Just eight Republican loons kept Kevin McCarthy up all night in January selling off chunks of his soul to the likes of Matt Gaetz and Marjorie Taylor Greene to finally be elected Speaker for a great big nine months. Today in the first ballot taken in the Republican conference, 81
How about the entire Repugnant House caucus in exchange for ALL the American hostages? The Repugnants have demonstrated their exceptional combat skills; let them fight against Hamas instead of prolonging their eternal internecine warfare.
You and I and all federal employees and members of the military have taken this oath. . ”I, ___, do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter. So help me God.” What do we swear to support and defend? “We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.” The entire GOP needs to understand the oath and the Constitution and start acting on behalf of all the people of our nation.
Well I have to be honest and say that I couldn't care less about what happend to your nasty politics and politicians except that your (American) nightmare corruption and propaganda leaks into the world's bloodstream like a giant festering boil or rotting teeth ... here we are in Australia with Trumpian misinformation (AKA evil, consciously hysterical lies campaign) used to derail, besmirch and ruin the Yes campaign to change our wonderful (not) Cononial era Constitution so as to guarantee rights of consultation for Australia's First Nations Tribes. But no, the awesomely unpleasant Sen. Price, elevated by the right wing opposition to stab her own people in the back, is reportedly in receipt of funds and encouragement for her Right wing Party's nasty No vote campaign against the Aboriginal Voice, by one of your very own American Christo fascist groups. Well thank you American exceptionalism, just a gift to the world that can't stop giving.
Understood Kathy. It is awful. And I know you and the people of Australia aren’t responsible for the gift that keeps on giving we have from Australia...Rupert Murdoch.
Exactly. There have been terrible right-wing media barons in America's past (Hearst nationally, Chandlers in L.A., McCormick in Chicago, and on and on and on, back when newspapers were *the* dominant form of "mainstream media").
Keith Rupert Murdoch, yes, his given name, happened along just in time to take advantage of the end of the fairness doctrine in TV "news" reporting. Plus, he hired Roger "Remember, honey, when you're on the set, always, knockers up! Now, twirl for me one more time!" Ailes.
So very, hideously true. Who could credit that one sleazebag control freak (with oil holdings in Golan Heights reportedly) could wreak such vile damage on every English speaking country? What an evil old b*stard. Shrewdly bought every government in every country where his toxic newspapers grow over everything like media slime mould. Sorry slime mould, what an insult.
What does Truscott, or his writing, have to do with the appalling campaign against The Voice. It's a stretch to blame this all on the US, Australia has its share of homegrown bigots and wingnuts (Pauline Hanson comes to mind) as well.
Of course you're right as far as the prevalence of white supremacist hysteria and all the other nasty attitudes our European ancestors brought with them to all the Colonies we violently seized from the Aboriginal possessors of the soil. And my Legislative research tells me that since 1835, between all the Australian Federal, State and Territory governments, over 1,000 racist pieces of Legislation and Ordinances have been promulgated to specifically target every single subject and later, civil right possessed by Aboriginal/ Native Australian people and to extinguish this right, especially land possession rights. And after the 1975 Racial Discrimination Act, the racism wasn't so overt, it didn't need to be, since all the humiliation, and damage to Aboriginal society was firmly emplaced. Sound familiar? It's just the way we old British folks deal with our Colonies and vanquished Indigenous populations. Shameful.
But because of various historical happenstances, we're not just like you. Yes, we don't have more guns than people. EEEEK! The very thought. We don't spend proportionally speaking, 8 trillion dollars on war games and invading the known world to support our multinational capitalists at their multifarious evil initiatives. We didn't anywhere near have the same number, proportionally speaking, of Covid deaths. (We have about 1/13 of your population and nowehere near 1/13 of Covid mortality.) Straight arrow Sydney Police Commissioner blocked the hideous Trump from Investing in Sydney's Casino back in the 1980's because of TRUMP'S MAFIA CONNECTIONS! Phwew, did we ever dodge a bullet!
But of course, we have horrible, nasty bigots here, of course, as someone said, God must have loved stupid people, he/ she/ it made so many of them.
And after all, it's not that comfortable where I live here in Australia's Northern Territory. It's very tropically hot, and what's more, has a population of just 250,000 and with a population of 100,000 homicidal crocodiles! But I'd rather have them, than one resident Trump.
To put a very fine point on it, The US had 4.8 times the per capita deaths from covid than Australia, or 3000 covid deaths/million citizens instead of 620/million in Australia.
Meaning that if we'd done as well as Australia in fighting the covid plague, we would have had about 200,000 deaths from covid in the US instead of the one million covid deaths we did have, meaning that 800,000 of our fellow citizens would not have died due to the global pandemic.
Mainly thanks to Trump and the Murdock manipulated morons he rode in on.
Exactly, Trump and his depraved cohorts at the very least are responsible for a host of "negligent and reckless policies," resulting in hundreds of thousands of avoidable deaths, as well as terrible lingering organ damage amongst a significant proportion of survivors.
On top of that, the same efforts fueled a dangerous, deplorable and unhinged contempt for sound medical science, and even science and rationality in general, it's really something to manage to transfer the essence of an irrational cult of ignorance into life-saving sciences, but they did it are are still at it.
Then add the scams and thievery in the midst of it all and we've got quite a deplorable house of horrors going, or had. And to think that those lot walk around with us everyday. If only there were Trump bindis.
Yes I did those sums too with incredulous horror. That disgusting homicidal maniac Trump is excited by the power of life and death over people at home and abroad and is now bragging how you're in for it if he manages to sleaze his way back to office. And glory be, the response is sort of ho hum, snore from your mass media. Like Georgetown except he wants everyone to drink bleach.
I would endorse every last particle of the diagnosis, excepting any implication that the entire world's population, in a rainbow coalition if you will, are bereft of the agency to fight back against all unwanted outside meddling, no matter the source - don't want to ever infantilize conscious adult human beings, as if they are solely somehow predestined as hapless victims of "American exceptionalism" and only that!
But yes to everything else, especially reversing several centuries of illegal land seizures, broken treaties, and the conscious destruction of indigenous cultures in the Americas, North, Central, and South, and Australia - New Zealand.
Is it really necessary to blame any entire country for anything? If you follow Progressive groups on Facebook you might think every inhabitant of Florida (a state yes, but as an example) is either a member of the Proud Boys or a neo-Nazi. Nothing could be farther from the truth.
I'm not entirely sure whish is worse for the country - A House with no Speaker, or a House with Gym Jordan as Speaker. The level of inaction is the same, the level of screaming assholery from the podium is much lower.
I'm struck by this sentence: "'Kevin was doing a lot of the Obama work,' Trump said." I see two possible reasons why Trump said "Obama" instead of "Biden." The first is that he is losing his mind; this is not the first time he has shown that he doesn't know who the president is. The second is that he wants his supporters to associate Biden with a Black man, because then they will hate him even more.
I hate referring to Obama as a Black man, because he is of mixed race. But, of course, most African American people are of mixed race, because one of their female ancestors was raped by her "owner" or overseer. And many more white people than know it have Black and mixed-race ancestors because several generations of women were raped until their offspring could pass as white. I wish that we could stop referring to people as "Black" or "white."
I wrote somewhere else that it's time for the Democrats to throw some chum into the water, and maybe attract some Republican votes among those who take their responsibilities seriously enough to cross the aisle and break bread with likeminded people who also put a high value on fulfilling their constitutional duties in accordance with their oath of office and loyalty to the country which they were elected to serve. Recall that Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger became the heroes of the Select Committee on the January 6th Insurrection. Cheney lost her primary and Kinzinger retired from Congress, and our country is the lesser for their sacrifice and loss.
Five or six newly-minted Independents would do us a world of good. Ten more Independents would be better. I'd like to think that a campaign message of Country First would resonate.
-"...attract some Republicans." See it the completely opposite way. Those handful of Rs claiming (words) to be responsible legislators who place the Constitution and country first should do the right thing by going to (actions) the Ds and cutting a deal.
-"...became heroes..." The bar is way too low for American heroes. Doing one's job and/or doing the right thing, a hero not make. Evah. If it was, then 99 and 44/100ths of Mothers would be declared American heroes rather than be taken for granted.
America arrived here due to having more heroes than folk who simply do their job and do the right thing at the right time for the right reason. Said another way "We don't need another hero."
-"five or six newly minted Independents" Another American myth of if only there was a 3rd party or in the alternative, people who claim to be independent. The House runs and governs by majority. By inserting so-called indies, the House would be hostage to the whims of a handful in a close split between the parties, effectively a tiny group would be the kingmakers in very short order.
Those 5 or 6 might represent 500k-1M voters in total out of the 210M eligible to vote or out of the 140M who voted in 2020. Read: That is the very definition of minority rule.
When you want to add a little humor, think of the great Walt Kelly -- "Sleep is escape, laughter is relief. " And we need all the laughter we can find right now.
Yes! I was lucky enough to be a member of the Macalester College Drama Choros, we always included Walt Kelly's "Pogo" - it was very effective with over fifty of us, men in suit jackets, kilts and sporrans, the women in long black skirts, white blouses, hair in chignons or tied back off the face - especially since programs would segue with no warning into "Fixin' to Die Rag" by Country Joe MacDonald and the Fish, Ferlinghetti's poem Tyrannus Nix, selections from Crow by Ted Hughes, Under Milkwood by Dylan Thomas, and so on.
There's absolutely no lower limit for this bunch, the ideological fanaticism is bubbling along like a foul, pestilential toxic brew of racist politics, raw opportunism, quasi-fascism, and unhinged economic theories out of the less enlightened texts of the 18th century, add in the omnipresent hovering specter of Donald J. Trump, archcriminal cult leader and, damn Sam, I won't continue as it's all cursing followed by the standard remedies: organize, volunteer, donate what you can strategically, publicize facts and reasoned views like LKTIV does so superbly, network, feed off whatever positive energy you can access.
" In his statement, De Niro cited his experience of playing vicious, lowlife film characters, saying: “I’ve spent a lot of time studying bad men. I’ve examined their characteristics, their mannerisms, the utter banality of their cruelty. Yet there’s something different about Donald Trump. When I look at him, I don’t see a bad man. Truly. I see an evil one.” [[Jeezus, tell us how ya really feel, this is great stuff! And he even manages to see a path forward that includes whoever can be wrenched free of Trump's malign spells:]]
"Actor Robert De Niro has launched another broadside at Donald Trump, calling the former president and likely Republican nominee for the 2024 election “evil” and “a wannabe tough guy with no morals or ethics”.
De Niro’s statement was aired on Wednesday at the Stop Trump Summit in New York City, organised by the New Republic magazine. De Niro was unable to attend the event in person due to testing positive for Covid, but his statement was read out by Miles Taylor, a former Trump administration official and author of Blowback: A Warning to Save Democracy from the Next Trump.
De Niro added: “This guy tries to be [a gangster], but he can’t quite pull it off … he’s a wannabe tough guy with no morals or ethics. No sense of right or wrong. No regard for anyone but himself – not the people he was supposed to lead and protect, not the people he does business with, not the people who follow him, blindly and loyally, not even the people who consider themselves his friends. He has contempt for all of them.”
Saying “we must take the danger of Donald Trump very seriously”, De Niro added his voice to those criticising Trump for his response to the Covid pandemic. “Remember how we were jolted by crisis in early 2020, as a virus swept the world. We lived with Donald Trump’s bombastic behaviour every day on the national stage, and we suffered as we saw our neighbours piling up in body bags. The man who was supposed to protect this country put it in peril, because of his recklessness and impulsiveness. It was like an abusive father ruling the family by fear and violent behaviour.”
De Niro also suggested it was key to reach out to Trump’s supporters “with respect”. “They’re not stupid, and we must not condemn them for making a stupid choice … Let’s not talk about democracy. Democracy may be our holy grail, but to others it is just a word, a concept, and in their embrace of Trump, they’ve already turned their backs on it. Let’s talk about right and wrong. Let’s talk about humanity. Let’s talk about kindness. Security for our world. Safety for our families. Decency. Let’s welcome them back.”
Sorry to quibble, but "bad" and "evil" are empty terms. De Niro should explain the difference between the bad men he has studied and Trump. All he says is that they're different. De Niro earlier said, “He’s so blatantly stupid. He’s a punk. He’s a dog. He’s a pig. A con. A bullshit artist." I'm sorry, but De Niro is not a sophisticated political commentator.
Ok, you and I can agree you refuse to make any distinctions between a badly played game of chess, and one played with evil intent, such as to lure a victim of a murder plot into being distracted by the Yugoslav Attack in the Sicilian; a bad decision to drive recklessly to "show off for his girlfriend" [My father's words after his fast driving reactions possibly saved our family's lives or from great bodily harm, pain and suffering, after a mid-July noontime picnic lunch between Clear Lake and Lake Okoboji in 1962 was followed by a hot rodded Chevy driven by a high school kid and said girlfriend roaring out the clear blue around a blind curve as we continued the trip to Bemidji} and what I would comfortably term - and with a panoply of supporting arguments and considerations to support the choice - an "evil" individual carrying out a determined, consistent, consciously planned series of attempts to live up to a notorious rep as a hyped-up religious fanatic to "mow down Jews," or finally (I could invent these contrasting hypotheticals all day, all week, all month, Henry - it's what I studied, after all!)
a "bad doctor" who routinely makes mistaken diagnoses, and Dr. Mengele, incarnation of evil in its starkest form.
Beyond Good and Evil: Prelude to a Philosophy of the Future (German: Jenseits von Gut und Böse: Vorspiel einer Philosophie der Zukunft) is a book by philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche that covers ideas in his previous work Thus Spoke Zarathustra but with a more polemical approach. It was first published in 1886 under the publishing house C. G. Naumann of Leipzig at the author's own expense and first translated into English by Helen Zimmern, who was two years younger than Nietzsche and knew the author.[1][2]
According to translator Walter Kaufman, the title refers to the need for moral philosophy to go beyond simplistic black and white moralizing, as contained in statements such as "X is good" or "X is evil".[1] At the beginning of the book (§ 2), Nietzsche attacks the very idea of using strictly opposite terms such as "Good versus Evil".[1]
In Beyond Good and Evil, Nietzsche accuses past philosophers of lacking critical sense and blindly accepting dogmatic premises in their consideration of morality. Specifically, he accuses them of founding grand metaphysical systems upon the faith that the good man is the opposite of the evil man, rather than just a different expression of the same basic impulses that find more direct expression in the evil man. The work moves into the realm "beyond good and evil" in the sense of leaving behind the traditional morality which Nietzsche subjects to a destructive critique in favour of what he regards as an affirmative approach that fearlessly confronts the perspectival nature of knowledge and the perilous condition of the modern individual.
***** There's all the difference in the world between demanding subtlety in the ascription of terms like good and evil, and the intellectual suicide approach of claiming they are "empty" of meaning. And I would stake De Niro as a sophisticated political commentator, especially with his great facility with slang vernacular, against a horde of bloviating masters of the globally vague, mealy-mouthed cliche who infest the mass media like bed bugs!
The "bad men" to whom De Niro referred -- those he played in movies, who were Mafia hoods for the most part -- were bad in the sense that their actions had evil intent. Your analogies with a badly played chess game or driving recklessly to show off fail. So I repeat: De Niro does not explain how his use of "bad" and "evil" differ.
That does not render either term empty, Henry, which was your claim and to which I responded, and now you fail to even try to show how a badly played chess game simpliciter cannot meaningfully be compared as indistinguishable from one which is deployed as such, but with the crucial addendum that it is one component in a murder plot, thus played "with evil intent"!
Simple enough for you to "show your work" about how that contrast fails, if you have reasons and considerations to do it - but I say you have nothing.
Ditto with the high school kid driving recklessly who conferred in an abashed way with Buck after we were forced off the road, he apologized to my father, they exchanged insurance info in case there were subsequent injuries or vehicle damage discovered that was not immediately apparent, now contrast that real life outcome with a hypothetical in which my father returns after discovering the two of them were chortling, gleeful, stating snidely and aggressively that they had formed a suicide pact, it's them against the world, and decided they might as well drive around forcing as many random people as possible off the road, running over pedestrians hiking around the lake, mowing down bicyclists - THAT would qualify as "evil."
Not only is all that true, there simply exists no such onus probandi at work here as you allege applies to De Niro, none! He is part of our language community, and relies on us to understand the contrast between, for example, Trump being a "bad politician" or a "bad man," and an "evil politician" or an "evil man," your failure to grasps this kind of distinction is your problem with speaking and comprehension, because - as always - no one carries around with them a sort of Carte Blanche Meaning Negater, such that commonly used terms describing familiar human traits and behaviors are rendered "empty, meaningless, unless they are explained to one's satisfaction and personally validated as such"!
You need to get some books on these kinds of debates, they run back thousands of years, there's no danger you'll lack for food for thought, maybe find some online or in your public library explicitly on modern philosophy of language.
This would be a good start, maybe you can find something that can rehabilitate your claim and give it some kind of plausibility, as opposed to simply stating that because you don't understand, or don't recognize, linguistic distinctions in this account of De Niro's disparaging comments about ex-president Trump, well, that's it folks - those distinctions cannot possibly exist! It would be a real super-power, that's for sure!
Finally: please, in no way should you take this "personally," I would respond in the exact same way with these or similar examples to ANYONE who made the same statements, it's a matter of intellectual honesty and refusing to simply accept your criticism as some kind of final arbitration on meaning and reference, that's all - I'm sure you're a great guy Henry, but that's not the point!
They need a speaker that will not cave to the lunatic fringe in the Freedom Caucus but that will make them so mad they will vote against everything although I guess they do that now, yet they happily continue to collect their lucrative paychecks courtesy of the American taxpayer, never mind that they never do anything constructive. They take great delight in gumming up the works and no doubt their intent is to shutdown the government entirely.
Putin must be delighted. He is probably saying to his people, 'see how democracy works? The U.S government has been brought to its knees, and not by an outside enemy.'
I personally think Biden should declare a national emergency and temporarily take over from Congress until the House GOP come to their senses and act like grown ups.
With Lucian in your Inbox, the world appears less mean, you hold your sides and giggle; occasionally you scream.
He dots his i’s and crosses the t’s.
And seldom is he known to tease.
But if the moment calls for a fight,
our dearest friend knows Left from Right.
And in a time that’s topsy turvy,
count on Truscott to calm what’s nervy!
The first time I've ever been the subject of a poem! Thanks.
Oh...spot on!
I suggest we trade Trump and Jordan for one American hostage in Gaza.
How about the entire Repugnant House caucus in exchange for ALL the American hostages? The Repugnants have demonstrated their exceptional combat skills; let them fight against Hamas instead of prolonging their eternal internecine warfare.
I’d trade him for a half empty Fresca
LOL
You and I and all federal employees and members of the military have taken this oath. . ”I, ___, do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter. So help me God.” What do we swear to support and defend? “We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.” The entire GOP needs to understand the oath and the Constitution and start acting on behalf of all the people of our nation.
Back to basics, yes, and it sums up exactly what the Trump cult despises - despite all their endless harangues about patriotism and Americanism.
Well I have to be honest and say that I couldn't care less about what happend to your nasty politics and politicians except that your (American) nightmare corruption and propaganda leaks into the world's bloodstream like a giant festering boil or rotting teeth ... here we are in Australia with Trumpian misinformation (AKA evil, consciously hysterical lies campaign) used to derail, besmirch and ruin the Yes campaign to change our wonderful (not) Cononial era Constitution so as to guarantee rights of consultation for Australia's First Nations Tribes. But no, the awesomely unpleasant Sen. Price, elevated by the right wing opposition to stab her own people in the back, is reportedly in receipt of funds and encouragement for her Right wing Party's nasty No vote campaign against the Aboriginal Voice, by one of your very own American Christo fascist groups. Well thank you American exceptionalism, just a gift to the world that can't stop giving.
Understood Kathy. It is awful. And I know you and the people of Australia aren’t responsible for the gift that keeps on giving we have from Australia...Rupert Murdoch.
Exactly. There have been terrible right-wing media barons in America's past (Hearst nationally, Chandlers in L.A., McCormick in Chicago, and on and on and on, back when newspapers were *the* dominant form of "mainstream media").
Keith Rupert Murdoch, yes, his given name, happened along just in time to take advantage of the end of the fairness doctrine in TV "news" reporting. Plus, he hired Roger "Remember, honey, when you're on the set, always, knockers up! Now, twirl for me one more time!" Ailes.
So very, hideously true. Who could credit that one sleazebag control freak (with oil holdings in Golan Heights reportedly) could wreak such vile damage on every English speaking country? What an evil old b*stard. Shrewdly bought every government in every country where his toxic newspapers grow over everything like media slime mould. Sorry slime mould, what an insult.
What does Truscott, or his writing, have to do with the appalling campaign against The Voice. It's a stretch to blame this all on the US, Australia has its share of homegrown bigots and wingnuts (Pauline Hanson comes to mind) as well.
Of course you're right as far as the prevalence of white supremacist hysteria and all the other nasty attitudes our European ancestors brought with them to all the Colonies we violently seized from the Aboriginal possessors of the soil. And my Legislative research tells me that since 1835, between all the Australian Federal, State and Territory governments, over 1,000 racist pieces of Legislation and Ordinances have been promulgated to specifically target every single subject and later, civil right possessed by Aboriginal/ Native Australian people and to extinguish this right, especially land possession rights. And after the 1975 Racial Discrimination Act, the racism wasn't so overt, it didn't need to be, since all the humiliation, and damage to Aboriginal society was firmly emplaced. Sound familiar? It's just the way we old British folks deal with our Colonies and vanquished Indigenous populations. Shameful.
But because of various historical happenstances, we're not just like you. Yes, we don't have more guns than people. EEEEK! The very thought. We don't spend proportionally speaking, 8 trillion dollars on war games and invading the known world to support our multinational capitalists at their multifarious evil initiatives. We didn't anywhere near have the same number, proportionally speaking, of Covid deaths. (We have about 1/13 of your population and nowehere near 1/13 of Covid mortality.) Straight arrow Sydney Police Commissioner blocked the hideous Trump from Investing in Sydney's Casino back in the 1980's because of TRUMP'S MAFIA CONNECTIONS! Phwew, did we ever dodge a bullet!
But of course, we have horrible, nasty bigots here, of course, as someone said, God must have loved stupid people, he/ she/ it made so many of them.
And after all, it's not that comfortable where I live here in Australia's Northern Territory. It's very tropically hot, and what's more, has a population of just 250,000 and with a population of 100,000 homicidal crocodiles! But I'd rather have them, than one resident Trump.
re: Covid deaths.
To put a very fine point on it, The US had 4.8 times the per capita deaths from covid than Australia, or 3000 covid deaths/million citizens instead of 620/million in Australia.
Meaning that if we'd done as well as Australia in fighting the covid plague, we would have had about 200,000 deaths from covid in the US instead of the one million covid deaths we did have, meaning that 800,000 of our fellow citizens would not have died due to the global pandemic.
Mainly thanks to Trump and the Murdock manipulated morons he rode in on.
Exactly, Trump and his depraved cohorts at the very least are responsible for a host of "negligent and reckless policies," resulting in hundreds of thousands of avoidable deaths, as well as terrible lingering organ damage amongst a significant proportion of survivors.
On top of that, the same efforts fueled a dangerous, deplorable and unhinged contempt for sound medical science, and even science and rationality in general, it's really something to manage to transfer the essence of an irrational cult of ignorance into life-saving sciences, but they did it are are still at it.
Then add the scams and thievery in the midst of it all and we've got quite a deplorable house of horrors going, or had. And to think that those lot walk around with us everyday. If only there were Trump bindis.
Yes I did those sums too with incredulous horror. That disgusting homicidal maniac Trump is excited by the power of life and death over people at home and abroad and is now bragging how you're in for it if he manages to sleaze his way back to office. And glory be, the response is sort of ho hum, snore from your mass media. Like Georgetown except he wants everyone to drink bleach.
" he manages to sleaze his way back to office "
It took Hitler a couple of shots at the throne to nail it.
Just sayin'
Somehow I think the English had something to do with Australia as a colony. Still exists today under "King Charles".
I would endorse every last particle of the diagnosis, excepting any implication that the entire world's population, in a rainbow coalition if you will, are bereft of the agency to fight back against all unwanted outside meddling, no matter the source - don't want to ever infantilize conscious adult human beings, as if they are solely somehow predestined as hapless victims of "American exceptionalism" and only that!
But yes to everything else, especially reversing several centuries of illegal land seizures, broken treaties, and the conscious destruction of indigenous cultures in the Americas, North, Central, and South, and Australia - New Zealand.
Keep fighting. Don’t let us get you down.
Is it really necessary to blame any entire country for anything? If you follow Progressive groups on Facebook you might think every inhabitant of Florida (a state yes, but as an example) is either a member of the Proud Boys or a neo-Nazi. Nothing could be farther from the truth.
I'm not entirely sure whish is worse for the country - A House with no Speaker, or a House with Gym Jordan as Speaker. The level of inaction is the same, the level of screaming assholery from the podium is much lower.
I'm struck by this sentence: "'Kevin was doing a lot of the Obama work,' Trump said." I see two possible reasons why Trump said "Obama" instead of "Biden." The first is that he is losing his mind; this is not the first time he has shown that he doesn't know who the president is. The second is that he wants his supporters to associate Biden with a Black man, because then they will hate him even more.
That comment made no sense to me. I think he's lost what few marbles he has left.
I hate referring to Obama as a Black man, because he is of mixed race. But, of course, most African American people are of mixed race, because one of their female ancestors was raped by her "owner" or overseer. And many more white people than know it have Black and mixed-race ancestors because several generations of women were raped until their offspring could pass as white. I wish that we could stop referring to people as "Black" or "white."
“Execrable” was invented for Jim Jordan.
Please! Don't insult clowns.
I wrote somewhere else that it's time for the Democrats to throw some chum into the water, and maybe attract some Republican votes among those who take their responsibilities seriously enough to cross the aisle and break bread with likeminded people who also put a high value on fulfilling their constitutional duties in accordance with their oath of office and loyalty to the country which they were elected to serve. Recall that Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger became the heroes of the Select Committee on the January 6th Insurrection. Cheney lost her primary and Kinzinger retired from Congress, and our country is the lesser for their sacrifice and loss.
Five or six newly-minted Independents would do us a world of good. Ten more Independents would be better. I'd like to think that a campaign message of Country First would resonate.
Am obligated to respond:
-"...attract some Republicans." See it the completely opposite way. Those handful of Rs claiming (words) to be responsible legislators who place the Constitution and country first should do the right thing by going to (actions) the Ds and cutting a deal.
-"...became heroes..." The bar is way too low for American heroes. Doing one's job and/or doing the right thing, a hero not make. Evah. If it was, then 99 and 44/100ths of Mothers would be declared American heroes rather than be taken for granted.
America arrived here due to having more heroes than folk who simply do their job and do the right thing at the right time for the right reason. Said another way "We don't need another hero."
-"five or six newly minted Independents" Another American myth of if only there was a 3rd party or in the alternative, people who claim to be independent. The House runs and governs by majority. By inserting so-called indies, the House would be hostage to the whims of a handful in a close split between the parties, effectively a tiny group would be the kingmakers in very short order.
Those 5 or 6 might represent 500k-1M voters in total out of the 210M eligible to vote or out of the 140M who voted in 2020. Read: That is the very definition of minority rule.
THANK YOU, LUCIAN!
When you want to add a little humor, think of the great Walt Kelly -- "Sleep is escape, laughter is relief. " And we need all the laughter we can find right now.
Yes! I was lucky enough to be a member of the Macalester College Drama Choros, we always included Walt Kelly's "Pogo" - it was very effective with over fifty of us, men in suit jackets, kilts and sporrans, the women in long black skirts, white blouses, hair in chignons or tied back off the face - especially since programs would segue with no warning into "Fixin' to Die Rag" by Country Joe MacDonald and the Fish, Ferlinghetti's poem Tyrannus Nix, selections from Crow by Ted Hughes, Under Milkwood by Dylan Thomas, and so on.
As Maine go, oh so Pogo go
Key Largo
Otsego to Frisco, go to Fargo,
Okeefenokee playin'
Possum on a Pogo
Stick around and see the show.
Go Overland alive, a band o' jive will blow
Go Pogo
I go, you go, who go, two go, parlez-vous go,
From Caravan Diego
Waco and Oswego
Tweedle dee, he go, she go, we go, me go Pogo.
Atascadero, Wheeler, Barrow, someplace in Mexico
Delaware, Ohio, and you don't need the Texaco
Wheeling, West Virginia
With ev'rything that's in ya
Down the line, you'll see the shine
From Oregon to Caroline.
Eeny, meeny, miny, Kokomo
Go Pogo
Tishomingo, sing those lingo, whistling go
Shamokin to Hoboken
Chenango to Chicango
It's golly, I go goo goo, goin' go go Pogo.
(solo)
Atascadero, Wheeler, Barrow
Someplace in Mexico
Delaware, Ohio -- you don't need the Texaco
Wheeling, West Virginia
With ev'rything that's in ya
Down the line, you'll see the shine
From Oregon to Caroline.
Oh, eeny, meeny, miny, Kokomo
Go Pogo
Tishomingo, sing those lingo, whistling go
Shamokin to Hoboken
Chenango to Chicango
It's golly, I go goo goo, goin' go go Pogo!
Ah, the Songs of Pogo! You had a great repertoire!
There's absolutely no lower limit for this bunch, the ideological fanaticism is bubbling along like a foul, pestilential toxic brew of racist politics, raw opportunism, quasi-fascism, and unhinged economic theories out of the less enlightened texts of the 18th century, add in the omnipresent hovering specter of Donald J. Trump, archcriminal cult leader and, damn Sam, I won't continue as it's all cursing followed by the standard remedies: organize, volunteer, donate what you can strategically, publicize facts and reasoned views like LKTIV does so superbly, network, feed off whatever positive energy you can access.
De Niro denouncing Trump is worth reading:
https://www.theguardian.com/film/2023/oct/13/robert-de-niro-trump-is-evil-and-a-wannabe-tough-guy-with-no-morals-or-ethics
Excerpt:
" In his statement, De Niro cited his experience of playing vicious, lowlife film characters, saying: “I’ve spent a lot of time studying bad men. I’ve examined their characteristics, their mannerisms, the utter banality of their cruelty. Yet there’s something different about Donald Trump. When I look at him, I don’t see a bad man. Truly. I see an evil one.” [[Jeezus, tell us how ya really feel, this is great stuff! And he even manages to see a path forward that includes whoever can be wrenched free of Trump's malign spells:]]
"Actor Robert De Niro has launched another broadside at Donald Trump, calling the former president and likely Republican nominee for the 2024 election “evil” and “a wannabe tough guy with no morals or ethics”.
De Niro’s statement was aired on Wednesday at the Stop Trump Summit in New York City, organised by the New Republic magazine. De Niro was unable to attend the event in person due to testing positive for Covid, but his statement was read out by Miles Taylor, a former Trump administration official and author of Blowback: A Warning to Save Democracy from the Next Trump.
De Niro added: “This guy tries to be [a gangster], but he can’t quite pull it off … he’s a wannabe tough guy with no morals or ethics. No sense of right or wrong. No regard for anyone but himself – not the people he was supposed to lead and protect, not the people he does business with, not the people who follow him, blindly and loyally, not even the people who consider themselves his friends. He has contempt for all of them.”
Saying “we must take the danger of Donald Trump very seriously”, De Niro added his voice to those criticising Trump for his response to the Covid pandemic. “Remember how we were jolted by crisis in early 2020, as a virus swept the world. We lived with Donald Trump’s bombastic behaviour every day on the national stage, and we suffered as we saw our neighbours piling up in body bags. The man who was supposed to protect this country put it in peril, because of his recklessness and impulsiveness. It was like an abusive father ruling the family by fear and violent behaviour.”
De Niro also suggested it was key to reach out to Trump’s supporters “with respect”. “They’re not stupid, and we must not condemn them for making a stupid choice … Let’s not talk about democracy. Democracy may be our holy grail, but to others it is just a word, a concept, and in their embrace of Trump, they’ve already turned their backs on it. Let’s talk about right and wrong. Let’s talk about humanity. Let’s talk about kindness. Security for our world. Safety for our families. Decency. Let’s welcome them back.”
Sorry to quibble, but "bad" and "evil" are empty terms. De Niro should explain the difference between the bad men he has studied and Trump. All he says is that they're different. De Niro earlier said, “He’s so blatantly stupid. He’s a punk. He’s a dog. He’s a pig. A con. A bullshit artist." I'm sorry, but De Niro is not a sophisticated political commentator.
Ok, you and I can agree you refuse to make any distinctions between a badly played game of chess, and one played with evil intent, such as to lure a victim of a murder plot into being distracted by the Yugoslav Attack in the Sicilian; a bad decision to drive recklessly to "show off for his girlfriend" [My father's words after his fast driving reactions possibly saved our family's lives or from great bodily harm, pain and suffering, after a mid-July noontime picnic lunch between Clear Lake and Lake Okoboji in 1962 was followed by a hot rodded Chevy driven by a high school kid and said girlfriend roaring out the clear blue around a blind curve as we continued the trip to Bemidji} and what I would comfortably term - and with a panoply of supporting arguments and considerations to support the choice - an "evil" individual carrying out a determined, consistent, consciously planned series of attempts to live up to a notorious rep as a hyped-up religious fanatic to "mow down Jews," or finally (I could invent these contrasting hypotheticals all day, all week, all month, Henry - it's what I studied, after all!)
a "bad doctor" who routinely makes mistaken diagnoses, and Dr. Mengele, incarnation of evil in its starkest form.
See also:
https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/4363/pg4363-images.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beyond_Good_and_Evil
Beyond Good and Evil: Prelude to a Philosophy of the Future (German: Jenseits von Gut und Böse: Vorspiel einer Philosophie der Zukunft) is a book by philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche that covers ideas in his previous work Thus Spoke Zarathustra but with a more polemical approach. It was first published in 1886 under the publishing house C. G. Naumann of Leipzig at the author's own expense and first translated into English by Helen Zimmern, who was two years younger than Nietzsche and knew the author.[1][2]
According to translator Walter Kaufman, the title refers to the need for moral philosophy to go beyond simplistic black and white moralizing, as contained in statements such as "X is good" or "X is evil".[1] At the beginning of the book (§ 2), Nietzsche attacks the very idea of using strictly opposite terms such as "Good versus Evil".[1]
In Beyond Good and Evil, Nietzsche accuses past philosophers of lacking critical sense and blindly accepting dogmatic premises in their consideration of morality. Specifically, he accuses them of founding grand metaphysical systems upon the faith that the good man is the opposite of the evil man, rather than just a different expression of the same basic impulses that find more direct expression in the evil man. The work moves into the realm "beyond good and evil" in the sense of leaving behind the traditional morality which Nietzsche subjects to a destructive critique in favour of what he regards as an affirmative approach that fearlessly confronts the perspectival nature of knowledge and the perilous condition of the modern individual.
***** There's all the difference in the world between demanding subtlety in the ascription of terms like good and evil, and the intellectual suicide approach of claiming they are "empty" of meaning. And I would stake De Niro as a sophisticated political commentator, especially with his great facility with slang vernacular, against a horde of bloviating masters of the globally vague, mealy-mouthed cliche who infest the mass media like bed bugs!
The "bad men" to whom De Niro referred -- those he played in movies, who were Mafia hoods for the most part -- were bad in the sense that their actions had evil intent. Your analogies with a badly played chess game or driving recklessly to show off fail. So I repeat: De Niro does not explain how his use of "bad" and "evil" differ.
That does not render either term empty, Henry, which was your claim and to which I responded, and now you fail to even try to show how a badly played chess game simpliciter cannot meaningfully be compared as indistinguishable from one which is deployed as such, but with the crucial addendum that it is one component in a murder plot, thus played "with evil intent"!
Simple enough for you to "show your work" about how that contrast fails, if you have reasons and considerations to do it - but I say you have nothing.
Ditto with the high school kid driving recklessly who conferred in an abashed way with Buck after we were forced off the road, he apologized to my father, they exchanged insurance info in case there were subsequent injuries or vehicle damage discovered that was not immediately apparent, now contrast that real life outcome with a hypothetical in which my father returns after discovering the two of them were chortling, gleeful, stating snidely and aggressively that they had formed a suicide pact, it's them against the world, and decided they might as well drive around forcing as many random people as possible off the road, running over pedestrians hiking around the lake, mowing down bicyclists - THAT would qualify as "evil."
Not only is all that true, there simply exists no such onus probandi at work here as you allege applies to De Niro, none! He is part of our language community, and relies on us to understand the contrast between, for example, Trump being a "bad politician" or a "bad man," and an "evil politician" or an "evil man," your failure to grasps this kind of distinction is your problem with speaking and comprehension, because - as always - no one carries around with them a sort of Carte Blanche Meaning Negater, such that commonly used terms describing familiar human traits and behaviors are rendered "empty, meaningless, unless they are explained to one's satisfaction and personally validated as such"!
You need to get some books on these kinds of debates, they run back thousands of years, there's no danger you'll lack for food for thought, maybe find some online or in your public library explicitly on modern philosophy of language.
This would be a good start, maybe you can find something that can rehabilitate your claim and give it some kind of plausibility, as opposed to simply stating that because you don't understand, or don't recognize, linguistic distinctions in this account of De Niro's disparaging comments about ex-president Trump, well, that's it folks - those distinctions cannot possibly exist! It would be a real super-power, that's for sure!
Finally: please, in no way should you take this "personally," I would respond in the exact same way with these or similar examples to ANYONE who made the same statements, it's a matter of intellectual honesty and refusing to simply accept your criticism as some kind of final arbitration on meaning and reference, that's all - I'm sure you're a great guy Henry, but that's not the point!
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/meaning/
]
I have always been afraid of clowns. Now I know why.
They need a speaker that will not cave to the lunatic fringe in the Freedom Caucus but that will make them so mad they will vote against everything although I guess they do that now, yet they happily continue to collect their lucrative paychecks courtesy of the American taxpayer, never mind that they never do anything constructive. They take great delight in gumming up the works and no doubt their intent is to shutdown the government entirely.
Putin must be delighted. He is probably saying to his people, 'see how democracy works? The U.S government has been brought to its knees, and not by an outside enemy.'
I personally think Biden should declare a national emergency and temporarily take over from Congress until the House GOP come to their senses and act like grown ups.
re: last sentence---they are way beyond the clown stage.
I understand the anger but we are not your enemy. We get it.