lees1975
lees1975's JournalThe religion of the political right is Pseudo-Christianity
https://signalpress.blogspot.com/2025/03/pseudo-christianity-is-political.htmlMessina says, of her church and pastor, "We were told Trump had been chosen by God, that he was a disheveled man like David, who was also an adulterer. Trump was a 'baby Christian', meaning he had just gotten saved, so we should give him grace because we're all sinners. Since he was a new creature in Christ, you couldn't hold anything against him."
"We saw Trump as the persecuted white savior," Messina goes on. "We believed Trump's critics were just blinded by Satan, and he was fighting for us."
The problem with this is that Trump is not "a baby Christian who had just gotten saved." Trump has repeatedly rejected the Evangelical interpretation of Christian conversion. He cannot get past the step requiring acknowledgement of being a sinner in need of God's grace. He has repeatedly and publicly declared, in media interviews where he is asked, and by several of the right wing evangelists who have been at great pains to try and make him look converted.
"I haven't done anything that requires God's forgiveness," has been Trump's repeated response. So Trump is not, by his own admission, a Christian at all. So he can't be "fighting for Christians."
To the Senate Democrats: The Moment for a Bold Move Has Arrived
https://signalpress.blogspot.com/2025/03/the-moment-for-bold-move-has-arrived.htmlWe know that government shutdowns can be rough. But let me tell you, if this bill passes, it will be much rougher. There are concessions in it that would take what little leverage the minority party in the Congress still has to protect American democracy, and give it away.
Politics is once again disabling the Democratic party and its ability to function as resistance and opposition to the destruction of American democracy. They keep telling us that Trump is an existential threat to democracy, and then, instead of stepping up and taking the bold action necessary to stop him, they start to think of their own political rear ends, and they back down.
I'm sorry, Senator Schumer. You were in charge in 2020, when the Senate could have make a risky, but bold move, broken the filibuster, packed the damn Supreme Court, saved Roe, eliminated the threat of a presidential immunity ruling and pushed Trump's insurrection trial to a speedy conclusion. We wouldn't be here now if that had happened then.
So come on, Senator Schumer, and any others who are thinking of pushing this through because it might look political. Grow a pair. Or step down and let Governor Hochul appoint AOC to the Senate.
How much Trump disaster will we put up with?
https://signalpress.blogspot.com/2025/03/trump-has-gone-way-beyond.htmlThat being said, I also need to point out what we have learned about who we are as Americans in the 21st century. Education, specifically the system of public education that we have developed since the Civil War, has been the primary means of providing an informed and effective electorate, capable of maintaining a constitutional democracy that is truly of, by and for the people. Democracies do not always succeed because, in some countries, mostly underdeveloped and undereducated countries, the electorate does not have the educational background to understand how democracy works and how the people are empowered by it. The sign that we have reached this point in the United States is the number of votes Trump got, plus the number of people who are eligible to vote, but didn't participate at all. Education, as one of the primary means for preserving and protecting government of, by and for the people, has failed to do so.
We have a partisan political element that has been at work for at least 45 years, undermining the balance of power in the Constitution, pushing a white supremacist, Christian nationalist agenda, systematically undermining the function of the constitutional republic by using the opportunities it has when it is the majority party to take control of the judicial system that can't work the way it was designed in the balance of powers when it follows a partisan agenda rather than the rule of law. Republicans have abandoned compromise and negotiation as a means of making government work, and are bent on seeing it fail by demonizing opponents, and undermining the Constitution and the rule of law. Every Republican administration since Reagan has followed this pattern, testing the waters. Trump simply brings the most destructive elements to the table in his gross incompetence, mental instability and moral bankruptcy.
Our options, under the rule of law, include impeachment and removal, the invoking of the 25th amendment, or his resignation. But, there are some important steps that we can take now, which will demonstrate whether or not the Democratic party leadership in the Congress is a genuine opposition group, or a bunch of self-serving pretenders who are not capable of defending American constitutional democracy.
Where the Democrats will build a foundation to win back Congress in 2026.
Bernie Sanders has taken the lead. People are lining up to get standing room only in his "rallies." Indivisible, the resistance group, is organizing town hall meetings and appearances by Democrats in red districts to conduct town halls in places Republicans aren't willing to hold them. It's already started here in Illinois, in the reddest congressional district in the state, where Democrats in the congressional delegation are going to put together a town hall meeting. That's some real pressure.
It would be nice if the Democrats in Congress got behind the candidates running for those house seats that would give Democrats a majority if they won them. Why not? Problem is, it doesn't appear that members of the Democratic party's congressional delegation is interested in helping any of them. Well, they can keep up the complaining and whining, drawing attention to Trump's worst moves. It's a long shot, but I think the road to impeachment needs to start now.
Among the pro-Democratic party media, Stephanie Miller is a stand-out
https://signalpress.blogspot.com/2025/03/among-pro-democratic-party-media.htmlIt's unique in that it isn't the typical talking heads commentary or even call-in format of typical political programming, nor is it a headliner for the host, like so many so-called news and commentary programs. It is entertainment, with a heavy dose of light hearted humor, which makes the litany of incompetence and destructiveness going on in the Trump administration a little easier to take. There is no compromise on facts. If they provide information, it's accurate, and it is delivered with the expected natural reaction sane, solid thinking people tend to have when they hear something that sounds ridicuous and incredulous, which is an every moment occurrence with Trump.
What it makes me feel like is that there is a normal world out there, that things are moving on, that we will get through it and in the meantime, we can temper the ridiculous and stupid with some humor and laughter about it, rather than worrying over it and getting an ulcer as a result. The show is a way of knowing there are plenty of people out there who think along similar terms and are also trying to figure out how to navigate through four years of chaos in government.
We told you so, but you wouldn't listen
https://signalpress.blogspot.com/2025/03/we-told-you-so-but-you-wouldnt-listen.htmlAnd yes, I mean entitled. I have been listening to Republicans lie about Democrats, using the plight of veterans in this country as an issue, claiming that Democrats want to flood Ukraine with money and resources but don't want to take care of our own poor veterans. And yet, the record shows that every benefit that has either been added to, or expanded, to veteran's services, especially in mental health and in healthcare services, is the result of an initiative of a Democratic political administration during a Democratic controlled Congress.
I saw the shocked and surprised look come over my wife's face earlier this past week when, after talking to her friend on the phone, she disclosed that her friend had said to her, "I sure regret voting for Trump," and "you were right."
That was an admission nine years in the making.
Listening to CBS radio news, the first four items this hour are
Trump tariffs
Trump praising Russia
Trump criticizing Ukraine
Trump saying cutting jobs has to be done because people were paid off in the past not to cut them.
From where this lifelong, supporting, active Democrat sits, learn from failure, listen to constituents, take some risks.
https://signalpress.blogspot.com/2025/03/from-where-i-sit-democrats-need-to.htmlFor months, there were those in the media who speculated that if he lost the election in 2020, he would not leave the White House peacefully. And that's exactly what happened. He was restrained by a few people still in his administration determined to keep out the worst abuses. But he instigated the insurrection that attacked the capitol and tried to prevent Congress from certifying electoral votes that added up to victory for Joe Biden.
So how is it that he could get away with doing all of that, and not be held accountable for it? That's where part of my frustration lies as a democrat.
We entered 2021 with a majority in both Houses of Congress, not a super majority, but one that had the potential to take a few risks to get things done. And there were some things that were discussed. It would not have been easy, but risks never are, and there is always the question about how the other side would take advantage of it when they get back in power. But the gravity of the situation needs to be considered, and that means taking the risk, and then doing some smart thinking while we still have a majority in both houses to make things a little more difficult.
A name I hate to bring up, but
After years of carefully crafting foreign policy that recognized Russia as an autocracy and dictatorship, and calling it an "evil empire," Ronald Reagan must be rolling over in his grave to see a Republican President align the US with a Russian autocracy against one of its former Soviet Republics fighting to preserve its fledgling Democracy.
And then having to watch a party with no convictions simply collapse in acceptance, betraying our allies, all of them, and turning away from freedom.
Of course, any disturbance to his eternal rest was well deserved by his own insensitivity and cruelty as a politician.
Trump and Vance abandoned America's founder's values in their treatment of Zelenskyy. We're in trouble, people.
https://signalpress.blogspot.com/2025/03/trump-vance-openly-abandon-americas.htmlNever before has the United States abandoned a country in which there were people who were committed to building a constitutional democracy, and bringing the kind of freedom we enjoy as Americans to a group of people whose history has never provided a place for them to experience this kind of freedom. But our current President only sees the world, and measures it, in terms of monetary value. Idealism is well beyond his grasp, unless it can be turned into something off of which to make a profit, and he's not above stealing even that from the American people for his own personal benefit.
The world watched that press conference today, which showed the President and Vice President of the United States cannot be trusted to tell the truth, are not honest men, and one is a weak sycophant, while the other is an insane egomaniac. They showed that the United States does not have competent leadership, a position that makes us extremely vulnerable to our enemies. Their blatant misrepresentation of the United States, especially the lies they told, borders on treason. The false narrative they spouted puts the United States and its diplomatic corp around the world, those that Musk hasn't fired yet, in grave danger.
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