Especially after seeing the media spin itself in a knot to make it appear at the dump rally that the stadium was filled with Nazi Q salutes instead of 100 or so people squished together to get a “good shot”.
My point is the bullsh*t veneer is pretty dang thin.
My conversations with every kind of voter out there tell me nothing different.
I will tell you that each end of the voter spectrum appear energized the most. Young people and their elders at the other end. The only slice of the pie that transverses that millenial group, the “busy, distracted, it’s not as bad as you say” group, are WOMEN. In my own poll, my guesstimate is at least 80% will vote for whoever is standing up for women’s rights. And it won’t be pathetic Repubs who have scrubbed their political sites of nonsense. One can’t walk back that sh*t.
Christine, I totally agree that women are the key this time. Across the political spectrum they do not want their lives to go backwards. Thankyou for your message of hope this day.
There’s are moments that cause me to go still. I can feel the shift of Light towards the fair balance that we are endowed with from the Creator. It’s quite powerful.
Last night while I was watching MSNBC with a friend and discussing this hate rally and its implications, one of the anchors displayed a chart that had been created by an expert on terrorism. The chart showed that approximately 5%, or 13 million belong to this cult of extremists. The fact that this rally was attended by so few of the 13 million and that almost all of them came from across the country - not from Youngstown - led to our discussing exactly what the impending violence by said cultists might look like in reality - when scattered in hamlet, town, rural areas and cities. I personally know of two freakish women in my county who, if they could afford the trip, would have been at that rally waving their finger at their dear leader. However, they live out in the country in their double-wides, with dirt roads leading to their homes, using propane for fuel, and raise rabbits for high school kids to show at county fairs. Their unemployable husbands depend upon their rabbit-raising spouses to clean houses for their meager living. If this is an example of what I need to fear, I'm not going to lose any sleep. I fired both of them three years ago. My friend noted that local law enforcement would put down anything those two or their husbands might attempt if they want to contribute to "The Storm." This sounds snarky and I do apologize for the tone. But that is my impression of the members of this cult group. They are sick, demented, and angry. They are armed. But unless they come gunning after me personally, I tend to think they'll do something really stupid to their neighbors (who are "other" and whom they hate) and that will be the end of their involvement in an uprising.
Ellen…hi Fab…. That is def one way it will play out. There will be lots of scenarios trying for the dramatic but achieving nothing. I know a few who I will help break their fall. But not many. My interest will be when the followers turn on their Machiavellian leaders. To court a cult is just plain stupid.
Trump wearing a Q on his lapel is dastardly and desperate.
🤗 thank you for shedding sunlight on the dystopian potential that TC describes. All scenarios are possible in our imaginations until the events evolve and become part of history.
I had forgotten Eisenhower’s disservice to Marshall. That, combined with Eisenhower's dislike of the Brown v. Board of Education decision, certainly pushes back the devolution of the Republican Party from 1968 (Nixon) or 1964 (Goldwater), where most people seem to mark the beginning of the end of the GOP’s honor.
The Fed will push interest rates up until there is a recession. As a practical matter, it is the only way the Fed knows that they have effectively taken away the punch bowl. The problem, of course, is that the current inflationary pressures are not the result of the traditional business cycle or of a finance driven bubble in asset values. There is both pent-up demand and pent-up savings which resulted from the pandemic, and excessively low corporate tax rates from the Trump tax bill has left a large segment of the economy with more funds than they know what to do with. Increased interest rates will not eat away at these savings and cash hordes. Increased interest rates will not induce the Chinese to bring their economy out of lockdown and resume producing desired goods. Increased interest rates will not make Putin withdraw from Ukraine and re-open the spigot for oil and gas and to Europe. What increased interest rates will do is shut down the real estate market, and the development of new single family residences, thus causing rents to rise as people bid up the cost of apartments because they can’t find a house to buy. I know I am sticking my neck out, but I think a very good argument can be made that in this particular economic situation, increasing the price of money (aka interest rates) may actually be inflationary. The question is whether such effect will be felt before the second Tuesday in November?
The Fed is and has been in La La land for a very long time. Increasing interest rates now will have no positive impact on inflation. You are right - it will make it worse.
And what's worse than that is the fact that super low (like zero for years) rates pushed savers into the equities markets that they don't understand or have risk capacity for. And...those super low rates allowed zombie companies to live past their due dates. Watch them tumble...
Powell is a dinosaur - lost in time when things were simpler.
By fixed income you mean on the verge of poverty? In a real sense most working people are on a fixed income. They have a fixed salary or a fixed wage with a fixed number of hours in the day. People who leverage money by borrowing or inducing investors to part with money, and then apply that leveraged money to a market via goods or services, are just about the only people who’s incomes are not fixed.
Anyway, I digress. In answer, Fern, people on a fixed income are screwed either way. Fed interest rate policy is never about helping individuals. It’s about keeping the economic ball in the air. On those rare occasions when the Fed takes seriously the labor side of its two part mandate (the second being price stability, I.e., inflation), all they try to do is increase the number of opportunities for people to find jobs. If opportunities outstrip job seekers, the job seekers have the chance to bid up their wages. But those instances are brief because a wage driven increase in inflation scares the shit out of the coupon clippers who sit on, and are represented by, the Fed. They have visions of the Weimar Republic, plus they don’t think workers deserve a good life (a perverse Calvinism at work there).
Gary, Thank you. I believe the following spells it out.
'Inflation can have a negative effect on fixed-income assets when it leads to higher interest rates. It usually does. Central banks like the U.S. Federal Reserve typically set inflation targets and, when inflation exceeds the desired threshold, they raise interest rates to bring it under control.
The longer term of a bond, the greater the risk that inflation will hurt the investor's real return.
Fixed-income assets can be found with terms ranging from a few months to five years or more.'
'The longest bond offered by the U.S. Treasury is a 30-year bond.
An investor in a one-year bond is taking less risk that inflation will erode its value before the bond matures.' (Investopedia)
In that regard, coupon clippers are the same as everyone else. Prices go up during periods of inflation. I referred, particularly, to those on a fixed income.
thanks, Gary. everything you're saying sounds right and I greatly appreciate it, having a weirdly bad head for any talk of economics. just a personal shortcoming which began in high school and has only gotten worse.
the trouble with it sounding right is that the situation SUCKS. and I don't see a way out anytime soon.
and of course, in times of economic stress, voters tend to "throw the rascals out," and most of the voters I know casually tend to vote exactly that way. it is a horrifying global irony that with all this good information "at our fingertips" people seem to be badly informed on a level I haven't seen before. we're in the digital domain now, but more and more, I'm feeling that it's a lot more like Pandora's Box than anything else. I look at the trades we seem to be settling for as a society and it looks like we've traded down very badly. the internet feels like one of those "shiny objects" and the trade has ended up being convenience in exchange for our souls. I know that sounds extreme but (as Tom has made the case above) things are pretty extreme.
I read a quote from Ike sometime in the last few years and it went something like "the thing I regret most is nominating that sonofabitch Earl Warren to be Chief Justice." Ike was one of those "gradual change" guys, whatever that meant in practical terms...I've never been able to figure out how gradual that "gradual" is. at around the same time Ike said that, the greatest of all American novelists was interviewed from his Mississippi perch and said that integration was ok, but "go slow," by which he meant something like two hundred years.
the thing about a lot of history is, as Tom says above (and which I say at least four or five times a week) that you can't make this shit up.
and since his name came up, I'm also a huge fan of General Marshall, who just might be the greatest public servant of his era. when you look at the things he did, it's (at the very least) kind of mind-blowing.
Marshall desperately wanted to command the army he had created for the invasion of Europe. When FDR told him "I can't let you go from where you are," he set aside that disappointment and made certain the "best man for the job" was assigned: Eisenhower.
“ But most people don’t have the knowledge, or the education to comprehend the importance of such knowledge.”
Dismantling Public Education has been a key, yet un-noticed spoke in the wheel of Corporate Authoritarian Rule for the last 40 years
Beginning with “Home Schooling”, parents with no credentials started keeping their children isolated from the society of other kids and “harmful” introduction to the terrifying concepts of “history”, “civics” and science Its no wonder that millions of Americans aren’t informed enough to grasp the danger of current GOP Authoritarianism. The very concept escapes them. “How bad could it be?”, they ask
America has failed to educate, and that wheel spoke was a brilliant foundation for the Fine Mess we’re in
You're spot on in your assessment. Killing off public education has been part of the RepubliQan goal since (at the latest) 1980, but I suspect, strongly, earlier.
He and his partner talked about how they rushed to finish the film to release now rather than in the Spring because he felt the timelines and the danger.
It's good to see the reference to Ike being the political coward he really was. I also think of Herbert Hoover and other republicans doing everything they could in the 1930s to undermine FDR and the country. My, but republican treason is an oldie but a goodie.
You need to get David Corn's "American Psychosis - A Historical Investigation Of How The Republican Party Went Crazy." Ike's part is prominent and early.
When I researched "Downtown," I found the story of the "bomber gap" pushed by the Air Force and aviation industry, that the U-2 program found to be non-existent. That and the realization of what he had done in 1952 was why Ike said what he did in his farewell address
There's also Heather Richardson's history of the party where she really traces it to Goldwater, but I think, as Charlie Pierce would put it, they long since had eaten the monkey brains.
Thanks for the book recommendation. The Eisenhower Marshall thing was a shock to me and to my brother who also follows you closely. I read HCR's books and also Lyn Fenwick's Prairie Bachelor: The Story of a Kansas Homesteader and the Populist Movement.
The Republican Party stopped being a party of the people a long long time ago. I do not think they are worried about the election because they have it fixed at the state level
this may sound extreme, but I think the Republicans started to do downhill in1878, with pulling federal troops out of the south and that foul-ball stolen Tilden/Hayes election. I say this also understanding that, until, say, my lifetime, a huge piece of the Democratic party were down south and hardly very "liberal." and TR's Progressivism, has always struck me as a tad too "elitist" (better word, anyone?), which you can hardly hold against him...
Breathtaking, and so much out of control. Just raising the interest rate one point to much could create the chaos inviting the storm. Sitting on the other side of the pool I don't even have a vote.
Posted on fb this morning: "finally some who will confront criminality, hope they start with illegal threats and hate against journalists."
Horrifying does not begin to capture the revulsion. I wonder when the sane media will begin to speak directly about the threat the gop and their candidates pose to the nation. The talking heads holding forth do little to raise the alarm. These are not "semi-fascists" they are the real thing - although many of them have no idea what doing politics via Fascism really means. I fear the sane media may continue to play the little game of horse race to the very bitter end. It is up to each voter to resist at the ballot box because this election may be the one that defends the ballot for the present and the future. And I'd also say, it is time for everyone to find the boots they put away too long ago. There will have to be a standing up to the threat, not from afar, but on the line. That is exactly what President Zelensky did when he and his administration colleagues stood outside in Kyiv the second night of Russia's attack and told the people they were there. And everyone could see it. They had not run away from the fight or from the "russcists" (Russian Fascists is what the Ukrainians call the occupiers.) They were present and being present gave everyone courage, even those who were standing on the street that night. We have entered a time where we must all stand up on the line to defend democracy from the Big Lie and the Big Liars that Fascism produces so freely and which took the world into the fires of World War II.
“Republicans approve of the American farmer, but they are willing to help him go broke. They stand four-square for the American home--but not for housing. They are strong for labor--but they are stronger for restricting labor's rights. They favor minimum wage--the smaller the minimum wage the better. They endorse educational opportunity for all--but they won't spend money for teachers or for schools. They think modern medical care and hospitals are fine--for people who can afford them. They consider electrical power a great blessing--but only when the private power companies get their rake-off. They think American standard of living is a fine thing--so long as it doesn't spread to all the people. And they admire of Government of the United States so much that they would like to buy it.”
Tom, this is about as off-topic as I can get, but what do think of Antony Beevor as a military historian? I know your fondness for Max Hastings (who's certainly a terrific writer), but what about Beevor, who seems to cover a lot of the same stuff. I'm about to start his book on Crete and Crete matters to me a great deal, since I lived in Chania for awhile in 1971 and actually met several veteran freedom fighters. I would have most of my meals just down the waterfront from the stadium where the Nazis rounded up all the Jews in and put them on a boat, which they sank in clear view of everyone on that waterfront. I was there when Agnew decided to visit and when the stadium filled up, my waiter (and just about everyone else who was old enough to have been there during the war) stopped dead and were caught speechless. when my waiter recovered a few minutes later, he told me that the only time the stadium had been that full was the day of the roundup.
Beevor's good. I liked his book on Stalingrad a lot, as well as D-Day, Battle of the Bulge and Arnhem. Haven't gotten into a lot of the Russian history, but he's generally well-regarded.
Let's hope that Garland's delay in bringing indictments is a clever strategy to unleash them in the weeks before the election. Same with the House Select Committee on Jan.6, whose website shows no more hearings scheduled. Let's hope the Democrats have finally woken up to the scare tactics of their opponents, and come together behind the scenes to plan strategy.
Yes. With the crises going on, the gentleman's agreement to not push the evidence out before the election should be off. Why be suckered into having to explain the lost seats because we were constrained to not act politically? Sorta like withholding the burning gun because the jury has been sent to deliberate. No retrial in elections. Guess I'm still disappointed (pissed?) that Mueller wasn't explicit enough or wouldn't go around Barr's rewrite of the findings because (a) I worked and report to him and don't disagree in public with my director and (b) tradition is that we don't indict a sitting president, even if there are these 11 tranches of potentially convictable crimes committed against our institutions, his oath of office, the American people, and that he got elected by conspiring to commit voting fraud by engaging with foreign entities to steal the 2016 election. By he way, we're still acting like suckers for having helped open the barn doors and deferred to rules not followed except for the polite gentle persons living in a time before when Norquist changed the opposition from a bunch of independent thinkers who came to serve into a solid flank running roughshod over every Democrat or socialist or liberal communist they could identify and all the while ridding on the horses whose reins we once held as they road out of the (our) barn? Not to be extremist, but when do you stop serving the opposition tea and crumpets and start feeding ham and eggs to our starving causes? OK. I am stilled passed at Mueller. Can imagine the lamentations following the battle of 2022 and the overthrow in 2024.
I like our odds.
Especially after seeing the media spin itself in a knot to make it appear at the dump rally that the stadium was filled with Nazi Q salutes instead of 100 or so people squished together to get a “good shot”.
My point is the bullsh*t veneer is pretty dang thin.
My conversations with every kind of voter out there tell me nothing different.
I will tell you that each end of the voter spectrum appear energized the most. Young people and their elders at the other end. The only slice of the pie that transverses that millenial group, the “busy, distracted, it’s not as bad as you say” group, are WOMEN. In my own poll, my guesstimate is at least 80% will vote for whoever is standing up for women’s rights. And it won’t be pathetic Repubs who have scrubbed their political sites of nonsense. One can’t walk back that sh*t.
So I say again, every minute-hour-day-week….
Unita! 🗽💜
Christine, I totally agree that women are the key this time. Across the political spectrum they do not want their lives to go backwards. Thankyou for your message of hope this day.
There’s are moments that cause me to go still. I can feel the shift of Light towards the fair balance that we are endowed with from the Creator. It’s quite powerful.
I honor It.
Salud, compatriot Carol.
🗽
Last night while I was watching MSNBC with a friend and discussing this hate rally and its implications, one of the anchors displayed a chart that had been created by an expert on terrorism. The chart showed that approximately 5%, or 13 million belong to this cult of extremists. The fact that this rally was attended by so few of the 13 million and that almost all of them came from across the country - not from Youngstown - led to our discussing exactly what the impending violence by said cultists might look like in reality - when scattered in hamlet, town, rural areas and cities. I personally know of two freakish women in my county who, if they could afford the trip, would have been at that rally waving their finger at their dear leader. However, they live out in the country in their double-wides, with dirt roads leading to their homes, using propane for fuel, and raise rabbits for high school kids to show at county fairs. Their unemployable husbands depend upon their rabbit-raising spouses to clean houses for their meager living. If this is an example of what I need to fear, I'm not going to lose any sleep. I fired both of them three years ago. My friend noted that local law enforcement would put down anything those two or their husbands might attempt if they want to contribute to "The Storm." This sounds snarky and I do apologize for the tone. But that is my impression of the members of this cult group. They are sick, demented, and angry. They are armed. But unless they come gunning after me personally, I tend to think they'll do something really stupid to their neighbors (who are "other" and whom they hate) and that will be the end of their involvement in an uprising.
One hopes you are dead-on accurate, Ellen.
Ellen…hi Fab…. That is def one way it will play out. There will be lots of scenarios trying for the dramatic but achieving nothing. I know a few who I will help break their fall. But not many. My interest will be when the followers turn on their Machiavellian leaders. To court a cult is just plain stupid.
Trump wearing a Q on his lapel is dastardly and desperate.
May we stay totally united.🗽
🤗 thank you for shedding sunlight on the dystopian potential that TC describes. All scenarios are possible in our imaginations until the events evolve and become part of history.
I had forgotten Eisenhower’s disservice to Marshall. That, combined with Eisenhower's dislike of the Brown v. Board of Education decision, certainly pushes back the devolution of the Republican Party from 1968 (Nixon) or 1964 (Goldwater), where most people seem to mark the beginning of the end of the GOP’s honor.
The Fed will push interest rates up until there is a recession. As a practical matter, it is the only way the Fed knows that they have effectively taken away the punch bowl. The problem, of course, is that the current inflationary pressures are not the result of the traditional business cycle or of a finance driven bubble in asset values. There is both pent-up demand and pent-up savings which resulted from the pandemic, and excessively low corporate tax rates from the Trump tax bill has left a large segment of the economy with more funds than they know what to do with. Increased interest rates will not eat away at these savings and cash hordes. Increased interest rates will not induce the Chinese to bring their economy out of lockdown and resume producing desired goods. Increased interest rates will not make Putin withdraw from Ukraine and re-open the spigot for oil and gas and to Europe. What increased interest rates will do is shut down the real estate market, and the development of new single family residences, thus causing rents to rise as people bid up the cost of apartments because they can’t find a house to buy. I know I am sticking my neck out, but I think a very good argument can be made that in this particular economic situation, increasing the price of money (aka interest rates) may actually be inflationary. The question is whether such effect will be felt before the second Tuesday in November?
The Fed is and has been in La La land for a very long time. Increasing interest rates now will have no positive impact on inflation. You are right - it will make it worse.
And what's worse than that is the fact that super low (like zero for years) rates pushed savers into the equities markets that they don't understand or have risk capacity for. And...those super low rates allowed zombie companies to live past their due dates. Watch them tumble...
Powell is a dinosaur - lost in time when things were simpler.
That was an interesting analysis
And what about the consequences for those on a fixed income?
By fixed income you mean on the verge of poverty? In a real sense most working people are on a fixed income. They have a fixed salary or a fixed wage with a fixed number of hours in the day. People who leverage money by borrowing or inducing investors to part with money, and then apply that leveraged money to a market via goods or services, are just about the only people who’s incomes are not fixed.
Anyway, I digress. In answer, Fern, people on a fixed income are screwed either way. Fed interest rate policy is never about helping individuals. It’s about keeping the economic ball in the air. On those rare occasions when the Fed takes seriously the labor side of its two part mandate (the second being price stability, I.e., inflation), all they try to do is increase the number of opportunities for people to find jobs. If opportunities outstrip job seekers, the job seekers have the chance to bid up their wages. But those instances are brief because a wage driven increase in inflation scares the shit out of the coupon clippers who sit on, and are represented by, the Fed. They have visions of the Weimar Republic, plus they don’t think workers deserve a good life (a perverse Calvinism at work there).
Gary, Thank you. I believe the following spells it out.
'Inflation can have a negative effect on fixed-income assets when it leads to higher interest rates. It usually does. Central banks like the U.S. Federal Reserve typically set inflation targets and, when inflation exceeds the desired threshold, they raise interest rates to bring it under control.
The longer term of a bond, the greater the risk that inflation will hurt the investor's real return.
Fixed-income assets can be found with terms ranging from a few months to five years or more.'
'The longest bond offered by the U.S. Treasury is a 30-year bond.
An investor in a one-year bond is taking less risk that inflation will erode its value before the bond matures.' (Investopedia)
Which is why coupon clippers freak out over inflation.
In that regard, coupon clippers are the same as everyone else. Prices go up during periods of inflation. I referred, particularly, to those on a fixed income.
Good point. I have an interest in the real estate market in Philadelphia, and it just started looking tight yesterday with the new interest rates.
Excellent analysis.
thanks, Gary. everything you're saying sounds right and I greatly appreciate it, having a weirdly bad head for any talk of economics. just a personal shortcoming which began in high school and has only gotten worse.
the trouble with it sounding right is that the situation SUCKS. and I don't see a way out anytime soon.
and of course, in times of economic stress, voters tend to "throw the rascals out," and most of the voters I know casually tend to vote exactly that way. it is a horrifying global irony that with all this good information "at our fingertips" people seem to be badly informed on a level I haven't seen before. we're in the digital domain now, but more and more, I'm feeling that it's a lot more like Pandora's Box than anything else. I look at the trades we seem to be settling for as a society and it looks like we've traded down very badly. the internet feels like one of those "shiny objects" and the trade has ended up being convenience in exchange for our souls. I know that sounds extreme but (as Tom has made the case above) things are pretty extreme.
When Eisenhower was finally pushed by events he did take the right position, however reluctantly he got there.
Isn’t it true that his reluctance was not a secret?
Yes. It was obvious, which is why when he finally moved it had an effect.
I read a quote from Ike sometime in the last few years and it went something like "the thing I regret most is nominating that sonofabitch Earl Warren to be Chief Justice." Ike was one of those "gradual change" guys, whatever that meant in practical terms...I've never been able to figure out how gradual that "gradual" is. at around the same time Ike said that, the greatest of all American novelists was interviewed from his Mississippi perch and said that integration was ok, but "go slow," by which he meant something like two hundred years.
the thing about a lot of history is, as Tom says above (and which I say at least four or five times a week) that you can't make this shit up.
and since his name came up, I'm also a huge fan of General Marshall, who just might be the greatest public servant of his era. when you look at the things he did, it's (at the very least) kind of mind-blowing.
Marshall desperately wanted to command the army he had created for the invasion of Europe. When FDR told him "I can't let you go from where you are," he set aside that disappointment and made certain the "best man for the job" was assigned: Eisenhower.
I think you're right.
“ But most people don’t have the knowledge, or the education to comprehend the importance of such knowledge.”
Dismantling Public Education has been a key, yet un-noticed spoke in the wheel of Corporate Authoritarian Rule for the last 40 years
Beginning with “Home Schooling”, parents with no credentials started keeping their children isolated from the society of other kids and “harmful” introduction to the terrifying concepts of “history”, “civics” and science Its no wonder that millions of Americans aren’t informed enough to grasp the danger of current GOP Authoritarianism. The very concept escapes them. “How bad could it be?”, they ask
America has failed to educate, and that wheel spoke was a brilliant foundation for the Fine Mess we’re in
You're spot on in your assessment. Killing off public education has been part of the RepubliQan goal since (at the latest) 1980, but I suspect, strongly, earlier.
I suspect it started right after the Brown v Board of Education decision. That started the White flight to private schools.
👍🏼
And in a nice moment of synchronicity, the Ken Burns film on the Holocaust offers a taste of what we have to look forward to.
He and his partner talked about how they rushed to finish the film to release now rather than in the Spring because he felt the timelines and the danger.
Yes, his work this time is a " warning" ....it is activating my flight or fight genes!
It's good to see the reference to Ike being the political coward he really was. I also think of Herbert Hoover and other republicans doing everything they could in the 1930s to undermine FDR and the country. My, but republican treason is an oldie but a goodie.
You need to get David Corn's "American Psychosis - A Historical Investigation Of How The Republican Party Went Crazy." Ike's part is prominent and early.
When I researched "Downtown," I found the story of the "bomber gap" pushed by the Air Force and aviation industry, that the U-2 program found to be non-existent. That and the realization of what he had done in 1952 was why Ike said what he did in his farewell address
There's also Heather Richardson's history of the party where she really traces it to Goldwater, but I think, as Charlie Pierce would put it, they long since had eaten the monkey brains.
Not to mention Rick Perlstein's trilogy on Goldwater, Nixon and Reagan. Very good stuff.
Agreed!
it was already gonna be next on my list.
Thanks for the book recommendation. The Eisenhower Marshall thing was a shock to me and to my brother who also follows you closely. I read HCR's books and also Lyn Fenwick's Prairie Bachelor: The Story of a Kansas Homesteader and the Populist Movement.
https://dablogfodder.blogspot.com/2021/05/prairie-bachelor-story-of-kansas.html
The Republican Party stopped being a party of the people a long long time ago. I do not think they are worried about the election because they have it fixed at the state level
this may sound extreme, but I think the Republicans started to do downhill in1878, with pulling federal troops out of the south and that foul-ball stolen Tilden/Hayes election. I say this also understanding that, until, say, my lifetime, a huge piece of the Democratic party were down south and hardly very "liberal." and TR's Progressivism, has always struck me as a tad too "elitist" (better word, anyone?), which you can hardly hold against him...
The "southern Democrats" are today's far right Republican party in the south.
Breathtaking, and so much out of control. Just raising the interest rate one point to much could create the chaos inviting the storm. Sitting on the other side of the pool I don't even have a vote.
Posted on fb this morning: "finally some who will confront criminality, hope they start with illegal threats and hate against journalists."
Your vote, Olaf, is your very apparent support of We the People and democracy.
Salud. 🗽
Horrifying does not begin to capture the revulsion. I wonder when the sane media will begin to speak directly about the threat the gop and their candidates pose to the nation. The talking heads holding forth do little to raise the alarm. These are not "semi-fascists" they are the real thing - although many of them have no idea what doing politics via Fascism really means. I fear the sane media may continue to play the little game of horse race to the very bitter end. It is up to each voter to resist at the ballot box because this election may be the one that defends the ballot for the present and the future. And I'd also say, it is time for everyone to find the boots they put away too long ago. There will have to be a standing up to the threat, not from afar, but on the line. That is exactly what President Zelensky did when he and his administration colleagues stood outside in Kyiv the second night of Russia's attack and told the people they were there. And everyone could see it. They had not run away from the fight or from the "russcists" (Russian Fascists is what the Ukrainians call the occupiers.) They were present and being present gave everyone courage, even those who were standing on the street that night. We have entered a time where we must all stand up on the line to defend democracy from the Big Lie and the Big Liars that Fascism produces so freely and which took the world into the fires of World War II.
Storm Warning indeed. Harry Truman was right. There are no good RepulbiQans. Cruelty is the point.
“Republicans approve of the American farmer, but they are willing to help him go broke. They stand four-square for the American home--but not for housing. They are strong for labor--but they are stronger for restricting labor's rights. They favor minimum wage--the smaller the minimum wage the better. They endorse educational opportunity for all--but they won't spend money for teachers or for schools. They think modern medical care and hospitals are fine--for people who can afford them. They consider electrical power a great blessing--but only when the private power companies get their rake-off. They think American standard of living is a fine thing--so long as it doesn't spread to all the people. And they admire of Government of the United States so much that they would like to buy it.”
― Harry S. Truman
I tried to "heart" this but couldn't. So, here's my "heart"!
It's there Ellen. If you click "like" and don't see it, hit "refresh" and you will. It's a Substack thing.
❤️❤️❤️, more hearts for you on Friday, Ellen.
💙
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Tom, this is about as off-topic as I can get, but what do think of Antony Beevor as a military historian? I know your fondness for Max Hastings (who's certainly a terrific writer), but what about Beevor, who seems to cover a lot of the same stuff. I'm about to start his book on Crete and Crete matters to me a great deal, since I lived in Chania for awhile in 1971 and actually met several veteran freedom fighters. I would have most of my meals just down the waterfront from the stadium where the Nazis rounded up all the Jews in and put them on a boat, which they sank in clear view of everyone on that waterfront. I was there when Agnew decided to visit and when the stadium filled up, my waiter (and just about everyone else who was old enough to have been there during the war) stopped dead and were caught speechless. when my waiter recovered a few minutes later, he told me that the only time the stadium had been that full was the day of the roundup.
Beevor's good. I liked his book on Stalingrad a lot, as well as D-Day, Battle of the Bulge and Arnhem. Haven't gotten into a lot of the Russian history, but he's generally well-regarded.
thanks, Tom.
I'm intersted in the answer too as I have read all his books
Let's hope that Garland's delay in bringing indictments is a clever strategy to unleash them in the weeks before the election. Same with the House Select Committee on Jan.6, whose website shows no more hearings scheduled. Let's hope the Democrats have finally woken up to the scare tactics of their opponents, and come together behind the scenes to plan strategy.
Yes. With the crises going on, the gentleman's agreement to not push the evidence out before the election should be off. Why be suckered into having to explain the lost seats because we were constrained to not act politically? Sorta like withholding the burning gun because the jury has been sent to deliberate. No retrial in elections. Guess I'm still disappointed (pissed?) that Mueller wasn't explicit enough or wouldn't go around Barr's rewrite of the findings because (a) I worked and report to him and don't disagree in public with my director and (b) tradition is that we don't indict a sitting president, even if there are these 11 tranches of potentially convictable crimes committed against our institutions, his oath of office, the American people, and that he got elected by conspiring to commit voting fraud by engaging with foreign entities to steal the 2016 election. By he way, we're still acting like suckers for having helped open the barn doors and deferred to rules not followed except for the polite gentle persons living in a time before when Norquist changed the opposition from a bunch of independent thinkers who came to serve into a solid flank running roughshod over every Democrat or socialist or liberal communist they could identify and all the while ridding on the horses whose reins we once held as they road out of the (our) barn? Not to be extremist, but when do you stop serving the opposition tea and crumpets and start feeding ham and eggs to our starving causes? OK. I am stilled passed at Mueller. Can imagine the lamentations following the battle of 2022 and the overthrow in 2024.