Early in the wake of Trump’s presidency, Republican Party lawmakers facing upcoming elections appear to have made the calculation that radicalized Trump voters were vital to their political futures.
A former president facing probable legal peril commenting on two geriatric fighters slugging it out on pay TV on the somber anniversary of perhaps the saddest day in our history, and last time the nation was united about anything.
On the positive side, it is more evidence that the former president is an increasingly irrelevant con man, back on tv in an effort to get out of his financial misadventures.
Joan, somehow I got on the Trump daily email list where either he or Jr spout lies and beg for money. Every. Single. Day. I was going to immediately block this creep, but decided not to. Instead I respond with a vulgarity or flat out call him a thief, everyday. The emails are a "reply to all". Not sure who gets them, but you would think someone on their end would have tossed me off the email list by now.
He is clearly desperate for money and doesn't care who he cons for it. But then, he has done that his entire life.
The former president will be running for re-election the rest of his life, because the money keeps pouring in. It's his most successful hustle of a life of hustles.
I agree with the premise that Trump is an increasingly irrelevant con man, but disagree that this qualifies as being “on the positive side”.
There is no positive side. Yet.
The sentiments of the 1/6 crowd and its hangers-on have moved well beyond Trumpism. The movement has lurched by him, is alive and well, and verges on nihilism.
The signs are everywhere. How could a state not rise in a blaze of fury against a state governor who is using his office to block/punish/subvert those who would insist on the best medical practices in the face of a pandemic that has roared back in full wrath? 13 people involved one way or another in education in one county have died of Covid in two weeks. A hurricane of much deadlier destructive power has hit Florida and the governor is not only blocking help, but in fact is stirring the very winds to greater intensity. Somehow, some way this malevolent madness, grounded in the self-interest of one man, must be stopped.
A couple of states to the left another governor has signed into law a bill which sets up a superstructure for hate by empowering vigilantes to monitor, excuse me, extinguish women’s reproductive rights. In response to a press query yesterday he took only a sentence or two to display his biological ignorance (or bad faith), and then fulminated about getting rapists off the street as if he had just conceived an idea that had not yet occurred to anybody in Texas. Or the States. Or the freaking world. Great idea. Wow, let’s think that one over. Meantime the rape kits are piling up.
This spurt of madness is occurring because the good governor has no Democratic opponent in his next election. But there are two candidates, squeezing into the tiny sliver of space to the right of him. So tear down a wall to the next room over where the really criminal, fascist right would like to go and leap nimbly past your opponents so that you once again have pride of place.
This sort of race to the bottom of a hollowed out democracy is sadly not limited to Texas. There are crazed, ambitious thugs everywhere whose moral compass points only downward. And they are elbowing their way into primaries in red states everywhere. That can only end in sweetness and light.
In Idaho, they are taking the first steps toward rationing care. That, of course, would be only coincidental to the fact that the state has a scintillating 39.7% full vaccination rate. “Rationing care”, a benevolent sounding phrase, means that if things get really, really bad, if the Delta variation doesn’t excuse itself and leave the room, then the doctors will have to decide who gets the health care to keep them alive, and who doesn’t. Where are your death panels now Sarah Palin? You certainly stirred the pot before mercifully disappearing into the ether.
Meanwhile, on the other side, that intellectual heavyweight, Senator Joe Manchin, has called for a “pause” in the deliberations of the 3.5 trillion infrastructure bill. Does he not realize that infrastructure has been on pause for so many years that it has become a meme? I really don’t have a picture in my mind of a horde of Senators rushing to the aisles, trampling each other in an effort to be first to vote on this bill. Have I missed something in the news?
No. The Democrats limp along their grand legislative path, taking care to re-shoot themselves in the foot periodically.
We need a pause? We got that when nine bright bulbs decided to vote against the big infrastructure bill if the little infrastructure bill wasn’t passed first.
And meanwhile, the voting rights bills have been put into a closet some time ago and now everybody’s forgotten which closet exactly it was.
And the anti-democracy bills get passed across the land with monotonous regularity. Maybe, Senator Manchin, you could ask for a pause on those.
And there are, give or take, 114 days left in 2021. And there’s word that there might be elections in 2022. Under new rules.
That about covers the bad news, minus the Trumps fondling a microphone at a perfectly 21st century gladiatorial exhibition… [checks notes]…oh wait, there is one more small thing.
Climate change.
Sorry for the dyspeptic rant. I’m feeling particularly vexed today. We have some monumental screw-ups here in Canada at the moment.
'O’Rourke has not made a decision on whether to challenge Abbott, which is causing some heartburn for Democrats worried they will be stuck without a major candidate.'
'But for 2022, other legitimate candidates could emerge. Julián Castro, the former San Antonio mayor and U.S. Housing secretary, hasn’t ruled out a run for governor, one of his aides said last week.'
'A new University of Texas/Texas Politics Project poll revealed that Abbott’s approval rating his dipped to 41%, with 50% disapproving of his job performance. The survey found that 52% of Texans feel the state is headed in the wrong direction. The mood of the respondents is shaped by the resurgence of the coronavirus, according to Texas Politics Project director Jim Henson.'
“There’s a general discontent and a dourness out there,” Henson said.'
'Strother said O’Rourke could help Democrats craft the narrative that Abbott is leading Texas in the wrong direction.' (Dallas News) see link below:
Good reply, Fern. Thank you. I surround Julian Castro and Beto O’Rourke with white light often in my light meditation along with quite a few others. Many are working for the force of good.
IMHO I can’t help but think that if it’s a struggle for Dems to craft an election narrative against Abbot then we are truly a knee capped organization.
Hasn't not having a strong, clear, persuasive message been one of the failures of Democratic Party? Imagine not having a powerful message given Abbott's lethal form of governing? The needs of most people in America - White, Black, Hispanic, Asian... are great and the spirit understandably low -- at yet! You have pinpointed a serious flaw of the Party. I think that we cannot know on the outside complications having to do with the electorate. Fox, Social Media, the Pandemic all contributing factors -- Beto is talented. If he is resisting, it may have to do with what a hard nut it is to crack. He might have an easier time beating Cruz.
No need for no Urban Dictionary. I'm an Urban Animal.
Although I do sometimes check out which phrases have caught on. Sometimes it takes DECADES for slang to make its way from The Bronx to mainstream America. It is often in use sooner in Amsterdam or Berlin before anyone gets it in whitebread country.
"In American democracy, when the majority party has enough votes to pass populist legislation, party leaders designate a scapegoat who will refuse to vote with the party thereby killing the legislation. The opposition is otherwise inexplicable and typically comes from someone who is safe or not up for re-election. This allows for maximum diffusion of responsibility.
WTF??? Senator Lieberman now opposes the same health care compromise he himself suggested. Just when everyone thought Democrats had enough votes to get this done. Guess they made Lieberman the rotating villain..."
see, EVERYBODY KNOWS (credit to our dear Leonard Cohen)
Oh, 'separatism'--reminds me of the white nationalist hate groups. Strange discontinuity, Charlie, with Daniel's opinion of people working in government.
Well said, Eric. Yes, the present onslaught from the Right (and beyond) is now an independent movement, lurching forward with power and its own momentum, independent of the former president*. Not good.
G.Zinn, Can you share why you think the extreme right is separate from Trump? I don't know his role, just wonder how cohesive the various groups are - how they come together. They aim to break up the current government and totally suppress minorities, what else? Is there a coherent plan for their means of governing? The Republican Party didn't even have a party platform at their convention. I know this movement is atomic. It may be able to bring the house down and then what? Does it need Trump as the Republican Party does -- their figurehead/promoter. Is Bannon a ringleader? Is knowing too little one of our biggest problems? I don't have confidence that the FBI knows enough or that any of our other agencies do.
It’s such a blatant message to his cult to fight it can’t even be called a dog whistle. An insurrection is an insurrection. Inciting civil war should get you locked up.
I agree, but millions of them make this insanity a threat to all of us. I couldn't believe that any sane person could vote for this abomination in 2016, but with all that has resulted from his presidency, they're still here, and more determined than ever. It is a relief, though, that Greg Abbott, in justifying his draconian abortion ban, assured everyone that there is no danger of rape causing a pregnancy, as ALL rapists would be arrested and jailed, thus making rape impossible.
And those eleven ultra-right members of the House mentioned above by HCR, if they ran today, would be re-elected! They are not the problem. The people who vote for them are. And because we are a democracy where their votes count, they made possible the severe damage done to the nation during the four years of the former president's administration, including a politicized SCOTUS and an attempt to redefine truth. As Pogo once said, "We have met the enemy and they are us." Well, not all of us. But at least those who repeatedly elect scoundrels like the eleven HCR lists.
Correct you are (don't want to attribute "right" to anyone here). Hice and MTG are both from Georgia, and I doubt that any of their constituents are reconsidering their votes. Covid might be causing their numbers to dwindle, though.
Further to this comment, I keep receiving persistent Nextdoor Neighbor emails. I occasionally check the site if I'm looking for a local service provider. I was idly checking through recent posts, and there were many regarding Biden's Afghanistan withdrawal. One woman's comments were so deficient in content, logic, and using such poor grammar and spelling, I wondered whether she ever attended school. She referenced the Freedom Caucus, so that told me and others exactly where she was coming from, and why she was so forceful with her "facts." I immediately went to my account profile, and adjusted my settings so I'd be spared such scholarly screeds. Not everyone in suburban Atlanta is insane, but those who are don't deserve any more space in my wounded psyche.
Most likely, the GOP in Texas are copying the laws written by ALEC or Heritage fund! Most of them could not cobble a few words into a coherent sentence!
ALEC severely damaged public education over the past 20 years. New Mexico got a heavy dose when we had a Republican governor who appointed Hanna Skandera in charge of our public schools. She implemented the severely punitive testing consequences that were so “successful” in Florida under Jeb Bush. After 8 years of draconian punishment for schools and teachers, everyone is suddenly surprised that we have a serious shortage of teachers.
ALEC is a nightmare. It feels like 've been hearing about them for 15 or 20 years, working hard to undermine any progressive movement in this country and lock in oligarchic, corporatist rule making everywhere they can. Sad to say, they're very good at what they do.
Agree. Where is the government on this? While I no longer believe that this government represents me (that would look very different) I wonder if this government has ANY IDEA of their defined role in democracy?
I don’t know Daniel. I do feel that we the people collectively create our own government. I feel like we’ve created a system where authentic, intelligent, honest people struggle to get elected or don’t have an interest in putting up with the crap that goes with the job. I never in my life looked at politics as an option for myself, nor did I ever once suggest or prepare my children for anything other than informed voting. It can’t be fixed overnight and we the people have to be much more engaged in the process if we are to rescue our democracy.
Christy - I wish it were so. There are many insights offered by Professor Richardson in these letters that are important to keep in mind when making plans. The primary insight is that we, the people, DO NOT collectively create out own government. The structure of the Senate for example, the filibuster, Gerrymandering, restrictions on voting, the Electoral College, etc.
The SYSTEM OF GOVERNMENT NEEDS TO BE FIXED. That's Job #1. We can't even claim rights to a representative government as long as THERE IS NO JUSTICE.
In my mind Daniel, we the people collectively are handing scoundrels power by voting them into office. If we truly have a majority that prefers laws, justice, fairness, the Golden Rule we need to speak up more about our ownership of government and being actively engaged in it. I’m admitting my own guilt and working to fix myself because that is what I have control over.
Worse yet, his mini-me son will be with him joining in the fight, from the sidelines. Will not surprise me if he conducts a moment of silence for “this great country that knew how to fight back from 9-11 and again with me as your president.”
I would love Tubby Trump to get in the ring and take a direct punch, after dishing out such potty mouth remarks to women, soldiers, disabled people, Latinos, and many others in our diverse society. For me perhaps the most despicable was when Bone Spur sought to trash John McCain. That meshes with his characterizing folks in the military as ‘suckers’ and ‘losers’. Yea verily, he is Chubby Chump in Chief.
Yes. And Cindy McCain and her group of Republicans continue to fight for decency and democracy as her husband did. It was cringeworthy to have the former utter McCain’s name.
I intend to introduce the Chubby Chump as ‘pissant’—an ‘American vulgar language’ term meaning insignificant or despicable thing or person. AND THAT IS A FACT!
This is the reason I supported Mike Bloomberg's candidacy. Mike would have KICKED TRUMP"S ASS all over America. Mike's partners would have KICKED their opponents until they squealed. We missed a chance to see that. (P.S. I also accept that after all the ass-kicking, would would still be left with a billionaire president and the problems that incurs).
I previously wrote a long comment here on my involvement in 9/11 and subsequent reaction. To make it short, I got out but my coworkers, bosses, sales et all did not.
My immediate reaction was that my government and its supporters would want revenge.
Daniel, living with that day every day for the past 20 years cannot be easy. My heart goes out to you and all the survivors and their families, and to the families of those who did not survive. The pain and poignancy radiates out, and will for a very long time. Please take good care of yourself, and keep your heart open.
I survived, so am grateful. The toll has passed (3 heart attacks and several stress-related instances of gastric ulcers). Now I am stronger and more determined than ever and, as they say, whatever doesn't kill you makes you stronger. And the strong survive. So Life goes on in all its mystery and majesty.
And a $50 fee to those who have lost so much thanks to his politization of a virus. Hmmm I hope we can survive this onslaught of blatant disregard for humanity and Americans.
Not for nothing, but the 20th anniversary of 9/11 will inevitably highlight Rudy Ghouliani's role as "America's Mayor" during that time. Fast forward to today where his status has fallen to just above laughingstock grade, best known as one of trump's most ardent and vocal defenders. I'm guessing trump et al. are quite happy to keep distant from any celebration of Rudy. I'd almost feel bad for the guy, but my distaste for him goes back to his winning the mayoralty from David Dinkins.
He was America's Fascist Mayor; creating hatred between the races. I am intimately familiar with his role post-9/11. Complete Fascism (he had his goons occupy our office building, leaving disgusting misogynistic graffiti everywhere). Our vault was emptied. But worse than his performance as Mayor and post-9/11, was his part in the fatal fire in WTC 7. He had directed that the City's emergency supply of fuel be stored in its basement. It blew like a bomb! I was there. I managed the largest disaster recovery of any organization in US history.
But we must keep in mind that they do not even believe their own propaganda. I have written several comment to explain this dilemma. They cannot change their position, BECAUSE THEY DO NOT BELIEVE THEIR POSITION. It is impossible to change the mind of someone who knows they're lying. This is the Dilemma of Fascism.
Only by putting Fascists on trial is it possible to prevent its spread.
I remember WTC 7 going down, and was suspicious because of the timing, but that's all I remember. I've done no follow-up research, and see that "Mrs." Google offers a lot!
Rudy, Rudy, Rudy! A media whore! Never missed an opportunity to get on TV, despite a police or fire spokesperson could have provided better information!
Consider 1993 truck bomb exploded in one of the Twin Tower garages on an upper floor. Fortunately, the thrust of the blast went downward rather than upward, else the tower would have come down. Arrested terrorist vowed we will be back at his trial!
Fast forward the no so ‘great’ counter terrorism expert, Rudy, is elected mayor and he decides to build the emergency management center in …..wait for it…one of the Twin Towers! Duh! What a genius!
Secondly, the tough in command Rudy, allowed Police and Fire to have different communication systems which were …..NOT compatible! Another gross failure on the part of Rudy! As the tragedy was unfolding the Police could not contact the Fire Commander who was sending more than 300 firefighters into the collapsing building to their doom!
As I was escaping AWAY from The Tragedy, I passed firefighters gathered behind Police barricades when they received the signal to go into the WTC. At that moment I was taken by their extraordinary bravery. Remember, I was running the other way.
Rudy deserves no pity. In addition to his many transgressions, his second wife, with whom he'd had an affair while married, discovered they were divorcing by reading about it in a magazine. Paragon of virtue he never was.
Rudy is continuing his quest entrap any young woman. The image of him with his hand down his pants trying to excite himself was pricelessly disgusting. Borat deserves a special recognition for the clip. Any suggestions for a name for such award?
Daniel , whaddya mean , he was tucking in his shirt, dontcha know. I am trying to come up with something appropriately inappropriate. May take awhile….
It is a complete tragedy. The opposite of which is a man who enjoys the company of women, therefore needing no help arousing himself. And I am just a few years' younger.
I was heartened this evening by Rachel Maddow's interview with Laurence Tribe on how the Texas Vigilante Abortion bill could be stopped in the courts by case precedents that would apply to this horrendous law especially on dealing with the vigilante ploy that needs to be stopped here and now forever and ever.
Oh don’t you know, Cathy. Gov made a speech yesterday and responded to no rape exception in new law. He said not necessary. Because Texas, under his leadership, will use every resource to get every rapist off the street so no woman, eh, person, has to experience rape ever again.
Rep Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez on CNN practically leapt through the screen to rip him a new one. Saying they will have to round up the close fam friend, the neighbor, the relative, the partner, the authority figure in charge…that more often will commit rape than a person from the streets. She literally called him grossly ignorant.
What is worse is how many people clapped after Abbott made the statement. They know how to stage a crowd, don’t they?
Yeah, I heard that. Let me see.... rape is about power and control executed via a forced sexual act. Texas men love power and control, especially over their women. Ain't gonna happen, Governor. EVER. Until you get rid of the concept that men have the right and duty to exercise power over women (see: The Bible).
... power over women, and children ... with parental rights predominating, and mens' rotary clubs in the weave of so-called child protective services, where are the exits in this theatre of the absurd?!
It came out that the Ppl that were in the Trump Towers when he announced his run for Pres.we’re pulled in off the sidewalk and paid. These are desperate times for many so you never know ?
You are correct Cathy. Rachel interviewed, Prof, Lawrence Tribe about his successful case taken all they way to a winning (8-1) SCOTUS' ruling back in 1982. Larkin vs Grendel's Den 459 U.S. 116 (1982) Grendel's was & is a loved Cambridge Mass bar & get-together establishment. The state of Massachusetts had delegated the power to prevent the issuance of a liquor license to non-state Actors. Per the written opinion of then Chief Justice Warren Berger, such a delegation (now vigilante actors) is not permitted under the U.S. Constitution.
FYI, current U.S. Attorney General, Merrick Garland, is a former Harvard Law student of Prof. Tribe. Garland has many legal tools to address the Texas' unconstitutional conduct. Prof Tribe mentioned 42 USC 1983, a 1981 Civil Rights law, among others..
It was heartening to hear that nearly 40 years ago Tribe successfully argued to the Supreme Court a case similar to the Texas case, though not involving abortion. Then again, the present court has gone renegade. (We have McConnell and Trump to thank.) I would love for HCR to educate us about how aberrant the court has become compared to others through the years.
Doesn't this court's (in)decision invalidate it's own integrity?
"The court’s notorious five-justice majority, which included all three of Donald Trump’s nominees, suggested that the court hadn’t previously encountered legislative schemes that confer on private individuals the power to veto the provision of lawful services. It purported to be procedurally stymied from blocking the Texas law’s manifest goal of snuffing out abortion services and wrecking the lives of many women during the year or more it will take the court to ultimately strike the Texas law down or admit that it is jettisoning Roe v. Wade. Not true. And a Massachusetts case established the precedent."
If the highest court and supreme legal authority in the nation is so flawed, how can it be challenged and held accountable? World court?
This is the first I've heard of a retroactive element in the Texas anti-abortion law! "...the Texas abortion law delegates quintessentially governmental power to private parties — in Texas, to literally anyone on earth with an objection to abortion, giving that individual or organization the unilateral and unfettered power to inflict criminal punishment on whoever assisted a woman, within the past four years, to terminate a pregnancy without being able to prove that the fetus didn’t have detectable cardiac activity."
And I don't even understand the element "without being able to prove that the fetus didn't have detectable cardiac activity". How would it be possible for a bounty hunter to legally access such private medical information, either retroactively or going forward? Are they just allowed to assume that, because there was an abortion performed, the pregnancy had to have been post-6 weeks?
I love it when El Jefe del Mar-A-Lardo goes out of his way to demonstrate what a conscienceless, talentless, brainless bucket of dreck he really is. He really must be sweating the nickels and dimes and quarters to do *that* on September 11. Of course, it's sort of a replay of what he was doing 20 years ago, which wasn't worrying about all his "friends" who died in the towers, since he's never had an actual friend in his life.
Don't know how many watched Rachel tonight, but Professor Tribe and she went over a case he represented to the Supreme Court in 1982, the Grendel's Den case, in which the court ruled that the state may not delegate any enforcement powers to a private, unaccountable entity. which is pretty much the spear someone's going to spit Abbott with and then slow roast him over a nice political fire with a Trump roadapple in his mouth.
I really suggest people re-watch "The Return of the King."
Since I’ve cut back on my TV news I’ve been taping “The Last Word with Lawrence O’Donnell” instead. He mentioned the Grendel’s Den case that Rachel talked about. Thanks for the reminder to go find it on Utube.
I wonder how "Gym" Jordan (R-OH) missed signing that letter of yahoos to Yahoo. He is always pushing himself forward into places he doesn't belong, but that would have been a perfect fit for him.
So now a very GQP state is rationing healthcare. If I remember correctly that is what the GQP said would happen under Obamacare led by Democrats. Hold onto your grannies the GQP is setting up "death panels".
So the reality TV huckster just can't resist showing his true colors. Maybe he should trying selling pillows for the "My Pillow" loser too.
It appalls me that everyday I still deal with people that refuse to mask let alone get the shot. I don't think we will ever reach herd immunity, but we are close to achieving herd stupidity.
I am sad that Ohioans we have to claim him. But then I have to deal with Bill Johnson in my district. Since Gymmie admitted he spoke with DiJiT 30 or 40 times on 6 Jan he should be scrambling to hide his phone records
I will never forget that journalist in his deadpan voice asking manic Gymmie if he spoke to the president. It remains classic. Dems do not even need to make opposing ad. Just use that.
It won’t matter. That district is so gerrymandered that a Democratic candidate has no hope. So is mine (suburban Columbus, solidly blue, but stretching almost to West Virginia to the east and encompassing parts of nine very rural red counties). We don’t even have a rep at all right now, since ours resigned in May. Ohio is a mess. I rest my hope on the fact that Sherwood Brown is still our senator.
And death. There is the reality that those who refuse to mask or vax are their followers and they are dying by the cartload, sadly. I do wonder if they will ever come to the realization that they are killing their supporters or at least making their numbers smaller?
They might have made the calculation that some of their supporters will die, but that more of the opposition will die, since minorities have the lowest rates of vaccination. In close races this could decide the outcome.
"I do wonder if they will ever come to the realization that they are killing their supporters"
Their supporters (aka "Followers") are just cannon fodder in the great War. It is the Followers death march for Twisted Freedom. All for the purpose of enriching a few. Who says there's no money in murder and death?
“ Followers’ death march for Twisted Freedom,” indeed, Daniel! I’d sandwich “Nonexistent” between the twisted and the freedom, as these followers seem enslaved to hate.
Good observation on all points...except that we are reaching herd immunity and herd stupidity has been with us forever. But I'm most intrigued by your observation that the Trump disciple James didn't sign the letter might be very, very telling. I wonder if he checked with his lawyer first?
Heather, you have provided a terrifying rap sheet on what used to be the Republican Party. It has echoes of Hitler’s spin master, Joseph Goebbels: IF YOU TELL A BIG ENOUGH LIE LONG ENOUGH, PEOPLE WILL BELIEVE IT. Do I hear the Trump drum beat of ‘false facts?” Don’t believe what you see or hear, only believe me. What so-called January 6th insurrection? It seemed like a typical tourist day at the Capitol Building.
I hear the chorus of George Orwell’s 1984: POWER IS IN TEARING HUMAN MINDS TO PIECES AND PUTTING THEM BACK TOGETHER AGAIN IN NEW SHAPES OF OUR OWN CHOOSING. A majority of Americans favor legal abortion in some ‘reasonable’ manner. Attack this image and ‘reshape’ it. Ditto with ‘reasonable’ gun laws. There is no evidence of any significant fraud in the 2020 presidential election. Balderdash! Go with the BIG LIE and, state-by-state, take control of the electoral process and restrict the right to vote for those who are not part of your ‘bund.’
WHERE’S THE BEEF? For the first time in my modern memory, in 2020 the ‘Republican Party’ chose not to include a policy segment in their party platform. What, no stated policies? That’s right. It would be policy by Trump tweet. I can discern no positive policies for this current Trumpian amalgam.Instead, I see rampant negativism, highlighted by the steadfast rejection of federal voting rules and a sensible investment in shaping a human and physical infrastructure suitable for a dynamic and diverse America. “Climate change’ was abolished in official documents during the Trump administration.
If there are not enough Americans that reject this horse shit, then I fear for our country.
"I see rampant negativism, highlighted by the steadfast rejection of federal voting rules and a sensible investment in shaping a human and physical infrastructure suitable for a dynamic and diverse America. “Climate change’ was abolished in official documents during the Trump administration."
And it is so much harder to build it up, than it was to tear it down. The Trump presidency damaged us so much, in ways both visible, and invisible to us.
It is the 60’s all over again, but this time it’s the other side that has “ turned on, tuned in, and dropped out.” Meanwhile, look for Texas to secede and become the lone star republic once again. It joined the us only because the constitution itself and federal law formed the strongest defense of slavery.
This is not comparable to the 60s. The 60s were just the opposite. The 60s warned that this was coming and sought an alternative to to dystopia. I was there.
There is no doubt in my mind that there will be many that see that gun law as a call to arms. Turning up the volume once again on an already potentially violent time. And, combined with the abortion law and the voting restrictions those crackpots have a series of specific targets/locations to choose from to threaten and terrorize. Such as abortion clinics and poling places. It is pandering to a far right constituent whom perhaps mostly wont do actual harm but, there are clearly more than enough crackpots out there that just may. The unknowns are scary enough to keep some people away. At the very least they will be able to flash a gun or get in the faces of people who they disagree with. If this menace is allowed to stand it is clearly an infringement of a persons freedoms by republicans for the sake of getting votes.
The 2nd Amendment was, in part, a deliberate measure to arm domestic terrorists. Correspondence between Washington and his generals on the frontier (Ohio, for example) is explicit about terrorizing the indigent population, using both regular army troops and white civilians.
While Republicans continue to hammer their abortion button with the Texas law, they feverishly try to abort our democracy. While they offer bounties to "Brown Shirts" to spy and accuse and sue their neighbors and community health clinics, they refuse and threaten those who set up and comply with legal law and order investigations when no bounties are offered.
When they claimed the Affordable Care Act was setting up "death panels" to ration healthcare, they have been rationing healthcare with their anti masking and anti vaccination campaigns. This did not just start in Idaho. It has been going on since Republican initiatives to hoax us on covid19 and the necessary preventions, increasing and expanding the infection, overloading our healthcare systems, and causing Americans to miss and delay the primary, descretionary and acute care that were need to maintain healthy lives.
My MD daughter tells me that she has seen patients die both from covid19 and inattention to their existing or developing conditions like diabetes and cancer. Their deaths are attributed to covid19, but their real causes of hospitalization and death are their underlying health conditions that aren't being diagnosed or sufficiently cared for. Americans are affected by the difficulty of getting appointments and their fear of going to covid19 affected healthcare facilities. The fact that even healthcare workers are resisting vaccinations and fight vaccination mandates, encouraged by Republicans, is cause for worry about going for needed healthcare services. So yes, Republicans have wielded the most oppressive politically motivated "death panel" in American history. And Americans have died in greater numbers and proportions than most nations, in spite of our substantial healthcare system because of Republican disinformation campaigns.
Comparisons with Nero are unfavorable to DT. Nero acted to feed and shelter refugees from the fire. Rebuilding, he acted against property speculators (who may have started the fire…)
Nero’s Domus Aureus (the Golden House) does, however, bring to mind New York’s answer to Caligula.
According to a semi-reliable source Nero started the fire as part of a massive redevelopment project and then fiddled while Rome burned. As Robert Caro brilliantly underscored, Robert Moses didn’t have a fiddle.
Another time of mass confusion, rumors, fake news and conspiracy theories. Tacitus tells that Nero was in Antium (Anzio -- familiar to Americans because of the great battle fought there in WW2) when fire broke out. As for fiddles, those came from the Far East... many centuries later...
Nero's redevelopment was unpopular, but he had the power to make it happen and drove out speculators in the process. Hence, perhaps, the conspiracy theories blaming the Emperor... In London after the Great Fire of 1666, that power rested with the City's burghers who insisted on retaining the old rabbit-warren of a street plan instead of Wren and Hawksmoor's grand project, more like Berlin or Saint Petersburg...
Women are coming for Texas Republicans and the women are pissed off. Be ready for the Oct. 2 Women’s March organizing rallies for that day everywhere across the U.S. Women and men will take to the streets that day in support of Reproductive Freedom. Put on your masks and get ready to march. We can do this.
I’m a day late here but yesterday’s letter referenced the Republicans concern in the present and historically with “Socialism”. I don’t think that I have heard any Republicans call for the elimination of that intrusive government entity that we know as FEMA.
Those who complain the loudest are first in line for government services when they need them. I recently had a discussion of socialism with a misinformed person who didn't know what he was talking about. Then I got ad hominem snarky comments and was accused of trying to control his mind and free will since he really could not discuss either socialism or capitalism. Funny where these folks go when they have nothing to say. I will certainly add HCR's bit on the history of socialism here next time some fool tries to talk about this.
I also couldn’t help but think about all of the right wing government workers and firemen and police officers and etc… They all work for the government and are supposed to be working for the tax payers. They are held up as heroes but they also get excellent pensions and benefits through their service. For so many of them to whine about socialism sounds ridiculous to me since non of them would have a job without the government. Same goes for politicians. It just sounds idiotic to me.
Being on government assistance, in the same way that an out-of-luck Black person might be, is humiliating for these losers. Thus their anger toward the Black person WHO IS IN THE SAME BOAT AS THEY ARE, BUT RESENTED FOR BEING IN THE BOAT.
Thank you, Heather, for pointing out that the Republican Party's approach to regaining power is becoming less and less popular with the American public, which quite possibly will be their downfall. They have shown that voting against the wishes of their constituents in favor of political expediency may very well turn against them. Republican attempts to outlaw mask mandates in the name of personal freedom while more and more people are infected and many die is wrong and criminal. Their supporters are beginning to understand that their leaders are willing kill to capture a legislative majority. Many are, pardon the pun, just plain sick of it.
What is interesting is that the Republican Party's game plan offers few ideas on how to run the country. They witnessed and are slowly absorbing, hopefully, the wrong thinking of a right wing GOP President: Suppression of the truth about Covid, a massive tax cut that helped no one except the 1% and corporations which did not plow added revenues into R and D and hiring as hoped, but continued to line their own pockets instead. Turning its back on international cooperation by exiting the WHO and the Paris Climate Accord. And finally, institutionalizing partisan extremism.
Now, desperate Republicans have resorted to cheating through voter suppression laws. It's pathetic. Their fuel tanks are swiftly headed toward empty while the Democratic Party works to improve the lives of working Americans, children and the elderly. The mid-terms are the GOP's to lose. Hopefully the ammunition they have been using shoots themselves in the foot.
Randy, I agree that the rethuglicans have no ideas as to how to make this country better other than to oppose anything the Dems want. They oppose but offer no ideas of their own. Pretty pathetic.
I have written this before, about the ambient insanity that has taken over the U.S. but there seems no end to it. It is cult behavior, reminiscent of Jim Jones 900 who drank the cyanide.
I was appalled on Nov. 8, 2016 when the ignorant cultists foisted an unqualified, mentally defective POSer president on us, and it had steadily grown worse in those 4 years. His opponent in that election, Hillary Clinton, even said on Aug 8, 2016, “Just imagine Donald Trump in the Oval Office facing a real crisis. We can’t afford that kind of risk.” And, sure enuf, his malice & ineptitude during the crisis of a new viral pandemic contributed to the more than a half-million deaths in the U.S.
And now, even after health professionals have shown the effectiveness of prevention by wearing masks & distancing and even after scientists have gotten life-saving vaccines in record time, his cult followers, leaders in the Repugnant Party still oppose both those rational measures as the deaths continue among the unvaccinated.
As a critical thinking person I cannot wrap my head around such mass insanity. Jim Jones’ 900+ is no longer the astonishing cult killing in one day, nor even the 3,000+ who were murdered on Sep. 11, 2001. That daily number of deaths happened on many days over the past year due to the disease, exacerbated by the insanity of the science & precaution denying cult leadership and their followers.
Thank you. Can numbers amplify your words? From December 29, 2020 to Jan 29, 2021, there were 104,280 deaths attributed to covid-19 in the US, an average of 3,160 per day. On January 6 alone, 3,964 died.
Re Jim Jones. Those people had Machine guns pointed at them also. I think it was for their children’s sake they drank the juice. It’s an agonizing death tho. They all had such daily challenging lives here, no rights, powers or privileges. They had/ and still have it harder than the white Caucasian and their fault was hope for better lives. Who amongst us hopes for less than they ? I still hear Janice Joplins “Me and Bobby McGee song. “Freedom is just another word for nothing left to lose“.
I'm surprised the Trump tag team didn't invite someone from the royal Saudi family to join them for the "gamecast".
As for the continued surge of the Republicans to the hard right, I hope I read in today's letter correctly that this move could cause their primaries to choose candidates so toxic, Democrats will win general elections in places previously not thought possible.
The extreme radical lengths they are now having to go can only serve to alienate members of their own party. Everything has its limits.
It seems like there is no limit to outrageous behavior. The Coyote tries in vain to capture the Roadrunner while keeping the Acme attack machine company in business
I’m hopeful that our overall American System will drop a big rock on the GQP Coyote
Yea, I knew where your “Q “ was coming from. I just wanted to eliminate the “ Grand”. And define them from my perspective. The “Q’s “ Great Grandparents wouldn’t have let this happen. And it appears a lot of them perhaps have lost Grandparents to CoVid ? Fickle Finger of Fate that a killer disease of the Seniors on it’s first round right before elections. So odd though, haven’t heard of anyone of great wealth or 1%, whatever you want to call them dying from it ? Just us ‘Folks ‘.No “Q’s “ either.
Trump must be increasingly desperate for money and attention. Hired to comment on a boxing match between men in their 50s and 40s? Sad for a former president, though for Trump it's so on brand.
t***p’s POTUS 45 performance resembled the blustering character he played on WWE TV more than it did the business mogul he pretended to be on *The Apprentice*.
The Mexican Supreme Court has just decriminalized abortion. Now watch as Abortion clinics are set up at every crossing point on the Texas Border with local "protection" against the GOP hordes.
Medical tourism is quite a thriving industry in México, (not just in border area). Abortion clinics, not only along the border but in easily accessed destinations such as Cancun, could be a practical solution for women seeking to terminate a pregnancy and profitable for the clinics providing the procedure.
True. Crossing the land border into México might be impossible for some seeking an abortion depending on their immigration status. If this law isn't overturned, states within an easy travel distance from Texas, and which already have restrictive abortion laws, will tighten them. This means women would have to travel to less restrictive states, further away, also an expensive proposition. That would be catastrophic for some women.
Before Roe v Wade, many women went to Mexico for their abortions. Again, affording the trip was the solution for some, but not many. Same will be true today.
I understand. Traveling to border states may not be an easy solution either, especially since states surrounding Texas are also eager to enact more restrictive laws. In March 2021, the Texas Policy Evaluation Project (TPEP) published its findings on the increased number of Texas women seeking border state abortions and the implications of increased restrictions in border state abortion laws. There will be no easy solution if these laws are not overturned.
"Implications statement: Abortion restrictions that severely curtail access may result in increases in travel out of state for care. Documenting out-of-state abortions is important for evaluating broader policy impacts and to prepare for future service disruptions. Texas residents may have more limited options for care if border states enact restrictive abortion laws."
New Mexico is the least restrictive border state and seems likely to remain so.
I've requested a copy of the full TPEP study and will post the link when I receive it, in the meantime here's the Abstract.
I don't know. All the centuries of abuse...the belief that women are inferior to men that's baked into our histories and traditions.
I got the TPEP report. Let me know if you'd like it and I will e mail it to you. It's a PDF so I can't simply forward it. (Or maybe I can, but I don't know how😐)
I noticed that Abbott signed the voter restriction bill with a big black Sharpie today, emulating DeSantis in copying that former guy. Stagecraft. Sigh.
I noticed that my Texas state representative was sitting at the front table with the Governor (the guy on the far left with the handle bar mustache). He was the chair on the House Elections Committee, a sponsor of the abortion bill and the author of the permitless carry bill. Three strikes! I am thinking of a way to approach him in my next letter to him. Believe it or not I think he may be salvageable. He did get quite an ear full from me on the Vigilante Abortion bill. I also noticed the signing was all white males except one token Latino, one token Black and one token woman. Most of my corporate career as a senior manager meant I was usually the only women in the room for years upon years so I know how it feels.
Cathy so I just don’t get how they could have gotten so up to their necks in doodle. They don’t want the immigrants but they ar encouraging them to be scared to have abortions so then they’ll multiply? Or are the banking on a new shoot em out Alamo series of events as vigilantes go for the 10,000 rewards. And what about their relationships with neighboring states who then take the brunt of the Texas defections either to escape Texas or desperately search for abortions in Southern California. It’s all so stupid. Hispanics don’t like abortions. When I taught them 9th graders were pregnant and happy about it because they had an aunt in the neighborhood who ran a daycare center. But then that was just Lynn, MA. I love the specter of quiet Garland looming over the whole mess with his fabulously bright team.
See latest from Mexican Supreme Court decriminalizing abortion! they'll pop back over the border to get the job done......while Garland prosecutes anyone who tries to get in the way.
Lynell— let’s just face it— they’re completely coukou— what Texas really needs is an emergency rescue team of quality psychologists bussed in from MA and NYC—it’ll be free and mandated.
They'd have to take the refugee camps and turn them into insane asylums to hold all the insane T-Basers (trump basers), Liz, and even then there wouldn't be enough room to fit them all.
When has anyone credited this crowd with logic? Despite statistics showing that the number of abortions plummeted following Roe v. Wade, they are determined to send women home or back street abortions. Abortions won't cease any more than rapists will cease raping.
HCR, as always, I am so grateful that you put these daily political aberrations in some order that we can follow, and slowly understand. The world we're living in, for now, feels so sad and dystopian. It's comforting to know that you send out these letters. I never thought I'd live in a day that Roe vs Wade could be torn apart. Or that people in charge wouldn't do the right thing (healthwise) in schools and for children and families.
A former president facing probable legal peril commenting on two geriatric fighters slugging it out on pay TV on the somber anniversary of perhaps the saddest day in our history, and last time the nation was united about anything.
(Shudder)
The metaphors scream at you.
On the positive side, it is more evidence that the former president is an increasingly irrelevant con man, back on tv in an effort to get out of his financial misadventures.
Joan, somehow I got on the Trump daily email list where either he or Jr spout lies and beg for money. Every. Single. Day. I was going to immediately block this creep, but decided not to. Instead I respond with a vulgarity or flat out call him a thief, everyday. The emails are a "reply to all". Not sure who gets them, but you would think someone on their end would have tossed me off the email list by now.
He is clearly desperate for money and doesn't care who he cons for it. But then, he has done that his entire life.
The former president will be running for re-election the rest of his life, because the money keeps pouring in. It's his most successful hustle of a life of hustles.
I completely agree Ralph.
We receive at least one phone call every single day, holidays and Sundays included, from the RNC!
Well, Joan, give them a giant EFF YOU from me the next time you respond.
This is so funny. Good for you.
I agree with the premise that Trump is an increasingly irrelevant con man, but disagree that this qualifies as being “on the positive side”.
There is no positive side. Yet.
The sentiments of the 1/6 crowd and its hangers-on have moved well beyond Trumpism. The movement has lurched by him, is alive and well, and verges on nihilism.
The signs are everywhere. How could a state not rise in a blaze of fury against a state governor who is using his office to block/punish/subvert those who would insist on the best medical practices in the face of a pandemic that has roared back in full wrath? 13 people involved one way or another in education in one county have died of Covid in two weeks. A hurricane of much deadlier destructive power has hit Florida and the governor is not only blocking help, but in fact is stirring the very winds to greater intensity. Somehow, some way this malevolent madness, grounded in the self-interest of one man, must be stopped.
A couple of states to the left another governor has signed into law a bill which sets up a superstructure for hate by empowering vigilantes to monitor, excuse me, extinguish women’s reproductive rights. In response to a press query yesterday he took only a sentence or two to display his biological ignorance (or bad faith), and then fulminated about getting rapists off the street as if he had just conceived an idea that had not yet occurred to anybody in Texas. Or the States. Or the freaking world. Great idea. Wow, let’s think that one over. Meantime the rape kits are piling up.
This spurt of madness is occurring because the good governor has no Democratic opponent in his next election. But there are two candidates, squeezing into the tiny sliver of space to the right of him. So tear down a wall to the next room over where the really criminal, fascist right would like to go and leap nimbly past your opponents so that you once again have pride of place.
This sort of race to the bottom of a hollowed out democracy is sadly not limited to Texas. There are crazed, ambitious thugs everywhere whose moral compass points only downward. And they are elbowing their way into primaries in red states everywhere. That can only end in sweetness and light.
In Idaho, they are taking the first steps toward rationing care. That, of course, would be only coincidental to the fact that the state has a scintillating 39.7% full vaccination rate. “Rationing care”, a benevolent sounding phrase, means that if things get really, really bad, if the Delta variation doesn’t excuse itself and leave the room, then the doctors will have to decide who gets the health care to keep them alive, and who doesn’t. Where are your death panels now Sarah Palin? You certainly stirred the pot before mercifully disappearing into the ether.
Meanwhile, on the other side, that intellectual heavyweight, Senator Joe Manchin, has called for a “pause” in the deliberations of the 3.5 trillion infrastructure bill. Does he not realize that infrastructure has been on pause for so many years that it has become a meme? I really don’t have a picture in my mind of a horde of Senators rushing to the aisles, trampling each other in an effort to be first to vote on this bill. Have I missed something in the news?
No. The Democrats limp along their grand legislative path, taking care to re-shoot themselves in the foot periodically.
We need a pause? We got that when nine bright bulbs decided to vote against the big infrastructure bill if the little infrastructure bill wasn’t passed first.
And meanwhile, the voting rights bills have been put into a closet some time ago and now everybody’s forgotten which closet exactly it was.
And the anti-democracy bills get passed across the land with monotonous regularity. Maybe, Senator Manchin, you could ask for a pause on those.
And there are, give or take, 114 days left in 2021. And there’s word that there might be elections in 2022. Under new rules.
That about covers the bad news, minus the Trumps fondling a microphone at a perfectly 21st century gladiatorial exhibition… [checks notes]…oh wait, there is one more small thing.
Climate change.
Sorry for the dyspeptic rant. I’m feeling particularly vexed today. We have some monumental screw-ups here in Canada at the moment.
'O’Rourke is thinking seriously about running. And every Democrat in Texas is waiting for him to make up his mind.'
https://www.texastribune.org/2021/06/23/beto-o-rourke-texas-democrats-2022/
'O’Rourke has not made a decision on whether to challenge Abbott, which is causing some heartburn for Democrats worried they will be stuck without a major candidate.'
'But for 2022, other legitimate candidates could emerge. Julián Castro, the former San Antonio mayor and U.S. Housing secretary, hasn’t ruled out a run for governor, one of his aides said last week.'
'A new University of Texas/Texas Politics Project poll revealed that Abbott’s approval rating his dipped to 41%, with 50% disapproving of his job performance. The survey found that 52% of Texans feel the state is headed in the wrong direction. The mood of the respondents is shaped by the resurgence of the coronavirus, according to Texas Politics Project director Jim Henson.'
“There’s a general discontent and a dourness out there,” Henson said.'
'Strother said O’Rourke could help Democrats craft the narrative that Abbott is leading Texas in the wrong direction.' (Dallas News) see link below:
https://www.dallasnews.com/news/politics/2021/09/03/after-summer-of-legislative-warfare-texas-republicans-democrats-prepare-for-2022-election-season/
Good reply, Fern. Thank you. I surround Julian Castro and Beto O’Rourke with white light often in my light meditation along with quite a few others. Many are working for the force of good.
I had a strong feeling you were a Good Witch Christine…and I mean that in the most positive and complimentary way. This also heartens me.
Marvelous. Beto is a decent man. He would need the tightest security.
Thanks, Fern. As usual, you are a jewel. :)
And firmly in the running for understatement of the year:
“There’s a general discontent and a dourness out there…”.
But great relief that Abbott has solved that nagging problem of rape, people would own to, if pressed.
Thanks for this, Fern. I find it amazing that Abbott's approval rating is that high. Scary thought that 41% of Texas likes his behavior.
Know your enemy.
IMHO I can’t help but think that if it’s a struggle for Dems to craft an election narrative against Abbot then we are truly a knee capped organization.
Hasn't not having a strong, clear, persuasive message been one of the failures of Democratic Party? Imagine not having a powerful message given Abbott's lethal form of governing? The needs of most people in America - White, Black, Hispanic, Asian... are great and the spirit understandably low -- at yet! You have pinpointed a serious flaw of the Party. I think that we cannot know on the outside complications having to do with the electorate. Fox, Social Media, the Pandemic all contributing factors -- Beto is talented. If he is resisting, it may have to do with what a hard nut it is to crack. He might have an easier time beating Cruz.
Can somebody please Pause Joe the Munchkin!
No one, not anyone in government will do anything to risk their own position. This is a real problem. And we are f-ked.
NAFC (check urban dictionary)
No need for no Urban Dictionary. I'm an Urban Animal.
Although I do sometimes check out which phrases have caught on. Sometimes it takes DECADES for slang to make its way from The Bronx to mainstream America. It is often in use sooner in Amsterdam or Berlin before anyone gets it in whitebread country.
Checked out Urban Dictionary's Word of the Day
ROTATING VILLIAN
"In American democracy, when the majority party has enough votes to pass populist legislation, party leaders designate a scapegoat who will refuse to vote with the party thereby killing the legislation. The opposition is otherwise inexplicable and typically comes from someone who is safe or not up for re-election. This allows for maximum diffusion of responsibility.
WTF??? Senator Lieberman now opposes the same health care compromise he himself suggested. Just when everyone thought Democrats had enough votes to get this done. Guess they made Lieberman the rotating villain..."
see, EVERYBODY KNOWS (credit to our dear Leonard Cohen)
Oh, 'separatism'--reminds me of the white nationalist hate groups. Strange discontinuity, Charlie, with Daniel's opinion of people working in government.
Well said, Eric. Yes, the present onslaught from the Right (and beyond) is now an independent movement, lurching forward with power and its own momentum, independent of the former president*. Not good.
G.Zinn, Can you share why you think the extreme right is separate from Trump? I don't know his role, just wonder how cohesive the various groups are - how they come together. They aim to break up the current government and totally suppress minorities, what else? Is there a coherent plan for their means of governing? The Republican Party didn't even have a party platform at their convention. I know this movement is atomic. It may be able to bring the house down and then what? Does it need Trump as the Republican Party does -- their figurehead/promoter. Is Bannon a ringleader? Is knowing too little one of our biggest problems? I don't have confidence that the FBI knows enough or that any of our other agencies do.
It’s such a blatant message to his cult to fight it can’t even be called a dog whistle. An insurrection is an insurrection. Inciting civil war should get you locked up.
Grifters gotta grift. Anyone dumb enough to fall for this con deserves what they get.
I agree, but millions of them make this insanity a threat to all of us. I couldn't believe that any sane person could vote for this abomination in 2016, but with all that has resulted from his presidency, they're still here, and more determined than ever. It is a relief, though, that Greg Abbott, in justifying his draconian abortion ban, assured everyone that there is no danger of rape causing a pregnancy, as ALL rapists would be arrested and jailed, thus making rape impossible.
And those eleven ultra-right members of the House mentioned above by HCR, if they ran today, would be re-elected! They are not the problem. The people who vote for them are. And because we are a democracy where their votes count, they made possible the severe damage done to the nation during the four years of the former president's administration, including a politicized SCOTUS and an attempt to redefine truth. As Pogo once said, "We have met the enemy and they are us." Well, not all of us. But at least those who repeatedly elect scoundrels like the eleven HCR lists.
Correct you are (don't want to attribute "right" to anyone here). Hice and MTG are both from Georgia, and I doubt that any of their constituents are reconsidering their votes. Covid might be causing their numbers to dwindle, though.
Further to this comment, I keep receiving persistent Nextdoor Neighbor emails. I occasionally check the site if I'm looking for a local service provider. I was idly checking through recent posts, and there were many regarding Biden's Afghanistan withdrawal. One woman's comments were so deficient in content, logic, and using such poor grammar and spelling, I wondered whether she ever attended school. She referenced the Freedom Caucus, so that told me and others exactly where she was coming from, and why she was so forceful with her "facts." I immediately went to my account profile, and adjusted my settings so I'd be spared such scholarly screeds. Not everyone in suburban Atlanta is insane, but those who are don't deserve any more space in my wounded psyche.
Yes. Those cultists are a symptom of the greater problem. So many have succumbed to their hypnotic herding calls. We need to break the trance.
Unfortunately Abbott is my state's ignorant governor and really keeps coming up with these harmful and ridiculous ideas and laws!
Let's hope that his flagging approval ratings signal the end of his career.
From your pen to God's ears, Nancy!
I can so wish!
Most likely, the GOP in Texas are copying the laws written by ALEC or Heritage fund! Most of them could not cobble a few words into a coherent sentence!
ALEC severely damaged public education over the past 20 years. New Mexico got a heavy dose when we had a Republican governor who appointed Hanna Skandera in charge of our public schools. She implemented the severely punitive testing consequences that were so “successful” in Florida under Jeb Bush. After 8 years of draconian punishment for schools and teachers, everyone is suddenly surprised that we have a serious shortage of teachers.
ALEC is a nightmare. It feels like 've been hearing about them for 15 or 20 years, working hard to undermine any progressive movement in this country and lock in oligarchic, corporatist rule making everywhere they can. Sad to say, they're very good at what they do.
Nancy, your reply is as eloquent as it is insightful. Please post often!
Agree. Where is the government on this? While I no longer believe that this government represents me (that would look very different) I wonder if this government has ANY IDEA of their defined role in democracy?
I don’t know Daniel. I do feel that we the people collectively create our own government. I feel like we’ve created a system where authentic, intelligent, honest people struggle to get elected or don’t have an interest in putting up with the crap that goes with the job. I never in my life looked at politics as an option for myself, nor did I ever once suggest or prepare my children for anything other than informed voting. It can’t be fixed overnight and we the people have to be much more engaged in the process if we are to rescue our democracy.
Christy - I wish it were so. There are many insights offered by Professor Richardson in these letters that are important to keep in mind when making plans. The primary insight is that we, the people, DO NOT collectively create out own government. The structure of the Senate for example, the filibuster, Gerrymandering, restrictions on voting, the Electoral College, etc.
The SYSTEM OF GOVERNMENT NEEDS TO BE FIXED. That's Job #1. We can't even claim rights to a representative government as long as THERE IS NO JUSTICE.
In my mind Daniel, we the people collectively are handing scoundrels power by voting them into office. If we truly have a majority that prefers laws, justice, fairness, the Golden Rule we need to speak up more about our ownership of government and being actively engaged in it. I’m admitting my own guilt and working to fix myself because that is what I have control over.
Shudder is right, Ralph.
Worse yet, his mini-me son will be with him joining in the fight, from the sidelines. Will not surprise me if he conducts a moment of silence for “this great country that knew how to fight back from 9-11 and again with me as your president.”
Ewwww.
I would love Tubby Trump to get in the ring and take a direct punch, after dishing out such potty mouth remarks to women, soldiers, disabled people, Latinos, and many others in our diverse society. For me perhaps the most despicable was when Bone Spur sought to trash John McCain. That meshes with his characterizing folks in the military as ‘suckers’ and ‘losers’. Yea verily, he is Chubby Chump in Chief.
Yes. And Cindy McCain and her group of Republicans continue to fight for decency and democracy as her husband did. It was cringeworthy to have the former utter McCain’s name.
Bawdy Wheelock, in the announcer's booth, will be doing the play-by-play. Oh, what a show!
I intend to introduce the Chubby Chump as ‘pissant’—an ‘American vulgar language’ term meaning insignificant or despicable thing or person. AND THAT IS A FACT!
Oh my gosh, Keith. I just used that word today on another stream. It just bubbled up from my insult list.
This is the reason I supported Mike Bloomberg's candidacy. Mike would have KICKED TRUMP"S ASS all over America. Mike's partners would have KICKED their opponents until they squealed. We missed a chance to see that. (P.S. I also accept that after all the ass-kicking, would would still be left with a billionaire president and the problems that incurs).
I feel you.
I previously wrote a long comment here on my involvement in 9/11 and subsequent reaction. To make it short, I got out but my coworkers, bosses, sales et all did not.
My immediate reaction was that my government and its supporters would want revenge.
They are still fighting.
Killing and dying.
God Bless America.
We need it.
Sept. 11th every year must be a tough day for you. Please, take good care of yourself on that day, and every day.
You are very kind, thank you. I have hardened myself towards the Haters. That leaves me available as kind and generous to the Decent.
Daniel, living with that day every day for the past 20 years cannot be easy. My heart goes out to you and all the survivors and their families, and to the families of those who did not survive. The pain and poignancy radiates out, and will for a very long time. Please take good care of yourself, and keep your heart open.
I survived, so am grateful. The toll has passed (3 heart attacks and several stress-related instances of gastric ulcers). Now I am stronger and more determined than ever and, as they say, whatever doesn't kill you makes you stronger. And the strong survive. So Life goes on in all its mystery and majesty.
Awwwww, this could be a really tender moment as Junior repeatedly shouts "That's RIGHT, dad!" and Trump occasionally asks him "Who are you, again?"
Don Jr. is proof that the Turd doesn't fall far from the Asshole.
🤣
😅😂🤣😂🤣
😂
And a $50 fee to those who have lost so much thanks to his politization of a virus. Hmmm I hope we can survive this onslaught of blatant disregard for humanity and Americans.
Not for nothing, but the 20th anniversary of 9/11 will inevitably highlight Rudy Ghouliani's role as "America's Mayor" during that time. Fast forward to today where his status has fallen to just above laughingstock grade, best known as one of trump's most ardent and vocal defenders. I'm guessing trump et al. are quite happy to keep distant from any celebration of Rudy. I'd almost feel bad for the guy, but my distaste for him goes back to his winning the mayoralty from David Dinkins.
He was America's Fascist Mayor; creating hatred between the races. I am intimately familiar with his role post-9/11. Complete Fascism (he had his goons occupy our office building, leaving disgusting misogynistic graffiti everywhere). Our vault was emptied. But worse than his performance as Mayor and post-9/11, was his part in the fatal fire in WTC 7. He had directed that the City's emergency supply of fuel be stored in its basement. It blew like a bomb! I was there. I managed the largest disaster recovery of any organization in US history.
Good grief, you can't help but wonder what he paid to keep all of that quiet, or was everyone so traumatized by 9/11 that they missed all of it?
The "Wrap yourself in the flag" strategy worked. No room for the ugly truth.
Correct. If it fits with your ideology, no further proof necessary. Of course, "patriotism" and "religion" are indisputable.
But we must keep in mind that they do not even believe their own propaganda. I have written several comment to explain this dilemma. They cannot change their position, BECAUSE THEY DO NOT BELIEVE THEIR POSITION. It is impossible to change the mind of someone who knows they're lying. This is the Dilemma of Fascism.
Only by putting Fascists on trial is it possible to prevent its spread.
😢
I remember WTC 7 going down, and was suspicious because of the timing, but that's all I remember. I've done no follow-up research, and see that "Mrs." Google offers a lot!
I too remember well. It was the fragments from that building that hit us.
Rudy, Rudy, Rudy! A media whore! Never missed an opportunity to get on TV, despite a police or fire spokesperson could have provided better information!
Consider 1993 truck bomb exploded in one of the Twin Tower garages on an upper floor. Fortunately, the thrust of the blast went downward rather than upward, else the tower would have come down. Arrested terrorist vowed we will be back at his trial!
Fast forward the no so ‘great’ counter terrorism expert, Rudy, is elected mayor and he decides to build the emergency management center in …..wait for it…one of the Twin Towers! Duh! What a genius!
Secondly, the tough in command Rudy, allowed Police and Fire to have different communication systems which were …..NOT compatible! Another gross failure on the part of Rudy! As the tragedy was unfolding the Police could not contact the Fire Commander who was sending more than 300 firefighters into the collapsing building to their doom!
Ah Rudy! A master BS artist, like dopey don!
As I was escaping AWAY from The Tragedy, I passed firefighters gathered behind Police barricades when they received the signal to go into the WTC. At that moment I was taken by their extraordinary bravery. Remember, I was running the other way.
My dislike of him has always been visceral, just to be clear. For 30 years and going.
And so it's no surprise that he and TFG were such a perfect match!
Rudy deserves no pity. In addition to his many transgressions, his second wife, with whom he'd had an affair while married, discovered they were divorcing by reading about it in a magazine. Paragon of virtue he never was.
Rudy is a wanker. Literally
Of course, you're right. I can see this happening. Do you suppose Rudy will join them?
Rudy is continuing his quest entrap any young woman. The image of him with his hand down his pants trying to excite himself was pricelessly disgusting. Borat deserves a special recognition for the clip. Any suggestions for a name for such award?
I love Borat, but develop brain freeze at the mere visual. I'll mull it over and try to get past the mental block.
Please do, I'm considering informing Sasha Baron, who is brilliant, insightful, creative, and courageous. He'll be humble, but pleased.
That's a great idea. Even if I'm able to overcome my brain freeze, Sasha's suggestions would be far better than anything I could muster.
Sasha Baron Cohen is Borat. Perhaps Maria Bakalova?
Daniel , whaddya mean , he was tucking in his shirt, dontcha know. I am trying to come up with something appropriately inappropriate. May take awhile….
It is a complete tragedy. The opposite of which is a man who enjoys the company of women, therefore needing no help arousing himself. And I am just a few years' younger.
Perhaps Rudy will be the referee.....
Of course! Should have considered that.
I’d gladly view the fight 🥊 - but my errant facial hair has a date with my tweezers and razor. 🪒 Darn! ;-)
🤣
I was heartened this evening by Rachel Maddow's interview with Laurence Tribe on how the Texas Vigilante Abortion bill could be stopped in the courts by case precedents that would apply to this horrendous law especially on dealing with the vigilante ploy that needs to be stopped here and now forever and ever.
Oh don’t you know, Cathy. Gov made a speech yesterday and responded to no rape exception in new law. He said not necessary. Because Texas, under his leadership, will use every resource to get every rapist off the street so no woman, eh, person, has to experience rape ever again.
Rep Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez on CNN practically leapt through the screen to rip him a new one. Saying they will have to round up the close fam friend, the neighbor, the relative, the partner, the authority figure in charge…that more often will commit rape than a person from the streets. She literally called him grossly ignorant.
What is worse is how many people clapped after Abbott made the statement. They know how to stage a crowd, don’t they?
Yeah, I heard that. Let me see.... rape is about power and control executed via a forced sexual act. Texas men love power and control, especially over their women. Ain't gonna happen, Governor. EVER. Until you get rid of the concept that men have the right and duty to exercise power over women (see: The Bible).
... power over women, and children ... with parental rights predominating, and mens' rotary clubs in the weave of so-called child protective services, where are the exits in this theatre of the absurd?!
Thank you AOC!!!
AOC grew up in a neighborhood near mine, which had been segregated during my childhood. She knows how far we have come and how far to go.
Gee whiz, golly gosh - why am I not reassured (re ass u red) ...?
😂
It came out that the Ppl that were in the Trump Towers when he announced his run for Pres.we’re pulled in off the sidewalk and paid. These are desperate times for many so you never know ?
How much does pretending to think what a Repub politician said was worthy of approbation go for these days?
$49.99 chance to listen to he and Jr commentate fight.
🤮
Chances are they'll be issuing directives in code to their loyal followers to advance a new chapter of dysruption - authorities should listen in ....
If I’m correct, one doesn’t become a rapist until he has raped. So will Abbott call on Tom Cruise to reprise his role in the Minority Report?
"Never argue with stupid people, because they will drag you down to their level and then beat you with experience." Mark Twain
AOL knows that to get the rapists off the street they'd have to dragnet the lawmakers first.
I know AOC knows.
She's from The Bronx.
I'm not convinced that rape and incest really exist in their. Nor does contraception ever fail. I wonder what color the sky is on their planet?
!!!!!!!!!!!!
The prisons will be full and lots of people will be surprised who is doing time.
You are correct Cathy. Rachel interviewed, Prof, Lawrence Tribe about his successful case taken all they way to a winning (8-1) SCOTUS' ruling back in 1982. Larkin vs Grendel's Den 459 U.S. 116 (1982) Grendel's was & is a loved Cambridge Mass bar & get-together establishment. The state of Massachusetts had delegated the power to prevent the issuance of a liquor license to non-state Actors. Per the written opinion of then Chief Justice Warren Berger, such a delegation (now vigilante actors) is not permitted under the U.S. Constitution.
FYI, current U.S. Attorney General, Merrick Garland, is a former Harvard Law student of Prof. Tribe. Garland has many legal tools to address the Texas' unconstitutional conduct. Prof Tribe mentioned 42 USC 1983, a 1981 Civil Rights law, among others..
https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/459/116/
It was heartening to hear that nearly 40 years ago Tribe successfully argued to the Supreme Court a case similar to the Texas case, though not involving abortion. Then again, the present court has gone renegade. (We have McConnell and Trump to thank.) I would love for HCR to educate us about how aberrant the court has become compared to others through the years.
We are being educated about that every day.
👍 No kidding right ?
Doesn't this court's (in)decision invalidate it's own integrity?
"The court’s notorious five-justice majority, which included all three of Donald Trump’s nominees, suggested that the court hadn’t previously encountered legislative schemes that confer on private individuals the power to veto the provision of lawful services. It purported to be procedurally stymied from blocking the Texas law’s manifest goal of snuffing out abortion services and wrecking the lives of many women during the year or more it will take the court to ultimately strike the Texas law down or admit that it is jettisoning Roe v. Wade. Not true. And a Massachusetts case established the precedent."
If the highest court and supreme legal authority in the nation is so flawed, how can it be challenged and held accountable? World court?
Quote from column in Boston Globe by Laurence H. Tribe and David Rosenberg:
https://www.bostonglobe.com/2021/09/07/opinion/how-massachusetts-case-could-end-texas-abortion-law/
This is the first I've heard of a retroactive element in the Texas anti-abortion law! "...the Texas abortion law delegates quintessentially governmental power to private parties — in Texas, to literally anyone on earth with an objection to abortion, giving that individual or organization the unilateral and unfettered power to inflict criminal punishment on whoever assisted a woman, within the past four years, to terminate a pregnancy without being able to prove that the fetus didn’t have detectable cardiac activity."
And I don't even understand the element "without being able to prove that the fetus didn't have detectable cardiac activity". How would it be possible for a bounty hunter to legally access such private medical information, either retroactively or going forward? Are they just allowed to assume that, because there was an abortion performed, the pregnancy had to have been post-6 weeks?
Probably the best comment here. Yes they have no integrity, on any level. Horrifying. Hope that smarter legal minds can prevail.
Yes, what good news. Really good news
I did a search for a live link - nothing but old clips showed up ...
Here it is, Kathleen.
https://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow/watch/supreme-court-precedents-offer-doj-lots-of-options-to-challenge-texas-abortion-law-120386117597
Thank you Christine!!
I love it when El Jefe del Mar-A-Lardo goes out of his way to demonstrate what a conscienceless, talentless, brainless bucket of dreck he really is. He really must be sweating the nickels and dimes and quarters to do *that* on September 11. Of course, it's sort of a replay of what he was doing 20 years ago, which wasn't worrying about all his "friends" who died in the towers, since he's never had an actual friend in his life.
Don't know how many watched Rachel tonight, but Professor Tribe and she went over a case he represented to the Supreme Court in 1982, the Grendel's Den case, in which the court ruled that the state may not delegate any enforcement powers to a private, unaccountable entity. which is pretty much the spear someone's going to spit Abbott with and then slow roast him over a nice political fire with a Trump roadapple in his mouth.
I really suggest people re-watch "The Return of the King."
Great stuff TC
For those that want the details of the Scotus Grendel's Den case
https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/459/116/
TC, you never mince words...."he's never had an actual friend in his life." How true is that!!!
He can't get along with anyone for 5 minutes.
Unless they s his d.
Have you ever seen him smile, heard him laugh? He ran in the first place because of a bit of ribbing by Obama at the correspondents’ dinner.
Sizzlin, TC. Sizzlin’. Bacon on the hot griddle today.
OMG, TC. Watched the entire trilogy last weekend. I’ve been spotting Orcs at Publix and school board meetings. Need me Sting and a scabbard.
Indeed, El Jefe Mar-A-Lardo.
I often go with Tsar-a-Loco.
Love it
😂
Maga Lardo
😂
😂
Since I’ve cut back on my TV news I’ve been taping “The Last Word with Lawrence O’Donnell” instead. He mentioned the Grendel’s Den case that Rachel talked about. Thanks for the reminder to go find it on Utube.
El Jefe!!! Lol. Can you create a caricature image to go with that?
Who or what is El Jefe ?
He's referring to Trump. "El Jefe" (The Chief) is a Latinx expression. It often applies to a local pol who is also a crook.
Drug dealers ala Columbia
Thank you .
Ah, Blue Laws...
Three cheers for Professor Laurence Tribe! And for Rachel for having this segment!! Here's the link to it for anyone who missed it. 20 minutes.
"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UaP0YxazSrI
I wonder how "Gym" Jordan (R-OH) missed signing that letter of yahoos to Yahoo. He is always pushing himself forward into places he doesn't belong, but that would have been a perfect fit for him.
So now a very GQP state is rationing healthcare. If I remember correctly that is what the GQP said would happen under Obamacare led by Democrats. Hold onto your grannies the GQP is setting up "death panels".
So the reality TV huckster just can't resist showing his true colors. Maybe he should trying selling pillows for the "My Pillow" loser too.
It appalls me that everyday I still deal with people that refuse to mask let alone get the shot. I don't think we will ever reach herd immunity, but we are close to achieving herd stupidity.
"Herd stupidity" -- nice
Pamela. Word on the street from my Ohio peeps is that Gymmie Jordan has declared the pandemic “over”.
Publicly.
Crickets.
I am sad that Ohioans we have to claim him. But then I have to deal with Bill Johnson in my district. Since Gymmie admitted he spoke with DiJiT 30 or 40 times on 6 Jan he should be scrambling to hide his phone records
I will never forget that journalist in his deadpan voice asking manic Gymmie if he spoke to the president. It remains classic. Dems do not even need to make opposing ad. Just use that.
It won’t matter. That district is so gerrymandered that a Democratic candidate has no hope. So is mine (suburban Columbus, solidly blue, but stretching almost to West Virginia to the east and encompassing parts of nine very rural red counties). We don’t even have a rep at all right now, since ours resigned in May. Ohio is a mess. I rest my hope on the fact that Sherwood Brown is still our senator.
Sherrod Brown is awesome and I am so proud to call him our senator. Sadly the idiocy starts at the state and local levels
The idiocy about the school board race here is crazy. It looks like a Maga takeover is in the works. Terrifying.
Sorry, autocorrect! Sherrod Brown.
And death. There is the reality that those who refuse to mask or vax are their followers and they are dying by the cartload, sadly. I do wonder if they will ever come to the realization that they are killing their supporters or at least making their numbers smaller?
Darwinism in action in its purest form.
They might have made the calculation that some of their supporters will die, but that more of the opposition will die, since minorities have the lowest rates of vaccination. In close races this could decide the outcome.
"I do wonder if they will ever come to the realization that they are killing their supporters"
Their supporters (aka "Followers") are just cannon fodder in the great War. It is the Followers death march for Twisted Freedom. All for the purpose of enriching a few. Who says there's no money in murder and death?
“ Followers’ death march for Twisted Freedom,” indeed, Daniel! I’d sandwich “Nonexistent” between the twisted and the freedom, as these followers seem enslaved to hate.
They are sacrificing for "Freedom", with the extra bonus of taking some libs with them.
(P.S. There are no Virgins waiting, but they'll find that out soon enough.)
I wonder that every day.
Good observation on all points...except that we are reaching herd immunity and herd stupidity has been with us forever. But I'm most intrigued by your observation that the Trump disciple James didn't sign the letter might be very, very telling. I wonder if he checked with his lawyer first?
Prob used burner phone on that day. I think Gymmie is up to his neck in pre-planning.
I noticed that, too.
Which James?
Jordan
I believe Idaho was where there was a public "mask burning", with children tossing masks into the fire. What goes around, comes around......
May the spirits of those children who die due their parent's hubris and malice haunt those parents to the end of their days.
D-another perspective I've heard sadly...considered as 'martyrs for the cause'
"..yahoos to Yahoo"
Very good!
Oh thank you Pamela! You have so many hilarious and poignant phrases in your comments and I appreciate every word you wrote.
Thank you Mitzi....humor is often the only way not to scream, cry or sit in the corner covered in ashes
Ooof!!!
Heather, you have provided a terrifying rap sheet on what used to be the Republican Party. It has echoes of Hitler’s spin master, Joseph Goebbels: IF YOU TELL A BIG ENOUGH LIE LONG ENOUGH, PEOPLE WILL BELIEVE IT. Do I hear the Trump drum beat of ‘false facts?” Don’t believe what you see or hear, only believe me. What so-called January 6th insurrection? It seemed like a typical tourist day at the Capitol Building.
I hear the chorus of George Orwell’s 1984: POWER IS IN TEARING HUMAN MINDS TO PIECES AND PUTTING THEM BACK TOGETHER AGAIN IN NEW SHAPES OF OUR OWN CHOOSING. A majority of Americans favor legal abortion in some ‘reasonable’ manner. Attack this image and ‘reshape’ it. Ditto with ‘reasonable’ gun laws. There is no evidence of any significant fraud in the 2020 presidential election. Balderdash! Go with the BIG LIE and, state-by-state, take control of the electoral process and restrict the right to vote for those who are not part of your ‘bund.’
WHERE’S THE BEEF? For the first time in my modern memory, in 2020 the ‘Republican Party’ chose not to include a policy segment in their party platform. What, no stated policies? That’s right. It would be policy by Trump tweet. I can discern no positive policies for this current Trumpian amalgam.Instead, I see rampant negativism, highlighted by the steadfast rejection of federal voting rules and a sensible investment in shaping a human and physical infrastructure suitable for a dynamic and diverse America. “Climate change’ was abolished in official documents during the Trump administration.
If there are not enough Americans that reject this horse shit, then I fear for our country.
There’s enough of us, Keith. YeeHaw!
"I see rampant negativism, highlighted by the steadfast rejection of federal voting rules and a sensible investment in shaping a human and physical infrastructure suitable for a dynamic and diverse America. “Climate change’ was abolished in official documents during the Trump administration."
Anti Everything!
Tear It All Down!
Easy to understand and act on.(That's key)
The policy of resentment
...and hate.
And it is so much harder to build it up, than it was to tear it down. The Trump presidency damaged us so much, in ways both visible, and invisible to us.
Don't leave anything "invisible to us."
That is where the rot festers.
It is the 60’s all over again, but this time it’s the other side that has “ turned on, tuned in, and dropped out.” Meanwhile, look for Texas to secede and become the lone star republic once again. It joined the us only because the constitution itself and federal law formed the strongest defense of slavery.
This is not comparable to the 60s. The 60s were just the opposite. The 60s warned that this was coming and sought an alternative to to dystopia. I was there.
👍
Re the gun laws. I have often thought this is deliberate to arm the domestic terrorists to do the dirty work.
There is no doubt in my mind that there will be many that see that gun law as a call to arms. Turning up the volume once again on an already potentially violent time. And, combined with the abortion law and the voting restrictions those crackpots have a series of specific targets/locations to choose from to threaten and terrorize. Such as abortion clinics and poling places. It is pandering to a far right constituent whom perhaps mostly wont do actual harm but, there are clearly more than enough crackpots out there that just may. The unknowns are scary enough to keep some people away. At the very least they will be able to flash a gun or get in the faces of people who they disagree with. If this menace is allowed to stand it is clearly an infringement of a persons freedoms by republicans for the sake of getting votes.
"If this menace is allowed to stand it is clearly an infringement of a persons freedoms by republicans for the sake of getting votes."
Where is the federal government?
In years past those who did the “Dirty Work “ were called the Mob. Now they call them Patriots ?
The 2nd Amendment was, in part, a deliberate measure to arm domestic terrorists. Correspondence between Washington and his generals on the frontier (Ohio, for example) is explicit about terrorizing the indigent population, using both regular army troops and white civilians.
The rethuglican policy is "oppose".
While Republicans continue to hammer their abortion button with the Texas law, they feverishly try to abort our democracy. While they offer bounties to "Brown Shirts" to spy and accuse and sue their neighbors and community health clinics, they refuse and threaten those who set up and comply with legal law and order investigations when no bounties are offered.
When they claimed the Affordable Care Act was setting up "death panels" to ration healthcare, they have been rationing healthcare with their anti masking and anti vaccination campaigns. This did not just start in Idaho. It has been going on since Republican initiatives to hoax us on covid19 and the necessary preventions, increasing and expanding the infection, overloading our healthcare systems, and causing Americans to miss and delay the primary, descretionary and acute care that were need to maintain healthy lives.
My MD daughter tells me that she has seen patients die both from covid19 and inattention to their existing or developing conditions like diabetes and cancer. Their deaths are attributed to covid19, but their real causes of hospitalization and death are their underlying health conditions that aren't being diagnosed or sufficiently cared for. Americans are affected by the difficulty of getting appointments and their fear of going to covid19 affected healthcare facilities. The fact that even healthcare workers are resisting vaccinations and fight vaccination mandates, encouraged by Republicans, is cause for worry about going for needed healthcare services. So yes, Republicans have wielded the most oppressive politically motivated "death panel" in American history. And Americans have died in greater numbers and proportions than most nations, in spite of our substantial healthcare system because of Republican disinformation campaigns.
They MUST be Stopped!!!
For anyone who may have scrolled past this embedded comment in Heather's list of sources:
Jeff Stein @JStein_WaPo
Covid hospitalizations, Labor Day 2020: 38K
Covid hospitalizations, Labor Day 2021: 99K
https://www.washingtonpost.com/.../covid-delta-variant.../
We're #1
Freedom!
What was Nero doing while Rome burned? Calling a boxing match?
Gratitude, Dear HCR, for your fearless documentation of the events of the day. Sanity in a world of insanity.
Comparisons with Nero are unfavorable to DT. Nero acted to feed and shelter refugees from the fire. Rebuilding, he acted against property speculators (who may have started the fire…)
Nero’s Domus Aureus (the Golden House) does, however, bring to mind New York’s answer to Caligula.
“No matter how many men you kill, you can't kill your successor.”
― Seneca, Dying Every Day: Seneca at the Court of Nero
Perfect!
A pointed reminder for Putin, for Xi, for Modi, for Kim Jong Un, for Duterte, for Bolsonaro, for every tinpot tyrant present and to come…
Seneca survived for several years as Nero’s mentor. DT was mentored by… Roy Cohn.
According to a semi-reliable source Nero started the fire as part of a massive redevelopment project and then fiddled while Rome burned. As Robert Caro brilliantly underscored, Robert Moses didn’t have a fiddle.
Another time of mass confusion, rumors, fake news and conspiracy theories. Tacitus tells that Nero was in Antium (Anzio -- familiar to Americans because of the great battle fought there in WW2) when fire broke out. As for fiddles, those came from the Far East... many centuries later...
Nero's redevelopment was unpopular, but he had the power to make it happen and drove out speculators in the process. Hence, perhaps, the conspiracy theories blaming the Emperor... In London after the Great Fire of 1666, that power rested with the City's burghers who insisted on retaining the old rabbit-warren of a street plan instead of Wren and Hawksmoor's grand project, more like Berlin or Saint Petersburg...
... well, not everyone has the talent to play a violin ... different fiddles for different folks ...?
Women are coming for Texas Republicans and the women are pissed off. Be ready for the Oct. 2 Women’s March organizing rallies for that day everywhere across the U.S. Women and men will take to the streets that day in support of Reproductive Freedom. Put on your masks and get ready to march. We can do this.
I’m a day late here but yesterday’s letter referenced the Republicans concern in the present and historically with “Socialism”. I don’t think that I have heard any Republicans call for the elimination of that intrusive government entity that we know as FEMA.
Those who complain the loudest are first in line for government services when they need them. I recently had a discussion of socialism with a misinformed person who didn't know what he was talking about. Then I got ad hominem snarky comments and was accused of trying to control his mind and free will since he really could not discuss either socialism or capitalism. Funny where these folks go when they have nothing to say. I will certainly add HCR's bit on the history of socialism here next time some fool tries to talk about this.
I also couldn’t help but think about all of the right wing government workers and firemen and police officers and etc… They all work for the government and are supposed to be working for the tax payers. They are held up as heroes but they also get excellent pensions and benefits through their service. For so many of them to whine about socialism sounds ridiculous to me since non of them would have a job without the government. Same goes for politicians. It just sounds idiotic to me.
It's a deliberate cover-up of their actual dependence. The tough-independent-guy is overcompensation, and poorly acted.
Being on government assistance, in the same way that an out-of-luck Black person might be, is humiliating for these losers. Thus their anger toward the Black person WHO IS IN THE SAME BOAT AS THEY ARE, BUT RESENTED FOR BEING IN THE BOAT.
Thank you, Heather, for pointing out that the Republican Party's approach to regaining power is becoming less and less popular with the American public, which quite possibly will be their downfall. They have shown that voting against the wishes of their constituents in favor of political expediency may very well turn against them. Republican attempts to outlaw mask mandates in the name of personal freedom while more and more people are infected and many die is wrong and criminal. Their supporters are beginning to understand that their leaders are willing kill to capture a legislative majority. Many are, pardon the pun, just plain sick of it.
What is interesting is that the Republican Party's game plan offers few ideas on how to run the country. They witnessed and are slowly absorbing, hopefully, the wrong thinking of a right wing GOP President: Suppression of the truth about Covid, a massive tax cut that helped no one except the 1% and corporations which did not plow added revenues into R and D and hiring as hoped, but continued to line their own pockets instead. Turning its back on international cooperation by exiting the WHO and the Paris Climate Accord. And finally, institutionalizing partisan extremism.
Now, desperate Republicans have resorted to cheating through voter suppression laws. It's pathetic. Their fuel tanks are swiftly headed toward empty while the Democratic Party works to improve the lives of working Americans, children and the elderly. The mid-terms are the GOP's to lose. Hopefully the ammunition they have been using shoots themselves in the foot.
Randy, I agree that the rethuglicans have no ideas as to how to make this country better other than to oppose anything the Dems want. They oppose but offer no ideas of their own. Pretty pathetic.
Inherent in your comment is the assumption that Rs want to make this country better.
They don't even believe in a government that would make things better for everyone.
In fact, they oppose it.
So they do have that platform.
But they don't propose an alternative other than oppose. So their government is what? Opposition is the platform.
it sells in america
Hopefully their ill gotten aim will be higher than the foot!
They'll have to move their heads to create an empty space. Would give a whole new meaning to the term 'bullseye'.
STILL APPALLED AT THE INSANITY
I have written this before, about the ambient insanity that has taken over the U.S. but there seems no end to it. It is cult behavior, reminiscent of Jim Jones 900 who drank the cyanide.
I was appalled on Nov. 8, 2016 when the ignorant cultists foisted an unqualified, mentally defective POSer president on us, and it had steadily grown worse in those 4 years. His opponent in that election, Hillary Clinton, even said on Aug 8, 2016, “Just imagine Donald Trump in the Oval Office facing a real crisis. We can’t afford that kind of risk.” And, sure enuf, his malice & ineptitude during the crisis of a new viral pandemic contributed to the more than a half-million deaths in the U.S.
And now, even after health professionals have shown the effectiveness of prevention by wearing masks & distancing and even after scientists have gotten life-saving vaccines in record time, his cult followers, leaders in the Repugnant Party still oppose both those rational measures as the deaths continue among the unvaccinated.
As a critical thinking person I cannot wrap my head around such mass insanity. Jim Jones’ 900+ is no longer the astonishing cult killing in one day, nor even the 3,000+ who were murdered on Sep. 11, 2001. That daily number of deaths happened on many days over the past year due to the disease, exacerbated by the insanity of the science & precaution denying cult leadership and their followers.
Thank you. Can numbers amplify your words? From December 29, 2020 to Jan 29, 2021, there were 104,280 deaths attributed to covid-19 in the US, an average of 3,160 per day. On January 6 alone, 3,964 died.
Re Jim Jones. Those people had Machine guns pointed at them also. I think it was for their children’s sake they drank the juice. It’s an agonizing death tho. They all had such daily challenging lives here, no rights, powers or privileges. They had/ and still have it harder than the white Caucasian and their fault was hope for better lives. Who amongst us hopes for less than they ? I still hear Janice Joplins “Me and Bobby McGee song. “Freedom is just another word for nothing left to lose“.
I'm surprised the Trump tag team didn't invite someone from the royal Saudi family to join them for the "gamecast".
As for the continued surge of the Republicans to the hard right, I hope I read in today's letter correctly that this move could cause their primaries to choose candidates so toxic, Democrats will win general elections in places previously not thought possible.
The extreme radical lengths they are now having to go can only serve to alienate members of their own party. Everything has its limits.
It seems like there is no limit to outrageous behavior. The Coyote tries in vain to capture the Roadrunner while keeping the Acme attack machine company in business
I’m hopeful that our overall American System will drop a big rock on the GQP Coyote
Now that is Dang funny ! Thank you for the LOL ! And the GQP “The Goon Quacks Party “.
Qanon
Yea, I knew where your “Q “ was coming from. I just wanted to eliminate the “ Grand”. And define them from my perspective. The “Q’s “ Great Grandparents wouldn’t have let this happen. And it appears a lot of them perhaps have lost Grandparents to CoVid ? Fickle Finger of Fate that a killer disease of the Seniors on it’s first round right before elections. So odd though, haven’t heard of anyone of great wealth or 1%, whatever you want to call them dying from it ? Just us ‘Folks ‘.No “Q’s “ either.
Oh yes, and they can bring the orb.
Trump only knows about little white balls. Guess they showed him didn’t they !
Yes, Christopher. Excellent takeaway.
👍
Trump must be increasingly desperate for money and attention. Hired to comment on a boxing match between men in their 50s and 40s? Sad for a former president, though for Trump it's so on brand.
He’s returning to his TV roots.
t***p’s POTUS 45 performance resembled the blustering character he played on WWE TV more than it did the business mogul he pretended to be on *The Apprentice*.
The Mexican Supreme Court has just decriminalized abortion. Now watch as Abortion clinics are set up at every crossing point on the Texas Border with local "protection" against the GOP hordes.
Medical tourism is quite a thriving industry in México, (not just in border area). Abortion clinics, not only along the border but in easily accessed destinations such as Cancun, could be a practical solution for women seeking to terminate a pregnancy and profitable for the clinics providing the procedure.
If they can afford the trip, though. This option would not be feasible for the majority...
True. Crossing the land border into México might be impossible for some seeking an abortion depending on their immigration status. If this law isn't overturned, states within an easy travel distance from Texas, and which already have restrictive abortion laws, will tighten them. This means women would have to travel to less restrictive states, further away, also an expensive proposition. That would be catastrophic for some women.
Before Roe v Wade, many women went to Mexico for their abortions. Again, affording the trip was the solution for some, but not many. Same will be true today.
I understand. Traveling to border states may not be an easy solution either, especially since states surrounding Texas are also eager to enact more restrictive laws. In March 2021, the Texas Policy Evaluation Project (TPEP) published its findings on the increased number of Texas women seeking border state abortions and the implications of increased restrictions in border state abortion laws. There will be no easy solution if these laws are not overturned.
"Implications statement: Abortion restrictions that severely curtail access may result in increases in travel out of state for care. Documenting out-of-state abortions is important for evaluating broader policy impacts and to prepare for future service disruptions. Texas residents may have more limited options for care if border states enact restrictive abortion laws."
New Mexico is the least restrictive border state and seems likely to remain so.
I've requested a copy of the full TPEP study and will post the link when I receive it, in the meantime here's the Abstract.
https://www.ibisreproductivehealth.org/projects/texas-policy-evaluation-project-txpep
Sigh... When will we women stand up to these asshole white men and say ENOUGH!
I don't know. All the centuries of abuse...the belief that women are inferior to men that's baked into our histories and traditions.
I got the TPEP report. Let me know if you'd like it and I will e mail it to you. It's a PDF so I can't simply forward it. (Or maybe I can, but I don't know how😐)
Thanks, Daria. I have my hands full with reading material as is. And, I have a feeling it might further enrage and depress me!
I inadvertently cut the name of the study: Border-state abortions increased for Texas residents after House Bill 2.
Here information about HB2 and subsequent legal challenges from Wikipedia. Not my favorite source but...
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Texas_House_Bill_2
I noticed that Abbott signed the voter restriction bill with a big black Sharpie today, emulating DeSantis in copying that former guy. Stagecraft. Sigh.
I noticed that my Texas state representative was sitting at the front table with the Governor (the guy on the far left with the handle bar mustache). He was the chair on the House Elections Committee, a sponsor of the abortion bill and the author of the permitless carry bill. Three strikes! I am thinking of a way to approach him in my next letter to him. Believe it or not I think he may be salvageable. He did get quite an ear full from me on the Vigilante Abortion bill. I also noticed the signing was all white males except one token Latino, one token Black and one token woman. Most of my corporate career as a senior manager meant I was usually the only women in the room for years upon years so I know how it feels.
Give 'em hell Cathy!
Cathy so I just don’t get how they could have gotten so up to their necks in doodle. They don’t want the immigrants but they ar encouraging them to be scared to have abortions so then they’ll multiply? Or are the banking on a new shoot em out Alamo series of events as vigilantes go for the 10,000 rewards. And what about their relationships with neighboring states who then take the brunt of the Texas defections either to escape Texas or desperately search for abortions in Southern California. It’s all so stupid. Hispanics don’t like abortions. When I taught them 9th graders were pregnant and happy about it because they had an aunt in the neighborhood who ran a daycare center. But then that was just Lynn, MA. I love the specter of quiet Garland looming over the whole mess with his fabulously bright team.
See latest from Mexican Supreme Court decriminalizing abortion! they'll pop back over the border to get the job done......while Garland prosecutes anyone who tries to get in the way.
Oh goody.
"They don’t want the immigrants but they ar encouraging them to be scared to have abortions so then they’ll multiply?" That right there, Liz.
Lynell— let’s just face it— they’re completely coukou— what Texas really needs is an emergency rescue team of quality psychologists bussed in from MA and NYC—it’ll be free and mandated.
They'd have to take the refugee camps and turn them into insane asylums to hold all the insane T-Basers (trump basers), Liz, and even then there wouldn't be enough room to fit them all.
/sarcasm/
You wouldn’t believe how many shrinks are on the east coast though.
When has anyone credited this crowd with logic? Despite statistics showing that the number of abortions plummeted following Roe v. Wade, they are determined to send women home or back street abortions. Abortions won't cease any more than rapists will cease raping.
Clueless repugs
I meant do do not doodle.
Hahahaha. I actually laughed, Liz thinking you made up new term for doo-doo. 😝
When you think of it— the shape of a cheese doodle..I agree..
And since TFG has been referred to as the orange cheeto, I think it's a perfect fit.
Or are they welcoming the next generation of cheap labor?
Hey Wendy—brilliant idea!
He has fanboy down pat.
HCR, as always, I am so grateful that you put these daily political aberrations in some order that we can follow, and slowly understand. The world we're living in, for now, feels so sad and dystopian. It's comforting to know that you send out these letters. I never thought I'd live in a day that Roe vs Wade could be torn apart. Or that people in charge wouldn't do the right thing (healthwise) in schools and for children and families.