The Justice Department sued to block the new congressional districts approved by CA voters last week.
In an email Bondi said, “California’s redistricting scheme is a brazen power grab that tramples on civil rights and mocks the democratic process. Governor Newsom’s attempt to entrench one-party rule and silence millions of Californians will not stand.”
The email said nothing about the earlier gerrymander in Texas.
The last pennies were minted yesterday in Philadelphia. I understand the rationale. I know about the cost of making them vs. the value of the coin. Nonetheless, I feel sad. All those sayings: “A penny saved is a penny earned,” “A penny for your thoughts,” “Find a penny, pick it up....”
Pennies are part of our culture. “Every time it rains, it rains pennies from heaven.” There was penny candy, penny loafers, “penny dreadfuls.” Things cost a pretty penny, and people were penny pinchers.
I know, I know. I’m old. I dislike change. Unless it is in pennies.
The right of political asylum is in the Declaration of Human Rights and other international treaties. If you are fleeing for your life from your country because of your political beliefs or your religion, you are guaranteed the right to asylum.
Under Trump’s deportation proceedings, the U.S. is now sending Iranian refugees who fled Iran to escape persecution back to Iran and certain imprisonment and probably death. I am so angry and so ashamed of my country right now.
And why is this bone spur chicken shit giving speeches on Veterans’ Day? Just shut up for one damn day, please.
Revolutions in technology don’t necessarily lead to better lives for the people involved. For example, it is well accepted that the shift from hunter-gatherers to agriculture led to shorter lives, social hierarchy, armies, and taxation.
Dr. Luke Kemp, aka “Dr. Doom,” has just published a book entitled “Goliath’s Curse: The History and Future of Societal Collapse.” Kemp says, “We live in a uniquely dangerous time.” To quote a review of the book, (which I have not read and am not sure I want to), we are in “...an age of pandemics, global heating, inequality, the rise of authoritarianism, the development of potentially dangerous artificial intelligence technologies and the ever-present nuclear sword of Damocles.”
Dr. Kemp says, “The future of collapse looks far grimmer than the past.”
Let’s abandon all this talk about “We’ll get you in the primary,” or “those eight Dems were traitors,” or “we were winning, and they caved.”
How many people went hungry tonight because they couldn’t get their food stamps? How many people couldn’t fly home to see a dying relative because their flight was cancelled? How many people faced eviction because they couldn’t pay the rent?
When elephants fight, it is the grass that gets trampled. Yes, the Dems were winning the public relations battle, but is that the kind of battle the Dems want to win. If the Republicans refuse to extend the medical payments, people will suffer, but at least then we will know who caused the suffering, and the voters can punish them, which they will.
Those eight Democrats, I’m sure, did not take that step lightly. I’m know they agonized over what they did and came to the conclusion that their vote was the right thing to do.
OK, maybe not Fetterman.
My American Studies students really liked F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, but that may have been because it was relatively short compared to Uncle Tom’s Cabin or The Grapes of Wrath, which we also read.
I’m fairly certain Trump never took American Studies and never read The Great Gatsby, although he may have seen the movie. The tone-deaf Trump threw a lavish Halloween “Gatsby” party, rumored to have cost over $3 million in taxpayer funds.
The book was published 100 years ago in 1925 during the “Jazz Age.” Wall Street was jumping. Morals were in flux. Jay Gatsby made some of his fortune working with the gambler who fixed the “Black Sox” World Series.
Just today I heard that two major league pitchers have been accused of fixing games. Gambling is rampant. Morals are in decline. We are in repeat mode. As Karl Marx wrote: “History repeats itself, first as tragedy, second as farce.” We are in the farce stage.
Let me end the way the book ends. Gatsby’s friend Nick Carraway, after finding Gatsby dead and floating in his pool, states: “They were careless people, Tom and Daisy–they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness or whatever it was that kept them together and let other people clean up the mess they had made.”
Here is an except from a chapter entitled "The Making of Americans" from an old textbook:
Persons of foreign birth who have not been naturalized are known as aliens. There are several millions of aliens residing in our country. They enjoy almost, although not quite, all the privileges of citizens. They are entitled to full protection of their lives and property by our government; they may move freely about the country and engage in business; they are entitled to all the privileges of the state courts and to some privileges of the national courts; they have freedom of religious belief. In some states there are restrictions against the holding of real estate by aliens ; but many states allow it and by the Homestead Act Congress has given millions of acres to them. In some states aliens may even vote for state and national officers after having declared their intention of becoming citizens.
from Arthur William Dunn, The Community and the Citizen, rev. and enlarged. Boston: D. C. Heath & Co., 1914. According to the stamp on the inside front cover it was used as a textbook in the Palmerton School District.
