Ken Bernstein is a teacher of government and history. In this post, he reflects on the current political situation.
Ken says our nation is in grave danger. He sees the daily degradation of our laws and our Constitution. He is worried.
I have noticed that in recent days, the media has warned that we must not react too strongly when the president makes extreme statements. Taking a stand against Trump’s racism and xenophobia merely encourages his base, they say. The media say that those of us who are outraged by his behavior and his language are causing divisions in the country.
The question is whether we should normalize Trump’s words and deeds.
If we do, we change the nature of the country. Should we ignore his assault on civil liberties and civil rights? Should we ignore Trump’s claim that white nationalists and avowed members of the KKK include “some very fine people”? Should we ignore his statement that the free press is “the enemy of the people” (a term attributed to Stalin)? Should we ignore his attacks on Muslims, Mexicans, Canadians, the EU, and anyone else he doesn’t like? Should we ignore his policy of separating parents and children at the border and putting children into cages, then blaming it on Democrats? Should we ignore his bullying of McCain, Warren, Sanders, and anyone else who dares to disagree with him? How can we?
Trump ridicules people daily, in tweets and rallies. But no one dare respond for fear of alienating his base. Let’s be clear: He is the source of today’s vicious and uncivil climate.
That’s a bridge too far. For me. And for Ken Bernstein.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Janus reversed and remanded, as expected.
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Court holds that union fees violate “the free speech rights of nonmembers by compelling them to subsidize private speech on matters of substantial public concern.”
Click to access 16-1466_2b3j.pdf
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Now every tax paying citizen has the right to object to how their tax dollars are spent. Every tax payer now has the right to sue the federal government. The courts will soon be clogged.
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No, that’s a “taxpayer standing” issue. There’s a ton of precedent saying that simply being a taxpayer is insufficient to confer standing against the US government. That precedent is not going anywhere. The analysis is a little different for suits against municipal governments, but Janus doesn’t change that analysis at all.
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I object to tax dollars going to vouchers in religious as this violates my right to free speech. Let the litigation begin.
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Correction: schools
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The United States government has limited sovereign immunity. The federal government is normally immune from suit by private citizens, (and the states). The federal government can only be sued, if it agrees to be sued. Ex: Korematsu v. US, etc.
see
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sovereign_immunity
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Charles, are you an engineer and a lawyer too?
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You have seen my resume. I am not a lawyer. My sister and her husband are attorneys, and we discuss the law and constitution often. My grandfather was in the state legislature in Kentucky, and I have enjoyed the law and the constitution, as an academic exercise since I was a kid.
When you have lived under communism, and under Islamic sharia law, you develop an appreciation of freedom that most other people do not share.
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All the more reason to despise the Orange Idiot who is destroying our democracy
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Thank you, FLERP!
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Ugh!! I’m sure that the Waltons, Kochs, Jeff Bezos and all the billionaire union haters will be popping the corks of their $10,000 champagne bottles and having all night caviar galas aboard their yachts. The rabid anti NJEA spewers over at the NJ Spotlight comments section will be cheering non stop. Elections have consequences: Hillary would have never appointed a Neil Gorsuch to the SCOTUS.
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As we debate the Red Hen request for Sarah Huckabee Sanders to eat elsewhere, we must be wary. The chronic use of false equivalence to sugarcoat the horrors of this president and his lickspittles is tiresome. Politely requesting a lying enabler to leave a restaurant is not the same as imploring supporters to beat protestors, or calling white nationalists “fine people,” or lying from a podium with the Presidential seal every day, or humiliating a differently abled person, or killing abortion providers, or separating children from their parents and locking them in jail, or claiming the right and ability to grab women by the p****, or . . . I could go on.
I find myself equally frustrated at the calls for Democratic candidates to focus on their “agenda” rather than make the midterms a referendum on Trump. That’s like sitting at the kitchen table paying the electric bill while someone crashes through your front door with a machete.
The Democratic “agenda,” whatever watered-down soup it may be, is hardly the issue. No Trump fanatics or wavering independents are going to be persuaded by an arcane discussion of health care or education. Don’t get me wrong – these issues are of enormous import, but are trivial compared to rescuing democracy itself.
The way to win in 2018 and 2020 is to keep reminding Americans that we have a lying, narcissistic sociopath coming through our window with a machete. Democracy will be protected by turnout, not by ignoring the monster in the room.
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I tend to agree with everything you say, but every time that Trump goes on a tirade, it’s an indication that something is happening behind the scenes that is of more importance. Trump is just the showman and distractor…..Pence is quietly leading the country with the aid of Koch dollars. Maybe if we stop reacting to the “noise” and start paying attention to the “silence”, we will be able to fight the machine. Everything being done is a knee jerk reaction to a bad reality TV show. I’m not saying that we ignore….but we must pause and ask “why” before we react. I don’t care one bit about what Trump says….I care about what the others in his inner circle don’t say.
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“Maybe if we stop reacting to the “noise” and start paying attention to the “silence”, we will be able to fight the machine. Everything being done is a knee jerk reaction to a bad reality TV show.”
Yes, yes, and YES!!!
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How should we respond to silence? With more silence?
Silence=consent.
Silence=death.
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If I can wade into this increasingly abstract metaphor, I think Dienne is saying (1) pay attention to the “silence” and (2) react to the “silence” with noise.
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Ignore the noise. If Trump tweets in a forest and no one hears it, does it make a noise? Seriously, stop paying attention to his tweets – getting outraged about them is exactly what he wants you to do. You’re letting him become your puppetmaster.
Respond to the silence. Look at what’s going on behind the silence and call it out. That’s what we need to be fighting – the stuff that’s going on quietly (and usually with bipartisan support).
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So how do we ignore what the POTUS of the most powerful country on earth (with access to the nuclear codes) says, tweets, spews and does? We have to be aware of everything when it comes to the Trump/Pence horror show. A good first step: VOTE OUT THE GOP!! Or have the usual progressive/liberal circular firing squad and allow the GOP to win again.
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I didn’t say ignore what he does. In fact, that’s specifically what I’m saying to pay attention to. What he says and tweets is irrelevant – an intentional distraction.
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I don’t agree. Words matter. Words wound.
I recall Marsha Gessen writing about how to survive in an autocracy.
Rule 1: pay attention to what the autocrat says. He means it.
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What Trump says and tweets IS relevant because it is an intentional distraction and because it stirs up his base and it affects his base and because it influences his supporters. It’s a propaganda barrage that works on a huge chunk of the population. Flash back to the 1930s Germany: Oh just ignore the rantings of Goebbels and Hitler.
Really?
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What does “pay attention to the silence” mean?
Seriously? It’s just a bunch of words in which the blame for all problems goes back to Democrats as if they are ONLY “paying attention to the words”.
Trump says and does some of the most reprehensible things in modern US history and there are people still attacking the DEMOCRATS! Because their response is less than perfect. Funny how it is the exact same people who insisted that there was no difference between a vote for Trump or Clinton.
Notice what the people who attack the Democrats do not say:
They do not say “VOTE FOR DEMOCRATS”. Because they do not actually care what Trump does — they only care about having their approved progressive candidates win and if their candidate doesn’t win, then a pox on those (non-white) people who will suffer.
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“Pay attention to what Trump does” say the critics of the Democrats.
Trump is spurning traditional democracies and meeting with the autocrat Putin who helped him win by interfering in US elections.
Are Democrats allowed to pay attention to that?
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And the best example right now is the Supreme Court ruling in favor of Janus. YES, I believe what’s going on at the border is very important and very wrong. This was the distraction to keep people occupied while the Janus decision was being framed in favor of the Koch Bros (and their ilk) and from the Muslim travel ban was being pushed through. What do you want to bet that in the next few days, all those children will be returned to their parents? Trump is just a puppet and he’s too stupid to realize that he’s being used by the exact people who need him in office acting like the baboon that he is. I think what’s going on at the border is sinful, but what just happened to millions of working americans is more important of an issue right now. Distraction is a political tactic being used by the GOP….that’s how they are winning.
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Lisa M, what are you talking about?
Unless you are suggesting that the Supreme Court’s right wing is directly colluding with the Trump administration, Supreme Court decisions don’t generally get written in a day or two.
The ONLY reason that those children might — and I say might — be returned to their parents now is the public outcry. How dare you suggest we should have shut up and let the policy of separation continue.
There is absolutely no reason that Americans can’t oppose all the ugly and terrible things that Trump is doing that his enablers on the left kept telling us were just like Hillary would have done.
Stop BLAMING us for caring about the things you decide aren’t important (kids and babies taken from their parents) and telling us that it is all our fault that the man that some people claimed was no worse than Hillary Clinton is doing exactly what we knew he would do. Appointing the most right wing Supreme Court Justices to make decisions like this.
The ONLY people to blame for this decision are those who refused to vote for Hillary Clinton. Period.
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Here is a Nation article on the subject titled
“Against Civility
You can’t fight injustice with decorum.”
Quotes
A popular and facile objection to “uncivil” action is that administration officials have the right to peace in their private lives: After all, the separation between the public and private spheres should allow for a liberal exchange of political views. But the people who’ve been denied service aren’t merely fellow citizens, or even longtime civil servants suddenly finding themselves in the clutches of a horrible boss. These are powerful political appointees and administration stalwarts who largely come from privileged backgrounds and have freely chosen to serve Trump and his agenda.
[…]
Nazi comparisons aren’t always perfect (except when they are), so let’s stay closer to home, and consider black resistance to white-supremacist terror in mid-century America instead. When black members of the civil-rights movement demanded to be treated equally by sitting in at lunch counters, blocking highways, and confronting public officials, they were labeled traitorous and impatient. The “be patient” attitude of white moderates famously prompted King’s “Letter From a Birmingham Jail” in which he wrote that “nonviolent direct action seeks to create such a crisis and foster such a tension that a community which has constantly refused to negotiate is forced to confront the issue.”
The actions we’re seeing around the country today have involved no violence–just mild discomfort. Still, civility enforcers like former education secretary Arne Duncan seem committed to taking the dumbest possible lesson from the civil-rights movement. “No matter how much we dislike or disagree with someone, we should not deny them the chance to have a meal,” Duncan tweeted. “The history in our country of denying people access to restaurants, to water fountains and even bathrooms is too raw, too real.”
[…]
Throughout history, activists have seldom won battles against injustice by asking politely.
The article finishes with
To cling to civility is to allow the powerful to commit crimes, as long as they do so with a smile and a handshake.
https://www.thenation.com/article/against-civility/
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“Trump ridicules people daily, in tweets and rallies. But no one dare respond for fear of alienating his base. Let’s be clear: He is the source of today’s vicious and uncivil climate.”
And people don’t respond because this thuggish president fights back like an evil clown. It’s like wrestling with a tar baby. It’s Goliath versus David. It’s the tank against the student in Tiananmen Square, it’s the regime against the individual, plus dog whistles. It’s really, really sick. It’s not disputation, it’s total subversion and deteriorization. After this, we will need mechanisms for getting rid of this kind of fundamental moral corruption. It’s not just racism, it’s general unfairness, abuse of power, indecency, cruelty, stupidity, divisiveness, etc.
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Auto-Correction correction:
It’s not disruption, it’s total subversion and deteriorization.
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Trump may exacerbate the incivility of today’s body politic, but he is more the result of it than the cause of it. Who can forget the lack of civility on right wing talk radio? Who can exaggerate the lack,of logic there in.
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The larger question is how a demagogue with no morals, ethics, or pronciples became the hero of evangelicals.
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Diane: My belief is that Evangelicals believe in a strict father figure…one to always follow. Trump is a strong figure. They believe in God’s forgiveness [Ex: he forgave all of Trumps immoral happenings and corruptness] and remember that Trump has been blessed by God because he is wealthy. Evangelical leaders go as far as to say Trump is some version of god.
One of their main goals was to get rid of Roe vs. Wade. Fetuses need to be born but can die from any number of lacks after that. They also want to get rid of gay marriages. As my brother said, “The Bible says Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve.’ Trump’s conservative Supreme Court will most likely prevail in this.
It’s all a bunch of faulty ‘Christians’ who don’t believe in or follow Jesus. They pretend to have all the right answers and want everyone else to believe what they do. Fortunately, I’ve read that younger people are dropping out. Worshiping a “demagogue with no morals, ethics, or principles” is stressing them out.
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George Lakoff says the same.
Trump is a strict Father figure who lies, is an adulterer, a gambler, a man of no morals who violates all Ten Commandments.
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The only god he worships is Mammon.
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Diane: I have a whole string of disgusting words to describe Trump. He is the opposite of religious. My favorite adjective and descriptive noun are Orange IDIOT, but Orange Buffoon also works well. I can’t figure out why any thinking person would vote for him. Comments by his supporters don’t make any sense. If facts are presented, they are always labeled ‘fake news’, followed by a worse mistake that Obama and Hillary made. Obama and Hillary are always blamed for something. Whataboutism is alive and well.
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“Trump is a strong figure. ”
I am not sure he is a strong figure, but he certainly isn’t a father figure. He is also hysterical and whimsical. I’d say he is a teenager figure.
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Trump is a malignant narcissist, psychopathic man-child with the figure of a walrus — no insult intended to walruses.
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Lloyd: I haven’t figured out why he thinks he is attractive to beautiful women. Perhaps he is delusional and hasn’t looked in the mirror recently. I do believe that women look for more than money if they want a good relationship.
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We should never normalize the racist, anti-democratic comments of a inveterate liar. I am heartened that about 20% of candidates in Oklahoma’s primary candidates are public school teachers. In New York a female Latina socialist just won the Democratic primary from the entrenched Joe Crowley. Let’s hope, “The Times, They Are a Changin.”https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2018/6/26/17506970/alexandria-ocasio-cortez-joe-crowley-primary-new-york
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There are two different kinds of normalization in play these days. One is the generalized, unthinking acceptance of injustices and irrational values by certain sectors of the population. The second is a numbing fatigue and resignation in the other, opposing sectors that results from the constant onslaught of malfeasance, evil and largely unchallenged lies being put into practice and imposed upon all. The later produces, by design, a mass disengagement from the battle against the former. The former is designed to leverage and increase the acceptance and expansion of it’s own evils into additional realms. What should be a broad based public discourse in the context of civics that seeks to put the best ideas and solutions in place for the benefit of all has been radically devolved into the “us vs. them”, “my team right or wrong” ideology of gang warfare. Those under assault by the current manifestations of malevolent unreason should beware of the Stockholm Syndrome and avoid abdicating their morally and ethically derived positions. Rest and recharge, continue to resist.
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Well said.
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Rest and recharge, continue to resist.
Yes.
I am energized and hopeful when I see the savvy high school students organizing to expand voting and providing a model for civic engagement…
I am beyond having words to express how angry and sick I feel about the destructive forces aligned with Trump.
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“Let’s be clear: He is the source of today’s vicious and uncivil climate.”
You are absolutely right. We should not in anyway ‘normalize’ this orange monster. We need to actively protest [Ex: Families Belong Together” protest on June 30], call and write our members of Congress and sign every petition that comes along. Being quiet and doing nothing is the same as supporting.
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I will be at the June 30 protest in Greenport, NY, to protest Trump immigration policies.
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Diane, I will be in the protest in Hammond, IN outside the Federal Building. I’ve made two signs with both sides filled with what I believe. People need to protest!!!
I just saw the announcement that Trump and Putin will be meeting. I’m sure Putin’s puppy is thrilled to have his master travel to see him.
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I am deeply disturbed by the actions of the president and those who ‘follow’ him. The GOP is playing the political game – ‘if I don’t follow the leader of our party, I might not have a job in government’ and they have their rose colored glasses on ignoring the outrageous wrongs that the president and his minions are doing. The top senator gloating with pride that he blocked Obama’s judge. The WH workers who repeat what is told to them even though they know it is wrong.
The direction is going down hill and taking all that we have fought for with it. We have a backbone and we need to use it. We have to stand up to the reversals. Will standing up against these atrocities start an internal/civil war? Maybe. We have to fight for what is clearly humane for all people – not just the few. We should not ignore those lies. We should not ignore those actions. Our first defense is the voting booth, along with writing letters, speaking to our representatives, protesting. It is not okay to be the bully and point fingers at others. It is not okay to demean others for your own gain.
It has gotten way out of hand to just turn the other cheek. We have to stand up to the wrongs !
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A favorite descriptive line recently, in arguing how Democratic leadership must sit up and recognize a sharp shift to the left, was that of describing Nancy Pelosi anxiously “clutching her pearls.” While I have a lot of respect for the hard work Peolsi has done, the very “civility” which Democratic leaders now call for smacks notably of both wealth and privilege — and a growing leadership worry about losing both.
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Since we are now living in a world of insults, racism and the rest of the evils that make up hell. If people have not been standing up for their rights they better start now. This is a battle for the soul of America and if we want to be stupid like the clown in charge then do nothing if you want a country where everyone matters STAND UP.
We let our leadership in public education sell us a fake bill of goods and what happened, we have kids graduating who can neither read nor write. We have right now two thousand children missing, what are we going to do about it. We are going to stand up and fight back. With words, our money, ,marching ,social media network with people and races that are different from you but we are not going to accept this madness and be like sheep going to the slaughter. We are Americans not Russians.
We need to find those children and sue the government for this racist hate..
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Agreed, Beata. Right on!
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Televised presidential debates should never have allowed verbal abuse. Making your case with ad hominem attacks that belittle others is not presidential and should not be tolerated.
What do teachers now say in classrooms when we try to police verbal abuse and bullying? A kid can just say the president does it all the time. That’s our fault.
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Here’s the conundrum. The president bullies and ridicules people all the time in Twitter. If anyone speaks against him or the cretins around him, they are uncivil.
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“If anyone speaks against him or the cretins around him, they are uncivil.”
This is their weapon—similar to people were called unpatriotic when they didn’t support the war after 911, or when they didn’t support Nazi Germany’s policies. As Goehring said to the American reporter during the Nuremberg trials, this is an age old weapon, and works everywhere.
It’s time to stop listening to the evaluation of Trumpists, to feel guilty about the strength of our voice. We do not always have to sound nice and calm. It’s time to call Trump a criminal.
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Ignore the media and learn from this poem:
“First they came for…” is a poem written by the German Lutheran pastor Martin Niemöller (1892–1984). It is about the cowardice of German intellectuals following the Nazis’ rise to power and subsequent purging of their chosen targets, group after group.
I do not want to be reading the following poem before my life ends:
Because I was not an immigrant.
Because I was not a Muslim.
Because I was not not a teacher and did not belong to a union.
WHEN bad things are happening and our corrupt leaders are causing them to happen, it is our duty to speak out and protest repeatedly and even fight back like our Founding Fathers did when the colonies rebelled and fought the British Empire.
Do not forget this old saying from one of America’s Founding Father Patrick Henry, “Give me liberty, or give me death!”
Anyone that isn’t willing to speak out and fight when needed does not deserve to have any freedom.
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Words Matter!
‘Throughout the 20th century, writers and thinkers who faced reality-destroying regimes kept producing similar recipes. “Live not by lies,” Solzhenitsyn wrote. Václav Havel pondered the predicament of living, unquestioningly, “inside the lie” & the uncanny power of stepping outside of i t. In our case, stepping outside the lie means refusing—stubbornly, consistently, incrementally—to lend credence to the opposite of politics, the opposite of diplomacy, and the opposite of sanity. That would require thinking, reading, and speaking critically: not treating an outburst as though it were politics, a tantrum as though it were diplomacy, and a delusion as though it were aspiration. The good news is that this is not an entirely impossible task.” https://www.newyorker.com/podcast/the-new-yorker-radio-hour/malcolm-gladwell-on-school-shootings-and-the-return-of-paul-schrader?mbid=nl_Daily%20052618&CNDID=45272181&spMailingID=13586914&spUserID=MTgwNzgwOTcyMzEyS0&spJobID=1402348413&spReportId=MTQwMjM0ODQxMwS2https://www.newyorker.com/podcast/the-new-yorker-radio-hour/malcolm-gladwell-on-school-shootings-and-the-return-of-paul-schrader?mbid=nl_Daily%20052618&CNDID=45272181&spMailingID=13586914&spUserID=MTgwNzgwOTcyMzEyS0&spJobID=1402348413&spReportId=MTQwMjM0ODQxMwS2
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Why are we supposed to, ” …soothing tensions over Russia’s interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election.”? Trump got elected with the help of Putin and now he is going to meet with Putting to smooth tensions? What kind of CRA* is this?
“Trump tweeted this morning that “Russia continues to say they had nothing to do with Meddling in our Election!” I’m sure Al Capone also said he did nothing wrong. Now we are to start believing what dictators and criminals say? Is this the new direction the Department of Justice is supposed to take…believe criminals when they say they didn’t do anything?
Putin’s poodle is now happy that he gets to meet with his master. Grrrrr!
…………………..
The Washington Post
Democracy Dies in Darkness
News Alert Jun 28, 8:07 AM
Trump, Putin will hold a summit July 16 in Finland, the White House announced
The meeting signals a growing rapprochement between the United States and Russia. President Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin have pursued the tete-a-tete in hopes of soothing tensions over Russia’s interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election and its aggression in Ukraine and elsewhere, despite retaliatory actions taken by both governments this year. Trump tweeted this morning that “Russia continues to say they had nothing to do with Meddling in our Election!”
Plans for the summit were finalized Wednesday by national security adviser John Bolton, who held marathon meetings in Moscow that included talks with Putin himself at the Kremlin.
Finland, officially neutral during the Cold War and not a NATO member, shares a border with Russia, and its president, Sauli Niinisto, has fostered a relationship with Putin.
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What kind of a nation are we when we allow this to happen? The GOP believes that making it harder for the poor to access help is making them more self sufficient and will lead to their feeling more fulfilled. [Horse manure.] Tax cuts for the wealthy and corporations is going to make all social programs harder to survive. Our priorities are skewered.
………………..
American kids are 70 percent more likely to die before adulthood than kids in other rich countries
A new study ranks 20 wealthy countries on childhood deaths. The US comes in last.
By Sarah Kliffsarah@vox.com Jan 8, 2018, 4:00pm EST
A child born in the United States has a 70 percent greater chance of dying before adulthood than kids born into other wealthy, democratic countries, a new study has found.
The research, published in the journal Health Affairs on Monday, shows that the United States lags far behind peer countries on child health outcomes. It estimates that, since 1961, America’s poor performance accounts for more than 600,000 excess child deaths — deaths that wouldn’t have happened if these kids were born into other wealthy countries.
“In all the wealthy, democratic countries we studied children are dying less often then they were 50 years ago,” Ashish Thakrar, the study’s lead author, said. “But we found that children are dying more often in the United States than in any similar country.”
The study comes out three months after Congress allowed funding for the Children’s Health Insurance Program — which provides insurance to nine million low-income kids — to expire. And it builds on data released earlier this year, which finds that overall life expectancy in the United States has declined for the past two years — a troubling trend that hasn’t been seen since the 1960s.
Infants in the US have a 76 percent higher risk of death than in other wealthy nations…
https://www.vox.com/health-care/2018/1/8/16863656/childhood-mortality-united-states
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The answer from Trump supporters to all of this is that it never happened. The truth is under fire here, and the only way to fight the assault on truth is to speak the truth as you see it. Fighting will only convince your opponents that they were right to begin with, that you are a dangerous radical for speaking against their truth, and you deserve state sanctions.
At the close of World War II, American soldiers felt obliged to march German citizens past the bodies of Jewish people who died on a forced march. Germans were forced to view truth from a lens that focused properly on the reality of what was being done instead of the statements issued by the censored German Press under the NAZI regime.
It strikes me that the problem is that the center is, as usual, being civil, and the right is painting it as far left. How ridiculous. There is no left in American politics. The Wobblies have no equal in modern society. Radical left politics was eliminated by the success of an expanding economy at the close of the Second World War, the success of the New Deal idea and its permeation of governmental purpose, and the success of labor unions forcing business to spread the wealth a bit. The Opposition to the war in Vietnam called itself the New Left, but the war ended and there was nothing left of the New Left.
Deprived of pressures from the left wing at a basic economic level, right wing political activists have now been remarkably successful at turning the New Deal approach to political/economic problems away. This will not last forever. The breakdown of authorities that govern very poor places will always produce a leadership that harnesses the power of the many. Think of Grito de Dolores in Mexican history that produced their revolution.
What right wing thinkers do not understand is that, throughout history, governments that failed to take care of their people, no matter how tyrannical, have crumbled. Some quickly like Hitler’s Germany. Some over a longer period, like Stalin’s Russian Empire. And some even longer, like the European monarchies which held on to absolute power tenaciously for generations, despite peasant uprisings going back into the medieval period.
If Americans do not begin to vote for good people to lead them, they will soon be governed by rich people who fear them. This will be messy.
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Trump encourages hatred and disrespect towards journalists and then sends condolences when five more people are mass killed at a newspaper. How sweet. He has been bought off by the NRA to the tune of $30 million so his ‘thoughts and prayers’ mean nothing.
How many more of these killings are going to be tolerated? How much more CRA* are we supposed to hear from worthless politicians like Trump?
Trump Offers Condolences to Capital Gazette
VIDEO: Trump Offers Condolences to Capital Gazette
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
President Trump, who has previously labeled the news media “the enemy of the people,” condemned the deadly newsroom shooting in Annapolis, Md.
https://www.nytimes.com/video/players/offsite/index.html?videoId=100000005983080
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Trump continuously spouts off against journalists who are truthful and denounce his actions. Some people are taking Trump’s rants seriously and are taking actions to ‘fix’ the problem. HIs ‘thoughts, prayers and condolences’ are worthless. The capital Gazette is speaking out.
……………………………
Our Say: Thank you. We will not forget. – Capital Gazette
…We won’t forget being called an enemy of the people.
No, we won’t forget that. Because exposing evil, shining light on wrongs and fighting injustice is what we do.
We are The Capital. We are the Maryland Gazette. We are the Bowie Blade-News and Crofton West County Gazette. We are more than just our questions and our writing and our headlines.
We are journalists.
Yes, we bring values and beliefs to our work. We believe in truth. We believe in speaking for those who don’t have the power to speak for themselves. We believe in questioning authority.
We believe in reporting the news.
Our community has rallied around us to show they understand who we are, and that we are not the enemy of the people. We are your neighbors, your friends. We are you.
You might not always like what we write, or the photos we shoot or the videos we produce. You may not agree with our definition of what a story is or is not…
http://www.capitalgazette.com/opinion/our_say/ac-ce-our-say-20180630-story.html#share=email~story
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I’m surprised to read that the National Institutes of Health, the largest research facility in the United States, is recognizing the effects of poverty on health. If NIH can see there is a problem, what is wrong with politicians? The Human Rights Council of the UN has put in a protest against the US on how it treats poverty.
Trump and the GOP are working so hard to Make America Great Again. [Sarcasm]
…….
Friday, June 29, 2018
NIH-funded scientists put socioeconomic data on the map
…Where someone lives can determine several health-related factors, such as safety, stress and access to food. A person’s neighborhood can influence many conditions, including cardiovascular disease and diabetes, which are disproportionately more common among racial and ethnic minorities and the socioeconomically disadvantaged.
“Socioeconomic disadvantage is one of the fundamental factors that result in health disparities; and understanding those factors is what will lead to development of interventions to reduce disparities,” said Eliseo J. Pérez-Stable, M.D., director of NIMHD. “Having a tool to better understand social factors impacting health disparities is an important step forward to achieving health equity.”
Developed by Amy Kind, M.D., Ph.D. from University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health, the Neighborhood Atlas uses the “Area Deprivation Index,” which includes 17 measures of education, housing quality and poverty, updated with current American Community Survey…
“Effectively measuring socioeconomic factors is a key step for conducting rigorous health disparities research related to aging,” said Carl V. Hill, Ph.D., M.P.H. who serves as the director of the NIA Office of Special Populations. “The Neighborhood Atlas enables the application of existing social data to understand the risk factors for many diseases, including Alzheimer’s disease, and provides the field with innovative disease modifiers to study.”
https://www.nih.gov/news-events/news-releases/nih-funded-scientists-put-socioeconomic-data-map
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