As you know, former Judge Roy Moore (twice removed from the bench for his refusal to obey and apply the law because he disagreed with it–once refusing to order the removal of the Ten Commandments from his courtroom, another time refusing to allow gay marriage) was selected as the Republican candidate for the Senate in Alabama yesterday.
He has the enthusiastic endorsement of Steve Bannon and Breitbart. Now that the race is over, he will get the enthusiastic endorsement of Trump.
Moore is a Bible-thumping old-style Southern politician, who is anti-gay, pro-gun, and far to the right of Trump. He ran against Mitch McConnell, and sent tremors through the Republican leadership. If he is elected to the Senate, which seems likely, he will push the party even farther to the mean, racist, xenophobic, hateful right. Now we know that the Swamp creatures are not in D.C. They are on their way to D.C., to drag the nation away from its values and ideals and turn the Republican party into the alt-right Bannon party (some think it is already the alt-right Bannon party, but Moore’s election proves it can get even more aggressive in its hostility to civil rights and civil liberties).
The few remaining Republican moderates are running scared.
The Washington Post wrote that this dreadful choice is terrifying Republicans who dare to have a moderate or reasonable bone in their body:
The stunning defeat of President Trump’s chosen Senate candidate in Alabama on Tuesday amounted to a political lightning strike — setting the stage for a worsening Republican civil war that could have profound effects on next year’s midterm elections and undermine Trump’s clout with his core voters.
The GOP primary victory by conservative firebrand Roy Moore over Sen. Luther Strange could also produce a stampede of Republican retirements in the coming months and an energized swarm of challengers.
It marked yet another humiliation for the Washington-based Republican establishment, particularly Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), whose allies pumped millions of dollars into the race to prop up Strange and reassure his colleagues that they could survive the Trump era.
Moore’s win, however, also demonstrates the real political limitations of Trump, who endorsed “Big Luther” at McConnell’s urging and staged a rally for Strange in Huntsville, Ala., just days before the primary. The outcome is likely to further fray Trump’s ties to Republicans in Congress, many of whom now fear that even his endorsement cannot protect them from voter fury.
“People think about those things all the time up here,” said Sen. Richard C. Shelby (R-Ala.), referring to unease in elected Republican ranks. “A lot of them won’t be run out of town — they want to stay and fight for their beliefs. But they know Moore’s supporters will come after them anyway.”
President Trump speaks at a campaign rally for Sen. Luther Strange in Huntsville, Ala., Friday. Strange was defeated in the GOP primary Tuesday.
The tremors began before the polls closed in Alabama. Sen. Bob Corker (R-Tenn.), the chairman of the powerful Senate Foreign Relations Committee, announced on Tuesday afternoon that he would not seek reelection in 2018, dogged by complaints from conservatives in his state over his criticism of Trump. A number of Corker’s potential primary rivals had already begun talks with wealthy donors.
“If you’re an incumbent, you have to assume the wind is against you,” said consultant Tom Ingram, a longtime Corker adviser. “If you do run, you take nothing for granted and leave nothing on the table. You start out with one big strike against you: You’re an incumbent Republican senator.”
For Democrats, the prospect of further retirements and revived GOP infighting has sparked talk of competing for Senate seats previously thought out of play. That is particularly true with candidates like Moore, long considered a fringe political figure who has, among other things, expressed doubts about whether former president Barack Obama was born in the United States and referred this month to “reds and yellows” in remarks on race. On the eve of the election, Moore, wearing a white cowboy hat and a black leather vest, pulled a handgun out of his pocket and flashed it at a rally.
“It’s an acid flashback to 2010,” said Charlie Sykes, a former conservative talk-radio host, referring to the year when seasoned GOP figures lost Senate primaries across the country as incendiary conservatives charged forward.
“It’s almost as if there is a compulsion in the party to nominate the most ‘out there’ candidate just to show you can, with no concern about what that means for the rest of the party,” Sykes said. “Republicans — and that means Trump, too — have unleashed something they can’t control.”
Hard-line challengers to Senate Republicans seized on the fall of Strange, who had been boosted by Trump and millions in outside Republican spending, as a sign of how the clamor of anti-establishment forces like Breitbart News — chaired by former White House chief strategist Stephen K. Bannon — could empower them, regardless of whether Trump rallies behind sitting senators.
“People everywhere are outraged with the swamp, but there has been hesitation in some states among people who are thinking about it. They wondered whether these senators can be beat. This changes all of that,” said Danny Tarkanian, a GOP businessman running against Sen. Dean Heller (R-Nev.).
No, same ol face.
You read my mind. They just can’t hide it as well.
GregB, it’s not that they can’t hide it as well, it’s that they don’t think they have to.
Trump has enabled and encouraged the racists, fascists, anti-Semites, etc to let it all hang out, and they are doing so.
Oy!
Yes, you are correct. You ain’t just kvetching!
UGH.
.Diane It’s the Party of Trump (POT) as in POTUS, and its aimed at a consolidation of power along authoritarian lines. And its feeding on a pretty large group of rightly-outraged but wrongly-ignorant Americans. In the short range, Mitch McConnell is getting his well-deserved blow-back, as are the libertarians and the neo-liberals. They unleashed Pandora from her box. Now what? And what will Trump himself think of Bannon’s power now? In the long run . . . .?
I think the answer is yes, especially since Trump has pardon power for all forms of malfeasance in office, including his kith and kin.
Republicans who have any respect for the law are diminishing in number and many evangelicals, not just Republicans, are probably wiling to embrace Roy Moore’s concept of “Moral Law” enshrined in his “Foundation for Moral Law.”
NRA supporters are probably thrilled that he likes to carry a pistol in plain sight, especially while riding a horse in a cowboy outfit.
I imagine that Alabama voting districts and voter suppression laws make it impossible for a Democrat to be elected. That is one of the aims of the Republican party nationwide…not that Democrats, when in power, are free from that affront to voting rights.
Mainstream republicans who have been living off the extreme right and its proclivity to support them must choose. Are they really going to keep silent, or will they call out conservative republicans who are not really in favor of government by the people? Are their gerrymandered districts so Republician that a moderate view cannot prevail even in a primary?
Those moderate Republicans still left have to decide how they feel about a party that has turned into the Breitbart Party, a party of racism, misogyny, anti-cooperation with allies, the party of the past. That KKK is starting to look like a brand.
So, wait, are you saying the Trump-endorsed candidate was the reasonable one? If that’s the choice Alabama voters had, I guess I can’t blame them. Personally, I’d’ve put on a blindfold and thrown a dart.
It was a choice between insane and stupid. Insane won.
Or they could’ve simply done what I did and voted for one of the Democrat candidates back in the primary election. They still can in the upcoming general election. (Those of us who did vote Democrat back in the primary could not vote in last night’s Republican primary runoff.)
It gets more and more frightening everyday.
Here are some selective quotes from WaPo. I got them on a different site because a pay wall prevents me from getting access. I wonder what this country is coming to when such abominable people are winning. “Christianity’ is long lost on the self-justified hatred of anyone who is different. People would suffer horribly if all of his beliefs become the law.
…………
“We have to return the knowledge of God and the Constitution of the United States to the United States Congress,” Moore said in his victory speech. “We have become a nation that has distanced ourselves from the very foundation.”
In three books, Moore has described his legal opinion that the United States was founded as a Christian nation that ultimately answered to the “laws of nature and nature’s God,” a phrase contained in the Declaration of Independence.
In a 2002 legal opinion, he described homosexual conduct as “an inherent evil,” and he has argued that the 2015 U.S. Supreme Court decision that legalized same-sex marriage should not be considered the rule of law. He was suspended from Alabama’s court a second time for defying the higher court’s marriage decision, and he later decided to retire from the bench.
Moore plans to crusade against the Senate practice of requiring 60 votes to move most legislation on the Senate floor, which he does not consider constitutional. He has also said he will seek the impeachment of federal judges who defy his view of the Constitution. He has called for military deployment to secure the southern border before the construction of a border wall, and he said he would have opposed the Cassidy-Graham legislation, the most recent effort to repeal the Affordable Care Act, because it was not conservative enough.
Good grief. Really SICK!
More than sick, Yvonne. Evil.
A latter-day version of Tomás de Torquemada.
I’m sending money to the Democrat and getting my local central committee to gin up a phone bank.
This is an opportunity that the Democrats will waste, just as they have wasted so many others. While many point fingers at the various reasons that Clinton lost, virtually all of those fingers have avoided pointing at one of the main factors, our corrupt political system, the “swamp” which Dumpster falsely promised to drain. Newt Gingrich gave the lie to that when he said that Dumpster was no longer interested in any draining of the swamp, but they all quickly walked that back. They MUST keep that lie alive at all costs. And that, right there is the vulnerability of the Replutocrats, that instead of draining the swamp, they are building a wall of lies, diversions and dissembling around it while they continue converting the swamp into the biggest political cesspool in living memory. All the Dumbocrats have to do is put forth a federal anti Gerrymandering law. There are many fantastic off the shelf ways to do that out there. Campaign finance is the other shoe they need to drop, and they can do and end run around both Citizens United and the McCutcheon decisions by putting in place a law which says that ONLY public funds may be used to campaign with, no private money including the candidates own. Add to these a law requiring that all Super PACS and other political advocacy entities disclose the true identity of their donors/funders. No black money, no shell corporations, no hidden back room funding of political speech. The donor class and corporations can all still spend as much money as they want spreading their lies, but by severing the ties of campaign money between politicians and the donor class, all voters have to do to inform their decisions at the polls is go to the websites of the candidates to see what their actual positions on the issues are. They can freely ignore all other political propaganda. The candidates can post rebuttals of all of the lies on their official sites, again, making those sites the only place to see what the candidates stand for. With campaign finance restrictions in place, the ultra wealthy will no longer have the other weapon they use, funding a primary opponent who will do their bidding since all candidates will get the same, far smaller than usual amount of money to campaign with. Imagine that if you can, a level playing field where everything other than the candidates statements can be ignored as fake news and the candidates can say so without fear of revenge from the donor class. Obviously, the Replutocrats can do all of these things, but they lack the courage and the integrity to even consider doing any of it. Let’s see if the Dumbocrats have the guts to do better. After all, this is the main reason that Sanders made such significant gains and had such huge crowds at his events, he’s been all over this for decades.
I am writing an essay on mendacity, called “Words Matter” I heard someone day last night, use my title. Words matter, and she added: “and what the president says matters most.
I am collecting links to articles that talk about lying.
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/04/opinion/trump-truth-wiretapping-obama.html? mcubz=0
From the above link:
“Of the statements by Trump that the fact-checking site PolitiFact has checked, just 5 percent were deemed absolutely true. Another 26 percent were just “mostly true” or “half true.” But a whopping 69 percent were found to be “mostly false,” “false” or “pants on fire,” the site’s worst rating.Indeed, it seems that every major publication has taken a
stab at trying to chronicle and explain Trump’s lying.
“But Politico may have been the most insightful. In an article there, Maria Konnikova pointed out in February that all presidents lie — all people lie — “but Donald
Trump is in a different category.” She continued:
“The sheer frequency, spontaneity and seeming irrelevance of his lies have no precedent. Nixon, Reagan and Clinton were protecting their reputations; Trump seems to lie for
the pure joy of it.”
“Citing the work of Harvard psychologist Daniel Gilbert, Konnikova gave this glib assessment of how the brain
deals with all this lying: Our brains are particularly ill-equipped to deal with lies when they come not singly but in a constant stream, and Trump, we know, lies constantly, about matters as serious as the election results and as trivial as the tiles at Mar-a-Lago.”
“She continued: “When we are overwhelmed with false, or potentially false, statements, our brains pretty quickly become so overworked that we stop trying to sift through everything. It’s called cognitive load — our limited cognitive resources are overburdened. It doesn’t matter how implausible the statements are; throw out enough of them, and people will inevitably absorb some. Eventually, without quite realizing it, our brains just give up trying to figure out what is true.”
Trump is quite literally overwhelming our humancapacities with his mendacity. It is not only hard to imagine that any person could lie this much — let alone the leader of the free world — it is also impossible for us to keep pace.
‘It is cold comfort that most of the country now believes that Trump isn’t a steady or moral or compassionate leader and half believe he isn’t honest, according to a Fox
News Poll released last week. But that acknowledgment doesn’t change the fact that we must develop a societal strategy for protecting the true in a post-truth world, and the first step is that we must neverstop saying: Donald Trump is a liar”
May I suggest reading Andre Comte-Sponvilles chapter on Fidelity in his “A Small Treatise on the Great Virtues”. It is from that chapter that I have used the concept of an ethic of “fidelity to truth”. Also Simon Blackburn’s “Truth: an Investigation” is another good source on discussions of what constitutes truth. From there I have used his concept of truth being “a belief based in fact”.
Yes, SLS,
You must never stop, as a lot of citizens haven’t stopped calling Obama the biggest liar of them all – he snookered the entire nation with his promises on health care – keep your doctor and cost goes down 2500$…..and why linger on not only him, but the entire Democratic party has lied to gain votes and voters within the African American community for years with their promises never fulfilled, lest I forget Obama lied to 800,00 kids with promises and now we are left with the DACA issue – yes, you keep Trumping your horn.
” Obama lied to 800,00 kids with promises and now we are left with the DACA issue”
Trump, with his bigoted dislike for immigrants has left them. Obama gave them a chance for hope and a better life.
Yeah Yeah ,Blah Blah. They all lie, but what you just said proves how clueless you are. Why do you bother even addressing me with such drivel.
This is right from a TRAGEDY PLAYBOOK.
The Alabama judiciary is a cesspool of corruption. Roy Moore is probably typical in that regard, even though he’s marginally distinguished himself with his open zealotry.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/andrew-kreig/alabama-decisions-illustr_b_213732.html
http://yellowhammernews.com/politics-2/harvard-study-alabama-among-corrupt-states-according-local-reporters/
“The end of the World as we Know it.”
A good many Alabamians voted against Trump in the last election. Maybe as many as a third of them despise direction of the state. Probably nearly a third of them voted against Hillary, an understandable reaction to a candidate who had a lot of years in politics to acquire baggage. Probably a significant number of voters in that state stayed home in the presidential election and certainly did not vote in the recent republican primary.
All these are good folks who are subjected to living in a state that does not respect humanity and claims Christianity. What must they think of both? Now Tennessee senator Corker, hardly a moderate on anyone’s list, has pulled himself out of the race for Senate. Will my state go down the road to false claims about religion to nominate some wild-eyed child of inflated ego that will join with other Breitbart and NAZI Americans who want pluralism to be a thing of the past? It is hard to live in an area where no one seems to value environment, human rights, or mutual respect as values. And yet, like Alabama, more than a third of tennesseans will be without representation in the next election. If you care about others you will have to live in a place where you do not have a voice.
But the far right should remember. When Rosa Parks tried out civil disobedience (learned, by the way, in Myles Horton’s Highlander Folk School in Monteagle, TN), she was a lone voice that grew into a movement. We may be down, but we are not out.
Please do not call Rosa Parks a “lone voice.” Her act took years of preparation and the support of a well organized coalition. The folk legend teaches the wrong thing. One hero will not save us. Only a large number organizing, standing up, and voting.
Quite true, but there was no organization that told her to react that particular day and in that way. That was all I meant.
The Republican Party, as an institution, has been pandering to Roy Moore and his ilk for two generations. Now they’re surprised by his ascendance?
Please.
Diane,
I am sure you either watched Chuck Todd or have crossed the news about his understanding of the Constitution. I don’t know why my fingers allowed me to turn NBC on but what was I thinking? F. Chuck Todd is the host of the NBC show Meet the Depressed. But to be honest I was delighted to see the level of intelligence spewing, or lack there of, from Chucky…he is a joke.
His lack of knowledge is accompanied by an arrogance and a condescension to everybody that watches. His history teachers and profs must be turning in their graves. He doesn’t understand the Constitution. Probably never read it.
I offer a free course for him and others in the liberal eft to take “Introduction to the Constitution” authored by Hillsdale College. Its free!
People hate Roy Moore. They hate him to begin with because he’s Christian. He used to be a judge in Alabama. He won the Senate Republican primary election over Luther Strange, and Judge Roy Moore is the judge that was involved in the Ten Commandments controversy in the Alabama courthouse. He wanted them displayed — and, of course, the culture war effort by the left to wipe and erase any reference to Christianity was well underway at the time.
So he became a scourge, he became hated — and because he was white and Christian, he became a racist, sexist, bigot, homophobic homophobe.
So F. Chuck Todd was describing Roy Moore, who they instinctively don’t like because they think he’s a white zealot and a KKK guy. Chuck Todd led off yesterday’s edition of the daily version of Meet the Press with the assertion that Roy Moore “doesn’t believe in the Constitution as it’s written.” Now, this is a profound insult to anybody who is in government, judge, politics, to say that he doesn’t understand the Constitution.
That just, by itself, is an insult. He thinks that Roy Moore is an idiot because Roy Moore said our rights come from God, which is clearly stated in the Declaration of Independence. Chuck Todd thinks rights come from government. Chuck Todd thinks the freedoms you have and the freedoms you don’t have are the result of government telling you what you can and can’t do, and that that is how the country was formed and that is how it shall be.
Chuck Todd started by touting the election as “a purge of the GOP Establishment,” Roy Moore winning and Luther Strange losing. He called it “a crisis of confidence in Mitch McConnell, a weakened president who’s now scrubbing his Twitter feed and the political earthquake in Alabama underneath it all.” Then he started jabbing at Roy Moore as a Christian conservative. He said, “But that doesn’t even begin to describe who the guy really is and he could very well be your next senator. If you don’t understand just how freaked out some folks in the GOP and the White House are about what that means, then you don’t know Roy Moore.
“First off, he doesn’t appear to believe in the Constitution as written,” and then Chuck Todd played a clip from Roy Moore, who was telling a journalist the following: “Our rights don’t come from government. They don’t come from the Bill of Rights. They come from Almighty God.” Todd thinks the guy’s a brain-dead extremist, white Christian, probably a white supremacist, and maybe even pro-KKK and Nazi.
After the Roy Moore sound bite, Chuck Todd said, “That’s just a taste of what are very fundamentalist views that have gotten him removed from office twice as Alabama chief justice.” What Roy Moore said is absolutely spot on and correct. Our rights don’t come from government. They don’t come from the Bill of Rights. They come from Almighty God. The view of the Founding Fathers — and he would know this if he’d been educated on it. I’m convinced Chuck Todd is uneducated on the Constitution, or maybe ill-educated.
The founders of this country saw rights as inalienable — meaning natural, God-given, not something given by man. We are all “endowed by our Creator with certain unalienable rights, among them life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” That’s in the Preamble of the Declaration of Independence that 56 brave people signed, and that began the process of establishing an independent United States. The Declaration sets out the belief that we are all created by God, our creator — and with that creation, we are born with rights. They do indeed come from God.
The Constitution does not “give” anybody rights. What the Constitution does, ladies and gentlemen, is guarantee them. Because rights come from God, they cannot be taken away. They are natural. They are what we are born with. They are how we are born. In our own Preamble! Government rights don’t exist. What government gives you it can be taken away. Government can take away whatever it gives. If that can happen, it’s not a right. A right cannot be taken away. The Constitution doesn’t grant a single person a right.
Ed Feulner, who was one of the founding members of the Heritage Foundation and the president. He said, “The Constitution doesn’t grant us freedom. It prevents government from taking it,” and that’s exactly why liberals hate it. The Constitution limits government. The Constitution doesn’t empower government to proclaim rights because it can’t. The founders didn’t believe rights came from government.
Obama, the Constitutional wonder guy, even noted that the Constitution was a list of negative rights and tells govt what it can’t do.
College students today (snowflakes, what have you) think the government grants rights, and they think the government should be even more powerful to take away certain people’s rights like your right to free speech. But the Constitution doesn’t grant you the right to free speech. It guarantees it. What the First Amendment says is that no law may be written to abridge your freedom of speech, that the state cannot write a law limiting your freedom of speech.
The First Amendment doesn’t say government grants us all the right to say what we want except for these circumstances. That’s what the left wants to be able to do. They want to be able to limit speech. And right now, the speech that many leftists want to eliminate is conservative speech, Republican speech, however you want to look at it. They think it ought not be permitted. They think government ought to have the power to punish people that say things leftists don’t want to hear.
So why would they understand the source of rights? It’s easy to understand if you’re taught. But because teaching it requires mentioning God, the left will have none of it. Can’t have God in the classroom. Can’t have God in the public square. Can’t have a nativity scene out there, can’t do that. And so anybody who does and wants God in a public square is a Nazi, white supremacist, KKK fantastic as far as the average, ordinary leftist of today thinks. And many of those average, ordinary leftists and their thinking are populating the Drive-By Media.
Government writes laws. But it does not grant rights. But you hear people throw the word “right” around. “I have a right to that chewing gum. I have a right to whatever I want. That is a right, if I want it, I have a right.”
That’s what people think of rights. Rights are what they want. Rights are what they don’t want. I have a right not to hear what you’re saying. No, that’s not the right. Everybody has a right to free speech, but there isn’t a single person that has to listen to you. But the left thinks that the right to free speech means you cannot not listen to them. You must listen to, and you can’t disagree. That’s what the First Amendment means to them.
How many times have you heard a leftist say just recently they think the Constitution prohibits hate speech? Somebody’s teaching this. Are their professorsteaching them this. If the almighty government assist you can’t say it, why, there is no other authority you need to cite. The almighty government says you can’t say hate speech.
Jscheidell,
I am gay. I am married to my partner of 33 years.
We are honest, law-abiding, good citizens.
Roy Moore would invalidate our marriage.
Would you?
He probably would if he could, Diane.
Love you response. Right on.
Diane and Zorba,
My brother is gay, and I also have a niece who is gay and married with a child they adopted. You guess what my reply would be on invalidating your marriage –
Shame on you Zorba – pitiful reply with no clue to back up your response..
I didn’t ask what you would do. What would Roy Moore say and do?
Well bless your heart. Aren’t you special?
Diane,
“Roy Moore would invalidate our marriage.
Would you?”
You did ask what I would do – see above
Why would you support a man who is so hateful?
I dislike those who look down upon others. Roy Moore says he believes in God. Moore looks down upon people he has declared as undesirable.
Jscheidell, I’m glad I don’t live with the anger that you carry.
Carol,
Not angry at all, just laughing my butt off regarding the left wing liberal journalists displaying a total lack of the Constitution – that was the point.
Carol,
Since you noted that Moore looks down on those “he has declared deplorable” – That fits right in with Hillary who called half the nation deplorable and a few other adjectives to boot.. same garbage.
Hillary isn’t the president. Trump is and his leadership abilities are creating chaos and separation within the US. Get off the Hillary kick.
Yes, Hillary is not the president – I guess you can guess the amount of ebullience I have, and how can one get off the Hillary kick when she came out of the woods and continues to give us a daily belly laugh! She needs to go back into the woods…..
It is Yom Kippur. A Day of Atonememt. A day of forgiveness. Not a day for meanness. Try to find the good in yourself. Stop expressing hatred. You will be better for it.
You define yourself in every comment, writing here where some really bright, aware people come for truth.
SLS
You define yourself as well as with every dribble and its so egotistical of you to include yoursel f as one of the brightest and to put down those who you disagree with
Give it up. This is not about disagreement. I know who I am , and so do the folks who read this blog. This is about truth, with which you have only a passing acquaintance.
“If it is then my passing acquaintence with your truth is a nightmare and lasted too long.”
So is ‘trickle-down’ tax breaks for the wealthy a truth that helps anyone but the wealthy? I just read an article that states “Polls show that most older people are more worried about running out of money than dying.” Guess the jobs that pay more still haven’t arrived. Since this ‘truth’ has been going around since Reagan, I’d think there’d be some progress in this direction by now. The only progress I’ve seen is how much the wealthy are getting and how little everyone else has. Inequality has never been so bad.
What about the GOP new ‘improved version’ of healthcare? The Graham-Cassidy was a piece of mean spirited garbage that would have placed millions with no healthcare. ACA is no picnic but their alternatives would hurt more people. Is this a truth that you stand by, cancelling Medicaid and Planned Parenthood funding is beneficial for the nation?
How about increasing the spending for the military? We already spend more for the military than the next 7 countries combined. Is this really helping a country when the roads and infrastructure are falling apart? How long should we continue to bomb in the Middle East? At what point have we destroyed enough lives? How many civilians killed is enough before it becomes known that we no longer are achieving anything?
Tell me how privatizing Social Security would benefit people? It is a wish of the GOP that our money be managed by financial institutions that want to make money while caring nothing about how many get screwed and take the chance of people ending up with nothing after a lifetime of working.
How many years are college students who graduate supposed to work before they pay off their loans? I’ve read of people on Social Security having to have their college loans deducted from their Social Security checks.
I’d say the nightmare has lasted too long. As Bernie would say, “Enough is enough”.
Exactly. I responded with a laugh, because it is Ironic to the point of humor that this person, like those that I encounter at the progressive site where I add my voice, rants and chants the very messages found in alt-right media.
I read at least 50 news feeds a day, none of which come from Facebook or blog, and many which are the go-to for authentic OBSERVABLE REALTIY, the stuff that happens in the real world. This shapes my ‘opinion’. There is a reigning idea that real ‘discussion’ at a ‘social’ blog, must consider the veracity of every opinion, which the freedom to say anything ( that pops into your head) is fine.
Ok, go ahead, but at this teacher’s room, where people often ‘debate’ conflicting ideas, the endless drivel about Hillary and the neocons, and Obama, is not merely sad, but laughable, to me, but then that is merely MY opinion after being exposed to the reality, of this “First White President” https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2017/10/the-first-white-president-ta-nehisi-coates/537909/
Yeah, I admit this is the ‘liberal’ press analyzing WHAT IS IN FRONT OF OUR EYES.
“His political career began in advocacy of birtherism, that modern recasting of the old American precept that black people are not fit to be citizens of the country they built. But long before birtherism, Trump had made his worldview clear. He fought to keep blacks out of his buildings, according to the U.S. government; called for the death penalty for the eventually exonerated Central Park Five; and railed against “lazy” black employees. “Black guys counting my money! I hate it,” Trump was once quoted as saying. “The only kind of people I want counting my money are short guys that wear yarmulkes every day.” After his cabal of conspiracy theorists forced Barack Obama to present his birth certificate, Trump demanded the president’s college grades (offering $5 million in exchange for them), insisting that Obama was not intelligent enough to have gone to an Ivy League school, and that his acclaimed memoir, Dreams From My Father, had been ghostwritten by a white man, Bill Ayers.”
“It is often said that Trump has no real ideology, which is not true—his ideology is white supremacy, in all its truculent and sanctimonious power. Trump inaugurated his campaign by casting himself as the defender of white maidenhood against Mexican “rapists,” only to be later alleged by multiple accusers, and by his own proud words, to be a sexual violator himself. ”
“To Trump, whiteness is neither notional nor symbolic but is the very core of his power. In this, Trump is not singular. But whereas his forebears carried whiteness like an ancestral talisman, Trump cracked the glowing amulet open, releasing its eldritch energies. The repercussions are striking: Trump is the first president to have served in no public capacity before ascending to his perch. But more telling, Trump is also the first president to have publicly affirmed that his daughter is a “piece of ass.” The mind seizes trying to imagine a black man extolling the virtues of sexual assault on tape (“When you’re a star, they let you do it”), fending off multiple accusations of such assaults, immersed in multiple lawsuits for allegedly fraudulent business dealings, exhorting his followers to violence, and then strolling into the White House. But that is the point of white supremacy—to ensure that that which all others achieve with maximal effort, white people (particularly white men) achieve with minimal qualification. Barack Obama delivered to black people the hoary message that if they work twice as hard as white people, anything is possible. But Trump’s counter is persuasive: Work half as hard as black people, and even more is possible.” There’s more at that link
… and of, course, as we know, Carol, Hillary worked for HIM, and unlike our swamp-fed present Secretary of State Tillerson, who comes straight from Exxon, she was a liar, and was married to a sexual predator… and ohmigod…she used her private email server… (like his daughter and many Of TRUMP ADVISORS.’.
LOL. If I don’t laugh, I WILL CRY.
And then there is this
LOL!
Yes Zorba,
I am special. Thanks for recognizing it!
Yes Zorba,
So is Diane special, and not just because of her disclosure.
What is your point?
Dolmathes (Stuffed Grape Leaves)
1 jar grape leaves, packed in brine
1/2 cup olive oil
2 large onions, finely chopped
4 green onions, finely chopped
1 1/2 cups long-grained converted rice
1 cup water
2 tablespoons chopped fresh spearmint (or 1 tblsp dried, crumbled)
3 tablespoons chopped fresh dill (DO NOT use dried)
1/3 cup pine nuts, toasted
1/3 cup currants
1 1/2-2 cups water ( enough to just cover dolmathes along with olive oil)
3/4 cup olive oil
1 lemon, juice of
lemon wedges, for serving at table
DIRECTIONS
Saute onions in ½ cup olive oil until translucent.
Wash and drain rice well and add to onion along with 1 cup of water.
Cook for 10 minutes.
Add herbs, pine nuts, currants and salt and white pepper to taste.
Set aside to cool.
Prep leaves by rinsing well under running water and blanch in boiling water for 1 minute. (Actually, you can even skip this, it’s mainly to remove salt on the grape leaves. If you don’t blanch, just skip the salt in the recipe, it will be fine.)
Cut off any tough stems by cutting a V around the stem, and discarding stem.
Place 1 leaf on flat surface, shiny side down, add 1 teaspoon of filling and roll LOOSELY (as for a tiny eggroll, tucking in sides first and then rolling up), as rice will expand during cooking.
Place seam side down on bottom of large saucepan which has been covered with a layer of thicker grape leaves (rejects from your jar – they may be very thick, therefore, not tender or torn and not suitable for being used as a wrapper- these protect the dolmathes from scorching. If you don’t have enough grape leaves left over to cover the bottom of the pot, use a lettuce leaf- it will be fine).
Repeat each grape leaf in same manner until all are used, packing them in tight- one next to the other- seam side down.
Add 1 1/2- 2 cups water, dash salt, 3/4 cup olive oil and the juice of 1 lemon (enough liquid to just cover the dolmathes).
Cover with a heavy plate to keep dolmathes immersed in liquid, and simmer for 45 minutes, or until rice is cooked.
Serve cold or at room temperature as a “meze” (appetizer).
Serve this with some lemon wedges, to squeeze on the dolmathes. These are also really good served with a dollop of Tzatziki sauce.
WOW Thank YOU!
Zorba, a welcome interjection on a day when the Trump trolls are out in force and the president is having a heck of a good time on his golf course.
Diane, if they keep on the way they have been, you are going to wind up with a nice little Greek cookbook spread throughout your website. 😉
To Sheidell and anyone who does not live in a bubble where Hillery-killery and bad-Obama dwell. We all know that our government has never been perfect, but ANYONE with EYES AND EARS know that THIS IS different. Tim Egan knows it :”The Trump Fog Machine” https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/29/opinion/trump-agenda-distraction-.html?rref=collection%2Fcolumn%2Ftimothy-egan&action=click&contentCollection=opinion®ion=stream&module=stream_unit&version=latest&contentPlacement=1&pgtype=collection A quote : “Do you remember what monstrous, contemptible or demonstrably false thing Donald Trump said one year ago? Six months ago? O.K., last week? Probably not. The effect of this presidency-by-horrors is to induce amnesia in the public, as if we’d all been given a memory-loss drug.
To recap: A year ago, Trump lied repeatedly in his first debate with Hillary Clinton, and was reminded that he had called women pigs, slobs and dogs. Six months go, he settled for $25 million two lawsuits and a fraud case regarding his phony university, a huckster scheme that duped people out of their personal savings. And last week, he unleashed an attack on the free-speech rights of athletes, using a profanity that could not be repeated on the news without a warning to children. Now it’s taxes. He’s already lied about whether his tax plan will benefit the rich and his own family. It will, by eliminating the estate tax, and ensuring that the top 1 percent will get nearly 50 percent of the windfall.
Those details will soon be lost in the Trump Fog Machine. He will say something awful, do something horrible, insult some vulnerable person. We will be shocked just long enough to forget what happened yesterday.
It’s. All. Going. According. To. Plan. The Trump presidency is a monumental failure on multiple levels.He’s made much of the world hate us, and A MAJORITY of his fellow citizens believe that he is unfit for office. But while his legislative agenda is in tatters, his master strategy — throwing out distraction bombs on a regular basis, while turning the screws of power toward a backward era — is working. In just the last two weeks, he has allowed a humanitarian crisis affecting more than three million American citizens to fester, reportedly mocked a dying senator, and threatened to annihilate a nation of 25 million people.”
Here is the realiy by The publisher of Oped, Rob Kall, who addresses what happens when such as Trump ascends: https://www.opednews.com/articles/Trumps-Narcissist-and-Pred-by-Rob-Kall-Exploitation_Narcissistic-Personality-Disorder_Predators-Predatory-People_Predatory-Capitalism-170929-439.html#comment675172
Rob writes: “If you can, listen to this video song, by Nina Simone as you read on: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ILFjJJxVjVA We’re seeing the strange fruits produced by the most despicable, corrupt, indescribably horrific substitute for a president the world has ever seen.
Rob has researched and written 85 articles on Sociopaths and psychopaths: https://www.opednews.com/Series/Psychopaths-and-Sociopaths-by-Rob-Kall-130529-11.html
He goes on to say, “I can’t imagine any sane person disputing the claim that Donald Trump is a narcissist. Experts characterize him as a malignant narcissist– the worst kind. All narcissists are predators. All psychopaths are narcissists and predators.We’re seeing the strange fruits produced by the most despicable, corrupt, indescribably horrific substitute for a president the world has ever seen.”
In times like we face to day, it is legitimate, rational, and our responsibility to assume the worst, to assume that thievery is rampant and our commons assets are under great threat. Assume that the path to achieve such thievery will be laid by the purported swamp clearers Trump has appointed. THIS PREDATION IS AT ITS WORST”
“Assume that the Puerto Rico disaster that Trump’s policies, responses and non-responses have exacerbated is part of a plan. It’s a disaster capitalism plan that will disgustingly exploit the tragedy and suffering of the millions of American citizens in Puerto Rico. Trump will force Puerto Rico to accept loans and deals that privatize utilities, privatize infrastructure and almost outright steal assets from the people of Puerto Rico. Assume that hundreds of thousands will lose their homes and small business properties. Assume that those properties will be bought up, perhaps under the duplicitous guise of emergency recovery, to be re-sold to friends of Trump or his GOP cronies– perhaps shell corporations owned by current or former congress-people like, Tom Price. “
What’s my point, JS.?
Hmmmm…
“There are many reasons to be appalled by President Trump, including his disregard for constitutional norms and decent behavior. But watching this unlikeliest of presidents strut on the treacherous stage of international politics is different from following the daily domestic chaos that is the Trump administration. Hearing him bully and brag, boast and bluster, threaten and lie, one feels a kind of dizziness, a sensation that underneath the throbbing pulse of routine scandal lies the potential for much worse. The kind of sensation, in fact, that accompanies dangerously high blood pressure, just before a sudden, excruciating pain.”
Wish I had written that…but I read it in The Atlantic,
WHICH ASKS: “Is Trump Ending the American Era?
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2017/10/is-trump-ending-the-american-era/537888/
DON’T FORGET THIS: Mr. Trump Squanders the World’s Trust https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/23/opinion/sunday/trump-trust-iran-korea.html?emc=edit_th_20170924&nl=todaysheadlines&nlid=50637717&_r=0 At a crucial moment, Donald Trump is forcing the world to confront core questions it really shouldn’t have to ask: Can he be trusted? And, more saliently, can America be trusted? His threats to jettison the Iran nuclear deal are undermining America’s credibility as a negotiating partner and weakening America’s ability to lead the free world as it has for 70 years.Now, Mr. Trump is threatening to torpedo the 2015 nuclear deal, which imposed strict limits on Iran’s nuclear program in return for a lifting of international sanctions. He has hinted that next month he will not certify that Iran is complying with its commitments, even though the head of America’s Strategic Command just said that it was. The certification is required every 90 days; a failure to provide it could lead to the re-imposition of American sanctions and cause the agreement to unravel.
And here are a few links to the reality, written by people who do not live in a bubble:
Trump Lashes Out at Puerto Rico Mayor Who Criticized Storm Response
The Lecture That Donald Trump Needs: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/26/opinion/sessions-free-speech-trump.html?mcubz=0
His newest LIE : “And for the millions of small businesses and farms that file their taxes as sole proprietors, corporations or partnerships, we will cap the tax rate they pay at 25 percent — much lower.”
REALITY: Here, Trump is referring to pass-through businesses,https://www.americanprogress.org/issues/economy/reports/2017/08/24/437654/trump-loophole-benefit-millionaires-not-small-businesses/?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=progReport&elqTrackId=da964da1823144399dfa9db741aab438&elqTrack=true
or businesses that don’t pay the corporate income tax and instead include business income on the personal income tax return of the business owner. Most pass-through business income actually goes to millionaires and big businesses. In fact, the Trump Organization is a pass-through business, and therefore would see its rate lowered from 39.6 percent to 25 percent. https://twitter.com/mattyglesias/status/913128384028381184?elqTrackId=b33fa6ed899e47fd9e44e52e30d40128&elqTrack=true
TrumpCLAIM: “I’m doing the right thing and it’s not good for me, believe me.”
LOL!
REALITY: Trump’s tax plan would be great for Trump and his wealthy friends. In addition to killing the estate tax, his plan also eliminates the alternative minimum tax, which “prevent[s] very wealthy Americans
http://www.businessinsider.com/whats-the-alternative-minimum-tax-2017-9?elqTrackId=e523264eaca94905b7b784055c6ea7f7&elqTrack=true from using deductions and loopholes to skimp on their taxes.” This tax once cost Trump $31 million in taxes, which is probably why he’s so eager to see it disappear. And don’t forget that Trump’s proposal would decrease the top tax rate from 39.6 to 35 percent.
Thank you for this sane place, Diane.
Yes, It is a very special day, today, Diane, as the New Year , 5775 begins.
We pray that sanity returns there are intelligent people who learn from history and can distinguish truth from lies!
This is a transformative era, where INFORMATION can be distributed alongside mis-information, and where propaganda takes on the mantle of truth and fools ignorant and gullible people for whom OBSERVABLE REALITY is lost.
I pray for us.
Susan,
Not to put too fine a point on the matter, but it is actually 5778. I remembered because I am 79!
00ps. Hit the wrong number. I am 75, LOL!
Boy have we seen a few Presidents… FDR, Truman, Ike, JFK, and Johnson, not to mention Carter,Clinton, (who gave us a surplus) Regan who also believed in ‘trickle-down’ nonsense, Nixon Bush 1 and, Bush -WMD, and Ford.
5778 is going to be an interesting year.
You and Susan make me feel young!
I’m 69.
Zorba:
Ah, to be 69 again!
I can appreciate that, Elder Sister. 💖
Namaste.
Actually, I agree. It was at 73 that I noticed the energy drop, and began to take a 4 Pm nap.