Yesterday, the news was filled with testimony from Tuesday’s hearing. And rightly so – I guess a lot of people did not realize, and still don’t, who Trump** so obviously is. Of course he throws dishes against the wall. Of course he tries to do bodily harm to anyone who pisses him off. Of course he’s the last person in the world who shold have the nuclear codes. How did so may people miss that? And I don’t even mean his cultists. I mean how did so may sane people still manage not to see that? It’s not as if Hillary didn’t warn us. At least more people are realizing it now. The other thing that was in the news (at least my news feed) was our primaries. I already reported that Tina Peters, the County Clerk who stole the voting equipment, lost her primary to run for Secretary of State (the bad news is that the winner is almost as bad.) Other bad news is that Boebert won her primary. I had no part in that, but I still apologize on behalf of my state to the entire nation. We can only hope that Democrats and Unaffiliateds combine to oust her. Sadly, that’s merely a hope.
Cartoon –
Short Takes –
The New Yorker – The “Gap” in the Constitution That Led to January 6th
Quote – Yes, it’s absolutely true that our Presidential-election system in particular has significant vulnerabilities. Some of those vulnerabilities are in the Constitution itself. As long as we retain the constitutional provision for the Electoral College, we won’t be completely out of the woods. State legislatures have the authority to replace a popular vote, to directly appoint the electors for their state. But they can’t do it retroactively. And that gets to what Giuliani and Trump were trying to do.
Click through for full discussion. All communication requires those communicating to share at least some assumptions (there’s a group exercise invilving peanut butter and jelly which brings this point home vividly), and one of those assumptions that we make without realizing it is that we expect our elected officials to act in good faith. For much of my life, though that wasn’t 100% true, there were enough who were that it was safe to assume it. Then came Reagan, Gingrich, and a host of others, and now it is no longer safe to make that assumption.
Robert Reich – The rogue court and the fight ahead
Quote – I keep telling the young people I work with and in the classes I teach that I grew up in an America that expanded constitutional rights, battled racism and protected voting rights, and enlarged the middle class. I tell them that if we did it then, we can do so again. They hear me but I’m not sure they believe me. Their young lives have been marked mostly by public failure. Many were motivated to vote for Barack Obama in 2008 and 2016, and against Trump in 2020, but their patience is wearing thin.
Clivk through for full argument (there’s also a video). I know, voting is not enough, but it has to start with voting. We have to give good leaders some authority – something to work with. If we don’t, their leaders get authority.
Food For Thought – I think this is the first time I have seen a New Yorker cartoon depict a real person, though it’s probably happened.
