A Letter Perfect Solution

I've said it before, and I'll say it again. Adding a single, short line to the first letter of Mr. Carlson's first name to change it to an F would clear up any questions about his bona ties as a journalist.

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Not My Coloring Book

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Today's Republican Party is the party for people who are afraid to color outside the lines or to use any but the officially-designated crayon of white supremacists. It is clearly not the party for people who believe Thomas Jefferson was right when he penned "all men are created equal" in the Declaration of Independence.

If asked, the conservative justices, who now control the Supreme Court and impose the regressive mores of originalism on all Americans, would point out that when Jefferson wrote the founding document of our country, many of its signatories believed that those with brown or black skin were not men, but property, specifically livestock to be bred, worked, sold, and slaughtered as needed. Similarly, they believed that women were the property of their husbands. Today's originalist justices believe that both groups had then and still have no standing before the law today.

That is essentially the sum and substance of the precedents Justice Samuel Alito cited in his recently leaked draft on abortion to justify overturning Roe v. Wade. It will be the basis of the originalist arguments the conservative majority in the Supreme Court will use to undo marriage equality, contraception, and other civil rights that were not included in the text of The Constitution.

The implications for the law of overruling Roe will be enormous. Justice Alito’s draft opinion for the Court says that Roe was “egregiously wrong” because it protects a right that was not included in the text of the Constitution, was not protected by the original meaning of the Constitution, and was not traditionally safeguarded as a constitutional right. 
– excerpt from: The Enormous Consequences of Overruling Roe v. Wade 

This is not my coloring book, but it would surely become the official coloring book of America should the Republican Party regain control of Congress in the midterm election.

Signal to Noise Help

The Political Price of Honesty and Transparency in Today's America

In an America where Fox "News" right-wing disinformation and the left's response to it dominate the political narrative, being honest and transparent becomes a political liability.

Case in Point: President Biden's approval rating is below 50% not because he is doing a poor job but because he is telling Americans what they need to hear and counting on their being able to hear the truth through the noise.

In such a noisy environment, it is critical that Americans take the time to learn and consider the details behind and realistic options for solving complex problems instead of being brainwashed by the droning hype of 24/7 propaganda touting solutions that are simplistic, ideological, emotion-driven, and counter-productive.

Heather Cox Richardson's Letters from an American is an excellent tool for increasing the signal to noise ratio, and I strongly urge you to subscribe to and read her daily posts.

In her May 6 letter, Ms. Richardson discusses how decades of economic noise (supply-side economics and Trump's ties to Putin) obscure the clear signal of President Biden's economic policies, which have brought back jobs, raised wages and accomplished "the fastest economic recovery since the pandemic of any of the wealthiest liberal democracies that make up the Group of Seven (G7) countries."

Click this link for the signal-boosting full story. Heather Cox Richardson's May 6, 2022 Letters from an American

True yet False

The headline of the article below is true, but it is also severely and dangerously misleading in that it implies a false equivalence between the two sides of the philosophical division. While it is true that Americans remain bitterly divided on abortion, the division is far from even, especially when one examines both numbers and bitterness.

Numberwise, only 18% of Americans want to see Roe vs. Wade overturned. The bitterness has been unquestionably fueled and nurtured by the actions of the 18% minority who use intimidation and fear-mongering to further their agenda. For decades they have blocked entrances to clinics, harassed the women attempting to enter them, and murdered the doctors who work in them all under the guise of being pro-freedom and pro-life. Their goal is to force the 81% majority to live by the repressive and rigid strictures of their theocratic belief system.

In contrast, the the 81% majority has relied predominantly on facts, science, and rational argument to mitigate the conflict. Their goal is to actualize the rhetoric of equality found in The Declaration of Independence and The Constitution.

In the article below, a poorly worded headline obscures all of these facts and enhances the authoritarian agenda of the 18%. The headline would have provided some clarity had it said, With the Supreme Court poised to act, Americans remain bitterly but disproportionately divided on abortion.

With the Supreme Court poised to act, Americans remain bitterly divided on abortion
Updated May 5, 2022    4:33 PM ET
JULIE ROVNER



Demonstrators gathered in front of the U.S. Supreme Court as the justices heard arguments in Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health, a case about a Mississippi law that bans most abortions after 15 weeks, on December 01, 2021. Experts believe a ruling on this case could undermine or overturn Roe v. Wade.

Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

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Help Pull America Back from the Brink of Dictatorship

If you do not want to see America become a dictatorship, I urge you to read and then share Heather Cox Richardson's April 23, 2022 Letters from an American with all of your friends, especially those living in states where Republican legislators are working to pass laws to ensure that only Republicans can win elections. It is also imperative that you urge them to share the letter with all of their friends.

One short excerpt from Richardson's April 23 letter cuts to the chase, summarizes the current situation, and explains why sharing this letter is of critical importance:

Former speechwriter for George W. Bush David Frum wrote in 2018: "If conservatives become convinced that they cannot win democratically, they will not abandon conservatism. They will reject democracy.” And here we are.

April 23, 2022

Heather Cox Richardson

13 hr ago

1,196

382

Late last night, the House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the U.S. Capitol filed a motion asking a judge to put an end to the attempts of Trump chief of staff Mark Meadows to stonewall the committee. Meadows has tried to avoid talking to the committee or providing it with documents, using a number of different arguments that essentially try to establish that the U.S. president cannot be held accountable by Congress. The committee’s motion carefully explains why those arguments are wrong.

To support their belief that the Congress has the right and responsibility to investigate the circumstances of the January 6 insurrection—a correct understanding of our governmental system, in my view—the committee gave the judge almost 250 pages of evidence.

Included was some of the material I’ve been waiting for: a list of members of Congress who participated in planning to overturn the results of the 2020 election.

We have heard a lot about independent lawyers and members of the executive branch who were willing to try to keep Trump in office. We have also heard about people at the state level. But while there has been plenty of speculation about what members of Congress were involved, we had little to go on.

We knew that both former energy secretary Rick Perry of Texas and Representative Jim Jordan (R-OH) had texted with Meadows about possible avenues for overturning the election. We knew that Representatives Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) and Lauren Boebert (R-CO) had recorded videos before the insurrection that suggested they supported it. We had an odd statement from Senator Chuck Grassley (R-IA) on January 5 saying that he, not then–vice president Mike Pence, would count the certified electoral ballots the next day. We had Representative Liz Cheney (R-WY) allegedly saying to Jordan on January 6, “Get away from me. You f**ing did this.”

But the January 6th committee has just given us a bigger—although not the whole, yet—picture.

In last night’s filed motion was part of the testimony to the committee from Cassidy Hutchinson, a former special assistant to the president and the chief of staff. When asked which members of Congress were involved in calls about overturning the election—including calls saying such efforts were illegal—Hutchinson named Representatives Greene, Jordan, Boebert, Scott Perry (R-PA), Louie Gohmert (R-TX), Andy Biggs (R-AZ), Mo Brooks (R-AL), Jody Hice (R-GA), Paul Gosar (R-AZ), and Debbie Lesko (R-AZ).

The heart of this group was the “Freedom Caucus,” which was organized in 2015 to move the Republican Party farther to the right. Its first chair was Jim Jordan; its second was Mark Meadows. Its third was Andy Biggs. Mick Mulvaney, who would go on to Trump’s White House, and Ron DeSantis, who is now governor of Florida, were key organizers.

Let’s be clear: the people working to keep Trump in office by overturning the will of the people were trying to destroy our democracy. Not one of them, or any of those who plotted with them, called out the illegal attempt to destroy our government.

To what end did they seek to overthrow our democracy?

The current Republican Party has two wings: one eager to get rid of any regulation of business, and one that wants to get rid of the civil rights protections that the Supreme Court and Congress began to put into place in the 1950s. Business regulation is actually quite popular in the U.S., so to build a political following, in the 1980s, leaders of the anti-regulation wing of the Republican Party promised racists and the religious right that they would stomp out the civil rights legislation that since the 1950s has tried to make all Americans equal before the law.

But even this marriage has not been enough to win elections, since most Americans like business regulation and the protection of things like the right to use birth control. So, to put its vision into place, the Republican Party has now abandoned democracy. Its leaders have concluded that any Democratic victory is illegitimate, even if voters have clearly chosen a Democrat, as they did with Biden in 2020, by more than 7 million votes.

Former speechwriter for George W. Bush David Frum wrote in 2018: "If conservatives become convinced that they cannot win democratically, they will not abandon conservatism. They will reject democracy.” And here we are.

As if to illustrate this point, news broke today that a North Carolina official threatened to fire an elections official unless she gave him access to the county’s vote tabulators. The news agency Reuters noted that this threat was only one of more than 900 instances of intimidation of election officials in what has become commonplace after the 2020 election.

It appears that elected officials of the Republican Party are willing to overturn a legitimate Democratic victory in order to guarantee that only a Republican can hold office. That means a one-party state, which will be overseen by a single, powerful individual. And the last 59 days in Ukraine have illustrated exactly what that kind of a system means.

Standing against that authoritarianism, Democratic president Joe Biden is trying to reassure Americans that democracy works. He insisted on using the government to support ordinary Americans rather than the wealthy, and in his first year in office, poverty in the United States declined, with lower-income Americans gaining more than at any time since the “War on Poverty” in the 1960s. Lower-income workers have more job opportunities than they have had for 30 years, and they are making more money. They have on average 50% more money in the bank than they did when the pandemic hit.

Biden’s insistence on investing in Americans meant that by the end of his first year, the U.S. had created 6.6 million jobs, the strongest record of any president since record keeping began in 1939. By the beginning of April, the economy had added 7.9 million jobs, and unemployment was close to a 50-year low at 3.6%. Meanwhile, the deficit is dropping: we should carve $1.3 trillion off it this year.

Biden’s deliberate reshaping of the American government to work for ordinary Americans again, regulating business and using the federal government to enforce equal rights, so threatens modern Republicans that they are willing to destroy our country rather than allow voters to keep people like Biden in power.

I do not believe that a majority of Americans want a dictatorship in which a favored few become billionaires while the rest of us live without the civil rights that have been our norm since the 1950s, and no voting rights to enable us to change our lot.

Tonight, news broke that Democrats in Utah have voted to back Independent candidate Evan McMullin for senator rather than run their own candidate. McMullin is trying to unseat Republican Senator Mike Lee, whose texts to Meadows as they conspired to overturn the election have lately drawn headlines. Democrats are gambling that there are enough Democrats, Independents, and anti-Trump Republicans in Utah to send Lee packing. 

Blather, Rinse, Repeat

The Republican Script That's Destroying The Country

1. Create a problem.
2. Blame the problem on Democrats without any evidence to back up your accusation.
3. Call any evidence that refutes the accusation Fake News.
4. Create another problem.

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But wait! There's one more, critical component…

5. Count on the brainwashed base to use the following rationale to support your bullshit and flush truth and the country down the toilet. 

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A Republican with clear vision reacts to the script...

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Victims and Oppressors

The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars,
But in ourselves, that we are underlings.

– William Shakespeare, Julius Caesar

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People who support Donald Trump truly believe they are victims, and in a sense they are. However, the source of their victimhood is a carefully crafted and nurtured fabrication unrelated to reality.

Since childhood they have been brainwashed so effectively that they dare not question the authority of their religious and political "leaders" and blindly blame whichever other du jour they're told is oppressing them. The others they blame are always demonized with a political trope that reduces a person, an idea, or an entire group of people to a name or phrase designed to elicit a dog whistle response rooted in prejudice and bigotry.

Here, in no particular order, are a few examples of such tropes:

socialism
Nancy Pelosi
right to life
Hillary
right to work
critical race theory

illegal immigrants

cancel culture 

Brainwash check:

As you read through the list, what emotions did you feel? How much factual information do you really have about each of the items listed?

Did you feel suspicion of or even outright hatred for Nancy Pelosi, socialism, or Hillary? Are you uncomfortable when you hear the terms cancel culture and illegal immigrants? If so, you are a victim of right-wing brainwashing.

For further reading:

The link below will take you to an article that unmasks the lies behind the cancel culture trope in particular, and by extension, other such political canards.

The Specter of Critical Race Theory Is Rotting Republicans’ Brains

Alex Shephard/June 15, 2021

No Pain; No Education

An old adage says, "No pain; no gain." Learning, however, requires pain. It only happens when students feel the pain that comes from recognizing their ignorance and overcome it by gaining new knowledge and insights.

Across America, Republican lawmakers are working undermine the educational process by making sure there is no pain for them and their supporters and absolutely no gain for anyone else.

Lawmakers want to ban discomfort in school. But Black history isn't always comfortable

Updated February 24, 202212:37 PM ET 

Heard on  All Things Considered

ANYA STEINBERG

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Learning about Black history isn't always comfortable, neither is learning about The Holocaust or any other topic these self-serving lawmakers wish to exclude from American education by banning this list of 

"uncomfortable" books that would expose their hypocrisy and duplicity.