Russians in Ukraine

 

Fear Creates Hate: Today’s GOP

My grandmother's family owned slaves in the 1800's. She said the goal in treating slaves is to instill fear in the slaves and differentiate the owners’ culture. How else can a few people control a large number of strong, angry people? Slave owners were afraid of slaves, so the owners hated the slaves.

Here's a description of slave treatment in the American Colonies: 

'General Elements in Slave Treatment

The treatment of slaves in the United States varied widely depending on conditions, time, and place. Generally speaking, urban slaves in the northernmost Southern states had better working conditions and more freedom than their counterparts on Deep South plantations. As slavery became more entrenched and slaves both more numerous and valuable, punishments for infractions increased.

Treatment was generally characterized by brutality, degradation, and inhumanity. Whippings, executions, and rapes were commonplace, and slaves were usually denied educational opportunities, such as learning how to read or write. Medical care was often provided to slaves by the slaveholder’s family or fellow slaves who had gleaned medical knowledge via ancestral folk remedies and/or experiences during their time in captivity. After well-known rebellions, such as that by Nat Turner in 1831, some states even prohibited slaves from holding religious gatherings due to the fear that such meetings would facilitate communication and possibly lead to insurrection or escape.

Isolated exceptions existed to the generally horrific institution of slavery. For instance, there were slaves who employed white workers, slave doctors who treated upper-class white patients, and slaves who rented out their labor. Yet these were far from common occurrences.'

https://courses.lumenlearning.com/boundless-ushistory/chapter/slavery-in-the-u-s/

That culture of hatred survived the Civil War and became the GOP today. We see the racial fear and resulting hatred spreading across the country.

'SOUTHERN CULTURE

The formative elements of cultural cognition are ubiquitous in the legacy of slavery. The system rested on stratification, rigid social barriers, insularity, and superior force. The American theory of slavery entailed complete subjugation to power in exchange for life itself; the resulting problematic was, in Orlando Patterson’s words, “How does a society, any society, come to terms with the idea of socially dead persons in its midst?” (1991:11). 

The answer is through embedded social mores, legal codes, and shared beliefs to create a mode of denial that slaves were human. In the case of Africans transported to the United States, slave society was rationalized as a manifestation of the Great Chain of Being in which hierarchy was part of the created universe, and the foreordained status of conquered Africans allowed slave owners to explain the ownership of “inferior” beings who were located between white persons and apes in the natural order of things. Indeed, “the popularity of the concept of the Chain in the eighteenth century derived in large measure from its capacity to universalize the principle of hierarchy” (Jordan 1968:228). The hierarchical order was so entrenched in slave society that ownership of black beings was merely a variation of property in livestock and other chattels (Jordan 1968:232–35).

Accompanying the cultural scheme of slavery was a complementary vision of rank, status, and worth attaching to the individual within the social matrix. White males occupied a unique role at the apex of the pyramid, but the precise quantum of worthiness was allocated to the man himself. W.J. Cash declared in his classic study of the mind of the South that “the dominant trait of this mind was an intense individualism—in its way, perhaps the most intense individualism the world has seen since the Italian Renaissance and its men of ‘terrible fury’” (Cash 1941:31). Individualism was coupled with a code of honor that supplied the ethical basis justifying the “racial and social bondage that first made temporary chattels of white servants, then made permanent slaves of African imports. 

From the start, slavery and honor were mutually dependent.” (Wyatt- Brown 1986:ix). To the extent necessary to defend an individual’s status, violence could be deployed in the service of honor. The concept rested on adherence to social rank and was enforced by any necessary amount of force against others. Slaves occupied the bottom rung of the order, with white men at the top and white women in between. Slave owners mediated their contradictory ideals of civic participation and exclusion based on race and gender by dichotomizing “public” and “private” life; households were managed as patriarchal enclaves distinct from the sphere of public affairs (Tomlins 2010). Under the Southern code of honor, individuality, and masculinity, secession was the only acceptable response to Lincoln’s election in 1860 (Olsen 2011).

Core cultural values in the United States are besotted with racial attitudes. The geography of culture follows lines of demarcation lowing from the Old South and into states of the West, as reflected by right-to-work laws. The elaborate system of race domination marking the Jim Crow era from 1877 to 1964 reinstated the essentials of the antebellum order, penetrating American life and indelibly stamping our social and political structures (Woodward 1974). Social historian Daniel Rodgers in his discussion of race and social memory describes an incident in 1986 when a young black man was beaten to death in Brooklyn because he crossed into the “wrong” neighborhood while responding to an advertisement of a car for sale (2011:111). A more recent case involving the death of Trayvon Martin, a young black man, skewed racial attitudes and sharply differentiated responses about race relations. As the Wall Street Journal reported, “Optimism over race relations in the U.S. has slid since its historic high in January 2009, when 77% of Americans polled—79% of whites and 64% of blacks—described such relations as good. In the new poll, 52% of those polled felt that way, including 52% of whites and 38% of blacks” (King and Ballhous 2013).

The defining features of the Confederacy mesh seamlessly with the cultural cognitionists’ description of hierarchy and individualism in the “group–grid” formulation. Americans’ cultural orientation is a contemporary expression of deeply sedimented values laid down at the formation of the Republic; the mechanics of slavery took root in the first waves of colonization and remained indelibly fixed in our constitutional scheme until the Civil War (Dred Scott v. Sandford 1857; Tomlins 2010). The ongoing relevance of culture for labor unions can be traced from the first attempts at national legislation during the New Deal through contemporary examples of governmental and judicial hostility to working-class solidarity. A historical perspective explains the deleterious conditions that confront modern unionism and the tightly knit connections among slavery, race, culture, and collective action. From the outset, those conditions were embedded in federal labor policy.’

Chapter 2: 'The Persistent Efects of Slavery in the United States: Culture, Legal Policy, and the Decline of American Labor Unions' 

Raymond L. Hogler

THE DISUNITED STATES OF AMERICA: Employment Relations Systems in Conflict.

Copyright © 2014 by the Labor and Employment Relations Association. Printed in the

United States of America. All Rights Reserved. No part of the book may be used without

written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and

reviews. First Edition ISBN 978-0-913447-09-3

LABOR AND EMPLOYMENT RELATIONS ASSOCIATION SERIES

Cowardly GOP Afraid of News Reporters and Debates - Cancels Presidential Forums

 

New today April 14:

Republicans pull plug  on presidential debate commission, leaving 2024 clashes in doubt.

Russia Kidnapping Children - Ukraine

 Statement by the MFA of Ukraine on the threat of illegal adoption of Ukrainian children by citizens of the russian federation - 

 Click to show link See here: 

Copy and Paste if link above not working:  https://www.kmu.gov.ua/en/news/zayava-mzs-ukrayini-shchodo-zagrozi-nezakonnogo-usinovlennya-ukrayinskih-ditej-gromadyanami-derzhavi-agresora

EVIL - Do we have the Courage?

 

She does:

 

 

On Evil –

 

Army psychologist Captain G. M. Gilbert was assigned to watching the defendants at the Nuremberg Trials. '...I was searching for the nature of evil, and now I have come close to defining it. A lack of empathy. It's the one characteristic that connects all the defendants, a genuine incapacity to feel with their fellow men. Evil, I think is the absence of empathy.'

 

Humans do evil.

 

Putin blows up children. Bashar al-Assad levels Aleppo and gasses his subjects. The Romans built a world wide civilization based on slave trade.

 

Navalny suggests '..the [Russian civil] fight was not of good against evil but of good against neutral...', or passivity and disengagement.

 

Putin justifies genocide: '"The collective West is attempting to splinter our society, speculating on military losses, on socioeconomic effects of sanctions, in order to provoke a people's rebellion in Russia," Putin said in a video address shared on Twitter.

 

"But any people, the Russian people, especially, are able to distinguish true patriots from bastards and traitors and will spit them out," he said of those who did not back the Kremlin.

 

"I am certain that this necessary and natural self-cleansing of society will only strengthen our country, our solidarity, togetherness, and our readiness to answer any calls to action," Putin said.'

 

Maybe it's an instinct for power and blood lust combined with zero empathy.

 

I do not know.

 

The United States experimented with the idea that the people can manage things without a tyrant.

 

Today's GOP fringe questions that experiment and works to install a tyrant in the USA.

Are We Playing Putin's Game ?

 

OPINION - NEW YORK TIMES  BRET STEPHENS

What if Putin Didn’t Miscalculate?

March 29, 2022

The conventional wisdom is that Vladimir Putin catastrophically miscalculated.

He thought Russian-speaking Ukrainians would welcome his troops. They didn’t. He thought he’d swiftly depose Volodymyr Zelensky’s government. He hasn’t. He thought he’d divide NATO. He’s united it. He thought he had sanction-proofed his economy. He’s wrecked it. He thought the Chinese would help him out. They’re hedging their bets. He thought his modernized military would make mincemeat of Ukrainian forces. The Ukrainians are making mincemeat of his, at least on some fronts.

Putin’s miscalculations raise questions about his strategic judgment and mental state. Who, if anyone, is advising him? Has he lost contact with reality? Is he physically unwell? Mentally? Condoleezza Rice warns: “He’s not in control of his emotions. Something is wrong.” Russia’s sieges of Mariupol and Kharkiv — two heavily Russian-speaking cities that Putin claims to be “liberating” from Ukrainian oppression — resemble what the Nazis did to Warsaw, and what Putin himself did to Grozny.

Several analysts have compared Putin to a cornered rat, more dangerous now that he’s no longer in control of events. They want to give him a safe way out of the predicament he allegedly created for himself. Hence the almost universal scorn poured on Joe Biden for saying in Poland, “For God’s sake, this man cannot remain in power.”

The conventional wisdom is entirely plausible. It has the benefit of vindicating the West’s strategy of supporting Ukraine defensively. And it tends toward the conclusion that the best outcome is one in which Putin finds some face-saving exit: additional Ukrainian territory, a Ukrainian pledge of neutrality, a lifting of some of the sanctions.

But what if the conventional wisdom is wrong? What if the West is only playing into Putin’s hands once again?

The possibility is suggested in a powerful reminiscence from The Times’s Carlotta Gall of her experience covering Russia’s siege of Grozny, during the first Chechen war in the mid-1990s. In the early phases of the war, motivated Chechen fighters wiped out a Russian armored brigade, stunning Moscow. The Russians regrouped and wiped out Grozny from afar, using artillery and air power.

Russia’s operating from the same playbook today. When Western military analysts argue that Putin can’t win militarily in Ukraine, what they really mean is that he can’t win clean. Since when has Putin ever played clean?

“There is a whole next stage to the Putin playbook, which is well known to the Chechens,” Gall writes. “As Russian troops gained control on the ground in Chechnya, they crushed any further dissent with arrests and filtration camps and by turning and empowering local protégés and collaborators.”

Suppose for a moment that Putin never intended to conquer all of Ukraine: that, from the beginning, his real targets were the energy riches of Ukraine’s east, which contain Europe’s second-largest known reserves of natural gas (after Norway’s).

Combine that with Russia’s previous territorial seizures in Crimea (which has huge offshore energy fields) and the eastern provinces of Luhansk and Donetsk (which contain part of an enormous shale-gas field), as well as Putin’s bid to control most or all of Ukraine’s coastline, and the shape of Putin’s ambitions become clear. He’s less interested in reuniting the Russian-speaking world than he is in securing Russia’s energy dominance.

“Under the guise of an invasion, Putin is executing an enormous heist,” said Canadian energy expert David Knight Legg. As for what’s left of a mostly landlocked Ukraine, it will likely become a welfare case for the West, which will help pick up the tab for resettling Ukraine’s refugees to new homes outside of Russian control. In time, a Viktor Orban-like figure could take Ukraine’s presidency, imitating the strongman-style of politics that Putin prefers in his neighbors.

If this analysis is right, then Putin doesn’t seem like the miscalculating loser his critics make him out to be.

It also makes sense of his strategy of targeting civilians. More than simply a way of compensating for the incompetence of Russian troops, the mass killing of civilians puts immense pressure on Zelensky to agree to the very things Putin has demanded all along: territorial concessions and Ukrainian neutrality. The West will also look for any opportunity to de-escalate, especially as we convince ourselves that a mentally unstable Putin is prepared to use nuclear weapons.

Within Russia, the war has already served Putin’s political purposes. Many in the professional middle class — the people most sympathetic to dissidents like Aleksei Navalny — have gone into self-imposed exile. The remnants of a free press have been shuttered, probably for good. To the extent that Russia’s military has embarrassed itself, it is more likely to lead to a well-aimed purge from above than a broad revolution from below. Russia’s new energy riches could eventually help it shake loose the grip of sanctions.

This alternative analysis of Putin’s performance could be wrong. Then again, in war, politics and life, it’s always wiser to treat your adversary as a canny fox, not a crazy fool.

Does Ukraine have the right to defend itself?

Russian missiles and artillery rain on apartments, hospitals, schools and houses as well as an occasional military facility in Ukraine. Putin's strategy appears to target civilians.

 

Can we allow the country to defend its population or shall we insist their people stay in basements and wait to die?

 

I say let Ukraine attack the sources of the rain of Russian munitions. Saving people is not an act of war.

 

Give Ukraine Iron Dome anti-aircraft to stop Russian long-range missiles and bombers.

 

Encourage 'Ukrainian' flagged weapons and machinery to destroy artillery batteries in Crimea, Donbas, Luhansk, Belarus and 50 miles of Russia as a matter of immediate population defense.

 

Apparently Russian artillery has a range of less than 50 miles

Finabel

Russia - Pariah State

During the Cold War, Russian Premier Kruschev was forced to resign by his government because he banged his shoe on the podium at the United Nations. Apparently, Russians wanted to join the international community with some respect. 

Now, Putin rages at imaginary enemies, installs bombing of infants and pregnant women as official military policy in Ukraine and elsewhere and also threatens  nuclear attacks against the West if his whims are questioned. 

Russia under Putin has descended into barbaric and disgusting official policies. 

Russians are rightfully ashamed of these actions.

Russia under Putin has forfeit any right to normal discourse with civilized nations.

Putin makes Russia a pariah state.

'Pariah states are states that are considered expelled because of their government. Anyone who does not abide by international rules or refuses to cooperate with the international community in wide areas must expect sanctions. Many of the former and current pariah states owe their classification to their autocratic rule, under which their own people suffer.' World Data info.

And:  video from Arnold Schwarzenegger, Former Governor of California:

https://www.facebook.com/OccupyDemocrats/videos/988130775424742/?notif_id=1647523098845616&notif_t=live_video&ref=notif

Post Putin Plan for the USA

Here is a question: How should the United States react to Russia AFTER Putin is gone?

He will go someday, maybe sooner than we expect. 

Some Russians in power and some of the general population are thinking about that already.

We MUST offer assistance to the new government so that the country does not slide into the chaos that followed the breakup of the Soviet Union.

Russia, or the Russian Federation, is a transcontinental country spanning Eastern Europe and Northern Asia. It is the largest country in the world by area, covering over 17,125,191 square kilometres, and encompassing one-eighth of Earth's inhabitable landmass. It's population is 144 million.

Gross domestic product 1.483 trillion USD ‎(2020)

Population growth rate -0.2% annual change ‎(2020)

Russia also has a considerable arsenal of nuclear weapons and a modern military.

The National Security of the United States depends on a stable and functioning Russia.

While our long term goal will be to foster free elections and democracy in Russia, the country is not able to turn away quickly from its authoritarian past and present without massive misery and death for its people. 

We should offer to help modernize the oil industry with the proviso that our private oil companies will profit FAIRLY from their work but that the majority of the revenue will stay in Russia. If we sow theft and greed in Russia, we will inherit violence.

We should support financially the sectors that serve the general population, but include requirements that those firms ensure their workers are treated fairly and make living wages.

We can support the monopolies which serve most people, but again, we require democratizing reforms in each firm.

Rather than list all Russian organizations needed for the general population, we should ensure that each one transitions slowly toward mutually agreed goals. 

We want to prevent another disaster like the 1990's. 

Make haste slowly. 

Kill Him

 

Images of Ukraine

 

Reflecting on Putin

 I have watched Putin since his East German days. 

He is intelligent, ruthless and power hungry. He has created an inner circle of like minded thugs and murderers who owe him all.

He will collect all of what he wants from them using whatever means necessary.

First goal - keep and expand his power base of citizen-victims from whom he can steal and whom he can murder with impunity.

Second goal - add more citizen-victims to his power base. 

Third goal - re-assert Russian dominance over nearby citizen-victims in Georgia, Crimea, Donbas, some of Ukraine and perhaps the Baltics and the nearby former Soviet sphere.

Fourth goal - destroy Democracy wherever possible and install autocrats loyal to him. This goal explicitly includes the United States of America. 

Fifth goal - be very quiet about it: by the time Democracies notice his actions it can be too late or too costly to reverse his actions.

What happens after Putin dies: Churchill had it right - “Kremlin political intrigues are comparable to a bulldog fight under a rug. An outsider only hears the growling, and when he sees the bones fly out from beneath it is obvious who won.”

After Putin we will see another such fight and the result will be another power hungry thug; it will NOT be a Democracy. 

Weep for the Russians, they do not deserve him.

Real GOP Risks....

DANGER !  Apologies to the easily offended by history. 

 If we enable this 

then we can get this

and this

and we already have this, from January Worldometer:

 

Coronavirus Cases:

75,271,402

Deaths:

905,661

Recovered:

45,806,388

Stand Up to Putin Now

OPINION - BRET STEPHENS - What Putin Really Wants From the Ukraine Crisis

By Bret Stephens, Opinion Columnist, New York Times, Jan. 11, 2022

Grave may have been the mistakes of Donald Rumsfeld, but George W. Bush’s first defense secretary did have a gift for memorable phrases. One of them — “weakness is provocative” — explains the predicament we again find ourselves in with Russia’s belligerence against Ukraine and NATO.

Let’s recap how we got here.

■ In August 2008, Russia invaded Georgia and took control of two of its provinces. The Bush administration protested but did almost nothing. After Barack Obama won the White House that fall, he pursued a “reset” with Russia. In 2012, he cut U.S. force levels in Europe to their lowest levels in postwar history and mocked Mitt Romney for calling Russia our principal geopolitical threat.

■ In September 2013, Obama famously retreated from his red line against Bashar al-Assad’s use of nerve gas in Syria, accepting instead a Russian offer of mediation that was supposed to have eliminated al-Assad’s chemical arsenal. That arsenal was never fully destroyed, but Vladimir Putin took note of Obama’s palpable reluctance to get involved.

■ In February 2014, Russia used “little green men” to seize and then annex Crimea. The Obama administration protested but did almost nothing. Russia then took advantage of unrest in eastern Ukraine to shear off two Ukrainian provinces while sparking a war that has lasted seven years and cost more than 13,000 lives. Obama responded with weak sanctions on Russia and a persistent refusal to arm Ukraine.

■ In 2016, Donald Trump ran for office questioning how willing America should be to defend vulnerable NATO members. In 2017 he tried to block new sanctions on Russia but was effectively overruled by Congress. The Trump administration did ultimately take a tougher line on Russia and approved limited arms sales to Ukraine. But Trump also tried to hold hostage military assistance to Ukraine for political favors before he was exposed, leading to his first impeachment.

Which brings us to Joe Biden, who ran for office promising a tougher line on Russia. It has been anything but. In May, his administration waived sanctions against Russia’s Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline to Germany, which, when operational, will increase Moscow’s energy leverage on Europe. Since coming to office, the administration has done little to increase the relatively paltry flow of military aid to Ukraine. In the face of a Russian invasion, it will be as effective as trying to put out a forest fire by peeing on it.

Then there was the fiasco of our withdrawal from Afghanistan. “In the aftermath of Saigon redux,” I wrote at the time, “every enemy will draw the lesson that the United States is a feckless power.” The current Ukraine crisis is as much the child of Biden’s Afghanistan debacle as the last Ukraine crisis was the child of Obama’s Syria debacle.

Now the administration is doubling down on a message of weakness by threatening “massive consequences for Russia” if it invades Ukraine, nearly all in economic sanctions. That’s bringing a knife to the proverbial gunfight.

Imagine this not-so-far-fetched scenario. Russian forces move on a corner of Ukraine. The United States responds by cutting off Russia from the global banking system. But the Kremlin (which has built its gold and foreign-currency reserves to record highs) doesn’t sit still. It responds to sanctions by cutting off gas supplies in midwinter to the European Union — which gets more than 40 percent of its gas from Russia. It demands a Russia-Europe security treaty as the price of the resumption of supplies. And it freezes the United States out of the bargain, at least until Washington shows good will by abandoning financial sanctions.

Such a move would force Washington to either escalate or abase itself — and this administration would almost certainly choose the latter. It would fulfill Putin’s long-held ambition to break the spine of NATO. It would further entice China into a similar mind-set of aggression, probably against Taiwan.

It would be to America’s global standing what the Suez Crisis was to Britain’s. At least Pax Britannica could, in its twilight, give way to Pax Americana. But to what does Pax Americana give way?

What can the United States do instead? We should break off talks with Russia now: No country ought to expect diplomatic rewards from Washington while it threatens the destruction of our friends. We should begin an emergency airlift of military equipment to Ukraine, on the scale of Richard Nixon’s 1973 airlift to Israel, including small arms useful in a guerrilla war. And we should reinforce U.S. forces in frontline NATO states, particularly Poland and the Baltics.

None of this may be sufficient to stop Russia from invasion, which would be a tragedy for Ukrainians. But Putin is playing for bigger stakes in this crisis — another sliver of Ukrainian territory is merely a secondary prize.

What he really wants to do is end the Western alliance as we have known it since the Atlantic Charter. As for the United States, two decades of bipartisan American weakness in the face of his aggression has us skating close to a geopolitical debacle. Biden needs to stand tough on Ukraine in order to save NATO.

********

The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.

Bret Stephens has been an Opinion columnist with The Times since April 2017. He won a Pulitzer Prize for commentary at The Wall Street Journal in 2013 and was previously editor in chief of The Jerusalem Post. 

Attorney Volunteers Needed to Fight Election Threats

GOP thugs threaten election officials in all 50 states.

Doing so is a crime.  

Volunteer attorneys needed in each state to prosecute the thugs. Attorneys Bob Bauer and Ben Ginsberg created a website to connect election officials with pro-bono attorneys. 

Volunteer here:

https://eoldn.org/

Addressing Insider Threats in Elections: How to Neutralize Insider Threats

There is an active effort to recruit rogue election officials to sabotage elections across the country.

BRENNAN CENTER FOR JUSTICE

 

ANALYSIS

• Facebook
• Twitterbotage elections across the country.

• Lawrence Norden
 
• Derek Tisler

 

December 8, 2021

read report here:   https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/analysis-opinion/addressing-insider-threats-elections

Joe and Nancy: Hey, Let's Partaaaay !!

Our beloved Taliban Supremes are about to shred the Constitution by taking away another right it grants to citizens, specifically women. Of course, they might 'chicken out' at the last minute and actually uphold the law and precedent.

Nah - they ain't gonna do that. A couple of corporate shills, a drunk rapist and a Handmaiden won't chicken out. They're all in. 

After all, they already put a citizen bounty on poor women's scalps, facilitated taking children from their parents, let corporations buy laws and favors, allow anyone to carry guns anywhere and allow a federal judge appointed by 45 to dictate United States foreign policy. 

MONEY rules the NEW USA.

BUT as DEMS, we have the POWER for a little while. Let's use it. 

Step 1: Chill the Champagne !  

THEN:

Confiscate all military style guns immediately.

Make sedition a capital crime and arrest and imprison FOX news and other treasonous organizations.

Fire the bad judges - Roberts, Cavanaugh and Barret - an replace them with Alexandra Ocasio Cortez, Ilhan Omar, Ayanna Pressley, Rashida Tlaib and  Pramila Jayapal. Never mind the numbers, we can just change the membership of the court. 

Drop the filibuster.

Make partisan gerrymandering a Federal felony, then put the organizers in jail.

Create real voting protections under Federal, not state, law.

Make all social media platforms and the tech companies which host them into non-profit public utilities subject to libel and sedition laws. 

I could go on, but we have to act before the Gang Of Prevaricators [GOP] steal power and elections.

We have thousands of years of written history where we can find examples of what to do.

Let the FUN begin............

Update - Can We Save Democracy?

We must have three things to save our Republic.

Each is required. 

They are:

*** Federal voting rights legislation; without it, autocratic forces will steal power.

*** Fairness doctrine for all publishers and media; hold each liable for false and/or unproven statements. Without it, lies can be told and believed with no recourse.  

*** Treat all social media as publishers for content they broadcast: make them liable for harm from misstatements appearing on each platform. Lies spread on social media - we can stop it. 

Enacting these items will not guarantee our future but failure to enact any one of the three items will pave the way for autocrats to seize power. 

Putin Claims Ukraine as Part of Russia

Read his remarks in English at this link:

http://en.kremlin.ru/events/president/news/66181

So, You Want to Know the Truth???

 Here is the truth :

EVIL Ascends

I have seen Evil in other places - Russia's Gulags, Nazi concentration camps, China's Great March, Eastern Europe after World War II and Bangladesh refugee camps today, among too many more.

I see Evil here today, coming slowly.

 

Republicans Will Use Violence to Steal Your FREEDOM !!

NOT the Democrats; the Dems leave you alone if pay your taxes and don't break the law.

BUT, Republicans want your FREEDOM, your VOTE, your SOCIAL SECURITY, your GUNS and your HEALTHCARE. They will take them from you by any means necessary. 

Make no mistake, the GOP has a concerted, coordinated effort to subvert our elections and destroy the rule of law in our Country. Republicans do not follow the usual rules of a political party. They are a violent mob which will do anything it can to retain power. 

The GOP will use violence and threats of violence against you if you stand in their way. Republicans will beat you and the police sent to protect you with flagpoles carrying the American flag. They will bear spray you. They will kill you if you resist. The GOP will threaten your school age children on their social media accounts; they will threaten you with death in endless phone calls and emails. They will follow you and try to kidnap and murder you. Republican mobs with guns will stand outside your house. All this harms the elected and appointed people who manage United States of America political elections. 

Wait, you say. Americans will never do that kind of stuff. 

But, American GOP have already done all that and more. It will continue.

The Republican goal is simple: turn the United States of America into a Fascist dictatorship.

It CAN happen here. Our democracy and freedom rest on the few elected and appointed officials who are willing to face death threats to defend our right to vote. They are being attacked. If the attack succeeds, then we very well may have a Fascist dictatorship in the United States. 

A Fascist government will directly harm the well being of the population - it is what Fascists do. 

Here's what life under Fascism will look like: 

Political debate, Elections: Opposition parties will cease overt political discussion or agitation because all their leaders will be in jail or deported. Voting will be rigged, government in power will receive 90% of votes. 

Immigration: The borders will be closed. Only citizens approved by central government will be allowed to enter. 

Political violence: Armed mobs will attack dissidents and racial minorities with violence and at will. Selected dissidents will be assassinated.

Finally, Environment Truth From Government !

 

Yep.

Real truth.

Can you handle it ?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1FqXTCvDLeo

Latest Q

Wow !

Did you hear the latest from Q: 

trump wins the 2024 election and then appoints Q as the official spokesperson of the trump government !

But, he sends all the private militia leaders to Guantanamo Bay prison and institutes a national gun confiscation program. 

What if Biden Stole it??

Your guy grabbed you with his great speeches for the 2016 campaign. He 'told it like it is.' SOMEBODY finally got it. The TRUTH -  at last ! And he beat that bitch, Hillary !

When your guy talks, he makes you feel good about everything - that's why you trust him.

Then he did a lot of good stuff for the country, things like standing up to the Chinese, closing the border during Covid, keeping the invasion of immigrants away, owning the Libs and a lot of other things I can't remember right now, but you can look them up..

Now your guy is saying that Biden stole the 2020 election and that your guy really, really won the election and is still the President! Gotta be true when your guy says it is !

In that case, then you know what to do  - and you know you will feel better when you do it. A good American stands up and defends the country against radical takeovers and a stolen election every day. And, so do you. You march, you protest, exercise your 1st Amendment right of free speech, even if some wackos do some violence - we're all on the same side after all: Standing up for America. Yeah ! And, you may send some cash contributions  - to save the USA. 

This is important stuff here - saving the country. So a careful man may want to check out some of the things he says, your guy. Maybe find some verification. After all you might be facing jail time if he made a little mistake; it doesn't take a lot of errors today to create a real problem.

Hold on a minute: There's a bit of an issue, here. 

Namely: There is no independent verification of his claims, it's his word only. 

Zero verification, just random repetition. 

ZERO. Diddly squat.

But wait! He took a lot of stuff to court and there are a lot of people verifying the elections to be sure there really was actual Biden vote stealing and that the elections were crooked, for real. 

He took his claims to court in 60 lawsuits in different states; 60 lawsuits.

The thing is - he LOST EVERY SINGLE challenge! All of them.

None of it is true - none !

So then why does he keep making the claims of election fraud every day?

Maybe, just maybe, he keeps making those claims because you and his other fans send him more money every time he makes a statement. 

Maybe it is just a money making scam for him and he does not believe a single word he says.

Makes you stop and think..

Non Partisan Legislation: Proven to Stop Insurrection

The United States faces an existential challenge.

It is this: Will trump's Fascist insurrection overwhelm the rule of law and our Democracy?

We can prevent this, but ONLY if we can work together for the common good.

A few Republican Senators and Representatives can vote with Democrats to enact non-partisan legislation to prevent a Fascist takeover. Other countries have done it.

We can all work together by finding something we all share. 

Our emotional division may create our political divisions. 

One group of Americans addresses political discussions in emotional terms. Here is an example: 'Proposition A [insert talking point here] makes me feel good so it must be true. And, I want to feel good since life is difficult right now. A political movement today tells me who is making me feel bad and I want to hurt them.'

Another group of Americans approaches things differently: 'Policy B [insert policy here] helps most Americans live better lives so I vote for politicians who support that policy. But, I am afraid that an insurrection can remove that policy.'

Fear seems to be a common ground. Perhaps we can use fear to motivate cooperation, as suggested by my wife Alexandra. 

We say this to the emotionally motivated: 'We share your fear of losing the conditions you like, but the political movement that appeals to your fears today likely will create the exact conditions you fear and simultaneously destroy all the things you like if they get into power.' [See post below titled 'America After Coup' for a list of things Fascism will destroy]

We say this to the Policy motivated: 'We share your concern of a Fascist takeover. The best way to prevent that is to work together with some GOP politicians to enact laws to prevent it. We will likely fail to prevent an insurrection if we fail to work together.'

UPDATED with example: We Need a Coalition between GOP and Democrats to Save Democracy in the United States from Tyranny

Make no mistake - trump directs a concerted campaign to install a Fascist dictatorship in the United States during or before the 2024 election for President.

Fascists pay no regard to any legal measures preventing their seizure of power by force. They will seize power with whatever means they can find.

This is the most important fact of life today.

Earlier governments faced a similar situation in the Great Depression; some were able to unite disparate factions to oppose Fascist tyranny and prevent a takeover, but some were not able to unite and became Fascist.

We need a few GOP Senators and Representatives to join Democrats in passing needed antifascist legislation. 

If the GOP continues its self-serving cowardice and fails to join Democrat efforts to thwart Fascism,  it is likely that democracy in the United States will end.

 It can be done:  

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/13/world/europe/czech-populism-strongmen.html

trump The 2024 Steal

trump will run in 2024.

He expects to lose the vote.

He will try to orchestrate an insurrection and violent takeover of the United States government and steal the Presidency. Plans are underway today for that project.

Here's how it might work:

The election is close; several swing states can tip the election if they vote for him.

The election favors Biden, but trump sycophants in key states control the elections.

trump goon Proud Boys, etc., demonstrate violently outside of the state capitols.

Sycophants declare the election in favor of trump since violence near the State capitol provides an 'emergency' excuse.  

Mobs of goons prevent, violently, an orderly examination of the facts. 

Supreme Court rules in trump favor.

He is inaugurated and installs goons and sycophants in key positions.

He purges Federal and States official who speak against the coup.

He suspends the Constitution and installs himself as President for Life. 

Does the GOP Want Chaos?

There is a potential strategy choice for the GOP which explains their current intransigence on the national debt, judges, etc., etc.

It is this: Creating instability in the United States of America creates an impression among some Americans that the country is weak because Democrats cannot govern.

If widely held, that perception can improve GOP chances in future elections. 

Perhaps Mr. McConnel chooses his actions in conformance with the goal of creating chaos instead of helping the country.  

America After Coup

trump and his financial backers are working today to install an autocratic government and eliminate American democracy including our free elections. There is no time to debate this. The critical time happens in the 2024 Presidential election.

        If we fail, here's what will happen to America After the Coup:

America After Coup - Guns: The regime will confiscate all firearms, by force if necessary. They may allow shotguns and pistols for some rural residents. 

America After Coup - Business Ownership: If a crony or government employee likes your business he may simply walk in, change the locks and use the police to force you out without compensation. Of course you will object. Private property - how quaint; when the police and courts serve the autocrat, the laws become moot.

America After Coup - Labor Unions: Labor unions will be controlled by management. Agitators will be fired or jailed. Work weeks will increase, vacations will disappear, mandatory unpaid overtime will affect all workers. 

America After Coup - Worker Safety: Laws protecting workers from harm will become moot or will cease to exist. There will be no regulation or consequences to businesses for violating worker safety practices.

America After Coup - Judiciary: The regime will remove all judges deemed unsympathetic to the regime; laws will be changed to facilitate their removal. The regime will assassinate some judges. 

America After Coup - Political debate: Opposition parties will cease overt political agitation because all their leaders will be in jail or deported.

America After Coup - Elections: Voting will be rigged, government in power will receive 90% of votes. Agitators - see above.

America After Coup - Education: The content and curriculum will be created by the central government. Teachers failing to present approved material will be fired. 

America After Coup - Political Protest:  Bloggers and online activists engaging in divisive activities will be jailed.

America After Coup - Media: All broadcast media will become subsidiaries of FOX. All publishing media will be controlled by central government.

America After Coup - Immigration: The borders will be closed. Only citizens approved by central government will be allowed to enter. 

America After Coup - Political violence: Armed mobs will attack dissidents and racial minorities with violence and at will. Selected dissidents will be assassinated.

America After Coup - Medical Care: Will be rationed and available only to friends of the regime. The regime decides which procedures to eliminate altogether. 

America After Coup - Pensions and Social Benefits: They will be reduced whenever the government needs extra cash, which will be continuous since regime friends seek and receive sanctioned tax avoidance. 

America After Coup - Income inequality: Our disastrous wealth gap widens even further; billionaires control the regime.  

                Who supports the coup?

The coup is supported by some individuals, corporations and politicians who seek power and financial gain at the expense of our society. 

Can we stop it?

Maybe we can, but it is 50/50 at this time. 

The future is in our hands, literally. In order to stop it we must become politically active since our future depends on our activity. 

Here's the least we can do: 

Enter opposition Democratic candidates in every single election for National, State or Municipal office where a 'Stop the Steal' candidate stands for office. Call out the Radical candidate for his/her positions.

Resist  any and all political mobs with armed forces from Police and National Guard. Purge trump sympathizers from all military and law enforcement ranks.

Challenge in Court every Federal, State and Municipal law deemed unconstitutional. 

Be alert to new tactics from the Right designed to weaken elections. 

American Shame

Child abuse damages a child for life. All child abuse is violence upon a child. 

Whether the violence is sexual or non-sexual, abused children grow into traumatized adults; some adapt and function with emotional scars and some cannot.

Individual actors in the government of United States of America and the national organizations established to protect child athletes have shamed us all by failing to protect children from predators, especially AFTER SOME VICTIMS REPORTED ABUSE.

Listen to the stories here:   https://www.c-span.org/video/?c4977158/us-gymnasts-testify-sexual-abuses-larry-nasser

The Taliban Court - Update

I will mince no words: 

The Supreme Court of the United States has abandoned any pretense to decency, respect, protection of the weak and upholding the Constitution or the rule of law. 

[See below for Code of Conduct that has been violated.]

The Court's failure to stop the Texas abortion law has loosed the evils of bounty hunters and other scum to prey upon defenseless women. 

I cannot find words short of vile profanity to describe the effects of what the Court has done. 

This law and this Court cannot stand. 

September 11, UPDATE: Justice Barret mistakenly calls outrage over Texas law 'politics'. 

Question: How has compassion for the weak become 'politics'?

[https://www.foxnews.com/politics/amy-coney-barrett-supreme-court-mitch-mcconnell-center-louisville-judges-partisan]

[Code of Conduct for United States Judges - https://www.uscourts.gov/sites/default/files/code_of_conduct_for_united_states_judges_effective_march_12_2019.pdf]

'Canon 1: A Judge Should Uphold the Integrity and Independence of the Judiciary

An independent and honorable judiciary is indispensable to justice in our society. A judge should maintain and enforce high standards of conduct and should personally observe those standards, so that the integrity and independence of the judiciary may be preserved. The provisions of this Code should be construed and applied to further that objective.

Guide to Judiciary Policy, Vol. 2A, Ch. 2 Page 3

COMMENTARY

Deference to the judgments and rulings of courts depends on public confidence in the integrity and independence of judges. The integrity and independence of judges  depend in turn on their acting without fear or favor. Although judges should be independent, they must comply with the law and should comply with this Code.

Adherence to this responsibility helps to maintain public confidence in the impartiality of the judiciary. Conversely, violation of this Code diminishes public confidence in the judiciary and injures our system of government under law'

Taliban Court - Lynda Pepitone

Arrest All Lawbreakers at the September 18 Rally

Far-Right Extremists and other White supremacists plan a rally in Washington DC on September 18. 

They want to show support for the traitors currently in jail due to participation in the January 6 insurrection.

It is VERY likely that they will be violent and that their violence will occur in several different locations. 

The National Security interests of the United States require that ALL of them who commit any infraction should be arrested and prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.  

We govern the United States with elections - not with mob violence.