Education Left and Right is Education Right and Wrong

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The cartoon above is funny until you realize that it also illustrates the difference between public and private control of knowledge, positions respectively held by America's left and right-leaning political ideologies.

By logical extension and an awareness of current events, it also suggests that private ownership of knowledge can be, and is in fact used to undermine the rule of law and to rob the people if their constitutionally guaranteed rights and freedoms.

I know no safe depositary of the ultimate powers of the society but the people themselves; and if we think them not enlightened enough to exercise their control with a wholesome discretion, the remedy is not to take it from them, but to inform their discretion by education. This is the true corrective of abuses of constitutional power.
--Thomas Jefferson to William C. Jarvis, 1820. ME 15:278

The most effectual means of preventing [the perversion of power into tyranny are] to illuminate, as far as practicable, the minds of the people at large, and more especially to give them knowledge of those facts which history exhibits, that possessed thereby of the experience of other ages and countries, they may be enabled to know ambition under all its shapes, and prompt to exert their natural powers to defeat its purposes.
--Thomas Jefferson: Diffusion of Knowledge Bill, 1779. FE 2:221, Papers 2:526

More Accurate Than Nostradamus

Cartoonists of both the comic strip and editorial variety often make more accurate predictions of what lies ahead than those made by the celebrated French astrologer, physician, and reputed seer of the16th Century.

Walt Kelley's famous Pogo comic strip, published on Earth Day in 1971, foreshadowed the Great Pacific Garbage Patch and the other man-made, ecological messes whic now befoul the planet.

Kelly, of course, had access to news reports on the growing trash problem, so his prescience was informed. Other cartoonists, however, had no idea that their cartoons would one day accurately presage the personality, behavior, and world view of the man-child who would become the 45th President of the United States.

Bill Watterson is one such cartoonist. His Calvin and Hobbes strip ran from 1985 to1995. Six-year-old Calvin can easily be viewed as a young Donald Trump. 

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In contrast, Jeff Stahler is a currently active cartoonist, but today's Moderately Confused offering suggests that he may have been inspired by a video clip of an earlier Trump speech. 

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But the prophecy prize goes to H. L. Mencken. David Horsey of the Los Angeles Times, who on November 9, 2016, added artwork and commentary to a 1920 Mancken quote, which laid bare the truth about Trump and his supporters before Trump was even born.

Here's the cartoon. To read what David Horsey had to say, click the link below the image.

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No News is NOT Good News

I wrote the commentary below in 2005 as part of a conversation about how the press covers - or rather fails to cover - important issues facing our country.

I believe my assessment is as accurate today as it was then, with only a three-word revision needed. In the last sentence above my signature, "a Texas accent" becomes "an orange toupee." 😎

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You ask, "Why on earth would the AP put out that the issues have been widely debated?" Allow me to offer an answer.

The AP, in lockstep with every other mainstream "news" organization, has succumbed to the notion that its job is to report how people "feel" about issues rather than to report the facts behind those issues, with the understanding that a well-informed populace will use those facts to arrive at intelligent conclusions and to make well-informed decisions.

Within this imbecilic news paradigm, investigative journalism consists entirely of telling us how many people disagree on either side of a given issue. That's very much like reporting on the number of angels capable of dancing on the head of a pin and just as useful. The leaders of such sadly uninformed society, of course, are those who convince a dumbed-down public that they speak with the authority of God.

Once this has been achieved, all who disagree become irrelevant because by their very disagreement they prove that they lack the faith necessary to do what's "right."

Why on earth would the AP put out such a statement? A better question would be, is it any wonder that a smirking clown with a Texas accent sits in the White House?

George A. Denino

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The one thing that doesn't abide by majority rule is a person's conscience.
--Harper Lee, writer (1926- ) "To Kill a Mockingbird"

Bolt vs. Bolton - A Sprinter vs. A Warmonger

This is Usain Bolt

Usain St Leo Bolt is a retired Jamaican sprinter and world record holder in the 100 metres, 200 metres and 4 × 100 metres relay. His reign as Olympic Games champion in all of these events spans three Olympics. Due to his achievements and dominance in sprint competition, he is widely considered to be the greatest sprinter of all time.Wikipedia

This is Insane Bolton

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John Bolton is not a sprinter. He is a distance runner with a very long track record of leading America into war as an advisor to right-wing presidents.

These are his accomplishments and plans to take us into yet another war:

One of the most bloodthirsty members of a gang of war-mongering neo-conservatives (almost all, like him, having no military experience themselves), who ran foreign policy and launched wars of aggression during the Bush/Cheney administration, Bolton is a man who for years has been pushing for an imperial US policy to combat domestic economic decline. According this numbskull notion, Washington should attempt to maintain US primacy in the world affairs through force of arms, picking fights, starting wars, overthrowing governments a playing existentially risky games of chicken with nuclear powers like Russia and China. He and the wacko ideology known as neoconservatism, have returned with Bolton as a National Security Advisor, in this case to advise a president who thinks nuclear weapons are meant to be used.

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Bolton actively conspired during his tenure as the Bush administration’s policymaker on Iran from 2002 through 2004 to establish the political conditions necessary for the administration to carry out military action. 

More than anyone else inside or outside the Trump administration, Bolton has already influenced Trump to tear up the Iran nuclear deal. Bolton parlayed his connection with the primary financier behind both Benjamin Netanyahu and Donald Trump himself—the militantly Zionist casino magnate Sheldon Adelson—to get Trump’s ear last October, just as the president was preparing to announce his policy on the Iran nuclear agreement, the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA). He spoke with Trump by phone from Las Vegas after meeting with Adelson. 

It was Bolton who persuaded Trump to commit to specific language pledging to pull out of the JCPOA if Congress and America’s European allies did not go along with demands for major changes that were clearly calculated to ensure the deal would fall apart.

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Cleaning Up Trump's Twitter Vomit

Donald Trump tweets distractions designed to allow him to control the political narrative. If people stopped reacting to them as if they came from someone who cared about the country, he would lose the ability to do that.

His actions both before and since his inauguration clearly show that the only thing Trump cares about is Donald J. Trump.

Rather than responding with logic to each and every deceptive tweet, I believe the following response would be not only appropriate but also effective in thwarting his self-centered agenda:

"Once again, Donald Trump has vomited on America. There is no need to discuss the content of his latest tweet. Doing so only helps to spread the lies and deceptions on which he and his base feed."

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If - The Key Word In William Barr's Duplicity

Several years ago two Mormon missionaries attempted to convince me of the truth of their religion by first making a hypothetical statement and then treating it as unassailable fact. The following is the essence of their argument:

One day Joseph Smith was standing in a grove of trees when two men appeared to him, and one said, "This is my beloved son. Hear him."

If that happened, who do you suppose those two men were?

Now since God and Jesus appeared to Joseph Smith…

I am not suggesting that those Mormon missionaries were deliberately using this deception. In fact, I am convinced that they believed they were were telling the truth.

William Barr, on the other hand, is an accomplished liar who knows precisely what he is doing with the words he uses.

In his testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee on May 1, 2019, Barr demonstrated his ability to do the Mormon missionary shuffle to create a false defense for Donald Trump and undermine the Mueller Report when he said the following:

If the president is being falsely accused, which the evidence now suggests that the accusations against him were false, and (if) he knew they were false, and (if) he felt that this investigation was unfair, propelled by his political opponents, and was hampering his ability to govern, that is not a corrupt motive for replacing an independent counsel. 

...The evidence is now that the president was falsely accused of colluding with the Russians and accused of being treasonous. ...Two years of his administration have been dominated by allegations that have now been proven false.

Americans Silent As The GOP Commits Crimes Against Humanity

16-year-old unaccompanied migrant boy dies in U.S. custody

The unidentified boy died after days in intensive care at a children's hospital in Texas.

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"Dear Leader" and his GOP enablers commit crimes against humanity as Americans sit in front of their TVs waiting for someone with authority to tell them what they should believe.

Over thirty years of brainwashing by right-wing talk radio bigots, FOX "News" celebrities, hypocritical religious leaders, and the complicit GOP has convinced them that they can't think for themselves or believe what's in plain sight.

You may read this and say, "God help us!" But that's the very placebo Americans have swallowed along with the right-wing Kool-Aid.

In a nation that claims to have a government of, by, and for the people, THE PEOPLE need to make "God helps those who help themselves" their mantra, get off their asses, and take responsibility for running their country. It's not rocket science for folks to figure out which politicians have both promised and supported policies designed to help all Americans and which have wrapped themselves in the flag and "Christian values" while working to enrich themselves at the expense of those most in need.

Donald Trump Did Not Fail Us, But...

This headline from an April 19, 2019 op ed in USA Today provided the inspiration for today's  rant:

Mueller report: Donald Trump failed us as commander in chief

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First, let me say unequivocally that I am no fan of Donald J. Trump. In fact, I believe he ranks quite high among the most vile and despicable people ever to walk the earth. However...

Donald Trump did not fail us as commander in chief. He was never interested in us. He was and is interested only in himself. As commander in chief he has acted exactly as everyone who has ever followed his career knew he would act.

Donald Trump did not fail us, but...

Any failure attributable to Trump and his administration rests squarely on the shoulders of Mitch McConnell, Paul Ryan, Lindsey Graham, and the rest of the duplicitous, Republican sycophants who knew exactly who and what Trump was and nonetheless sold out - and continue to sell out - America for personal power and wealth.

Lowering The Barr

As I watched and listened to William "Shill" Barr rolling out his redacted version of the Mueller Report and rolling over the rule of law, this is what I saw.

My Fellow Progressives...

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Every adult knows that life consists of tradeoffs, that is, recognizing the difference between the real and the ideal and choosing the possible over the illusory pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.

In politics the ability to make such choices is essential to winning elections. Barack Obama's reputation for pragmatism was rooted in that understanding. It allowed him to winaccomplish a great deal, even if it was not as much as he or we had hoped for.

Nancy Pelosi's success in advancing progressive legislation in the face of a hide-bound conservative opposition consists entirely of pragmatic choices, and she certainly realizes that alienating one third of the electorate (i.e. those who self-identify as moderates) by publicly embracing a hard-left agenda will hand the election to Trump and shrink the big tent Democratic party into a left-wing version of Trump's MAGAT-infested base.

So, my fellow progressives, stop acting like spoiled brats shouting "But I want!" and work to win the election instead of drawing red lines that play into Trump's hand.

Mob Rule vs. Mob Rule

As the Founding Fathers wrestled with creating a constitution to replace the ineffective Articles of Confederation, one of their greatest fears was mob rule. These men were truly interested in creating a stable government, but they were primarily members of an elite minority of wealthy land owners and merchants who feared the common people (demos in Greek and the root word of democracy), who outnumbered them.

To protect their positions of privilege and wealth from the mob, they created a republic instead of a democracy. Their choice was based on the belief that an assembly of honest, educated, elected representatives like themselves could and would temper both the inevitable, wild swings in public opinion characteristic of the uneducated mob and also mitigate their own self-serving tendencies and instincts. 

It was a good plan, and it worked well for over two hundred years.

Unfortunately, the Founding Fathers could not foresee a time when the elected representatives would sell out the country and the Constitution for personal gain and support a would-be dictator hell bent on replacing representative governance with mob rule of the type practiced by the Mafia.

Race, Wealth, and the 14th Amendment

Q: Do race and wealth matter in a country that claims to guarantee equal protection under the law?
A: In today's America, you bet your * they do!

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Conversing Effectively with Trump Supporters

Don't try to engage Trump supporters in conversations based on critical thought, and don't expect them to follow a logical argument, let alone accept its conclusion. Doing so is like trying to teach algebra to a goldfish.

Instead, keep in mind with whom you are speaking and try to come up with a way to say something that might actually make a difference.

This short story provides an example of how such a strategy works.

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Republicanism and The Reality of Our Economy

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Unions brought us the 40 hour work week as well as retirement at 60 with a pension. Education created a middle class capable of questioning the underpinnings of our social order.

"The reality of our economy" is that it was designed and works to benefit those with the most wealth by exploiting those with the least wealth.

Most people are familiar with the "buy low; sell high" principle. However, most people don't understand that the prime commodity bought and sold in our economic system using this principle is people, more specifically, the skills and labor of people. As a result, unions and education are threats to "the reality of our economy" for both give the people power to bargain for a better deal.

In America, the Republican party is dominated by the wealthiest among us. Is it any wonder that it has worked and continues working to destroy both unions and education?

To maintain the buy low; sell high basis behind the reality of our economy, Republicans introduce so-called "Right to Work" legislation, which guts the prime commodity's bargaining power under the pretext of protecting freedom of choice. To create a new, "separate but equal" education system designed to educate the well off and train the masses, they limit funding for public education and promote using tax revenue to support private and charter schools.

I believe this cartoon captures the Republican view of an ideally structured economy and makes the strongest possible argument for Americans to re-evaluate their worth in the reality of our economy and oppose those who treat them as a commodity to be exploited.

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Republicans, if you're listening…

(from) The Life of Reason: The Phases of Human Progress by George Santayana

• Fanaticism consists in redoubling your efforts when you have forgotten your aim.

• Progress, far from consisting in change, depends on retentiveness. When change is absolute there remains no being to improve and no direction is set for possible improvement: and when experience is not retained, as among savages, infancy is perpetual. Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.

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Today I offer the words of George Santayana in the hope that those on the political right might read them and recognize the very real and imminent threat to human existence climate change poses.

Unfortunately, today's Republicans have shown that they only listen to what rattles around in the right-wing echo chamber.

The Tragedy of the Commons

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"The Tragedy of the Commons" is a term used to describe what happens to common resources as a result of human greed. It was first coined in an article in Science in 1968 by Garrett Hardin. The commons dilemma was seen long before Hardin, but he brought widespread attention to it and described it in a common-sense fashion that made it easily accessible.
At its core, the Tragedy of the Commons demonstrates that, in any situation where the consequences of a course of action are shared among a collective, while the benefits are reaped by an individual or single group within the collective, people will tend to take actions that in the long term are detrimental to the group as a whole. This is a tragedy because, in seeking their own personal gain, the members of the group actually ultimately hurt themselves.

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In America today, and throughout the so-called "developed" world, The Tragedy of the Commons is unfolding right before our eyes as greed drives economic, environmental, and political decisions. As a result, humanity is facing possible extinction as a species. Should this occur, it will be a suicide, and greed will be our weapon.

The GOP Card Party

Rather than attack Trump, Lindsey Graham attacks Trump critics who defend McCain

McCain's former "amigo" has become a Trump apologist, even as Trump attacks his late friend.It's an open secret as far as I'm concerned.

JOSH ISRAEL MAR 21, 2019, 9:52 AM

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How does one explain Lindsey Graham's actions; or, for that matter the actions of the entire collection of Republicans in Congress when it comes to sucking up to Donald J. Trump?

As far as I'm concerned, the answer to that question is an open secret.
Graham and the rest of the Congressional elephant troupe knew that Trump was dealing with the Russians and Wikileaks during the campaign, and they kept Trump's secret for two reasons:

1. Amassing power and personal wealth are more central to their core beliefs than serving one's country.

2. They didn't think Trump would win.

Trump, of course, knew they were with him in his deception. In fact, he could never have altered the GOP's platform regarding Ukraine without help from others in the party who most likely wanted in on the action. To think otherwise is to believe that Republicans are blind and have the intelligence of a bag of bellybutton lint. Republicans may be morally bankrupt, but one should not confuse them with the MAGATS that make up the base of their party.

Now that he's President, their complicity in deceiving the voters gives Trump leverage over them. He owns them the same way Putin owns him.

As a result, today's Republican party is nothing but a house of cards; and the cards are all jokers. If any one of them had the decency and courage to fess up and provide proof of the deception perpetrated in 2016, the GOP would come crashing down. However, Graham et al. have no decency and certainly no courage. They've chosen to spread lies to glue together their house of cards in the hope that the voters won't notice come election time and blow it down.

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Steve King is Not An Aberration

For those who only recently tuned in…

The racists in the GOP were once Democrats. Back then they were called Dixiecrats, a moniker that signaled that they were somehow different from mainstream Dems. "Dixie" was a strong clue as to how they were different, and the party treated them differently. Keeping their strongest biases in check while recognizing the need for their votes in order to govern, the Democrats slowly advanced a progressive agenda.

When the Democrats passed the Civil Rights Act in 1964, the Dixiecrats bolted, and the GOP and Richard Nixon opened their arms to them with the Southern strategy.

For the regressive right it was a marriage made in heaven.

The rest of the political spectrum is now learning that the only similarity between heaven and where that marriage was made is in the white robes worn by all.

I addressed this topic in a post on February 14, 2014. I offer that post again today…

The Tea Party Two-Step
The other day I saw this picture on Facebook.

BLACK HISTORY PHOTO OF THE DAY: Mrs. James Dascomb and Mrs. Charles Finney take their rightful place among 15 women graduates of Oberlin College's Class of 1855. In 1835, Oberlin became the first predominately white college to admit African American male students and two years later it opened its doors to all women, becoming the first coeducational college in the U.S. If you stand for equality, please like and share!

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I found it thought-provoking and shared it on my timeline, along with this comment:

Yet, 179 years after Oberlin integrated its campus, there are still a whole lot of Americans, who don't like the fact that the White House is inhabited by a Black man, and they are doing everything they can think of to undermine his presidency.
We will have matured as a nation when such people are identified as bigots and thereby deemed unsuitable for public office by the voters of their local and state communities.

A friend then replied:

Too often, however, bigots get elected because bigots vote for bigots. What needs to happen is for Society (and the media) to begin condemning bigots publicly, but we know that's never going to happen since the media "must" be "fair" in its coverage. After all, you can't call Candidate A a bigot if you don't have a similar disparaging remark to make about Candidate B. That might give Candidate B (the decent human being) an "unfair advantage." Phooey.

My friend's description of the media's song and dance routine is accurate, and in writing "must" in quotation marks he correctly implies that this way of being "fair" is disingenuous. Of course it is. "The media" is an agglomeration of for-profit businesses. No business wants to alienate its customers, and the music to which any business dances is always played on the cash register. Thus, the media's "fairness" policy is a subterfuge which enables them to retain that sizable portion of their revenue stream which flows from the pockets of the bigots found in the general population.

The media are not the only dancers who have learned the choreography. For decades the Democratic Party excelled at the political version of that disingenuous dance. To hold on to its Dixiecrat faction and thereby maintain majority control of Congress, it not only danced, but baked. As it tripped the light fantastic, it twisted its policies and positions into half-baked pretzels, which it served to the country as "the best we can do" without bothering to mention that they could do better if  the voters demanded more from them. The ringing cash register dictated that they not modify the well-rehearsed steps of the dance.

But when Lyndon Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act, the music changed; and whenever that happens, dancers with a limited repertoire usually leave the dance floor. The Dixiecrats found themselves unable to dance to the new, national tune of integration and equality, and their bigotry made it impossible for them to even consider learning a new routine.

So the Dixiecrats fled to the GOP, which eagerly embraced them under the mantle of its "Southern Strategy." There they discovered they could spread hatred and bigotry throughout the party by co-opting the two social forces  moderate conservatives had long used to gain the unquestioned loyalty of their constituents - religion and patriotism. The moderates had danced conservatively; the newcomers garishly brandishing the trappings of unassailable religion and patriotism and turned the dance into a bacchanal. Eventually they abandoned all pretense to mainstream republicanism and rebranded themselves as "Tea Party Patriots."

Unlike the Democratic Party, the GOP has not been able to come up with a political pretzel recipe to simultaneously advance its conservative agenda  and also maintain control over their bigots. In fact, the former Dixiecrats appear to be writing the music to which the GOP must now dance; and, thanks to the Tea-Party Two Step, the "Party of Lincoln" appears to be on the verge of becoming the Party of Jefferson...Davis, that is.