I say YES. YOU say NO....Numero Tre! Enjoy!

illinoislady · December 13

illinoislady · December 13

Not right.

illinoislady · December 13

Imagine how our lives might be if everyone had even a bit more of the Wisdom that comes from seeing clearly. Suppose people everywhere, simultaneously, stopped what they were doing and paid attention for only as long as it took to recognize their shared humanity. Surely the heartbreak of the world's pain, visible to all, would convert everyone to kindness. What a gift that would be.

Sylvia Boorstein

illinoislady · December 13

illinoislady · December 13

I keep looking at the above picture and thinking, hmmm natural disposition. Mad at the world and doesn't really understand why. I know when I'm mad that it's usually due more to the 'other' five things that happened before, and it tempers my reactions.

This guy has no idea that he has been mad and un-fulfilled his whole life long and nothing gives him a decent feeling for long. Well, maybe a bucket of KFC or a couple of Cheeseburgers but the rest just turns into the downer that is his life. I almost can't imagine NOT being able to feel the joy of hearing beautiful music or seeing a rainbow or all the other things that inspire fantastic sensations that stay with you and re-play for you anytime you choose to think of them.

illinoislady · December 13

illinoislady · December 13

illinoislady · December 13

an absolute one.

illinoislady · December 13

illinoislady · December 13

Got my vote.

illinoislady · December 13

illinoislady · December 13

illinoislady · December 13

No big surprise. He just has vague concepts that he spews all over the place. He says what he wants, when he wants, where he wants and doesn't give a darn whether it bears any relation to truth or possibility what-so-ever.

illinoislady · December 13

Partly the reason he's been kept out of sight for a lot of the end of campaigning time. He can't remember titles for people or a lot of anything else — yoo-hoo. He's in the strong grip of something here and all of us (meaning the rt. side too) are screwed. Thanks a bunch.

illinoislady · December 13

When did a little thing like that ever stop that idiot.

illinoislady · December 13

The only way Trump will succeed

John Stoehr

December 13, 2024

I was on Stephen Robinson’s podcast when I blurted out a personal truth. For years, I have defended the Democratic Party in various ways, but since Donald Trump’s victory, I haven’t been in the mood. Matter of fact, I find myself open to arguments that I had not been open to.

For instance, the one about how the Biden administration, namely US Attorney General Merrick Garland, should have prosecuted Trumpimmediately after his attempted overthrow of the US government. I figured Garland’s caution was appropriate, and anyway, I believed there was no way voters would rehire a traitor they had already fired.

I feel different now.

I’m also more open to the argument about how the Democrats must develop and maintain a media ecosystem of their own that’s as strong as the one that gave the GOP a trifecta. It’s not that I didn’t think the Democrats needed one. It’s that I believed that propaganda never made anyone believe anything they didn’t already believe. If you’re a racist, you’re a racist. A white-power podcaster can’t make it so.

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But I now see the problem in a more nuanced light.

The problem is that the Democrats don’t have a media ecosystem of their own with which to compete with the Republicans on a level playing field for voters who are not getting, and who are not capable of getting, good information on their own. The Democratic Party trusts, and relies on, the public too much. Facts and history must never be allowed to speak for themselves. The Democrats must speak for them.

So I find myself in a rather new position. I’m no longer in the mood to defend the Democrats (for now, anyway; time will tell), but I’m also not in the mood to criticize them on the old ideological grounds that are familiar to the followers of the Democratic Party’s best-known critics.

I don’t see a point in the class-based critique of people like Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders. I don’t see a point in the “centrism”-based critique of people like Massachusetts Congressman Seth Moulton. The Democrats are already a party of the working class. They are already centrist as a result of already being a party of working-class policy.

Anyway, America’s backsliding can’t be solved with policy, as the crisis we face isn’t the result of “big dislocations, like a depression with mass unemployment and the legacy of losing a major war,” as Professor Grossman put it. If it could be solved with policy, it would be solved, as Joe Biden flipped four decades of economic consensus on their head.

No, the backsliding is the result of a lack of good information.

And guts.

So my beef with the Democrats isn’t a matter of ideology. (It’s nothing like what you will find on “Chapo Trap House.”) My beef is a matter of temperament. At issue isn’t “purity,” as Moulton said. It’s courage. Either the Democrats meant it when they said Trump is a menace to democracy and the rule of law – or they didn’t. Either they meant it when they said that now’s the time for choosing – or they didn’t.

Honestly, I’m not sure they meant it.

In response to Trump’s renewed threat to prosecute members of the Congress who investigated his attempted paramilitary takeover of the US government, Adam Schiff, who sat on the panel, and who is now California's junior senator, said: “I don’t think the incoming president should be threatening his political opponents with jail time. That’s not the kind of talk we should hear from a president in a democracy.”

What is this?

Politics or kindergarten?

Schiff went on: “Nor do I think a pardon is necessary for members of the January 6 committee. We are proud of the work we did … It was a fundamental oversight obligation to investigate the first attempt to interfere with a peaceful transfer of power in our history.”

Look, I told you. I have defended the Democrats in various ways for years, especially when they stood up for democracy, the Constitution and the rule of law after Trump’s attempt to overthrow the will of the people. But this is so weak, I can’t defend it. I don’t think anyone can.

Here’s what Schiff could have said:

Donald Trump is a criminal. It was criminal to lead an insurrection. It’s criminal to threaten jail time for his opponents. Trump is a criminal up and down, and criminals are bad for democracy, especially when they are democratically elected.
A criminal president is going to corrupt, even more than it already has been, the moral fabric of American society.
The Democrats, as the party of the rule of law, will do everything in their power to bring criminals to justice.
The Democrats may lose in the end, but not without a fight.

Schiff could have said any of these things without losing support back home. Instead, we got The Language Police or The Disappointed School Marm, take your pick, who not only failed to show resolve but also validated the allegation that the Democrats are a bunch of pricks.

Jesus God, January 6 was not “the first attempt to interfere with a peaceful transfer of power.” It was a crime. It was treason. But Schiff couched that fact in abstract multisyllabic words, as if euphemism and understatement were the appropriate mode of presidential discourse.

Worse was what the Senate minority leader said afterward.

“He did a great job,” Chuck Schumer said, referring to Adam Schiff’s performance on the J6 committee. “And it will stand for itself.”

No, it won’t. It really won’t. With the rightwing media apparatus, Trump erased facts. With a new administration, he’ll try erasing history. Watch. And he will succeed if the Democrats won’t fight.

Like I said, my beef with the Democrats isn’t a matter of ideology. Either they meant it when they said they are a political party.

Or they didn’t.

illinoislady · December 13

The above is an opinion piece, but I thought it had a lot going for it. As Democrats, I don't think we have actually messaged well for a long time. That is not to say that some parts aren't wonderful, but it is the other things just like how Schiff could have worded things.

Not sure why we seem to be infected by feeling we always have to couch things in nice polite terms and not say something is wrong and be as vile about it as the other side always seems to be. That said, I don't want to become 'them' by any stretch, but the old saying 'nice guys finish last' has been all too often true for we Democrats. We don't have to nice anyone to the nth. degree — it isn't workable in this day and age. There are ways to say things and a lot of those things need a lot of repetition — because if you don't do that it doesn't seem to stick real well.

betrayal · December 13

Take a look at the flag tattoo on Hegseth's arm, are the stars pointing in the wrong direction? If so, isn't that one adopted by the white supremacists? I think the stars should be on the outer aspect of his bicep, not towards his arm pit.