Thank you for sharing your insight and perspective. I'm gonna contemplate how to overcome my news blindspots. There's so many plates spinning these days, that it isn't enough to only stare at the ones closest to my navel.

Helps to steel myself against those, foreign and domestic, who are working to upend peaceful order.

I'm looking up and out, and the view is not normal.

Walkie Talkies

Can be indispensable when the power goes out/cell service drops or if your family evacuates in more than one vehicle (which I do not recommend if you can avoid it).

Used such after Ike, and while driving in tandem to my SO for the 8 hour long, 50 mile trek before Rita. We got separated by a couple miles for some of those hours, but could communicate despite the pegged cell service.

Keep your wits, prepare, do things methodically, know the evacuation plan, and do not panic evacuate like we did for Rita. I'll be in contact with a good friend in Florida, will share his takes on the situation later today/tomorrow. He's, eh, seasoned in dealing with FL hurricanes.

Best wishes for y'all, hang in there, and stay safe.

The firehosing of corrupt entanglement salad that defines the tRumpian years is a bit much for one person to track.

Thanks for posting this, Snarkopleptic. As has been the case countless times for me over the years, I'm better informed for reading DU.

The harsh history that precedes us.

The current of meanness that we face shouldn't just run over us. If we stand up, the waters wouldn't even reach to our knees.

I started to write this comment yesterday, but I couldn't quite muster many real words. Fits and starts at moments, all I could do is breathe and figure out what I could do about it. The tree being cut down, that shouldn't have happened. Not in 2019 in Arkansas along the Mississippi.

What I did was meager, but something of a start: I told aloud the events in Elaine from 1919 and 2019 to a friend in my inner circle, to bring it out of virtual realm. I will share it out further in an effort to inform and reflect on what we can do to support a true and loving egalitarian society that values the beauty of the diversity that is humankind.

Plant another tree. I hope they plant another tree. I'd like to help plant 237 trees in Elaine, in this year of 2019. That feels like a real starting place to me.

Don't pee in my boots and tell me it's raining, Lindsey. Don't tell me people want the pain.

Nobody except Trump and the trade guy he bought on Amazon thought tariffs were a good idea. He sold this painted mule to his gullible base, and now everyone has to pay?! And so, now, Lindsey is selling the con, just as sure as he sold his soul.

He's up for reelection, so maybe he'll pay for his bullshit at the ballot box.

They are gloriously BOLD.

The buttons will shout from my purse strap like beacons of truth. https://store.kydemocrats.org/

Made a bonus, one-time donation to McGrath on top of the monthly ones. Her newest ad does my heart some good.
https://amymcgrath.com/

Mad Dog Pac - I know their signs work. I know what it means to see a message that rarely gets uttered in some parts of the country. That those who would defy the prevailing powerful hypocrites are not alone. https://maddogpac.com/

All of it gets me fired-up (in a good way)! Yay!

This fiat by tweet smells like stock manipulation and a shakedown for campaign contributions. Extortion to bring political opponents to heel and confederates to payout.

By now, he and his advisors should darn well know the consequences of his Twitter fingers on the markets. He and all of his market guys, billionaire buddies, know he can dump stocks on a whim. Sooo, I'd like to know who in his circle owns/shorted those stocks or associated plays. Good grief, he tanked the market, after Powell sort of smoothed things over. When does willful idiocy become premeditated manipulation?

Trade wars are easy he said. Tell that one again to the retired teacher trying to transfer funds and chose the wrong day to sell some of their modest portfolio. Tell that lie again to the farmers losing their shirts.

And he signalled that he wants companies to dragnet deliveries for fentanyl, as if there aren't limitations and screens for the stuff already in place. Seems this is the sort of thing that needs to be searched at the ports...amirite, Cocaine Mule Moscow Mitch? But no, that wouldn't have the same effect as his chilling chaos-making upon corporate free speech money.

Our capitalist system has become so corrupt that it's wrapped itself around, and is eating its tail, and turning into corporate/nationalist socialism. The free hand of the market? Ha. Yeah right, increasingly it's more like the little orange fingers in the market jerking everyone around. The mess of it didn't start with him, or the Citizens United decision, but have been accelerants for the economic cynicism and corruption that lead to payola over real value creation.



(Please note, I've used some hyperbole and taken liberties with terms like payola instead of using 'rent seeking' because I believe it has greater, more immediate artful meaning to more people. I'm not entirely comfortable describing the current state of our capitalistic system as corporate nationalist socialist, but I'd argue it has features of such. Mostly, that paragraph echoes in-person conversations I've had with family members who've been trained to view Democrats as mooching socialists. I made at least one of them blush, and maybe think twice about their certainty on the matter.)

I needed this. It's so true.

The civil fight for our democracy.

Give money and/or time to Stacy's FairFight2020. I have no doubt her campaign will have positive results.

Volunteer to GOTV... It's a rush every time you tell a young person that the voting age is 18, not 21. Or that person who just moved and had not updated their registration. Or that student that thinks they have to travel home to vote, etc.

This is what democracy looks like!

Commenting especially to journal this, so I can revisit the turn you've made in the thread. I appreciate the OP, but cannot let myself get bogged down to the point of feeling hopeless.

Gonna keep on gettin' up and standing up.