For people sick of news, there is nothing happening that cannot wait, so tonight’s letter is a good one to skip. Otherwise, there are lots of developing stories today. Top of the list is the story of Representative Matt Gaetz (R-FL), who is implicated in what appears to be a significant sex scandal involving underage girls.
The repetition and promotion of the Big Lie just blows my mind. The idiocy. The whole Naked Emperor fable-come-true of it all. But then, I was watching a couple of Masterpiece Theater productions set in WWII, and thought about the good people who suffered through the atrocities of Hitler’s Big Lies and there is the sad truth of history repeating itself.
Education has to be the answer, because I can only believe that ignorance gives the Big Lie the air it needs to spread.
Once again, Professor Richardson is being understated and far kinder to failed-former-45 than he deserves. The scammed money was not only an interest free loan from the supporters who realized the extra taking and asked for refunds. It was also theft, perhaps legal, from everyone whose money was maneuvered from them for however long. We will never know how many people were scammed but did not ask refunds, for whatever reasons. From the outside, of course, it’s no surprise that a con man cheated his marks in one more way.
The Big Lie turns out to be nothing more than just another chapter in the Big Fraud. Use other people's money to build a grotesque palace, skim the early returns into the Trump bank accounts, launch a new grotesque scheme, then pay back only those investors in the previous scam who are such sore losers that they demand their money back -- until you have to declare bankruptcy to avoid paying back anything substantial at all. Let's not dignify this perversion any longer by calling it propaganda or Free Speech or an assault on the Constitution. It's just fraud, by a fraudster, for a fraudster in the pursuit of the next fraud. When the law finally catches up to him by following his long trail of victims, the suspect will be listed as having no fixed address, no known occupation, with a list of aliases that will run beyond the margins of the police blotter.
Skip a letter, you jest! The cat and I, snuggled in bed in the mornings, will never skip a letter. 😻 This one actually gave me a frisson of what I think must be glee. I haven’t felt it for so long I am not quite sure, but it is certainly not the usual feeling of anxiety or dread that I face the news with each day. Gaetz facing his comeuppance....yay! The word is apparently derived from to ‘come up’ before the court. There is nothing more satisfying than the idea of nefarious dudes and dudettes facing up to their evil deeds in a public forum. If he has any dirt on Epstine he could bargain with and I could see Prince Andrew hanging out to dry I would do a happy dance indeed. McConnell is unhappy...aww, heck, it could not happen to a nicer guy. He is a crook, so bent he can see his own backside. A sterling example of diligent evil like him deserves every twinge of alarm that his house of cards might be starting to topple. I can feel the wind shifting...lets hope its not an ill wind but one that finally blows some good.
As usual, Heather is right on target: "Today’s overarching story is connected to this one["the Trump campaign scammed supporters out of more than $122 million by tricking them into “recurring” donations."]. It is the same as yesterday’s big story, and the day before that, reaching on backward until the 2020 election. Republican Party leaders continue to insist, without evidence, that former president Donald Trump won the 2020 election and that Democrats stole it from him through voter fraud. A new Reuters/Ipsos found that six in ten Republicans believe this Big Lie.
However, "The Hill" broke a story by Alexander Bolton at 6:28PM last night: "The Senate parliamentarian [Elizabeth MacDonough] ruled Monday that Democrats can use special budgetary rules to avoid a GOP filibuster on two more pieces of legislation, setting the stage for President Biden's infrastructure agenda to pass in two packages with simple-majority votes.
It's a win for Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) that allows him to pass Biden's $2.25 trillion package by revising the fiscal 2021 Budget Resolution.
Schumer could pass a budget resolution for fiscal 2022 to do a third reconciliation package for the second half of the Biden infrastructure agenda. Or the fiscal 2021 budget could be revised a third time to set up a third reconciliation package."
This, along with a majority-passed exception to the filibuster for Election Laws, would clear the way for cornerstone items on President Biden's agenda.
When I heard about McConnell telling corporations they should stay out of politics, I thought McConnell had gone mad. Then I realized there was another reason the corporations are turning toward the Democrats with their criticism of the voter suppression laws. Corporations want to be on the good side of the Democrats as they pass the For the People Act to try to keep the corporate tax rate lower.
Skip a letter? Yeah, no. I saw the Douglas Blackmon tweet yesterday; very cogent assessment of what the impacts of voter restriction look like in Georgia. McConnell's whining about corporations is just hilarious. I look forward to indictments on McConnel and Chao and their "empire" as well as on the former guy.
Now the big question is ..."How do you dress up the "John lewis" bill and other corrollary measures, blasting gerrymandering and voter suppression out of the water, as budget measures that can go through the new recapitulation opening that the Senate parliamentarian has just offered the Democrats?
“To continue to apply that level of force to a person proned out, handcuffed behind their back — that in no way, shape or form is anything that is by policy,” Chief Medaria Arradondo testified.
It was astounding to see the Police Chief of Minneapolis, Medaria Arradonda, tell the TRUTH in a court of law charging policeman, Derek Chauvin, with the murder of George Floyd.
Arrandonda fired Chavin in less than a day after the murder. A police Chief testifying against a cop; how is that for truth telling?
Chief Arrandonda was a perfect witness for George Floyd, Floyd's family, the police, justice and the American people. There is no way to avoid lies in the USA, especially Trump's BIG LIE, which Heather referred to. in today's LETTER The Republican Party, along with so many Americans have been infected by lies. Say Medaria Arrandona's name. Watch a video of his testimony. The truth is alive and we need to see more of it.
'A fifth-generation Minnesota resident, Arradondo joined the MPD in 1989 as a patrol officer in the Fourth Precinct and worked his way up through the police ranks until he was named the inspector for the First Precinct.[1] In 2007, he and four other African-American officers sued the department alleging discrimination in promotions, pay, and discipline.[2][3] The lawsuit was settled by the city for $740,000, and in December 2012 Arrandondo was promoted to head of the Internal Affairs Unit responsible for investigation of allegations of officer misconduct.[4] (Wikipedia) Arrandondo is 53rd Chief of the Minneapolis Police Department and assumed office on July 21th, 2017
I will leave you with Police Chief, Medaria Arradonda,, for now
Regarding Trump’s scamming supporters into “giving” him interest-free loans: Trump is a modern day Calvera (from The Magnificent Seven) who said “If God did not want them shorn, He would not have made them sheep.”
This schism - between deplorable populists and corporatists - has been in the making at least since trump rode down the elevator. The deplorable army (led by Trump, with lieutenants like Cruz, Gaetz, Hawley, Greene, Noem, Paul, Cotton, et al) want an end to immigration, an end to abortion and women's rights, an end to gay marriage and LGBTQ rights, promotion of white privilege, restricted minority rights, a ban on Muslims, guns guns guns, an end to globalization and a Christian theocracy installed in government institutions. Corporations just want to make money, with as few taxes and regulations as possible. The corporate backers of the GOP are mostly in favor of gay rights, minority rights and women's rights, and very much in favor of immigration and globalization. Corporations are mostly opposed to Christian dominion-ism and the proliferation of guns. Since Reagan, there's been an unspoken alliance between these two camps. Corporations have ignored the gun-humping, bible-thumping, nativist, racist platform of the populists in the GOP, in return for tax cuts and de-regulation. Now corporations are realizing that supporting deplorables is bad for business. Poor, poor Mitch. The GOP has risen to power by distracting the rubes with rants about gays, god and guns, while collecting corporate $$ billions to win elections. It's coming apart...so sad.
There is something satisfying about having a place to post. It is like doing a painting where you already know where it is going to hang. The flip side to that, as there is always a flip side, is that you already know the extent to which you might be understood or misunderstood.
Years ago I became convinced that despite the political, sociological, biochemical strata of evident human experience there was a more subtle and pervasive connection that we experience less consciously. This layer has to do with the quality of thought and emotion. I learned of this in the wilderness survival environment where subtlety is abundant and nature is undisturbed but it was my experience in the emergency department that convinced me. Despite the high levels of emotion people are experiencing they are in crisis and therefore they are not as set in their way. They are more susceptible to influence. Without changing my physical practice I began to pay attention to the thoughts and emotions around me and to interact with them in my personal consciousness with, not an expectation exactly, but an open door to the possibility that it could have an effect. And, it did.
I began to be able to sense how entrenched an individual was in their experience. This entrenchment was independent of the severity of the clinical situation. The more entrenched they were the less I would attempt this mechanism because it simply wouldn’t work. This had no correspondence to intelligence, education, race, age or time of day. It was completely individual in my observation. I didn’t share this with colleagues or patients of course for two reasons. One, anonymity added to the effectiveness and two, I didn’t want to be singled out as crazy. I did mention that perhaps instinct had a role to play in clinical medicine and that it could be trained along with the intellect. As you can imagine this idea had no legs.
I bring this up because despite our letter writing campaigns and our notion of a liberal future or our understandings of how corrupt our leaders always seem to be the progress of recent history is more clearly seen by understanding the manipulations of the advertising industry. This is why big money wins. The effect of advertising through social media, fake news outlets, propaganda outlets and politicians who have a voice because of our insatiable appetite for daily controversy have a palpable effect on the same level of being that I sensed in the ED.
I suggest that this is how the brain washing works. It is not the topic of the day at all, it is the subtle energetic accompaniment that rides all that physical activity like mold on a shipping pallet. Our current mix of media is so much more powerful in this way than newspaper or old style TV that this is now the dominant strata of human experience. So, is it more effective to write a letter to your senators, who are some of the most entrenched personalities I have ever sensed, or is it as beneficial to simply sip your coffee and order your thoughts?
Of course it takes all kinds and the purpose isn’t to rule the day but to guide it toward a future that has a better chance of being pleasant for your grand children. And, for those that see it, a better place for your next life.
Well, I feel the development with potentially the farthest reaching affect is today’s announcement from Senate Parlimentarian, who has ruled that Senate Democrats may pass another THREE legislative initiatives through the Senate, due to the Budget Reconciliation process. But there is something much more exciting, and it happens this morning .....
More importantly to all of our personal lives, is the opportunity for one and all to ask a personal question of America’s leading journalist, at 11AM ET, TODAY, on Maine Public call-in talk show, “Maine Calling.” (mpbn.org) And that journalist is, of course, ...
Judy Woodruff.
My “Mrs". and I are so gob-smacked at this idea, that for the first time ever, I may be too nervous to speak on live, public radio (after having personally hosted a public radio program for several years)!. Alas, we recently learned that our endearing Professor Richardson was interviewed a week ago Friday. HOWEVER - tomorrow is, at last, our chance to graciously thank our dinner guest of nearly every mid-week meal, of the past six or seven years. And Judy Woodruff has indeed been our most favorite guest! She IS such wonderful company, you should know!
I will have dreams tonight, of being on the phone throughout my adopted home state, with thousands of listeners, with my “Shero” of American journalism. I already anticipate how she will FINALLY answer the question my heart has longed to ask ...
McConnell helped create the monster and now he is learning that he can't control it. It makes me think of some of the excerpts from Boehner's upcoming book about the chaos created in congress with the advent of the Tea Party.
The repetition and promotion of the Big Lie just blows my mind. The idiocy. The whole Naked Emperor fable-come-true of it all. But then, I was watching a couple of Masterpiece Theater productions set in WWII, and thought about the good people who suffered through the atrocities of Hitler’s Big Lies and there is the sad truth of history repeating itself.
Education has to be the answer, because I can only believe that ignorance gives the Big Lie the air it needs to spread.
Once again, Professor Richardson is being understated and far kinder to failed-former-45 than he deserves. The scammed money was not only an interest free loan from the supporters who realized the extra taking and asked for refunds. It was also theft, perhaps legal, from everyone whose money was maneuvered from them for however long. We will never know how many people were scammed but did not ask refunds, for whatever reasons. From the outside, of course, it’s no surprise that a con man cheated his marks in one more way.
The Big Lie turns out to be nothing more than just another chapter in the Big Fraud. Use other people's money to build a grotesque palace, skim the early returns into the Trump bank accounts, launch a new grotesque scheme, then pay back only those investors in the previous scam who are such sore losers that they demand their money back -- until you have to declare bankruptcy to avoid paying back anything substantial at all. Let's not dignify this perversion any longer by calling it propaganda or Free Speech or an assault on the Constitution. It's just fraud, by a fraudster, for a fraudster in the pursuit of the next fraud. When the law finally catches up to him by following his long trail of victims, the suspect will be listed as having no fixed address, no known occupation, with a list of aliases that will run beyond the margins of the police blotter.
Skip a letter, you jest! The cat and I, snuggled in bed in the mornings, will never skip a letter. 😻 This one actually gave me a frisson of what I think must be glee. I haven’t felt it for so long I am not quite sure, but it is certainly not the usual feeling of anxiety or dread that I face the news with each day. Gaetz facing his comeuppance....yay! The word is apparently derived from to ‘come up’ before the court. There is nothing more satisfying than the idea of nefarious dudes and dudettes facing up to their evil deeds in a public forum. If he has any dirt on Epstine he could bargain with and I could see Prince Andrew hanging out to dry I would do a happy dance indeed. McConnell is unhappy...aww, heck, it could not happen to a nicer guy. He is a crook, so bent he can see his own backside. A sterling example of diligent evil like him deserves every twinge of alarm that his house of cards might be starting to topple. I can feel the wind shifting...lets hope its not an ill wind but one that finally blows some good.
Crook http://www.word-detective.com/2010/07/crook/
As usual, Heather is right on target: "Today’s overarching story is connected to this one["the Trump campaign scammed supporters out of more than $122 million by tricking them into “recurring” donations."]. It is the same as yesterday’s big story, and the day before that, reaching on backward until the 2020 election. Republican Party leaders continue to insist, without evidence, that former president Donald Trump won the 2020 election and that Democrats stole it from him through voter fraud. A new Reuters/Ipsos found that six in ten Republicans believe this Big Lie.
However, "The Hill" broke a story by Alexander Bolton at 6:28PM last night: "The Senate parliamentarian [Elizabeth MacDonough] ruled Monday that Democrats can use special budgetary rules to avoid a GOP filibuster on two more pieces of legislation, setting the stage for President Biden's infrastructure agenda to pass in two packages with simple-majority votes.
It's a win for Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) that allows him to pass Biden's $2.25 trillion package by revising the fiscal 2021 Budget Resolution.
Schumer could pass a budget resolution for fiscal 2022 to do a third reconciliation package for the second half of the Biden infrastructure agenda. Or the fiscal 2021 budget could be revised a third time to set up a third reconciliation package."
This, along with a majority-passed exception to the filibuster for Election Laws, would clear the way for cornerstone items on President Biden's agenda.
When I heard about McConnell telling corporations they should stay out of politics, I thought McConnell had gone mad. Then I realized there was another reason the corporations are turning toward the Democrats with their criticism of the voter suppression laws. Corporations want to be on the good side of the Democrats as they pass the For the People Act to try to keep the corporate tax rate lower.
Skip a letter? Yeah, no. I saw the Douglas Blackmon tweet yesterday; very cogent assessment of what the impacts of voter restriction look like in Georgia. McConnell's whining about corporations is just hilarious. I look forward to indictments on McConnel and Chao and their "empire" as well as on the former guy.
Now the big question is ..."How do you dress up the "John lewis" bill and other corrollary measures, blasting gerrymandering and voter suppression out of the water, as budget measures that can go through the new recapitulation opening that the Senate parliamentarian has just offered the Democrats?
“To continue to apply that level of force to a person proned out, handcuffed behind their back — that in no way, shape or form is anything that is by policy,” Chief Medaria Arradondo testified.
It was astounding to see the Police Chief of Minneapolis, Medaria Arradonda, tell the TRUTH in a court of law charging policeman, Derek Chauvin, with the murder of George Floyd.
Arrandonda fired Chavin in less than a day after the murder. A police Chief testifying against a cop; how is that for truth telling?
Chief Arrandonda was a perfect witness for George Floyd, Floyd's family, the police, justice and the American people. There is no way to avoid lies in the USA, especially Trump's BIG LIE, which Heather referred to. in today's LETTER The Republican Party, along with so many Americans have been infected by lies. Say Medaria Arrandona's name. Watch a video of his testimony. The truth is alive and we need to see more of it.
'A fifth-generation Minnesota resident, Arradondo joined the MPD in 1989 as a patrol officer in the Fourth Precinct and worked his way up through the police ranks until he was named the inspector for the First Precinct.[1] In 2007, he and four other African-American officers sued the department alleging discrimination in promotions, pay, and discipline.[2][3] The lawsuit was settled by the city for $740,000, and in December 2012 Arrandondo was promoted to head of the Internal Affairs Unit responsible for investigation of allegations of officer misconduct.[4] (Wikipedia) Arrandondo is 53rd Chief of the Minneapolis Police Department and assumed office on July 21th, 2017
I will leave you with Police Chief, Medaria Arradonda,, for now
Dear Professor HCR,
The light of your insights always precedes the dawn. Thank you for allowing us to see those truths before Republicans taint it with their false hues.
Regarding Trump’s scamming supporters into “giving” him interest-free loans: Trump is a modern day Calvera (from The Magnificent Seven) who said “If God did not want them shorn, He would not have made them sheep.”
This schism - between deplorable populists and corporatists - has been in the making at least since trump rode down the elevator. The deplorable army (led by Trump, with lieutenants like Cruz, Gaetz, Hawley, Greene, Noem, Paul, Cotton, et al) want an end to immigration, an end to abortion and women's rights, an end to gay marriage and LGBTQ rights, promotion of white privilege, restricted minority rights, a ban on Muslims, guns guns guns, an end to globalization and a Christian theocracy installed in government institutions. Corporations just want to make money, with as few taxes and regulations as possible. The corporate backers of the GOP are mostly in favor of gay rights, minority rights and women's rights, and very much in favor of immigration and globalization. Corporations are mostly opposed to Christian dominion-ism and the proliferation of guns. Since Reagan, there's been an unspoken alliance between these two camps. Corporations have ignored the gun-humping, bible-thumping, nativist, racist platform of the populists in the GOP, in return for tax cuts and de-regulation. Now corporations are realizing that supporting deplorables is bad for business. Poor, poor Mitch. The GOP has risen to power by distracting the rubes with rants about gays, god and guns, while collecting corporate $$ billions to win elections. It's coming apart...so sad.
There is something satisfying about having a place to post. It is like doing a painting where you already know where it is going to hang. The flip side to that, as there is always a flip side, is that you already know the extent to which you might be understood or misunderstood.
Years ago I became convinced that despite the political, sociological, biochemical strata of evident human experience there was a more subtle and pervasive connection that we experience less consciously. This layer has to do with the quality of thought and emotion. I learned of this in the wilderness survival environment where subtlety is abundant and nature is undisturbed but it was my experience in the emergency department that convinced me. Despite the high levels of emotion people are experiencing they are in crisis and therefore they are not as set in their way. They are more susceptible to influence. Without changing my physical practice I began to pay attention to the thoughts and emotions around me and to interact with them in my personal consciousness with, not an expectation exactly, but an open door to the possibility that it could have an effect. And, it did.
I began to be able to sense how entrenched an individual was in their experience. This entrenchment was independent of the severity of the clinical situation. The more entrenched they were the less I would attempt this mechanism because it simply wouldn’t work. This had no correspondence to intelligence, education, race, age or time of day. It was completely individual in my observation. I didn’t share this with colleagues or patients of course for two reasons. One, anonymity added to the effectiveness and two, I didn’t want to be singled out as crazy. I did mention that perhaps instinct had a role to play in clinical medicine and that it could be trained along with the intellect. As you can imagine this idea had no legs.
I bring this up because despite our letter writing campaigns and our notion of a liberal future or our understandings of how corrupt our leaders always seem to be the progress of recent history is more clearly seen by understanding the manipulations of the advertising industry. This is why big money wins. The effect of advertising through social media, fake news outlets, propaganda outlets and politicians who have a voice because of our insatiable appetite for daily controversy have a palpable effect on the same level of being that I sensed in the ED.
I suggest that this is how the brain washing works. It is not the topic of the day at all, it is the subtle energetic accompaniment that rides all that physical activity like mold on a shipping pallet. Our current mix of media is so much more powerful in this way than newspaper or old style TV that this is now the dominant strata of human experience. So, is it more effective to write a letter to your senators, who are some of the most entrenched personalities I have ever sensed, or is it as beneficial to simply sip your coffee and order your thoughts?
Of course it takes all kinds and the purpose isn’t to rule the day but to guide it toward a future that has a better chance of being pleasant for your grand children. And, for those that see it, a better place for your next life.
Well, I feel the development with potentially the farthest reaching affect is today’s announcement from Senate Parlimentarian, who has ruled that Senate Democrats may pass another THREE legislative initiatives through the Senate, due to the Budget Reconciliation process. But there is something much more exciting, and it happens this morning .....
More importantly to all of our personal lives, is the opportunity for one and all to ask a personal question of America’s leading journalist, at 11AM ET, TODAY, on Maine Public call-in talk show, “Maine Calling.” (mpbn.org) And that journalist is, of course, ...
Judy Woodruff.
My “Mrs". and I are so gob-smacked at this idea, that for the first time ever, I may be too nervous to speak on live, public radio (after having personally hosted a public radio program for several years)!. Alas, we recently learned that our endearing Professor Richardson was interviewed a week ago Friday. HOWEVER - tomorrow is, at last, our chance to graciously thank our dinner guest of nearly every mid-week meal, of the past six or seven years. And Judy Woodruff has indeed been our most favorite guest! She IS such wonderful company, you should know!
I will have dreams tonight, of being on the phone throughout my adopted home state, with thousands of listeners, with my “Shero” of American journalism. I already anticipate how she will FINALLY answer the question my heart has longed to ask ...
McConnell helped create the monster and now he is learning that he can't control it. It makes me think of some of the excerpts from Boehner's upcoming book about the chaos created in congress with the advent of the Tea Party.
So, Trump supporters were scammed out of $122 million and then gave him enough more contributions to allow him to pay them back?