Not Trump, not his top advisers, and not the right-wing media. Liz Cheney is stripping the invisibility and invincibility from all Trump acolytes. We are seeing the height of their perfidy and their involvement in trying to overturn the 2020 election results.
Oh, my! Which political party will try to get Liz Cheney to run for office under their banner? It won’t be the Republican Party, for sure!
She is a firebrand and has set the former Executive Branch on fire with her investigation of perfidy at the highest levels. Just like every other investigation of ex-President Donald Trump, this one burns everybody around him. He may have been asbestos in Russia Gate but he is going to burn for his role in the events of January 6th.
There are way too many scandals involving ex-President Donald Trump and his attempts to usurp the US election process. How is it possible that the decent people in the mainstream Republican Party can continue to applaud, listen, and support ex-President Donald Trump?
I don’t know.
But I’m reminded of the Bible story about the prodigal son. I wish all the good Republicans would return home to the Party of fiscal responsibility and good governance.
I hope those Prodigal Sons and Daughters realize that HOME has a new address. HOME for good-governance Republicans is now the Reform Party of the USA.
It’s time to come home. The dinner bell is ringing. You are welcome to join us at the table of good governance and fiscal responsibility.
This opinion piece provides the dumbest reasons why NYC should allow noncitizens the right to vote in municipal elections. But it is protected by the Freedom of the Press.
If we made sausages the way News is offered to the public for consumption, the FDA would be all over this crap and shut these operations down. Does Freedom of the Press mean everyone can say crap about everything in national news and caveat emptor (buyer beware) prevails? Sheesh.
( I know, I know, that is exactly what Freedom of the Press means. I’m just having a tantrum over this opinionated defense of foreign residents voting in American elections. Bear with me, please. I’ll get over it.)
A) It will strengthen communities and give more residents an investment in politics that affect their daily lives. (Who says it was a weakness to forbid foreign residents from voting and why?)
B) There are about 15 million legal non-residents in the country and about 800,000 in New York City. These are our neighbors who pay taxes, send their children to public schools, start businesses and contribute to their communities. They should be able to elect leaders and have a say in local politics just like anyone else. (Well, they already have a say in local politics. They just don’t have the ability to vote their politics into American action!)
C) Giving noncitizens the right to vote will encourage civic engagement, thereby strengthening the cities that allow it. The more people who vote, the more accurately leaders and policies will reflect their constituencies. (What weaknesses exist today? Hmm? And what evidence do you have that the policies in place today do not reflect their constituencies?)
D) It is not fair that these potential citizens should go so long without any civic voice as their cases wind their way through our backlogged immigration system. (Cry me a river. They already have a civic voice and it has nothing to do with immigration status. If you mean politicians prefer to listen to American voters over foreign voters, well, yes, that is the moral, ethical, and legal right of a politician to determine who they will appeal to.)
“It’s not fair” Sheesh. Grow up, buddy. Life isn’t about fairness towards civic representation.
The author never cited a single instance in which foreign residents of NYC have been harmed by or neglected by the citizens who do vote in NYC. There is no evidence of suffering imposed upon a population of 800,000 foreign residents of New York City.
But hey, this is America. This is the place that no matter how asinine your cause is, you will find a national press ready to publish it.
If we made sausages the way news is offered to the public for consumption, the FDA would be all over this crap and shut these operations down. Does Freedom of the Press mean everyone can say crap and caveat emptor prevails? Sheesh. I guess it does.
Doesn’t matter where one looks, or reads, or listens, the social and news media can only comment on strife and division. They only see life through political eyeglasses.
And the “deliverables” from the American political process are tainted or adulterated or poisoned. Legislation is full of favors and gifts and each is poisonous to the US budget and deficit.
And as for politicians, poisonous accusations abound. There is haint with the taint. (The word haint was historically used in African-American vernacular to refer to a witch-like creature seeking to chase victims to their death by exhaustion.[4][5] The accusations are exhausting!)
There is poison in the political Kool Aid. How much will you drink when you are told to drink from the glass, shut your mouth, and look the other way?
Do you drink Red Kool Aid or Blue Kool Aid? Do you lean left or right?
The Leaning Tower of Pisa leans both ways depending upon where you stand. America leans in the same way. Depending upon where one stands, America is left-leaning or right-leaning. Like the Leaning Tower of Pisa built on soft land, America was built on the soft land of people rather than the hard land of history. The Constitution is a heavy monument to the best in humankind. Unfortunately, soft people have settled over the past two hundred and fifty years and the Constitution now leans.
People wonder why the Constitution has not already toppled. Two political parties intend to bend American government to fit their agenda. The tilt of the Constitution increases relative to the observers but in no way does it straighten itself.
To prevent the Constitution from toppling, engineers are needed to strengthen it . It can never be completely upright again but the lean (from both perspectives) must stop or it will topple.
Where are the engineers and who will let them be about the business of shoring up the Constitution to offset the settling of the people?
Wherever they are, don’t let them drink the Kool Aid.
I admit I still have a vestige of social hypochondria. COVID, Trump, Red vs Blue, robots, budget deficits, police brutality, Children of the Corn (hehehe), zombie vaccinations, etc.
Slate Magazine: Social hypochondria: “As a society, we always seem to be obsessing about some problem like teen-age drinking or child abuse or immigration or cloning, convinced that it will destroy the country or the world unless it is eliminated. The hypochondria analogy isn’t perfect: These diseases tend to be real, not wholly imagined. But a) their perils are exaggerated—at least until they are put aside to make room for other perils; and b) the hope of ever curing them is also exaggerated.”
There is no cure. But how do we discourage decent people from believing all the social media things they encounter?
Truth helps but it is always a complicated truth and, frankly, not everyone is cut out to ferret truth from lies. There are experts out there who find a hot button issue and begin to infect society with an exaggerrated fear. How can a regular person decide if “global warming” deserves all the hyperbole written about it? Or police brutality? Or Aliens in the Arctic?
Rush Limbaugh died the other day. He was excoriated by the liberal press and revered by the conservative press.
Some say he defined the modern Republican Party with his views about women (Feminazis), Gays, liberals, female sexual freedom, and the dirty, sinful, socialism of the Democrats versus the shining Republicans on the hill. You know them, the ones who live Christian lives as examples for the rest of us to follow.
Rush Limbaugh was at the crest of societal change in America and he didn’t like any part of it. He told millions of viewers every day , in mocking self-righteous tones, of the hypocrisy between what liberals and Democrats say and what they do. The disaffected and suspicious-of-change Conservatives listened to his radio program every day to hear more examples of outrageous behaviors on the part of liberals who believed in improving humanity through others but not through themselves.
He was funny and he poked the bear with outrageous quotes and comparisons.
But something changed in Rush Limbaugh in the early 2000’s. He was no longer funny. He became mean. I don’t know if he realized he was losing his war on the culture changes in America or if he started to throw himself into propaganda for ratings and money.But change he did. He became the voice of right-wing ideology, obtained a following, and fueled partisan politics in ways no one had previously had done.
Connecting the dots between conservatives who lived by self-actuating,nuclear family, individual rights and biblical memes, with a solid Republican, fiscally responsible, minimal government, and political perspective, Rush Limbaugh developed a cult. He fed the cult and the cult echo-chamber replied.
Becoming more mean, Rush began to denigrate people by name rather than by poking fun at their ideology. He created a monster that hides under YOUR bed or in the dark corners ready to take YOUR soul if you let it. He taught people to fear Hilary because she was a feminazi, fear Obama because he was angry and black, fear gays because they want you to accept their biblical perversions, and fear sexual freedom for the collapse of shameful behaviors in Society. This is who Rush Limbaugh became for the past 15 years.
But now, Rush is dead. So,too, is the old society that Rush tried to salvage from the forge that was creating a new American mettle. The new American mettle? Women became competitors to men, even among truckdrivers, construction workers, bank CEOs, Wall Street financiers, scientists, plumbers, elcetricians, politicians, and engineers. Gays are competitors to straight men and are accepted in society without being considered biblically perverted. American blacks of both sexes are now competitors to white men and have broken more ceilings and become a larger part of society than ever in American history. And sexual freedom is found everywhere. Even among the gun-toting, single white female moms living in the Bible Belt working in sex chat rooms.
Rush Limbaugh found, identified, and held up for our inspection, the societal changes that were occurring around us. No longer isolated by two oceans, America was becoming part of the global community whether Rush Limbaugh wanted it or not. And now, America has changed and it knows it has changed. It cannot return to the paternalistic People of The Book Christian ideology that it once exemplified.
The death of Rush Limbaugh, the expulsion of Donald Trump, and the new American mettle, each heralds a greater American future.
I mourn the loss of my enemy. I mourn the passing of my past. The King is dead. Long live the king.
The Washington Post is simply the best at collecting, analyzing, and distributing timelines of history-making events. Read it here.
The attached article outlines in detail the events that marked the US response to the COVID-19 pandemic. There is a tone of Monday morning quarterbacking, but don’t let that tone divert you from understanding what occurred and when.
In essence, the agencies of the United States government were swift to begin, BUT the President’s appointees slowed the game down enough to thwart US leadership. The President’s appointees were informed and then promptly acted in a mediocre manner to an urgent situation. The result was the Rest of the World was ahead of the US.
You should thank God there are two oceans to protect America. And thank God that China quarantined a city of 11 million people when it did. If not for that quarantine and two oceans, the deaths in the US would have been unbelievable.
Although others try, one can’t really fault China for being slow to respond to the ROW (rest of world). It had 11 million people to address and millions more to prevent infection.
As for the US response, well, we are into the fourth month of an outbreak, and there is no national testing to show us the spread of the disease. There is a lack of protection for healthcare workers and shortages in disinfectant for everyone.
YouTube has more videos about how to protect yourself than the CDC or Health and Human Services.
All of which proves this President, and his political appointees, failed to lead America during the crisis that occurred on President Trump’s watch.
The missteps of a bombastic President and his staff will have severe consequences in New York City these next two weeks. But no sense crying over spilled milk.
We can thank the media for its overblown and reactionary approach to the news. Without it, millions more Americans would be at risk today. It literally PUSHED the government to do its job.
We can thank God that state governors stepped up and took measures the White House failed to recommend.
BUT, give the Devil of Unresponsiveness his due. When the White House finally acted, there were unprecedented measures taken with closing travel from other countries. Of course, it was too little and too late, but it was still unprecedented.
I once read that mediocre people are always at their best. This President and his appointees are always at their best.
They just don’t get it, do they? The news anchors, I mean. “It is better to be thought a fool than to open your mouth and remove all doubt.”
Let’s say this straight out:
If you are a news person and you are “The Story”, you aren’t doing your damn job right!
YOU… Mr./Mrs./Ms….you so-called journalist…YOU are not supposed to have encounters with the President, challenge the President, or pontificate on a series of facts before asking the President leading questions. Or anyone else for that matter.
YOU are not the news. When YOU are the news, it is because you have too much ego and not enough intelligence. YOU want us to see YOUR “courage” (cough) to speak truth to power. YOU are NOT the story.
YOU are supposed to give us YOUR opinion AFTER THE DAMN INTERVIEW!
Have you forgotten your elders? George Will, Charles Krauthammer, Seymour Hersch, Howard Fineman, Wolf Blitzer, George Stephanopoulos. Sheesh!
Lyndon B. Johnson once said, “If one morning I walked on top of the water across the Potomac River, the headline that afternoon would read PRESIDENT CAN’T SWIM.”
This illustrates my point. The story was about the President. It’s not about the journalist who was standing on the shore shouting out some absurd comment like: “How do you think people are going to feel about you walking on water now, Mr. President? Some might say that you are covering up the fact that the water is polluted since you removed all pollution controls by executive order?”
That’s not journalism. That’s crap.
Save your pontificating in front of the Washington press corps for drinks at the “newsy” hotel bars.
Or get a blog like mine. With a blog, you are free to open your mouth and remove all doubt about the kind of fool you are. I do it every day.
The silence of the politicians continues into 2014. It has been a couple of months now that the rhetoric between the two political parties has subsided. In fact, the volume is almost as low as Congress’ ratings.
We must be in the re-branding phase. This occurs right before the campaigns for re-election begin. This is the time when we American idiots are supposed to forget the characteristics of the current politicians so our heads can be filled with new stuff and nonsense about the campaign themes du jour.
Will it be social re-engineering topics like gay marriage and women’s rights? Will it be economic blankets to cover the poor and homeless and the unemployed? Or will it be National Defense, the National Deficit, or National Healthcare?
Seems to me that we have exhausted the print media and the news with stories on all of those. Taxes have lost their luster also. Looks like we might have to put together something like a “Congressional Modernization Act” in order to change the operating rules in Congress. Then both parties will have plenty of fodder until after the campaign. But like all “Modernization Acts” enacted to date, it will be fraught with problems of power and over reach when it is passed.
Perhaps Congressional races can stir up a fight over Executive Privilege. One side seeking to give more power to the Executive Branch for liberal ideas and the other party seeking to give more power over conservative ideas. Then both parties can claim victory over the results when the President simply closes Congress for malfeasance reasons and takes over writing all laws.
Sigh, my cynicism is getting the better of me. Perhaps the fight will be over Privacy Rights and a bunch of stuff will get dumped into it that gives government more intrusive power, removes responsibilities and liabilities of communication and information companies while pretending to add them, and limits freedom of the press and freedom to travel.
I know that last year has left me underwhelmed with congressional hope, overwhelmed with governmental intrusion, and simply whelmed with the political balls of some people. I promise to do better…Wish me luck…
Reasonable Citizen 