The Divided States of America is a current program on CNN that portrays some aspects of our political situation well. However, it minimizes the degree to which propaganda contributes to the problem. It also gets the problem itself wrong. The labeling of our main problem as “polarization” seems to sell well. It’s not the truth.
The main problem is not polarization but corruption — lies, propaganda, criminal behaviors, voter suppression and other kinds of intentional destruction of democracy. The polarization is an effect of the lying and other corruption.
I dislike the “Let’s get all alarmed” sensationalistic music here —…
Hello, Majority Leader Schumer. Thanks so much for standing up to Mitch McConnell and refusing to pledge to let him keep the filibuster. Thanks for getting an Organizing Agreement done without making such a pledge. Although I thought you didn’t need an Organizing Agreement, apparently you did, because some Dem Senators are against ending the filibuster.
I have something more to ask of you — that you don’t try to do your very difficult job alone — that you seek support. …
All Democratic Voters from the states that elected these people — should phone the offices of Tester, Sinema & Manchin daily to tell them to stop acting like DINOs — Democrats in Name Only. Also Chris Coons, Feinstein, Patrick Leahy, and Angus King. If you’re not from any of those states, see if you can find a friend of a friend of a friend who knows a Dem who is a voter in one of those states to call their Senator.
They should vote to end the filibuster. If they won’t, they should all be primaried.
Maybe some of the…
Here’s a Twitter thread from Attorney Greg Doucette answering my question on whether Dems need a power sharing agreement in the Senate: His answer is No, we don’t.
Here I have quoted his two tweets below:
“No -need- for a power sharing agreement; Dems have 50+1 & Schumer will be the Majority Leader
“*But,* if there’s no agreement, VP Harris would need to be in the Senate every day in event of ties. So McConnell has some leverage b/c Harris doesn’t want to spend 2 years presiding
“Honestly Dems need to just say f*ck it, abolish the filibuster &…
Happy Martin Luther King Day, everyone. It’s fitting that on this day this year we are going toward justice, reversing the trend of the past four years. The Democratic party — that is committed to justice, rather than to con artistry and lies as the Trumpublican party is — needs to push further down that road and reverse the injustices committed in the last four years.
A lot of the power of charisma is a fantasy in the heads of those who follow the charismatic leader. One way that Trump and other charismatic figures appeal to some people is by…
Our nation narrowly escaped experiencing an even greater catastrophe than the one that did occur on Jan. 6. Right Wing disinformation — lying, fear mongering, hate mongering, demonization of Democrats and of anyone who disagrees with Trump— led to the coup. It also limited the damage done this one time — but only by accident.
I’d like to call your attention to this news story, about information that’s been brought to light by interviewing DC Metropolitan Police Officers. The quotes I am putting below are from the interviews of these police officers about the insurrection.
“We were getting chemical irritants…
What’s more important for the nation than this?
See the article below from Data for Progress. This is not a democracy. We’ve been living a lie. Voters aren’t getting to choose their representatives when they vote based on lies.
This ought to be the lead story on page 1 of every major newspaper in the nation for years — or for however long it takes to solve the problem and bring back a democracy where what you vote for is what you get. It’s absurd for newspapers, TV news and radio news to focus on trivial matters, while this ongoing…
This is a famous and very true quote often attributed to Mark Twain, as well as to many other authors.
There once was a land without environmental regulations. So various companies routinely poisoned the air, the water and the land. Everyone accepted this as normal. A local water company ran contaminated water into around half of the residents’ houses, because it was easy and cheap to sell water without bothering to purify it first. Many people got sick and some died.
People tried to understand and address the problem, according to the cultural values of the land. The major newspapers…
Here’s a Twitter thread about what Republicans are doing now to try to wreck the economy during Biden’s presidency — trying to hamper the Federal Reserve from being able to do emergency lending when it’s needed.
Here’s an article that is cited at the end of the thread. Here’s a quote from it: “The Toomey provision would be an unprecedented change to the law to strip the Fed chair of one of their most important tools to quickly respond to any future economic crisis.”
Here’s another article about the situation, that is more frank about who’s causing the problem.
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Here’s a Twitter thread from a newly elected DNC member telling us all how the DNC works — or doesn’t. Every Democratic voter should read this. We need to know the problems of the Democratic party and its subgroups.
It sounds like Atkins means well and wants to do well for the DNC. Even so, the situations he describes illustrate well how institutions such as the DNC are wasting tremendous amounts of liberals’ time, money and energy, while not getting much of the work done that needs to be done to save democracy.
Atkins’ description leads me to a…
psychologist