There are nearly innumerable expletives that could pepper this post but for some reason I am trying to be civil on occasion. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. So for the beginning of my comment, at least, it may take on a civil tone. No Guarantee how the end will look however.
~~~ Gerrymandering has been with us & has been very successful to the detriment to our democracy. And now I wonder if it's too late for the dying lady of liberty & lady justice?? There are days when I have a lot of fight within me to do what I can to save our country but then I see people, corporations, influencers just cave BEFORE that egomaniac takes office. I have raised the question about why we, the little people, are responsible to do all the fighting & saving while those with the means & influence to fight can just open their goddam coffers to trump & his merry band of thieves.
Have we become that venal, that lazy, that traitorous that those who CAN do something just roll over & show their bellies to the BEAST about to gut our coffers of power & influence & goodness?
It really is so hard to take. Every goddam time I watch the news (And I'll be up front, I pretty much only watch some select shows on MSNBC, by the way I stopped recording Morning Joe after they slithered down to Mar A Lago.), to repeat, every time I watch the news I get more & more disgusted, irate, depressed, sickened, furious to the point of practically screaming at the TV.
~~~All the talk of gutting this program & that program & handing more & more wealth to the wealthy. Then there are all the promises of deportations that so many 'Americans' (I use that term very loosely here.) are elated about. Have you seen/heard where, now in Missouri they are planning on legalizing bounty hunting illegal immigrants? They want to to offer $1,000 to anyone that can bring in an illegal immigrant!!!!!!! What the fuck???(See, I told you no guarantees about the expletives.) I live here in California & I am lucky enough to have lovely Hispanic lady, Maria, to do some house cleaning for me every 2 weeks. I don't know her legal status, I don't care about it, she is a friendly woman who does a great job for me. Her English is limited but we can converse pretty well & damn, she makes the absolutley BEST TAMALES! She was generous & kind enough to give me 2 at Thanksgiving, YUMMY. (Pardon my wandering off subject but it's a nice interlude to think of someone kind, hard working & generous.) So, if I lived in Missouri, what would happen to this wonderful woman? I mean surely she would be targeted, she looks Hispanic, speaks broken English so she must be illegal & she's worth a thousand bucks if she gets turned it!!!!! (Typing this just about brought on a spasm of nausea.)
~~~So gerrymander away, US, gerrymander away decency, generosity, morals, kindness, hope, caring, love, go ahead & do it but STOP saying you're Making America Great Again, GROSS,, definitley but GREAT, no way.
Great heart felt post Normalcy. I agree with every word, and feel the same emotion you feel. I have zero problems with immigrants, but leave it up to the authorities to catch and weed out the criminals.
I also remind people, that it was legal migrants that brought criminals into the US.The Jewish Mafia, the Irish Mafia, the Italian Mafia, the Armenian Mafia, the Albanian mafia, and on it goes. Jared Kushners father was part of the Russian or Jewish mafia., Joseph Kennedy Sr and Grace Kelley's father,. John B, were part of the Irish mafia.
Oh no, Return. "Have you seen/heard where, now in Missouri, they are planning on legalizing bounty hunting illegal immigrants?" I will look that up. That's terribly dangerous and so wrong.
Add voter intimidation, voter preclusion and foreign interference, including psy ops.
Biden needs to report on Russian interference ASAP! We are the victims of the Russian war on the USA. An admission is dispositive and is actionalble and constitutes an emergency.
You know I love you Daniel, we are soul brothers, but when it comes to Biden needing to do something, we separate.
I don't expect Biden to do anything, except maybe save his ownskin. Biden could have removed pot from schedule 1, and thus freed up millions of people and billions of dollars and yet he has done nothing.
He could have done something about making abortion legal in all states, by having congress when they had a trifecta to pass legislation, like they did for gay marriage (the Respect for Marriage act) he did nothing, he appointed a right wing partisan as Attorney General, and hung on to his re election, despite the fact that the evidence was that he had lost his mental and physical facilities, because of ego. He revoked the one tool that Trump left him, that would have enabled him to purge the DOJ, NSA, HSS, and all federal agents of the very Trump humping assets that Trump embedded in his last weeks in office (talking of EO 139575, Schedule F, which he revoked with EO 140003, he could have used that EO to purge Trump's schedule F, but revoked it, and now Trump will reissue it on Jan 21st
There is so much Biden could have done, but didn't, so much he needs to do,but won't.
I will be pleasantly surprised if he proves me false.
IMO he was a disaster I only voted for him as he was the only viable alternative to Trump, and that is why the feckless DNC selected him. The DNC is the problem, they don't have any real populist in the stable, leaving populism to be a monopoly of the extreme right. And because it is, it is given a bad name by the corporate media, who controls the narrative.
There is a difference between leftist populism and rightist populism, a huge chasm, but the corporate media has fused the two into a meme of right wing populism. Unions are an expression of left wing populism, national health care, national parks, national plumbing, national energy. But such means disempowering corporations.
With the DNC staffed as it is, with corporate lobbyists and corporate money filing the trough from which politicians slop, the chances of us ever getting a politician that actually represents the people is none to zilch, except in far off places which house people like Sherrod Brown of Sheldon Whitehouse, or AOC., isolated corners of the country, and even they don't last long. big money took care of Sherrod Brown.
Unless something is done we are goners. I'll keep trying.
I appreciated all that Biden has done...and tried to do. Nobody's perfect. He has done more with less than any recent president.
We still have some time to get through to him.
I would hope that the media would pick up on this. I'm not saying that there's more to it but in September, DOJ asserted that Sergey Kiriyenko had created some 30 internet domains to spread Russian disinformation, including on Elon Musk’s X which was formerly known as Twitter. In October 2024, the Wall Street Journal disclosed that Musk had been in contact with Kiriyenko and Vladimir Putin which Dmitry Peskov affirmed.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sergey_Kiriyenko
Has anyone figured out Musks end game? We know he is autistic, and a man child, like Trump (probably their bond), he is not a genius but a sociopath, born on 3rd base with a gold nugget in is mouth,, he is a vehement racist, a narcissist and sociopath, but his aliance with Putin and Trump means that he is up to something, the same thing that Rupert Murdoch and his son Lachland are up to.
They,including Trump, Orban, Erdogan are hell bent on destroying the will of the people (democracy),, but to what end? A New World Order of authoritarian oligarchs.
If that comes to past, it won't be long as they go to war with each other.. There can only be one alpha in the pack
As a kid growing up, I was misled into believing that the Supreme Court was the last bastion of justice. While every once in a while, it is, the scars on our democracy are nearly always evidence of partisan bias within the court. Gerrymandering is but one more such scar.
None of those scars will fully heal unless the biggest scar, Citizens United, is overturned by legislation or amendment. More than a scar, CU is a crippling disability that like say, dementia, has caused America to forget where it left its moral principles. It appears that politicians in both parties have put greed for donations ahead of our democracy, or Congress would have killed that worst SCOTUS decision in my lifetime.
If Dems ever do try to undo Citizens United (and the stupid decision that corporations are citizens which justified it) they might also limit SCOTUS terms and institute the same ethical standards as all other federal officials.
Not just Citizens united Tom, but there are stepping stones. The first stone was Santa Clara County via Southern Pacific Railroad, and a head note which stated "that corporations are considered "persons" within the meaning of the 14th Amendment." The headnote was not part of the ruling, but was added by a clerk of the court who had been the president of a railroad.
uckley v. Valeo, 424 U.S. 1 (1976)
While the government can limit how much individuals contribute to political campaigns, it cannot place limits on campaign expenditures, expenditures by a candidate from personal resources, or independent expenditures by groups supporting the campaign. This is because the Court equated money with speech in this context, so the First Amendment applies.
First National Bank of Boston v. Bellotti was a 1978 landmark Supreme Court case that established the First Amendment right of corporations to contribute to ballot initiatives and express their political views:
These led to Citizens United, they all need to be overturned, but with the present SCOTUS and Trump humping Judicial system, and project 2025, what's the chance?
Actually thanks go to Thom, who educated me some years ago, not only on Santa Clara, but Buckley and Belloti, I am an awake student of the Hartmann University. :)
It is scary isn't it Daniel, We are living on the cusp of a neo feudalistic society, that is theocratic in nature. I would not be surprised if they passed a law, requiring one to get a permit to change jobs or employers.
Mr. Solomon, when I read your heartfelt words, I was stunned. Neither your education nor your professional life have been wasted. Think of the many people who were affected by your decisions and your efforts. They received, from you: justice. A measure of one of the things that make communal life worth living. No one will ever be able to make that disappear, not Trump, not Musk, not Bezos, no one, ever.
It seems to me you have made a number of correct choices in your life. You did not choose to abuse others while you acquired huge wealth and power for your own benefit. You chose instead to toil for years in our educational system to learn how to administer justice to our fellow citizens. Then you subsequently built a professional career doing just that. Think of all the people who benefitted from your work.
I do not know if you have ever been a classroom teacher. But you have been a teacher of a kind which uses a courtroom. As such, I like to think we share some career characteristics. We both did some teaching as a service to our community. Like you, I too spent a great deal of my life and efforts earning undergraduate and graduate degrees in preparation for a long career. The third most important objective in my teaching was to prepare my students to be responsible citizens, There was an element of this objective in all my classes, in all my subjects.
Some of my students became physicians, many nurses, defense attorneys, prosecuting attorneys, judges, social workers, labor organizers, a few college professors. During most of my career the US empire seemed to be on a downward spiral. We have now reached a dismal level I did not really believe I would live to see. But my contribution, and yours, shall survive as a seed for the future. Neither of our lives were wasted.
If you find my words unconvincing, then please ask some one close if they agree with me.
It is beyond my comprehension that every voter in this country does not support the idea of “one person one vote”. Here in Ky., we are so badly gerrymandered that there ain’t no way in hell that we have a chance to have an election that represents the will of the people in this state. How can anyone be okay with that? How is being able to draw district lines to keep one’s own self or choice for representation legal?
If we look at all the ways the Republicans, aided by the Supreme Court s Republican appointees, have already attacked our Democracy, they have destroyed many people’s desire to vote.
It’s not something seen as a right . According to republicans, they think it’s a privilege that they grant as they see fit.
This obnoxious horde of Maga extremists believe it’s their decision who can vote .
They’ve twisted up every law of democracy that generations have fought and died for .
Democrats have not been effective in offsetting these issues.
For far too long we relied on ‘our good intentions ‘ to keep our country safe and strong .
We need to start making a lot more noise and create effective deterrence to their bulldozer tactics.
The people who make their money being politicians or bribing politicians have more time to rig the system than most working people have to resist their chicanery.
Great expectation till the people understand how the states represent what’s wrong with this country. That is people forget taxes were always in place to make things more equal and not allow a few to do what they wish.
What’s mind blowing to me is the blatant out and out Gerrymandering done by the Republicans. Say it’s in both Parties well, maybe, I don’t know. Captain my Captain whatever you call what they are doing, well I believe it’s cheating because they can’t win any other way. I, do however think the Democratic Party needs to look deep and hard at what went wrong. Messaging. Too, late. We need new leadership and action people when we need action most. I hope somebody is listening, Thom.
Thanks Thom! Your letter today has given me something I can get behind. Gerrymandering has ushered in Reagan, Bush, and DJT. Your information needs to be hammered home to our state reps. and governors. Democratic leaders need to know that their jobs are on the line, if they don't support this very important initiative.
There are nearly innumerable expletives that could pepper this post but for some reason I am trying to be civil on occasion. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. So for the beginning of my comment, at least, it may take on a civil tone. No Guarantee how the end will look however.
~~~ Gerrymandering has been with us & has been very successful to the detriment to our democracy. And now I wonder if it's too late for the dying lady of liberty & lady justice?? There are days when I have a lot of fight within me to do what I can to save our country but then I see people, corporations, influencers just cave BEFORE that egomaniac takes office. I have raised the question about why we, the little people, are responsible to do all the fighting & saving while those with the means & influence to fight can just open their goddam coffers to trump & his merry band of thieves.
Have we become that venal, that lazy, that traitorous that those who CAN do something just roll over & show their bellies to the BEAST about to gut our coffers of power & influence & goodness?
It really is so hard to take. Every goddam time I watch the news (And I'll be up front, I pretty much only watch some select shows on MSNBC, by the way I stopped recording Morning Joe after they slithered down to Mar A Lago.), to repeat, every time I watch the news I get more & more disgusted, irate, depressed, sickened, furious to the point of practically screaming at the TV.
~~~All the talk of gutting this program & that program & handing more & more wealth to the wealthy. Then there are all the promises of deportations that so many 'Americans' (I use that term very loosely here.) are elated about. Have you seen/heard where, now in Missouri they are planning on legalizing bounty hunting illegal immigrants? They want to to offer $1,000 to anyone that can bring in an illegal immigrant!!!!!!! What the fuck???(See, I told you no guarantees about the expletives.) I live here in California & I am lucky enough to have lovely Hispanic lady, Maria, to do some house cleaning for me every 2 weeks. I don't know her legal status, I don't care about it, she is a friendly woman who does a great job for me. Her English is limited but we can converse pretty well & damn, she makes the absolutley BEST TAMALES! She was generous & kind enough to give me 2 at Thanksgiving, YUMMY. (Pardon my wandering off subject but it's a nice interlude to think of someone kind, hard working & generous.) So, if I lived in Missouri, what would happen to this wonderful woman? I mean surely she would be targeted, she looks Hispanic, speaks broken English so she must be illegal & she's worth a thousand bucks if she gets turned it!!!!! (Typing this just about brought on a spasm of nausea.)
~~~So gerrymander away, US, gerrymander away decency, generosity, morals, kindness, hope, caring, love, go ahead & do it but STOP saying you're Making America Great Again, GROSS,, definitley but GREAT, no way.
Great heart felt post Normalcy. I agree with every word, and feel the same emotion you feel. I have zero problems with immigrants, but leave it up to the authorities to catch and weed out the criminals.
I also remind people, that it was legal migrants that brought criminals into the US.The Jewish Mafia, the Irish Mafia, the Italian Mafia, the Armenian Mafia, the Albanian mafia, and on it goes. Jared Kushners father was part of the Russian or Jewish mafia., Joseph Kennedy Sr and Grace Kelley's father,. John B, were part of the Irish mafia.
thank you
De nada
Oh no, Return. "Have you seen/heard where, now in Missouri, they are planning on legalizing bounty hunting illegal immigrants?" I will look that up. That's terribly dangerous and so wrong.
But true. Saw it On Democracy.
You watch Democracy Now Daniel? I use to donate to them faithfully, until I detected their pro Putin position,then they became pro HAMAS.
On Democrqacy, F.P. Wellman, my friend from Vote Vets. He lives in St. Louis...
On Democracy is that a substack?
Yes, and a TV show and a website.
I heard that too this morning. OMG What is our world coming to?
Whatever it is it "ain't" good!
Return to Normalcy, so well said!
thank you
Add voter intimidation, voter preclusion and foreign interference, including psy ops.
Biden needs to report on Russian interference ASAP! We are the victims of the Russian war on the USA. An admission is dispositive and is actionalble and constitutes an emergency.
https://www.newsweek.com/vladimir-putin-nikolai-patrushev-donald-trump-russia-1984360
You know I love you Daniel, we are soul brothers, but when it comes to Biden needing to do something, we separate.
I don't expect Biden to do anything, except maybe save his ownskin. Biden could have removed pot from schedule 1, and thus freed up millions of people and billions of dollars and yet he has done nothing.
He could have done something about making abortion legal in all states, by having congress when they had a trifecta to pass legislation, like they did for gay marriage (the Respect for Marriage act) he did nothing, he appointed a right wing partisan as Attorney General, and hung on to his re election, despite the fact that the evidence was that he had lost his mental and physical facilities, because of ego. He revoked the one tool that Trump left him, that would have enabled him to purge the DOJ, NSA, HSS, and all federal agents of the very Trump humping assets that Trump embedded in his last weeks in office (talking of EO 139575, Schedule F, which he revoked with EO 140003, he could have used that EO to purge Trump's schedule F, but revoked it, and now Trump will reissue it on Jan 21st
There is so much Biden could have done, but didn't, so much he needs to do,but won't.
I will be pleasantly surprised if he proves me false.
Biden is done. He tried to reverse some of the damage he helped cause.
I disagree with you. Economy and Infrastructure are better now than ever. I will agree to disagree with you, whoever you are.
IMO he was a disaster I only voted for him as he was the only viable alternative to Trump, and that is why the feckless DNC selected him. The DNC is the problem, they don't have any real populist in the stable, leaving populism to be a monopoly of the extreme right. And because it is, it is given a bad name by the corporate media, who controls the narrative.
There is a difference between leftist populism and rightist populism, a huge chasm, but the corporate media has fused the two into a meme of right wing populism. Unions are an expression of left wing populism, national health care, national parks, national plumbing, national energy. But such means disempowering corporations.
With the DNC staffed as it is, with corporate lobbyists and corporate money filing the trough from which politicians slop, the chances of us ever getting a politician that actually represents the people is none to zilch, except in far off places which house people like Sherrod Brown of Sheldon Whitehouse, or AOC., isolated corners of the country, and even they don't last long. big money took care of Sherrod Brown.
Unless something is done we are goners. I'll keep trying.
I appreciated all that Biden has done...and tried to do. Nobody's perfect. He has done more with less than any recent president.
We still have some time to get through to him.
I would hope that the media would pick up on this. I'm not saying that there's more to it but in September, DOJ asserted that Sergey Kiriyenko had created some 30 internet domains to spread Russian disinformation, including on Elon Musk’s X which was formerly known as Twitter. In October 2024, the Wall Street Journal disclosed that Musk had been in contact with Kiriyenko and Vladimir Putin which Dmitry Peskov affirmed.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sergey_Kiriyenko
Has anyone figured out Musks end game? We know he is autistic, and a man child, like Trump (probably their bond), he is not a genius but a sociopath, born on 3rd base with a gold nugget in is mouth,, he is a vehement racist, a narcissist and sociopath, but his aliance with Putin and Trump means that he is up to something, the same thing that Rupert Murdoch and his son Lachland are up to.
They,including Trump, Orban, Erdogan are hell bent on destroying the will of the people (democracy),, but to what end? A New World Order of authoritarian oligarchs.
If that comes to past, it won't be long as they go to war with each other.. There can only be one alpha in the pack
As a kid growing up, I was misled into believing that the Supreme Court was the last bastion of justice. While every once in a while, it is, the scars on our democracy are nearly always evidence of partisan bias within the court. Gerrymandering is but one more such scar.
None of those scars will fully heal unless the biggest scar, Citizens United, is overturned by legislation or amendment. More than a scar, CU is a crippling disability that like say, dementia, has caused America to forget where it left its moral principles. It appears that politicians in both parties have put greed for donations ahead of our democracy, or Congress would have killed that worst SCOTUS decision in my lifetime.
If Dems ever do try to undo Citizens United (and the stupid decision that corporations are citizens which justified it) they might also limit SCOTUS terms and institute the same ethical standards as all other federal officials.
Not just Citizens united Tom, but there are stepping stones. The first stone was Santa Clara County via Southern Pacific Railroad, and a head note which stated "that corporations are considered "persons" within the meaning of the 14th Amendment." The headnote was not part of the ruling, but was added by a clerk of the court who had been the president of a railroad.
uckley v. Valeo, 424 U.S. 1 (1976)
While the government can limit how much individuals contribute to political campaigns, it cannot place limits on campaign expenditures, expenditures by a candidate from personal resources, or independent expenditures by groups supporting the campaign. This is because the Court equated money with speech in this context, so the First Amendment applies.
First National Bank of Boston v. Bellotti was a 1978 landmark Supreme Court case that established the First Amendment right of corporations to contribute to ballot initiatives and express their political views:
These led to Citizens United, they all need to be overturned, but with the present SCOTUS and Trump humping Judicial system, and project 2025, what's the chance?
Didn't know "Corporation are Persons" were not part of the ruling, but was added by the clerk, who was a railroad president. WOW!
Actually thanks go to Thom, who educated me some years ago, not only on Santa Clara, but Buckley and Belloti, I am an awake student of the Hartmann University. :)
Most of my legal enducation and much of my professional life has been wasted.....
American federal "Administrative law" has been reduced to history. It's as if the Adminstrative Procedure Act never existed.
Musk and Bezos are parties in a case that may determine that most federal labor law will be declared unconstitutional.
It is scary isn't it Daniel, We are living on the cusp of a neo feudalistic society, that is theocratic in nature. I would not be surprised if they passed a law, requiring one to get a permit to change jobs or employers.
Mr. Solomon, when I read your heartfelt words, I was stunned. Neither your education nor your professional life have been wasted. Think of the many people who were affected by your decisions and your efforts. They received, from you: justice. A measure of one of the things that make communal life worth living. No one will ever be able to make that disappear, not Trump, not Musk, not Bezos, no one, ever.
It seems to me you have made a number of correct choices in your life. You did not choose to abuse others while you acquired huge wealth and power for your own benefit. You chose instead to toil for years in our educational system to learn how to administer justice to our fellow citizens. Then you subsequently built a professional career doing just that. Think of all the people who benefitted from your work.
I do not know if you have ever been a classroom teacher. But you have been a teacher of a kind which uses a courtroom. As such, I like to think we share some career characteristics. We both did some teaching as a service to our community. Like you, I too spent a great deal of my life and efforts earning undergraduate and graduate degrees in preparation for a long career. The third most important objective in my teaching was to prepare my students to be responsible citizens, There was an element of this objective in all my classes, in all my subjects.
Some of my students became physicians, many nurses, defense attorneys, prosecuting attorneys, judges, social workers, labor organizers, a few college professors. During most of my career the US empire seemed to be on a downward spiral. We have now reached a dismal level I did not really believe I would live to see. But my contribution, and yours, shall survive as a seed for the future. Neither of our lives were wasted.
If you find my words unconvincing, then please ask some one close if they agree with me.
Great comment, Tom on the beach.
It is beyond my comprehension that every voter in this country does not support the idea of “one person one vote”. Here in Ky., we are so badly gerrymandered that there ain’t no way in hell that we have a chance to have an election that represents the will of the people in this state. How can anyone be okay with that? How is being able to draw district lines to keep one’s own self or choice for representation legal?
If we look at all the ways the Republicans, aided by the Supreme Court s Republican appointees, have already attacked our Democracy, they have destroyed many people’s desire to vote.
It’s not something seen as a right . According to republicans, they think it’s a privilege that they grant as they see fit.
This obnoxious horde of Maga extremists believe it’s their decision who can vote .
They’ve twisted up every law of democracy that generations have fought and died for .
Democrats have not been effective in offsetting these issues.
For far too long we relied on ‘our good intentions ‘ to keep our country safe and strong .
We need to start making a lot more noise and create effective deterrence to their bulldozer tactics.
The people who make their money being politicians or bribing politicians have more time to rig the system than most working people have to resist their chicanery.
Great expectation till the people understand how the states represent what’s wrong with this country. That is people forget taxes were always in place to make things more equal and not allow a few to do what they wish.
What’s mind blowing to me is the blatant out and out Gerrymandering done by the Republicans. Say it’s in both Parties well, maybe, I don’t know. Captain my Captain whatever you call what they are doing, well I believe it’s cheating because they can’t win any other way. I, do however think the Democratic Party needs to look deep and hard at what went wrong. Messaging. Too, late. We need new leadership and action people when we need action most. I hope somebody is listening, Thom.
Thanks Thom! Your letter today has given me something I can get behind. Gerrymandering has ushered in Reagan, Bush, and DJT. Your information needs to be hammered home to our state reps. and governors. Democratic leaders need to know that their jobs are on the line, if they don't support this very important initiative.