James Pindell wrote in the Boston Globe about the Republican Convention.
For the Republicans, America is a country on the verge of collapse because there is rioting in the cities, impending doom in the suburbs, and some concerted effort in the rural areas to prevent people from going to church or owning a gun. As one speaker put it: “Trump is the bodyguard of western civilization.”
The Republican Party no longer exists, he writes:
There is no longer a Republican Party. Over the past four years, what was the Republican Party has become the Trump party. This was on full display in the first 24 hours of the convention. After all, the party didn’t even bother doing the most basic thing at a convention: pass a platform stating what the party stood for. Because the party stands for one thing: Trump.
Speaker after speaker invoked Trump over any principles of America or what had been widely viewed as the basic tenets of the Republican Party: strong foreign policy, social conservatism, and fiscal conservatism. Indeed, while tax rates were mentioned, no speaker said anything about fiscal responsibility after years of soaring deficits under Trump.
Even the podium reflected this new reality. Where the Democrats used the convention’s logo, the Republicans either used one that read “Trump 2020″ or “Trump Pence.”
Diane Ravitch's blog 
More proto-fascism from the Grand Old Party.
I suppose that the self-proclaimed pro-lifers made no mention of the 150,000+-and-counting preventable deaths directly attributable to Dear Leader’s utter disregard for human life.
This is the astonishing irony of the “pro-life” group: they care about the unborn but don’t care at all about the 170,000+ who died of coronavirus.
Diane I hate abortion, but I’m not a “lifer,” and I support Roe v Wade and providing women’s health across-the-board.
That said, I know that many lifers who make a clear distinction between (a) causing the death of unborn babies (that’s how they see it) and (b) other unjust causes of death. None are appropriate, but the baby-thing is a particularly egregious assault.
I’m explaining, and not endorsing, what may seem to many as hypocrisy, plain and simple. CBK
I don’t like abortion, but I don’t think I have the right or authority to tell anyone else not to have one. Abortion is a decision between a woman and her doctor.
Diane Exactly that . . . what you said. Lifers, however, consider that there’s a baby involved, and there is. I think the true hypocrisy, however, is shown your previous note where you say:
“But the same people who preach ‘personal responsibility’ to the poor, exempt Donald Trump from any personal responsibility for his crimes.”
The irony is that they forgive him. The hypocrisy: they do so at the service of their biases and whims with the cover of “Christian.”
The problem is that the code hidden in THEIR idea of personal responsibility is wedded to the neo-liberalism . . . drown the state . . . there is no group responsibility . . . through the provisions of governmental services, like the USPO, or education, or health etc etc etc. Sacrosanct are the oligarchs, who are in dire need of taxation. CBK
Many “Pro-Lifers” are really not pro-life. Rather they are “Pro-Birth”. If Pro-Lifers” truly believe what they try to push down people throats then they would care for every individual from birth to the grave. But that is not the case as demonstrated on a daily basis.
Exactly right. They are “pro-birth,” but they are anti-life. They would gladly pull the switch at an execution or deny health care to a dying person.
“There is no group responsibility.” Well said, CBK. That is, there is no group responsibility to create a society which cares for all its members.
We have come a ways toward helping the neediest. Our safety nets are better than they were 60 yrs ago. But that is a low bar. During the same 60 yrs we’ve hollowed out the middle class, produced one of the worst gini coefficients among OECD nations, virtually halted upward mobility. We keep more people alive with safety nets, only to parade before them mocking media images of unattainable security and prosperity. That fosters class division, bitterness, hopelessness– which leads to crime, addiction, & many other ills including the destruction of the family unit through lack of social support. Abortion falls in the latter category.
Not to mention the people who do not get medical attention from birth because of pro-lifers voting for people who preach personal responsibility over charity.
But the same people who preach “personal responsibility” to the poor, exempt Donald Trump from any personal responsibility for his crimes.
“Personal responsibility” is a moralistic cudgel to hold over the riffraff. See Jerry Falwell Jr. for the most recent example of this…the Idiot’s family for an extended version.
Roy, these folks aren’t against “charity,” they’re against equitable social support through fair taxation. They’re basically anti-social.
“Lifers, however, consider that there’s a baby involved, and there is.”
No, there is not a baby involved at least during the first trimester. There is a HUGE difference between a baby and a fetus at the end of the first 12 weeks.
Week 12:
By now your baby might be about 2 1/2 inches (61 millimeters) long from crown to rump — the length of the short side of a U.S. bill — and weigh about 1/2 ounce (14 grams) compared to the average birth weight for babies is around 7.5 lb (3.5 kg), although between 5.5 lb (2.5 kg) and 10 lb (4.5 kg) is considered normal.
The brainstem is responsible for many of our body’s most vital functions–heart rate, breathing, and blood pressure. It is largely mature by the end of the second trimester, which is when babies first become able to survive outside the womb.
Last of all to mature is the cerebral cortex, which is responsible for most of what we think of as mental life–conscious experience, voluntary actions, thinking, remembering, and feeling. It has only begun to function around the time gestation comes to an end.
When most “lifers” think or say the word baby, I am convinced in their minds that they are thinking of babies after they are born and not the one that weighs 1/2 ounce at the end of the 12th week that has no brain yet.
one-half-of one-ounce vs 5.5 to 10 pounds.
Lloyd Lofthouse: A few years back, I went to a Planned Parenthood building for an outdoor protest. There were two police cars parked by the building for our protection.
The ‘keep the fetus born’ crowd put up signs across the street and glared at us with pure hatred. Their signs were showing babies in the womb and all sorts of signs that we protestors were murdering babies.
The police cars came on days when women seeking abortions would enter. These people who support fetuses being born are that cruel. They never protest the inequalities that exist nor protest against children who can be free to die by any other means…such as starvation, lack of medical care, guns, etc. I say they are hypocrites.
Lloyd . . . thank you for your explanation . . . I guess I don’t have to tell you that lifers don’t think of it that way, nor (that I know of) do they think of a “little baby” as little but already formed at inception. It’s a more comprehensive view that concerns the beginning of a life.
But here and now is not the place nor the time to discuss this. I do think it’s perhaps helpful for opposed views to try to understand where others are “coming from.” Also, to me the legal issues are where the authentic battleground is and, in that, I am not “for abortion” but for the family and ultimately for the woman, with her doctor, to shoulder the responsibility, the decision, and the history of thought that goes along with it. CBK
This was a comment that I posted on the online NYT. The columnist Peter Wehner made a comment that I didn’t like.
“Liberals should also hope for the revivification of a healthy conservatism. It would check some of the excesses of the Democratic Party, making it stronger and more responsible.”
I’d like Peter Wehner to tell me exactly what is wrong with Bernie Sanders or Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. [They are guilty of the ‘excesses’ of the Democratic party.]
Bernie supports raising the minimum wage to $15 an hour, raising taxes on wealthy households and corporations, and a stronger social safety net. He is a big supporter of organized labor, and he’s criticized both parties for elevating the concerns of corporations over the needs of everyday workers. He takes a skeptical view of free trade agreements, because he worries they would outsource American jobs. He backs diplomatic action over the use of military force. Sanders has backed a strong public education system. He voted against final passage of the No Child Left Behind law in 2001, criticizing the bill’s focus on “high-stakes” standardized testing to measure student achievement and punish low-performing schools. He’s labeled those who propose the forced deportation of undocumented immigrants “ugly beyond belief.” He backed the DREAM Act.
“We need a tax system which asks the billionaire class to pay its fair share of taxes and which reduces the obscene degree of wealth inequality in America.”
How HORRIBLE to enact all of these measures which would help average and poor Americans./s
……………………………………..
Conservatives Have Only One Choice in 2020
After what we have seen during Trump’s first term, any true conservative should be appalled by the prospect of a second.
By Peter Wehner
Contributing Opinion Writer
carolmalaysia Wehner replies to your comment:
“Liberals should also hope for the revivification of a healthy conservatism. It would check some of the excesses of the Democratic Party, making it stronger and more responsible.”
Missing is the tension in a democracy between (a) personal freedoms and (b) the law.
In that context, the idea behind “liberals” ALLOWS for personal freedoms, but they don’t necessarily endorse the “excesses” that flow from people who abuse those freedoms. In that context, I think Whener has a point with the idea of “healthy conservatism.”
Unfortunately, however, liberal ideas wrongly get the flack that should be assigned to the irresponsibility constantly on display from those who abuse those freedoms.
The fact that codification of moral laws are repugnant to any free society does not negate the idea that freedom calls for PERSONAL intellectual, moral, and even spiritual development–interior law–aka cultured and civilized persons. In fact, in a democracy, that fact demands such development. . . . one reason why gaining an authentic EDUCATION is no small thing in a democracy.
Would that the anti-maskers and groupers would think half as much of their responsibilities as they do of their rights.
I cannot get the image of that young woman licking the window to spread the virus out of my head. CBK
They are all bowing to Trump, The Magnificent, who can fix this country of every wrong. If this malarkey is true, why hasn’t he done ANY FIXING yet? Four years of lying doesn’t count.
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GOP Says Vote Trump… or Get a Marxist Hellscape
No matter what the problem, more Trump was the cure at Night 1 of the Republican National Convention.
Published Aug. 24, 2020 11:53PM ET
On Night 1 of the 2020 Republican National Convention, acolyte after high-profile acolyte lined up to lavish praise on President Donald Trump for standing tall between the American people and a Marxist, politically correct hellscape.
They just couldn’t seem to figure out why, exactly, he was so great.
Trump was alternately touted as a true champion of the Black community—but also as the only person standing in the way of the death of the “suburbs” at the hands of “low-quality apartments” and radical Marxist mobs. He was cast as a visionary leader who has made and kept his promises of law and order and economic growth, all while video of U.S. cities on fire unspooled throughout the night. And Trump’s work combating COVID-19 was described as a Herculean effort to save the country—a message that all but ignored the 175,000-plus who had died and was delivered from an empty auditorium in the capital of a pandemic-stricken nation…
https://www.thedailybeast.com/gop-says-its-trump-or-a-marxist-hellscape?source=email&via=desktop
The longer he is in office, the more chaotic and dangerous our society becomes.
Four more years of this? Please, spare me the disintegration of our nation.
One of the most nauseating humans on the planet spoke at the RNC coven, Rebecca Friedrichs.
Here is Friedrichs on the Laura Ingraham Show in July: REBECCA FRIEDRICHS: The unions are using the closure of our schools as a smokescreen. Laura, here’s why. Sadly, these unions are actually using our schools to sexualize our children and to train them in anti-American ideology. They do this with a coalition of over 180 organizations, including, sadly, the CDC, Planned Parenthood, and Black Lives Matter incorporated.
It is shocking what they’re teaching our children online through virtual learning. They are teaching our children to sext, to view pornography. They are hooking them up with online sex experts. So, what they are doing is grooming our children for sexual predators to use them. This is child abuse. I have an editorial about this tomorrow online in The Washington Times, people can read and learn all the details.
This is one of the big reasons that unions want to keep our schools closed. Because they can’t sneak these evil lessons past loving teachers who have no idea by keeping them virtual.
https://www.mediamatters.org/laura-ingraham/fox-guest-says-teachers-are-grooming-our-children-sexual-predators-use-them
This woman is a vicious lying liar on an epic scale and she’s associated with ALEC. To say that she is rabidly anti-union is an understatement.
Rebecca Friedrichs should be sued for defamation and slander by the CDC, Planned Parenthood, the teachers’ unions and Black Lives Matter. The teacher unions don’t write the curriculums, they don’t publish the text books and they don’t control the decisions whether the schools will be open, closed or have a hybrid plan. She just makes things up out of whole cloth, like her beloved Jabba The Trump. This woman is despicable beyond words. How does she explain child sexual abuse at private and religious schools that are not unionized. I’m sure she’s a Jerry Falwell, Jr. fan, too.
Even I was surprised at the attack on public schools. You know they have disdain for public schools and public school families but this is more overt than even 2010.
Now we understand why they haven’t lifted a finger to support public schools in the pandemic. They’re affirmatively running against our schools and students. Hoping our schools and kids fail.
Trumpsy dumpsy is a full-blown narcissist who’s plain stupid. He’s unfit to serve a rat.
About violence surrounding peaceful protests: How do we know WHO is causing the violence? No one knows for sure (and that’s part of the problem).
But according to WHAT WE KNOW ABOUT TRUMP and his followers, it would not surprise me to find out that they create and direct such violence and chaos and then blame those who ARE peaceful for it.
Trump has actually repeated Obama’s words about the dangers of electing the opposition, only he upped it from the loss of “democracy” to the loss of “civilization” . . . he mirrors and throws back everything that others say about him . . . . a method, BTW, that is so very fascist it’s even written into Hannah Arendt’s work on “The Origins of Totalitarianism.” CBK
BEYOND THE PALE: This is WHY I worry about the polls that are still above 40% . . . WHO would think of the below as anything but NUTS on a platter? CBK
“Here is Friedrichs on the Laura Ingraham Show in July: REBECCA FRIEDRICHS: ‘The unions are using the closure of our schools as a smokescreen. Laura, here’s why. Sadly, these unions are actually using our schools to sexualize our children and to train them in anti-American ideology. They do this with a coalition of over 180 organizations, including, sadly, the CDC, Planned Parenthood, and Black Lives Matter incorporated.'”
This is why, if I were a betting person, right now I’d bet on the Idiot staying in office. Forty percent represents the people who are not ashamed of supporting him and his cult. I could easily see 10-12 percent of the voting population being too embarrassed to say so in public. The same happened with David Duke, George W. Bush, and the Idiot. Americans in my lifetime have never been an optimistic people. They are overwhelmingly driven by fear, selfishness, bigotry, and favoritism. They may not say it, but our history since the height of the Cold War leads to no other conclusion. Again, I’ve written it here before, but I challenge anyone here to visit your local large hardware store or stores when business is humming. Just walk around, take a look, eavesdrop on random people, and then ask yourself if you feel good about our future. I saw a clip of the Idiot Jr’s girlfriend speak this morning. She’s speaking to them and they love, whether they express it or not.
GregB Steve Kornecki, the statistics guy on MSNBC, did a comparison of where we are now with the same time for several past presidents. Trump IS within range, in just the way you say. CBK
I sure hope we’re both wrong as can be.
Takeaway take two:
Another vitrolic political theater event. An enthralling puppet show for diehard
believers in electoral saviors.
“Scott Stump
As the boundaries of our missions in #space continue to expand, so do the career opportunities.
CubeSat provides teachers new online project resources to help HS students build valuable technical skills for careers.”
Truly amazing to watch the ed reform echo chamber in government ignore the reality of public schools in this pandemic. Are they clueless and useless because they aren’t aware public schools exist or because they have contempt for the schools and students?
Would someone send a letter to Washington DC to inform the US Department of Education that public schools are struggling to deal with a pandemic? They’re not aware.
You’re all paying for this. You’re paying thousands of public employees who refuse to offer any practical effort or assistance to your schools or students because they oppose the existence of the schools that 90% of Americans attend. Tens of millions of dollars it costs and no public school student anywhere receives any value whatever.
Hire new people. You’re just throwing money away.
Never fear! Public schools have gotten zero practical assistance from any of the thousands of federal employees we’re all paying, but the Professional Public School Critics Association of ed reform is on the case:
Center on Reinventing Public Education
Just 11 of the 106 school districts in ’s reopening database outline plans to provide specific support to homeless and transitional students.
As usual, hard at work listing the failures of schools they didn’t and don’t attend and don’t support. This is what the billionaire bucks pay for- a whole sector of professional, full time critics of public schools.
Did they ever get that funding passed? No, of course not. Practical and useful assistance is not on the agenda.
Not that it matters. Public schools muddled through without any assistance, as they have for the last 20 years. Some did well, others did worse, but they all did it without any help or assistance from the full time education experts who coincidentally are all ideologically opposed to the schools they’re supposedly “improving”
The Grand Old Party is grand no more! No platform means you have nothing to offer Americans for the future.
180,000 dead, 20-30 million out of work, the GDP down 33% and their opening salvo is to attack public schools, teachers and their unions. Then they went on to the 2 racists who used their minute of infamy as a call to arms to defend their homes and white suburbia. fast forward to Donny Jr and his concubine that delivered speeches that could have been written by Mussolini. Nikki Haley then went on to say she WAS a kid with brown skin in the past.
This was the first convention in modern times that refused to have any union trades working on the production. No wonder the production quality was poor.
70 days to election day.
“It is no distinction to an American President to be honest, nor to be brave, nor to be intelligent, nor to be patriotic–that have all been all of those…” These words were said by TR’s secretary of state, John Hay, when giving a speech about his president. How tragic and pathetic that we now have an occupant of the White House (incidentally, a term coined by TR, prior to that it was the Executive Mansion) who not only has none of these attributes, but actually embodies the very opposite of each.
Dang, I still haven’t found the time to contribute $42 to Trump’s re-election. I definitely have been with him since the beginning. GROSS! [Trump doesn’t seem to have many working to help him who aren’t related to his family.] I could have my name displayed for the ENTIRE WORLD to see.
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