Category: Politics

By Thomas Ultican / Tultican / Feb. 20, 2020

Katherine Stewart’s The Power Worshippers: Inside the Dangerous Rise of Religious Nationalism is a brilliant piece of investigative journalism. It shines a light on significant threats to American pluralism and representative democracy.

The religious rights amazing successes now influence every aspect of American life, from the White House to local governments, from schools to hospitals. Stewart documents the origins of “the Russia thing” and the evangelical embrace of Donald Trump. She clarifies that the Christian right is not fighting a culture war; it is a political war waged against the institutions of American democracy and freedom of conscience.

Trump is a Gift from God

By Colleen O’Connor / Times of San Diego / Dec. 26, 2019

‘Tis the season for good tidings and cheer — even in politics.

Time for those bedtime stories, but first, forget the usual classics: Miracle on 34th Street, A Christmas Carol , or even Tim Burton’s Nightmare Before Christmas, which feels like politics present.

Enter a new Christmas classic—The Maestro and the Tuba Man. Imagine. The symphony orchestra has tuned up.

By TokyoSand / Reposted from Political Charge via Words&Deeds

Do you remember the days and weeks leading up to the Senate’s vote on the disastrous Republican “repeal and replace” healthcare bill during Trump’s first year as president?

I do. Thousands of everyday Americans called their Senators, and attended town halls, and demanded meetings in their local offices, and wrote op-eds for their local papers, and more. We demanded to be heard on this incredibly important topic and we did not give up. Back in 2017, we had no reason to believe that the Republican Senators would vote the way Democrats wanted them to. But we cared a LOT about this issue and nothing was going to stop us.

By Colleen O’Connor / Times of San Diego / October 16, 2019

Pelosi, a practicing Catholic, repeats sincerely, that she prays for “the President and the country”—every day.

Secretly, I believe, Pelosi has been praying for a lot more. She is praying for time. And for help.

Time to make the case that Trump is “unfit for the office” and must be impeached on the overwhelming evidence that already exists and will soon become public.

And to complete the task before Thanksgiving.

Time to protect the constitution and U.S. democracy, which she says are “hanging by a thread.”

By Joni Halpern

Dear Ohio,

A few days ago, I was sitting at the breakfast table with my husband, each of us reading a newspaper, downing the bitter tales of our democracy with sips of sweetened coffee. I never read the paper anymore without whispering “Oh my god,” or “Jesus Christ,” and sometimes “WTF?”

That day, I waded through the front page of grief. First, there was the story about whole families flooded out of their homes by tropical storms, losing every material thing they possessed except the clothes on their backs.

By Dan Rather /Dan Rather facebook / Aug. 28, 2019

Beware fatigue. It is easy to say, of course, much harder to achieve.

Memories jump to mind of fourth quarter huddles with my high school football team and a coach exhorting us to dig deeper. The thought enters the mind, “Sure coach, but you don’t know how licked we are.” Of course you would never utter the words, and deep down you knew he was right. I have seen so many times where those with the advantage falter from exhaustion.

We are at a moment when the sheer cumulative toll of the Trump presidency strikes with the relentlessness of a summer heat waves (which many of us have also been contending with this year, thanks likely to the climate crisis the President dismisses).

By Marjorie Cohn / Truthout – Blog / Aug. 17, 2019

On July 30, the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan reported that the Afghan government and international military forces, primarily the United States, caused most of the civilian deaths in Afghanistan during the first six months of 2019. That’s more killings than those perpetrated in the same time period by the Taliban and ISIS combined.

Aerial operations were responsible for 519 civilian casualties (356 deaths and 156 injuries), including 150 children (89 deaths and 61 injuries). That constitutes a 39 percent increase in overall civilian casualties from aerial attacks. Eighty-three percent of civilian casualties from aerial operations were carried out by the international forces.

By Joni Halpern

Dear Ohio,

We’re running out of time. There is too big a gap between what Americans need to understand in order to make informed election decisions and what they believe are facts. We could call this the “Ignorance Gap,” and it is growing by leaps and bounds.

Funny this is happening in an age when all you have to say is “Google (or Alexa or Siri or Ethel Crankenhouse, etc.], tell me…”

How many drops of water in an ounce of rain? 591.47 drops.

What is Himalayan salt? It is a pinkish salt mined from the Salt Range Mountains in the Punjab region of Pakistan.

What is the United States National Debt? As of February 2019, it was $22.012 trillion, the highest it has ever been in our history.

In a flash, you can find a fact you never knew before. A fact for which your grandmother or mom would have spent days searching in the library unless they had books on hand that would answer the questions at home.

By Colleen O’Connor / Times of San Diego / August 9, 2019

The reasons why a woman will be on the Democratic ticket are in the news every day.

That news is not just ugly, violent and unbelievably cruel, but repulsive in the extreme. And it affects women in visceral and now political ways.

While this may sound alarming, the list below points to some reasons why even Orange County—that Republican bastion—is now majority Democratic.

The answer is women.

By Joni Halpern

Dear Ohio,

I have often heard over the past two years that the reason we are so polarized in this country is that we are not listening to the other side. We simply brand each other as one thing or another, and shout across the distance. Even when we get together with family or friends, we focus on harmless topics, lest we end up throwing cake at each other, the way our Commander-in-Chief did when he was a little tyke attending birthday parties that were not for him.

There is even a popular theory going about that if we were just civil long enough to hear the other side, we would alter our position in light of truth told by those who disagree with us. I am a great believer in civility, in respecting the dignity of others. But it is a natural law of the human eardrum, as immutable as any law of physics, that an unwelcome truth, regardless of how soft the whisper, is always heard as a shout. And this is the source of our acrimony today.

By Amber Phillips / Washington Post / August 9, 2019

House Democrats have begun impeachment proceedings against President Trump. A key Democrat admitted as much Thursday.

“This is formal impeachment proceedings,” the chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.), told CNN on Thursday, after weeks of dancing around whether his committee would formally consider impeaching Trump.

“We are investigating all the evidence, gathering the evidence,” Nadler added. “And we will [at the] conclusion of this — hopefully by the end of the year — vote to vote articles of impeachment to the House floor. Or we won’t. That’s a decision that we’ll have to make. But that’s exactly the process we’re in right now.”

By Joni Halpern

Ohio is deemed one of the nation’s bellwether states, so we Californians need to give them some advice about the upcoming 2020 elections.

Dear Ohio,

I’m guessing that you, like most of us in California, have not given much thought to asking our presidential candidates about blueberries. Certainly you have not contemplated asking them about the red-state species known as the rabbiteye blueberry, which grows from central Florida to eastern North Carolina and from Eastern Texas to Southern Arkansas.

The humble rabbiteye blueberry is a hearty plant apparently unattractive to major pests. Depending upon care and environment, just one rabbiteye blueberry bush can produce about 15 pounds of blueberries in a single season. And darned good blueberries at that, filled with flavor and anti-oxidants, the latter a favorite ingredient of the “live-forever” patrons of high-end supermarkets.