Really? Is there not enough divisiveness in our nation without adding the grammar police? Typos and erroneous word choice is perfectly acceptable in casual comments as long as the person's meaning is clear. If you haven't read it yet, try Ben Franklin's autobiography. It will help you let go of needing to correct misspellings and word use errors.
If you must correct someone, start off by thanking them for their comment or anything else that's nice.
I love it. Now: Can we get folks (folks on radio and TV) using "fewer" rather than "less" when appropriate. You'd think fewer is no in the dictionary anymore.
Every time I hear myself repeating something I've read, I wonder if it's the beginning of a new talking-point. The most visceral feeling about Trump that I've ever had is the one when I first saw him on The Apprentice: this guy is a fraud. Everything since simply bears out my original reaction to him. I'm eternally grossed out that people vie for his attention and get giddy when he looks their way. WTF do they see?
My first encounter with Trump was more than 30 years ago. I knew his name, of course, and that he was quite rich, but that’s all I knew. One time, I heard someone talking on the TV in the other room. My partner was watching some show or other. My immediate thought was, “there’s something wrong with that man.“ I went in to see who it was.
One comment: The shooter in the National Guard incident wasn't an ordinary asylum seeker. He was a member of a CIA-run Afghan special forces unit used in attacking Taliban and other threats in Afghanistan. He and other members of his unit have CIA and military vouching for them but often can't get work permits or other needed papers and social services, and, now that we have brought them to the US, can't support their families because America won't let them. They can't get jobs. I'm sure they also don't get mental health services, given that even our own vets struggle to get access All that makes this man's situation a scandal in its own right.
Exhausted and exhausting by design. More than done with the fan-spreading misrepresentations, outright lies and not-so-secret manipulation. What's next? A clear-eyed restatement of what democracy actually is, how it so easily gets derailed, and the complicated steps this nation will need to take, in order to that this nation might move toward democratic laws and practices. Many are pushing up our sleeves and continuing the work of feeding people, participating in civil, productive discussions, and anything/everything else that needs doing. We haven't stopped, we aren't afraid, and we hold tightly the Bill of Rights.
I think we have plenty of people who would speak up: But-- and I know we differ on this-- If bet Gavin Newsom. He has a way of really rallying people from Anywhere it seems -- even Texas . But the bottom line is that we all MUST speak up.
The immigration policy of Biden/Harris was a failure. So is the immigration policy of Lying King Donald. But Democrats need something better that the failed Biden/Harris approach if they want to win elections. The US should not be the lifeboat that takes on all swimmers, risking sinking. There are many failed cultures and countries and the local people need to fight, struggle and sacrifice to change them. The US lifeboat will sink if hundreds of millions take the easy way out and escape their world and overwhelm the US. Reality and practicality over mindless compassion!
I think many of us can agree we have a bit of an issue with vetting who and how many people come here but we simply can not use immigrants as a scapegoat every time there’s an issue or to push an agenda.
Countries like Canada vets those coming into their country, they want to make sure you have something to contribute… even they aren’t perfect when it comes to immigration but we can’t blame all of our problems on those coming here for a better opportunity.
My point was simple: Neither the Biden/Harris easy immigration OR the Crazy King Donald abuses are acceptable AND win votes. I want to be clear that for Democrats, the "easy immigration" policies of Biden/Harris earned America the election of King Donald and his MAGA shills. Democrats need to learn from the Biden/Harris mistakes to win more elections. Spending all the time talking about Crazy King Donald's abuses won't win elections IF Democrats don't have a more moderate, realistic, practical immigration plan. Vetting people is complicated and not quick. Winning elections is better than whining about lost elections!
Compassion is never mindless. It requires everything we have. The U.S. is not a lifeboat it is a nation that took everything away from the original inhabitants, brought African nationals in and forced them to do much of the back-breaking work, disenfranchised the Mexican people up the west coast, and used to have an excellent immigration system that aged and was allowed to break because it was too lucrative to fix. After all, immigrant laborers were not, and are not, protected by law well at all. There were migrant workers when I was a child (T.Rex) and there still are, who are under the age of 12. As the world's weather, and increased wars threaten, you bet more people will move to save their families. Compassion isn't some gushy nonsense. It is the intuitive understanding that we are the same and have the same needs. The mess we are in is due to our own failure to manage the gift of democracy and stay ahead of the soulless.
I disagree. When compassion comes from the hill people to those in the low lands, without regard to consequences, it is often mindless. When the lifeboat is overloaded, it sinks, with all drowning. Women and children. All gone.
After Justinian, few of the Romans left to live in country estates. Most died, starving, struggling, without hope for themselves or their children.
I believe in family first, and then the community. Other countries and cultures are different. Perhaps warlike, perhaps not. But their propensity to have cultures that lead to many more children in poverty, girls sold for food, driven by archaic religions, all lead to misery. Like a herd of animals that overgraze the land, with dire consequences. Much compassion is simple mindedness. You may be OK with that. But it doesn't really care for the consequences. Compassion can be suicidal. It makes a nice happy movie. And abstract thoughts of how it should be are mind chatter.
Reality and practicality have a place at the table. The Earth has already had massive resource depletion, and now we have 8 Billion people. More misery is around the corner of reality. Compassion doesn't welcome reason or survival. It's like an emotional lollipop. The soulless will crush those on islands that welcome them.
Fundamentally, I agree with you. Where I disagree is are we going to worry only about non-white immigrants, or are we going to talk about all immigrants? I have absolutely no problem with people that want to come here, work, and live in peace with their neighbors. I agree the process should be orderly. I don’t agree that the borders were wide open under Biden, or any more wide-open under Biden than they were under Trump or Obama or Bush or Clinton.
A lot of the illegal immigration is people not leaving when their visas say to. I’ve heard proportions as high as 50%. But I haven’t researched it.
What happened to the two Guardsmen was "blowback" from a CIA operation. The CIA does everything except what it was originally chartered to do (hint: the head of the CIA is also referred to as the DCI -- Director of Central Intelligence). But analysis is boring; you have more fun and get promoted if you are on the operational side of the house, and invent gadgets and kill people - every field agent wants to be James Bond or a Green Beret, while the Green Berets and SEALs want to be CIA and kill people while in civilian attire. (Carte Blanche) So, the CIA raises paramilitary armies, and inevitably loses control of them, to include their weaponry. Most Americans are not aware of the panic that engulfed the Agency after the 2001 al-Qaeda attack; they had left the STINGERs with the Mujahaideen. Fortunately, the Muj had not kept the weapons stored properly and charged. They also managed not protect the guy they had selected to lead the new Afghan government, who was promptly assassinated by the Taliban. And so it goes.
There are articles circulating today about making the Fed more devoted to "supply side" economics -- more catering to the wealthy. So long as the Supreme Court continues to promote rampant corruption in the US political system, the gun issue is a victim of the corruption focused on making the rich richer at the expense of the working class.
The rich don't care about gun violence. They don't care whether access to guns is tightened or loosened. (Excluding those making blood money off gun sales.) It doesn't impact them. How many mass shootings at schools have killed, or even threatened, a billionaire's kid? (Or in the case of Musk, would he really care if one of his kids was killed? Plenty more where that one came from.) Heck, the gun industry views shootings as marketing for people to buy more guns.
The rich pay people to convince the working class to vote for candidates who'll take from the working class and give to the wealthy -- although the rich mostly just think about the getting, not a lot about where it's taken from.
They pursue that goal through whatever means necessary regardless of whether it relates directly. They use abortion to rally people to vote for candidates who'll give the wealthy whatever they want. They use easy gun ownership to rally people to vote for candidates who'll give the wealthy whatever they want. It isn't really about abortion or guns. Those are just means used by the political operatives of the rich.
The rich created, own, and are hosts at FoxNews with the goal of convincing the working class to vote in the best interest of the wealthy and against their own best interest. Look at how much the hosts of the Fox propaganda "entertainment" programs make and are worth and consider whether their interests are aligned with the working class they're propagandizing to.
You're unlikely to fix the gun violence problem so long as more gun violence is politically aligned with the rich getting richer and the Supreme Court continues to promote rampant political corruption. One lever which could be worked in the greater scheme of things is to push messaging out to FoxNews viewers that the people they're watching are not like them and don't share their political best interests.
Convince FoxNews viewers the owners and hosts at FoxNews are the "them". Unfortunately this isn't something which can appear to come from the Left or it'll be rejected. It's a dish best served from within the Right social media sphere. If right wingers appear to be spreading this message, it's unclear how Fox would be able to counter it.
Politically turning things around has to be done, primarily but not exclusively, at the state levels. It's what the wealthy did in response to the working class achieving more political power than the wealthy liked. Blogs like yours need to focus a lot more on specific state-level actions.
“ The rich pay people to convince the working class to vote for candidates who'll take from the working class and give to the wealthy -- although the rich mostly just think about the getting, not a lot about where it's taken from.”
The Kingston Trio did this something like 60 years ago
trump and his evil minions use what ever hot button they think will excite their base and keep them in power, Immigrant, lgbtq, etc. Hitler and his evil minions used Jews, lgbtq, and gypsies to exterminate 6 million men, women, and children. I can actually see trump trying to do that.
Totally agree with you on all points Mike! It's truly disgusting what they are doing. Killing people and blaming "narco terrorists" but if they truly wanted to do it the correct way they would let the Coast Guard take care of these so called "terrorists" the right way. And the same goes for blaming the immigrants for things they never did. It's so by!
Can't these "rants" be syndicated in big publications like the Times and the Journal and regularly run like opinion columns? Anything that has wide public viewership. How do we get that to happen to reach those who haven't a clue what substack is, don't blog or tik-tok (like me!)?
If you think immigrants are the problem while billionaires rake in record profits … you’ve already drank the MAGA kool aid
Past tense of drink is drunk… “have drunk.” Drank is the simple past tense used here in error!
Really? Is there not enough divisiveness in our nation without adding the grammar police? Typos and erroneous word choice is perfectly acceptable in casual comments as long as the person's meaning is clear. If you haven't read it yet, try Ben Franklin's autobiography. It will help you let go of needing to correct misspellings and word use errors.
If you must correct someone, start off by thanking them for their comment or anything else that's nice.
Peace out.
I love it. Now: Can we get folks (folks on radio and TV) using "fewer" rather than "less" when appropriate. You'd think fewer is no in the dictionary anymore.
Look at it on the bright side. They’ll be doing that less times.
Who’d a thunk it?!!!
Every time I hear myself repeating something I've read, I wonder if it's the beginning of a new talking-point. The most visceral feeling about Trump that I've ever had is the one when I first saw him on The Apprentice: this guy is a fraud. Everything since simply bears out my original reaction to him. I'm eternally grossed out that people vie for his attention and get giddy when he looks their way. WTF do they see?
My first encounter with Trump was more than 30 years ago. I knew his name, of course, and that he was quite rich, but that’s all I knew. One time, I heard someone talking on the TV in the other room. My partner was watching some show or other. My immediate thought was, “there’s something wrong with that man.“ I went in to see who it was.
You can guess who it was.
He’s been pretty slimy for a long time. Good thing he had a rich dad. Mine would have beat his azz.
One comment: The shooter in the National Guard incident wasn't an ordinary asylum seeker. He was a member of a CIA-run Afghan special forces unit used in attacking Taliban and other threats in Afghanistan. He and other members of his unit have CIA and military vouching for them but often can't get work permits or other needed papers and social services, and, now that we have brought them to the US, can't support their families because America won't let them. They can't get jobs. I'm sure they also don't get mental health services, given that even our own vets struggle to get access All that makes this man's situation a scandal in its own right.
I thought PTSD. So sad for all. With all the hate going around it’s hopeless to believe it will matter.
😞 so sad
Exhausted and exhausting by design. More than done with the fan-spreading misrepresentations, outright lies and not-so-secret manipulation. What's next? A clear-eyed restatement of what democracy actually is, how it so easily gets derailed, and the complicated steps this nation will need to take, in order to that this nation might move toward democratic laws and practices. Many are pushing up our sleeves and continuing the work of feeding people, participating in civil, productive discussions, and anything/everything else that needs doing. We haven't stopped, we aren't afraid, and we hold tightly the Bill of Rights.
I think we have plenty of people who would speak up: But-- and I know we differ on this-- If bet Gavin Newsom. He has a way of really rallying people from Anywhere it seems -- even Texas . But the bottom line is that we all MUST speak up.
Well said, Mike.
You are forgetting that transgender people share the #1 spot with immigrants for being blamed.
UPGRADE TO PAID buttons don’t work. Is it me?
The immigration policy of Biden/Harris was a failure. So is the immigration policy of Lying King Donald. But Democrats need something better that the failed Biden/Harris approach if they want to win elections. The US should not be the lifeboat that takes on all swimmers, risking sinking. There are many failed cultures and countries and the local people need to fight, struggle and sacrifice to change them. The US lifeboat will sink if hundreds of millions take the easy way out and escape their world and overwhelm the US. Reality and practicality over mindless compassion!
I think many of us can agree we have a bit of an issue with vetting who and how many people come here but we simply can not use immigrants as a scapegoat every time there’s an issue or to push an agenda.
Countries like Canada vets those coming into their country, they want to make sure you have something to contribute… even they aren’t perfect when it comes to immigration but we can’t blame all of our problems on those coming here for a better opportunity.
My point was simple: Neither the Biden/Harris easy immigration OR the Crazy King Donald abuses are acceptable AND win votes. I want to be clear that for Democrats, the "easy immigration" policies of Biden/Harris earned America the election of King Donald and his MAGA shills. Democrats need to learn from the Biden/Harris mistakes to win more elections. Spending all the time talking about Crazy King Donald's abuses won't win elections IF Democrats don't have a more moderate, realistic, practical immigration plan. Vetting people is complicated and not quick. Winning elections is better than whining about lost elections!
Compassion is never mindless. It requires everything we have. The U.S. is not a lifeboat it is a nation that took everything away from the original inhabitants, brought African nationals in and forced them to do much of the back-breaking work, disenfranchised the Mexican people up the west coast, and used to have an excellent immigration system that aged and was allowed to break because it was too lucrative to fix. After all, immigrant laborers were not, and are not, protected by law well at all. There were migrant workers when I was a child (T.Rex) and there still are, who are under the age of 12. As the world's weather, and increased wars threaten, you bet more people will move to save their families. Compassion isn't some gushy nonsense. It is the intuitive understanding that we are the same and have the same needs. The mess we are in is due to our own failure to manage the gift of democracy and stay ahead of the soulless.
I disagree. When compassion comes from the hill people to those in the low lands, without regard to consequences, it is often mindless. When the lifeboat is overloaded, it sinks, with all drowning. Women and children. All gone.
After Justinian, few of the Romans left to live in country estates. Most died, starving, struggling, without hope for themselves or their children.
I believe in family first, and then the community. Other countries and cultures are different. Perhaps warlike, perhaps not. But their propensity to have cultures that lead to many more children in poverty, girls sold for food, driven by archaic religions, all lead to misery. Like a herd of animals that overgraze the land, with dire consequences. Much compassion is simple mindedness. You may be OK with that. But it doesn't really care for the consequences. Compassion can be suicidal. It makes a nice happy movie. And abstract thoughts of how it should be are mind chatter.
Reality and practicality have a place at the table. The Earth has already had massive resource depletion, and now we have 8 Billion people. More misery is around the corner of reality. Compassion doesn't welcome reason or survival. It's like an emotional lollipop. The soulless will crush those on islands that welcome them.
Fundamentally, I agree with you. Where I disagree is are we going to worry only about non-white immigrants, or are we going to talk about all immigrants? I have absolutely no problem with people that want to come here, work, and live in peace with their neighbors. I agree the process should be orderly. I don’t agree that the borders were wide open under Biden, or any more wide-open under Biden than they were under Trump or Obama or Bush or Clinton.
A lot of the illegal immigration is people not leaving when their visas say to. I’ve heard proportions as high as 50%. But I haven’t researched it.
trump IS violence. Personified.
Wow! Thank you for saying what I and so many others are feeling.
What happened to the two Guardsmen was "blowback" from a CIA operation. The CIA does everything except what it was originally chartered to do (hint: the head of the CIA is also referred to as the DCI -- Director of Central Intelligence). But analysis is boring; you have more fun and get promoted if you are on the operational side of the house, and invent gadgets and kill people - every field agent wants to be James Bond or a Green Beret, while the Green Berets and SEALs want to be CIA and kill people while in civilian attire. (Carte Blanche) So, the CIA raises paramilitary armies, and inevitably loses control of them, to include their weaponry. Most Americans are not aware of the panic that engulfed the Agency after the 2001 al-Qaeda attack; they had left the STINGERs with the Mujahaideen. Fortunately, the Muj had not kept the weapons stored properly and charged. They also managed not protect the guy they had selected to lead the new Afghan government, who was promptly assassinated by the Taliban. And so it goes.
There are articles circulating today about making the Fed more devoted to "supply side" economics -- more catering to the wealthy. So long as the Supreme Court continues to promote rampant corruption in the US political system, the gun issue is a victim of the corruption focused on making the rich richer at the expense of the working class.
The rich don't care about gun violence. They don't care whether access to guns is tightened or loosened. (Excluding those making blood money off gun sales.) It doesn't impact them. How many mass shootings at schools have killed, or even threatened, a billionaire's kid? (Or in the case of Musk, would he really care if one of his kids was killed? Plenty more where that one came from.) Heck, the gun industry views shootings as marketing for people to buy more guns.
The rich pay people to convince the working class to vote for candidates who'll take from the working class and give to the wealthy -- although the rich mostly just think about the getting, not a lot about where it's taken from.
They pursue that goal through whatever means necessary regardless of whether it relates directly. They use abortion to rally people to vote for candidates who'll give the wealthy whatever they want. They use easy gun ownership to rally people to vote for candidates who'll give the wealthy whatever they want. It isn't really about abortion or guns. Those are just means used by the political operatives of the rich.
The rich created, own, and are hosts at FoxNews with the goal of convincing the working class to vote in the best interest of the wealthy and against their own best interest. Look at how much the hosts of the Fox propaganda "entertainment" programs make and are worth and consider whether their interests are aligned with the working class they're propagandizing to.
You're unlikely to fix the gun violence problem so long as more gun violence is politically aligned with the rich getting richer and the Supreme Court continues to promote rampant political corruption. One lever which could be worked in the greater scheme of things is to push messaging out to FoxNews viewers that the people they're watching are not like them and don't share their political best interests.
Convince FoxNews viewers the owners and hosts at FoxNews are the "them". Unfortunately this isn't something which can appear to come from the Left or it'll be rejected. It's a dish best served from within the Right social media sphere. If right wingers appear to be spreading this message, it's unclear how Fox would be able to counter it.
Politically turning things around has to be done, primarily but not exclusively, at the state levels. It's what the wealthy did in response to the working class achieving more political power than the wealthy liked. Blogs like yours need to focus a lot more on specific state-level actions.
“ The rich pay people to convince the working class to vote for candidates who'll take from the working class and give to the wealthy -- although the rich mostly just think about the getting, not a lot about where it's taken from.”
The Kingston Trio did this something like 60 years ago
They’ll regulate the taxes
So the poor can pay the rich
To keep the poor flat on their axes
trump and his evil minions use what ever hot button they think will excite their base and keep them in power, Immigrant, lgbtq, etc. Hitler and his evil minions used Jews, lgbtq, and gypsies to exterminate 6 million men, women, and children. I can actually see trump trying to do that.
Totally agree with you on all points Mike! It's truly disgusting what they are doing. Killing people and blaming "narco terrorists" but if they truly wanted to do it the correct way they would let the Coast Guard take care of these so called "terrorists" the right way. And the same goes for blaming the immigrants for things they never did. It's so by!
Can't these "rants" be syndicated in big publications like the Times and the Journal and regularly run like opinion columns? Anything that has wide public viewership. How do we get that to happen to reach those who haven't a clue what substack is, don't blog or tik-tok (like me!)?