Items that pique my interest: videos, topical stories, movie, book reviews, political essays, commentary, political art, humor and photos.
Tuesday, December 08, 2020
Monday, November 23, 2020
STOP CALLING THEM “REPUBLICANS"
Words Matter
I try never to paint groups of people with the same brush but I will now.
In the modern history of the United States we've only had two great political parties: Democrats & Republicans. We have now been reduced to one.
Millions belonged to the Republican Party. They had some good ideas & stood for some principles. Some identified as “Conservative”, “Middle-of-the-Road” or “Compassionate Conservative” but you can forget that nomenclature. They have vanished; co-opted. Now we have Democrats & Cultists.
Cultists have only fealty to the dear leader & are guided by his lies and conspiracies. The truth escapes them. They live in an alternate universe and entertain such rich ideas as “alternative facts”. There. Is. No. Such. Thing; IT IS AN OXYMORON.
Consider Jones, Koresch, Rajneesh, Jeffs, Raniere & perhaps, the best known: Adolf Hitler. They all lived by “alternative facts”. Most who followed them lost everything, have suffered or perished.
Malcolm X argued that the word “integration” was only an invention to make middle class whites feel comfortable. The more accurate word, he argued, was “mongrelization”. Only as people intermarry, have families and successful careers in society will there be true integration.
Fast forward. Today, you rarely hear anyone use that word, “integration”, referring to race. People no longer march for integration. We are now beginning a discussion on “systemic racism”.
Those who once proudly identified as Republican can no longer do so. Thousands have resigned from the Republican Party. Some are simply disgusted. Some have become virulent Anti-Trumpers. Those who remain have sipped the Kool-Aid. They have morphed into the Alt-Right, Qnoners, Racists, Conspiracy Mongers, Purveyors of Misinformation, Bullshitters, Cowardly Lions; certainly not constitutionalists..
Current members of congress who identify as "Republican" can no longer claim to be the loyal opposition. They have done nothing to earn the title but have managed extreme fealty to Donald Trump. He paralyzes them, He mutes them. He has them running scared. He tweets at them. Oh my. They are no longer guided by truth & principle. Constitution? What Constitution? Truth? What truth? Law? What law? They are no longer "Republicans". They cannot debate with credibility, make statements or offer up ideas that make sense. Words matter. Stop calling these people “Republicans”. They are certainly not. Call them something else.
Journalists, opinionists, public figures & writers, please find another name. Remember words do matter. And stop calling the man in the White House “the most powerful man in the world”. He is not.
From 2015-2019 journalists "fumphered" around trying to describe Donald Trump’s exaggerations, untruths & flights of fancy. Only in 2020 did the mainstream media finally begin to call it “lying”. "Oorah"! That’s accurate and has made a difference in our collective conscience.
Meanwhile former “Republicans” need to find a new home and a new name. Many have found temporary asylum in the Lincoln Project but sooner or later, the Lincoln Project will morph into a political party with an alternate name, like, let’s say, “The National Union Party (United States)”. Check it out.
Abraham Lincoln was actually part of “The National Union Party” so were “Republicans” really the “Party of Lincoln”? When Lincoln ran for President under the “The National Union Party” banner, he won by a landslide. Of course, that was in 1864.
What makes this country viable is debate, voting and the law. Without “Republicans”, there can be no debate. You end up talking to yourself. That's what is happening now.
Discussion between Democrats and Cultists consists of “I’m right & you’re wrong.” One cannot discuss an issue with cultists who dispense conspiratorial smoke & mirrors and expect to arrive at a reasoned conclusion. But Democrats debating “The National Union Party”? Now that could be a healthy debate between equals.
We hear the “talking heads” use the phrase “words matter”. Yes, they do.So let’s start using more of them.
Friday, October 09, 2020
THE NEW HIGH FOR THE 45TH POTUS
My new theory: the imPOTUS is not lying. He DOES feel better. It's a drug induced high. That's what steroids do for you.
In fact, he feels SO GOOD that he has ORDERED his military doctor to continue the STEROID regimen to which his doctor replies: "Yes Sir".
It's is drug of choice and because he now feels bigger, stronger, even more confident, he is even more DANGEROUS.
That's what steroids do to you.
Be careful, very careful.
For those of you who have been prescribed a regimen of steroids, you know I'm telling the truth. For those of you who haven't had this experience, ask a doctor, a nurse, a nurse practitioner or your local pharmacist.
There are legitimate reasons to be discussing the 25th amendment. Let's just not take too long....
Thursday, July 09, 2020
Tuesday, June 16, 2020
Sunday, June 07, 2020
GEORGE FLOYD'S PLACE IN HISTORY
Tuesday, June 02, 2020
TOO IMPORTANT TO IGNORE. PLEASE TAKE A MOMENT TO READ.
By
George F. Will
Columnist
June 1, 2020 at 3:18 p.m. EDT
This unraveling presidency began with the Crybaby-in-Chief banging his spoon on his highchair tray to protest a photograph — a photograph — showing that his inauguration crowd the day before had been smaller than the one four years previous. Since then, this weak person’s idea of a strong person, this chest-pounding advertisement of his own gnawing insecurities, this low-rent Lear raging on his Twitter-heath has proven that the phrase malignant buffoon is not an oxymoron.
Presidents, exploiting modern communications technologies and abetted today by journalists preening as the “resistance” — like members of the French Resistance 1940-1944, minus the bravery — can set the tone of American society, which is regrettably soft wax on which presidents leave their marks. The president’s provocations — his coarsening of public discourse that lowers the threshold for acting out by people as mentally crippled as he — do not excuse the violent few. They must be punished. He must be removed.
Social causation is difficult to demonstrate, particularly between one person’s words and other persons’ deeds. However: The person voters hired in 2016 to “take care that the laws be faithfully executed” stood on July 28, 2017, in front of uniformed police and urged them “please don’t be too nice” when handling suspected offenders. His hope was fulfilled for 8 minutes and 46 seconds on Minneapolis pavement.
What Daniel Patrick Moynihan termed “defining deviancy down” now defines American politics. In 2016, voters were presented an unprecedentedly unpalatable choice: Never had both major parties offered nominees with higher disapproval than approval numbers. Voters chose what they wagered would be the lesser blight. Now, however, they have watched him govern for 40 months and more than 40 percent — slightly less than the percentage that voted for him — approve of his sordid conduct.
Presidents seeking reelection bask in chants of “Four more years!” This year, however, most Americans — perhaps because they are, as the president predicted, weary from all the winning — might flinch: Four more years of this? The taste of ashes, metaphorical and now literal, dampens enthusiasm.
The nation’s downward spiral into acrimony and sporadic anarchy has had many causes much larger than the small man who is the great exacerbator of them. Most of the causes predate his presidency, and most will survive its January terminus. The measures necessary for restoration of national equilibrium are many and will be protracted far beyond his removal. One such measure must be the removal of those in Congress who, unlike the sycophantic mediocrities who cosset him in the White House, will not disappear “magically,” as Eric Trump said the coronavirus would. Voters must dispatch his congressional enablers, especially the senators who still gambol around his ankles with a canine hunger for petting.
In life’s unforgiving arithmetic, we are the sum of our choices. Congressional Republicans have made theirs for more than 1,200 days. We cannot know all the measures necessary to restore the nation’s domestic health and international standing, but we know the first step: Senate Republicans must be routed, as condign punishment for their Vichyite collaboration, leaving the Republican remnant to wonder: Was it sensible to sacrifice dignity, such as it ever was, and to shed principles, if convictions so easily jettisoned could be dignified as principles, for . . . what? Praying people should pray, and all others should hope: May I never crave anything as much as these people crave membership in the world’s most risible deliberative body.
A political party’s primary function is to bestow its imprimatur on candidates, thereby proclaiming: This is who we are. In 2016, the Republican Party gave its principal nomination to a vulgarian and then toiled to elect him. And to stock Congress with invertebrates whose unswerving abjectness has enabled his institutional vandalism, who have voiced no serious objections to his Niagara of lies, and whom T.S. Eliot anticipated:
We are the hollow men . . .
Our dried voices, when
We whisper together
Are quiet and meaningless
As wind in dry grass
or rats’ feet over broken glass . . .
Those who think our unhinged president’s recent mania about a murder two decades ago that never happened represents his moral nadir have missed the lesson of his life: There is no such thing as rock bottom. So, assume that the worst is yet to come. Which implicates national security: Abroad, anti-Americanism sleeps lightly when it sleeps at all, and it is wide-awake as decent people judge our nation’s health by the character of those to whom power is entrusted. Watching, too, are indecent people in Beijing and Moscow.
Read more from George F. Will’s archive or follow him on Facebook.
Saturday, April 11, 2020
PANDEMIC
Saturday, April 04, 2020
Tuesday, March 24, 2020
Monday, February 17, 2020
AHOY! A BLOOMBERG IS ON THE HORIZON
Forget the alt-right haters; his current weaknesses seem to lie with minority & mid-west voters. Although his minority (black) support is on the upswing -- because he is seen as the dRump killer -- I haven't seen any discussion about Bloomberg's chances in the mid-west.
Enter Amy Klobuchar. She's a she, she's moderate, smart as a whip, tough, no nonsense & slightly more charming than Bloomberg.
OTOH, Kamala Harris is all those things plus she appears to be even more approachable, has real charm, an infectious laugh, is a minority & all that counts for something anywhere, any time.
Having said that, a Bloomberg/Harris ticket would represent the two coasts, once again leaving the mid-west as flyover country & I'm not sure the Dem's should try that again (even though Uncle Joe will undoubtedly be waiting in the wings to help out). So maybe it will be Bloomberg/Klobuchar.
However, given that the overriding imperative in 2020 is to make dRump the unPOTUS, I believe all the losing Democratic candidates -- maybe not Bernie because he'll be pouting up in VT -- but a wonderful culturally diverse cross section of very smart surrogates like Castro (Latinos), Beto (idealists), Booker (love preacher), Bennett (Big Sky reformer), Mayor Pete (LBGTQ + Iowa) & Warren (the pragmatic revolutionary) will be out campaigning for the chosen one, addressing some of the electorate nooks & crannies across the nation.
If I'm right, the current POTUS can kiss his ass goodbye. Unfortunately, that will not rid us of the Trump/Kushner cabal. They will be feeding in the political trough, dogging the Democratic administration for years to come. But it will eventually recede like a bad dream.
Saturday, February 15, 2020
FOLLOWING THE SHINY OBJECT, JOURNALISM IN THE AGE OF TRUMP
Journalists and news outlets of all kinds ARE indispensable to a healthy democracy. However, there is much public sentiment that views TV news as utterly dispensable. Considering how much news is consumed over the airwaves, this is dangerous but may be deserved.
Day after day, there is uneven, lazy TV reporting on our presidential candidates, arguably the most important story in the world for all that it suggests about our place amongst nations. I watch the coverage day after day. I find myself talking to my TV set. I'm both disgusted and sad.
February 15, 2020
Thursday, February 13, 2020
ACCESSORIES TO MURDER
Monday, February 10, 2020
Sunday, February 09, 2020
Friday, January 31, 2020
JAY SEKULOW : EVEN MORE DANGER! DANGER! DANGER!
Daniel Borochoff, president of the American Institute of Philanthropy, said Sekulow appears to be mixing his defense of Trump with his charitable endeavors. The group has issued a “Donor Alert” about ACLJ on its CharityWatch website.
Thursday, January 30, 2020
DANGER! DANGER! DANGER!
Voters also say their biggest concern is disinformation, followed by voter fraud and voter suppression. Forty-four percent think it's likely that many votes will not actually be counted in 2020.
American Distrust Of The Voting Process Is Widespread, NPR Poll Finds Jan. 21, 2020
While most voters have confidence in their state and local governments to run a fair election, 43% do not think those officials have done enough to make sure that there's no foreign interference.
Many more blame President Trump. Fifty-six percent say he has done little or nothing to keep the elections safe. A slim majority think the president, who has repeatedly questioned Russian tampering in 2016, actually encourages foreign interference.
This lack of voter confidence has unnerved lower-level election officials as the nation heads into what's expected to be a highly contentious presidential race with high levels of turnout.
"My biggest concern in 2020 is that regardless of outcome, we will be faced with somewhere around the end of the first week in November, this concern by half of the country that they lost the election illegitimately, " says Colorado Election Director Judd Choate.
SOLIPSISM
Excerpted from "A Very Stable Genius"