the curtain from The Wizard of Oz, and unfortunately, they have largely captured America's institutions.
Lex, I just wanted to say thanks for articulating this. My outrage and disgust on reading this about Greene this morning was paralyzing.
Thank you, Alexandra. As Mitt Romney said in The Atlantic yesterday, most of the Republican Party no longer believes in the Constitution. (He said he had only recently realized this. I figured it out when they circled the wagons around the Iran-contra defendants and Bush 41 pardoned them.) From there it's only a short step to the bat-guano psychopathy we're seeing, and pretty much every Congressional Republican has taken that step. I was a Republican for 40 years, so to a certain extent it pains me. But at this point I'd be surprised if I ever vote for a Republican again.
I was also a Republican in an "I like Ike" family. By the time I could vote, I had switched. Watching the insanity of Vietnam sent me over.
But over time, my political philosophy rolled around a lot. There were libertarian ideas that were attractive. (Government: stay out of my bedroom). There were revelations about the Military Industrial Complex that both parties fed off.
For a while, I was like millions of others. Consumed by my personal dramas. Politics? Meh. Then I was awakened by Al Gore and his warnings. What could possibly be more important? And then...the hanging chads of Florida! The stolen election. The phony invasion of two countries that were NO threat to the US. Good grief.
There is no perfect political party. But I am going to stick with the one that wants to save the planet and democracy. The one that wants kids to have food and healthcare. The party that really believes in the Constitution and the right to vote. It's now a no brainer. The Republican party of my parents died decades ago. It is now the party of cruel cowards and neo-Nazis. It must be outvoted until it recedes under the cold dark rock it emerged from.
Absolutely right. I stayed a Republican as long as I did partly out of inertia -- I stopped supporting the party nationally after the Gingrich wave, and in the state after it went bat-guano crazy in 2010. What pushed me to move was watching the reception that they gave TFG when he rode down the gold-plated escalator in 2015. I knew immediately that they were going to nominate him, that it would be tantamount to Nazism, and (from having lived in NYC in the '80s) that any government he led would be a functional disaster. I did not want to wake up one day and hear my grandkids asking me, "Pop, why do people call you a 'good German'?" So I walked away and haven't looked back.
Lex I too was a Republican through the first term of GW. It’s hard to believe looking back that I was. I also believe though that we were republicans of a different party. The one we were part of died.
I was a Democrat until 1976 when I was kicked out of the Aroostock County (Maine) Democratic committee because I was seen working a booth for John Anderson at the county fair. I then became an Independent who for years and years was as likely to vote for a (moderate) Republican as a Democrat. But no more and not for a long time. The Republican Party has been morphing into what it is today for many years prior to TFG and I cannot see any Republican, locally or nationally, whose views come close to intersecting with mine anymore. As an aside, while I was truly impressed with John Anderson, I do wish that I had had the foresight to recognize that working for and helping re-elect Jimmy Carter would have resulted in a far better outcome for our country, then and up until now!
I think Carter was painted as a strange person. As I recall wearing sweaters and turning down the thermostats in the White House. He was that peanut farmer with the hick brother. My point being that this portrayal tainted the world view of him. I liked John Anderson as well. I also liked John McCain. But like you, I can’t see myself voting for a Republican ever. As much as Romney comes off as reasonable because of his opposition to the maga culture, looking at his position on important issues, I couldn’t vote for him either.
True, but in hindsight I think I should have seen it even on the state level no later than 1994, and I didn't. I thought the reasonable Republicans would continue to hold sway. I was wrong.
Surely that thought would not cross your mind at this point.
Well, "never" is a mighty long time, so I hesitate to use it. But I can't see it happening, not nationally and not here in NC where I live.
As a native Tar Heel, I understand the comment. The state has changed after McCrory and Art Pope did their thing. I recall a trip there years ago, when I heard an announcement on the radio that Rush Limbaugh was coming to NC. Made my blood run cold. Friends and family are virtual strangers now. Beyond sad.
Same here. My outrage is over the top just thinking about what that lowly, sub-human goon said. What can we expect from someone that dropped out of Kindergarten is wailing about? She should be in cage in a zoo by the way she acts, like a wild animal.
Nailed her
I am beginning to think that MTG is not a woman. She is a horrific insult to women in my opinion. I honestly have never ever seen or heard of a woman that is so arrogant, ignorant and full of hate as MTG is. If there is a ''hell'' i think MTG must have emerged from it. To me, Donald TUMP is a horrific insult to human beings in general, just as MTG is.
Couldn’t agree more. Not an iota of humanity in either one, or many of the cult nuts. People like this used to be recognized for what they are and most elected to stay under their rocks. Now they are proud cretins/clowns whose hatred flows like the worst flood, threatening to drown us all
I totally agree with you. I am beyond sick of all of their hatred. I keep thinking how things would be ifHillary Clinton had won the election in 2016? We would not even be thinking about Donald TUMP and his cult followers right now. I think we would be way above all of his theme of hate, violence, and the senseless shootings that have killed hundreds of innocent citizens, and innocent little children. Oh what a huge blunder that TUMP has been. Just thinking about what i just wrote here drives me nuts.
She is not a Leninist she is just a dim, hateful person. Lenin was very clever.
Well, no, not a Leninist in the sense that she subscribes to all Lenin's ideas. I'm pretty sure she doesn't know them and wouldn't understand them. But in the limited sense I described, yes.
You mean Marge of the gazpacho and marshall law? Yeah, she knows who Lenin is. He was in the Beatles.
LOL.
*snort!!!* ba-da-bum!
Racism, sexism, and anger/hatred are the Long Island iced tea cocktail of the MAGATs.
"Racism is a helluva drug."
Yeah. It makes a lot of white folks do irrational things, even bat-guano insane things, personally and politically. I watched it happen from the time I was 10 and the school system in which I grew up started busing for integration. It's still happening today, more than 50 years later.
“We’re the only nation based on an idea—an idea. We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men and women are created equal, endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights. Look,” Biden said, “we’ve never fully lived up to it,’’ but “[w]e’ve never walked away from it.”
“These other guys are trying to walk away from it.”
HCR has been panning for gold.
The President is right on point. Our noble beliefs about equality, and liberty and justice for All, are aspirational. We've been working toward those goals since the founding of the nation. We are not going to quit.
David I appreciate your optimism and am walking beside you! Rhetorically that is
And she never wastes her time.
Sounds to me like the ‘Pubbies are now supporters of gun control. Look at the charges against Hunter Biden. Two counts of lying on a firearms application and being a drug addict. One count of being a drug addict in possession of a firearm. Never mind he owned said firearm for all of 11 days, never put any ammo in it or fired it.
Sounds like gun control to me.
And then there’s the case of Kyle Rittenhouse. In possession of weapons while underage, carrying those weapons across state lines, murdering 2 people—one of whom was mentally ill, the other was threatening him with a skateboard.
But what do I know? I’m just a simple girl from the country.
From my understanding, these charges are rarely brought by themselves. They are usually added on to more serious charges involving gun violence. This whole thing with Hunter Biden is a sham. All of it is for the benefit of trump. My heart goes out to Hunter. Many, many people have issues with drug or alcohol abuse. Imagine trying to get healthy in his reality? The gun charge should be thrown out of court. It's ridiculous. Maybe we should investigate MAGA family members just because. No. We're better than that.
As I read this, I was wondering how many red hatted voters have drug issues AND guns? Quite a few, I'd bet.
Aw hell. If substance abusers were denied guns here in MAGA land we’d be overrun with deer.
IJBOL!!
Lets see - too many deer or too many MAGATS? Gosh I think I'd take the deer.
🤣🤣🤣
BC I agree with you. The Hunter Biden charges are a sham that would never be brought of his name wasn’t Hunter Biden. I think they were brought on so quickly by the special prosecutor DW. I think he was threatened. I don’t understand how this can be happening.
Nor do I. I'm thinking, with all the legal experience I've obtained by reading Joyce Vance, that maybe the judge hearing the case will throw it out. I'm not sure, though. I don't think Joyce wrote about this yet. I'm being silly about knowing law. Obviously, I don't. But, this scenario is what I'm hoping to happen. It seems like politics is moving this case.
These charges because the statue of limitations expired on his parking tickets and a rubber check he wrote t9 his supplier when he was 18.
Not in these times, we're not. Tired of fighting clean. Our very democracy is at stake.
No more Mr./Ms. Nice Guy.
Seems to me that the Republicans p, illegitimate Supreme Court and NRA should be rallying around Hunter. They say there is no license required, okay for concealing, etc. so according to them he did nothing wrong. As I recall, Boebert carries a gun on the floor of the House.
Marla, the hypocrisy slays me. I lived in the South for a while and I went to slews of parties and events where at least half the attendees could've been convicted for 'Two counts of lying on a firearms application and being a drug addict. One count of being a drug addict in possession of a firearm."
I am in the north and had a coworker with family in a red state. She attended a family party, I think it was a hs graduation, and mentioned that as everyone arrived, they all put their handguns on top of the refrigerator. I thought she was joking. She was not. I guess drinking and tempers were common, and "if the guns were on top of the fridge, anyone going for it could get tackled before they reached it"
!!!!!!!
Handy for the children, or those who came unarmed, too...
Did anyone see the news that the Governor of NM tried to ban the carrying of guns in that state? They have had a lot of mass shootings - altho at this point - so has every other state. I think it got "shot down" . Law officers said they would not enforce it & I believe a judge put a stop to it. I have to admit - for any law officer to have to enforce it where people are presently carrying and concealed carrying might be a pretty scary situation. Imagine the current crowd of MAGAs at that point.
How sad is it that the bottom line is that nobody DARES to try that?
Republicans support the strict enforcement of gun laws for everyone . . .
. . . named Hunter Biden. If you're named Hunter Biden, you will By God and By GOP be prosemecuted! Anyone else ... eh, not so much.
Their insistence that "we have to prosecute Hunter because nobody is above the law" is laughable considering how much they lurrrrrrve Trump, and considering that when they controlled the federal government they didn't prosecute more than a literal handful of the tens of thousands of people caught lying on their federal gun purchase forms. Talk about a witch hunt; if they could burn Hunter at the stake at midnight, Margie Three Names would light the match.
What you said about Kyle Rittenhouse is inaccurate, but I have no wish to open that ancient debate again, so I will instead wish you a happy weekend out in the country :-)
Brilliant!
This column is part of what appears to be shift toward recognizing and publicizing Joe Biden's extraordinary accomplishments and the Republicans' despicable approach to dealing with America's public policy toward what are, to me, inexplicable goals. Every reporter. Every columnist. Every leader of the media in the country has to choose between a false even-handedness and integrity as they report in the run up to the election. That choice will chart the direction of the country. If they choose integrity, they will follow Heather Cox Richardson's lead.
I suspect that news media fears losing followers if they Woodward and Bernsteined the epically corrupt "GOP", but they may lose a whole lot more than subscribers if they don't.
Exactly. The news media both creates and needs a country with integrity. Without it, the news media loses its independence. Consider, by the way, my free newsletter - Len's Political Notes. Subscribe at https://lenspoliticalnotes.com.
With respect, Heather isn't "shifting" toward anything. From the beginning of Biden's term, she not only has reported straightforwardly on Biden's successes and failures, she also has provided deep historical context for what he is doing and trying to do.
She is an historian first. We all need to keep that in mind. It amplifies everything in her wonderful letters.
Also her motivation for what she is documenting: creating a historical record for some future historian to read and assess this time in our nation’s history.
Absolutely.
Could not agree more.
Heather is part of national movement shifting us all to a better understanding of Joe Biden's accomplishments.
I am sorry that Mitt Romney is walking away, but I don't blame him. When the majority of party succumbed to trump's fascism in pursuit of power, the Republican Party of Lincoln died. I am also sorry that Hunter Biden turned to drugs and wealth to prop up his sagging ego, but Hunter is 53 years old, hardly a child. President Biden has neither legal, nor moral responsibility for his son's behavior. I hope when all this mess is behind us Hunter can receive the mental health treatment he so obviously needs.
As to the trumpian maggots in the House of Representatives, their stupid ploy of impeaching President Biden on spurious charges with NO evidence is such a waste of taxpayer dollars and time that could be better put to working for the American public as they were elected to do. I still wish we could sue them for all the wasted taxpayer money.
I would not agree that Hunter Biden is propping up a sagging ego. As a retired mental health therapist,I would say he is still suffering from the severe trauma he experienced in early childhood. I too hope that someday Hunter Biden will receive the help he needs to finally bring him peace.
Do you think, like I do, that he may have purchased that gun because he had suicidal thoughts.....? As a person in recovery for 19 years, I have heard many stories from the rooms of AA that give me pause about the reasons he may have had in obtaining the gun.......I pray for him, for he is a sick man.
His sister-in-law has said that's why she threw the gun away, fear that he may have intended to kill himself and end his emotional pain.
I didn’t think that, but it seems like a real possibility. Actually, it crossed my mind that all this pressure might be putting him at risk for suicide.
Was just going to write a similar sentiment. If he did, do you think the MAGAts would then be happy? Nah
I agree. I’m almost sure that was why.
I share your assessment, though I’m not a therapist. First he survived a violent crash that killed his mother and sister and then later in life lost that brother too.
I defer to you expertise, I am not a psychology major, but I'm glad you concur that Hunter needs some treatment to relieve what ever is causing him the mental anguish.
Thank you, MLMinET. You beat me to it.
But whatever chump wants, chump gets. McCarthy made this clear from the git go. May the noose tighten…
I'd love to throw Gaetz and Greene into a Florida swamp and let gators do what gators do, but those two are so saturated with the toxic waste of MAGA even gators would spit them out.
The gators would probably die a horrific death if they consumed that much toxic poison. The poison those two would produce would be hundreds times worse than Cyanide. It doesn't get much worse than those two creeps.
They are also so slippery they'd slide out from between the gators' jaws, thus annoying and humiliating the gators and so PETA would charge in and . . .
Sorry. Too little sleep last night :-)
LOVE THIS COMMENT!
You are too kind, Kathleen, and thank you for it.
“We’re the only nation based on an idea—an idea. We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men and women are created equal, endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights. Look,” Biden said, “we’ve never fully lived up to it,’’ but “[w]e’ve never walked away from it.”
“These other guys are trying to walk away from it.”
Those are the words of our doddering President. It would be nice if we all were so doddering at his age; indeed, at any age.
Republicans are out of ideas, empathy, and ethics. It is incumbent upon us all to do what Chesley Sullenberger III urged; please watch this clip:
https://youtu.be/9mzcW0zUSKg?si=q7BjdEbgby6yr-PA
Thank you, sorry I missed that earlier. Needs to be on every media outlet
That is awesome.
THANK YOU!! I missed it also!
Needs a new ending from Sullenberger that states “We voted him out, now we need to keep him out. Vote.” Plus constant airtime.
So powerful. I’m in tears.
wlipman, thank you!
Big supporter of the Lincoln Project--yet I somehow missed that one. One of their best ones....
So we'll get a book of puffery on Mitt Romney. Sorry, I'm not buying it. My father had no use for Mitt's father when he was governor of Michigan (I grew up there) and I had no use, years later, for Mitt when he became governor of Massachusetts. Yes, he had the courage to stand up to Trump while all of his Republican colleagues in the Senate cowered in fear. That only makes clearer the depths to which the Republican party has sunk - to the point where doing the right thing elevates you to the top of their dung heap: the dung heap is still there.
And he has the money to protect his family from the traitors. We see, we fear, we cower. Only money can save us. Billionaires only, the rest of us are toast.
“McConnell never answered.”
Not a mumbling word. Just awful.
I hope Jack Smith sees MR remarks and interviews him, or puts him up as a witness to testify in the Jan 6 trial.
Got that right Helen, MR cannot be cross-examined on his preferred social media outlet.
I have a list of questions but, I am sure Jack & Team have more.
Interesting that Romney’s book came out 9/12, the day after the 9/11/2012 anniversary of his launching his verbal bomb at Obama and Hillary Clinton about Benghazi. It’s important that he calls out his Republican colleagues, but it’s also important to remember his role in contributing to their behavior.
I woke up just a little while ago feeling so sad for the President. He must be so devastated about what is happening to his son. Yet somehow he keeps getting up everyday and doing what he believes is right for Americans. I can’t believe his resilience in the face of such terrible malice. I am not surprised that Senator Romney is not running again. He was our governor and although I did not vote for him, I always thought he was a good person and a competent leader. I fear that very soon, good, decent people will no longer run for office and we will lose our republic and end up like Germany in the 1930s. The Republicans have been playing a very long game to take over America and tonight I feel they are winning.
Biden is like men of my dad’s generation. Many were WWII vets. They didn’t complain, they didn’t point fingers. They got up every day and lived their lives and supported their families.
Nazis redux
“We’re the only nation based on an idea—an idea. We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men and women are created equal, endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights. Look,” Biden said, “we’ve never fully lived up to it,’’ but “[w]e’ve never walked away from it.”
Yeah! Right on, Mr President! What you're quoting there is the American Creed, the justification for our very existence as a nation and the source of our strength.