Hekate
Hekate's JournalYes it is. It's waaaaaay too easy to get Dems to play along in our own political self-destruction...
...especially with the media stirring the pot for fun and profit.
This time last year I was watching Gov Cuomo trying to inform New Yorkers about the pandemic, while incidentally engaging the whole nation with his emotional capacity, genuine ethnic folksiness, intelligence, and heart. He talked about his family in very relatable ways.
This time last year I was tuning in to my own Governor Newsom’s broadcasts as he tried to keep us abreast of California’s efforts to deal with the catastrophe. He’s really bright, and I like that, and he’s a Democrat so we know where he stands on the important issues, but he’s a technocrat, so while not cold, he lacks the folksiness of the guy from New York.
Over time, hubs and I started assessing the two men as presidential candidates, post-pandemic. I bet a lot of other people were doing the same.
What do you think their prospects are now?
One of my oldest friends & her husband ended up in Civil Service careers there, so I got to visit...
...several times by staying with them. The first time was in May and I was in my mid-30s. I used the Washington Monument as my gnomon and walked everywhere. I know schoolkids get to go — but not if you grow up in Hawai’i! It was a wonderful experience.
When my own kids were 13 and 11 there was an air-fare promotion, so I took them from SoCal to DC. Our local congressman’s office was able to help with tickets for tours of various government buildings. Unfortunately it was the end of July, beginning of August, so the heat and humidity were killer. There was a brief thunderstorm that literally made the stone buildings and asphalt streets steam. I took full advantage of air conditioned buildings, especially the various Smithsonians. I made sure the kids got to see Space & Science. My 11 yo son got so enchanted with the African art we lost him for awhile and then had to scramble to get a taxi to meet my friend on time.
On one of my trips sans kids, I met up with a cousin who was working in the city, and he took me to visit the Vietnam War Memorial. I did not expect it to have the impact on me that it did, but I cried and cried for the young men of my generation.
I went for several protest marches. One was against Dubya’s invasion of Iraq, where I looked up friends from the Vets for Peace, with whom I was working back home; and one was the March for Women’s lives, which my by-then-grown daughter insisted we go to. There were indeed a million protestors for the women’s march — the organizers were counting, not fantasizing. May I say that in both cases there was no violence and no vandalism.
And here’s the thing about protesting in Washington, D.C. — it is very much our right to do so. We have “the right to petition the government for redress of grievances,” and we were loud and noisy and in the case of the anti-war protest we were very angry. But none of us (as far as I could tell, or I would not have been there) wanted to overthrow the US government by other than votes, nor did we want to harm or destroy the jewel that is OUR city. The city that represents in its very architecture the core of our Founders’ aspirations. And as much as I despised BushCheney, they didn’t set troops on us and try to kill us, the way Trump did to “his” protestors when his turn came.
The Jan 6 insurrectionists are nothing but thugs and murderers — and how dare they.
My friend and her husband retired a number of years ago, and now divide their time between Florida and Tennessee, leaving me without a free place to sleep near DC. I doubt I shall return, as much as I would dearly love to visit all the Smithsonian museums, the old and the new.
Jennifer Rubin of the WaPo got this exactly right. It was a pleasure to listen to Biden...
...who is
* a gentleman
* patient (up to a point)
* highly intelligent
* in complete command of all the facts
* gives very substantive answers
* able to instruct at length (for which he apologizes, & he shouldn’t)
I could go on, but suffice it to say, Ms Rubin is correct.
Regarding crossing the desert, which is seasonal, he made a comparison to his great-great- ancestors deciding to take a “coffin ship” to America. They didn’t want to leave Ireland, but the situation was desperate. (For those who don’t know, they were called coffin ships because of the large numbers of passengers who died on the way to America, generally of typhus.) Improve conditions in their home countries, and migration will slow down.
Regarding his comments on foreign policy, China in particular — they were substantive. Did anyone even listen? Take notes? Care? What he said was actually quite important, and shows he has been paying attention for decades and is quite up to the minute.
As it is, I turned off the tv shortly after he left the podium, and will wait for Rachel’s take on it tonight. I hope she will talk about foreign policy, as it is right up her alley.
Amen, amen, amen. I'm in California & Gov Cuomo was a lifeline of encouragement, info, & sanity...
...while Trump & Jared were killing people by refusing to help blue states, refusing to produce PPE, telling state governors they were on their own in every respect, telling govs they had to bid against each other for scarce supplies, and literally stealing shipments of PPE from airport tarmacs.
It was chaos in the early months, and nobody knew what to do. Bodies were stacked up in trucks outside hospitals. You want nursing home scandals? In one nursing home there was no place for the sudden number of bodies and they put them in a garden shed — because what? They were supposed to put them in the front lobby? In the kitchen chill room? Nobody came to help them — and something tells me the owners/ managers are going to be in court the rest of their natural days, because of Trump’s depraved indifference.
So Cuomo is abrasive. So he can be an ass. He was there for the entire country when the goddamned US President was trying to monetize the deaths of half a million Americans and counting.
How many Dem Governors are in danger of their careers &/or lives? Repubs can only win by cheating
...as they have made abundantly clear. So I am really interested in who is funding these attacks, and who will in the future fund attacks against Joe Biden and other sitting Dems. Anyone know?
Gretchen Whitmer was threatened with kidnapping and death.
Gov Newsom was fairly elected but now is facing a recall election, because reasons.
Gov Cuomo has a flurry of sexual harassment charges all of a sudden — but also is accused of “covering up” nursing home deaths in the terrible early days of the pandemic.
MEANWHILE: De Santis is actively causing COVID death among the old in Florida and sent gun toting agents to the home of a whistleblower to confiscate her electronics and terrorize her children.
Abbot allowed people to literally freeze to death in the dark, and likewise will not lift a finger to help the sick & dying.
You guys can fill in the blanks about the rest, but I think I’ve made my point. Where is the frothing outrage against them?
Asking for a friend, as I’m sure you know.
Governors re-opening/no masks
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/us/states-reopen-map-coronavirus.html
Updated 3-11-2021
Alaska - Dunleavy
Florida - De Santis
Georgia - Kemp
Idaho - Little
Iowa - Reynolds
Mississippi - Reeves
Missouri - Parson
Montana - Gianforte
Nebraska - Ricketts
North Dakota - Burgum
Oklahoma - Stitt
South Dakota - Noem
Tennessee - Lee
Texas - Abbot
Home, painfully rehabbing from a total knee replacement, trying to talk hubby into stocking up...
..the pantry and freezer. He just couldn’t; it’s not in his skillset. I had to wait until I was mostly off the walker, and then called my SIL for a ride to Trader Joe’s where I filled a cart.
In March I furloughed my 2 cleaning ladies. In my mind I somehow thought I would be able to have them back in 3 months, but it was not to be. Cita texted me just a few weeks ago asking about returning, and I gave her our timeline — finish vaccinating in March (this month), taxes in April, then hopefully they can return in May, a full year after I imagined.
I had the surgery 2-19-2020, one of the last elective surgeries for the hospital, and already the hospital was in preparation mode for what was coming... What is so maddening is WE KNEW. Just like the 1-9-2021 Insurrection, WE KNEW.
The only thing we did not know, that we could not have known, is how maliciously and murderously the response would be botched. What Joe Biden is doing now is what I thought our country would be doing then. I expected Trump would let the CDC and other agencies do their jobs, not cripple them.
If there is a Hell, Trump and Jared Kushner and all the other bloody-handed enablers belong there. If there is Karma, they will all come back as cockroaches and sewer rats.
It's a virus. It mutates. Like the annual flu, for which scientists have to make vaccines ...
...on a best guess basis, every year.
That’s where we are with this. So far, everything I’ve heard about all 3 COVID vaccines from Rachel Maddow’s scientist guests is that if you get vaccinated, you might get sick later, but you won't end up in the hospital.
Also, as I read here a week or so back, there are 3 or 4 Russian “news” sites busily spreading disinformation in the US about all our vaccines, with particular emphasis on J&J. Can’t find the link now, but it was posted here, and as a consequence I think we all need to be extra-careful about where we are getting our science news.
Reciting Dylan Thomas as I fall asleep; still recall this after all these years...
Didn’t know what else to do with it, but knew someone at DU would still be up.
In My Craft or Sullen Art
by Dylan Thomas
In my craft or sullen art
Exercised in the still night
When only the moon rages
And the lovers lie abed
With all their griefs in their arms,
I labour by singing light
Not for ambition or bread
Or the strut and trade of charms
On the ivory stages
But for the common wages
Of their most secret heart.
Not for the proud man apart
From the raging moon I write
On these spindrift pages
Nor for the towering dead
With their nightingales and psalms
But for the lovers, their arms
Round the griefs of the ages,
Who pay no praise or wages
Nor heed my craft or art.
Yes, they are, and China is leaning hard on India's water supply. They plan to dam the Brahmaputra
....River, which originates in Tibet and waters many nations on the India side. This is only one enormous issue created by China. They want to control India’s water supply for their own use and they want to claim all of the South Pacific for strategic purposes.
I don’t see where the US “pits neighbor against neighbor,” so much as a return to recognizing the complexities of international relations after 4 years of the US having a corrupt government and possibly insane president.
President Obama and then-Vice President Biden were in the right track with the Trans Pacific Partnership. The amount of garbage I read about the TPP from supposed progressives would gag a goat. China is ambitious and ascendant and they don’t play by any rules but their own. We will not win peace or good international relations by ignoring them, yielding to them unthinkingly, or irritating them for sport the way Trump did.
China needs intelligent and aware adversaries, and America needs allies.
Dear DUers: All thru this terrible COVID year I've felt a sense of community at DU.....
All thru this terrible year I’ve felt a sense of community here — as if we're holding each others’ hands, being encouraging voices in the darkness that Trump created.
Praying for the sick and terrified, grieving with the bereaved, upholding the weary and fearful. Rejoicing at each step forward — each recovery, each vaccination. Being a community.
All of a sudden in the last few days, our “family” is turning on itself. In multiple posts and OPs we who have managed to work our way thru the distribution labyrinth are being accused of “gloating,” being “disrespectful,” being uncaring of others, hogging medication that should go to others, and of being unconscious of our “white privilege.”
How dare we have even a glimmer of hope and a sliver of relief?
No. Just no. This only serves Trump, who malignantly and maliciously killed at least half a million of our friends and loved ones. He and his family and cronies did this to us, and they did it on purpose.
Turn your wrath toward he who deserves it, turn your energies toward working somehow to make the system work better, and recognize that each person who is protected brings you and others closer to protection as well.
Please.
Profile Information
Gender: FemaleHometown: Central Coast, California
Home country: USA
Member since: 2002
Number of posts: 90,616
