Four far-right "friends" on Facebook, since February 2022, have essentially stopped posting almost daily rants on Joe Biden's fraudulent victory in 2020 with threats to "party like its 1776." I'm not sure whether it's because Facebook is regulating their accounts after too many posts were flagged by algorithms as spreading false information or violating terms... Continue Reading →
From the 1930s through the 1980s, Americans divided politically over ideas they had to think through at least somewhat. Did they favor free enterprise or government regulation? Business or labor? Fewer government programs or more government programs? The 1990s were a transitional time when you could be a Clinton Democrat or a Bush/Dole Republican and... Continue Reading →
CNN: "Many Trump-leaning Republicans accuse their political counterparts of being "communist". Reality Check’s John Avlon speaks with Russian dissident and former World Chess Champion Garry Kasparov about what real communism is and why Americans shouldn't resort to extreme name calling." https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YHUrvN-hIM4 https://www.cnn.com/specials/us/john-...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ykLchRiGzDA President Biden's State-of-the-Union 2022 speech may signal a change in the international and domestic paradigm. He framed Russia's invasion of Ukraine as a larger struggle between autocracy and dictatorship. And he gave people reasons to see progress over the last year, most notably a record increase in job growth, record investments in infrastructure improvements,... Continue Reading →
"Patriotism means to stand by the country. It does not mean to stand by the President." -- Theodore Roosevelt, 26th President of the United States." "There is no middle ground between freedom and autocracy. Everyone will need to choose their side." -- Steve Schmidt on Twitter. Since the 2020 election, Donald Trump has created an... Continue Reading →
It's a relief to see respectable conservatives swat down the breath-taking, blatant attempts of Donald Trump and his cult followers to subvert democracy via patently false claims of election fraud. "Trump's challenge is over," the conservative Wall Street Journal editorialized. "He has no legal alternatives and ought to concede." Bitterness as a political strategy rarely... Continue Reading →
Federal troops in cities like Portland, ordered by President Trump without the approval or even consultation with local authorities, have increased tensions and confrontations. A few anarchists are using aggravation and black bloc tactics to incite violence. Protests in several major cities across the country have turned violent. This of course plays into the hands... Continue Reading →
Democrats, despite gerrymandering and the so-called problem of clustering, ultimately won more than 40 seats or 54 percent of the House of Representatives in the 116th Congress. They will hold 237 seats compared to 198 for Republicans -- 218 are needed to govern. The parties precisely reversed ratios in the House of Representatives from the previous Congress. Democratic gains... Continue Reading →
Senator Susan Collins, Republican from Maine: "We live in a time of such great disunity as the bitter fight over this (Kavanaugh) nomination both in the Senate and among the public clearly demonstrates. It is not merely a case of different groups having different opinions. It is a case of people bearing extreme ill will... Continue Reading →
In June, 1950, a freshman Republican senator from the state of Maine took her political life in her hands by challenging a hateful demagogue, fellow Republican Senator Joe McCarthy. Margaret Chase Smith (1897-1995), the first and only woman to serve in the US Senate for many years, offered a "Declaration of Conscience" that has become... Continue Reading →
400 Years of American Politics 