Believe him when he stands up in public and tells us exactly what he will do. Read those words again. Memorize them. Remember that this weekend, The Economist named Donald Trump the greatest threat to the planet in 2024. The presidential contest is not Donald Trump vs. Joe Biden.
TC, you wrote, "Donald Trump’s entire life is about revenge. He has spent his life with his nose pressed against the glass, staring at the world he wants to join, knowing that so long as anyone on the other side of that glass is alive, the door will never be opened; he will never be invited in. His list of those who will pay includes everyone he has ever seen on the other side of the glass."
The thought that came to mind was this - not only was this a world he wanted to join, it was a world he wanted to OWN and a world whose ADORATION he coveted.
I don't know if you agree with this, but it seems to me that he also has on that list every person, every organization, every entity, every anything that he can't OWN or that doesn't kowtow to him in some way.
Just what I was thinking Jeri! Adam Kinzinger’s now famous letter from his extended family called tfg a “good Christian.” That just amazed me. It’s a holy war to them and they will never concede
That’s the biggest con of all. Chump is the epitome of the Pharisee or self-righteous hypocrite. Jimmy Carter actually tried to follow Jesus and is vilified by the MAGAts. It’s a crusade racing off after the devil…deluded and with fervor
I'm on the leadership of our red-County, Virginia Democratic Committee and a contributor to our local Indivisible page. Since Virginia's fantastic Democratic election victories (control of both chambers), we have begun to demand that our local officials (all Rs) disavow Trump. They're in safe seats; getting off the Trump train now will cost them nothing politically. They admit privately that Trump is a criminal and despot. Such cowards.
IMO, if low level Republicans with nothing to lose don't start telling the truth, their fascists base will never see the light.
We're hitting that message - a demand, not an ask - at least once a week until these hypocrites decide to support democracy.
We're not just on FB, but writing Letters to the Editor of our local paper (we still have a local paper). Every one us must push this message wherever we're able to do so.
As much as I despise all elected Republicans, IMO, Wittman is better than Ben Cline (VA06), who is a clone of MAGA Mike Johnson. Cline is just plain stupid. He loves Newsmax and Gym Jordan, loves photo ops with farmers and HS students, and votes against rights and for fascism every time. Folks are working now to find a candidate to run against him. A tough ask in a 65R - 35D (at best) Congressional District.
We must run in every district, every city/ county council race. If we are in a safe blue district as I am, look around and see who might need help nearby. And thank you.
Your urgent writing and quotations are so profound that I must read them several times and think deeply on what I must do. Thank you for your leadership in challenging us to face these terrible realities.
Cline is an embarrassment. Wittman has been keeping his head down and hoping to fly under the radar. Until the new districts were drawn he seemed invincible. I’m supporting Herb Jones again in the election and hope to bring pressure to bear against Ole Rob.
I have just been listening to a dumbshit show called Daily Blast Live and they have gone on and on about how "old" and how "unPresidential" Biden is to the point of sick-making. I was infuriated. IT ISN'T ABOUT THE HORSE RACE--IT"S ABOUT THE STAKES!!!! WHY cannot these morons get it through their heads??? They brought up Biden's management (as though HE and he alone is in charge of the war) of the Israel-Gaza war. They seemed to enjoy reporting a stupid poll that found that among younger folk (and the loony left) his star is sinking.
Well when I was that age I thought in terms of black and white, too....but why treat this news as though it's carved in stone?
I damn near threw something at the tv and I have started a letter to NBC about this outrageous misuse of information when we should be trying to shut the gate against the Hunnish orange barbarian? Do they think they are immune to Trump's revenge? No one is.
already done.....I was so angry that I used some very salty language. So I set it aside and took the dog for a walk. When I came back I was still angry but edited out the salt without losing the vehemence and disgust. Then I posted it to Chris Clark, the executive producer out there in la-la land. It still is making me angry.
I cannot for the life of me figure out why they think they will be immune to the damage and fallout if Trump should win the election.
Really, really well done TC. Thanks for the call, it's almost Common Sense. I hadn't seen anything about the CA Democratic Convention, the price of living in the Midwest, but, you're right. We have to get our collective anti-authoritarian act together and make sure that neither the failed insurrectionist nor any of his wannabe imitators get anywhere near the White House.
Wow, just wow! I love the urgency of your words. May others let their similar words ring out or at least listen to what you and others who are speaking with an extreme sense of urgency know and have known before 2016. I knew then( and I am not prescient here) that Donald Trump, once embedded in our culture, would be a viscous cancer to get rid of.My thing back then was the question I always posed-Do you want Donald Trump to replace RBG?I KNEW. Others have known.Thank-you TC for this brilliant word-smithery and may others take notice.
If Mangled Orange gets back in, it will be anarchy. People will revolt and leave for (fill-in-the-blank). Skirmishes will break out. Neighbors will kill neighbors. It happened after 2020, it just wasn't presented as a politically-charged crime. The United States of Yugoslavia.
Well, my paternal grandmother was born in Leamington, Ontario and my step-mother lives in Windsor, so that's 'Plan A' (I live right across the river from Windsor). Plan B is that I emigrate to Sweden and marry someone I've known for nearly 20 years from my involvement in Paralympic Sport. Plan C would be to board up my house until the hoards pass.
If we fail in 2024, future generations will curse us and rightfully so. And yet, in the long run, I believe we will win, even if the Mango Mussolini gets back in next year. The Republicans cannot govern - one, they cannot get their act together, and winning in 2024 will not make them any better at governing.
They will be obsessed with implementing Trump's (and their own) agendas, and will soon recognize the vast costs such destruction will involve - rounding up and deporting 10 million undocumented immigrants will cost at east a trillion dollars. That will be only the down payment on the financial destruction of the economy should they be successful - the dislocations and the depression that would follow will make the 1930s look like a Hallmark movie about the Depression.
The collapse of agriculture will increase food prices by a huge amount and taking 10 million people out of the economy suddenly will be financially catastrophic. The impending end of Social Security and Medicare will guarantee that the death rates shoot up and the rise in elder poverty will doom the economy as much as any other thing they do - retired people have traditionally been good spenders in their retirement years, and that will go away.
The poorer rural areas will hollow out even faster as anyone with a brain and any gumption gets the hell outa Dodge while they can. There is likely to be a "soft" civil war in which the blue states and major cities in red states devolve into High Renaissance city-states that provide health care, good jobs, education and public support, and possibly even nationally prohibited services like abortion, and people will flock to those areas, which already produce 2/3 of the national GDP (a figure that will only go higher as the poorer red areas decline further).....
Since the vast majority of red states are welfare clients of the national government, the blue states can "starve the beast" and gradually weaken the federal government so it cannot enforce any of its laws. Not a great situation, but just as the Irish monasteries preserved much of ancient knowledge during the Dark Ages, these blue city-states can preserve the essence of what America once was, and could be again.
On global warming, look up James Hansen's latest paper and drink heavily. It is not at all reassuring..... The sad fact is, there is not enough time, money or materials to replace the one billion cars and trucks that burn fossil fuels, and that is a fact we must live with. Some form of scaled-up CO2 and methane mitigation/sequestering is essential if we are to last long enough to develop the flux capacitor from "Back to the Future" or something similar. Wish us luck.....
that's a great Lincoln quote. I need to see it more, especially since he still serves as that Party's mascot for proving they're on the side of the angels..."we're the party of Lincoln."
well,uhhh...actually, you're full of shit.
my oft-mentioned "friend upstairs" was visiting before. he parried my complaints with a dumb thing Biden said thirty or forty years ago. he wasn't getting it. I had to throw him out, agreeing 100% that I was, in fact, being an asshole and yes, I probably DID bring it up.
"At what point then is the approach of danger to be expected? I answer, if it ever reach us, it must spring up amongst us. It cannot come from abroad. If destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of freemen, we must live through all time, or die by suicide." All true. Unfortunately his next comment is utterly and completely false: that the usurper of our democracy would be a "man possessed of the loftiest genius. How Lincoln would shudder to see that the sadist who plans to demolish our democracy is an illiterate, unread, and very, very STUPID so-called "man".
My badge of honor: was insulted by Trump for no good reason many years ago in my twenties after encountering him in a public space. A dangerous derp then, and even more so now.
What Trump really fears is a man who stands tall and confident, handsome and deserving of admiration and love for all his kindness, contributions and good works. They must die.
As for women of true beauty, stature and grace, they must be tortured and humiliated, but kept alive for his sadistic pleasure.
I'll compliment Joe Biden on a lot of things, just as I'll compliment Barack Obama and, to a lesser extent, Bill Clinton. But none of them seemed to realize it was time for treason prosecutions, and it was. And it has been.
Those who have just voted for anyone whose name is followed by an R finally waking up to these not being normal times, when they see a radical right government as a threat, and vote in Biden or just stay home on election day. ,
I'm still holding out for the prospect of Trump and those like him doing something so unspeakable that even their most willfully ignorant, crass, and violent supporters will be taken aback. The magas are in a dervishlike zealous frenzy when they congregate at rallies and marinate in their collective bigotry, but at 3 o'clock in the morning they may have to reconsider their own vulnerability to the evil plans of the Steve Bannons and Stephen Millers that carry Trump's water (although it's probably vice-versa some of the time) and who will be heading the Gestapo roundups of perceived enemies, because how will the enemies be identified and "whatcha gonna do when they come for you?" An overpriced red cap will not save them. And they'd better lose the tans, Taco Bell wrappers, and non-WASP surnames.
Dying is unacceptable. But blue can work sometimes. Little blue aliens, azure cat fairies flitting through a fantasy land, a blue haired matron with rhinestone accessories and a string bag of hopes and dreams waiting at the bus stop to happiness. The current reality is so harsh I need a little blue joy to get me through the days. BTW, your-- post- the quotes, wonderful, epic... you rock.😻
TC, you wrote, "Donald Trump’s entire life is about revenge. He has spent his life with his nose pressed against the glass, staring at the world he wants to join, knowing that so long as anyone on the other side of that glass is alive, the door will never be opened; he will never be invited in. His list of those who will pay includes everyone he has ever seen on the other side of the glass."
The thought that came to mind was this - not only was this a world he wanted to join, it was a world he wanted to OWN and a world whose ADORATION he coveted.
I don't know if you agree with this, but it seems to me that he also has on that list every person, every organization, every entity, every anything that he can't OWN or that doesn't kowtow to him in some way.
yeah, good points all.
All of us, no doubt
Just what I was thinking Jeri! Adam Kinzinger’s now famous letter from his extended family called tfg a “good Christian.” That just amazed me. It’s a holy war to them and they will never concede
That’s the biggest con of all. Chump is the epitome of the Pharisee or self-righteous hypocrite. Jimmy Carter actually tried to follow Jesus and is vilified by the MAGAts. It’s a crusade racing off after the devil…deluded and with fervor
The real Christians are always dumped on by the "Christians" - for exposing them as the hypocritical pissants they are.
I see that in my family; hypocrites are proud
I'm on the leadership of our red-County, Virginia Democratic Committee and a contributor to our local Indivisible page. Since Virginia's fantastic Democratic election victories (control of both chambers), we have begun to demand that our local officials (all Rs) disavow Trump. They're in safe seats; getting off the Trump train now will cost them nothing politically. They admit privately that Trump is a criminal and despot. Such cowards.
IMO, if low level Republicans with nothing to lose don't start telling the truth, their fascists base will never see the light.
We're hitting that message - a demand, not an ask - at least once a week until these hypocrites decide to support democracy.
We're not just on FB, but writing Letters to the Editor of our local paper (we still have a local paper). Every one us must push this message wherever we're able to do so.
Voter in the 1st here. Rob Wittman has so far been too slimy to pin down and demand answers. I look forward to that changing in this election cycle.
As much as I despise all elected Republicans, IMO, Wittman is better than Ben Cline (VA06), who is a clone of MAGA Mike Johnson. Cline is just plain stupid. He loves Newsmax and Gym Jordan, loves photo ops with farmers and HS students, and votes against rights and for fascism every time. Folks are working now to find a candidate to run against him. A tough ask in a 65R - 35D (at best) Congressional District.
We must run in every district, every city/ county council race. If we are in a safe blue district as I am, look around and see who might need help nearby. And thank you.
Your urgent writing and quotations are so profound that I must read them several times and think deeply on what I must do. Thank you for your leadership in challenging us to face these terrible realities.
Cline is an embarrassment. Wittman has been keeping his head down and hoping to fly under the radar. Until the new districts were drawn he seemed invincible. I’m supporting Herb Jones again in the election and hope to bring pressure to bear against Ole Rob.
I have just been listening to a dumbshit show called Daily Blast Live and they have gone on and on about how "old" and how "unPresidential" Biden is to the point of sick-making. I was infuriated. IT ISN'T ABOUT THE HORSE RACE--IT"S ABOUT THE STAKES!!!! WHY cannot these morons get it through their heads??? They brought up Biden's management (as though HE and he alone is in charge of the war) of the Israel-Gaza war. They seemed to enjoy reporting a stupid poll that found that among younger folk (and the loony left) his star is sinking.
Well when I was that age I thought in terms of black and white, too....but why treat this news as though it's carved in stone?
I damn near threw something at the tv and I have started a letter to NBC about this outrageous misuse of information when we should be trying to shut the gate against the Hunnish orange barbarian? Do they think they are immune to Trump's revenge? No one is.
finish the letter and post it.
already done.....I was so angry that I used some very salty language. So I set it aside and took the dog for a walk. When I came back I was still angry but edited out the salt without losing the vehemence and disgust. Then I posted it to Chris Clark, the executive producer out there in la-la land. It still is making me angry.
I cannot for the life of me figure out why they think they will be immune to the damage and fallout if Trump should win the election.
good!
Over and over.
CNN is on the same tear. Had to turn it off.
Really, really well done TC. Thanks for the call, it's almost Common Sense. I hadn't seen anything about the CA Democratic Convention, the price of living in the Midwest, but, you're right. We have to get our collective anti-authoritarian act together and make sure that neither the failed insurrectionist nor any of his wannabe imitators get anywhere near the White House.
Tom …..By your last passage of your message
Tears were rolling down my face
It amazes me that you had a grandfather serving in the Revolutionary War..
Your family has such a history of brave dedicated soldiers who have served the
Country of America…I’m always touched
When doing my hospice counseling and grief counseling and in the presence of veterans and their families..I’m grateful
I give Thanks that is what… Thanksgiving means to me ..Gratitude
Tom I’m privileged to subscribe and
Absorb and Share your thoughts and Stories… Bless You Forever, Marsha ❤️
what a beautiful letter, Marsha
thank you for writing it
I am grateful for your loving and devoted service to our veterans and their families
may you have a blessed Thanksgiving
Wow, just wow! I love the urgency of your words. May others let their similar words ring out or at least listen to what you and others who are speaking with an extreme sense of urgency know and have known before 2016. I knew then( and I am not prescient here) that Donald Trump, once embedded in our culture, would be a viscous cancer to get rid of.My thing back then was the question I always posed-Do you want Donald Trump to replace RBG?I KNEW. Others have known.Thank-you TC for this brilliant word-smithery and may others take notice.
NOT ONE STEP BACK! Remember Tom telling us this?! Stay the course! Defeat
Trump! That is what we have to do.
Our democracy has been under fire before, yet for
nearly 250 years it has survived.
My ancestors fought in the
Revolution, Civil War, my family in WWI, WWII, Korea, Vietnam, Gulf 1 and 2 and Afghanistan. A long military history runs in our yankee
blood. For freedom and
democracy here and in other
countries.
This is MY country too and I
will not leave it for a lickspittle like Trump or any
of his low life henchmen and
women.
Thank you Tom, always for
saying it out loud, what others only whisper in fear
about.
If Mangled Orange gets back in, it will be anarchy. People will revolt and leave for (fill-in-the-blank). Skirmishes will break out. Neighbors will kill neighbors. It happened after 2020, it just wasn't presented as a politically-charged crime. The United States of Yugoslavia.
If Trump gets in, it’s the privileged who can flee. The rest will pay dearly, whether Trump supporters or not.
Well, my paternal grandmother was born in Leamington, Ontario and my step-mother lives in Windsor, so that's 'Plan A' (I live right across the river from Windsor). Plan B is that I emigrate to Sweden and marry someone I've known for nearly 20 years from my involvement in Paralympic Sport. Plan C would be to board up my house until the hoards pass.
If we fail in 2024, future generations will curse us and rightfully so. And yet, in the long run, I believe we will win, even if the Mango Mussolini gets back in next year. The Republicans cannot govern - one, they cannot get their act together, and winning in 2024 will not make them any better at governing.
They will be obsessed with implementing Trump's (and their own) agendas, and will soon recognize the vast costs such destruction will involve - rounding up and deporting 10 million undocumented immigrants will cost at east a trillion dollars. That will be only the down payment on the financial destruction of the economy should they be successful - the dislocations and the depression that would follow will make the 1930s look like a Hallmark movie about the Depression.
The collapse of agriculture will increase food prices by a huge amount and taking 10 million people out of the economy suddenly will be financially catastrophic. The impending end of Social Security and Medicare will guarantee that the death rates shoot up and the rise in elder poverty will doom the economy as much as any other thing they do - retired people have traditionally been good spenders in their retirement years, and that will go away.
The poorer rural areas will hollow out even faster as anyone with a brain and any gumption gets the hell outa Dodge while they can. There is likely to be a "soft" civil war in which the blue states and major cities in red states devolve into High Renaissance city-states that provide health care, good jobs, education and public support, and possibly even nationally prohibited services like abortion, and people will flock to those areas, which already produce 2/3 of the national GDP (a figure that will only go higher as the poorer red areas decline further).....
Since the vast majority of red states are welfare clients of the national government, the blue states can "starve the beast" and gradually weaken the federal government so it cannot enforce any of its laws. Not a great situation, but just as the Irish monasteries preserved much of ancient knowledge during the Dark Ages, these blue city-states can preserve the essence of what America once was, and could be again.
Wow. I almost skipped this because it was one long paragraph, but I am glad I didn’t.
And there is global warming. We are way behind on that. Are there any Republicans who think we should do anything other than drill in more places?
On global warming, look up James Hansen's latest paper and drink heavily. It is not at all reassuring..... The sad fact is, there is not enough time, money or materials to replace the one billion cars and trucks that burn fossil fuels, and that is a fact we must live with. Some form of scaled-up CO2 and methane mitigation/sequestering is essential if we are to last long enough to develop the flux capacitor from "Back to the Future" or something similar. Wish us luck.....
My apologies - I should have broken it into shorter paragraphs - will do better in the future.....
that's a great Lincoln quote. I need to see it more, especially since he still serves as that Party's mascot for proving they're on the side of the angels..."we're the party of Lincoln."
well,uhhh...actually, you're full of shit.
my oft-mentioned "friend upstairs" was visiting before. he parried my complaints with a dumb thing Biden said thirty or forty years ago. he wasn't getting it. I had to throw him out, agreeing 100% that I was, in fact, being an asshole and yes, I probably DID bring it up.
so much of this is just so DEPRESSING.
"At what point then is the approach of danger to be expected? I answer, if it ever reach us, it must spring up amongst us. It cannot come from abroad. If destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of freemen, we must live through all time, or die by suicide." All true. Unfortunately his next comment is utterly and completely false: that the usurper of our democracy would be a "man possessed of the loftiest genius. How Lincoln would shudder to see that the sadist who plans to demolish our democracy is an illiterate, unread, and very, very STUPID so-called "man".
My badge of honor: was insulted by Trump for no good reason many years ago in my twenties after encountering him in a public space. A dangerous derp then, and even more so now.
What Trump really fears is a man who stands tall and confident, handsome and deserving of admiration and love for all his kindness, contributions and good works. They must die.
As for women of true beauty, stature and grace, they must be tortured and humiliated, but kept alive for his sadistic pleasure.
The only joining that ever tempted him is the fraternity of Executioners.
I'll compliment Joe Biden on a lot of things, just as I'll compliment Barack Obama and, to a lesser extent, Bill Clinton. But none of them seemed to realize it was time for treason prosecutions, and it was. And it has been.
They followed Ford’s logic. Took a while for the bull Schitt factor to become clear, but I’d like to think it’s not too late.
This tension is going to be unsustainable for the next (almost) year. Is there a point when the "normies" say enough, leaving only the MAGANAZIS?
We had better hope not.
Meant the MAGANAZIS isolated and shunned.
It would be helpful if you clarified what you mean by "when "normies" say enough". What does "say enough" mean in your view?
When they decide to vote for Biden and do so.
Those who have just voted for anyone whose name is followed by an R finally waking up to these not being normal times, when they see a radical right government as a threat, and vote in Biden or just stay home on election day. ,
I'm still holding out for the prospect of Trump and those like him doing something so unspeakable that even their most willfully ignorant, crass, and violent supporters will be taken aback. The magas are in a dervishlike zealous frenzy when they congregate at rallies and marinate in their collective bigotry, but at 3 o'clock in the morning they may have to reconsider their own vulnerability to the evil plans of the Steve Bannons and Stephen Millers that carry Trump's water (although it's probably vice-versa some of the time) and who will be heading the Gestapo roundups of perceived enemies, because how will the enemies be identified and "whatcha gonna do when they come for you?" An overpriced red cap will not save them. And they'd better lose the tans, Taco Bell wrappers, and non-WASP surnames.
You wish, I wish, we all wish, but don't hold your breath waiting for it to happen because turning blue and dying doesn't look good.
Dying is unacceptable. But blue can work sometimes. Little blue aliens, azure cat fairies flitting through a fantasy land, a blue haired matron with rhinestone accessories and a string bag of hopes and dreams waiting at the bus stop to happiness. The current reality is so harsh I need a little blue joy to get me through the days. BTW, your-- post- the quotes, wonderful, epic... you rock.😻
And we need every vote. So do some deep breathing or whatever gives your brain and body a break.