The GOP wants to install their very own version of Putin, Duterte or Orbán in the White House in two years, regardless of what the majority of Americans want. VOTE!
This is the truth. Do not try to understand what Mr Hartman is saying . It doesn’t open the truth for analysis. It is the truth . Don’t complicate it or enrich it .
If we don’t take this at face value. We might as well move to Russia.
Democracy is why this country was founded.
We have an obligation to the truth and to preserve it from unmistakable lies and threats by wealthy men .
As well as those aspiring to be wealthy on the backs of the citizens of this country.
They’ve tried in every way to slam this election up against a wall of lies and money .
They are suing to hold up counts of legal mail in ballots . They’ve sent out armed thugs to harass Democrats at the polls , they’re purging voter lists of Democrats , especially people of color . Native Americans have been ruled against by the courts .
Republicanmagas are trying to prolong the Jan 6 coup.
I vote by mail-in ballot because I live in a semi-rural area of S.Cal and I have no designated polling place. So for those moronic Republicans who go on and on about voter fraud and file lawsuits challenging mail-in voting I say “screw you”.(Sorry! for the vulgar verbiage). And it makes me frustrated that I live in a Republican stronghold with a representative who votes straight party over country while promoting himself as a “patriot” who “works for all Americans.” I am so sick and tired at my age watching the unqualified, racist, idiotic Republican candidates for public office spout lies and propaganda to justify or protect the former guy’s illegitimate presidency. And who reward the top 1% by their selective anti middle class policies. I have warned my daughter and family to buckle up because if the Republicans win the majority we will be in a period of time we haven’t seen in this country for a long time.
Democracy died when in 2000 the Supreme Court led by Scalia and O'Connor halted the recount in Florida and knowingly gave the election to GW Bush. State's rights did not apply when it was going to put Al Gore in the White House.
But it has always been a republic and not a democracy which was by design to protect the rights of those profiting from the slave trade. We saw this in 1944 when the Democratic Party bosses pushed three-term VP Henry S Wallace off the ticket and put their man, Harry Truman, on the ticket in his place. Three months after the election Roosevelt died and Harry Truman became the defacto president of the United States.
The party bosses have keep Bernie Sanders off the ticket despite his having the greatest support in 2008 and 2016 and 2020. Heaven forbid a competent progressive get elected as president. We get to vote for the neoliberals that the party bosses choose to put on the ballots. That is an oligarchy at best.
OK Thom, I'm going to argue with you from my environmentalist background.
As a lifelong environmentalist, I've watched irrefutable and verifiable evidence be completely ignored by everyone who wasn't swimming to safety while pushing a door with their kids on top, but a few door pushers have woken up after losing a home or loved ones.
This is the same. People are waking up, world wide. More outside the USA because most of the world still has a free press.
My friends in Brazil are fed up and say that violence will put Lula in if winning a fair election doesn't. My friends in India, PI, China, Singapore, Malaysia, Nigeria, Guyana, Turkey, Russia, and even Mozambique are simmering too, haven't boiled over yet, but they are getting hotter. I don't know anyone in Hungary but I suspect Orban is sitting on a pressure cooker lid with steam puffing out, and only 100% control of media keeps it secret.
My point is, Thom et al are getting the word out. They are acting like one buzzer in a global alarm clock, and it's working. Nobody I know believes anything they hear on mass media, though NaziRepublican cultists PRETEND to believe lies so they can remain a member in good standing in their tiny fantasy-based hate and terror cult.
I see the signs, or lack of signs. On recent trips between my homes in Colorado and Missouri, I've seen TRUMP 2024 signs drop from up to 400, to 2 signs Nov 1st, with one sign having the words "for prison" added after Trump, clearly by the sign owner.
As a bicyclist, I'd say we have been climbing for an hour, and are almost to the 20 mile coast down the canyon. We can't give up, we can't even let up, we have to keep pedaling or we miss the whole reason for fighting fascism.
I used to be proud of this country because, unlike so many others we didn't have a department devoted to internal policing. Hoover's FBI was bad enough, but it was pretty limited, and the CIA, at least in theory, did its dirty deeds offshore. All that changed after 9/11 although the idea of having some sort of American security department was in the works before that. But bin Laden correctly saw how the damage he planned would keep reverberating through our country, both economically and socially. Perhaps somewhat as the 20th was Hitler's century, this will be his.
The problem of course is that Americans don't see this, and why should they? They accept that the good old USA is now a "Homeland"; Thom has noted the origins of this disgusting term, which is now so widespread. They line up for body scanners thinking they're not giving up rights that previous generations would have been horrified to lose. My very quick check of corporate interlockings and the history of the approval of these chambers of horror indicate that from Obama down into Congress people were given "campaign contributions" if not outright investment returns for them. But the point is that if they are meekly accepted then it's no surprise that armed "men in black" going after "agitators" will be shrugged off too. And governments rise to take all the power they can. It's an old, old story.
I have no answer except to keep fighting. Here and there a school will teach real civics, someone will realize that a pathological liar is running for president again, or a person will just connect the dots and say, "enough!" Maybe none of this is actually enough, but what else can we do? And sometimes things do shift when enough people want a paradigm to change. It's hopeful that every year non-Hispanic whites compose a smaller majority of this country, and from what I've seen plenty of young people are concerned about the future. If a real change happens it could be fast. May it be soon.
Actually it was founded on those values. Unfortunately that was marred by white ruling ignorance . So yes many people suffered as this country was brought to its feet .
And these same minorities suffer today . Also a majority of used to be middle class / not anymore people also suffer.
However, the suffering experienced now will escalate tremendously under authoritarianism .
Another amazing distillation of a crucial subject and I would like to add another perspective on the purpose and relationship between the GOP and Putin. As you observed, “the GOP wants to install their very own version of Putin or Orbán in the White House in two years.” I would add that they want to do that because Putin, as the apex Oligarch, told the GOP to install it. Not coincidentally Putin is also the head of the world’s greatest-ever crime family. I suspect that the GOP does these things for him or they get to experience whatever form coercion comes in, after all, that’s what Putin does. Perhaps we could ask Ron Johnson. The GOP is a puppet of Putin mostly because of Trump. But if it wasn’t Trump, they would have recruited another set of grifters just like him to control our government, It just would have taken longer. And as always the root cause is the powers of corporate personhood (i.e., money is speech and corporations are people). I could support the assertion but I’m too lazy and besides, Thom does it all the time in his op-eds.
First of all, let's dispel the narrative that this country was founded on democracy. It was founded on the backs of those who built it under the threat of rape, bondage and torture. Those people who built it, and those who lived here in the first place, had absolutely no say in its conception. Second, you can rant all you want about Trump and Russia and democracy, but the patients I see every day are not concerned with those issues apart from the fact they recognize that in a country in which elections are bought and sold democracy is merely an ideal. In our democracy we are getting sicker, living shorter lives, being abused and murdered by our own police, have the highest chance in the industrialized world of getting randomly gunned down, and constantly affecting the "democracies" of other countries by staging coups, bombing with impunity, and aligning with the worst of the war criminals (see Israel, Saudi Arabia etc) in favor of our economic interests. Even you Thom said that Biden had to chum up to MBS for his oil, merely because you want Democrats to win an election. In our democracy anything can be sacrificed to win an election, to the point of liberals becoming McCarthyists and shutting down anyone who does not embrace the notion of nuclear confrontation over the great "democracy" of Ukraine. Having no room in either party for peace or human dignity because that political party must be supported at all costs is hardly a democracy.
This is the truth. Do not try to understand what Mr Hartman is saying . It doesn’t open the truth for analysis. It is the truth . Don’t complicate it or enrich it .
If we don’t take this at face value. We might as well move to Russia.
Democracy is why this country was founded.
We have an obligation to the truth and to preserve it from unmistakable lies and threats by wealthy men .
As well as those aspiring to be wealthy on the backs of the citizens of this country.
They’ve tried in every way to slam this election up against a wall of lies and money .
They are suing to hold up counts of legal mail in ballots . They’ve sent out armed thugs to harass Democrats at the polls , they’re purging voter lists of Democrats , especially people of color . Native Americans have been ruled against by the courts .
Republicanmagas are trying to prolong the Jan 6 coup.
We cannot allow this .
VOTE.
I vote by mail-in ballot because I live in a semi-rural area of S.Cal and I have no designated polling place. So for those moronic Republicans who go on and on about voter fraud and file lawsuits challenging mail-in voting I say “screw you”.(Sorry! for the vulgar verbiage). And it makes me frustrated that I live in a Republican stronghold with a representative who votes straight party over country while promoting himself as a “patriot” who “works for all Americans.” I am so sick and tired at my age watching the unqualified, racist, idiotic Republican candidates for public office spout lies and propaganda to justify or protect the former guy’s illegitimate presidency. And who reward the top 1% by their selective anti middle class policies. I have warned my daughter and family to buckle up because if the Republicans win the majority we will be in a period of time we haven’t seen in this country for a long time.
Democracy died when in 2000 the Supreme Court led by Scalia and O'Connor halted the recount in Florida and knowingly gave the election to GW Bush. State's rights did not apply when it was going to put Al Gore in the White House.
But it has always been a republic and not a democracy which was by design to protect the rights of those profiting from the slave trade. We saw this in 1944 when the Democratic Party bosses pushed three-term VP Henry S Wallace off the ticket and put their man, Harry Truman, on the ticket in his place. Three months after the election Roosevelt died and Harry Truman became the defacto president of the United States.
The party bosses have keep Bernie Sanders off the ticket despite his having the greatest support in 2008 and 2016 and 2020. Heaven forbid a competent progressive get elected as president. We get to vote for the neoliberals that the party bosses choose to put on the ballots. That is an oligarchy at best.
OK Thom, I'm going to argue with you from my environmentalist background.
As a lifelong environmentalist, I've watched irrefutable and verifiable evidence be completely ignored by everyone who wasn't swimming to safety while pushing a door with their kids on top, but a few door pushers have woken up after losing a home or loved ones.
This is the same. People are waking up, world wide. More outside the USA because most of the world still has a free press.
My friends in Brazil are fed up and say that violence will put Lula in if winning a fair election doesn't. My friends in India, PI, China, Singapore, Malaysia, Nigeria, Guyana, Turkey, Russia, and even Mozambique are simmering too, haven't boiled over yet, but they are getting hotter. I don't know anyone in Hungary but I suspect Orban is sitting on a pressure cooker lid with steam puffing out, and only 100% control of media keeps it secret.
My point is, Thom et al are getting the word out. They are acting like one buzzer in a global alarm clock, and it's working. Nobody I know believes anything they hear on mass media, though NaziRepublican cultists PRETEND to believe lies so they can remain a member in good standing in their tiny fantasy-based hate and terror cult.
I see the signs, or lack of signs. On recent trips between my homes in Colorado and Missouri, I've seen TRUMP 2024 signs drop from up to 400, to 2 signs Nov 1st, with one sign having the words "for prison" added after Trump, clearly by the sign owner.
As a bicyclist, I'd say we have been climbing for an hour, and are almost to the 20 mile coast down the canyon. We can't give up, we can't even let up, we have to keep pedaling or we miss the whole reason for fighting fascism.
I used to be proud of this country because, unlike so many others we didn't have a department devoted to internal policing. Hoover's FBI was bad enough, but it was pretty limited, and the CIA, at least in theory, did its dirty deeds offshore. All that changed after 9/11 although the idea of having some sort of American security department was in the works before that. But bin Laden correctly saw how the damage he planned would keep reverberating through our country, both economically and socially. Perhaps somewhat as the 20th was Hitler's century, this will be his.
The problem of course is that Americans don't see this, and why should they? They accept that the good old USA is now a "Homeland"; Thom has noted the origins of this disgusting term, which is now so widespread. They line up for body scanners thinking they're not giving up rights that previous generations would have been horrified to lose. My very quick check of corporate interlockings and the history of the approval of these chambers of horror indicate that from Obama down into Congress people were given "campaign contributions" if not outright investment returns for them. But the point is that if they are meekly accepted then it's no surprise that armed "men in black" going after "agitators" will be shrugged off too. And governments rise to take all the power they can. It's an old, old story.
I have no answer except to keep fighting. Here and there a school will teach real civics, someone will realize that a pathological liar is running for president again, or a person will just connect the dots and say, "enough!" Maybe none of this is actually enough, but what else can we do? And sometimes things do shift when enough people want a paradigm to change. It's hopeful that every year non-Hispanic whites compose a smaller majority of this country, and from what I've seen plenty of young people are concerned about the future. If a real change happens it could be fast. May it be soon.
Actually it was founded on those values. Unfortunately that was marred by white ruling ignorance . So yes many people suffered as this country was brought to its feet .
And these same minorities suffer today . Also a majority of used to be middle class / not anymore people also suffer.
However, the suffering experienced now will escalate tremendously under authoritarianism .
The people of the lie.
Another amazing distillation of a crucial subject and I would like to add another perspective on the purpose and relationship between the GOP and Putin. As you observed, “the GOP wants to install their very own version of Putin or Orbán in the White House in two years.” I would add that they want to do that because Putin, as the apex Oligarch, told the GOP to install it. Not coincidentally Putin is also the head of the world’s greatest-ever crime family. I suspect that the GOP does these things for him or they get to experience whatever form coercion comes in, after all, that’s what Putin does. Perhaps we could ask Ron Johnson. The GOP is a puppet of Putin mostly because of Trump. But if it wasn’t Trump, they would have recruited another set of grifters just like him to control our government, It just would have taken longer. And as always the root cause is the powers of corporate personhood (i.e., money is speech and corporations are people). I could support the assertion but I’m too lazy and besides, Thom does it all the time in his op-eds.
First of all, let's dispel the narrative that this country was founded on democracy. It was founded on the backs of those who built it under the threat of rape, bondage and torture. Those people who built it, and those who lived here in the first place, had absolutely no say in its conception. Second, you can rant all you want about Trump and Russia and democracy, but the patients I see every day are not concerned with those issues apart from the fact they recognize that in a country in which elections are bought and sold democracy is merely an ideal. In our democracy we are getting sicker, living shorter lives, being abused and murdered by our own police, have the highest chance in the industrialized world of getting randomly gunned down, and constantly affecting the "democracies" of other countries by staging coups, bombing with impunity, and aligning with the worst of the war criminals (see Israel, Saudi Arabia etc) in favor of our economic interests. Even you Thom said that Biden had to chum up to MBS for his oil, merely because you want Democrats to win an election. In our democracy anything can be sacrificed to win an election, to the point of liberals becoming McCarthyists and shutting down anyone who does not embrace the notion of nuclear confrontation over the great "democracy" of Ukraine. Having no room in either party for peace or human dignity because that political party must be supported at all costs is hardly a democracy.