Chuck Schumer managed not to learn a damned thing from watching Mitch McConnell for years. Kirsten Gillibrand’s signature accomplishment is running Al Franken out of the Senate. Dick Durbin’s glacial response to emergencies mirrors that of Merrick Garland. “Leaders” like these are delivering fascism to the United States on a silver (gold?) platter.
(I should hire an editor). To be clear, I most emphatically do not regard running Al Franken out of the Senate an “accomplishment”. He was among the best, which Gillibrand is most emphatically not.
No problem. I, and I imagine thousands of others, took "Gillibrand's signature accomplishment " to be white hot sarcasm. Al Franken was the best senator in the senate. His resignation was a devastating loss for America.
PS: I have told Gillibrand several times that I would never support her and would even consider donating to an honest Republican opposing her( if I could find one with any backbone)
I am getting tired of this helplessness and futility. We still have not gotten to the root of these myriad problems. Moment of truth: Superstition is still a profound problem.
We have had political correctness when it comes to superstition for far too long. Superstition, wearing the cloak of God and religion has been ruling our lives forever. It is high time we freed ourselves from its death grip. God is the authoritarian tyrant behind the curtain pulling strings. He has to go. Enough of the debilitating orthodoxy! Bad religion and hypocrisy have been in our crosshairs for a very long time. But there is no good religion if God can bully his way into our politics and social affairs with impunity at every turn. It is time to give him a pink slip and run him out of town on a rail. God is never satisfied to just be worshipped. He wants omnipotence and we have given it to him. ENOUGH! They said he was dead a while ago. But they refused to accept reality, and the reactionaries kept him on life support so he could come back and take over. We will either put an end to him and his oppression, or he will put an end to us. I am sorry I am verbose and confusing. I never learned how to think or write well. But I recently posted my thoughts in a new article on Substack. Maybe someone can summarize it. The title is: "We Created Machines, Computers, AI, and God: Can We survive Them?" Subtitle: "Will Americans Choose to Grow Up; or Will We Die as Immature Children?" Religion has wormed into our minds, our politics, our society, and our schools, despite all attempts to keep it in its proper place. We will not have freedom and liberty until we are free of the power of religion, using a fake god as a terrorist and a prison warden.
It’s not “God” it’s human’s using the Almighty to threaten other people. That’s why Religion was Supposed to be Separate from anything to do with Government in this country.
Our ancestors (who wrote the Constitution) fled from countries that did exactly what the theocrats are trying to do now in the United States - attempting to impose their version of God on everyone else.
In Europe that tactic lead to hundreds of thousands of murders in the “name of God”
Bullshit -
That’s not what the New Testament teaches.
These people aren’t Christians anymore than Hitler was a Christian.
Anymore than Putin is a Christian.
The Republicans who attack the vulnerable are liars and criminals taking apart our country for their own purposes
Elon Musk is a twisted, ketamine fueled Nazi fiend who is a money sucking parasite on this country and should be exorcised like the leech he is. No one elected Elon.
I agree with your sentiments of much of what you say Kay. Save for this.
The Bible is akin to a supermarket, you browse the aisles (pages) and pick out what suits you and discard the rest. Thomas Jeffeson said of it that Christians take scissors and glue, so he did the same with his Jefferson Bible (you can google and download it, it has none of the crap of Paul.
There is even more than one Jesus, so people choose the one that they like
There is the Jesus of Matthew, the sermon on the mount
and the Jesus of Luke who commanded: Bring before me, he who would not have me reign over him and slay him. and who also said: Sell your cloak and buy a sword.
There is the Jesus of Saul who said women should stay silent and if they wish to learn anything ask their husband.
The Bible has something for everyone. Rape, genocide, incest, you name it.
And the earliest known record of a resurrection story originated in Sumeria more than 6,000 years ago. There have been several others since then. Take your pick.
The dudes who wrote the old testament and the new testament, relied on myths passed around and modified thousands of years
Who ever started writing the old testament had worked in the library of Babylon and were familiar with the Sumerian stories of the creation,Eden and the flood. The Akkadians displaced the Sumerians but kept the myths, albeit in modified form to fit them,the Babylonians displaced the Akkadians and wash,rinse repeat.
The Book of Esther and her Uncle Mordecai are Ashera and Marduke (Venus and Mars). There was no such massacre as recorded in Esther.
Moses was a composite figure,even the Hindu's have Krshna floating down the river in a basket and there was the story of Talmudz.
Solomon was the Assyrian wise fish god,with some historical attributes of Assyrian kings. David also a composite figure.
Even the name of their god Ya was taken from the Caanninites.
You can see it in the exclamation of praise praise ye Ia, halleluiah,Greek eleleu were placed at the hymns of praise to Apollo
Religion the greatest con ever sold.
Jesus was a composite figure, most likely a Jewish rebel,maybe even Barabas, Dionysos, the Greek god of wine,who turned water into wine,the name means son of god (Dios or Zeus) also born of a god and a mortal,and Apollonius of Tyana,actually Apollonius travel loque is the same as Pauls but in reverse order.
You are correct, but Saturnicus is not the only one morphed into Jesus.
Actually I think this is how it went down. The Pharisees were a group of Greek educated stoics, and watched the people try to fight the Romans, without success, guerrilla warfare didn't hack it, Masada was the last straw.
If you can't beat them from without, defeat them from within. Rome's strength was it's martial spirit,it celebrated war and conquests with Triumph's , columns, games, it built the Coliseum with slaves taken from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Syria_Palaestinaand sliver plundered from Jerusalem.
If you can't beat them from without, then beat them from within, pacify them, and Jewish missionairies set out through the Roman lands, starting with Anatolia and proselytized the message of pacificism of brotherly love.
It of course grew and soon there were hundreds of missionaries in the Roman Markets clamoring for attention and followers.
Too much for Constantine, it was out of control, so he decided not to fight the movement but to co opt it, and gathered together the most notoroius and sequestered them in Nicea, sat guards at the door plied with with young boys and wine, and told them they couldn't come out until they came up with a coheisive consensus.
Well they beat each other badly, but eventually settled on the Trinitarian Nicean creed.
Then when it came time to formalize the cult, all of the written documents were gathered together, and under supervision of wealthy Romans like Piso,
that were assembled in a book, translated from the Greek under the Auspices of Jerome and a former Manichean priest to which the church gave the name, the great one or Augustine, and the produced the Latin Vulgate, the collection of manuscripts on vellum and papyrus that became the "Holy Bible", there are many versions, the Catholic Douay Rheims differs from the KJV and he Guttenberg Version and the Ferrar Fenton differs tremendously from the KJV, being a translation from the original Hebrew, Chaldean and Greek. I had this version, gave it to my son. It us interesting, it formed the basis of the British Israel movement,of Benjamin D'Israeliand Queen Victoria.
I couldn't agree with you more. My husband is a recovering Catholic. I walked away from it 20 years ago. I've apologized to my kids for making them go to church. God started resembling a malignant narcissist psychopath to me. That book was written by many over a 2000 year period, 150 yrs after said events. You would think some things might of got lost in translation. It's like a book of personal projections. Its fucking batshit crazy. Why would a drug addict win the lottery and say he's blessed, but a child dies of cancer? Lost me there. Nothing says hate like Christian love. It's a predators' paradise.
We are in agreement. Superstition is the issue. Superstition, whether it is primal or not is a choice or one alternative which we must keep in its place. Superstition creates a desire for a deity, an authority, or a creator and gives the idea of god power and inordinate significance. Science has better and more neutral and satisfactory answers, which lack the certainty and security of a protective or domineering god but also lack the arbitrariness and brutality of cults. Unfortunately, even Christianity based on the New Testament and the Beatitudes and faith tends to devolve into fanaticism and extreme beliefs and has a need to save the world and spread through orthodoxy and ultimately force. Agnostics and atheists are democratic by definition.
Religion like everything else is developmental. I tire of people who carry around a concept of God and religion that they learned as children -- and assume that is what it is ultimately all about. There is a kind of acute intellectual Sloth here -that parades as condescending brilliance all the while looking like the universal arrogance of adolescent boys returning home after their first year in college. Assume they know everything but ultimately know almost nothing. There is more in heaven and earth Horatio ---- than what your limited experience has thus far revealed. Or, as one of my favorite rabbis stated, "the God you don't believe in, doesn't exist"................
I somehow missed all but the last couple of posts in this "thread" until just now. I am unable to process it all, too much of an "intellectual sloth" to go to all that trouble. What seems to be animating the discussion is a difference between religion and philosophy and a confusion between religion and spirituality, not to mention ritual and ordinary mythology. The common difficulty seems to be that formal religion relies on an authority and becomes an authoritarian system which brooks no dissent. In all cases, we create the deity we worship. That is nonsense or a tautology or some such insanity. Who has time for all of that? We have problems to solve and mysteries to unearth. Science and reason are more my cup of tea, or what was it that Socrates drank, hemlock juice. I am a descendant of Welsh people btw. Calhouns.
There is no right or wrong built into the solution at hand for Democrats.
Whatever happens to people will still be ON THE REPUBLICANS. They have the choice and THEY WILL BE RESPONSIBLE. We are going to pound that message into everyone's head online, in the air, and IN THE STREETS.
Soooo, as much as I believe in progressives and their values, you won't find me bashing the other side of my party. The Democratic Party of FDR, Obama, and Biden are the ONLY reason my life is live-able. That is my truth and I'm going to tell it.
Musk and Trump get off on hatred and pain--- both are sadistic psychopaths. The Nazis managed to bring together a whole party of them, and now they have too. We are going to make damn sure everyone knows it!
Here is a clue. Name one thing that AOC and Nancy Pelosi were united on?
Killing the Continuing resolution.
Chuck is a coward, corrupt or complicit. Trump shot a warning across the bow when he called him a Palestinian not a Jew, after that Chuck folded.
Trump uses threats and blackmail to assemble his coterie of ass kissers (kiss my ass or else)
Schumers excuses are specious and as full of crap as Trump.
He claimed to be afraid of what Trump would do, if the CR was not passed. That Trump would act in the dark.
Gott dam it. Trump is going to do what he is going to do anyway, and he isn't hiding in the dark, he is out in the broad daylight because he is untouchable, and he is untouchable because the milquetoast Schumer, and the slop sucking morons at the DNC basically elected him by their fecklessness and stupidity.
We could have had a real populist, not a faux right wing "populist", name of Bernie Sanders, but no the DNC had to reward the old faithful race horse that has been padding around the paddock accumulating creds and showing loyalty
And yes, there is identity politics. Black, Hispanic, Asian, women, MuslimLGBT all demand prominence and are at some ends at odds with others, but the Right has a united identity in their politics.
White, male, Christians..
And guess who was able to coalesce and what do we call them? MAGAts.
There are three warring actions in the Republican party: nationalist populists (such as Stephen Bannon), techno-libertarians (like Musk) and pro-Maga congressional Republicans
yet because they are all power hungry males, mostly white,though me thinks that the likes of Kash Patel would call himself white, as would Bobby Jindahl, and Nikki Haley., they stand united, and nothing will drive a wedge between them until they achieve total power, but by then it will be too late for us.
DNC shoved Biden at us in 2020. They kneecapped Bernie. IMHO Biden should never have been President to begin with...we could have had Bernie,Elizabeth Warren, or Piet Butttigieg, but NO the DNC HAD to pick Uncle Joe. He was already too old back then. And then all the gaslighting around his ability to run again, especially when there was so much at stake, which they acknowledged while campaigning in 2024. I'm so disgusted with the Democratic Party. Given the same situation the GOP would have never passed the CR, because they know how to circle the wagons ...not the Dem's. We need major change in the Democratic Party.
That they did arshambow,and the reason is because they had no other race horse in the stable.
The DNC has been the loyal opposition, slopping at the same trough as the Republicans, but only at the level of the General election, they forfeited local elections,ceded those to the Republicans and now we have paid.
I compare the DNC to a stable of race horses. In the stable you have horses that are groomed, then taken out exercised in the paddock,and when the owners feel they are ready, one is chosen and led to the starting gate..
This wasHillary Clinton,she stood in line, paid her dues, and acquired the creds, the experience,that the owners felt at that time were quintessential for a President, foreign service,which she lacked in 2008, so they had Obama make her Secretary of State.
Well they had it all wrong, didn't they.
Not having learned a lesson in 2016, they reached into their stable of old tired race horses and chose Tery McAuliffe to run for Governor of Virginia, and we see how that worked out.Out of touch,he catered to the teachers union and ignored the (false and manufacutured) concerns of parents.
When real populists come along likeAOC and Bernie,the DNC does everything to squash them.
It is remarkable that this one ime Nancy Pelosi joined hands with AOC, in enjoing Chuck Schumer not to vote for cloture on the continuing resolution,because she has spent money and energy trying to squash the Progressive caucus.
She went so far as to back the conservadem Joseph Kenney Jr, in his run against Sen Markley of MA. and she backed a homophobe against a progressive gay.
She has her whole career waged war on progressives,
She and Rahm Emanuel killed Bernies Medicare for All, in favor of the awkward and burdensome ACA.
The republican look at our infighting and use it against us. For example the big steal that the democrats stole the election. They well know that they are the ones stealing elections. So they use this point. And when they see us fighting each other, I remember trump using this to say democrats are corrupt. This has been taking the emphasis off of the true corrupt party and putting on the democrats with the help of the corporate media.
There truly is a mind game and the Republicans have been winning it. And democrats will not get ahead of this until they figure on how to get their message across. Hopefully it will be media like Substack and old fashioned protest.
Oh, yeah! And that's their super power. We, on the other hand are split up in factions. King Shitpants is drunk on power. He's going to be the evil villain in a Marvel movie. This is balls to the walls time. Still feel like we're fucked. 🤔
The left is its own worst enemy. It is my cause, no it is my cause, how dare you say prostitute when it should be sex worker. And while we squabble the tsunami of resentment build and on Nov 5th, 2024 it overwhemed us
Thanks to this clown Mahmoud and those like him, we are watching a democratic Republic crumble under our feet, and the Palestine that he so cherished is being washed away, And it isn't just Mahmoud it is all of the short sighted, self centered fools that voted for Trump or worse, didn't bother to vote (90 million of them)
Just made a few substitutions into a line in your post today for a preview of what could be: “Trump didn’t murder millions, public sector workers did,” arguing that it was US government employees who were responsible for the The Greatest Recession of All Time, not Donald Trump and Musk who planned the so-called End of US as a Democracy.”
— Women are NOW, TODAY having trouble registering to vote in NH because they've done the SAVE Act on a a state level...Where are the Democrats on this!?
Allow me to answer. There are virtually NO Democrats in NH. What we have are, at every level from US Senate to State Representative, with few exceptions a bunch of Republican Lites who would wear the label "Milquetoast" with pride. As much collective gumption as a bowl of cold Cream of Wheat.
One of my three sisters and her husband is a republican in Alabama. When Bernie ran for president they backed him. Yet when he lost the primary to Hillary Clinton they voted for trump.
This is a good example of the old story where if a person has a choice between a republican and a conservative corporate democrat, they will choose the democrat every time. And in this situation to the detriment of my sister.
Bernie if your listening please come to Alabama for it looks like Katy Britt, Does not want to face the people shoe represents. And AOC please come with him. Show Alabama, the state that had the first woman Governor what woman can do for poor working people. On the national stage.
Damn I meant to say that when people have the choice between a corporate democrat and a republican they normally choose the republican not the democrat. So we need progressives.
Totally agree! Every democratic representative needs to get out to republican areas and speak the truth and how these changes are going to hurt all Americans!
Chuck Schumer is a useless shill. He and the other nine traitors aren't worth two smashed dead flies.
Sununu passing the state level version of the SAVE act is one of the most ludicrous bits of nonsense ever. New Hampshire is 99.9999999999865% White. It's only immigrants come from Massachusetts and Maine. Ridiculous.
Thank you, Professor Hartmann, for your excellent analyses of the wild events of just a week. You have a wonderful way of seeing and conveying what you see to the reader. Thank goodness for you.
This much is obvious: the Democratic Party has become counterproductive and meaningless, the very name now tarnished by ineptitude. Time for the many brave, strong, and savvy ones to form a new party - maybe the Constitutional Party? Or even the Lincoln Party. Or . . .? Or, is there still a battle to be won?
The poor planning and less than tepid response to Trump, Musk and maga have me wondering could he be a Republican "deep plant"? At the least he's the epitome of political malfeasance.
Chuck Schumer managed not to learn a damned thing from watching Mitch McConnell for years. Kirsten Gillibrand’s signature accomplishment is running Al Franken out of the Senate. Dick Durbin’s glacial response to emergencies mirrors that of Merrick Garland. “Leaders” like these are delivering fascism to the United States on a silver (gold?) platter.
(I should hire an editor). To be clear, I most emphatically do not regard running Al Franken out of the Senate an “accomplishment”. He was among the best, which Gillibrand is most emphatically not.
No problem. I, and I imagine thousands of others, took "Gillibrand's signature accomplishment " to be white hot sarcasm. Al Franken was the best senator in the senate. His resignation was a devastating loss for America.
PS: I have told Gillibrand several times that I would never support her and would even consider donating to an honest Republican opposing her( if I could find one with any backbone)
They divide us and we fall for it. Concentrate on Republicans.
My browser won't record a like, so I give you a standing ovation.
I am getting tired of this helplessness and futility. We still have not gotten to the root of these myriad problems. Moment of truth: Superstition is still a profound problem.
We have had political correctness when it comes to superstition for far too long. Superstition, wearing the cloak of God and religion has been ruling our lives forever. It is high time we freed ourselves from its death grip. God is the authoritarian tyrant behind the curtain pulling strings. He has to go. Enough of the debilitating orthodoxy! Bad religion and hypocrisy have been in our crosshairs for a very long time. But there is no good religion if God can bully his way into our politics and social affairs with impunity at every turn. It is time to give him a pink slip and run him out of town on a rail. God is never satisfied to just be worshipped. He wants omnipotence and we have given it to him. ENOUGH! They said he was dead a while ago. But they refused to accept reality, and the reactionaries kept him on life support so he could come back and take over. We will either put an end to him and his oppression, or he will put an end to us. I am sorry I am verbose and confusing. I never learned how to think or write well. But I recently posted my thoughts in a new article on Substack. Maybe someone can summarize it. The title is: "We Created Machines, Computers, AI, and God: Can We survive Them?" Subtitle: "Will Americans Choose to Grow Up; or Will We Die as Immature Children?" Religion has wormed into our minds, our politics, our society, and our schools, despite all attempts to keep it in its proper place. We will not have freedom and liberty until we are free of the power of religion, using a fake god as a terrorist and a prison warden.
It’s not “God” it’s human’s using the Almighty to threaten other people. That’s why Religion was Supposed to be Separate from anything to do with Government in this country.
Our ancestors (who wrote the Constitution) fled from countries that did exactly what the theocrats are trying to do now in the United States - attempting to impose their version of God on everyone else.
In Europe that tactic lead to hundreds of thousands of murders in the “name of God”
Bullshit -
That’s not what the New Testament teaches.
These people aren’t Christians anymore than Hitler was a Christian.
Anymore than Putin is a Christian.
The Republicans who attack the vulnerable are liars and criminals taking apart our country for their own purposes
Elon Musk is a twisted, ketamine fueled Nazi fiend who is a money sucking parasite on this country and should be exorcised like the leech he is. No one elected Elon.
Send Elon to the darkness where he belongs
I agree with your sentiments of much of what you say Kay. Save for this.
The Bible is akin to a supermarket, you browse the aisles (pages) and pick out what suits you and discard the rest. Thomas Jeffeson said of it that Christians take scissors and glue, so he did the same with his Jefferson Bible (you can google and download it, it has none of the crap of Paul.
There is even more than one Jesus, so people choose the one that they like
There is the Jesus of Matthew, the sermon on the mount
and the Jesus of Luke who commanded: Bring before me, he who would not have me reign over him and slay him. and who also said: Sell your cloak and buy a sword.
There is the Jesus of Saul who said women should stay silent and if they wish to learn anything ask their husband.
The Bible has something for everyone. Rape, genocide, incest, you name it.
And the earliest known record of a resurrection story originated in Sumeria more than 6,000 years ago. There have been several others since then. Take your pick.
Thanks.
The dudes who wrote the old testament and the new testament, relied on myths passed around and modified thousands of years
Who ever started writing the old testament had worked in the library of Babylon and were familiar with the Sumerian stories of the creation,Eden and the flood. The Akkadians displaced the Sumerians but kept the myths, albeit in modified form to fit them,the Babylonians displaced the Akkadians and wash,rinse repeat.
The Book of Esther and her Uncle Mordecai are Ashera and Marduke (Venus and Mars). There was no such massacre as recorded in Esther.
Moses was a composite figure,even the Hindu's have Krshna floating down the river in a basket and there was the story of Talmudz.
Solomon was the Assyrian wise fish god,with some historical attributes of Assyrian kings. David also a composite figure.
Even the name of their god Ya was taken from the Caanninites.
You can see it in the exclamation of praise praise ye Ia, halleluiah,Greek eleleu were placed at the hymns of praise to Apollo
Religion the greatest con ever sold.
Jesus was a composite figure, most likely a Jewish rebel,maybe even Barabas, Dionysos, the Greek god of wine,who turned water into wine,the name means son of god (Dios or Zeus) also born of a god and a mortal,and Apollonius of Tyana,actually Apollonius travel loque is the same as Pauls but in reverse order.
In approximately 325 CE the Romans morphed Saturnicus into Jesus. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Council_of_Nicaea
That's the Jesus you know, not the circumcized tvillin wearing kosher eating bar mitvahed dovining preacher.
And Kninky Friedman is his prophet. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5FSWm67IhDU
You are correct, but Saturnicus is not the only one morphed into Jesus.
Actually I think this is how it went down. The Pharisees were a group of Greek educated stoics, and watched the people try to fight the Romans, without success, guerrilla warfare didn't hack it, Masada was the last straw.
If you can't beat them from without, defeat them from within. Rome's strength was it's martial spirit,it celebrated war and conquests with Triumph's , columns, games, it built the Coliseum with slaves taken from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Syria_Palaestinaand sliver plundered from Jerusalem.
If you can't beat them from without, then beat them from within, pacify them, and Jewish missionairies set out through the Roman lands, starting with Anatolia and proselytized the message of pacificism of brotherly love.
It of course grew and soon there were hundreds of missionaries in the Roman Markets clamoring for attention and followers.
Too much for Constantine, it was out of control, so he decided not to fight the movement but to co opt it, and gathered together the most notoroius and sequestered them in Nicea, sat guards at the door plied with with young boys and wine, and told them they couldn't come out until they came up with a coheisive consensus.
Well they beat each other badly, but eventually settled on the Trinitarian Nicean creed.
Then when it came time to formalize the cult, all of the written documents were gathered together, and under supervision of wealthy Romans like Piso,
that were assembled in a book, translated from the Greek under the Auspices of Jerome and a former Manichean priest to which the church gave the name, the great one or Augustine, and the produced the Latin Vulgate, the collection of manuscripts on vellum and papyrus that became the "Holy Bible", there are many versions, the Catholic Douay Rheims differs from the KJV and he Guttenberg Version and the Ferrar Fenton differs tremendously from the KJV, being a translation from the original Hebrew, Chaldean and Greek. I had this version, gave it to my son. It us interesting, it formed the basis of the British Israel movement,of Benjamin D'Israeliand Queen Victoria.
So more than Saturnniecus
"Religion is the opium of the people" - Karl Marx
Mark Twain " The easy confidence with which I know another man's religion is folly teaches me that I suspect that mine is also".
"It ain't parts of the Bible I can't understand that bother me, It's the part's that I do understand"
"Religion was invented when the first con man met the first fool".
(love Mark Twain)
"The devil can site scripture for his purpose." Shakespeare.
All that humor, wisdom, and talent! Twain was a philanthropist too---it's interesting to look at what he did.
Yes, he is a National Treasure!
I couldn't agree with you more. My husband is a recovering Catholic. I walked away from it 20 years ago. I've apologized to my kids for making them go to church. God started resembling a malignant narcissist psychopath to me. That book was written by many over a 2000 year period, 150 yrs after said events. You would think some things might of got lost in translation. It's like a book of personal projections. Its fucking batshit crazy. Why would a drug addict win the lottery and say he's blessed, but a child dies of cancer? Lost me there. Nothing says hate like Christian love. It's a predators' paradise.
Unfortunately there seems to be a primal belief in magic. Until we acknowledge this and address it we will continue to battle with ineffective tools.
We are in agreement. Superstition is the issue. Superstition, whether it is primal or not is a choice or one alternative which we must keep in its place. Superstition creates a desire for a deity, an authority, or a creator and gives the idea of god power and inordinate significance. Science has better and more neutral and satisfactory answers, which lack the certainty and security of a protective or domineering god but also lack the arbitrariness and brutality of cults. Unfortunately, even Christianity based on the New Testament and the Beatitudes and faith tends to devolve into fanaticism and extreme beliefs and has a need to save the world and spread through orthodoxy and ultimately force. Agnostics and atheists are democratic by definition.
Religion like everything else is developmental. I tire of people who carry around a concept of God and religion that they learned as children -- and assume that is what it is ultimately all about. There is a kind of acute intellectual Sloth here -that parades as condescending brilliance all the while looking like the universal arrogance of adolescent boys returning home after their first year in college. Assume they know everything but ultimately know almost nothing. There is more in heaven and earth Horatio ---- than what your limited experience has thus far revealed. Or, as one of my favorite rabbis stated, "the God you don't believe in, doesn't exist"................
I somehow missed all but the last couple of posts in this "thread" until just now. I am unable to process it all, too much of an "intellectual sloth" to go to all that trouble. What seems to be animating the discussion is a difference between religion and philosophy and a confusion between religion and spirituality, not to mention ritual and ordinary mythology. The common difficulty seems to be that formal religion relies on an authority and becomes an authoritarian system which brooks no dissent. In all cases, we create the deity we worship. That is nonsense or a tautology or some such insanity. Who has time for all of that? We have problems to solve and mysteries to unearth. Science and reason are more my cup of tea, or what was it that Socrates drank, hemlock juice. I am a descendant of Welsh people btw. Calhouns.
Lose/Lose
There is no right or wrong built into the solution at hand for Democrats.
Whatever happens to people will still be ON THE REPUBLICANS. They have the choice and THEY WILL BE RESPONSIBLE. We are going to pound that message into everyone's head online, in the air, and IN THE STREETS.
Soooo, as much as I believe in progressives and their values, you won't find me bashing the other side of my party. The Democratic Party of FDR, Obama, and Biden are the ONLY reason my life is live-able. That is my truth and I'm going to tell it.
Musk and Trump get off on hatred and pain--- both are sadistic psychopaths. The Nazis managed to bring together a whole party of them, and now they have too. We are going to make damn sure everyone knows it!
Republicans are doing so bad and I think everyone knows it and to not have a viable opposition is insane. Get rid of the old timers we need fighters.
Thanks, Thom. The Democratic Party has a lot of work to do. And so it goes.
Here is a clue. Name one thing that AOC and Nancy Pelosi were united on?
Killing the Continuing resolution.
Chuck is a coward, corrupt or complicit. Trump shot a warning across the bow when he called him a Palestinian not a Jew, after that Chuck folded.
Trump uses threats and blackmail to assemble his coterie of ass kissers (kiss my ass or else)
Schumers excuses are specious and as full of crap as Trump.
He claimed to be afraid of what Trump would do, if the CR was not passed. That Trump would act in the dark.
Gott dam it. Trump is going to do what he is going to do anyway, and he isn't hiding in the dark, he is out in the broad daylight because he is untouchable, and he is untouchable because the milquetoast Schumer, and the slop sucking morons at the DNC basically elected him by their fecklessness and stupidity.
We could have had a real populist, not a faux right wing "populist", name of Bernie Sanders, but no the DNC had to reward the old faithful race horse that has been padding around the paddock accumulating creds and showing loyalty
And yes, there is identity politics. Black, Hispanic, Asian, women, MuslimLGBT all demand prominence and are at some ends at odds with others, but the Right has a united identity in their politics.
White, male, Christians..
And guess who was able to coalesce and what do we call them? MAGAts.
There are three warring actions in the Republican party: nationalist populists (such as Stephen Bannon), techno-libertarians (like Musk) and pro-Maga congressional Republicans
yet because they are all power hungry males, mostly white,though me thinks that the likes of Kash Patel would call himself white, as would Bobby Jindahl, and Nikki Haley., they stand united, and nothing will drive a wedge between them until they achieve total power, but by then it will be too late for us.
DNC shoved Biden at us in 2020. They kneecapped Bernie. IMHO Biden should never have been President to begin with...we could have had Bernie,Elizabeth Warren, or Piet Butttigieg, but NO the DNC HAD to pick Uncle Joe. He was already too old back then. And then all the gaslighting around his ability to run again, especially when there was so much at stake, which they acknowledged while campaigning in 2024. I'm so disgusted with the Democratic Party. Given the same situation the GOP would have never passed the CR, because they know how to circle the wagons ...not the Dem's. We need major change in the Democratic Party.
That they did arshambow,and the reason is because they had no other race horse in the stable.
The DNC has been the loyal opposition, slopping at the same trough as the Republicans, but only at the level of the General election, they forfeited local elections,ceded those to the Republicans and now we have paid.
I compare the DNC to a stable of race horses. In the stable you have horses that are groomed, then taken out exercised in the paddock,and when the owners feel they are ready, one is chosen and led to the starting gate..
This wasHillary Clinton,she stood in line, paid her dues, and acquired the creds, the experience,that the owners felt at that time were quintessential for a President, foreign service,which she lacked in 2008, so they had Obama make her Secretary of State.
Well they had it all wrong, didn't they.
Not having learned a lesson in 2016, they reached into their stable of old tired race horses and chose Tery McAuliffe to run for Governor of Virginia, and we see how that worked out.Out of touch,he catered to the teachers union and ignored the (false and manufacutured) concerns of parents.
When real populists come along likeAOC and Bernie,the DNC does everything to squash them.
It is remarkable that this one ime Nancy Pelosi joined hands with AOC, in enjoing Chuck Schumer not to vote for cloture on the continuing resolution,because she has spent money and energy trying to squash the Progressive caucus.
She went so far as to back the conservadem Joseph Kenney Jr, in his run against Sen Markley of MA. and she backed a homophobe against a progressive gay.
She has her whole career waged war on progressives,
She and Rahm Emanuel killed Bernies Medicare for All, in favor of the awkward and burdensome ACA.
And now the betrayal of Chuckie boy.
The republican look at our infighting and use it against us. For example the big steal that the democrats stole the election. They well know that they are the ones stealing elections. So they use this point. And when they see us fighting each other, I remember trump using this to say democrats are corrupt. This has been taking the emphasis off of the true corrupt party and putting on the democrats with the help of the corporate media.
There truly is a mind game and the Republicans have been winning it. And democrats will not get ahead of this until they figure on how to get their message across. Hopefully it will be media like Substack and old fashioned protest.
Thus Feathers of Hope. Ju jitsu.
Oh, yeah! And that's their super power. We, on the other hand are split up in factions. King Shitpants is drunk on power. He's going to be the evil villain in a Marvel movie. This is balls to the walls time. Still feel like we're fucked. 🤔
The left is its own worst enemy. It is my cause, no it is my cause, how dare you say prostitute when it should be sex worker. And while we squabble the tsunami of resentment build and on Nov 5th, 2024 it overwhemed us
Thanks to this clown Mahmoud and those like him, we are watching a democratic Republic crumble under our feet, and the Palestine that he so cherished is being washed away, And it isn't just Mahmoud it is all of the short sighted, self centered fools that voted for Trump or worse, didn't bother to vote (90 million of them)
Ist Musk kein Nazi?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I7vb89c6pQY
Musk is a drug-addled psychopath. He needs to be in a psychiatric hospital.
Just made a few substitutions into a line in your post today for a preview of what could be: “Trump didn’t murder millions, public sector workers did,” arguing that it was US government employees who were responsible for the The Greatest Recession of All Time, not Donald Trump and Musk who planned the so-called End of US as a Democracy.”
— Women are NOW, TODAY having trouble registering to vote in NH because they've done the SAVE Act on a a state level...Where are the Democrats on this!?
Allow me to answer. There are virtually NO Democrats in NH. What we have are, at every level from US Senate to State Representative, with few exceptions a bunch of Republican Lites who would wear the label "Milquetoast" with pride. As much collective gumption as a bowl of cold Cream of Wheat.
One of my three sisters and her husband is a republican in Alabama. When Bernie ran for president they backed him. Yet when he lost the primary to Hillary Clinton they voted for trump.
This is a good example of the old story where if a person has a choice between a republican and a conservative corporate democrat, they will choose the democrat every time. And in this situation to the detriment of my sister.
Bernie if your listening please come to Alabama for it looks like Katy Britt, Does not want to face the people shoe represents. And AOC please come with him. Show Alabama, the state that had the first woman Governor what woman can do for poor working people. On the national stage.
Damn I meant to say that when people have the choice between a corporate democrat and a republican they normally choose the republican not the democrat. So we need progressives.
Totally agree! Every democratic representative needs to get out to republican areas and speak the truth and how these changes are going to hurt all Americans!
Chuck Schumer is a useless shill. He and the other nine traitors aren't worth two smashed dead flies.
Sununu passing the state level version of the SAVE act is one of the most ludicrous bits of nonsense ever. New Hampshire is 99.9999999999865% White. It's only immigrants come from Massachusetts and Maine. Ridiculous.
Thank you, Professor Hartmann, for your excellent analyses of the wild events of just a week. You have a wonderful way of seeing and conveying what you see to the reader. Thank goodness for you.
Ding, ding, ding...hot off the presses. The Minnesota Republicans put forward a bill to define Trump Derangement Syndrome as a mental illness.
Acute onset of paranoia in otherwise normal persons that is in reaction to the policies and presidencies of President Donald J Trump.
Now I wonder if this tied with his new bill to be able to take guns away from anyone deemed mentally ill. Dicktators don't like guns.
Minnesota Republicans Tom Emmers and Michelle Fischbach. Need I say more.
This much is obvious: the Democratic Party has become counterproductive and meaningless, the very name now tarnished by ineptitude. Time for the many brave, strong, and savvy ones to form a new party - maybe the Constitutional Party? Or even the Lincoln Party. Or . . .? Or, is there still a battle to be won?
The poor planning and less than tepid response to Trump, Musk and maga have me wondering could he be a Republican "deep plant"? At the least he's the epitome of political malfeasance.