I say YES. YOU say NO....Numero Tre! Enjoy!
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Hate Nazis.
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Chicago is on edge again: there was a police-involved shooting yesterday (the suspect was allegedly shooting at the cops while running away and a gun found in the alley where the chase happened is alleged to have been his); but someone then started a social-media chain to organize looting caravans in the Loop, Mag Mile, Gold Coast and even W. Lincoln Park (the Best Buy was trashed, and the Apple Store was breached but not clear if anything was stolen). Might have been deliberate disinformation by outside agitators (either Boogaloos or Proud Boys) trying to foment race riots, just like in Minneapolis (security-cam video showed a white-supremacist threw the first incendiary device)...or just opportunism. Maybe even DOJ looking to justify sending in their unmarked storm troopers. Due to road and ramp closures, Bob had to take a labyrinth of side streets to get to Christ Hosp. and then his office today. He'll have to take the tollway and then close-in north suburban E-W streets home to avoid the inevitable closures tonight.
And Putin puppet Ron ("Plastics!") Johnson (R-WI) just issued subpoenas to investigate Hunter Biden.
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All three here dressed up in a suit -- I presume to show the respectability that they want you to see, but which they don't really have. Just goes to show some things don't change from generation to generation.
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Anyone using "DJT" because they refuse to utter the name of 45 should instead use "BAD:" Benito Adolf Drumpf.
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Sandy. I do my best not to say the name ( or use initials ) any more than I have too. Yes, he definitely is that distasteful. I use a lot of memes though. I'm so hopeful that we are/will be rid of this monster in Nov. I'm so anxious to see him hauled off to jail. I think whomever in the new admin. will do plenty to encourage that to happen though it seems likely it will be a NYC feat and honor.
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I remember this one and laughed never dreaming at the time:
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Serenity, thanks for the heads up about the 19th Amendment stamp! I will be placing an order. I have a small collection of stamps ,adding ones that reflect my interests. More recent purchases include American Gardens and The Great Outdoors. I didn't know about the women's vote stamp! I order online at times but when I go to the post office and ask what kinds of forever stamps they have, the clerks always seem mildly annoyed. I don't care. I see such beauty in the different stamps. Trivia: my dad was a mailman. More trivia: I recently took a survey about strengths and my #1 strength turns out to be “Appreciation of Beauty and Excellence”. Haha! I didn't even know that was a thing!
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and a little lighter:
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Trump is likely the only man in the world who thinks he is on a par with Abraham Lincoln - maybe even better. That is a very deep narcissism.
Trump May Try To Out Do Lincoln With New Gettysburg Address
Trump has been obsessed with comparing himself favorably to Abraham Lincoln, and he is considering accepting the Republican nomination at Gettysburg.
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The American city should be a collection of communities where every member has a right to belong. It should be a place where every person feels safe on his or her streets and in the house of his or her friends. It should be a place where each individual's dignity and self-respect is strengthened by the respect and affection of his or her neighbors. It should be a place where each of us can find the satisfaction and warmth which comes from being a member of the community of human beings. This is what people sought at the dawn of civilization. It is what we seek today.
-Lyndon B. Johnson0 -
I am stealing the LBJ quote.
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Lincoln wrote the Gettysburg Address unlike DJT who will rely on a speech writer who will be unable to hold a candle to Lincoln's speech. Meanwhile we know that DJT is unable to construct a simple sentence requiring basic spelling, grammar and punctuation at the elementary school level. He can barely read what is written for him as evidenced by his last rambling, disorganized and frenetic speech. He is painful to watch and any second grader could do a better job because they would be concentrating on "getting it right". He cannot, and will not stick to what is scripted for him and that is "good" because it reveals what an idiot he is.
Love the LBJ quote and wish it were true. One of my neighbors has a "By(e) Don" sign on their lawn (wonderful to see) and I am waiting to see if our once Republican stronghold puts out the Trump 2020 signs to counteract this.
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Ruth
and glad you liked the quote and wanted to keep it. 0 -
WATCH: Beto O'Rourke Predicts Biden Will Win Texas
Texas, especially during the 8 year run of George W. Bush, has been a ruby red Republican stronghold. There have been cracks over the last 10 years with Democrats winning house seats and Beto O'Rourke coming within 3 points of defeating Ted Cruz. There have been a number of recent polls that show Joe Biden …
Continue reading "WATCH: Beto O'Rourke Predicts Biden Will Win Texas"
I hope he is right. Funny -- I never realized that Texas ranked as the 50th. state in voting. So it makes sense to look on it as more of a non-voting state. It will be interesting to see how things turn out this election.
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Aug 11
The most striking news of the day was not that Trump has suggested he wants his image on Mt. Rushmore but rather that such an outrageous statement has garnered so little attention. That says something about his presidency.
This weekend, the New York Times ran a story by Jonathan Martin and Maggie Haberman laying out Trump's apparent interest in adding his face to those carved on Mt. Rushmore. He'd like to be up there next to Presidents George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, and Theodore Roosevelt. After Trump told the governor of South Dakota, Kristi Noem, that he hoped to have his likeness there next to his predecessors, an aide reached out to the governor's office to learn about the process of adding an additional face. When Trump visited the monument last month, Noem greeted him with a four-foot replica of the monument with his faced added.
This entire concept is moot. The rock face cannot support more carving, which answers the question definitively. Even if it could, though, the sculpture is carved on a mountain that is part of land that the United States government took illegally from the Lakota people in 1877. The monument remains embroiled in the legal dispute over this land grab. The chance that anyone would now attempt to add a new carving to it is pretty close to zero.
Not to be deterred, on Sunday night Trump tweeted a picture of himself positioned in such a way that his face was superimposed on the structure, beside Lincoln. Yet the story that the president wanted his likeness added to Mt. Rushmore had no sticking power.
A similar fate met Trump's statement that last week's devastating explosion in Beirut, caused when an estimated 2,750 tons of ammonium nitrate blew up, was a "terrible attack." "I've met with some of our great generals and they just seem to feel that it was not a -- some kind of manufacturing explosion type of event. This was a -- seems to be according to them, they would know better than I would, but they seem to think it was an attack. It was a bomb of some kind." U.S. Defense Department officials said there was no indication that the explosion was an attack. The statement came and went.
This afternoon, at his press conference, Trump told reporters that "the Obama campaign spied on our campaign, and they've been caught, all right?.... It's probably treason. It's a horrible thing they did.... They used the intelligence agencies of our country to spy on my campaign, and they have been caught." This is a statement Trump has been making since June 22, and it is an astonishing lie. And like Trump's other outlandish statements recently, people didn't pay a great deal of attention to it.
During his first three years in office, Trump could command headlines with outrageous statements. They often distracted us from larger stories. But that power has waned from overuse, and now outlandish stories—Trump's face on Mt. Rushmore, a deadly attack in Beirut, Obama committing treason—barely make a ripple.
That we are no longer shocked by his outrageous comments weakens Trump's ability to control the narrative. It also badly weakens the office of the presidency. Increasingly, he seems to be sidelined from any real decision making, which makes it hard to run for reelection with the argument that he will accomplish anything in a second term.
The White House dropped Trump's three executive memorandums and one executive order on Friday evening, clearly expecting to set up a situation in which Democrats challenged their legality and Republicans argued that Democrats were keeping ordinary Americans from getting coronavirus relief payments. Trump's people came out swinging as soon as Trump signed the actions, suggesting that Democrats would oppose them and it would be their fault Americans were suffering from the economic crash.
While even some Republicans opposed Trump's redirection of congressionally-appropriated money—Senator Ben Sasse of Nebraska called the actions "unconstitutional slop"-- Democratic leaders took a different approach. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi agreed that the executive announcements were "absurdly unconstitutional," but she and Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer challenged them not on legal grounds, but on their effectiveness.
On "Fox News Sunday," Pelosi said they were "illusions," and listed, point by point, their weaknesses. The relief memo relies on state money that states don't have; the payroll tax cut only defers the tax until next year, meaning employers will be reluctant to implement it since they will have to claw it all back after the election. Schumer told ABC's "This Week" that Trump's executive actions were "a big show, but they don't do anything." They both called for Republicans to return to the table for negotiations.
This threw Trump back on his heels and he is trying to spin the exchange as a victory. "The Democrats have called," Trump said on Sunday night. "They'd like to get together. And we say if it's not a waste of time, we'll do it…. They're much more inclined to make a deal now than they would've been two days ago." This morning, he tweeted: "So now Schumer and Pelosi want to meet to make a deal. Amazing how it all works, isn't it. Where have they been for the last 4 weeks when they were "hardliners", and only wanted BAILOUT MONEY for Democrat run states and cities that are failing badly? They know my phone number!"
Pelosi and Trump haven't spoken since October 16, when she walked out of a meeting where he railed at her and called her a "third-rate politician." She told reporters he had a "meltdown."
Meanwhile, the country's governors today issued a statement outlining their concerns about Trump's executive actions. Five days ago, the National Governors Association, a nonpartisan organization of the 55 states, territories, and commonwealths, unanimously elected New York Governor Andrew Cuomo, a Democrat, as their chair. Arkansas Governor Asa Hutchinson, a Republican, is the NGA vice chair. Their statement calls out "the significant administrative burdens and costs this latest action would place on the states."
"The best way forward is for the Congress and the Administration to get back to the negotiating table and come up with a workable solution, which should provide meaningful additional relief for American families. NGA has requested $500 billion in unrestricted state aid and NGA continues to urge Congress and the White House to reach a quick resolution to provide immediate assistance to unemployed Americans. This resolution should avoid new administrative and fiscal burdens on states. It is essential that our federal partners work together to find common ground to help restore our nation's health and protect our economy."
Today Trump has floated yet another outrageous idea: the notion that he will make his speech accepting the Republican nomination for his reelection either at the White House or at "The Great Battlefield of Gettysburg, Pennsylvania," which is a national park. Both locations run into both ethical problems and optical problems, since both are federal property and iconic sites.
Federal law prohibits federal employees from promoting political positions at work. The law does not cover the president, but it does cover all the other federal employees who would need to be present to make such an event possible.
Either choice also has optical problems for Trump. The White House is the people's house, and giving a partisan speech there will not play well. And Gettysburg? It will invite comparisons the president might not like.
It was during the dedication of the Gettysburg National Cemetery, where the dead of the 1863 battle were laid to rest, that Lincoln rededicated America to "the proposition that all men are created equal." He reminded his listeners that the men who had died there to save the Union had given "the last full measure of devotion" to their country. And he charged Americans to "here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain -- that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom -- and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth."
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The Missing Year
August 11, 2020August 11, 2020 / John Pavlovitz
Yesterday, I asked my readers to tell me about something they missed this year because of the lockdowns and restrictions: a date, event, trip, or occasion they were looking forward to and didn't get to experience fully or at all.
The responses came in furious and painful waves:
An oldest child's high school graduation.
The postponed destination wedding of a best friend.
An interrupted Peace Corps journey.
A solo European backpacking vacation, years in the planning.
The running of a first marathon.
A surprise Disney trip for three young children.
A woman still unable to reunite with her fiancé abroad.
Chemo visits with a worried college friend.
A birthday party for a 95-year old family matriarch.
A promising high school football player's senior year.
The reconstructive surgery for a young accident victim.
The funeral for a friend's teenage daughter.
A first-time author's book lunch.The thousands of responses were a mix of big calendar events (anniversaries, birthdays, vacations), but just as often it was the intimate, smaller everyday moments (a local cooking class, a visit to a sick friend, helping a favorite uncle transition to a retirement community, hugging a grandchild, Sunday dinners at a local Italian restaurant) that are piled upon people's hearts right now.
I don't think I was prepared for the scope and the depth of the losses, each one entirely specific, yet universal in painfully reminding us that we are all carrying the grief of the lives we thought we would be living right now. We are continually mourning our missed events, our changed plans, our what-might-have-been years. The accumulated sadness is more than any of us can calculate.
And none of us are immune to the attrition of the past few months. We've all had something stolen without warning, we've all had our calendars shredded, we've all watched our normal be ravaged by something beyond our control. I think this is probably the sole blessing of what we're enduring, the only comfort: the knowledge that we are in vast and very good company and that this may be the single greatest collective grieving we have done or will ever do.
That prevalent pain is just beneath the surface for all of us and it shows up throughout our days: in our angry outbursts in take out lines, our quick temper with our children, our knee-jerk tirades on social media, our muffled screams into the pillow, our ever-present fatigue.
Right now, we're all doing the best we can to cope and to adjust on the fly: to pivot to online classes, car graduation parades, Zoom family reunions, backyard camping trips—and yes, life is still happening all around us and we're as present and available as we can be, given the trauma.
But nothing can change the reality that this was not how this year was supposed to go for any of us, and that we're all not sure how much more we'll have to cancel and lose and miss or shelve, or when we'll get to make new plans or pick up our dreams where we left off, if we're able to at all. The frustrating stuck-ness of this moment is epidemic.
Today, as you pass people in traffic, as you see them getting their mail, as you encounter them on your timeline, as you sit across from them at the dining room table: remember that you're looking at someone who's lost something and is grieving that as deeply as you are.
No one wanted to be here.
We are all missing this year.
Let's be gentle with one another in the middle of it.
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Axios
Joe Biden picks Kamala Harris as running mate
Why it matters: She's the first Black woman to be named to a major-party U.S. presidential ticket, and potentially the first woman vice president if Biden defeats President Trump.
I think I am glad this is finally accomplished. Probably a good thing that Biden didn't get too rushed about his choice and when to TELL. I am thinking Trump will not be thrilled in many ways. Kamala Harris can hold her own in a debate and I'm sure she knows how to prepare for them. So, that leaves me hoping that Biden might pick someone like Sally Yates for AG.
I think ( it sounded that way with what I read yesterday ) that Trump may be filling out many of his choices for the other offices. He has called people to Delaware ( Kamala Harris was one of those ) for meetings. Pete Buttigieg was there a short while ago. I look on that as a very good thing as well. Biden will have so much of the work done -- and be ready to hit the pavement running if we win the election and I keep thinking we will. The only way I can see for Trump is Putin and massive voter suppression. I wish that sounded harder to do. His messing with the PO is scary to say the least.
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Adam Schiff would make an incredible AG. He was my Representative for a number of years, and he's a really great guy. Smart, kind, funny, and tenacious as hell. He was a former assistant US attorney and he led the impeachment trial in the house. I would love to see him go after The Trump crime syndicate. They won't know what hit them.
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"George Conway column taunts Trump supporters as believing everything the president says"
https://www.marketwatch.com/story/george-conway-column-taunts-trump-supporters-as-believing-everything-the-president-says-2020-08-11Here's the very powerful opinion piece written by George Conway of the Lincoln Project, printed in the Washington Post; the piece went viral.
I (still) believe the president, and in the president
Opinion by. George T. Conway III, Contributing columnist
August 10, 2020
I believe the president Made America Great Again. I believe we need him reelected to Make America Great Again Again.
I believe Joe Biden is "Sleepy" and "weak." I believe Biden could "hurt God" and the Bible.
I believe that if Biden is elected, there will be "no religion, no anything," and he would confiscate all guns, "immediately and without notice." He would "abolish" "our great," "beautiful suburbs," not to mention "the American way of life." There would be "no windows, no nothing" in buildings.
I believe the news media would have "no ratings" and "will go down along with our great USA!" if the president loses — and that this would be bad even though the media is fake.
I believe it's normal for the president to say "Yo Semites" and "Yo Seminites," "Thigh Land," "Minne-a-napolis," "toe-tally-taria-tism," "Thomas Jeffers" and "Ulyss-eus S. Grant." I believe it's Biden who's cognitively impaired.
I believe the president "aced" a "very hard" impairment test, and that his "very surprised" doctors found this "unbelievable." I believe it was "amazing" he remembered five words, such as "person, woman, man, camera, TV" — in correct order. I believe he took the SAT himself.
I believe the president has "a natural ability," like his "great, super-genius uncle" from MIT, which is why he understands "that whole world" of virology and epidemiology.
So I believed the president in January and February when he said covid-19 was "totally under control," that it was Democrats' "new hoax," and that he was "not at all" worried about a pandemic. I believed him in March when he said he "felt it was a pandemic long before it was called a pandemic."
I believe the president and the doctor who believes in demon sperm and the medical use of space alien DNA, and not Anthony S. Fauci, who's an "alarmist" and "wrong."
I believe the president's suggestions that physicians should try injecting patients with household disinfectants, and shining ultraviolet light inside their bodies, make perfect sense.
I believe the "books" and "manuals," if someone would just read them, say "you can test too much" for covid-19. I believe we now have 5 million cases because we test so much, and that the president was right to slow testing down, unless he was kidding — in which case he was right not to.
I believe that the president has done a tremendous job fighting the virus — and that he shouldn't "take responsibility at all"— even though about 160,000 Americans have died. I believe the virus "is what it is."
I believe it isn't racist to call the coronavirus"kung flu" or "the China Virus." It isn't racially divisive to say Black Lives Matter is a "symbol of hate," to celebrate Confederate generals as part of our "Great American Heritage," or to share video of someone shouting "white power," which, like displaying the Confederate flag, is "freedom of speech."
I believe that "when the looting starts, the shooting starts," and that the president was just stating a fact, not making a threat, when he said that. I believe it was fine for federal law enforcement to fire tear gas and rubber pellet grenades at protesters so that the president could pose with a Bible in front of a church.
I believe that a 75-year-old protester in Buffalo may have been "an ANTIFA provocateur" who intentionally cracked his own skull in a "set up."
I believe Rep. John Lewis made a "big mistake" not attending the president's inauguration. I believe the president has done more for Blacks than any other president — perhaps even Abraham Lincoln, who "did good" although the "end result" was "questionable," and certainly more than Lyndon B. Johnson, who signed into law the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which hasn't "worked out" so well.
I believe the president has been treated worse than Lincoln, even though Lincoln was assassinated. I believe the president should be added to Mount Rushmore, pronto.
I believe it's normal that the president wished his friend Ghislaine Maxwell "well" and good luck," even though his administration charged her with sex trafficking teenage girls for another presidential friend, Jeffrey Epstein, whom the president says may have been killed in federal custody.
I believe the president rightly said of Maxwell, "Let them prove somebody was guilty." I believe we don't need evidence against former acting attorney general Sally Yates, because she was "part of the greatest political crime of the Century," about which "Obama/Biden knew EVERYTHING!" And I believe it was fine for the president to baselessly suggest that a television host committed murder since the host said mean things about the president.
I believe that the reports Russia paid bounties to have U.S. soldiers killed, and that the president was briefed on it, are another "Fake News Media Hoax," and that such intelligence never reached the president's desk, even though his administration said otherwise.
I believe absentee voting, where voters mail in their ballots, is good, and that mail-in voting, where voters mail in their ballots, is totally different, and bad — and will result in "the most INACCURATE & FRAUDULENT Election" in history. Except in Florida, where absentee and mail-in voting are the same and both good, "because Florida has got a great Republican governor."
I believe we should "Delay the Election until people can properly, securely and safely vote" — but that "SCHOOLS MUST OPEN IN THE FALL!!!"
I believe the president won the popular vote in 2016 "if you deduct the millions of people who voted illegally." I believe he shouldn't accept the election results if he loses in November.
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She also is the first Asian-American (her mom is from India) to run on the top ticket. Drumpf is professing his love for Pence, but I wouldn't be surprised if he ditches Pence for Nikki Haley (also Indian-American, specifically Sikh).
Some of my dream Cabinet: Susan Rice for State (Bret Stephens's NYT hatchet job notwithstanding); Sally Yates for A.G.; Elizabeth Warren for Treasury; Dr. Zeke Emanuel or IDPH head Dr. Ngozi Ezike for HHS; Stacy Abrams for HUD; Bill Gates for Commerce; Eddie Glaude (or re-hire Arne Duncan) for Education. Not sure who should be chosen for Energy, EPA, or Transportation; but I'd love to see Malcolm Nance for CIA, DNI, DHS or Defense. And of course Merrick Garland for the next SCOTUS vacancy--a shoo-in if we re-take the Senate.
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Yes to your cabinet Sandy. Omg, wouldn't that make so many dreams come true? I had the same feeling about Nikki Haley, too. Trump gets bored so easily, he's probably ready to part with Pence.
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Love the Conway piece!
I was in the car when the MVP (Madam Vice President) news came across, and I actually screamed with excitement! And immediately got about 5 texts from friends equally excited.
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And on a lighter note:
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