So, yeah, let’s take seriously the existential threat a GOP president represents to our nation, the nations of the world, and all life on Earth. The stakes have literally never been higher...
Thank you Thom for continuing to relate the disaster that looms if we do not energize efforts to continually expose and oppose the Maga authoritarians.
Its says a lot about how far we’ve fallen from reality and peace of mind
when Trumps militant ignorants elevate his indictments to a form of approval.
Its at least massively disturbing, to see these fools in Congress, head fool , Kevin McCarthy attack Joe Biden and his son Hunter bypassing reality and calling for impeachment. Another radical move just designed to take the focus off of Trumps massive criminal agenda. . This is an example of the willingness of Maga republicans to take this Country to the hell of their lies without mercy for anyone but billionaires .
Those people have floated the despicable Maga in return for more leeway to destroy the world for money .
That is acceptable to them in their rotten corps of Maga fascists.
What has happened to the Constitution?
Well the six justices for Maga on the Supreme Court have totally bastardized the Constitution for the purpose of elevating Maga fascists.
The idea that people are created equally and have the same rights under the law has been burned to ashes by these justices. An aid to the Maga corps for sure.
The Heritage Society and like groups the Koch brothers , Leonard Leo and etc have destroyed democracy for their monetary benefit.
They too are fascists as is all of the Republican party . Even the more moderately positioned republicans don’t say a word against this perfidy. They are therefore complicit.
At some point maybe someone will remind people here that George w. Bush invaded Iraq, allowed the credit crisis to explode, helped destroy the us reputation around the world and put people like Sam Alito on the Supreme Court.
Sit back and do a FULL accounting - was trump's first term really worse than bush?
Trump is utter nonsense, utter criminality and incompetence.
But so much of this all actually comes from The NY Times - which put 21 different pieces about trump in one 2015 sunday edition which featured zero (nothing) about Bernie, the most popular politician in America. Harvard's Shorenstein center put out a report, saying that in 2015 it was the free media coverage that drove trumps campaign as he had no campaign chest to draw upon and would've been unable to to succeed absent all that free media exposure.
The most basic thing that goes unacknowledges by almost all media, is that neither the New York Times, nor any other main stream outlet, even questioned trumps qualification for this position, when he came to this position having no experience in politics, won no prior elections, having had no experience in foreign policy, having had no experience with regulation, even having had no audit committee with independent representation on the board of his company.
A simple rule, saying that you can't run for president without having first served in the cabinet, or been the governor of a state, or having been a senator, would go such a long way to avoiding the horrible damage that this crap media does to the society.
Thank you Thom again for nailing the root of this country’s barriers to effectively mitigate the looming crisis of climate change. I’m at the end of my lifespan but extremely worried about the “red lights “ flashing warnings of oncoming climate disasters for my grandchildren and great grandchildren. We’ve already had some of the highest temperatures on record this summer and recently extreme winter conditions that literally locked many of us in our mountain communities due to nonstop snowfall in S. Cal. People have died due to this this extreme weather, both hot and cold weather conditions. All people should be alarmed but unfortunately the naysayers, the Republican death cult and their donor fossil fuel conspirators, continue to willfully bury facts of causation from man made dirty energy sources. But of course the obstruction from Republicans and their selective policies to reward the rich is why the rest of us in America and (I’ll add around the globe) can’t have nice things. We all should be angry and demanding change to advance development and use of alternative energy programs but again, the science deniers, the willfully ignorants, the gaslighted Maggats somehow prevail.
Kathy says: " but again, the science deniers, the willfully ignorants, the gaslighted Maggats somehow prevail."
I lay the blame on the media, including "liberal" MSNBC, People don't know how the media actually works. There is a board of directors, whose members sit on other boards, including the petro chemical, military industrial, fossil fuel complex. is a Venn Diagram of overlapping BoD's,
Therir purpose is to ensure a constant and increasing return on investment for the investors, not only of the media company, but the companies on whose board they sit.
The BoD hires and fires executives, and executives know how to toe the party line, and hire producers, editors, talking heads that toe the party line.. When you see a talking head on TV, whether it is a news reader (there are no real journalists and reporters, they all have ear buds,you can see the coiled white wire behind their ear, which is the producer telling them what to say, monitoring and censoring their speech, also a screen in front of them with the script.
The #1 rule is don't say anything that disturbs our owners and advertisers.
Corporations as a rule do not place ads directly with the media, they use ad companies, that monitor the behavior (output) of media corporations and thus do not direct ads to companies that are not considered reliable to the profit motive of the advertiser.
PhARMA or rather the companies that are PhRMA, primarily place ads with NBC and MSNBC.
I've got not much else to do, so I started a list of Drugs hawked in MSNBC, it was 81 drugs, until Jul, then they started hawking new Drugs with the most ridiculous and insulting of names, they pay a consulting firm to come up with these stupid names. I started late this year, so far I've collected four new drugs, there are scores more, that I failed to write down, but I will
... most mammals have an endo- cannabinoid system--just as a cardiovascular system, melatonergic
System (melatonin by the way has been claimed to be Covid preventative), BUT fascinating re: the endocannabinoid system are the pros or cons of the various terpenes & ternabinoids --
eg: > pinene= anti-inflammatory,
Antibacterial , is a bronchodilator
(so this is a good one for pasc--aka long Covid, rheumatologic disorders,
Traveling ... myriad uses;
> humulene is likewise anti-inflammatory, but it's also an appetite suppressant (surprise surprise!); rate secondary terpines are > sabinenr= Anti-bacteria and ❗️ antioxidant ( who doesn't need that?!!); >borneol= Anti-inflammatory and analgesic; >phytol = Anti-inflammatory and antianxiety
(my dictum is: ppm in the in the air, water, food, GOP, angry planet, major global {Ecuador anyone ?}shift to the right, endemics, leprosy in Florida... you get it...= EVERYONE
could benefit from any of the above .
••••• Caution: ecs is extraordinarily, for me, complicated: do your diligent research! (the Funny Drug Admin did not require me to state that; were I to say "discuss with your healthcare practitioner"--as the fda requires for non-approved treatments... you are most likely be laughed out of the office of an md, do office. oh...i too am a ca survivor
x 2...aenesthesia was tougher than chemo--they had no tcm acupuncture physicians on staff.
ps: sun grown plants are best, no plant nor plant product bought --oop by the way / not covered by ins-- from approved medicinal pharmacies can claim to be organic!
Western Med is allopathic. It treats the symptoms not the disease.There is a time and place for it, such as I had lung and brain cancer I am in remission since Oct 2017 for Lung and brain cancer, thanks to a craniotomy and two years of triweekly Keytruda infusions. (Immunotherapy not chemo) chemo is a killer
I just watched a Special featuring Anderson Cooper, it was about cannabis instead of drugs, the special featured Israel and Florida I think, mostly about people over 50 using cannabis instead of drugs to treat alzheimers, pain, depression and it works, but it is medical grade marijuana.
I don't smoke, hut I do take gummies to help me sleep through the night, otherwise I have insominia and wake up many times, with the gummies I get a good nights sleep, never used the stuff recreational, and only started the gummies about three months ago.
My wife smokes it though, she has a lot of medical problems, like fibromyalgia and it really helps.
The only drug I take is metformin and I am considering getting off that as well.
Genetic testing for health at 23andme, says that as far as my body, metformin is not efficacious, but my PCP ordered it anyway., so I figured what the heck and recently found out that there are side effects.
I was also taking Melatonin, but that has a side effect that costs you your balance,and I have a problem with that anyway, since the cranitomy and subsequent radiation.
By the way my PCP is a D.O., it is legal in my state. The south is stuck in the 19th century. And I don't live there or the midwest either.
The reason I tell this story is to back you up. Not complaining or braggine, neither serves a purpose because either doesn't change a thing.
One can legitimately wonder what these "lefty meat" pieces accomplish. Clearly, it would be at least one thing - many of its readers have not read the indictment filed yesterday.
"We all should be angry and demanding change to advance development and use of alternative energy programs"
It would be good to get the average mpg of the cars driven by the commenters, just to see how the single most obvious things people can do to help the planet are completely left out of the discussion.
Golly, way to stick it to the tree huggers! The mpg of the vehicles we drive? Really? When the entire range of consumer choice is manipulated entirely to satisfy the billionaire class? Sure, we should just pay no attention to the fossil fuel industrial complex’s full obstruction of all climate-protecting measures. No it’s the Hartman readers! It’s all their fault. Seriously, WHAT?
i have an environmentally induced neurological condition which interferes with my mouth movements: my accidentally sent message above
Meant to read:
WE EACH R OF ABILITY AND HOPE
if you do not know how and why it is imperative to SAVE our intelligently designed champions of the food chain--butterflies / bumblebees //birds--from climate crisis and the likes of Baer Monsanto, I refer you to
AGRICULTURE --MDPF I said where has a wealth of information scientific, MEDICAL, ANIMAL, VETERINARY, HABITAT.. .
not necessary to join ARBER foundation to plant a tree a week//yes I know , it takes 20 years for a tree to a tree to be productive.
BUT THIS TEENAGER'S incredible awareness to make a commitment to save the ocean graces us with an element of time//
HE DECLARES A
CLEAN OCEAN BY 2040/-
without this news, & the 10 participant ( i believe it is 10) Challenge to create the largest carbon capture plan Which will award $$$enough to produce the plan--nasa is a participant --I will be sounding the alarm by 2026--
although it is clanging now at an enormous decibel
--and😱‼️ an infectious fly invasion!! diseased mosquitoes in Florida; leprosy in Florida (though I doubt the authoritarian who believes he is a new Messiah... "Will be filmed touching a leper!)
I have previously listed several actions that the poorest of the poor
can accomplish and benefit from .
Please write to all legislators in your state, to the EPA, especially the department of AGRICULTURE:
I stated my opinons everyone has one. At least I have the courage to state mine,and to state where I stand ideologically and politically.
You not, how about telling us about yourself so we don't assume the worse, by your own posts.
As regard Garland being timid. I stand by that, he is either cowardly, corrupt or compromised
It took over a year since the J6 committee for him to take action, and he was shamed into it by peers and the J6 committee. His delay cost time, and perhaps the ability to charge Trump , and he still hasn't charged the malefactors in Congress. Rep Adam Schiff said the same thing on MSNBC.
Actually, in my "troll" opinioni, Garland is compromised by ideolgoy and loyalties, after all he was nominated to Obama, by the right wing extremist Orrin Hatch R-UT and he was a moderator (10 times) for the Federal Society, you know that think tank that is vetting right wing judges, and seeks to overturn the constitution, though laws passed by a Republican House and 6 corrupt right wing judge on SCOTUS
Now tell us who you are dude. This tactic of yours going on the offense, to avoid telling us who you are, isn't working
I never said it was the Hartman readers fault, please try to read - you can do it.
There's just a certain absurdity of people as a daily routine coming on a web forum like this and saying we need to demand change, when the most obvious and direct impact is with what we drive.
It's on nobody's mind and that's the problem. It's only on the minds of Canadian vacationers who come here and don't even see enough charging stations. They come from a country that has an economy tied to fossil fuels just like ours yet they accept 10 dollar gas prices and support an initiative to really change over to electric vehicles.
Media powerfully affects what's in people's minds. This comment is not about pointing blame at readers, or
“ It would be good to get the average mpg of the cars driven by the commenters, just to see how the single most obvious things people can do to help the planet are completely left out of the discussion.”
P.S. when I can afford one I’m getting an EV. And not only is climate/ecological collapse on my mind pretty much 24/7, I do my best to share info and raise awareness in what small ways I can. Tho honestly I’m pretty much fully collapse aware at this point, and I think the most important priority right now is to prepare for mitigation and harm reduction among the most vulnerable. The inevitable is … inevitable.
No, that's the ultimate conclusion the masters want people to draw. Nobody can do anything, even the congress. But it's not true and we will all benefit once we have some plan that everyone can actually participate in and relate to - it's going on in many parts of the world through conversion to EVs, ESG investing, etc. and we need to know more about what's going on outside USA. These are only secrets if we guide our thinking by us media standards.
....uummmm: EURONEWZ (tubi free APP does not need to be connected to your television service
...uuummmm: young man started at age 16 to feel responsible for our plastic ocean //now owns a company cleaning tons and tons of plastic from the ocean 24/7 ! this machine clears an area the size of a football field every 10 seconds. if some of us are not technocrats, name the appropriate bumblebee and butterfly flowering bush for your area.
Go ahead :_____. ? do you not know how to save the insects and butterflies family pesticide fungicide insecticide of the man senses of the world SPECT that will ultimately bring home faster family and ultimate famine ultimately famine
The magnets found in permanent magnet motors used in electric vehicles contain rare-earth metals to increase the power output of these motors. The mining and processing of metals such as lithium, copper, and nickel requires significant energy and can release toxic compounds into the surrounding area.
Lithium batteries are proving to be dangerous, catching on fire (there is a cargo ship in the Atlantic, loaded with Porsche's , that is burning and nothing can be done.
And the battery life of these batteries is five years, and the coast of replacing them is more than you would spend in preventative maintenance in five years
Your sanctimonious declarations are boring.But predictable.
And since the bulk of Thom's readers and viewers are "lefties", your "scathing" critiques are directed at Thom's readers. Yes they are.
That seems to be the right wings form of attack. They act very friendly at first and then turn on you like a pack of hyenas. All they can do is itch, itch, itch. They think complaining will get them elected even though they are mentally bankrupt on making life better on this planet. Tearing down what we the people have now, will only make things worse in the future. Most of the trolls suffer from mental illness also. They're very disruptive and positive they are correct and are narcissistic as well. I have a relative like that who can go on for hours and hours... I changed my phone number.
Once again Marc, by your choice of slurs, you expose yourself. You've got a serious case against progressives (lefty's in your right wing vernacular). Why do I say that, because only right wing trolls use he "L" word to describe progressives.
By the way, twice or three at most, times a week I drive 3.5 miles to town, to pick up food at the market and pick up mail and packages at my private mail box, then 3.5 miles back.
I combine any other visit, like a medical appointment, with that trip.
I also bought $5,000 worth of shares in the electrical coop that services the county, for solar power.
If Trump gets back in the White House it will spark a civil war in this country, an event that will only hasten the advance of global warming, ensuring our demise as a nation and the end of Homo sapiens as a species. Another Trump presidency is suicidal, not only for ordinary Americans, but for the fascist Republican oligarchs and Putin-loving pimps of war that stage managed this whole political nightmare. The Uber rich and super powerful seem to harbor the illusion that they are exempt from the climate crisis, but that will be dissolved quickly when the temperature and humidity reach wet bulb 35 celsius, which is deadly to all living beings, including racist MAGA Republican dumb asses. One good outcome however, is that the only item on the menu at the parties celebrating Trump's election victory will be money and as these numbskulls will find out, you can't eat money!
Since Ronald Reagan, the GOP gave up trying to improve the life of Americans and instead focused on stealing as much loot while turning America into a third world failed nation. The natural progression would have been to oppose free trade and to support self-supporting prisons and poor farms. Instead of solving problems the GOP mostly with Mitch McConnell has focused on turning America into a dictatorship, where American citizens food and drugs can be poisoned for profit. Where the minimum wage can be repealed and where there is no social security and where enemies of the state can be tortured and have their organs harvested and killed. Unlimited greed, phony religions and the family unit have made this normal human behavior for thousands of years. The clock is ticking. I pity all the good people and could care less about the parasites.
The problem with the Nader elected W story and the Stein elected Trump story is that both ignore the third party vote totals for the Reform,Libertarian and Constitution Parties. Yes, Nader got enough votes to undercut Gore, but Buchanan, Browne and Phillips did the same for W. And Gary Johnson and Darrell Castle got more than three times as many votes as Stein in WI, ditto in MI and PA. Third Party candidates have usually taken far more votes from GOP presidential candidates than they have from Democratic candidates. And of course, there is Ross Perot in 1992 who knocked HW out of his re-election attempt.
Anyway, Nader did not cost Gore the presidency in 2000. Antonin Scalia did when he stopped the FL recount, which Gore would have narrowly won if the votes were counted honestly as ordered by the FL Supreme Court. And the primary reason the FL vote was as close as it was is due to the incompetence of the Democratic Party officials in Palm Beach County who approved the butterfly ballot which pushed thousands of votes to Buchanan that voters thought they had voted for Gore. And even that doesn't count the vast purge of eligible voters by Sec of State, Katherine Harris.
Au Contraire,Nader did cost Gore, and America, the election. Because it was the Florida votes that counted, it was the Florida votes that SCOTUS ruled on. In Florida betweenBush and Gore, Nader took enough votes from Gore, that he elected Bush.
The same with Jill Stein. What you are looking at, perhaps, are the national totals, and as a reminder I tell you that it isn't the national popular vote that matters. It is the electoral college, and Hillary won the national (popular Vote) by Trump won the electoral college. Swing states are called swing states for that reason.
No, I was looking at the votes in those three states. But it is the popular vote within the states that grants a candidate its electoral votes. You can't complain about third party candidates' impact on Dems while disregarding the same thing on the Repub side. They have been spoilers against Repubs far more than against Dems. Check the numbers out for yourself.
Tom, I have been worried about this since the last election. My worries have not gone away. That is what Trump has done, he has made sure I cannot even enjoy having the best president in my lifetime because Trump with his selfish ego has made everything so rotten.
The last several elections were lost to Democrats due to third party candidates. If the Democratic candidates needed those votes, why didn't they adopt progressive ideas to attract those voters. Like saying they would provide national healthcare, make marijuana legal at the federal level, and provide tuition free higher education to all.
The obvious reason they didn't was because they felt they didn't need those voters and wrote them off. Instead of demonizing third party candidates why don't we criticize the Democratic candidates themselves, including Joe Biden.
Sadly I agree with that. The problem is the DNC. I've said it too many times, they are beholden to the same Mega donors as the Republican party, just now Trump is hauling in the cash, and beating Biden, there aren't enough small donors supporting Biden.
Until LBJ, the Democratic party was the party of blue collar workers and racists, and they were usually one and the same, but the Republicans benefited from the shift of blue collar and racists Democrats to Republican with Nixon and his southern strategy.
Clinton exasperated the whole thing with NAFTA and GAAT, which saw the exodus of manufacturing to Mexico and then Asia.
The Democratic party is aged, in leadership and philosophy. om 2009 he Rahm Emanuel said "Progressives are fucking retarded", then he went on to kill public education, in favor of Charter schools (I imagine Betsy Devos had an organism)
Here is how the DNC operates, they have a stable of old tired horses, stuck in the past, who do not upset the conservative mega donors and corporation. When election season comes around they pick the one that has stood in line, paid their dues and earned credentials (which Trump proved does not matter) Clinton was wrong, it is not the economy, it is the culture war.
And the old horses that have been trotting in circles around the paddock, biding their time waiting to be called to the starting gait, don't have a chance in the 21st Century, but the DNC would have to admit they lack imagination, reasoning skills, and are hide bound by tradition, because they "owe" it to the old faithfuls. Thus the best they could come up with is Terry McAuliffe for Governor of VA and Hillary for President.
Biden, in my opinion, he is in office because 81 million people voted to turn Trump out of office, a head of cabbage could have beat Trump.
The Republicans know that, so they have used the time since 2020, to enact state laws, that suppress and nullify the elections, even laws that ignore the popular vote in favor of a legislature selecting the electors.
True in Moore v. Harper (Rebecca Harper) they ruled in favor of Harper and thus rejected the Independent State Legislature theory, but that doesn't matter, now that Alabama has ignored the Supreme Court and kept their gerrymandered map. If Alabama can ignore the court,and if Biden won't send in U.S. Marshalls, which he can do (Article II gives him the authority to declare a national emergency, but the weak man, sits there like a stonewall, letting the Republicans shit on him.
Count the states with Republican legislatures and see tha they actually control more than the required 270 electoral votes
Again, the notorious trump and his republican cohorts are shown to be verrrrrry bad people.
Somehow this film seems familiar, like maybe we've seen it over and over again on the same screen this summer.
Let's not focus on what democrats did in response, which was to give the madman the largest surveillance and military budget, with associated powers, ever in history - with little oversight.
Let's not read the most important indictment ever in the history of the us, or talk about what's in it, or talk about the heros that put their careers, families and lives on the line for these cases.
Let's not talk about merrick garlands actual record, or how many cases have been brought successfully. Let's not even consider what doj policies are, or whether there is anny difference between a speeding ticket and a sprawling conspiracy case with hundreds of witnesses. Instead let's use that word that cnn (in its newly red-tinted perspective) uses to describe garland, and let's assume that hundreds of witnesses can be corralled up to willingly testify against their boss in just a few months.
"Dithering is such a good verb and can't be overused in Washington," cnn co-host Brianna Keilar said!
Moving away from red-tinted cnn, we find the guardian reporting yesterday that when the criminal referrals were made by the House, cases had already been opened and were already being worked on by doj. But why mention something that appears in the Guardian, which faithfully carries important news about climate change, and Trump and all his horrors every single day - when it contradicts a favored narrative and one can use the same dumbed down catch phrases that CNN uses?
Maybe, just maybe, with this critical indictment in place, it's thom Hartman that is "dithering" by failing to cover it, or even read it? In any event the readers here are getting Brianna Keiler-level analysis
on garland.
The only thing left to do is have mock trials, where serious people like thom Hartman and William Farrar, with their extensive knowledge of federal criminal prosecutions and what is involved in successfully prosecuting thousands of cases, can show us how simple and easy it is to bring criminal cases like the one in this indictment, or to win cases (say, last year) when numerous material witnesses about the case haven't cooperated or testified yet.
Is there No limit on these prepackaged pieces? Even today, when the most important criminal case (or any case) in the history of this country was filed yesterday? Just remember that jack smith encourages everyone to read the indictment in full, something you won't be encouraged to do by any mainstream media or (at least today) by this outlet.
You're right! Scratch my comment and replace with this:
Thom's piece today is spot on as usual.
What a great day to say that republicans are bad. In fact I'm proud to think it, read and say it. "Republicans are bad." See?
Let's not worry about whether, across the board, former federal prosecutors and doj experts with expertise constantly show that these lazy uninformed characterizations of merrick garland and DOJ are BOTH
1. Wrong, and
2. Of real importance.
No, let's just do one thing- again and again.
Republicans are bad.
Certainly it's better than focusing on how the DOJ was manipulated into creating false flags to help trump's conspiracy, how smith documents this in the indictment, and how the indictment tells a clearer more detailed story that Jan 6 report or media has ever been able to do...
I should finish that says dictation is wrong and sent accidentally:;
That's the best you can come up with ; baseless swipes had a president who has said more records than president, DOJ, whatever whatever whoever is on the maga menu will regurgitated repeatedly that everyone if you would like
had anyone ever been able to live without you?! I don't know if I should take an hour with such low brow venomous attacks. A bit full of yourself .. do you practice in front of the mirror?
and lastly
that's the best analysis you can come up with what is written in success don'tm
Well I agree with your criticism of the DOJ, It is still Trump's DOJ, he appointed scores of acting associates to the DOJ, DHS. DOD, NSA, and other important federl agencies, by EO 13975, which created Schedule F civil servants, and that EO simultaneously changed the status of protected civil service of the employees who his appointees were to replace to at will, and voila the DOJ, amongst others is populated by Trump humpers, like you.
As far as Garland, by his inaction alone, and also by his actions, he too is complicit.
Yes he is, and scratch the lottery ticket, and you will see that Garland is responsible for having Aileen Cannon as the Florida judge inTrump's trial.
He floated the nonsense excuse that her name came up on the "wheel", named for the wheel on Jeopardy.
So te;; is who your really are, Your ideolgy, your world view, where to you fit on the political spectrum.
Your comments indicate that you are a right wing troll and a Putinist.
On one level, there is no question, right now only one party will even support the rule of law and fair elections. There is no comparison and anyone reading this newsletter should be happy to be able to vote for biden. It's just a vote.
On another level, both parties corrupted leaves opening for corporate power to control mostly everything. And we must consider whether the extremist nature of republicans is emboldened or made possible by weakness and corruption of Democratic Party, of its coming unmoored from labor and working classes, class politics etc.
There should be some serious consideration of not only instant runoff voting, but also third-party candidates at every level, and in my view, Thom Hartman has not been as welcoming, and supporting to the idea of third-party as would be appropriate, given history and the flexible nature of our election systems.
We have lived into this notion that it's better to try to use the Democratic Party as a vehicle for progressives to assert power but unfortunately, you can ask Bernie and Jayapal whether their agenda is being promoted or crushed in the last few years by this overall strategy.
I'm right with you. In fact, the reason why I make some of the comments I do is to caution against buying into right wing narratives that "Merrick Garland is timid" and "Merrick Garland is bad" and "Biden is politically going after trump," etc. and everything else that they say which might cause people to stay home during an election - none of which is true, none of which is going to be helpful.
Finally, I agree with almost your entire comment, but not the notion of a third party. Not in America. Teddy Roosevelt who was very progressive in many ways (probably a racist though),proved what a wreck Third Parties are, so did Ralph Nader. If all of those Florida votes went for Gore, there would have been no Dubya, no Iraq war, no waste of money and lives in Afghanistan either. and if Jill Stein hadn't run against Biden in 2016 Trump would never have been President.
The sad fact is that, all that third parties do, is peel votes away from Progressive candidates (even if they are marginally progressive, and help or ensure that the fascist and their mega donors control the country.
A vote for a third party is a vote for Trump. You might notice that no conservative , corporate stooge ever runs as a Third party, the only Third party candidates steel votes away from liberals.
Worse and worser every day. Amazing how stupid so many humans are. And I agree. I think the morbidly rich think they can protect themselves from climate catastrophe. They may last longer. But they too well go
THE ONLY THING THAT MATTERS HERE IS THE CLIMATE CRISIS. I promise you, we will not be around if either Biden or Trump are re-elected as President. Biden, in response to the hottest Summer ever and a myriad of other climate turning points, threw a few million $ at some sort of better weather/heat/whatever tracking system. He's authorized drilling in AK and is best buds with that jerk Prime Minister in the UK who just authorized 100's of drilling licenses in the North Sea. These old farts don't care; they (and their minions) already know that the only way to guarantee that they will be alive 5 years from now is to have some billion $ bunker in New Zealand or Raven's Rock, et al. Do you have any idea how many Raven's Rocks exist? 100's if not more.
Ginger, It is actually too late, to turn back the heat. It doesn't matter who is president. It's too late, Arctic ice is gone, it might recover a little in winter, but only a little, because of the Albedo effect, the Jet Stream has been distorted and it now shifts south, Mid America, The Greenland glaciers are melting and soon archaeologists and airplane buffs will have a field day, but all that fresh water is disrupting the Atlantic current which warms the East coast, and Europe.
On top of that the Antarctic ice cap, is melting, and the sea ice is not rebuilding.
Given that, there are estimates that we have at most to the 22nd Century before the Anthropocene ends and a new geological epoch begins, but one that will be devoid of most life on Earth. The Anthropocene is the period in which humans have had a profound impact on the planet, It started in the 1950's according to some. There are estimates that we have about 27 more years. AT 84 and my wife at 70 we will be long gone, but not my descendants.
I have no choice except to continue living my life, and making wills, as if everything will go on as before,
You're right! But, I still believe in miracles, just don't see them coming from the White House anytime soon. Check out 'Don't Look Up' on Netflix for the 'asteroid hit' scenario;) It's actually a climate crisis allegory movie.
Well I should enjoy the time I've got left. I am in my 89th year with two daughters and four granddaughters. My beautiful wife Irene and I have one vote each. The next presidency should be very exciting at the least. I hope you scare the crap out of enough people to turn the tide you figure we got coming. Sounds like you figure all is lost. I am keeping my eye on you and your prognostications. Hope you and I can have a good laugh after the next election.
I hope that I make it to 8 9, only 5 more years. I've already beat the odds with brain and lung cancer. discovered in 2017, oncologist says I am a miracle.
Indeed, the stakes have never been higher. We need to come together as humanity and work together to transition immediately from fossil fuels. Another Republican administration would be a disaster for the planet.
Gorsuch is an Episcopalian and when he was first nominated, I looked up his church on line. From their website, they appear to be pretty darn progressive. I wonder how he squares it all and how pleased his fellow parishioners are with some of his decisions.
Believe that all this can happen. We are well on our way. We have already been conditioned to accept the worst.
“…public schools will be replaced with vouchers for private, segregated, religious academies as has already happened under Republican administrations in Arizona and Florida.” It’s a done deal in Louisiana, too.
The threat of school privatization or the intention of reactionaries or libertarians to “destroy” education or public schools are recurrent themes, and for good reason. They are winning. This is their foot in the door. Plans for stopping them are vague and indirect. I keep asking the same kinds of questions, however. Did you know, e.g., that many prominent Democratic stars and philanthropists, such as Cory Booker, Obama, Bloomberg, and others have been big boosters for charter schools? (See Democrats for Education Reform). DEMOCRATS. Please explain.
As Pogo said, “I have seen the enemy and he is us”.
To my utter amazement, I find it necessary to ask the astute and erudite readers here again if they believe that our traditional public schools are “as good as could be expected”, “doing an acceptable job”, or if they rate somewhere above a “D-“. Can I get a show of hands? Does anyone think that it is worth even asking?
Is there any more urgent or important issue? How do these questions relate to politics or to the preservation of democracy, which has now taken center stage?
If schools are to be saved, should we not solve some of their monumental problems to make them defensible and functional? Pick up a newspaper.
I am aware that it is terribly impolite to inquire. But I really need to know, for example, what educators truly and honestly think of the 20 – 30% or more of students who have never excelled at anything in their schools or who feel invisible, demoralized, or disposable there. What are their true feelings and opinions about their students who are often mercilessly chided or dinged for “work not completed”; about those who are punished repeatedly for unacceptable behavior; about those who flunk or simply disappear, or the many who quietly fake it and are sent away, many with a diploma, without ever having quite “gotten it”?
Perhaps just as significantly, can anyone tell me how those who were “A” students, the teachers’ pet, or the “average” children who were recognized and rewarded as good kids, social, and “not a problem” have felt toward those others in the lower ten or twenty-percent of the class who were a problem? Do you remember any of those troublesome kids? Did they ever matter? Are you nostalgic for the great school experiences YOU had, totally unaware of the misery others faced daily?
Oh, we all know that those kids who didn’t fare quite as well in that environment should not really be blamed, of course. Some had undiagnosed “learning disabilities”. Their parents “didn’t have books in the home”. “No one read bedtime stories to them”. “Parents were not involved in their schooling” or they had family disruptions and certain demographic issues.
We cannot expect the schools to compensate for poverty, social conditions, or those kinds of things, can we? Can we? We cannot hold educators responsible for not mitigating personal or family problems, can we? Or can we? School is not a social service agency after all, is it?
Does anyone other than me consider it rather peculiar that free services and facilities in or adjacent to school simply do not exist to address many of these gross deficiencies in this great and wonderful, rich country? Could that possibly be because schools have been sold as the end-all and be-all for curing society’s ills and because educators have co-opted that entire domain and hyped their incomparable value incessantly with fictitious or delusional claims? Is that why attendance there is still involuntary?
What has been only rarely understood is that, in an institutional setting, for a variety of reasons, authority that is assigned is nearly impossible to control. Teachers seldom control authority; authority frequently gets the upper hand. Authority is the dark matter contaminating school under compulsory attendance. The status quo is omnipotent as a result.
One more question: With the exception of the destructiveness of inequality and issues such as the ludicrous fear of CRT being imposed on unsuspecting white students, why have I never, ever heard one single word of empathy or sympathy for the victims of bad schooling in this space? Not one word.
How much longer will we pretend that such victims simply do not exist? What is it, if it is not denial, selective blindness, or willful ignorance to blow off the people who have been failed by these authoritarian bureaucracies? Incidentally, while the worst damage is typically done to poor children and minorities, NO individual or group is immune to the harm of programming and conditioning based on arbitrary authority and a misanthropic conception of education.
One might expect certain people to feel a need to overlook the chronic problems, controversies, and shortcomings of schools, or to attribute those all to stingy legislators, inattentive or uninvolved parents, ‘a few bad apples’ (i.e., poorly trained or incompetent teachers or unruly students), or predictable features of any comparable major social undertaking involving a diverse and dependent population. Teachers, for example, should not be expected to be completely objective on this score.
However, it takes a special kind of obfuscation to downplay a pathetic success rate (measuring by the accomplishment of the stated missions and goals, such as graduation, literacy, numeracy, employability, intellectual and academic acumen, social and psychological adjustment, civic engagement or at a minimum, awareness and voting record, etc.) which hovers around 50% if one is exceptionally generous. To quote, George Bush, the Lesser, “oops”.
Are those who appear to be obtuse and strongly or reflexively biased in favor of our schools just naïve? Are they school snobs who found school to be ‘a piece of cake’ and are therefore indifferent or oblivious to the millions of students who have struggled, endured anxiety and humiliation, and who felt lost, ignored, or confounded? Do they want to have their cake and eat it too? Are they school cultists? Do they have some deep psychological urge to deny the failures that are the subject of thousands of reports and empirical research studies? Are those studies somehow irrelevant or inaccurate? What am I missing?
I have asked before for anyone who believes that our schools rate highly (AAA+!!!), or that “we have the best schools in the world” (referring to traditional “public state mandated schools), or that putting men on the moon and achieving amazing scientific progress are attributable to the schools, to finally provide something much more substantial as solid empirical evidence to both validate and absolve them. Is that an unreasonable request given that statements are frequently made here that democracy depends wholly on a well-informed, educated, and engaged citizenry?
You tell me. This is the place where having a conscience and being consciously aware of all of the social and political factorials are taken seriously and discussed honestly and openly, is it not? Or have I struck upon the single exception and the taboo subject?
Booker, Obama, Bloomberg, Emanuel and others are supporters of vouchers, because politicians prostitute themselves for donor cash, and the donors are millionaires, billionaires, corporations, who don't need or want an educated work force, as the educated know history, particularly the history of labor and living standards.
Reference Thoms reports on the Lewis Powell memo.
Dumb them down, and you get a meek compliant population of Eloi,who clamor to work for the Morlocks, for their daily bread. H.G. Wells Time Machine was a prophecy.
Politicians know who has the real power, so they throw bones of verbage at us critter, just enough to support them and vote for them.
Then once elected they put plugs in their ears, and shades over their eyes. It Even Reagan, as hard as that is to believe.
Reagan promised in 1980, he promised not to appoint members of the Trilateral Commission and Council on Foreign Relations (poison to the right, who consider them commies), and what did he do after election appoint them to his cabinet, like Casper Weinberger as Secretary of Defense, Weinberger, a member, and an officer of the Trilateral Commission, and other appointments were members of the Council on Foreign relations.
It was then that the Democratic party fell into line, making foreign service credentials a must have, and why they told Obama to appoint Hillary as Secretary of State, so she could amass those credentials, because she was another old loyal horse, stomping around in the paddock waiting to be called to the starting. However the world has changed and the DNC hasn't, it is no longer foreign service, or even the economy, it is the culture war, and a lot of POC, gays and trans people, as well secularists, that are motivated by the amygdala, to turn out and vote.
It is no longer the pre frontal cortex, if it ever was, that motivates people to vote. Especially if you have a job, and feel comfortable.
You lost me there with that stuff about the Trilateral Commission. I’ve read about it on various occasions but it apparently didn’t make enough of an impression on me to stick in my memory. Too bad I’m not educated.
I have largely shared your cynicism about politicians and many from the nouveau riche in the past. For obvious reasons I still have a deep mistrust of about 94% of all Republicans and a handful of Democrats. I agree that many do not want or expect the ordinary working people to know the difference between right and wrong, up and down, and their own interests as opposed to the interests of their masters in the investor class.
However, after reading the book, “The Prize: Who’s in Charge of America’s Schools”, by Dale Russakoff, I have been forced to re-evaluate in the cases of Booker, Obama, Bloomberg, and, believe it or not even the royal ass Chris Christy, at least with respect to their sincerity about improving schooling and lifting families out of abject poverty via a better educational experience.
The author, who has a sterling reputation as an education and school reporter for about three decades and who clearly believes in education as the way to a better life, presents intimate details and conversations and demonstrable facts which show that most of the big wigs involved in the one-hundred million dollar gift by Zuckerberg to the Newark, NJ schools, which was matched by a group of other wealthy individuals, foundations, or corporations were involved in deciding how and where the money would be spent.. While they all had their own ideas about how to get to better schools (and what they thought of as “quality education”, with which I vehemently disagree) they cannot fairly be accused in my opinion of solely selfish interests. The fact that the entire endeavor was a failure did not appear to satisfy anyone in the least. They had seen the dismal reports and stats on the Newark schools and their hope was to create a model to use nationwide to help teachers, kids, and communities. Politics and egos were involved of course, but they saw problems and thought they could fix them.
I could have told you that throwing money at the problems would not make a significant difference. Much of the money went to Charter schools administered within the district, some of which showed some improvement, and many that did not. But you do not want to know what I think. Sadly, no one here, nor anywhere else has any desire to acknowledge the truth about schooling. Charters are just another way to more efficiently control and program kids, when they are operated honestly for the benefit of children and the community, and they are more conveniently used by fanatics to spread their harmful ideology. The destruction of democracy is just collateral damage.
There's a media phenomenon which is to take complex sociological issues and address them through one-sided simplistic explanations that take no account of sociology or economics.
There's also trolling, in which someone continues to bombard a comment board with the same drivel time and again.
As for the topic we can call "cognitive sophistication, religion and the trump vote," here is an article worthy of reading:
The Salon article sums up the situation very well. I agree with the entire piece completely. While it good to have confirmation of what I have been reading and saying for some time and what I believe Thom and others have said consistently about the politics and the attitudes or mental sophistication of the respective camps, the new research is not particularly revealing with respect to unknowns or to any recent changes.
The author states: “A lasting remedy will demand that the country's political, cultural, and educational institutions be renewed, re-energized, and reimagined.” A bit earlier he states that “leaders and governing institutions have failed them”, them being us, the American people. My term for this transformational process in schooling and its converse, education is a massive paradigm shift. But first, it must be recognized by those we look up to and listen to that the paradigm on which traditional “public schooling” is based is roughly three centuries behind the latest neurological and other science relative to learning, knowledge, and human behavior.
The proclivities which those on the extreme right have for anti-intellectualism, literalism, faith over reason, fear of the other and unknown evils, etc., could have been effectively counteracted generations ago in institutions of socialization and learning had we continued on the path of the Enlightenment, instead of taking the path of paternalism and authoritarianism with compulsory school laws which made government the dispenser of truth and the definer of knowledge. Now, with privatization, power and influence are handed over to technocrats and profit seeking capitalists and oligarchs. They are seen as the saviors and supermen coming to fix dysfunctional systems which have produced failure and many of these gullible and angry people on the right fringe. The media, as you point out, are complicit. They have been relaying the myths and false ideas propagated by so-called educators and arrogant so-called experts word for word and selling them to an unwitting public who want and need to believe that they are providing education. Fortunately, some of us get there despite the wasted time and inanity.
Capitalism always ends in a catastrophe. A few owning almost everything makes the poor ignorant and insane. The poor dream of they themselves being rich instead of ending human suffering for all. Their made up deity will do that.
While of course anyone who is reasonably well-informed would agree that Trump is a threat to the stability of our country, I find your assertion of his being a threat "to all life on Earth" a glaring blind spot in your ideology. The most immediate threats to life on earth are climate change, which Democrats are addressing in the most minimalist and inadequate fashion imaginable, and the real prospect of a nuclear confrontation as brought to us by the Biden administration. Not only in his escalation of purposefully obstructing diplomacy but in sending bottomless munitions to Ukraine (including cluster bombs so you and your cabal can get off your moral high horse), but his strategies with China (sending military aid) and North Korea (sending nuclear submarines). As recently as two days ago Medvedev again cautioned the US regarding the real possibility of the use of nuclear weapons if Ukraine's latest offensive were to be successful. To think that we are essentially risking the obliteration of life on earth because liberals have to make Biden's warmongering and rejection of diplomacy in favor of his warhawk advisors working for Raytheon and the like is far more chilling to me than anything Trump could or would be able to do. Your insistence on diverting attention away from the disaster that is the Biden administration by obsessing almost exclusively about Trump and Republicans might be good for selling dog food but is doing a disservice to progressivism and truth.
So... Blow up the whole country by electing Trump cuz Biden is somehow more evil, or something something something? Yeah. Biden ain’t perfect; never was. But to suggest that Trump isn’t really that big a deal and we shouldn’t be doing everything we can to ensure the GOP doesn’t get near the White House is ... naive at least, if not morally repellent. Thom succinctly listed the facts we face, and it’s going to take enormous effort to tackle the violent-minded cultists who want to see everything destroyed. Priorities.
That is not what I said. What actions are you going to take to change the course of what Trump is doing or how he is prosecuted? Nothing, you can't change a thing about it. And don't say voting because with the electoral college, gerrymandering etc that is not nearly enough. But you CAN stop Biden from blowing up the world, and you CAN tell him not to commit more war crimes than he already has by using cluster munitions in Ukraine. We CAN continue to push Democrats to take climate change more seriously than the one step forward two steps back policies of The Inflation Reduction Act. Trying to hold Trump accountable while you ignore the danger imparted by the party you pledge allegiance to is completely ineffectual and is what got Trump elected in the first place. Your ignorant and rudderless party helped to get him elected then fundraises and campaigns off of it. https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2016/11/hillary-clinton-2016-donald-trump-214428/
The Democratic Party is not just ignorant and rudderless. It is corrupt as it is obviously failing badly when it loses five congressional seats to Republicans in New York State, one of the bluest states. We should always keep reminding people that three or five of the most powerful Republicans today are from blue states, including trump who was a New Yorker most his life.
All of this ridiculous national political media fails to point out how critical it was that New York failed to redistrict and how critical it was that stupid Sean P Maloney insisted on replacing mondaire jones in ny-17 only to lose to the Republican state campaign chair.
No instead you get the usual midterms story, not adequately considered in the wake of Dobbs. That democrats lost the house EVEN in the wake of Dobbs should be some kind of wake up call!
As noted in another comment, we don't have electric vehicles on our minds nearly enough whatever was done with the inflation, reduction act did not result in a real change over to our vehicles and we see Canadians driving down from Canada with a long range electric vehicles looking for charging stations. I don't know how other people feel but this makes me feel like we are in embarrassment.
I don't know how other people feel, but this makes me feel like we are in an embarrassment that it's not just simply a matter if republicans.
All of this is not to say that Chomsky is wrong in saying trump is an existential threat, that people need to band together to at least declaw the most blatant threat.
Although right behind Trump, we must keep in mind - the republican party is called by Chomsky the most dangerous organization in the history of mankind, one that is such an outlier across all of human history that it distinguishes itself as perhaps the only one that would destroy the viability of the entire planet to achieve its goals.
Outside of NYC , Buffalo and Rochester NY is Alabama. Sean is not a progressive, but a Republican in Democratic bunting, he is a conservative, and he did nothing to save NY. In fact he and Adam Schiff went junketeering in Paris, while he should have been home supporting his fellow candidates. neither the DCCC or DNC devoted any money to those races that were lost.
Certainly the Democratic party has taken its base for granted, except when they need money and votes, but the real money it gets is from millionaires, billionaires and mega donors, the corporations, and they have a visceral hate for progressives, much like Rahm Emanuel who called us "fucking retards:, because progressives don't have deep pockets like their mega donors.
And it is no surprise that the citizens of the losing district in NY have caught on.
I find cluster munitions abhorrent, but that is the only defense Ukraine has at the moment, as Russia continues to press Ukraine. So just lay down and surender.
Biden a war monger, laughable, only a Putin troll could say such a thing. Putin is the war monger here, how about putting pressure on Putin.
Biden would not give Ukraine the F-16's it needed nor the long range rockets and artillery it needs, meanwhile Putin is turning Ukraine into a pile of rubble, and whines like a baby when drones hit Moscow..
Russia needs to taste what Ukraine is tasting. How nice to have a sanctuary from which one can attack civilians, especially childrenand turn a country into rubble
with no consequences.
Openly or inadvertently you are championing a murderous war Criminal (Putin)
What got Trump elected in the first place, was racism, misogyny and homophobia, the culture war, and that is all, and in 2020 we had enough of him, an d 81 million people , a record, turned out to turn him out of the White House
В жопу товарищ
V zhopu tovarishch
FYI, I don'[t give a rats ass about Biden, never respected him, never trusted him, but a bed bug is better than Trump, any minute of the day, any day of the week.
As regards Putin, if there was justice in the world, he would be swinging from a rope in Belgium, for the cowardly, psychopathic, child killer and destroyer of nations that he is.
i'm older & obviously have more clarity than you: biden's
>> w a r m o n g e t i n g << ??
>> w a r h a w k s << ??
putin 🔥 blows away a Democratic country'd infrastructure? 🎯ing civilians supply lines maternity hospitals schools cathedrals and wheat fields it will bring on massive famine in Africa as if it weren't already bad enough.... Moscow gets a taste of 3 drones and eclairs nuclear the next step?? do you want to try to convince me to blame that on Biden? You haven't so far try again and again try some more
Nope I'm still not convinced . BIDEN is ready to declare
Climate EMERGENCY ‼️
wow Republicans want to produce more oil and gas ? Do you believe yourself? Well obviously you do that do you hear yourself
So Biden is perfectly obstrucing diplomacy, I can only assume that you are talking about Ukraine, and the Putin troll rears its head. Wow do you have an affection for Putin.
There is no diplomatic solution for Ukraine, only complete surrender to Putin with all of the horrors that follow.
Then you toss in liberal warmongering, Proof yet again that you are a Putin troll, if not a Trump humper.
I don't usually respond to vitriolic diatribes --esp if replete w/ nixon / bush the C-student era buzz words describing them. i have learned in 76 years that contrary responses fall on closed brains --yes indictment has been read. I've also printed and read the dems 40 demands to censor WARMONGERING ( to use ur term ) AK wielding mtg ( g as in gro....? W?...grow up...
gO ?...away...SS ? ...gross... SS -- yes I think she would like that one , & as she has already called in the MARSHALS , she will never put it together; indeed may end up in her next campaign photo ! akg et al.
you sound a lot less vicious if you would be transparent about repubs
Urgency to please their pocket running hobbyists in the gas and oil industries--which now are destroying tuna populations with their international waters pipelines.
Surely you're aware ? i'm not part of a cabral , and if anyone on this page is riding a high horse📸 gotcha on camera.
Help me understand : Biden is a warmonger because NASCAR received three drone attacks and wants to reply with an Oppenheimer invention ? Russia is brutally destroy the infrastructure of a free nation .
Am I correct so far ? They are wiping out the breadbasket of Europe , which of course will bring famine
Thank you Thom for continuing to relate the disaster that looms if we do not energize efforts to continually expose and oppose the Maga authoritarians.
Its says a lot about how far we’ve fallen from reality and peace of mind
when Trumps militant ignorants elevate his indictments to a form of approval.
Its at least massively disturbing, to see these fools in Congress, head fool , Kevin McCarthy attack Joe Biden and his son Hunter bypassing reality and calling for impeachment. Another radical move just designed to take the focus off of Trumps massive criminal agenda. . This is an example of the willingness of Maga republicans to take this Country to the hell of their lies without mercy for anyone but billionaires .
Those people have floated the despicable Maga in return for more leeway to destroy the world for money .
That is acceptable to them in their rotten corps of Maga fascists.
What has happened to the Constitution?
Well the six justices for Maga on the Supreme Court have totally bastardized the Constitution for the purpose of elevating Maga fascists.
The idea that people are created equally and have the same rights under the law has been burned to ashes by these justices. An aid to the Maga corps for sure.
The Heritage Society and like groups the Koch brothers , Leonard Leo and etc have destroyed democracy for their monetary benefit.
They too are fascists as is all of the Republican party . Even the more moderately positioned republicans don’t say a word against this perfidy. They are therefore complicit.
They too, live the lie.
At some point maybe someone will remind people here that George w. Bush invaded Iraq, allowed the credit crisis to explode, helped destroy the us reputation around the world and put people like Sam Alito on the Supreme Court.
Sit back and do a FULL accounting - was trump's first term really worse than bush?
Trump is utter nonsense, utter criminality and incompetence.
But so much of this all actually comes from The NY Times - which put 21 different pieces about trump in one 2015 sunday edition which featured zero (nothing) about Bernie, the most popular politician in America. Harvard's Shorenstein center put out a report, saying that in 2015 it was the free media coverage that drove trumps campaign as he had no campaign chest to draw upon and would've been unable to to succeed absent all that free media exposure.
The most basic thing that goes unacknowledges by almost all media, is that neither the New York Times, nor any other main stream outlet, even questioned trumps qualification for this position, when he came to this position having no experience in politics, won no prior elections, having had no experience in foreign policy, having had no experience with regulation, even having had no audit committee with independent representation on the board of his company.
A simple rule, saying that you can't run for president without having first served in the cabinet, or been the governor of a state, or having been a senator, would go such a long way to avoiding the horrible damage that this crap media does to the society.
Thank you Thom again for nailing the root of this country’s barriers to effectively mitigate the looming crisis of climate change. I’m at the end of my lifespan but extremely worried about the “red lights “ flashing warnings of oncoming climate disasters for my grandchildren and great grandchildren. We’ve already had some of the highest temperatures on record this summer and recently extreme winter conditions that literally locked many of us in our mountain communities due to nonstop snowfall in S. Cal. People have died due to this this extreme weather, both hot and cold weather conditions. All people should be alarmed but unfortunately the naysayers, the Republican death cult and their donor fossil fuel conspirators, continue to willfully bury facts of causation from man made dirty energy sources. But of course the obstruction from Republicans and their selective policies to reward the rich is why the rest of us in America and (I’ll add around the globe) can’t have nice things. We all should be angry and demanding change to advance development and use of alternative energy programs but again, the science deniers, the willfully ignorants, the gaslighted Maggats somehow prevail.
Kathy says: " but again, the science deniers, the willfully ignorants, the gaslighted Maggats somehow prevail."
I lay the blame on the media, including "liberal" MSNBC, People don't know how the media actually works. There is a board of directors, whose members sit on other boards, including the petro chemical, military industrial, fossil fuel complex. is a Venn Diagram of overlapping BoD's,
Therir purpose is to ensure a constant and increasing return on investment for the investors, not only of the media company, but the companies on whose board they sit.
The BoD hires and fires executives, and executives know how to toe the party line, and hire producers, editors, talking heads that toe the party line.. When you see a talking head on TV, whether it is a news reader (there are no real journalists and reporters, they all have ear buds,you can see the coiled white wire behind their ear, which is the producer telling them what to say, monitoring and censoring their speech, also a screen in front of them with the script.
The #1 rule is don't say anything that disturbs our owners and advertisers.
Corporations as a rule do not place ads directly with the media, they use ad companies, that monitor the behavior (output) of media corporations and thus do not direct ads to companies that are not considered reliable to the profit motive of the advertiser.
PhARMA or rather the companies that are PhRMA, primarily place ads with NBC and MSNBC.
I've got not much else to do, so I started a list of Drugs hawked in MSNBC, it was 81 drugs, until Jul, then they started hawking new Drugs with the most ridiculous and insulting of names, they pay a consulting firm to come up with these stupid names. I started late this year, so far I've collected four new drugs, there are scores more, that I failed to write down, but I will
fascinating... health concerns are on my calling card--i'll join in the count
....on my forehead is tattooed
🚫 FDA🚫AMA. Q: why are Naturopath Physicians permitted to practice the art in ~20 states only?beware of western med
... most mammals have an endo- cannabinoid system--just as a cardiovascular system, melatonergic
System (melatonin by the way has been claimed to be Covid preventative), BUT fascinating re: the endocannabinoid system are the pros or cons of the various terpenes & ternabinoids --
eg: > pinene= anti-inflammatory,
Antibacterial , is a bronchodilator
(so this is a good one for pasc--aka long Covid, rheumatologic disorders,
Traveling ... myriad uses;
> humulene is likewise anti-inflammatory, but it's also an appetite suppressant (surprise surprise!); rate secondary terpines are > sabinenr= Anti-bacteria and ❗️ antioxidant ( who doesn't need that?!!); >borneol= Anti-inflammatory and analgesic; >phytol = Anti-inflammatory and antianxiety
(my dictum is: ppm in the in the air, water, food, GOP, angry planet, major global {Ecuador anyone ?}shift to the right, endemics, leprosy in Florida... you get it...= EVERYONE
could benefit from any of the above .
••••• Caution: ecs is extraordinarily, for me, complicated: do your diligent research! (the Funny Drug Admin did not require me to state that; were I to say "discuss with your healthcare practitioner"--as the fda requires for non-approved treatments... you are most likely be laughed out of the office of an md, do office. oh...i too am a ca survivor
x 2...aenesthesia was tougher than chemo--they had no tcm acupuncture physicians on staff.
ps: sun grown plants are best, no plant nor plant product bought --oop by the way / not covered by ins-- from approved medicinal pharmacies can claim to be organic!
Good luck on your health journey
Western Med is allopathic. It treats the symptoms not the disease.There is a time and place for it, such as I had lung and brain cancer I am in remission since Oct 2017 for Lung and brain cancer, thanks to a craniotomy and two years of triweekly Keytruda infusions. (Immunotherapy not chemo) chemo is a killer
I just watched a Special featuring Anderson Cooper, it was about cannabis instead of drugs, the special featured Israel and Florida I think, mostly about people over 50 using cannabis instead of drugs to treat alzheimers, pain, depression and it works, but it is medical grade marijuana.
I don't smoke, hut I do take gummies to help me sleep through the night, otherwise I have insominia and wake up many times, with the gummies I get a good nights sleep, never used the stuff recreational, and only started the gummies about three months ago.
My wife smokes it though, she has a lot of medical problems, like fibromyalgia and it really helps.
The only drug I take is metformin and I am considering getting off that as well.
Genetic testing for health at 23andme, says that as far as my body, metformin is not efficacious, but my PCP ordered it anyway., so I figured what the heck and recently found out that there are side effects.
I was also taking Melatonin, but that has a side effect that costs you your balance,and I have a problem with that anyway, since the cranitomy and subsequent radiation.
By the way my PCP is a D.O., it is legal in my state. The south is stuck in the 19th century. And I don't live there or the midwest either.
The reason I tell this story is to back you up. Not complaining or braggine, neither serves a purpose because either doesn't change a thing.
One can legitimately wonder what these "lefty meat" pieces accomplish. Clearly, it would be at least one thing - many of its readers have not read the indictment filed yesterday.
"We all should be angry and demanding change to advance development and use of alternative energy programs"
It would be good to get the average mpg of the cars driven by the commenters, just to see how the single most obvious things people can do to help the planet are completely left out of the discussion.
Thom did a great job on the radio show today discussing the indictment, starting by saying it's of the greatest importance and about democracy itself.
This is right on, thank you Thom for getting on to the indictment today.
Golly, way to stick it to the tree huggers! The mpg of the vehicles we drive? Really? When the entire range of consumer choice is manipulated entirely to satisfy the billionaire class? Sure, we should just pay no attention to the fossil fuel industrial complex’s full obstruction of all climate-protecting measures. No it’s the Hartman readers! It’s all their fault. Seriously, WHAT?
...still not finished: WHO KNEW?:
--government will subsidize solar
panels not only for homes but for >>corner unit condominiums & apartments
>> and did not the first solar powered airplane just demonstrate ingenuity and hope
--why are we selling public land to China?
--let's talk hydrogen
--A drive to northern Spain takes one -through --acres and acres of windmills--for decades now
--Israel (🚫 net) did not reveal to the visiting Magas their underground watering filtration system !
(Israel 21 APP)
... my recommendation: take a nap;
Begin DAILY lIPOSOMAL glutathione. Shop politically
Don't forget to water the birds and the dogs and the cats
please allow me to correct my dictation/-
i have an environmentally induced neurological condition which interferes with my mouth movements: my accidentally sent message above
Meant to read:
WE EACH R OF ABILITY AND HOPE
if you do not know how and why it is imperative to SAVE our intelligently designed champions of the food chain--butterflies / bumblebees //birds--from climate crisis and the likes of Baer Monsanto, I refer you to
Environmental defensefund.org, friendsoftheearth.org, NATURAL RESOURCESDEFENSE COUNCIL.org., earthjustice.org,
MDPI jOURNALS such as NATURE,
AGRICULTURE --MDPF I said where has a wealth of information scientific, MEDICAL, ANIMAL, VETERINARY, HABITAT.. .
not necessary to join ARBER foundation to plant a tree a week//yes I know , it takes 20 years for a tree to a tree to be productive.
BUT THIS TEENAGER'S incredible awareness to make a commitment to save the ocean graces us with an element of time//
HE DECLARES A
CLEAN OCEAN BY 2040/-
without this news, & the 10 participant ( i believe it is 10) Challenge to create the largest carbon capture plan Which will award $$$enough to produce the plan--nasa is a participant --I will be sounding the alarm by 2026--
although it is clanging now at an enormous decibel
--and😱‼️ an infectious fly invasion!! diseased mosquitoes in Florida; leprosy in Florida (though I doubt the authoritarian who believes he is a new Messiah... "Will be filmed touching a leper!)
I have previously listed several actions that the poorest of the poor
can accomplish and benefit from .
Please write to all legislators in your state, to the EPA, especially the department of AGRICULTURE:
> .> VOTE NO E.A.T.S. Act < <
" TAX COW BURPS " read billboards in Texas (courtesy PCRM)
--and for heaven sake GET OFF , the meat wagon! Factory farmed cattle
=⬆️ methane than a melting
iceberg
He is a troll, a proven Putin puppet.
Hey, anybody can play catch the troll! It's the guy who says:
1. Garland is timid.
2. Nobody important will be prosecuted.
3. Nobody will be charged with seditious conspiracy.
That's the troll!
I stated my opinons everyone has one. At least I have the courage to state mine,and to state where I stand ideologically and politically.
You not, how about telling us about yourself so we don't assume the worse, by your own posts.
As regard Garland being timid. I stand by that, he is either cowardly, corrupt or compromised
It took over a year since the J6 committee for him to take action, and he was shamed into it by peers and the J6 committee. His delay cost time, and perhaps the ability to charge Trump , and he still hasn't charged the malefactors in Congress. Rep Adam Schiff said the same thing on MSNBC.
Actually, in my "troll" opinioni, Garland is compromised by ideolgoy and loyalties, after all he was nominated to Obama, by the right wing extremist Orrin Hatch R-UT and he was a moderator (10 times) for the Federal Society, you know that think tank that is vetting right wing judges, and seeks to overturn the constitution, though laws passed by a Republican House and 6 corrupt right wing judge on SCOTUS
Now tell us who you are dude. This tactic of yours going on the offense, to avoid telling us who you are, isn't working
I never said it was the Hartman readers fault, please try to read - you can do it.
There's just a certain absurdity of people as a daily routine coming on a web forum like this and saying we need to demand change, when the most obvious and direct impact is with what we drive.
It's on nobody's mind and that's the problem. It's only on the minds of Canadian vacationers who come here and don't even see enough charging stations. They come from a country that has an economy tied to fossil fuels just like ours yet they accept 10 dollar gas prices and support an initiative to really change over to electric vehicles.
Media powerfully affects what's in people's minds. This comment is not about pointing blame at readers, or
This you?
“ It would be good to get the average mpg of the cars driven by the commenters, just to see how the single most obvious things people can do to help the planet are completely left out of the discussion.”
P.S. when I can afford one I’m getting an EV. And not only is climate/ecological collapse on my mind pretty much 24/7, I do my best to share info and raise awareness in what small ways I can. Tho honestly I’m pretty much fully collapse aware at this point, and I think the most important priority right now is to prepare for mitigation and harm reduction among the most vulnerable. The inevitable is … inevitable.
No, that's the ultimate conclusion the masters want people to draw. Nobody can do anything, even the congress. But it's not true and we will all benefit once we have some plan that everyone can actually participate in and relate to - it's going on in many parts of the world through conversion to EVs, ESG investing, etc. and we need to know more about what's going on outside USA. These are only secrets if we guide our thinking by us media standards.
....uummmm: EURONEWZ (tubi free APP does not need to be connected to your television service
...uuummmm: young man started at age 16 to feel responsible for our plastic ocean //now owns a company cleaning tons and tons of plastic from the ocean 24/7 ! this machine clears an area the size of a football field every 10 seconds. if some of us are not technocrats, name the appropriate bumblebee and butterfly flowering bush for your area.
Go ahead :_____. ? do you not know how to save the insects and butterflies family pesticide fungicide insecticide of the man senses of the world SPECT that will ultimately bring home faster family and ultimate famine ultimately famine
And yo are the great (name your adjective) hope?
The magnets found in permanent magnet motors used in electric vehicles contain rare-earth metals to increase the power output of these motors. The mining and processing of metals such as lithium, copper, and nickel requires significant energy and can release toxic compounds into the surrounding area.
Lithium batteries are proving to be dangerous, catching on fire (there is a cargo ship in the Atlantic, loaded with Porsche's , that is burning and nothing can be done.
And the battery life of these batteries is five years, and the coast of replacing them is more than you would spend in preventative maintenance in five years
Your sanctimonious declarations are boring.But predictable.
And since the bulk of Thom's readers and viewers are "lefties", your "scathing" critiques are directed at Thom's readers. Yes they are.
That seems to be the right wings form of attack. They act very friendly at first and then turn on you like a pack of hyenas. All they can do is itch, itch, itch. They think complaining will get them elected even though they are mentally bankrupt on making life better on this planet. Tearing down what we the people have now, will only make things worse in the future. Most of the trolls suffer from mental illness also. They're very disruptive and positive they are correct and are narcissistic as well. I have a relative like that who can go on for hours and hours... I changed my phone number.
Once again Marc, by your choice of slurs, you expose yourself. You've got a serious case against progressives (lefty's in your right wing vernacular). Why do I say that, because only right wing trolls use he "L" word to describe progressives.
By the way, twice or three at most, times a week I drive 3.5 miles to town, to pick up food at the market and pick up mail and packages at my private mail box, then 3.5 miles back.
I combine any other visit, like a medical appointment, with that trip.
I also bought $5,000 worth of shares in the electrical coop that services the county, for solar power.
If Trump gets back in the White House it will spark a civil war in this country, an event that will only hasten the advance of global warming, ensuring our demise as a nation and the end of Homo sapiens as a species. Another Trump presidency is suicidal, not only for ordinary Americans, but for the fascist Republican oligarchs and Putin-loving pimps of war that stage managed this whole political nightmare. The Uber rich and super powerful seem to harbor the illusion that they are exempt from the climate crisis, but that will be dissolved quickly when the temperature and humidity reach wet bulb 35 celsius, which is deadly to all living beings, including racist MAGA Republican dumb asses. One good outcome however, is that the only item on the menu at the parties celebrating Trump's election victory will be money and as these numbskulls will find out, you can't eat money!
Since Ronald Reagan, the GOP gave up trying to improve the life of Americans and instead focused on stealing as much loot while turning America into a third world failed nation. The natural progression would have been to oppose free trade and to support self-supporting prisons and poor farms. Instead of solving problems the GOP mostly with Mitch McConnell has focused on turning America into a dictatorship, where American citizens food and drugs can be poisoned for profit. Where the minimum wage can be repealed and where there is no social security and where enemies of the state can be tortured and have their organs harvested and killed. Unlimited greed, phony religions and the family unit have made this normal human behavior for thousands of years. The clock is ticking. I pity all the good people and could care less about the parasites.
The problem with the Nader elected W story and the Stein elected Trump story is that both ignore the third party vote totals for the Reform,Libertarian and Constitution Parties. Yes, Nader got enough votes to undercut Gore, but Buchanan, Browne and Phillips did the same for W. And Gary Johnson and Darrell Castle got more than three times as many votes as Stein in WI, ditto in MI and PA. Third Party candidates have usually taken far more votes from GOP presidential candidates than they have from Democratic candidates. And of course, there is Ross Perot in 1992 who knocked HW out of his re-election attempt.
Anyway, Nader did not cost Gore the presidency in 2000. Antonin Scalia did when he stopped the FL recount, which Gore would have narrowly won if the votes were counted honestly as ordered by the FL Supreme Court. And the primary reason the FL vote was as close as it was is due to the incompetence of the Democratic Party officials in Palm Beach County who approved the butterfly ballot which pushed thousands of votes to Buchanan that voters thought they had voted for Gore. And even that doesn't count the vast purge of eligible voters by Sec of State, Katherine Harris.
Au Contraire,Nader did cost Gore, and America, the election. Because it was the Florida votes that counted, it was the Florida votes that SCOTUS ruled on. In Florida betweenBush and Gore, Nader took enough votes from Gore, that he elected Bush.
The same with Jill Stein. What you are looking at, perhaps, are the national totals, and as a reminder I tell you that it isn't the national popular vote that matters. It is the electoral college, and Hillary won the national (popular Vote) by Trump won the electoral college. Swing states are called swing states for that reason.
No, I was looking at the votes in those three states. But it is the popular vote within the states that grants a candidate its electoral votes. You can't complain about third party candidates' impact on Dems while disregarding the same thing on the Repub side. They have been spoilers against Repubs far more than against Dems. Check the numbers out for yourself.
Tom, I have been worried about this since the last election. My worries have not gone away. That is what Trump has done, he has made sure I cannot even enjoy having the best president in my lifetime because Trump with his selfish ego has made everything so rotten.
The last several elections were lost to Democrats due to third party candidates. If the Democratic candidates needed those votes, why didn't they adopt progressive ideas to attract those voters. Like saying they would provide national healthcare, make marijuana legal at the federal level, and provide tuition free higher education to all.
The obvious reason they didn't was because they felt they didn't need those voters and wrote them off. Instead of demonizing third party candidates why don't we criticize the Democratic candidates themselves, including Joe Biden.
Sadly I agree with that. The problem is the DNC. I've said it too many times, they are beholden to the same Mega donors as the Republican party, just now Trump is hauling in the cash, and beating Biden, there aren't enough small donors supporting Biden.
Until LBJ, the Democratic party was the party of blue collar workers and racists, and they were usually one and the same, but the Republicans benefited from the shift of blue collar and racists Democrats to Republican with Nixon and his southern strategy.
Clinton exasperated the whole thing with NAFTA and GAAT, which saw the exodus of manufacturing to Mexico and then Asia.
The Democratic party is aged, in leadership and philosophy. om 2009 he Rahm Emanuel said "Progressives are fucking retarded", then he went on to kill public education, in favor of Charter schools (I imagine Betsy Devos had an organism)
Here is how the DNC operates, they have a stable of old tired horses, stuck in the past, who do not upset the conservative mega donors and corporation. When election season comes around they pick the one that has stood in line, paid their dues and earned credentials (which Trump proved does not matter) Clinton was wrong, it is not the economy, it is the culture war.
And the old horses that have been trotting in circles around the paddock, biding their time waiting to be called to the starting gait, don't have a chance in the 21st Century, but the DNC would have to admit they lack imagination, reasoning skills, and are hide bound by tradition, because they "owe" it to the old faithfuls. Thus the best they could come up with is Terry McAuliffe for Governor of VA and Hillary for President.
Biden, in my opinion, he is in office because 81 million people voted to turn Trump out of office, a head of cabbage could have beat Trump.
The Republicans know that, so they have used the time since 2020, to enact state laws, that suppress and nullify the elections, even laws that ignore the popular vote in favor of a legislature selecting the electors.
True in Moore v. Harper (Rebecca Harper) they ruled in favor of Harper and thus rejected the Independent State Legislature theory, but that doesn't matter, now that Alabama has ignored the Supreme Court and kept their gerrymandered map. If Alabama can ignore the court,and if Biden won't send in U.S. Marshalls, which he can do (Article II gives him the authority to declare a national emergency, but the weak man, sits there like a stonewall, letting the Republicans shit on him.
Count the states with Republican legislatures and see tha they actually control more than the required 270 electoral votes
Again, the notorious trump and his republican cohorts are shown to be verrrrrry bad people.
Somehow this film seems familiar, like maybe we've seen it over and over again on the same screen this summer.
Let's not focus on what democrats did in response, which was to give the madman the largest surveillance and military budget, with associated powers, ever in history - with little oversight.
Let's not read the most important indictment ever in the history of the us, or talk about what's in it, or talk about the heros that put their careers, families and lives on the line for these cases.
Let's not talk about merrick garlands actual record, or how many cases have been brought successfully. Let's not even consider what doj policies are, or whether there is anny difference between a speeding ticket and a sprawling conspiracy case with hundreds of witnesses. Instead let's use that word that cnn (in its newly red-tinted perspective) uses to describe garland, and let's assume that hundreds of witnesses can be corralled up to willingly testify against their boss in just a few months.
"Dithering is such a good verb and can't be overused in Washington," cnn co-host Brianna Keilar said!
Moving away from red-tinted cnn, we find the guardian reporting yesterday that when the criminal referrals were made by the House, cases had already been opened and were already being worked on by doj. But why mention something that appears in the Guardian, which faithfully carries important news about climate change, and Trump and all his horrors every single day - when it contradicts a favored narrative and one can use the same dumbed down catch phrases that CNN uses?
Maybe, just maybe, with this critical indictment in place, it's thom Hartman that is "dithering" by failing to cover it, or even read it? In any event the readers here are getting Brianna Keiler-level analysis
on garland.
The only thing left to do is have mock trials, where serious people like thom Hartman and William Farrar, with their extensive knowledge of federal criminal prosecutions and what is involved in successfully prosecuting thousands of cases, can show us how simple and easy it is to bring criminal cases like the one in this indictment, or to win cases (say, last year) when numerous material witnesses about the case haven't cooperated or testified yet.
Is there No limit on these prepackaged pieces? Even today, when the most important criminal case (or any case) in the history of this country was filed yesterday? Just remember that jack smith encourages everyone to read the indictment in full, something you won't be encouraged to do by any mainstream media or (at least today) by this outlet.
You’re offended that Thom said the AG dithered. I’m struggling to see how your long rant is proportional to that. Are you actually a subscriber? Why?
You're right! Scratch my comment and replace with this:
Thom's piece today is spot on as usual.
What a great day to say that republicans are bad. In fact I'm proud to think it, read and say it. "Republicans are bad." See?
Let's not worry about whether, across the board, former federal prosecutors and doj experts with expertise constantly show that these lazy uninformed characterizations of merrick garland and DOJ are BOTH
1. Wrong, and
2. Of real importance.
No, let's just do one thing- again and again.
Republicans are bad.
Certainly it's better than focusing on how the DOJ was manipulated into creating false flags to help trump's conspiracy, how smith documents this in the indictment, and how the indictment tells a clearer more detailed story that Jan 6 report or media has ever been able to do...
Nahhh.
Republicans are bad!
Gotta give up with this this dictation thing
I should finish that says dictation is wrong and sent accidentally:;
That's the best you can come up with ; baseless swipes had a president who has said more records than president, DOJ, whatever whatever whoever is on the maga menu will regurgitated repeatedly that everyone if you would like
had anyone ever been able to live without you?! I don't know if I should take an hour with such low brow venomous attacks. A bit full of yourself .. do you practice in front of the mirror?
and lastly
that's the best analysis you can come up with what is written in success don'tm
.... tell us how you really feel, oh boy
One nasty person . take a nap after a Brickhouse hit, eat your polyphenols and flavonoids, and don't forget the LIPOSOMAL Ubiquinol
Well I agree with your criticism of the DOJ, It is still Trump's DOJ, he appointed scores of acting associates to the DOJ, DHS. DOD, NSA, and other important federl agencies, by EO 13975, which created Schedule F civil servants, and that EO simultaneously changed the status of protected civil service of the employees who his appointees were to replace to at will, and voila the DOJ, amongst others is populated by Trump humpers, like you.
As far as Garland, by his inaction alone, and also by his actions, he too is complicit.
Yes he is, and scratch the lottery ticket, and you will see that Garland is responsible for having Aileen Cannon as the Florida judge inTrump's trial.
He floated the nonsense excuse that her name came up on the "wheel", named for the wheel on Jeopardy.
So te;; is who your really are, Your ideolgy, your world view, where to you fit on the political spectrum.
Your comments indicate that you are a right wing troll and a Putinist.
I get it, both Democrats and Republicans have led us to this stage. The point is who do you want to have as our next President Biden or Trump?
On one level, there is no question, right now only one party will even support the rule of law and fair elections. There is no comparison and anyone reading this newsletter should be happy to be able to vote for biden. It's just a vote.
On another level, both parties corrupted leaves opening for corporate power to control mostly everything. And we must consider whether the extremist nature of republicans is emboldened or made possible by weakness and corruption of Democratic Party, of its coming unmoored from labor and working classes, class politics etc.
There should be some serious consideration of not only instant runoff voting, but also third-party candidates at every level, and in my view, Thom Hartman has not been as welcoming, and supporting to the idea of third-party as would be appropriate, given history and the flexible nature of our election systems.
We have lived into this notion that it's better to try to use the Democratic Party as a vehicle for progressives to assert power but unfortunately, you can ask Bernie and Jayapal whether their agenda is being promoted or crushed in the last few years by this overall strategy.
I agree, but I would rather have another 4 years to tackle that problem than full blown authoritarianism.
I'm right with you. In fact, the reason why I make some of the comments I do is to caution against buying into right wing narratives that "Merrick Garland is timid" and "Merrick Garland is bad" and "Biden is politically going after trump," etc. and everything else that they say which might cause people to stay home during an election - none of which is true, none of which is going to be helpful.
Finally, I agree with almost your entire comment, but not the notion of a third party. Not in America. Teddy Roosevelt who was very progressive in many ways (probably a racist though),proved what a wreck Third Parties are, so did Ralph Nader. If all of those Florida votes went for Gore, there would have been no Dubya, no Iraq war, no waste of money and lives in Afghanistan either. and if Jill Stein hadn't run against Biden in 2016 Trump would never have been President.
The sad fact is that, all that third parties do, is peel votes away from Progressive candidates (even if they are marginally progressive, and help or ensure that the fascist and their mega donors control the country.
A vote for a third party is a vote for Trump. You might notice that no conservative , corporate stooge ever runs as a Third party, the only Third party candidates steel votes away from liberals.
Oh. Ok.
There you go again Marc, A Trump humping troll. Should I add a Putinist into that equation?
This is not a right wing message board. If you don't care for Thom, then leave and do us all a favor
Worse and worser every day. Amazing how stupid so many humans are. And I agree. I think the morbidly rich think they can protect themselves from climate catastrophe. They may last longer. But they too well go
THE ONLY THING THAT MATTERS HERE IS THE CLIMATE CRISIS. I promise you, we will not be around if either Biden or Trump are re-elected as President. Biden, in response to the hottest Summer ever and a myriad of other climate turning points, threw a few million $ at some sort of better weather/heat/whatever tracking system. He's authorized drilling in AK and is best buds with that jerk Prime Minister in the UK who just authorized 100's of drilling licenses in the North Sea. These old farts don't care; they (and their minions) already know that the only way to guarantee that they will be alive 5 years from now is to have some billion $ bunker in New Zealand or Raven's Rock, et al. Do you have any idea how many Raven's Rocks exist? 100's if not more.
Ginger, It is actually too late, to turn back the heat. It doesn't matter who is president. It's too late, Arctic ice is gone, it might recover a little in winter, but only a little, because of the Albedo effect, the Jet Stream has been distorted and it now shifts south, Mid America, The Greenland glaciers are melting and soon archaeologists and airplane buffs will have a field day, but all that fresh water is disrupting the Atlantic current which warms the East coast, and Europe.
On top of that the Antarctic ice cap, is melting, and the sea ice is not rebuilding.
Given that, there are estimates that we have at most to the 22nd Century before the Anthropocene ends and a new geological epoch begins, but one that will be devoid of most life on Earth. The Anthropocene is the period in which humans have had a profound impact on the planet, It started in the 1950's according to some. There are estimates that we have about 27 more years. AT 84 and my wife at 70 we will be long gone, but not my descendants.
I have no choice except to continue living my life, and making wills, as if everything will go on as before,
We could be hit by an asteroid
You're right! But, I still believe in miracles, just don't see them coming from the White House anytime soon. Check out 'Don't Look Up' on Netflix for the 'asteroid hit' scenario;) It's actually a climate crisis allegory movie.
Well I should enjoy the time I've got left. I am in my 89th year with two daughters and four granddaughters. My beautiful wife Irene and I have one vote each. The next presidency should be very exciting at the least. I hope you scare the crap out of enough people to turn the tide you figure we got coming. Sounds like you figure all is lost. I am keeping my eye on you and your prognostications. Hope you and I can have a good laugh after the next election.
I hope that I make it to 8 9, only 5 more years. I've already beat the odds with brain and lung cancer. discovered in 2017, oncologist says I am a miracle.
Indeed, the stakes have never been higher. We need to come together as humanity and work together to transition immediately from fossil fuels. Another Republican administration would be a disaster for the planet.
Gorsuch is an Episcopalian and when he was first nominated, I looked up his church on line. From their website, they appear to be pretty darn progressive. I wonder how he squares it all and how pleased his fellow parishioners are with some of his decisions.
Believe that all this can happen. We are well on our way. We have already been conditioned to accept the worst.
“…public schools will be replaced with vouchers for private, segregated, religious academies as has already happened under Republican administrations in Arizona and Florida.” It’s a done deal in Louisiana, too.
The threat of school privatization or the intention of reactionaries or libertarians to “destroy” education or public schools are recurrent themes, and for good reason. They are winning. This is their foot in the door. Plans for stopping them are vague and indirect. I keep asking the same kinds of questions, however. Did you know, e.g., that many prominent Democratic stars and philanthropists, such as Cory Booker, Obama, Bloomberg, and others have been big boosters for charter schools? (See Democrats for Education Reform). DEMOCRATS. Please explain.
As Pogo said, “I have seen the enemy and he is us”.
To my utter amazement, I find it necessary to ask the astute and erudite readers here again if they believe that our traditional public schools are “as good as could be expected”, “doing an acceptable job”, or if they rate somewhere above a “D-“. Can I get a show of hands? Does anyone think that it is worth even asking?
Is there any more urgent or important issue? How do these questions relate to politics or to the preservation of democracy, which has now taken center stage?
If schools are to be saved, should we not solve some of their monumental problems to make them defensible and functional? Pick up a newspaper.
I am aware that it is terribly impolite to inquire. But I really need to know, for example, what educators truly and honestly think of the 20 – 30% or more of students who have never excelled at anything in their schools or who feel invisible, demoralized, or disposable there. What are their true feelings and opinions about their students who are often mercilessly chided or dinged for “work not completed”; about those who are punished repeatedly for unacceptable behavior; about those who flunk or simply disappear, or the many who quietly fake it and are sent away, many with a diploma, without ever having quite “gotten it”?
Perhaps just as significantly, can anyone tell me how those who were “A” students, the teachers’ pet, or the “average” children who were recognized and rewarded as good kids, social, and “not a problem” have felt toward those others in the lower ten or twenty-percent of the class who were a problem? Do you remember any of those troublesome kids? Did they ever matter? Are you nostalgic for the great school experiences YOU had, totally unaware of the misery others faced daily?
Oh, we all know that those kids who didn’t fare quite as well in that environment should not really be blamed, of course. Some had undiagnosed “learning disabilities”. Their parents “didn’t have books in the home”. “No one read bedtime stories to them”. “Parents were not involved in their schooling” or they had family disruptions and certain demographic issues.
We cannot expect the schools to compensate for poverty, social conditions, or those kinds of things, can we? Can we? We cannot hold educators responsible for not mitigating personal or family problems, can we? Or can we? School is not a social service agency after all, is it?
Does anyone other than me consider it rather peculiar that free services and facilities in or adjacent to school simply do not exist to address many of these gross deficiencies in this great and wonderful, rich country? Could that possibly be because schools have been sold as the end-all and be-all for curing society’s ills and because educators have co-opted that entire domain and hyped their incomparable value incessantly with fictitious or delusional claims? Is that why attendance there is still involuntary?
What has been only rarely understood is that, in an institutional setting, for a variety of reasons, authority that is assigned is nearly impossible to control. Teachers seldom control authority; authority frequently gets the upper hand. Authority is the dark matter contaminating school under compulsory attendance. The status quo is omnipotent as a result.
One more question: With the exception of the destructiveness of inequality and issues such as the ludicrous fear of CRT being imposed on unsuspecting white students, why have I never, ever heard one single word of empathy or sympathy for the victims of bad schooling in this space? Not one word.
How much longer will we pretend that such victims simply do not exist? What is it, if it is not denial, selective blindness, or willful ignorance to blow off the people who have been failed by these authoritarian bureaucracies? Incidentally, while the worst damage is typically done to poor children and minorities, NO individual or group is immune to the harm of programming and conditioning based on arbitrary authority and a misanthropic conception of education.
One might expect certain people to feel a need to overlook the chronic problems, controversies, and shortcomings of schools, or to attribute those all to stingy legislators, inattentive or uninvolved parents, ‘a few bad apples’ (i.e., poorly trained or incompetent teachers or unruly students), or predictable features of any comparable major social undertaking involving a diverse and dependent population. Teachers, for example, should not be expected to be completely objective on this score.
However, it takes a special kind of obfuscation to downplay a pathetic success rate (measuring by the accomplishment of the stated missions and goals, such as graduation, literacy, numeracy, employability, intellectual and academic acumen, social and psychological adjustment, civic engagement or at a minimum, awareness and voting record, etc.) which hovers around 50% if one is exceptionally generous. To quote, George Bush, the Lesser, “oops”.
Are those who appear to be obtuse and strongly or reflexively biased in favor of our schools just naïve? Are they school snobs who found school to be ‘a piece of cake’ and are therefore indifferent or oblivious to the millions of students who have struggled, endured anxiety and humiliation, and who felt lost, ignored, or confounded? Do they want to have their cake and eat it too? Are they school cultists? Do they have some deep psychological urge to deny the failures that are the subject of thousands of reports and empirical research studies? Are those studies somehow irrelevant or inaccurate? What am I missing?
I have asked before for anyone who believes that our schools rate highly (AAA+!!!), or that “we have the best schools in the world” (referring to traditional “public state mandated schools), or that putting men on the moon and achieving amazing scientific progress are attributable to the schools, to finally provide something much more substantial as solid empirical evidence to both validate and absolve them. Is that an unreasonable request given that statements are frequently made here that democracy depends wholly on a well-informed, educated, and engaged citizenry?
You tell me. This is the place where having a conscience and being consciously aware of all of the social and political factorials are taken seriously and discussed honestly and openly, is it not? Or have I struck upon the single exception and the taboo subject?
Booker, Obama, Bloomberg, Emanuel and others are supporters of vouchers, because politicians prostitute themselves for donor cash, and the donors are millionaires, billionaires, corporations, who don't need or want an educated work force, as the educated know history, particularly the history of labor and living standards.
Reference Thoms reports on the Lewis Powell memo.
Dumb them down, and you get a meek compliant population of Eloi,who clamor to work for the Morlocks, for their daily bread. H.G. Wells Time Machine was a prophecy.
Politicians know who has the real power, so they throw bones of verbage at us critter, just enough to support them and vote for them.
Then once elected they put plugs in their ears, and shades over their eyes. It Even Reagan, as hard as that is to believe.
Reagan promised in 1980, he promised not to appoint members of the Trilateral Commission and Council on Foreign Relations (poison to the right, who consider them commies), and what did he do after election appoint them to his cabinet, like Casper Weinberger as Secretary of Defense, Weinberger, a member, and an officer of the Trilateral Commission, and other appointments were members of the Council on Foreign relations.
It was then that the Democratic party fell into line, making foreign service credentials a must have, and why they told Obama to appoint Hillary as Secretary of State, so she could amass those credentials, because she was another old loyal horse, stomping around in the paddock waiting to be called to the starting. However the world has changed and the DNC hasn't, it is no longer foreign service, or even the economy, it is the culture war, and a lot of POC, gays and trans people, as well secularists, that are motivated by the amygdala, to turn out and vote.
It is no longer the pre frontal cortex, if it ever was, that motivates people to vote. Especially if you have a job, and feel comfortable.
Wm,
You lost me there with that stuff about the Trilateral Commission. I’ve read about it on various occasions but it apparently didn’t make enough of an impression on me to stick in my memory. Too bad I’m not educated.
I have largely shared your cynicism about politicians and many from the nouveau riche in the past. For obvious reasons I still have a deep mistrust of about 94% of all Republicans and a handful of Democrats. I agree that many do not want or expect the ordinary working people to know the difference between right and wrong, up and down, and their own interests as opposed to the interests of their masters in the investor class.
However, after reading the book, “The Prize: Who’s in Charge of America’s Schools”, by Dale Russakoff, I have been forced to re-evaluate in the cases of Booker, Obama, Bloomberg, and, believe it or not even the royal ass Chris Christy, at least with respect to their sincerity about improving schooling and lifting families out of abject poverty via a better educational experience.
The author, who has a sterling reputation as an education and school reporter for about three decades and who clearly believes in education as the way to a better life, presents intimate details and conversations and demonstrable facts which show that most of the big wigs involved in the one-hundred million dollar gift by Zuckerberg to the Newark, NJ schools, which was matched by a group of other wealthy individuals, foundations, or corporations were involved in deciding how and where the money would be spent.. While they all had their own ideas about how to get to better schools (and what they thought of as “quality education”, with which I vehemently disagree) they cannot fairly be accused in my opinion of solely selfish interests. The fact that the entire endeavor was a failure did not appear to satisfy anyone in the least. They had seen the dismal reports and stats on the Newark schools and their hope was to create a model to use nationwide to help teachers, kids, and communities. Politics and egos were involved of course, but they saw problems and thought they could fix them.
I could have told you that throwing money at the problems would not make a significant difference. Much of the money went to Charter schools administered within the district, some of which showed some improvement, and many that did not. But you do not want to know what I think. Sadly, no one here, nor anywhere else has any desire to acknowledge the truth about schooling. Charters are just another way to more efficiently control and program kids, when they are operated honestly for the benefit of children and the community, and they are more conveniently used by fanatics to spread their harmful ideology. The destruction of democracy is just collateral damage.
There's a media phenomenon which is to take complex sociological issues and address them through one-sided simplistic explanations that take no account of sociology or economics.
There's also trolling, in which someone continues to bombard a comment board with the same drivel time and again.
As for the topic we can call "cognitive sophistication, religion and the trump vote," here is an article worthy of reading:
https://www.salon.com/2022/03/23/new-research-on-voters-theyre-not-the-sharpest-tools-in-the-box/
Marc,
The Salon article sums up the situation very well. I agree with the entire piece completely. While it good to have confirmation of what I have been reading and saying for some time and what I believe Thom and others have said consistently about the politics and the attitudes or mental sophistication of the respective camps, the new research is not particularly revealing with respect to unknowns or to any recent changes.
The author states: “A lasting remedy will demand that the country's political, cultural, and educational institutions be renewed, re-energized, and reimagined.” A bit earlier he states that “leaders and governing institutions have failed them”, them being us, the American people. My term for this transformational process in schooling and its converse, education is a massive paradigm shift. But first, it must be recognized by those we look up to and listen to that the paradigm on which traditional “public schooling” is based is roughly three centuries behind the latest neurological and other science relative to learning, knowledge, and human behavior.
The proclivities which those on the extreme right have for anti-intellectualism, literalism, faith over reason, fear of the other and unknown evils, etc., could have been effectively counteracted generations ago in institutions of socialization and learning had we continued on the path of the Enlightenment, instead of taking the path of paternalism and authoritarianism with compulsory school laws which made government the dispenser of truth and the definer of knowledge. Now, with privatization, power and influence are handed over to technocrats and profit seeking capitalists and oligarchs. They are seen as the saviors and supermen coming to fix dysfunctional systems which have produced failure and many of these gullible and angry people on the right fringe. The media, as you point out, are complicit. They have been relaying the myths and false ideas propagated by so-called educators and arrogant so-called experts word for word and selling them to an unwitting public who want and need to believe that they are providing education. Fortunately, some of us get there despite the wasted time and inanity.
Capitalism always ends in a catastrophe. A few owning almost everything makes the poor ignorant and insane. The poor dream of they themselves being rich instead of ending human suffering for all. Their made up deity will do that.
While of course anyone who is reasonably well-informed would agree that Trump is a threat to the stability of our country, I find your assertion of his being a threat "to all life on Earth" a glaring blind spot in your ideology. The most immediate threats to life on earth are climate change, which Democrats are addressing in the most minimalist and inadequate fashion imaginable, and the real prospect of a nuclear confrontation as brought to us by the Biden administration. Not only in his escalation of purposefully obstructing diplomacy but in sending bottomless munitions to Ukraine (including cluster bombs so you and your cabal can get off your moral high horse), but his strategies with China (sending military aid) and North Korea (sending nuclear submarines). As recently as two days ago Medvedev again cautioned the US regarding the real possibility of the use of nuclear weapons if Ukraine's latest offensive were to be successful. To think that we are essentially risking the obliteration of life on earth because liberals have to make Biden's warmongering and rejection of diplomacy in favor of his warhawk advisors working for Raytheon and the like is far more chilling to me than anything Trump could or would be able to do. Your insistence on diverting attention away from the disaster that is the Biden administration by obsessing almost exclusively about Trump and Republicans might be good for selling dog food but is doing a disservice to progressivism and truth.
So... Blow up the whole country by electing Trump cuz Biden is somehow more evil, or something something something? Yeah. Biden ain’t perfect; never was. But to suggest that Trump isn’t really that big a deal and we shouldn’t be doing everything we can to ensure the GOP doesn’t get near the White House is ... naive at least, if not morally repellent. Thom succinctly listed the facts we face, and it’s going to take enormous effort to tackle the violent-minded cultists who want to see everything destroyed. Priorities.
That is not what I said. What actions are you going to take to change the course of what Trump is doing or how he is prosecuted? Nothing, you can't change a thing about it. And don't say voting because with the electoral college, gerrymandering etc that is not nearly enough. But you CAN stop Biden from blowing up the world, and you CAN tell him not to commit more war crimes than he already has by using cluster munitions in Ukraine. We CAN continue to push Democrats to take climate change more seriously than the one step forward two steps back policies of The Inflation Reduction Act. Trying to hold Trump accountable while you ignore the danger imparted by the party you pledge allegiance to is completely ineffectual and is what got Trump elected in the first place. Your ignorant and rudderless party helped to get him elected then fundraises and campaigns off of it. https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2016/11/hillary-clinton-2016-donald-trump-214428/
The Democratic Party is not just ignorant and rudderless. It is corrupt as it is obviously failing badly when it loses five congressional seats to Republicans in New York State, one of the bluest states. We should always keep reminding people that three or five of the most powerful Republicans today are from blue states, including trump who was a New Yorker most his life.
All of this ridiculous national political media fails to point out how critical it was that New York failed to redistrict and how critical it was that stupid Sean P Maloney insisted on replacing mondaire jones in ny-17 only to lose to the Republican state campaign chair.
No instead you get the usual midterms story, not adequately considered in the wake of Dobbs. That democrats lost the house EVEN in the wake of Dobbs should be some kind of wake up call!
As noted in another comment, we don't have electric vehicles on our minds nearly enough whatever was done with the inflation, reduction act did not result in a real change over to our vehicles and we see Canadians driving down from Canada with a long range electric vehicles looking for charging stations. I don't know how other people feel but this makes me feel like we are in embarrassment.
I don't know how other people feel, but this makes me feel like we are in an embarrassment that it's not just simply a matter if republicans.
All of this is not to say that Chomsky is wrong in saying trump is an existential threat, that people need to band together to at least declaw the most blatant threat.
Although right behind Trump, we must keep in mind - the republican party is called by Chomsky the most dangerous organization in the history of mankind, one that is such an outlier across all of human history that it distinguishes itself as perhaps the only one that would destroy the viability of the entire planet to achieve its goals.
You can blame he loss on Pelosi and Sean Mahoney.
Outside of NYC , Buffalo and Rochester NY is Alabama. Sean is not a progressive, but a Republican in Democratic bunting, he is a conservative, and he did nothing to save NY. In fact he and Adam Schiff went junketeering in Paris, while he should have been home supporting his fellow candidates. neither the DCCC or DNC devoted any money to those races that were lost.
Certainly the Democratic party has taken its base for granted, except when they need money and votes, but the real money it gets is from millionaires, billionaires and mega donors, the corporations, and they have a visceral hate for progressives, much like Rahm Emanuel who called us "fucking retards:, because progressives don't have deep pockets like their mega donors.
And it is no surprise that the citizens of the losing district in NY have caught on.
Now you’re talkin’ sense 😊
Right on!
I find cluster munitions abhorrent, but that is the only defense Ukraine has at the moment, as Russia continues to press Ukraine. So just lay down and surender.
Biden a war monger, laughable, only a Putin troll could say such a thing. Putin is the war monger here, how about putting pressure on Putin.
Biden would not give Ukraine the F-16's it needed nor the long range rockets and artillery it needs, meanwhile Putin is turning Ukraine into a pile of rubble, and whines like a baby when drones hit Moscow..
Russia needs to taste what Ukraine is tasting. How nice to have a sanctuary from which one can attack civilians, especially childrenand turn a country into rubble
with no consequences.
Openly or inadvertently you are championing a murderous war Criminal (Putin)
What got Trump elected in the first place, was racism, misogyny and homophobia, the culture war, and that is all, and in 2020 we had enough of him, an d 81 million people , a record, turned out to turn him out of the White House
В жопу товарищ
V zhopu tovarishch
FYI, I don'[t give a rats ass about Biden, never respected him, never trusted him, but a bed bug is better than Trump, any minute of the day, any day of the week.
As regards Putin, if there was justice in the world, he would be swinging from a rope in Belgium, for the cowardly, psychopathic, child killer and destroyer of nations that he is.
i'm older & obviously have more clarity than you: biden's
>> w a r m o n g e t i n g << ??
>> w a r h a w k s << ??
putin 🔥 blows away a Democratic country'd infrastructure? 🎯ing civilians supply lines maternity hospitals schools cathedrals and wheat fields it will bring on massive famine in Africa as if it weren't already bad enough.... Moscow gets a taste of 3 drones and eclairs nuclear the next step?? do you want to try to convince me to blame that on Biden? You haven't so far try again and again try some more
Nope I'm still not convinced . BIDEN is ready to declare
Climate EMERGENCY ‼️
wow Republicans want to produce more oil and gas ? Do you believe yourself? Well obviously you do that do you hear yourself
Also, there was an interesting indictment filed yesterday. I don't know if you heard about that.
So Biden is perfectly obstrucing diplomacy, I can only assume that you are talking about Ukraine, and the Putin troll rears its head. Wow do you have an affection for Putin.
There is no diplomatic solution for Ukraine, only complete surrender to Putin with all of the horrors that follow.
Then you toss in liberal warmongering, Proof yet again that you are a Putin troll, if not a Trump humper.
I don't usually respond to vitriolic diatribes --esp if replete w/ nixon / bush the C-student era buzz words describing them. i have learned in 76 years that contrary responses fall on closed brains --yes indictment has been read. I've also printed and read the dems 40 demands to censor WARMONGERING ( to use ur term ) AK wielding mtg ( g as in gro....? W?...grow up...
gO ?...away...SS ? ...gross... SS -- yes I think she would like that one , & as she has already called in the MARSHALS , she will never put it together; indeed may end up in her next campaign photo ! akg et al.
you sound a lot less vicious if you would be transparent about repubs
Urgency to please their pocket running hobbyists in the gas and oil industries--which now are destroying tuna populations with their international waters pipelines.
Surely you're aware ? i'm not part of a cabral , and if anyone on this page is riding a high horse📸 gotcha on camera.
Help me understand : Biden is a warmonger because NASCAR received three drone attacks and wants to reply with an Oppenheimer invention ? Russia is brutally destroy the infrastructure of a free nation .
Am I correct so far ? They are wiping out the breadbasket of Europe , which of course will bring famine