And, while we're at it, remind everyone we talk to that the ballot doesn't end after the Congressional line, or even the governor. Having decent people in local, county, and state offices is essential too if we're going to preserve a functioning democracy.
And School Boards! Keep your eyes out for this MAGAt monstrosity - Shenandoah Co. Virginia's SB will vote May 9 to RE-install Confederate killers' names on two public schools. The names were removed in 2021 and the alumni are still screaming about "Mah heritage!" The SB that made that move has ALL been voted out. And of course, those schools were built and named in the late 1950s as Whites-only, with dollars that were directed to be spent towards integration. Massive Resistance is alive in rural VA.
Even if the poles are shifting I still cannot wrap my mind around the fact that trump and the maga gop are still in this race! What are people seeing that I am not? For the life of me I cannot see anything positive coming out of trump and maga. Even if you disagree with Biden and some of his policies he has accomplished more good for this country than the opposition can ever claim .
Having recently discovered who and what H.L. Mencken was, I am reducing my usage of his aphorisms, but "Nobody ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American public" is too true - regardless of who said it - not to keep it around.
I know that to be true, from my years spending so much time at BFF’s house. Not only do they know less, they have been awash in lies and innuendo wrapped in hatred. At that house it was 24-7 and has been going on almost 30 years.
My niece and I had the same conversation yesterday. We are not alone and our job is to tank their rating and defeat them at the ballot box every chance we get.
For reasons not worth going in to I found myself several times alone and stranded in a dentist's waiting room. They had on fox news. The programs seemed intellectually aimed at the elementary school level of thought.
With the occasional junior high bully and someone to taunt the Dems. Bill O’Reilly’s area of expertise, but Rupert has a whole stable of such. Drum beat, never letting up.
Mightily stirring words, TC, especially coming from you, who I can trust to never blow sunshine up my skirt. I'll keep up my postcard-writing and my phone calls, even from here in retrograde Idaho.
The only time I've been in Idaho has been on cross-country trips between Seattle and Boston, or in the first of those trips, NYC instead of Boston. For that latter trip, I was 2 and a half, and have one memory, of when the train had stopped, and my father had gone out into the town to get something, and my brother and I were waiting for him to come back. I am virtually certainit wasn't Idaho, but a flatter, more centrally located small town. We went through Idaho on x-country car trip #2, and none of my memories are specifically Idaho. I bicycled through Idaho on my way from Seattle to Boston, after I'd graduated from college, and slept on the beach on Lake Pend Oreille, which was by far the nicest place I slept on that trip. But that was almost 50 years ago, and I've read Idaho horror stories dealing with the impact of Dobbs there. I hope and expect you have at least a handful of like minded friends.
Thanks for a boost today The wind is shifting. Your last two paragraphs say it all though. Have a great week! The fascist Machine is gearing up at Mar a Lago with the billionaire mobsters kissing the ring. American capitalism is a moral failure (who could have imagined!!???!!).
Thanks David. The lack of a moral compass is more and more apparent---and so is the "religion" (in a "history of religions" sense) of MAGA with its chief sacred figure DT himself. To get rid of the MAGA religion it will take something like "religious conversion" which politicians don't understand (unless they are Trump and his pseudo-evangelical supporters. ) Much more to unpack here. Time to get to work on postcards, phonebooks, and the like....... This was a great TCinLA post. And his "addition" in the comments that Socrates, age 45, was one of the rowers was one of those historical tidbits that is worth its weight in gold.
That's like saying American football is a moral failure. Ain't no morality in either. Capitalism is an economic game requiring rules and regulations and guardrails and referees. Momma Russia and Daddy Oil have bought the game.
It's time for the campaign strategists managing Biden's reelection to introduce the young, bright individuals that work for the Biden administration and advocate for its agenda. They should inform us about their initiatives and what they're fighting for.
I watched FTC chair Lina Khan being interviewed by Jonathan Karl today. As my students used to say, "she is wicked smart" and young, bravely challenging corporate giants to advocate for the American people. By targeting corporate monopolies, especially in the food industry, she's demonstrating to the American public that high grocery prices aren't caused by the Biden administration.
Lina Khan is just one of the many young people in the Biden administration making a difference. It's crucial for young voters to understand the Biden team's efforts and achievements.
Biden--best pres of my lifetime, which began first summer of the Eisenhower Administration. This is another example. He knows how to pick the people for his administration!
I’m glad to see a shift in the polls. I’m even happier to have written 80 postcards urging folks in Montana to register to vote. Tomorrow I start a 6-week zoom class called People, Power, and Peace led by author Rivera Sun. On Friday at noon EST NOvA Power much will be all about Project 2025. The threats are real, but our ability to be informed, engaged, and active citizens is real as well.
Thank you for your uplifting report, Tom. We've got to keep the pedal to the metal, and full speed ahead. I am still surreptitiously slipping my "warning notes" about radical right wing dictatorships into the product shelves at the local markets, auto parts stores, restaurant ladies' restrooms, in the handles of the gas pumps, inside the magazines at the dentist's office, etc. If it's not windy I'll leave one in a shopping cart. I write them with a sharpie on oddly cut up pieces of cereal boxes and other product containers. Not sure what becomes of them, but they have all been gone when I've done a return check. The message is short and found in unexpected places, which I think helps.
I am also going to check into registering citizen adults in two of the area homeless shelters, an assisted living facility, and three senior highrises.
I research all down ballot candidates and then email or text my choices to a variety of people. People are lazy, even my friends. I am not lazy.
I have had voting parties where we get together, fill out ballots and one or two of us takes them to the post office or the local drop box, allowed in California. The night when we filled in our ballots for Biden will always be remembered. We felt absolutely wonderful!
Such important work, Judith. I have done school board candidate research the past few electtions and disseminate to friends on facebook. Many appreciate that. I need to start postcarding. You inspire me.
So, to put it succinctly, the better, educated and smarter you are the more likely to vote AND the more likely to vote Democrat (:-) No wonder DeSantis and Trump want to lower both the educational standards and the college attendance! So there we have another important plank for the election "Free or low cost publicly owned college education for all who want to achieve it."
In Michigan, the races I'm most concerned about (outside of voting for Biden, Slotkin and whoever wins the August primary to defeat do-nothing John James) is the Michigan, MSU and Wayne State Board elections. All three are just so screwed up at the moment. They are three of the largest public universities in the country, yet all three are run by voter-elected boards. There have been calls for Governor Whitmer to dissolve the Michigan State board, but so far she's resisted. The problem with these boards is that it's all name recognition. Bernstein, Ilitch, everyone in the state know who they are. Same thing with the State Supreme Court. No one knows these people and they vote for them anyway. All the other Universities boards have members appointed by the sitting governor. They don't seem to have as many issues as the Big 3.
Here's hoping Shawn Fain of the UAW stumps hard for Biden at every automotive plant, here and in the newly unionized Southern plants. Wayne County is reliably Dem, even with the Arab community being upset with Biden, but Macomb, Kent, and the Traverse City areas need some ammonia sticks under their noses.
I live in Macomb County and it's not easy. Biden got 46% in '20. If he does that well here this time, I'll be shocked (in the same way Capt. Renault was). I was hoping Andy Levin would take on James this time, but he likes the private sector too much. So, it looks like a rematch between Marlinga and James. One thing I really want to see is Lucindo bounced off his ass. He's done nothing except collect a fat paycheck and be a bully.
I understand the aphorism and fully agree with the sentiment, but, at some point you need to close the umbrella and come in out of the lightning storm as a matter of self preservation. The electorate cannot be like a flock of turkeys standing out in the rain, looking up and drowning! If this is truly the state of our electorate then we really need to be “woke” before we collectively commit social suicide.
It is encouraging to see that some of the MSM are starting to deal with Trump and who and what he really is, going after his more outlandish and dangerous rhetoric. Some pundits had predicted that after Nikki Haley dropped out, there would be no horse race for the Republican nomination and the news media would eventually HAVE to start talking in some detail about Trump's plans for the second Trump administration..... Seems it may be starting, but slowly. Sooner or later, it will catch fire.....
And, while we're at it, remind everyone we talk to that the ballot doesn't end after the Congressional line, or even the governor. Having decent people in local, county, and state offices is essential too if we're going to preserve a functioning democracy.
Yes!
And School Boards! Keep your eyes out for this MAGAt monstrosity - Shenandoah Co. Virginia's SB will vote May 9 to RE-install Confederate killers' names on two public schools. The names were removed in 2021 and the alumni are still screaming about "Mah heritage!" The SB that made that move has ALL been voted out. And of course, those schools were built and named in the late 1950s as Whites-only, with dollars that were directed to be spent towards integration. Massive Resistance is alive in rural VA.
Yeah, I'm sure Faulkner was thinking of the rural South when he said "The past is never dead; it isn't even past."
I can’t “like” this. Is Ben Cline being challenged?
Yes, we're going to deCline VA06: https://www.kenmitchellforvirginia.com/
Great to hear! Trying to oust Wittman in the 1st!
Yes, and our school boards too!! They are being infiltrated by 'Mom's for Liberty ' and creating havoc and distress in our communities.
And it often means finding and reading small community newspapers because they're the only ones who cover those races.
Yes. Vote for decent folks. Not for enraged or for grifters with deep pockets but no pony.
All Politics are Local at the bottom line.
Exactly, down ballot positions in Nirth Carolina include many judgeships, which last election were won by repubs!
Even if the poles are shifting I still cannot wrap my mind around the fact that trump and the maga gop are still in this race! What are people seeing that I am not? For the life of me I cannot see anything positive coming out of trump and maga. Even if you disagree with Biden and some of his policies he has accomplished more good for this country than the opposition can ever claim .
Having recently discovered who and what H.L. Mencken was, I am reducing my usage of his aphorisms, but "Nobody ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American public" is too true - regardless of who said it - not to keep it around.
Watching Fox drops your IQ points by 30 points, at least.
Polling has found that people whose sole source for news is Faux Snooze know less about current events than people who watch no news.
I know that to be true, from my years spending so much time at BFF’s house. Not only do they know less, they have been awash in lies and innuendo wrapped in hatred. At that house it was 24-7 and has been going on almost 30 years.
My niece and I had the same conversation yesterday. We are not alone and our job is to tank their rating and defeat them at the ballot box every chance we get.
Watch Fox for five minutes. Used to have it on tv when I visited my bff. It was like a different world…
I would not allow anyone to come into my space and talk to me the way foxheads talk. It is abuse.
It is abusive propaganda, and as successful as Goebbels
Yup.
For reasons not worth going in to I found myself several times alone and stranded in a dentist's waiting room. They had on fox news. The programs seemed intellectually aimed at the elementary school level of thought.
With the occasional junior high bully and someone to taunt the Dems. Bill O’Reilly’s area of expertise, but Rupert has a whole stable of such. Drum beat, never letting up.
Fox News.
Mightily stirring words, TC, especially coming from you, who I can trust to never blow sunshine up my skirt. I'll keep up my postcard-writing and my phone calls, even from here in retrograde Idaho.
The only time I've been in Idaho has been on cross-country trips between Seattle and Boston, or in the first of those trips, NYC instead of Boston. For that latter trip, I was 2 and a half, and have one memory, of when the train had stopped, and my father had gone out into the town to get something, and my brother and I were waiting for him to come back. I am virtually certainit wasn't Idaho, but a flatter, more centrally located small town. We went through Idaho on x-country car trip #2, and none of my memories are specifically Idaho. I bicycled through Idaho on my way from Seattle to Boston, after I'd graduated from college, and slept on the beach on Lake Pend Oreille, which was by far the nicest place I slept on that trip. But that was almost 50 years ago, and I've read Idaho horror stories dealing with the impact of Dobbs there. I hope and expect you have at least a handful of like minded friends.
Thanks for a boost today The wind is shifting. Your last two paragraphs say it all though. Have a great week! The fascist Machine is gearing up at Mar a Lago with the billionaire mobsters kissing the ring. American capitalism is a moral failure (who could have imagined!!???!!).
I wish I could give you at least ten likes for this!
Thanks David. The lack of a moral compass is more and more apparent---and so is the "religion" (in a "history of religions" sense) of MAGA with its chief sacred figure DT himself. To get rid of the MAGA religion it will take something like "religious conversion" which politicians don't understand (unless they are Trump and his pseudo-evangelical supporters. ) Much more to unpack here. Time to get to work on postcards, phonebooks, and the like....... This was a great TCinLA post. And his "addition" in the comments that Socrates, age 45, was one of the rowers was one of those historical tidbits that is worth its weight in gold.
Thanks for the additional wisdom, Grover. And yes indeed, another great post from TCinLA.
‘Moral failure’ isn’t strong enough. The word is disfunctional.
That's like saying American football is a moral failure. Ain't no morality in either. Capitalism is an economic game requiring rules and regulations and guardrails and referees. Momma Russia and Daddy Oil have bought the game.
It's time for the campaign strategists managing Biden's reelection to introduce the young, bright individuals that work for the Biden administration and advocate for its agenda. They should inform us about their initiatives and what they're fighting for.
I watched FTC chair Lina Khan being interviewed by Jonathan Karl today. As my students used to say, "she is wicked smart" and young, bravely challenging corporate giants to advocate for the American people. By targeting corporate monopolies, especially in the food industry, she's demonstrating to the American public that high grocery prices aren't caused by the Biden administration.
Lina Khan is just one of the many young people in the Biden administration making a difference. It's crucial for young voters to understand the Biden team's efforts and achievements.
Biden--best pres of my lifetime, which began first summer of the Eisenhower Administration. This is another example. He knows how to pick the people for his administration!
It is looking that way.
Did you teach in the Boston area?
No, NH.
That's close enough for you to be characterizing someone as "wicked smaht!"
I’m glad to see a shift in the polls. I’m even happier to have written 80 postcards urging folks in Montana to register to vote. Tomorrow I start a 6-week zoom class called People, Power, and Peace led by author Rivera Sun. On Friday at noon EST NOvA Power much will be all about Project 2025. The threats are real, but our ability to be informed, engaged, and active citizens is real as well.
Thank You, Susan!
On this Greek Orthodox Easter Sunday, I love your Salamis reference!
Socrates was one of the rowers. At age 45.
I didn’t even know that! I’m rushing off to read this to my husband as he makes youvetsi for dinner.
Thank you for your uplifting report, Tom. We've got to keep the pedal to the metal, and full speed ahead. I am still surreptitiously slipping my "warning notes" about radical right wing dictatorships into the product shelves at the local markets, auto parts stores, restaurant ladies' restrooms, in the handles of the gas pumps, inside the magazines at the dentist's office, etc. If it's not windy I'll leave one in a shopping cart. I write them with a sharpie on oddly cut up pieces of cereal boxes and other product containers. Not sure what becomes of them, but they have all been gone when I've done a return check. The message is short and found in unexpected places, which I think helps.
I am also going to check into registering citizen adults in two of the area homeless shelters, an assisted living facility, and three senior highrises.
Good stuff, Judith. I particularly like The Phantom Informer.
I research all down ballot candidates and then email or text my choices to a variety of people. People are lazy, even my friends. I am not lazy.
I have had voting parties where we get together, fill out ballots and one or two of us takes them to the post office or the local drop box, allowed in California. The night when we filled in our ballots for Biden will always be remembered. We felt absolutely wonderful!
Such important work, Judith. I have done school board candidate research the past few electtions and disseminate to friends on facebook. Many appreciate that. I need to start postcarding. You inspire me.
Great piece, a battle drum we need to set the rhythm synced across the Country. Boom boom boom boom...
So, to put it succinctly, the better, educated and smarter you are the more likely to vote AND the more likely to vote Democrat (:-) No wonder DeSantis and Trump want to lower both the educational standards and the college attendance! So there we have another important plank for the election "Free or low cost publicly owned college education for all who want to achieve it."
In Michigan, the races I'm most concerned about (outside of voting for Biden, Slotkin and whoever wins the August primary to defeat do-nothing John James) is the Michigan, MSU and Wayne State Board elections. All three are just so screwed up at the moment. They are three of the largest public universities in the country, yet all three are run by voter-elected boards. There have been calls for Governor Whitmer to dissolve the Michigan State board, but so far she's resisted. The problem with these boards is that it's all name recognition. Bernstein, Ilitch, everyone in the state know who they are. Same thing with the State Supreme Court. No one knows these people and they vote for them anyway. All the other Universities boards have members appointed by the sitting governor. They don't seem to have as many issues as the Big 3.
Here's hoping Shawn Fain of the UAW stumps hard for Biden at every automotive plant, here and in the newly unionized Southern plants. Wayne County is reliably Dem, even with the Arab community being upset with Biden, but Macomb, Kent, and the Traverse City areas need some ammonia sticks under their noses.
I live in Macomb County and it's not easy. Biden got 46% in '20. If he does that well here this time, I'll be shocked (in the same way Capt. Renault was). I was hoping Andy Levin would take on James this time, but he likes the private sector too much. So, it looks like a rematch between Marlinga and James. One thing I really want to see is Lucindo bounced off his ass. He's done nothing except collect a fat paycheck and be a bully.
Doing what we can in T.C. Sent Democrat Betsy Coffia to the House in traditionally Republican seat!
I look to our League of Women Voters candidate info, condense it, and share on facebook. You are right about our Michigan Big 3 boards.
Hear, hear, Tom! Well said. Thanks for the great analysis on the poll numbers.
I understand the aphorism and fully agree with the sentiment, but, at some point you need to close the umbrella and come in out of the lightning storm as a matter of self preservation. The electorate cannot be like a flock of turkeys standing out in the rain, looking up and drowning! If this is truly the state of our electorate then we really need to be “woke” before we collectively commit social suicide.
It is encouraging to see that some of the MSM are starting to deal with Trump and who and what he really is, going after his more outlandish and dangerous rhetoric. Some pundits had predicted that after Nikki Haley dropped out, there would be no horse race for the Republican nomination and the news media would eventually HAVE to start talking in some detail about Trump's plans for the second Trump administration..... Seems it may be starting, but slowly. Sooner or later, it will catch fire.....
Thank you for this, Tom. xx's