January 31, 2020

Remember This Day

51 enablers of tyranny.
51 dead souls.
51 ghosts of American history.

Remember this day.

WE are America.
WE are not dead.
We are The People.
We are not leaving.
WE are the American Underground.

January 31, 2020

On Tyranny -- Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century

(by Timothy Snyder, 2017, pocket- sized, double spaced, 126 pp)

Chapter Titles:

1. Do not obey in advance.
2. Defend institutions.
3. Beware the one-party state.
4. Take responsibility for the face of the world.
5. Remember professional ethics.

6. Be wary of paramilitaries.
7. Be reflective if you must be armed.
8. Stand out.
9. Be kind to our language.
10.Believe in truth.

11. Investigate.
12. Make eye contact and small talk.
13. Practice corporeal politics.
14. Establish a private life.
15. Contribute to good causes.

16. Learn from peers in other countries.
17. Listen for dangerous words.
18. Be calm when the unthinkable arrives.
19. Be a patriot.
20. Be as courageous as you can.

In the future we might literally be the Democratic Underground.

January 31, 2020

May The Road Rise With You

Anger is an energy. Millennials love the hell out of this.

January 31, 2020

Cory Booker's Answer To The Normalization of Lawlessness -- Do Not Lose Your Outrage

Let me tell you right now.
And again this goes to the heart of our country.
Never stop being a prisoner of hope.
Our whole country speaks to that.

They crushed, they beat us at Bunker Hill.
They bombed us in a church in Birmingham.
They beat us down at Stonewall.
We've seen horribly painful moments where the very ideals of this nation were under threat that we found ways to gather back together and come back even stronger.

This election is about so much more now than a choice between a Democratic and a Republican president.
This is not about Right or Left.
This is about Right or Wrong.
This is a moral moment.

And the moral vandal that's in the White House right now?
He may win this day.
But he will not win our Nation.
We are America.
And we're going to find a way to regroup, heal, and be the moral nation that we are.

Thank you, Senator Booker. We WILL keep saying this over and over.

We are The American People.

January 29, 2020

From Pew Research -- Nine months before Election Day, three dozen House members heading for the exit

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Good, seemingly fair methodology here. We need to pay attention, and put party money on training candidates toward these seats.



We have to do the Obama thing -- run the numbers on the ground. "On the ground" means laying out the voter profile, existing and potential.

https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2020/01/28/nine-months-before-election-day-three-dozen-house-members-heading-for-the-exits/?fbclid=IwAR1n0_OZ5TmAsJjzn9jb6nooMG-RSBUHNSVLNQXj7c-9T20n63QCJt4CrnM

January 27, 2020

The Good News

From Gallup and Slashdot, posted on Facebook:

https://news.slashdot.org/story/20/01/27/1424209/more-americans-went-to-the-library-than-to-the-movies-last-year?utm_source=feedburnerFaceBook&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Slashdot%2Fslashdot+%28Slashdot%29&utm_content=FaceBook&fbclid=IwAR0LKs7l7PMwBZZHSoZi-aRwl8YoPjXXZ6IttIAeB8vq2Qj341XEWGw92GE

https://news.gallup.com/poll/284009/library-visits-outpaced-trips-movies-2019.aspx

January 27, 2020

In the House That Kobe Bryant Built -- Alicia Keys and Boyz II Men

The most powerful thing in the world to bring us all together -- music.

The most healing thing in the world. Music.

January 26, 2020

In this constitutional crisis, if you feel dread like I do, this book can help.

I highly recommend historian Jill Lepore's This America -- The Case For the Nation (2019), because it can guide our thought and action into THE FUTURE.

It's short, 140 pages of double-spaced lines, pocket-sized.

When it comes to how we look ahead, its power and clarity flashes a love and understanding for this country that can mean the difference between (en)lightening and the (en)lightening bug.



There are times when reading IS doing.

January 26, 2020

Impeachment Is About Corruption and How That Drags A Government Down

Warren is relentless, hitting on the embedding of corruption in this administration, and how Americans can't get what they need with dignity.

January 25, 2020

Almost all Americans don't know the mess John Roberts made. They think it's about this trial. NO.

John Roberts made this mess back in 2000 in Gore v Bush.

Flown in by the two Bush brothers' bad boys, Roberts literally TRAINED the Bush legal team to BEG SCOTUS to override the Supreme Court of Florida ruling to have a complete state recount.

John Roberts knew that if they used the arguments he trained them to use, that Sandra Day O'Connor, and Wm Rehnquist ( whom she called, livid about the FL Supreme Court ruling) -- enraged Federalist Society conservatives -- would chomp at the chance to keep the pro-Bush count as it was.

And so they did. They OVERRULED A STATE SUPREME COURT. The SCOTUS vote was a split.

BUT. When the real vote count continued, and it was found AFTER THE SCOTUS INTERFERENCE WITH THE FLORIDA COUNT, THAT GORE ACTUALLY DID WIN.

Bush, once inaugurated, rewarded John The Pirate Roberts by
a) nominating him to the Supreme Court, and
b) making him Chief Justice.

If John Roberts, Jeb Bush and GWBush had respected Florida's Supreme Court ruling, we wouldn't be going through this today.

Here's where we'd be, instead.

-- We'd have a fully functioning, fully funded government that responds to us and our landbase
-- We'd be ahead of the climate crisis with an already established green new deal;
-- we'd have clean energy utilities;
-- there would have been NO 9/11 and
-- no bank bailouts or debt;
-- so many other good things that would make all Americans healthier and economically well off.
-- Plus high speed rail.

John Roberts -- sitting there in all his fake humility that covers his legal shame, has made that mess. So much for juris "prudence."

Every single American should know what he did.