You never know what we'll churn up in cleaning a stall
The more I listen, the more I perceive the Tea Party agenda is ultimately an attack on democracy in America. Unlike the Founding Fathers, they have no respect for the necessity of government.
And, be assured, a position of no compromise is the essence of tyrannical dictatorship.
What’s left would be brutal and cruel. Especially, for many of them, without their Social Security, in the aftermath.
And they’re afraid of socialism as an attack on the nation and its values? Think again.
Been reflecting on the great irony of Fox television’s bias toward right-wing candidates who wrap themselves in a nostalgic image of a nation back before, well, 1960. That is, before the network began spewing its vulgarity into American living rooms and lowering the standards of civilized conversation with language and situations that never before would have been allowed in polite company, much less its propaganda wing of the Republican establishment.
In other words, Fox has been a big part of the problem. Would the solution be to pull the plug? Do it themselves, to clear their conscience? Just wondering.
I’m tired of hearing so-called liberal media take the blame. And please don’t accuse Norman Lear and his societal comedies. They’re downright uplifting by comparison.
It would be fascinating, by the way, to get Archie Bunker’s take on Don “the Con” Trump. I’m guessing even he would see through the shill. Maybe in tandem with George Jefferson, at the bar? I’d drink to that.
A comment on a Hippie Trails pin at Pinterest just might explain how Trump-Pence followers interpret their vow to “Make America great again.” It goes:
“Man, that takes me back. I began in law enforcement back in the 70s, in the county jail in late 1970, on to police work four years later. we used to knock the crap out of those long hairs. Toss ’em into a drunk tank full of GIs from Fort Hood. Give ’em a free buzz cut on suspicion of lice. Worked out a lot of transition-to-civilian-life stress that way. Made coming to work pleasant. Back when a joint was a felony, and prison meant hard work in the sun. Good times!”
The fact that such a brutal, abusive outlook is still treasured by some shows how far we are from a just society. It echoes so-called conservatives who want to curb bureaucracy and government at the same time they’re invading bedrooms and voting for soaring prison populations.
Listen. Making America great is the opposite of such tyranny.
Or, as many are interpreting the campaign slogan, Make America hate again.
It’s enough to make Jesus weep.
If you’re willing to think President Obama is a Muslim or that Hawaii, where he was born, is a foreign country (it’s not, it’s the 50th State of the Union), then I suppose we shouldn’t be surprised if you accept Donald Trump’s claim to being a Christian.
Me, I want to see some evidence that he respects and follows the teachings of Jesus and St. Paul – a willingness to honor weakness as a virtue, to nurture the Fruits of the Spirit, to side with the oppressed and the poor, to love his enemies rather than ridicule them. Until then? It’s one more empty boast.
By the way, a little reminder may be in order here: Barack is the name of one of the Bible’s great generals, a Jewish hero, not a hint of Islam I can see there. Or is that another of the pages missing from too many Bibles?
Long ago I learned the maxim, Actions speak louder than words. Now, if you’ll excuse me, we have some work to do.
What if the One Percent moved out of the United States? Where would they go that wouldn’t tax them heavily? Much more heavily than here? Or where they wouldn’t gain so much from the public purse?
Or would they just huddle behind their own Big Wall – a much cheaper option than the one proposed for the southwest corner of the United States.
I presume they’d still be relying on our dollars, too. The kind the Treasury prints.
Besides, they couldn’t take all their assets with them. This is where their wealth’s generated, after all. Really. Even when their banks are Swiss.
As for the lunatic fringe? They would have real reasons to worry. Who else would back them, financially?
When it comes to history, Woodpecker has a long memory.
It’s all been drilled in his head. One tap at a time, as it were.
These days he’s thinking there are good reasons to be nervous. The whole tree’s infected and the wind’s rising.
To those who proclaim “All lives matter,” I want to retort, “Good, now let’s put it to the test. Does that mean cops can start shooting at you and yours willy-nilly?”
If you’re not appalled by the stream of news reports of police shootings of innocent blacks, you’re not listening. All lives are not given equal respect in American society, as the shootings are proving. All lives cannot matter as long as this inequality continues. This has to stop – it’s intolerable in a just society. To ignore this, we together need to fix the problem where it exists – sometimes, dare we say, where it’s been sanctioned.
Let’s be blunt. Black lives, we must insist, have not mattered when it comes to too many officers with guns. We’re hearing too many stories from too many law-abiding citizens who have too many reasons to fear officers and others acting on flimsy premises. It’s bound to fan panic and, unfortunately, ugly reactions.
The officers, in turn, are at risk from the availability of handguns and military rifles. Let’s be blunt. For the arms-ownership crowd, we need to advise, “Watch out how you embrace the Second Amendment, because one interpretation does indeed put public officials at risk.” It’s one reason I insist on the “well regulated” part of that amendment, the crucial phrase that’s currently overlooked.
It’s time to face reality and facts, rather than continue the smug ignorance. For all of the heated bombast about foreign terrorists, the biggest threat to any sense of personal security in America these days is domestic. I’d put people toting guns in public as the No. 1 reason. Where has any of that recognition been admitted in the GOP speeches? Or of that from those toting guns?
Yes, black lives matter. Start there, where the omission seems greatest, in assuring that all lives matter.
Don’t be swayed by nasty attack ads. They’re paid for by nasty people. Stand up and vote against them. Turnabout is, after all, fair game.
They have the money. You have the ballot. It’s your shot, in the end.
Listening to Donald Trump, I keep feeling I’ve heard this before. And then it hits me: George Wallace, 1968.
Only I never, ever, thought I’d be hearing such hate and despising and pettiness from the Party of Lincoln.
Or what was once the Party of Lincoln.
It used to be the Party that Freed the Slaves. The Party of Lincoln and his idealistic, compassionate vision with its drive toward greater equality. The party of yeomen, essentially.
These days, in the long shadow of Nixon’s Southern Strategy, it’s looking more and more like the Party to Re-Enslave, with the working classes as its target. No matter our race, creed, or ethnic origins, Pharaoh’s watching us from his palace. Or more accurately, his high-rise suite or private jetliner.
Remember, the only entrance to that ancient stratosphere was through birth, just like most of the One Percent today. (By marriage is a new twist, incidentally, for what, one percent of the One Percent?)
From our end, just imagine what eliminating the minimum wage would do, especially if a job’s required to get any public assistance, as some are proposing. Right to work? What about the other half of that exchange, implicit in the work ethic, the right to a livable wage?
Where I’m from, the work ethic is an essential component of the American way, a cornerstone of liberty and well-being. Curiously, its primary support in the public arena has come from a self-described democratic socialist rather than those who claim to support free enterprise. Seems to me there’s a serious disconnect somewhere.
Jnana's Red Barn 