2021 Archives

The best of the rest of the news this week. — On January 6th, Mike Pence refused to get in the Secret Service car. He appears to have realized that Donald Trump just tried to kill him to hang onto power. This is how close we came to a total coup overthrowing the government of the United States and replacing it with a neofascist Trumpist dictatorship…and most of the GOP is doing its best to set it up again for 2024. New laws have been passed in 17 states that let Republicans decide which votes to count and which to throw away; these laws are taking us closer and closer to that possible reality of an unelected (and, thus, dictatorial) government.

The old Confederacy, like Freddy Krueger, is trying to rise from the dead and slash our nation with its “superstition, ambition and ignorance.” Prior to 1965, the only American president to have both promoted and presided over a multiracial democracy was Ulysses Grant, the former general in Lincoln’s army who became president when impeached Southern slaveowner Andrew Johnson’s term expired on March 4, 1869. Grant (and Johnson, but grudgingly) saw freed African Americans not only voting but taking political office by the hundreds. It lasted until the day Grant left office, when the Tilden/Hayes election “compromise” of 1876 ended the period known as Radical Reconstruction the following year. During this brief time, more than 600 African Americans were elected to state legislatures (the majority in South Carolina and Louisiana) and 16 served in the US House of Representatives.

Letting Americans die to win elections. Is that how low today’s GOP has sunk? What other possible explanation could there be? Dr. Jonathan Reiner, a CNN Medical Analyst, said last week, “A surprising amount of death will occur soon...” But why, when the deadly Delta variant is sweeping the world, are Republicans and their media warning people not to get vaccinated? There’s always a reason. People don’t do things — particularly things involving a lot of effort and a need for consistency — without a reason. It just doesn’t happen. No matter how bizarre, twisted or dysfunctional the reason may be, there’s always a reason.

President Biden fired the Trump holdovers at the head of Social Security and Medicare... What happens when the GOP actually flips an election?... The brutal, punishing, racist Republicans strike again.... Are hate and death all they have left?...Evangelical Christianity is dying, and the GOP is what's killing it... When big American corporations claimed they would no longer send money and other support to those members of Congress who actively worked to overturn the 2020 election…they lied... Congressman Chip Roy comes right out and tells a group of Republican activists that their entire legislative and political strategy for 2021 and 2022 is to prevent Democrats from getting anything done for the American people... Who would oppose teaching our children the true racial history of America?... The Second Amendment is a failed experiment, and it's time for reasonable people to admit that fact... The Weather Channel says they'll be documenting the role climate change plays in today's extreme weather events. So, how does the billionaire Murdoch family empire respond to this? They're rolling out a new weather channel themselves, Fox Weather... Over at Daily Kos, GoodNewsRoundup has compiled "Fifty Great Things Biden Has Accomplished in less than half a year in office."