Letter From An American by Heather Cox Richardson

Ledbetterman10

mickeyrat said:

Ledbetterman10 said:

Do you wait up all night refreshing this Letters From An American website? This last one was posted at 4:23 a.m. And it seems like most of them are posted in the early morning hours. Nobody's going to beat you to posting these. No need to rush. 

More like "Blog posts from an American" than "letters" by the way. 

I work nights. so I am checking for when it posts, but not to beat anyone to the punch. Brian has commented on a letter I had yet to post a couple times.

as for the last, its her title , not one I came up with.

I'm just kidding around with the bolded part. If I worked third shift, I'd look forward to daily blogs or podcasts or whatever else comes out in the early morning hours too. 

mickeyrat

Ledbetterman10 said:

mickeyrat said:

Ledbetterman10 said:

Do you wait up all night refreshing this Letters From An American website? This last one was posted at 4:23 a.m. And it seems like most of them are posted in the early morning hours. Nobody's going to beat you to posting these. No need to rush. 

More like "Blog posts from an American" than "letters" by the way. 

I work nights. so I am checking for when it posts, but not to beat anyone to the punch. Brian has commented on a letter I had yet to post a couple times.

as for the last, its her title , not one I came up with.

I'm just kidding around with the bolded part. If I worked third shift, I'd look forward to daily blogs or podcasts or whatever else comes out in the early morning hours too. 

she's like a drug dealer.  the timing varies so wildly. you just know its coming but........

mickeyrat

 May 28, 2021 (Friday)

This afternoon, Republicans in the Senate killed the bill to establish a bipartisan independent commission to investigate the January 6 insurrection. The vote was 54 to 35, and yet the thirty-five “no” votes won because of the current shape of the Senate filibuster, which requires 60 votes to break, even if the minority doesn’t show up to vote.

For their part, having killed the bipartisan, independent commission, Republicans are now complaining that the Democrats might set up a committee on their own. Maine Senator Susan Collins told Politico, “The most likely outcome, sadly, is probably the Democratic leaders will appoint a select committee. We’ll have a partisan investigation. It won’t have credibility with people like me, but the press will cover it because that’s what’s going on.”

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi could indeed set up such a House committee, although she has been clear that she preferred the bipartisan approach. Such a select committee could issue subpoenas and hold hearings to investigate the people involved in the attack. Republicans, who likely fear some of their own would be implicated, are already claiming such a committee would be partisan. President Biden could also set up a commission, which he could then staff in a bipartisan fashion, but without congressional support it could not issue subpoenas.

On Thursday, Senator Joe Manchin (D-WV) continued to hope Republicans would vote for the commission, saying,  "...the Democrats have basically given everything they've asked for, any impediment that would have been there, and there's no reason not to now unless you just don't want to hear the truth." Today, after the vote, he said, “I never thought I’d see it up close and personal that politics could trump our country. I’m going to fight to save this country.”

Indeed, by refusing to investigate what is arguably the most dangerous attack on our democracy in our history, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) has brought out into the open just how radical the Republican Party has become.

As if in illustration of the party’s increasingly antidemocratic radicalism, in Georgia last night, Representatives Matt Gaetz (R-FL) and Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) continued to stoke the same Big Lie that drove the insurrectionists, claiming (falsely) that former president Trump won the 2020 election. The two representatives are on a tour of rallies, possibly to distract from the scandals in which they’re embroiled. Last night, Gaetz, who is under federal investigation for sex trafficking, told attendees that the nation’s founders wrote the Second Amendment to enable citizens to rise up against the government. “It’s not about hunting, it’s not about recreation, it’s not about sports,” he said. “The Second Amendment is about maintaining, within the citizenry, the ability to maintain an armed rebellion against the government if that becomes necessary.”

As the audience cheered, Gaetz continued: “I hope it never does, but it sure is important to recognize the founding principles of this nation and to make sure that they are fully understood.”
For his part, President Biden appears to be trying to undercut the increasingly radical Republicans by trying to improve conditions across the country, especially for those hurting economically as the nation’s factories automate and as their jobs move overseas.

When he took office, his first order of business was to get the coronavirus under control, demonstrating that the federal government could, indeed, do good for the people. That has been a roaring success, with about 62% of American adults currently having received at least one vaccine. Biden is now aiming to have 70% of American adults vaccinated by July 4. New cases are plunging as the vaccines take effect, and the country is reopening rapidly.

Biden also turned quickly to repairing the economy, with the $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan, which expanded unemployment benefits and the child tax credit. That credit will start to show up in people’s bank accounts in mid-July and is expected to cut child poverty in half.

So far, Biden’s approach to turning the mood of the country seems to be working: while his predecessor is polling at 39% approval and 57% disapproval, Biden is currently enjoying a 63% job approval rating.

We’ll see how these two themes play out. Today, Biden released a proposed $6.01 trillion budget, tying together three plans he’s already proposed—the $2.3 trillion American Jobs Plan, the $1.8 trillion American Families Plan, and $1.5 trillion in discretionary spending—and adding more to invest in education, health, science, and infrastructure. The proposal increases defense spending by 1.7% and nondefense spending by 16%. Overall, it increases federal spending to levels like those of WWII. By 2031, it would peg spending at $8.2 trillion. Deficits would run higher than $1.3 trillion for the next ten years but then would begin to decrease.

The president proposes to pay for the additional spending by increasing revenue by $4.17 trillion through taxes on individuals who have an annual income of more than $1 million and by revising the top capital gains rate to 39.6%, plus a 3.8% Medicare surtax, bringing the rate to 43.4%. (The current rate is 20% plus the Medicare surtax, making it 23.8%). The White House figures the capital gains tax reform should raise about $322 billion over the next decade.

The budget shows Biden aiming to rebuild the middle class and make America globally competitive again. Acting director of Office of Management and Budget Shalanda Young said that the administration had earlier called for such investment because, “The country had been weakened by decades of underinvestment in these areas.” The 2022 budget would, she said, “grow the economy, create jobs, and do so responsibly by requiring the wealthiest Americans and big corporations to pay their fair share.”

Doubling down on the 2017 Trump tax cuts, which funneled money upward even as corporate tax revenues fell 31%, Republicans have vowed to oppose all tax increases and want no part of Biden’s proposed spending.

Today, McConnell responded to the budget proposal with words that were somewhat unfortunate coming, as they did, on the same day the Republicans refused to create a bipartisan commission to investigate an attack on our government. “If Washington Democrats can move beyond the socialist daydreams and the go-it-alone partisanship,” he said, “we could get a lot of important work done for our country.”

mickeyrat

 May 29, 2021 (Saturday)

A red, white, and blue morning from Buddy this week. He says he didn't tweak it at all-- this is exactly how it came from his iPhone when he was headed out to haul.

I'm going to go all American Studies on you and say that the colors of this image jumped out at me immediately as a modern reflection of Frederic Church's 1861 painting "Our Banner in the Sky," which Church painted to show how, as the Civil War broke out, the heavens indicated their support for the United States by reflecting the nation's colors in the setting sun.

I like that Buddy's image is of the sunrise.

Am still making up for lost sleep from the semester. Will see you tomorrow.  

[photo by Buddy Poland]

mickeyrat

 May 30, 2021 (Sunday)

I wrote the following last year for a dear friend who had recently passed. She was the middle sister in this story, and as we grew up, she told us stories of Beau so that he came alive, although he died 19 years before I was born. Maybe it’s because I am a historian, but for the life of me I cannot think of those who died in our wars without thinking of the terrible holes their deaths tore in the fabric of our lives. This year, as I thought of what I might want to say about Memorial Day, it kept coming back to this: who would men like Beau have become, and what has the world lost by never knowing their children?

In the end, I decided just to rerun last year’s post from Memorial Day, because right now, anyway, I have nothing more to add:

Floyston Bryant, whose nickname was “Beau,” had always stepped in as a father to his three younger sisters when their own father fell short.

In September 1942, he enlisted in the Army Air Corps. He became a Staff Sergeant in the 322nd Bomber Squadron, 91st Bomb Group, nicknamed "Wray's Ragged Irregulars" after their commander Col. Stanley T. Wray. By the time Beau joined, the squadron was training with new B-17s at Dow Army Airfield near Bangor, Maine, and he hitchhiked three hours home before deploying to England so he could see his family once more.

It would be the last time. The 91st Bomb group was a pioneer bomb group, figuring out tactics for air cover. By May 1943, it was experienced enough to lead the Eighth Air Force as it sought to establish air superiority over Europe. But the 91st did not have adequate fighter support until 1944. It had the greatest casualty rate of any of the heavy bomb squadrons.

Beau was one of the casualties. On August 12, 1943, while he was on a mission, enemy flak cut his oxygen line and he died before the plane could make it back to base. He was buried in Cambridge, England, at the Cambridge American Cemetery and Memorial, the military cemetery for Americans killed in action during WWII. He was twenty years old.

I grew up with Beau’s nephews and nieces, and we made decades of havoc and memories. But Beau's children weren't there, and neither he nor they are part of the memories.

His sisters are all gone now, along with almost all of their friends. We are all getting older, and soon no one will be left who even remembers his name.

When Beau was a teenager, he once spent a week’s paycheck on a dress for his middle sister, so she could go to a dance.

I wish you all a meaningful Memorial Day.

mickeyrat

 May 31, 2021 (Monday)

President Joe Biden spoke at Arlington National Cemetery today to remember those who gave the “last full measure of devotion” to the United States, dying in our service. His speech was a full-throated defense of the cause for which those soldiers gave their lives: democracy.

“Democracy is more than a form of government,” Biden said. “It’s a way of being; it’s a way of seeing the world. Democracy means the rule of the people—the rule of the people.  Not the rule of monarchs, not the rule of the moneyed, not the rule of the mighty—literally, the rule of the people.”

Democracy, he said, is in peril as authoritarians around the world try to destroy it. But while our democracy is imperfect, Americans “of all backgrounds, races, creeds, gender identities, sexual orientations, have long spilled their blood to defend our democracy… because they understand the truth that lives in every American heart: that liberation, opportunity, justice are far more likely to come to pass in a democracy than an autocracy.”

Biden called today’s Americans to repay their sacrifice by making America live up to the ideals laid out in the Declaration of Independence. “We owe them the work of our hands and our hearts, to make real the promise of a nation founded on the proposition that all of us—all of us—all of us are created equal and deserve to be treated that way throughout our lives.”

Biden’s impassioned defense of democracy is not a rhetorical device.

Just last week, the refusal of Republican leaders to back the creation of a bipartisan independent commission to investigate the January 6 insurrection illustrated that the party is now wedded to former president Trump and his ongoing determination to overturn the 2020 election. Thomas Kean, the former Republican governor of New Jersey who headed the 9/11 Commission, told David Smith of The Guardian that the failure to create a 9/11-type commission for the events of January 6 was “a mistake and it’s a country’s loss and a democracy’s loss.” “[T]here was no real, public reason for turning it down,” he said. “I guess some people were scared of what they’d find out.”

This weekend, a QAnon conference in Dallas, Texas, featured Trump’s former national security advisor Michael Flynn and Trump’s former lawyers Sidney Powell and Lin Wood as keynote speakers. Republican Representative Louie Gohmert of Texas and Texas Republican Party chair Allen West were also featured. They continue to insist, against all evidence, that Trump won the 2020 election.

Powell suggested that Trump could “simply be reinstated” as president, although she said she could not be sure Trump would get credit for time lost when Biden was in the White House.

After he left office, Flynn pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI about his conversations with Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak—Trump pardoned him—and has fallen more and more deeply into QAnon conspiracy theories. For months, QAnon supporters have been praising the February military coup in Myanmar that overturned a democratically elected government and calling for such a coup here. During Flynn’s speech, an audience member asked why what happened in Myanmar can’t happen here. The crowd cheered and Flynn replied: “No reason. I mean, it should happen here.” When the video clip of the exchange went viral, Flynn’s verified Parler account called the idea he had called for a coup “a boldface fabrication based on twisted reporting.”

The Big Lie rhetoric is behind the voter suppression bills in Republican-dominated states, where legislators insist they must combat the alleged “voter fraud” that they blame for Biden’s victory. In Texas in the middle of Sunday night, House Republicans rushed to pass a sweeping election reform bill that would make it harder to vote and easier for judges to overturn an election, although Texas had just one potential case of voter fraud in 2020, out of 11 million ballots cast.

Texas Democrats thwarted the passage of the bill by leaving the chamber until there were too few people left to make up a quorum, which is the number of people required to be there in order to hold a vote. Governor Greg Abbott, a Republican, vowed to veto funding for the legislature in retaliation. “No pay for those who abandon their responsibilities,” he tweeted. He demanded the legislature take the “must-pass” measure up again in a special session.

The approximately 60 Texas Democratic lawmakers were forced to walk away from bills they had hoped to pass, but they felt they had to send a message. State Representative Trey Martinez Fischer said, “Breaking quorum is about the equivalent of crawling on our knees begging the president and the United States Congress to give us the For the People Act and give us the John Lewis Voting Rights Act.”

The For the People Act would, among other things, make it easier to vote, stop partisan gerrymandering, and limit the use of money in elections. The John Lewis Voting Rights Act is more limited: it would restore the parts of the Voting Rights Act struck down by the Supreme Court in 2013 in the Shelby County v. Holder decision, thereby returning protections to people of color voting in state with a history of racial discrimination.

In a letter to Senate Democrats on Friday, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) thanked them for a productive May session that included confirming Biden’s nominations; advancing the U.S. Innovation and Competition Act (USICA) to invest in science, technology, and manufacturing; rolling back Trump-era rules that hurt the environment, consumers, and workers; and passing the Hate Crimes Act that will help protect Asian Americans from attacks.

Senate Democrats “are doing everything we can to move legislation in a bipartisan way when and where the opportunity exists,” he said. “But we will not wait for months and months to pass meaningful legislation that delivers real results for the American people.” Schumer committed to bringing to vote in the last week of the June work period the For the People Act, “legislation that is essential to defending our democracy, reducing the influence of dark money and powerful special interests, and stopping the wave of Republican voter suppression happening in the states across the country in service of President Trump’s Big Lie.”

At Arlington National Cemetery, President Biden warned us that we are fighting for “the soul of America itself.” “Folks, you all know it,” he said. “Democracy thrives when the infrastructure of democracy is strong; when people have the right to vote freely and fairly and conveniently; when a free and independent press pursues the truth, founded on facts, not propaganda; when the rule of law applies equally and fairly to every citizen, regardless of where they come from or what they look like.”

“[T]he right to vote, the right to rise in a world as far as your talent can take you, unlimited by unfair barriers of privilege and power—such are the principles of democracy.”

mickeyrat

 June 1, 2021 (Tuesday)

Today, more than 100 scholars who study democracy issued a letter warning that “our entire democracy is now at risk.” The letter explains that the new election laws in Republican-led states, passed with the justification that they will make elections safer, in fact are turning “several states into political systems that no longer meet the minimum conditions for free and fair elections.”

If we permit the breakdown of democracy, it will be a very long time before we can reverse the damage. As a nation spirals downward, the political scientists, sociologists, and government scholars explain, “violence and corruption typically flourish, and talent and wealth flee to more stable countries, undermining national prosperity. It is not just our venerated institutions and norms that are at risk—it is our future national standing, strength, and ability to compete globally.”

The scholars called for federal action to protect equal access to voting and to guarantee free and fair elections. Voting rights should not depend on which party runs the state legislature, and votes must be cast and counted equally, regardless of where a citizen lives. They back the reforms in the For the People Act, which protects the right to vote, ends partisan gerrymandering, and curbs the flood of money into elections.

They urged Congress “to do whatever is necessary—including suspending the filibuster—in order to pass national voting and election administration standards that both guarantee the vote to all Americans equally, and prevent state legislatures from manipulating the rules in order to manufacture the result they want. Our democracy is fundamentally at stake.”  

“History,” they wrote, “will judge what we do at this moment.”

But in Tulsa, Oklahoma, today, President Joe Biden noted that the events that transpired in the Greenwood district of that city 100 years ago today were written out of most histories. The Tulsa Massacre destroyed 35 blocks of the prosperous Greenwood neighborhood, wiping out 1100 homes and businesses and taking hundreds of Black lives, robbing Black families of generational wealth and the opportunities that come with it.

Biden pointed out that he was the first president to go to Tulsa to acknowledge what happened there on May 31 and June 1, 1921. But, he said, “We do ourselves no favors by pretending none of this ever happened or doesn’t impact us today, because it does.” He drew a direct line from the terrorism at Greenwood to the terrorism in August 2017 at Charlottesville, Virginia, to the January 6 insurrection. Citing the intelligence community, he reminded listeners that “terrorism from white supremacy is the most lethal threat to the homeland today. Not Isis. Not al-Qaeda. White supremacists.”  

Victims’ trauma endures, too, and it eventually demands a reckoning when “what many people hadn’t seen before, or simply refused to see, cannot be ignored any longer.” Today, Americans are recognizing “that for too long, we’ve allowed a narrowed, cramped view of the promise of this nation to fester, the view that America is a zero-sum game, where there’s only one winner. If you succeed, I fail. If you get ahead, I fall behind. If you get a job, I lose mine. And maybe worst of all, if I hold you down, I lift myself up. Instead of if you do well, we all do well.” Biden promised to invest in Black communities extensively to unlock creativity and innovation.

Then the president took on the elephant in the room: voting. On Saturday, Biden took a stand against the state voter suppression laws being passed in Republican-dominated legislatures that, as he said, attack “the sacred right to vote.” They are “part of an assault on democracy that we’ve seen far too often this year—and often disproportionately targeting Black and Brown Americans.” They are “wrong and un-American.”

Biden called on Congress to pass the For the People Act and the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act, which would restore the voting protections the Supreme Court stripped out of the 1965 Voting Rights Act with the 2013 Shelby County v. Holder decision. He called on “all Americans, of every party and persuasion, to stand up for our democracy and to protect the right to vote and the integrity of our elections.

In Tulsa today, Biden called the Republican efforts to restrict voting a “truly unprecedented assault on our democracy.” He urged voting rights groups to redouble their efforts to register and educate voters, and then he put pressure on Democratic senators Joe Manchin (WV) and Kyrsten Sinema (AZ), who continue to say they will not challenge the Republican use of the filibuster to stop passage of voting rights bills. Biden promised to fight “like heck with every tool in my disposal” to get the For the People and the John Lewis Voting Rights Act passed.

He has asked Vice President Kamala Harris to lead the effort. Today, she released a statement placing today’s fight for voting rights in the context of our history. “[M]any have worked—and many have died—to ensure that all Americans can cast a ballot and have their vote counted,” she said. “Today, that hard-won progress is under assault.” She promised to work with voting rights organizations, community organizations, the private sector, and Congress to strengthen voting rights.

“The work ahead of us is to make voting accessible to all American voters, and to make sure every vote is counted through a free, fair, and transparent process,” she said. “This is the work of democracy.”

Merkin Baller

mickeyrat said:

Ledbetterman10 said:

mickeyrat said:

Ledbetterman10 said:

Do you wait up all night refreshing this Letters From An American website? This last one was posted at 4:23 a.m. And it seems like most of them are posted in the early morning hours. Nobody's going to beat you to posting these. No need to rush. 

More like "Blog posts from an American" than "letters" by the way. 

I work nights. so I am checking for when it posts, but not to beat anyone to the punch. Brian has commented on a letter I had yet to post a couple times.

as for the last, its her title , not one I came up with.

I'm just kidding around with the bolded part. If I worked third shift, I'd look forward to daily blogs or podcasts or whatever else comes out in the early morning hours too. 

she's like a drug dealer.  the timing varies so wildly. you just know its coming but........

lol

mickeyrat

 https://www.newamerica.org/political-reform/statements/statement-of-concern/

mickeyrat

podcast....

Now & Then
Podcast: https://www.podcastrepublic.net/podcast/1567665859

How can the past help inform today’s most pressing challenges? Every Tuesday, award-winning historians Heather Cox Richardson and Joanne Freeman use their encyclopedic knowledge of US history to bring...

Subscribe to this podcast: https://feeds.megaphone.fm/VMP8436744812

----
Sent from Podcast Republic 21.5.21R
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.itunestoppodcastplayer.app

mickeyrat

 June 2, 2021 (Wednesday)

The big story today is that in Israel, a coalition of eight very different parties has come together to oust Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu from power after 12 years. Netanyahu, who was a close ally of former president Trump, is currently on trial for fraud, bribery, and breach of trust while in office. For the first time, the coalition that will replace him includes a party that represents Palestinian citizens of Israel. According to the deal, hardliner Naftali Bennett will serve as prime minister for two years before turning the office over to center-left leader Yair Lapid, who hammered out the arrangement. The deal has to be accepted by the Israeli parliament, which is expected to do so.

As soon as the coalition announced it was approaching agreement, Republican senators Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, Ted Cruz of Texas, and Bill Hagerty of Tennessee flew to Israel to offer support to Netanyahu and to call President Biden weak. Cruz released a video that he claimed was of a home destroyed by a Hamas rocket that killed “an elderly woman’s caretaker.” Considering that Cruz left Texas to go to Cancun in the midst of the deadly freeze in that state that killed at least 111 people, it seems likely that his concern for the 12 Israelis killed in the 11 recent days of fighting was related less to humanitarianism than to wooing U.S. pro-Israel voters.

Other stories from today are the kind that advance bigger stories, nothing that stands alone as a game changer.

Like Cruz, Fox News Channel personalities seem to have forgotten the old saying that politics stops at the water’s edge, an expression meaning that Americans don’t criticize the government to other nations. FNC personality Sean Hannity has been cheering on Russian President Vladimir Putin while calling President Biden “weak and... a cognitive mess,” telling the president he shouldn’t go to the scheduled summit on June 16, and not to forget “your warm milky and your sippy cup.”

Today, we learned that, during the Trump administration, the Department of Justice secretly seized phone records from four New York Times reporters. We already knew it had seized records from reporters affiliated with CNN and the Washington Post. The department appeared to be trying to figure out the source of leaks from the FBI.

Early reviews suggest that the policy of trying to help people in crisis has been a success. A study from the University of Michigan reveals that the December 2020 Covid-19 relief bill and the March 2021 American Rescue Plan dramatically improved American lives. Food insufficiency fell by more than 40%, financial instability fell by 45%, and adverse mental health symptoms fell by 20%. The study suggests that “the speed, breadth, and flexibility” of the programs, especially the use of cash transfers, was key to easing material hardship.

Opponents of the programs argue that hardship would have improved anyway, since tax credits arrived in April. Scott Winship of the American Enterprise Institute told New York Times reporter Jason DeParle, “It’s not sustainable to just give people enough cash to eliminate poverty…. And in the long run it can have negative consequences by reducing the incentives to work and marry.”

Today, in order to reach his goal of having 70% of U.S. adults vaccinated by July 4, Biden announced that certain child care chains and YMCAs would provide free child care while parents and caregivers get their shots, and that certain pharmacies will be open all night for vaccinations. The administration has enlisted barbershops and hair cutting salons in Black communities to hold vaccine clinics—these locations are important community centers that were key to organizing during the Civil Rights Movement—and Anheuser-Busch, the beer corporation, has announced it will buy a beer for the first 200,000 applicants over the age of 21 if the U.S. meets Biden’s goal.

mickeyrat

 June 3, 2021 (Thursday)

Ten days after he was taken from a plane diverted to Minsk by autocrat Alexander Lukashenko of Belarus, 26-year-old opposition journalist Roman Protasevich appeared on state television. Visibly injured, Protasevich praised Lukashenko and parroted his government’s story that protests are backed by the West. He disavowed his past opposition and confessed to organizing “mass unrest.”

By the end of the interview, he was crying. “I never want to get into politics again. I want to hope that I can correct myself and live an ordinary peaceful life, to have a family, children, stop running away from something.”

Protasevich faces the death penalty.

In Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu is trying to stay in power. As Josh Marshall writes at Talking Points Memo, Netanyahu’s supporters are threatening the incoming prime minister, Naftali Bennett—himself a hard-liner—and his supporters. A Netanyahu ally in the Israeli legislature—the Knesset—says he is simply going to refuse to hold the vote that’s necessary to recognize the new government. It’s not clear how long he can do that, but every day increases the pressure on members of Bennett’s party to break away from the new coalition. That would keep Netanyahu in power.

The coalition that is trying to oust Netanyahu is a coming together of left and right out of fear that Netanyahu is destroying the rule of law and setting up one-man rule. Marshall notes that “[w]hen you lose an election, you’re supposed to leave. Netanyahu’s not leaving.” The situation is volatile.

In the U.S., Charles C. W. Cooke of National Review confirmed the scoop by Maggie Haberman of the New York Times on Tuesday that former president Trump believes he will be “reinstated by August.” He believes that the so-called “audits” of the 2020 election results from Arizona, Georgia, and possibly other states will put him, and former senators David Perdue of Georgia and Martha McSally of Arizona, back into office.

This is a fantasy. Aside from the fact there is no evidence of any irregularity in the 2020 votes, we have no mechanism for such a “reinstatement” in our system. But by telling his supporters that he will be president again in August, he is setting up a scenario where they will be angry enough to fight for that to happen, always with the idea that they are defending American democracy, not attacking it, just as they did on January 6 when they tried to “Stop the Steal.”

The “audit” now underway in Arizona by the private company Cyber Ninjas has been widely discredited as a partisan hack job by “auditors” who have no idea what they’re doing, but Republican lawmakers from Pennsylvania have now called for a similar “audit” in their state.  Philadelphia City Commissioner Al Schmidt, a Republican, opposes the plan, and says, “what is going on in Arizona is not an audit. It is funded by partisan political benefactors, it is directed by partisan political operatives to reach a partisan political conclusion, which is… not an audit.”

One of the Pennsylvania Republicans pushing the “audit” in his state is Doug Mastriano, who called for the Republican state legislature to appoint its own delegates to the Electoral College rather than following the actual results of the vote, and then helped to organize busses to go to Washington, D.C., for the January 6 insurrection, at which he was present. Mastriano has recently met with Trump; they talked about launching an “audit” in Pennsylvania.

In Georgia, a state judge has permitted a reexamination of 147,000 mail-in ballots from Democratic Fulton County, and in Wisconsin, the speaker of the state assembly, Representative Robin Vos, had said he is hiring retired police officers to investigate the 2020 election.

These “audits” don’t have to find anything; the fact that they exist at all is enough to do what they are designed to do: undermine voters’ faith in the system at the same time they indicate that no election result that elects a Democrat is legitimate.

This week Senators Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH), Chris Murphy (D-CT), and Rob Portman (R-OH) traveled to Eastern Europe, where they met with Belarus opposition leader Svetlana Tikhanovskaya, who lives in exile in Lithuania, to illustrate their support for democracy. “The U.S. stands in bipartisan solidarity with the people of Belarus in their pleas for an accountable government,” said Shaheen.

The senators went on to Ukraine and Georgia, where they reiterated their support for democracy there and called for a united front against Russian President Vladimir Putin. Murphy said: “[W]e know that the best defense against Russian interference is a strong, resilient democracy….”

Shaheen added, “This bipartisan trip sends a clear message that the United States is committed to rebuilding our transatlantic relations and reasserting U.S. global leadership to promote democratic values.”

The first National Security Study Memorandum of Biden’s presidency, issued today, formally establishes the fight against corruption as a core U.S. National Security Interest. It begins by noting that corruption “provides authoritarian leaders a means to undermine democracies worldwide.” To combat that corruption, Biden vows to combat “all forms of illicit finance” in the U.S. and internationally. He will “robustly” implement the law that requires all shell companies to disclose who owns them, a rule in the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) that Congress passed over Trump’s veto on January 1, 2021. (Remember I wrote then that this piece of the law would end up being important?)

The memorandum promises to “hold accountable corrupt individuals, transnational criminal organizations, and their facilitators,” including by seizing stolen assets. The U.S. government will work with international partners to stop the strategic corruption that enabled bad actors to interfere in U.S. elections—a shot across Russia’s bow—and work across offices, agencies, and departments—State, Treasury, Defense, Justice, Commerce, Energy, and so on—to develop government-wide policies that will root out corruption.

“[B]y effectively preventing and countering corruption and demonstrating the advantages of transparent and accountable governance, we can secure a critical advantage for the United States and other democracies,” the memorandum reads.

The Biden administration announced today that it plans to distribute at least 80 million doses of Covid-19 vaccine to the rest of the world by the end of June. Biden said: "We are sharing these doses not to secure favors or extract concessions. We are sharing these vaccines to save lives and to lead the world in bringing an end to the pandemic, with the power of our example and with our values.”

brianlux

Lately, reading Heather's blog, I get the distinct feeling that civilization is coming apart at the seems.  On the home front, Biden is doing his best to keep things patched together, but the Republican resistance is unrelenting.  Unsettling times.

tempo_n_groove

brianlux said:

Lately, reading Heather's blog, I get the distinct feeling that civilization is coming apart at the seems.  On the home front, Biden is doing his best to keep things patched together, but the Republican resistance is unrelenting.  Unsettling times.

Fear sells Brian.  With Trump gone the reporters have to find something else to complain about, well not gone gone, but gone.  Most of the other stuff has been going on for years and most likely will never stop.

She is right on her reporting which is good but a little good news like the herring is nice every now and again.

Merkin Baller

tempo_n_groove said:

brianlux said:

Lately, reading Heather's blog, I get the distinct feeling that civilization is coming apart at the seems.  On the home front, Biden is doing his best to keep things patched together, but the Republican resistance is unrelenting.  Unsettling times.

Fear sells Brian.  With Trump gone the reporters have to find something else to complain about, well not gone gone, but gone.  Most of the other stuff has been going on for years and most likely will never stop.

She is right on her reporting which is good but a little good news like the herring is nice every now and again.

She's not a reporter, she's a historian. 

brianlux

tempo_n_groove said:

brianlux said:

Lately, reading Heather's blog, I get the distinct feeling that civilization is coming apart at the seems.  On the home front, Biden is doing his best to keep things patched together, but the Republican resistance is unrelenting.  Unsettling times.

Fear sells Brian.  With Trump gone the reporters have to find something else to complain about, well not gone gone, but gone.  Most of the other stuff has been going on for years and most likely will never stop.

She is right on her reporting which is good but a little good news like the herring is nice every now and again.

She does go a little far with editorializing (see below) rather than letting facts speak for themselves, but I don't think it's as much about trying to "sell" us something, as it is wanting to inform.  And I thinks she's excellent at being informative.   It's the information that leads me to thinking the world is unraveling.  Looking at it historically, I'm pretty certain that since the advent of agriculture, humans have often done more unraveling than we have building a more secure world.

Merkin Baller said:

tempo_n_groove said:

brianlux said:

Lately, reading Heather's blog, I get the distinct feeling that civilization is coming apart at the seems.  On the home front, Biden is doing his best to keep things patched together, but the Republican resistance is unrelenting.  Unsettling times.

Fear sells Brian.  With Trump gone the reporters have to find something else to complain about, well not gone gone, but gone.  Most of the other stuff has been going on for years and most likely will never stop.

She is right on her reporting which is good but a little good news like the herring is nice every now and again.

She's not a reporter, she's a historian. 

True.  And like any good historian, she is at her best when when she lets history speak for itself.  When her blog reads more like an op ed page, I'm not quite as impressed.  And its not that I disagree with her but I just think her writing is better when she is showing more than telling.

Merkin Baller

brianlux said:

tempo_n_groove said:

brianlux said:

Lately, reading Heather's blog, I get the distinct feeling that civilization is coming apart at the seems.  On the home front, Biden is doing his best to keep things patched together, but the Republican resistance is unrelenting.  Unsettling times.

Fear sells Brian.  With Trump gone the reporters have to find something else to complain about, well not gone gone, but gone.  Most of the other stuff has been going on for years and most likely will never stop.

She is right on her reporting which is good but a little good news like the herring is nice every now and again.

Merkin Baller said:

tempo_n_groove said:

brianlux said:

Lately, reading Heather's blog, I get the distinct feeling that civilization is coming apart at the seems.  On the home front, Biden is doing his best to keep things patched together, but the Republican resistance is unrelenting.  Unsettling times.

Fear sells Brian.  With Trump gone the reporters have to find something else to complain about, well not gone gone, but gone.  Most of the other stuff has been going on for years and most likely will never stop.

She is right on her reporting which is good but a little good news like the herring is nice every now and again.

She's not a reporter, she's a historian. 

True.  And like any good historian, she is at her best when when she lets history speak for itself.  When her blog reads more like an op ed page, I'm not quite as impressed.  And its not that I disagree with her but I just think her writing is better when she is showing more than telling.

Agreed.

tempo_n_groove

Merkin Baller said:

brianlux said:

tempo_n_groove said:

brianlux said:

Lately, reading Heather's blog, I get the distinct feeling that civilization is coming apart at the seems.  On the home front, Biden is doing his best to keep things patched together, but the Republican resistance is unrelenting.  Unsettling times.

Fear sells Brian.  With Trump gone the reporters have to find something else to complain about, well not gone gone, but gone.  Most of the other stuff has been going on for years and most likely will never stop.

She is right on her reporting which is good but a little good news like the herring is nice every now and again.

Merkin Baller said:

tempo_n_groove said:

brianlux said:

Lately, reading Heather's blog, I get the distinct feeling that civilization is coming apart at the seems.  On the home front, Biden is doing his best to keep things patched together, but the Republican resistance is unrelenting.  Unsettling times.

Fear sells Brian.  With Trump gone the reporters have to find something else to complain about, well not gone gone, but gone.  Most of the other stuff has been going on for years and most likely will never stop.

She is right on her reporting which is good but a little good news like the herring is nice every now and again.

She's not a reporter, she's a historian. 

True.  And like any good historian, she is at her best when when she lets history speak for itself.  When her blog reads more like an op ed page, I'm not quite as impressed.  And its not that I disagree with her but I just think her writing is better when she is showing more than telling.

Agreed.

See, all 3 agree on her writing style.

She may be a historian but she does write like a reporter with an agenda.

dignin

tempo_n_groove said:

Merkin Baller said:

brianlux said:

tempo_n_groove said:

brianlux said:

Lately, reading Heather's blog, I get the distinct feeling that civilization is coming apart at the seems.  On the home front, Biden is doing his best to keep things patched together, but the Republican resistance is unrelenting.  Unsettling times.

Fear sells Brian.  With Trump gone the reporters have to find something else to complain about, well not gone gone, but gone.  Most of the other stuff has been going on for years and most likely will never stop.

She is right on her reporting which is good but a little good news like the herring is nice every now and again.

Merkin Baller said:

tempo_n_groove said:

brianlux said:

Lately, reading Heather's blog, I get the distinct feeling that civilization is coming apart at the seems.  On the home front, Biden is doing his best to keep things patched together, but the Republican resistance is unrelenting.  Unsettling times.

Fear sells Brian.  With Trump gone the reporters have to find something else to complain about, well not gone gone, but gone.  Most of the other stuff has been going on for years and most likely will never stop.

She is right on her reporting which is good but a little good news like the herring is nice every now and again.

She's not a reporter, she's a historian. 

True.  And like any good historian, she is at her best when when she lets history speak for itself.  When her blog reads more like an op ed page, I'm not quite as impressed.  And its not that I disagree with her but I just think her writing is better when she is showing more than telling.

Agreed.

See, all 3 agree on her writing style.

She may be a historian but she does write like a reporter with an agenda.

Yeah, the agenda of saving democracy in the US.

Merkin Baller

tempo_n_groove said:

Merkin Baller said:

brianlux said:

tempo_n_groove said:

brianlux said:

Lately, reading Heather's blog, I get the distinct feeling that civilization is coming apart at the seems.  On the home front, Biden is doing his best to keep things patched together, but the Republican resistance is unrelenting.  Unsettling times.

Fear sells Brian.  With Trump gone the reporters have to find something else to complain about, well not gone gone, but gone.  Most of the other stuff has been going on for years and most likely will never stop.

She is right on her reporting which is good but a little good news like the herring is nice every now and again.

Merkin Baller said:

tempo_n_groove said:

brianlux said:

Lately, reading Heather's blog, I get the distinct feeling that civilization is coming apart at the seems.  On the home front, Biden is doing his best to keep things patched together, but the Republican resistance is unrelenting.  Unsettling times.

Fear sells Brian.  With Trump gone the reporters have to find something else to complain about, well not gone gone, but gone.  Most of the other stuff has been going on for years and most likely will never stop.

She is right on her reporting which is good but a little good news like the herring is nice every now and again.

She's not a reporter, she's a historian. 

True.  And like any good historian, she is at her best when when she lets history speak for itself.  When her blog reads more like an op ed page, I'm not quite as impressed.  And its not that I disagree with her but I just think her writing is better when she is showing more than telling.

Agreed.

See, all 3 agree on her writing style.

She may be a historian but she does write like a reporter with an agenda.

I agree that good historians are at their best when they let history speak for themselves. 

I don't agree with your assessment.