Month: February 2020

According to David Corn, a group of prominent conservatives in Washington – including the wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas (Ginni Thomas) and journalists from Breitbart News and the Washington Examiner – has been meeting privately since 2013 to concoct talking points, coordinate messaging, and hatch plans for  “a 30 front war seeking to fundamentally transform the nation,” believing they are losing the messaging war with progressives.  This group know as “Groundswell” met (and still meets) weekly in the offices of Judicial Watch, the conservative legal watchdog group where they cooked up battle plans for their ongoing fights against the Obama administration, congressional Democrats, progressive outfits, and the Republican establishment and ‘clueless’ GOP congressional leaders.

They fear big government policies, socialism, communism and the “evil left who is purposely destroying the greatest country in all of world history.”  They were anti-Obama and are anti-immigration reform, anti-gay marriage, and pro-voter ID to name a few of their preferences.  They believed they were failing the propaganda battle with progressives.  They stated “We must reclaim the language and put ‘a face’ on our message, tell stories and write articles on a 4th grade level.”  The repeated right-wing talking points we hear over and over again, came from Groundswell (and brought us Impeached President Trump).

They mistakenly believe that somehow the professional / wealthy class made America great all by themselves.  They want to keep all the wealth we generated together for themselves.  They don’t think they need to invest in public education or social programs that help those in need to succeed.  If it wasn’t for the New Deal that created the biggest middle class in the world, the United States wouldn’t have achieved the number one standing.  More importantly, they don’t understand that the only way to maintain our standing is by working together including the middle and working classes and the immigrant class that is needed to grow our economy.  These “conservative elitists” are tragically wrong in their thinking.  They have separated themselves from average Americans thinking we are somehow a drain on their wealth, when we are the foundation on which it is built.

Sadly, this group has the ear of Justice Thomas through his wife.  Are his decisions being unfairly influenced?  We can’t know for sure.  All I know is that we need to do what is good for all Americans, not just the top few.  Finding the truth behind the propaganda is our uphill battle.  What is good for the least of us is good for all of us!

 

Michael Bloomberg is the 12th richest person in the world with over $60 billion.  During the democratic debate this week, one of the moderators asked if someone this rich should even exist?  Bloomberg replied that he was lucky and that he worked hard!  Really?  Most people I know work very hard and still fall in the bottom 50% of earners.  Many people who work very hard qualify for food-stamps.  Most of us are lucky in that we have found a job and that we are physically and mentally capable of performing that job.

How can we begrudge Bloomberg for becoming an American success?  Don’t most people on some level dream of becoming rich?  Bloomberg is a philanthropist.  But, boy, was I angered when he attributed his great wealth to hard work.  Similarly, back in a December 2017 post called “Who are the poor in the U.S.?”, I wrote that multi-millionaire Senator Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa) thinks that people who are not rich are lazy and spend their money on booze, women and movies.  It is apparent that both Bloomberg and Grassley have no clue what it is like to be an average hard working American, yet, they are in positions or want to be in positions to make decision that impact our lives.

Bloomberg used his natural talent, experience and Harvard Business degree to develop a computerized financial system back in the 80s that delivered high-quality business information delivered through technology, The Bloomberg Terminal.  It became the business standard in computerized trading and brought in more wealth than that owned by the bottom 120 million Americans combined.

All hardworking Americans deserve a livable wage.  Over the last four decades, legislation has favored only the top earners and the wealthy class of which many do not even work at all.  Trickle down does not work!  Hardworking Americans don’t want handouts, we just want a fair deal!

 

Growing up I often heard adults warn to never discuss politics or religion at social gatherings.  I didn’t really understand the warning on a deep level until recently.  Now that we live in a time of rampant political divisiveness, I often find people who have completely opposite world-views and each person not only believes that the other is wrong, but completely ignorant in their understanding of reality.  Each side has their mind made up and discussion is futile.

As I’ve been pondering how to understand people who represent the “other” from my perspective, I came across an Apple podcast from Innovation Hub called Teamsmanship. During the podcast authors Mark Hetherington and Lillianna Mason were interviewed.  Mark and his coauthor Jonathan Weiler wrote Prius or Pickup?: How the Answers to Four Simple Questions Explain America’s Great Divide.  Lillianna Mason wrote Uncivil Agreement: How Politics Became Our Identity.

My takeaway from the podcast is that each of us is drawn to our respective sides from a deep seated feeling.  We either believe that our lives are threatened by terrorists, criminals and illegal immigrants and our priority should be to protect ourselves OR we believe its a big beautiful world mostly full of good people and we must find a way to embrace each other and not allow ourselves to be isolated.  We then interpret information in a way that makes our party seem better and the other party seem worse.  In fact, we are hardwired to try to find information that makes our team look good and to find ways to disprove information that makes the other team look good causing us to  think in a completely biased way without knowing that we are biased.

The team becomes more important than policies or I might add even the truth.  We all are experiencing implicit bias.  The authors suggest that we should not try to discuss politics with the other until we build something together toward a common goal with the other.  The only way to stop implicit bias is to actively acknowledge that it is happening and then to work on slowing down our automatic responses that are going to be immediately biased to anything partisan.  We need to ask ourselves, what are the things that I automatically do when I think about the other side?  And, then I can slow those things down.

Let’s recognize our own implicit bias, seek the truth and build a better world together.

 

It seems that the wholesome, cordial, compassionate and principled world in which I was born has become rude, crude, abusive and uncivil.  I have read that energy follows thought and that we create our own reality.  However, when our thoughts are influenced by negativity and lies, our collective reality becomes adverse, dubious and hostile.  I realize that there has always been a negative undertone in our culture, but what is unsettling is that this negative undertone has risen to the surface and is spreading to the detriment of us all.  When I look back on my 60 plus years, I see notable moments where this negativity was breaking through.  The moments I will be listing are not the only moments they’re just the ones that standout to me.  Here we go.

1980’s – Tennis star John McEnroe engages in unsportsmanlike behavior, ranting, raving and name-calling without consequence.

1982 – David Letterman takes over the “Tonight Show” from Johnny Carson.  Letterman’s irreverence challenges and changes what’s acceptable on TV.

1987 –  the movie “Wall Street” tells us that corporate raids and hostile takeovers of businesses that took a life-time or more to build is not just ok but clever and celebratory, and that “greed is good.”

1988 – Rush Limbaugh’s radio talk show becomes nationally syndicated spreading negativity, half-truths and even lies.

1992-1999 – TV show “Melrose Place” in which a bunch of self-abosorbed young professionals are only concerned with their own personal goals, drives and desires, and have no concern of how they treat others.

1995-1999 – Newt Gingrich becomes Speaker of the House and undermines political decorum and democratic norms thereby hastening political polarization and partisanship.   He used combative, hateful language, and false accusations.  He was charged by the Democrats with eight-four Ethics violations and reprimanded.

1996 – Roger Ailes heads Fox News.  Ailes was a Republican consultant beginning with Nixon and ending with the Trump campaign when he died in 2016.  He used false allegations, distraction and television production techniques to promote his candidates.  He used a false narrative and partial facts to promote Republican talking points on Fox News which is currently rated as 85% untruthful.

2017 – The Trump administration enters the Whitehouse and includes despicable persons, Steve Bannon and Stephen Miller.

2019 – The House of Representatives impeaches Trump for Abuse of Power and Obstruction of Congress.  The Republican majority Senate acquits.

2020 – Impeached President Donald Trump fires several public servants who told the truth under oath just like a third world dictator.

Is it too late to return to decency in America?  I hope not.  Will electing a respectable President change the downward flow into total incivility?  Let’s vote and find out!!!

 

I’ve been watching parts of the Senate impeachment trial of Impeached President Donald Trump this past week.  The house managers laid out their case and the Whitehouse counsel picked apart the process in what seemed like an endless repetitive loop.  It leaves an average person like me (non-lawyer, non-politician) at times confused and angry.

The Senate had the opportunity to hear from first-hand witnesses, but voted 51-49 to deny the calling of new witnesses.  Two Republicans joined the Democrats and Independents in favor of hearing witnesses, but it wasn’t enough.  Two more votes were needed to carry the motion.  This vote denied me and my fellow Americans the clarity we deserve and wanted as 75% of polled Americans favored more witnesses.

A. Lamar Alexander, Republican Senator from Tennessee, basically said that the managers proved their case.  Impeached President Donald Trump committed an illegal quid pro quo. Even though, Alexander said this behavior was inappropriate, he feels it is not impeachable and he voted against hearing from more witnesses.

So all the arguments I tried to process all this week were summarized by Alexander’s simple statement.  HE (Impeached President Donald Trump) DID IT and the Senate is going to do NOTHING ABOUT IT.

THIS WAS NOT A FAIR TRIAL, IT WAS NOTHING MORE THAN A REPUBLICAN COVER UP.

The Senate has left it up to us.  It is our duty to vote this corrupt, impeached president out of office. VOTE!!!

ONCE IMPEACHED ALWAYS IMPEACHED