INDEPENDENCE DAY REFLECTIONS

By Ruth A. Sheets

July 4^{th is here}, Independence Day.  It was 248 years ago today, in Philadelphia when the Congress approved the report from the Declaration Committee, and John Hancock, President of the Congress and Charles Thompson, Secretary of Congress signed “The Declaration of Independence.”  It was a pretty radical document at the time.  Not only had 13 of the British-American colonies taken up arms against their mother country, but they had produced a document to explain why.  Other nations in the past two centuries since, have done something similar to gain their own freedom. 

Declaring Independence was, of course, the easy part.  Fighting for that independence would continue on and off for more than 7 years.  Then there was the hard work of governing a nation made up of individualists, people who believed their faith should be pushed on everyone living in the new nation, farmers, merchants (each with their own needs and issues), professional people and tradesmen.  In addition, women, Black people whether enslaved or free, the indigenous people, poor white folks, and children had no say about anything, just as in Britain.   

Developing an agreement among the 13 states was essential and Congress began with “The Articles of Confederation,” which proved far less than successful.  By 1787, it was clear something had to be done if the union were to be preserved.  The “Constitution of the United States,” as we know was a product of desperation.  It too, was far from perfect, but it was a start.  The men who worked to produce the framework for our government made provisions for amending the Constitution, but did not make it possible to incorporate the amendments into the body of the document.  Over time, those amendments have been seen as just add-ons that could be, well, dismissed or ignored entirely if desired.  Ratification of the Constitution, though, hinged on there being a bill of rights that would state the most important of the rights every American citizen would have as unalienable.  So, in 1791, the “Bill of Rights” was added to our constitution.  In 233 years, only 17 amendments have been added and one of those was to negate the Prohibition Amendment.”  That lack of amendments is because it is extremely hard to amend our constitution, requiring 2/3 of the members of Congress and ¾ of the states to ratify.  We actually have an amendment ready to add, but alas, a misogynistic Congress back in the 1970s decided it could put a time limit on its ratification, something not in the Constitution, but Congress has often made things up to suit themselves.  Since there is no precedent for this time limit, and the required number of states have ratified, it seems to me the President could send it to the National Archivist to be officially added to the Constitution because it looks like our Congress has remained just as misogynistic as 40+ years ago and won’t remove its unconstitutional time limit.  

Now, according to our Supreme Court conservative 6, as of July 1, 2024, our president has nearly unlimited powers if something is claimed to be official.  So, Adding the 28^th Amendment, The Equal Rights Amendment to the Constitution would be within his powers, and would finally include women in our constitution, after just over a century of trying.

It really is strange the things that come to me when I am contemplating Independence Day each year.  This year, it’s that there are many in this country who have decided they would prefer America become a dictatorship under a man who has no moral compass, cares for nothing and no one but himself, and who has no clue about our nation’s history, struggles, and attempts to “form a more perfect union.”  They as a group of white, mostly male  “pseudo-christians” have decided they know what is right for everyone and that it is their warped form of Christianity which actually has little to do with Christianity, just acquisition of power and money for themselves, with no opposition. 

They and their fathers have been working on this project for half a century and more and are getting closer.  Those men have lots of money and access to lots more as they promise the very rich that if they let those white guys get power and keep it, they will let the addicted rich accumulate even more wealth and force workers to work for even lower wages and live in even more vile conditions.  Those very rich are delighted and are totally on board, even bribing our judges and justices as well as members of Congress and state legislatures with impunity.  To keep women, people of color, LGBTQ+ persons, immigrants, and poor folks from interfering, they are regularly passing laws to limit the rights of those people  , most of us, to vote, control our bodies, tell medical personnel whom to treat, imprison migrants, asylum-seekers, limit travel, and on and on.  They have purchased so many judges and justices they can sue and get whatever they want from them, even the 6 on the Supreme Court and there is no one in power either able or willing to stop it. 

As I sit and enjoy this summer day, I can’t help but wonder whether I will be able to sit here next year and enjoy the day as a continuation of American efforts toward a more diverse and egalitarian society.  I wonder who will be harmed if Donald Trump is re-elected and his anti-American crew creates a throne from which they can control or harm anyone they don’t like.  Somehow, those usurpers of our democracy are working hard to undermine our current president and are getting help from some Democrats too.  It is breaking my heart to see the anger and resentment Republicans have inserted into the democratic process and how many Democrats are buying it.  Their attacks on President Biden’s age, for example, are appalling when his opponent is nearly as old and is a lying machine that can’t tell truth from lies and needs constant coaching to spew the same nonsense at every rally, names of the insulted interchangeable.

Our founders, the ones the Supreme Court conservatives seem to love so much would have been appalled at how things have improved, then deteriorated over the past 250 years.  They would have wanted us to make more progress in living together.

However, what I know is, as always, it is going to be up to us, We the People to keep or reject our democracy.  Getting the truth out about who each candidate is, acknowledging the vast differences in their vision for this nation, and pushing our fellow citizens who actually care about this nation, to vote for President Biden and Vice-President Harris and Democrats up and down the ballot is critical!  Dump the Republican hate fest and their racist, misogynistic, xenophobic, homo/transphobic candidates who want  to control everyone’s lives except their own. 

We can do this!  Our ancestors have done it before.  This time, we need to win and come out of the fray energized and ready to see that everyone here is treated equitably, that people have what they need, and the rich folks, not too much, and that we tackle the global warming crisis NOW, not well, when we decide to get around to it. 

Happy July 4^th!

HYPOCRICANS NOW ARE A PARTY

by Ruth A. Sheets

This morning, I heard a snippet Of Trump’s speech to the Black community at Temple Univ. yesterday.  My response, what a hypocrite!  It takes gall for a convicted criminal to lie about crime in Philadelphia.  I remember having written a blog about hypocrisy a while back, called “hypocricans.”  I thought I had written it about 5 or 6 years ago.  I looked back through my more than 13 years of blogs.  It turned out I actually wrote the blog a bit over 11 years ago.  I find it interesting, perhaps a little amusing that I remember a particular blog from so long ago, then I read it and realized it is at least as relevant now as back then.  I pass it on to you here.  I have updated it in a few places, but, I have left it intact.  I have italicized the updates.  I would love to know what you think and if there is anything we can do about this blatant rarely reported hypocrisy on the part of trump and friends. 

Whenever an election season comes around, folks begin talking about third parties.  I want to get a head start.  I have a modest proposal for a third party, or rather, a second and a half party.  I would call them the “Hypocricans.”   Iin the past 11 years, I have come to see that we don’t need a third party when the “Republican” Party has taken over the Hypocrican role.  That works because they need their position clearly articulated.

In order to be a member of this party, one must meet a variety of rather strict criteria.  But, these criteria are DOABLE and I suspect that there are a great many people who could join tomorrow.  OK, about 70 million of them are already members in “good” standing.

1. A member must want only to associate with people who believe the same things he does.  This is very important because it can make a person uncomfortable to have any beliefs challenged, and God knows a lot of folks can’t bear to be challenged on anything, especially related to their cherished beliefs. 

2. Members must not have an original thought.  Original thoughts can alienate those one would like to emulate.  It might make others think a person is too smart (elite) to be included in their set, and that would be a tragedy.

3. Members must be male or hold to the “honored” tradition that white men are superior to everyone else.  We know that a lot of women, and a few people of color have this essential value, so, for a while at least, there will be a strong pool to draw from.  It is not clear why anyone not white and male would want to be a Hypocrican, but I bet it has something to do with preferring to be a big fish in a small pool (the small pool being the number of prominent women, people of color, and LGBTQ+ persons in the Party.  Not much competition!

4. Members must despise, distrust, and/or fear women.  Passing legislation that limits women’s rights and ability to choose helps to keep the female gender in its place and to keep males dominant.  Effective propaganda makes even many women fall wholeheartedly into line.  That is not enough, though.  it is necessary for these women to condemn their sisters who value choice and won’t march to their beat.

5. Members must be Christian, assuming that our founding fathers were all Christian (no matter the actual religious faith of George, Thomas, Benjamin, and the others).  Only Christians truly have God’s ear and know exactly what God wants everyone in America to do.  In their heart of hearts, they must know that God has ordained them to be His army on earth.  I call these folks “pseudo-christians,” because they follow few if any of the basic Christian principles.

6. Members must hate “Big Government.”  That hatred, however must only extend to programs that help people who are poor, struggling, aging, disabled, unemployed, uninsured, and children.  The role of “Big Government” is to enforce the values of the hypocricans:  big military, Big Money, Big Brother in the bedroom, Big Security watching everyone everywhere (if you’re doing the right thing, you won’t care who sees you doing it).  Of course, there’s no problem with “cop cams” that just happen to be off when they shoot a Black man)

7. Members must hold forgiveness in high esteem.  That forgiveness, though can only come after tearful, if not too sincere apologies for infidelity, extortion, embezzlement, influence peddling, insider trading . . .  And, this forgiveness wipes out all previous offenses, but only for members and their supporters, the true believers.  

8. Members must LOVE guns.  Despite all evidence to the contrary, members must KNOW that guns are the only way they can be safe.  Members will adhere to the “keep and bear arms” clause of the second amendment, but carefully forget the “well-regulated” or “militia” parts of the same amendment.  And, it is OK to have bump stocks, assault-style weapons, and to openly carry, unless you’re Black, of course.

9. Members must believe that science is a hoax and that nothing science or scientists have to say can be counted as true unless it directly helps the military, provides drugs to improve members’ lives, or contributes to members’ comfort and convenience.  NO VACCINES!

10. Members must know how to make mountains out of mole hills when minor problems arise within the opposition administration:  Ben Gazi, IRS targeting a few right-wing organizations to be sure they really are “Social welfare” not political, tapping phones of a few journalists.  They must also know how to make mole hills out of mountains when they are being held accountable:  outing CIA agents, starting wars due to a series of lies (so what if more than 4,000 Americans died, it was for the security of America), not showing up to help minority victims of a natural disaster, remember Katrina and Puerto Rico.

In short, Hypocricans must value hypocrisy above all virtues but not admit to it.  There are a whole lot of people who would make terrific members.  I nominate Sara Palin, Mitch McConnell, John Boener, Michele Bachman, and Marco Rubio (as the token minority figure along with Ted Cruz and Tim Scott).  I also nominate Samuel Alito, Clarence Thomas, and the other 4 conservative Supreme Court justices who lie regularly, make up laws, accept cases they should never hear, take good care of businesses rightly accused of criminal behavior, yet claim impartiality.  Then, there’s Donald Trump and his family!  I’m guessing Karl Rove, Roger Stone, the Steves, and the Heritage Foundation with its “Project 25” will design their platform for them.  Rove’s had a lot of experience and anyway,  he is a charter member.    

It is obvious we have only moved deeper into Republican hypocrisy over these past 11 years.  When I wrote this originally, I was reminded that I should not be name-calling.  I have decided that might have been good advice back then, but when a man is running for president who regularly breaks the law, is a convicted criminal, and only avoids standing trial for other even more serious crimes because of “friendly” judges, yet claims to be a “law and order” candidate, the party he leads is “Hypocrican.”   This former president, while in office, pardoned criminals who helped him commit the crimes, has established lying as a critical criterion for being a leader in his “Hypocrican” Party, it is essential to call a thing what it is, and Republicans are hypocrites, so renaming the party is fair!  Besides, “Republicans” are no longer in favor of maintaining our Republic.  

THE TRUMP ALPHABET

By Ruth A. Sheets

Every day, I follow several Substack threads.  Last week on one of them, participants were naming words that described Donald Trump.  At first the words were random, then Mary B. decided to put them together into the framework of the song “A You’re Adorable.”  Several other people joined the fun with additional words.  I decided to make a full alphabet for Mr. Trump.  The words and rhymes are mostly mine except for letters “C” through “F.”  Mary B. is responsible for those.

so, here it is for your entertainment.  I suspect you may come up with other words that would fit even better.  If you have stronger words and rhymes, please pass them along and maybe we could have something that could really connect with folks on social media.  Perhaps, one way to defeat this would-be dictator is to point out just how unfit for any office he is and do it with a bit of humor

A you’re one we Abhor, B you’re a deadly Boor,

C you're a Criminal at heart. 

D you're Deplorable, E Egotistical,

F just a Felon with a Fart.

G Generous not a bit, H you're a Hypocrite, 

I you're Incompetent to all,

J you're a Jealous Jerk,  K Knowing you don't work,

L you're a Lying brat on call,

M you're a Mess to Meet, N a Notorious cheat,

O you're Obnoxious and obscene 

P a Pathetic man, Q Quite a ghastly tan 

R you're Ridiculous but mean

S you're Superfluous, T you are Tedious,

U you’re Uniquely Unaware.

V Vladamir’s a friend, W Why do you pretend,

You have capacity to care?

X Xenophobic one,  Y You’re for YOU alone

Z Zip your mouth and all will cheer! 

it's time you go back  and,  stay home at Trumpy Land

And eat your resentment, hate, and fear.  Yummy!

 

Feel free to pass this on to anyone who needs a set of alphabetical images to remind them of Trump’s near total inadequacy.  Maybe they’ll get a bit of a chuckle too.

 (thanks to the song “A You’re Adorable” by Buddy Kay et al for the idea)

THE BIDEN ECONOMY-MEDIA DILEMMA

By Ruth A. Sheets

Robert Reich, Substack commentator, University Professor, former Secretary of Labor, wrote today that President Biden needs to speak more forcefully and often about the ways corporations are harming the American people, the way Senate candidates Casey or PA, Brown of OH, Rosen of NV, and others have spoken out.  My response to his article is as follows with a few changes and additions.  I’d like to know your reaction to this.

It has been 9 years since Donald Trump jumped on his golden escalator and rode into the throat of our nation, causing as much chaos as he could with only a few patriots trying to stand in the way of even more damage done.  Trump has been the first or second news item on a vast majority of newscasts since then even when he was not president or even officially running for anything.  In the 2016 campaign candidate Hillary Clinton got only “emails” and “Ben Gazi,” both non-issues that had been more than fully dealt with before the campaign mostly in her favor.  At the same time Trump's comments no matter how stupid, how evil, how ridiculous and uninformed got prominence on the air, even at NPR.  His "supporters" were interviewed and the only thing we learned was that they are were and are as uninformed as their Trump. 

During the 2020 campaign news outlets only briefly mentioned the poor quality of Trump’s presidency, and not at all that he did almost no work, because he just didn’t know what to do.  His handling of COVID 19 was problematic.  He did get vaccine research moving, though acted as though researchers hadn’t been working on it since the early 2000s and it was all done under his careful watch; it wasn’t.  Then he didn’t push the vaccine when he learned some prominent supporters were antiivaxers. 

When Trump left office, the economy was in free-fall and just as in 2009 when Barack Obama became president in the midst of the “Great Recession which occurred under Republican Bush, Biden was left with an enormous mess that he would have to clean up with little to no help from the Fed (he mistakenly left Jerome Powell in charge, a poor attempt at bipartisanship).  He knew he was not going to get much if any help from Republicans in Congress and it turned out to be the truth.  Biden did get insulted and belittled, though, and the full-scale Republican lying and disinformation strategy set in. 

Despite all of that and despite the defection of two supposedly Democratic senators, Manchin and Sinema, Biden managed to get some important legislation passed in the first 2 years of his term, the term when Dems were in charge of both the House and Senate.  Biden also was “shot in the foot” by Democrats across the country, in the 2022 mid-term elections, particularly in New York who didn’t vote, which allowed Republicans in their chaos to run the House, which has been an 18-month clown show. 

In the 2024 campaign in the media, so far, President Biden’s economic successes have been generally dismissed despite the major improvements to our economy, our infrastructure, our well-being he has helped to initiate. 

Donald Trump did nothing positive while in office for anyone but the very rich with the massive tax cuts and none of that was passed on to the ordinary people, even Trump's "supporters" yet they now think they were so much better off then.  They can't name one thing that was better, but truth is irrelevant to the Trumpers and Trumpettes whose only contact with the real world is their workplace, their churches, and right-wing news outlets, all of which are slanted in ways that encourage them to think as little as possible, to resent what others have that they don’t and to blame THOSE people for it (except the very rich, because that is what they want to be.  Biden can stand up and has stood up to speak about what corporations are doing to the American people, the price gouging, the shrinkflation, the greedflation, the monopolies  (and he has spoken loudly about all of these), but it is as though he has been silent if one considers the current media coverage.  

In addition to the corporate bad behavior that has hurt consumers, the Fed has kept interest rates high because they settled on an almost impossible inflation rate to meet 2%, before they will lower interest rates, even a tiny fraction. People can't afford to buy a home or car or to take out a loan for repairs or improvements, and the deals they make with banks and other loan agencies have outrageously high rates for the consumer.  Credit card interest rates are robbery.  Powell, the Fed Chair, told us he was expecting a recession and he has been working hard to make it happen, but it hasn't happened yet.  He is still going to be working on it because the elections are still 140 days away and he wants a complete Republican victory and who cares who is harmed.  The Fed could call out the corporations but I have not heard a word about it from them.  I don't know what Biden can do when even as president he is hardly heard. 

Even today when Trump had nothing of any value to say, except that he was tripping up to the Capitol to "consult" with his elected cult members, his story Trumped Biden's actual trip to Europe for discussions on how to deal with the real issues in front of the world's economies.  However, say if Biden should slip a bit while walking up a wet staircase, that would make the top story, proving he is too old and incompetent.  Every time Trump opens his mouth he proves his incompetence, but it is covered as though it is some kind of “normal” pronouncement.  Well, it is, pronouncing that he is a fool who wants to be a dictator over our democracy and tear it to pieces so his toddler self can prove he is bigger and badder than the other kids. 

Messaging and advertising have not been a strong suit for Democrats, although Dem speeches are far superior to anything Republicans have dished up in decades.  And, Democrats actually do try to work to make things better for more people than just themselves, but that cannot penetrate the orange wall. 

Democrats do depend on donations from corporations, a bad practice, but when the other side is taking advantage of such resources, ignoring that resource would be foolish.  The Roberts Supreme Court erroneously decided that money is speech and corporations and rich people should be able to “speak” in campaigns as much and as often as they wish.  Because of this, corporations and rich folks have far more influence than they have a right to be when it is one person one vote.  All candidates can benefit, but Republicans who want a free rein for corporate activities benefit most.  That corporate power does mean Biden has to be a bit careful when calling out those corporations, although, since he is gaining nothing from being seen as silent, maybe stirring the corporate pot a whole lot more could help.

I would really like to see more Democratic presidential advertisements in all media spoken by prominent people describing what Biden has been working on, how Republicans in Congress have done everything to block efforts to help people, and a counter to Trump’s promise of a dictatorship filled with revenge and hatred, more money to the rich, and disregard for the law and our Constitution.  A bit of comedy from some of our greats, like Alonzo Bodin and Samantha B, some serious talk from say, Martin /Sheen and Barack Obama, and maybe a song or jingle from some composers and musicians like Bruce Springsteen and Tom Paxton.  Get creative folks!  This really is a crisis!