A Baptist Minister and a Supreme Court Justice Walk Into a Bar . . . October 31, 2018October 30, 2018 Paul Raushenbush, an ordained Baptist minister, is an interesting guy. Senior VP of the Auburn Theological Seminary, his great grandfather, Walter Rauschenbusch (somewhere along the line they dropped the c’s), was a big deal Baptist theologian whose work — despite his being a thoroughly white blue blood — influenced the likes of Martin Luther King, Jr., and Bishop Desmond Tutu. “. . . [Walter’s] view of Christianity was that its purpose was to spread the Kingdom of God, not through a ‘fire and brimstone’ style of preaching, but by the Christlike lives led by its members.” Another of Paul’s great grandfathers, Louis Brandeis, was our nation’s first Jewish Supreme Court Justice. In 1985, relatives of Paul were murdered in what up until Saturday is thought to have been the deadliest attack on Jews in our country’s history. Informed by that background, Paul yesterday posted America’s Choice: The Tree of life or White Supremacy. As it happens, we get to help make that choice Tuesday. (Or today, with early voting.) And I’d like to stress — and ask YOU to stress to people who may be embarrassed not to know the names of all the candidates (how could “normal” people with one or two jobs and kids to raise follow all this?) — You don’t need to know who the candidates are. You know which team you’re on.* Just vote! *If you favor affordable health care that covers pre-existing conditions, affordable college, overtime pay, clean air and water, equal rights — things like that . . . if you thought Obama was a pretty good President and you “believe in” science and worry about climate change . . . you’re a Democrat. Vote D. If you think the really big problem we face as a nation are desperately poor Hondurans walking thousands of miles to turn themselves in at the border in hopes of asylum to pick your tomatoes and clean your motel toilets . . . and you think it’s okay for Trump’s party to control all three branches of government with no checks and balances . . . vote R. You’re a Republican.
Trump Is Right October 29, 2018October 29, 2018 He goes from state to state saying, “A vote for Sally is a vote for me.” “A vote for Ted is a vote for me.” And it’s true. So here’s what you get if you vote Republican this year: Vulgarity. Misogyny. Dishonesty. Bigotry. Ignorance. Corruption.* Division. Climate Denial. Tax Fraud. Fascism. A pathological liar (says Ted Cruz). A dangerous con man (says Marco Rubio). A national disgrace (says Colin Powell). The world’s number one bully (says Republican ex-governor Christine Todd Whitman). A Putin admirer. A sociopath who kept a book of Hitler’s speeches by his bedside. Our very own Mussolini. (Who, as it turns out, did not make the trains run on time.) That’s what you’re voting for if you vote Republican this year. Check out TheBigDeal2018 to motivate that 19-year-old of yours to turn out. Sign up with NextGen to text “Vote Early” reminders to young voters in swing states. They offer virtual trainings to make it easy. *Read this transcript. “Shame still exists,” Rachel Maddow is surprised to report. And then runs through a saga of corruption that will leave you agape Wait til you see whom they picked to be Inspector General at the Interior Department. You Russian literature fans will know that Gogol himself couldn’t have come up with something so ludicrous. And then wait til you read about the FBI building deal. Mind-boggling.
Cross Their Hearts And Hope To Die October 29, 2018October 29, 2018 Correction: I was wrong to say there are six churches in Paris, Texas, each of which would have to help accommodate a desperate Honduran family once every 24 years. (“Do the math.”) According to a friend from Paris, “There are WAY more than six. That link is incredibly wrong. It doesn’t even include my family’s church! I’d say there are probably 30 or 40 at least, no joke. If you go to Google Maps of Paris, and type in Church, at least 20 pop up.” So each church would have to help one desperate Honduran family more like once every hundred years. And this is the scare tactic — 7,200 desperate Hondurans with 1,000 more miles to walk before they turn themselves in at our border seeking asylum to harvest our tomatoes and clean our motel toilets — that Republicans are using to distract you from their having voted more than 50 times to kill or weaken Obamacare rather than improve it or offer anything to replace it. Flashback: Republican politicians have been saying they’re for covering pre-existing conditions and maintaining the social safety net — all those things Democrats have long been voting for and enacting — for a great long time. “Cross their hearts and hope to die.” Yet they always seem to vote “no.” I imagine you’ve seen this Roosevelt clip, but it’s always worth another look. As is this affirmation that, yes, now that Republicans have slashed taxes for corporations’ wealthiest shareholders, they’re coming after your Social Security. Reminder: The Senate passed comprehensive immigration reform 68-32. The House would have passed it, too, if the Republicans had allowed a vote. Question: Who should be allowed into this country? Not the Irish, certainly. (Who needed people like Ronald Reagan or John Kennedy in this country?) Not Syrians. (Who needed Steve Jobs?) People of good will can surely differ on the trade-offs involved in crafting comprehensive immigration reform. What they should not do — can’t we agree on this much? — is demonize refugees for political gain. It’s immoral, it’s unChristian, it’s unAmerican — and it’s the heart of the Republican strategy to maintain a stranglehold on all three branches of government. Oh — and by the way?
Four Years Later October 26, 2018October 25, 2018 [Movie tip: 1985 opens today in NY and LA. So powerful. It’s impossible not to care about this small-town Texas family.] I posted this on the eve of the 2014 mid-terms: Be Healthier AND Wealthier: Vote Democrat. Do you know what? Nothing’s changed. Sure, Republican voter suppression tactics have evolved. (I’ve noted the particular irony of their efforts to keep Native Americans from voting, since they’re the only Americans who aren’t immigrants.) And, sure, Republicans have spent four more years sabotaging the Affordable Care Act rather than proposing anything to improve or replace it. But if you updated it all, the conclusions would be the same. The only important difference is that this time, with a sociopath unchecked in the White House, our democracy itself is in peril. Vote! Volunteer! Give!
Do The Math October 25, 2018October 26, 2018 The barbarians are at the gate and Trump is terrified on our behalf. Republicans may have some hidden empathy for the 7,200 tired, poor Hondurans yearning for a better life — they are actual human beings, after all, just like us — but think about the consequences of allowing them to apply for asylum. Do the math. It’s 7,200 people but — assuming you don’t separate parents from their children — perhaps 2,400 family units. Say we had two such enormous caravans each year– 2 times 2,400 = 4,800 — and that they somehow disbursed evenly, one family settling in each of America’s 19,000 cities. Within four years, each city in America would find itself having had to accommodate a Honduran family! A city like New York or LA — even Cleveland or Phoenix — could handle one new immigrant Honduran family every four years. Easy. But at the other extreme, what about a “city” like Paris, Texas, with a population of just 25,000 (2,000 of them Hispanic) and just six churches. Could a “city” so small really handle a new Honduran family every four years? How many more police would they need to hire? How many more schools would they need to build? Think about it: each of the six churches (if they shared the burden equally) would face the challenge of helping to welcome and integrate a new Honduran family into the life of the community every 24 years!* But it’s worse than that. Trump has people from Montana to Maine genuinely fearful of the crime, rape, drugs, and economic hardship he’s persuaded them that non-white asylum-seekers, giving themselves up legally at the border, bring. Indeed, he has pledged to send our military — not just the National Guard, the military (which is illegal) — to repel them rather than grant them asylum to clean our toilets, pick our tomatoes, and trim our hedges. (How, by the way? Shoot them? Tase them? Force-march them 2,500 miles home?) Yet realistically, these Hondurans are not likely to walk to Montana or Maine. Let alone disburse evenly among America’s 19,000 cities. No, they’re all gonna settle in Texas, which has just 27,000 churches, and maybe a few in Arizona and New Mexico, which have 3,000 and 2,000 churches. I mention the churches, because Republicans are the religious party. Many of them believe America is specifically a Christian country. So is this something churches could do? Help the poor and needy? The least among us? Something most religious voters — even in Texas — could embrace? Just asking. Vote! Volunteer! Give! *Correction: I was wrong to say there are six churches in Paris, Texas. According to a friend from Paris, “There are WAY more than six. That link is incredibly wrong (it doesn’t even include my family’s church!). I’d say there are probably 30 or 40 at least, no joke. If you go to Google Maps of Paris, and type in Church, at least 20 pop up.” So each church would have to help one desperate Honduran family more like once every hundred years.
Hawking Monday’s Post October 24, 2018October 24, 2018 While Trump cages children separated from their parents, calls women “horse face,” promises to send Congress a tax cut this week (Congress is not in session) despite the already-irresponsible tax cuts that have the ice-veined Senate majority leader targeting Social Security and Medicare . . . here are some of the challenges the late Stephen Hawking says mankind faces. His posthumous piece is so worth reading. We are, after all, privileged to be alive in the make-or-break century for our species. (In the previous 2,000 or so centuries, nothing humans did could much affect the species at all, let alone wipe it out.) And: we may have only a very short few years to avoid passing the point of no return — if we haven’t passed it already. Do we really think today’s Republican leadership has the vision and wisdom to meet those challenges? Was the Obama Administration not more thoughtful, as it brought the world together for the Paris Climate Accords and six nations together to denuclearize Iran and seeded so much tech progress with ARPA-E? Facebook occasionally tries to get me to boost my posts. It’s how they make money, I guess. So when they offered me a promotional $5 to boost a post, I added a further $55 of my own (or tried to) to boost Monday’s post — Trump Is Right — to young Republican women in six swing states. This campaign — at $10 per state — was modest, I’ll admit. But even so, it was “disapproved” without explanation. I’m guessing the algorithms we hope will block Russian bots and FSB agents posing as Americans . . . and perhaps totally unsubstantiated conspiracy theories of the Alex Jones variety . . . will be blocking more than that as well. Yes, the post was harsh. But is Trump not all those things I listed? Did Republicans not say about him all those things I quoted? Is the definition of sociopath I linked to out of the mainstream of psychiatric discourse? Know anyone at Facebook we could ask? Vote! Volunteer! Give!
The More You Know October 23, 2018October 22, 2018 Things to know: You don’t bring a bone saw to a fist fight. Our president is the only person in the world, other than some Saudis, who pretends to believe otherwise. It’s ludicrous. And evil. Murder is proscribed in the Bible. Freedom of the press is enshrined in the Constitution. Murdering journalists — whom the founders saw as agents, not enemies, of the people — is a mortal sin that erodes democracy. Trump pals Putin and Duterte and Erdogan and Mohammed Bin Salman murder journalists. Denying native Americans their right to vote is so Republican. As you’ve probably heard, Republicans have devised a way to block long-time voters from voting this time, by adding a new requirement: their ID must include a street address. But Indian reservations don’t have streets. Republicans couldn’t come up with a proposal for the “replace” part of repealing Obamacare, but boy can they make things happen when it comes to suppressing the vote. I mean, in fairness, what right do Native Americans have to vote? Why are they here, anyway? They don’t look like us. As the old saying goes, “go back to . . .” Oh, wait. It’s the economy, stupid: President Obama took the Bush Collapse and got the unemployment rate down by five percentage points — despite unprecedented obstruction from the Republican Congress — even as he got the National Debt back to shrinking relative to the economy as a whole (as Clinton had also done). Trump has managed to keep the Obama Recovery going, trimming the unemployment rate by yet another percentage point — even as he has exploded the deficit, growing the National Debt faster than the economy ((as Bush and Reagan did). See the difference? You don’t think this is going to come back and bite us? You don’t think the Republican tax cut for corporations and their wealthiest shareholders won’t cut into the programs so many normal Americans rely on? Mitch McConnell says it out loud! Republicans are gunning for Social Security, Medicare and Obamacare! Vote! Volunteer! Give!
Trump Is Right October 22, 2018October 22, 2018 He goes from state to state saying, “A vote for Sally is a vote for me.” “A vote for Ted is a vote for me.” And he’s right: a Republican vote this year is a vote for him. So here’s what you’re voting for if you vote Republican: Vulgarity. Misogyny. Dishonesty. Bigotry. Ignorance. Corruption. Division. Climate Denial. Tax Fraud. Fascism. A pathological liar (to quote Ted Cruz). A dangerous con man (to quote Marco Rubio). A national disgrace (to quote Colin Powell). A bully (“the world’s number one bully,” to quote Republican ex-governor Christine Todd Whitman). A Putin admirer. A sociopath who kept a book of Hitler’s speeches by his bedside. Our very own Mussolini. Who, as it turns out, did not make the trains run on time. That’s who you’re voting for if you vote Republican this year.
The Proud Boys October 19, 2018October 18, 2018 Watch this five-minute video on our slide into fascism. You don’t think it could happen here? Or in Hungary? Or in Turkey? Or in Italy? Or in Germany? Each time, built around a strongman with a fanatical following? Meanwhile: Donald Trump To Speak At Hate Group’s Annual Event, A First For A President. Oh! And how about The Proud Boys? Whose leader — banned from Twitter — was last week “invited to speak at a popular Republican institution not despite his extremism but because of it. His invitation to the Metropolitan Republican Club [in New York], scholars of fascism said, shows Republicans’ increasing ease with what is essentially the militant, fascist wing of their party — an especially unnerving development, given Proud Boys’ penchant for violence. . . .” (Violence did in fact ensue.) “. . . The next day Proud Boys in Portland, Oregon, joined with another violent far-right gang, Patriot Prayer, to assault leftist protesters there. On Oct. 6, Proud Boys in Providence, Rhode Island, attacked counterprotesters at a Resist Marxism demonstration . . .” Vote! Volunteer! Give! And really: watch that video. [For these with PRKR, the company lost a lawsuit in Germany and the stock tanked. But a bigger German lawsuit remains, and an even bigger one here in America. No question: the stock could be zero. But I’m not taking any tax losses yet. One of those lawsuits could still work out.]
And Speaking Of Dementia October 18, 2018October 17, 2018 I keep coming back to BrainHq because it dramatically reduces the risk of dementia. TIME highlighted it. Tom Brady swears by it. “The Today Show” featured it. Old folks have fewer car crashes when they use it. It’s free to try. (Tell your parents? Your increasingly loopy boss?) All of which I’ve written before. The new news: BrainHQ Brain Exercises Spread Across 2019 Medicare Advantage Plans — making it available to more than a million seniors in 24 states. The other news? At least for me? I was rarely finding the occasional “hour” to exercise. But my friends at the company tell me 10 minute chunks may be even more effective. Who can’t find 10 minutes once or twice a week? You don’t even need to shower. And speaking of dementia, everybody knows you’re supposed to trim budget deficits when the economy is doing well so you have room to have room to expand them when times are tough. You’d be crazy to run big deficits otherwise, unless it were, say, to win World War II (what other choice did we have?) or to massively revitalize our infrastructure. (An investment that would pay dividends for decades and thus not “spending” at all.) Yet the Republicans, in complete control of the government, have opted for massive deficits — $779 billion in the fiscal year just ended, expected to hit $1 trillion this year — and why? To cut taxes for the Sheldon Adelsons and Donald Trumps and Exxons of the world. It’s demented. Vote. Volunteer. Give.