December 14, 2020

What will you be drinking when the Pres. Elect speaks tonight?

I have a nice barleywine from Tree House Brewing Co.

December 13, 2020

American Democracy Was Never Supposed to Work Bill Moyers

https://billmoyers.com/story/american-democracy-was-never-supposed-to-work/

If the United States were a democracy, this election wouldn’t have been close. The fate of the world wouldn’t depend on a handful of suburban precincts. The winner would have been known immediately. With a comfortable lead well into the millions, the president-elect and his party could have moved on to crafting and passing the program that gained them an undeniable mandate.

But we do not have a democracy, and not because Trump undermined it but because the framers of the Constitution did not create one. They felt the Articles of Confederation left too much power in the hands of economic populists in the states, and so they constructed a system meant to serve and protect the rich. The Constitution was designed specifically to prevent, as James Madison put it in the Federalist Papers, “an abolition of debts” or “an equal distribution of property” from passing into law.

Nearly two and a half centuries on, the antidemocratic provisions of the Constitution are still working as the framers intended. Even in an era of global capital, the wealthy benefit from a sclerotic, dysfunctional government. When early election results suggested a Joe Biden presidency with Republicans maintaining their grip on the Senate, the Associated Press reported that “stocks rallied on Wall Street as investors embraced the upside of more gridlock in Washington.” Divided government, these investors seem to think, will derail what Madison called “wicked or improper projects”: the abolition of student debt, higher taxes on the wealthy, the Green New Deal.

Read the rest at the link at the top.

December 9, 2020

"DONALD TRUMP WAS DOING THINGS THAT WERE ILLEGAL AND UNCONSTITUTIONAL":

https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2020/12/massachusetts-ag-maura-healey-on-prosecuting-a-president

“DONALD TRUMP WAS DOING THINGS THAT WERE ILLEGAL AND UNCONSTITUTIONAL”: MASSACHUSETTS A.G. MAURA HEALEY ON PROSECUTING A PRESIDENT

As a new era dawns in Washington, state attorneys general, who have filed nearly 140 lawsuits against President Donald Trump’s administration over the last four years, are also preparing for what is to come in the next administration. It’s a welcome change for someone like Maura Healey, Massachusetts’s attorney general, who has joined more than 100 of those suits, on everything from Trump’s family-separation policy to census issues to environmental protections. “I don’t think you can overstate how much energy and effort it took to hold the line against the Trump administration that was doing things so entirely unprecedented and in violation of so many norms and the rule of law,” she said in an interview with Vanity Fair earlier this month.

The work, however, is not done, as the country reckons with coronavirus and the Black Lives Matter movement, and issues around free, fair, and trusted elections continue, even after Joe Biden’s decisive win. Healey discussed what lies ahead, what Republicans need to do to help bring our country together, and what she thinks should happen to a post–White House Donald Trump: “I’m going to be limited in what I can say,” she told me, “but it is important that Donald Trump, his enablers, those who acted in concert with him and furthered actions that may have been illegal, criminal or otherwise, are held accountable.”

Read the whole interview at the link.

December 7, 2020

America's nurses could use some mercy now

I have spent my professional career researching and writing about the spirituals, gospel songs and freedom songs of the African American experience. They also provide much of the soundtrack of my life.

But two weeks ago, when I found myself in a crowded Waco hospital undergoing knee replacement surgery, it wasn’t a classic spiritual that sustained me. It was Mary Gauthier’s “Mercy Now.” “Mercy Now” was hailed as an instant classic upon its release in 2005, a simple, haunting plea that sounds older than the oldest spirituals, like it was somehow summoned from divine ether rather than composed in the vulgar present.



If you don’t believe politicians, believe nurses. If you don’t believe scientists, believe nurses. If you don’t believe the media, teachers, doctors and medical associations, or even folk wisdom, then believe nurses. Nurses need a little mercy now.

The nurse has nothing to gain by misleading you. Our nurses have been at the front lines from day one. They’ve seen us at our worst, puking, screaming, defecating, whining, threatening, bullying, bleeding and they still accept us unconditionally into their care.




Read the whole article at the link below.
https://www.dallasnews.com/opinion/commentary/2020/12/06/americas-nurses-could-use-some-mercy-now/?fbclid=IwAR1rXCi6lz4ZEWouBP99yWf6p6ed35TTvRqW3s2W_iTAkC_J1ckM28mphDQ