Quotes of the Day -- On Wishes

Imagination and fiction make up more than three quarters of our real life.

Simone Weil

A person will sometimes devote all his life to the development of one part of his body - the wishbone.

Robert Frost

Quote and Question of the Day

But hey, thanks, Mr. President!

Thanks, Republicans!

This President Trump's re-election slogan:

Trump 2020!

What ELSE have you got to lose?

Thought for the Day

"Reality is what we take to be true. 

What we take to be true is what we believe. 

What we believe is based upon our perceptions. 

What we perceive depends on what we look for. 

What we look for depends on what we think. 

What we think depends on what we perceive. 

What we perceive determines what we believe. 

What we believe determines what we take to be true. 

What we take to be true is our reality."

~ David Bohm

So Many Things Too Many Americans Don't Know of Iran, the Middle East and Recent History

I found the following post today on Facebook on the page of author, reporter and former correspondent for NPR until 2014.

As I said, so many things too many of us Americans don't know in our world. I thought this enlightening, if not even important.

                                                    

Last night, for a few girlfriends, I made baba ghanoush for the first time in a long time. Blistering the eggplants’ skins to black, hulling out the pomegranate seeds, I thought of the first time I was served it -- in a beautiful salon, the snow falling outside, the carpets unfurled and the talk, mesmerizing. I was in North Tehran, at the home of two scholars, Goli and Karim Imami. It was 1995, 16 years after the Iranian revolution, and NPR hadn’t had anyone in the country in years. In the short two weeks I’d have there, I met scores of people -- and even, fell in love with an amazing man over tea and jasmine and jazz.

I would make several more trips to Iran in the 90’s and 2000, one of which, for the Washington Post magazine, would even lead to meeting my husband a few years later. Iran is a spectacularly beautiful country -- you can ski right outside Tehran, or visit the Caspian Sea. 

Once, doing a story for Vanity Fair, I got stuck overnight on a train with Faezeh Rafsanjani, the daughter of President Rafsanjani, who was the country’s leader then. We went skiing, too. I made many, many friends -- and my Iranian boyfriend, Ramin, moved with me for a year to Canada, where he became a citizen, (his brothers were already there) before he returned to Tehran and his business. He was a brilliant physicist and poet. 

We’ve lost touch, but so many other friends remain -- Mamak, the art collector, scholar and curator, Houman, the graphic artist who had his own marketing and design firm (he’d spend eight years in America before returning to aging parents), Azar Nafisi, the author who emigrated and wrote Reading Lolita in Tehran and I remember, too, all the women who were pushing for change. Maziar Bahari, the documentary filmmaker who was imprisoned in 2009 and lives in London today.

Iran has had internal struggles since the dawn of 20th century, sometimes erecting democratic measures, as in its 1906 constitution (demolished in 1979), and other times, more often, seen those instincts suppressed by monarchies or theocracies -- but it is the Americans overthrew its democratically-elected prime minister Mosaddegh in 1953, in favor of the US-dependent Shah and his brutally repressive regime. The 1979 revolution was wildly popular before it was essentially hijacked by its theocracy, which has enacted its own brutality on the Iranian people, murdering thousands of people. And one way or another, they have held onto power ever since, despite mass demonstrations and international pressure.

But at least Iran, in 2015, under the nuclear agreement JCPOA, signaled it would give diplomacy a try, and abide by the international nuclear agreement that Donald Trump couldn’t wait to tear up, a racist’s rebuke to an African-American president, whose hated legacy he’d do anything to destroy.
Now, the forces of progressivism have been dealt a tremendous blow in the killing of Soleimani. 

Even Iranians who would have hated his malicious lethality believe in Iran’s sovereignty-- and there is plenty of hatred within Iran for its own leadership. There were huge demonstrations last fall. 

Listening to my former colleague Mary Louise Kelley conduct her excellent interview with Javad Zarif, Iran’s foreign minister, I thought back to a time when I’d interviewed him in New York, and how bitter and angry he sounded last night. 

As why should he not? 

Skills of diplomacy have failed-- and this president has hollowed out intelligence in all the various military sectors, left nearly a score of top defense and intelligence positions vacant, all so that he can act arbitrarily and conduct his whims by tweet.2020 dawns with fear -- the fires in Australia, the gaslighting from the White House and its enablers like Pompeo, the missile strikes raining down in an Iraq caught helplessly in between the US and Iran, and the Iranian people insulted and enraged.

We talked so much, when I was in Iran 20 years ago, about "goftegu," dialogue - could there be a dialogue between Iran and democracies. Two men had founded a magazine by that name. And even though at least them would have to flee, (as did many others; Iran is a bad actor to its own people as well) at least, while Barack Obama was president, we had some dialogue. We had diplomacy. Iranians had sympathy for Americans after 2001.

If there is any sympathy there today, I can imagine, it is among the kinds of educated people who’ve struggled under this regime, who know too well what it is like to have a malignant actor with autocratic instincts at the helm. We have a man who would destroy culture, something he does not understand, and who celebrates war crimes. 

I just hope we can survive long enough to get rid of him. 

Until he is gone, the world is so much less safe.

My baba ghanoush was well-received. Restraint, restraint, restraint.

Links:

Jacki Lyden - Wikipedia

Jacki Lyden : NPR

Jacki Lyden - Author | Facebook

Quote of the Day -- Sunday Edition

And yes, folks, I Googled it. He really did say this.

]

The Most Insightful Writing On This President?

I do believe, personally, that Michael Gerson may well be writing the most lucid, insightful and intelligent, relevant, nearly important pieces about this current President.

MICHAEL GERSON: Trump's twilight zone

It is sometimes argued that the media should spend less time on President Trump’s transgressive tweets in order to devote more attention to real issues such as North Korea. In fact, it is necessary to focus on Trump’s tweets precisely because they shed light on the mind that is doing the deciding on North Korea. It is a distasteful exercise. But we cannot look away. We need to know the state of mind we’re dealing with.

Trump’s tweets reveal a leader who is compulsive, abusive and easily triggered. Trump describes all this as “modern day presidential.”

What we are witnessing is not a new age in presidential communications. It is an ongoing, public breakdown. And the question naturally arises: Is this the result of mental dysfunction?

Most psychiatrists are (understandably) uncomfortable with diagnosis from a distance. And the particular diagnosis of narcissistic personality disorder requires significant impairment – which is a hard case to make of a figure at the pinnacle of American politics.

And yet. There are judgments that must be made about the fitness of the leaders. Citizens are under no ethical obligation to be silent when they see serious dysfunction. The challenge here is not merely the trashing of political norms. The main problem is the possibility that America has an unbalanced president during a period of high-stakes global testing. This is not a clinical diagnosis. It is a civic and political judgment, made necessary by the president’s own words and acts. Trump holds a job that requires, above all else, the ability to unite and steady the nation in a time of crisis. There is no reason to believe he can play that role.

Much of the prudence and courage required to confront this problem will need to come from Republicans and conservatives. Where to start? How about refusing to downplay revolting lunacy?

It is not merely an “occasional ad hominem” for a president to employ the tremendous power of his office to target individual American citizens who oppose him. It is an abuse of power.

It is not merely “uncouth” for a president to tolerate, even to hint support for, violence against political opponents (“I’d like to punch him in the face”). It creates an atmosphere of intimidation.

It is not merely “exaggeration” for a president to issue a series of eye-stretching lies, including that his predecessor spied on him and that a popular vote victory was denied to him by widespread electoral fraud. It indicates either a deep cynicism or a tenuous connection to reality.

It is not being “coarse” for a president to engage in consistent misogyny. It is a sign of a disturbing and deep-seated dehumanization of women.

Many conservatives would respond to this critique by saying, “At least he fights!” The question is: For what? Trump evinces no strong or consistent policy views. He fights for himself – for admiration and adulation – which is the only cause his extreme narcissism allows.

Many conservatives would also respond by saying, “At least he does conservative things!” But if health care is any indication, Trump lacks conviction, knowledge and the ability to persuade.

House and Senate Republicans should be prepared to aggressively challenge unbalanced or unhinged presidential language and decisions, rather than trying to dismiss them as simply a “distraction.”

No one really knows how to deal with this situation, which still feels more like an unnerving political novel than our political reality. Trump has led our country into unexplored territory. If this is “modern day presidential,” all progress moves toward the past.

--Michael Gerson served as President George W. Bush’s chief speechwriter from 2001-2006 and is a columnist for the Washington Post

Quote of the Day -- On America and Capitalism

“Thus did a handful of rapacious citizens come to control all that was worth controlling in America. Thus was the savage and stupid and entirely inappropriate and unnecessary and humorless American class system created. Honest, industrious, peaceful citizens were classed as bloodsuckers, if they asked to be paid a living wage. And they saw that praise was reserved henceforth for those who devised means of getting paid enormously for committing crimes against which no laws had been passed. Thus the American dream turned belly up, turned green, bobbed to the scummy surface of cupidity unlimited, filled with gas, went bang in the noonday sun.”

― Kurt Vonnegut, God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater

Entertainment Overnight -- Manhattan

Quote of the Day -- On the Political Illiterate

Get involved. Be involved. Stay involved. Be aware.

And yes, vote.



Links:

Bertolt Brecht - Wikipedia

Bertolt Brecht | German dramatist | Britannica.com

Bertolt Brecht - Theatre Database

Bertolt Brecht

Bertolt Brecht | Poetry Foundation

A Seemingly Timely Reminder

A friend on FB reminded me of this today. It seems, again, very timely.

THE SECOND COMING

Turning and turning in the widening gyre

The falcon cannot hear the falconer;

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;

Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,

The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere

The ceremony of innocence is drowned;

The best lack all conviction, while the worst

Are full of passionate intensity.

Surely some revelation is at hand;

Surely the Second Coming is at hand.

The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out

When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi

Troubles my sight: a waste of desert sand;

A shape with lion body and the head of a man,

A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,

Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it

Wind shadows of the indignant desert birds.

The darkness drops again but now I know

That twenty centuries of stony sleep

Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,

And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,

Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

--William Butler Yeats,  (1865-1939)

Quote of the Day -- On Living

With Mr. Trump soon to be in office, and the Republicans in control of Congress in Washington and 32 of the 50 statehouses, we'll have to lean heavily on the "hate tyrants" part.

Have a great day, y'all and keep warm.

Quote of the Day -- On the Orange One

If Donald Trump is, in fact, made president and he has the cabinet he has presented to the nation so far, he may well outdo Warren Harding in corruption, and easily.

And the thing is, we can see it coming. It's headed straight for us.

God help us.

Links:    Most corrupt administration in U.S. history

Worst Presidents: Warren Harding (1921-1923)

Coincidentally, this magazine below only published this article 6 days ago, in an attempt, I expect, to educate and warn Americans on what this kind of guy got us in the past. Of course, fortunately, Warren Harding didn't have nuclear weapons available.

A Cautionary Tale From the Most Corrupt White House 

in History

Quote of the Day -- God Help Us

Quote of the Day -- Timely Proof

"To succeed in life, you need two things: ignorance and confidence."

--Mark Twain

William Faulkner on Donald Trump

There is a fantastic, intelligent, rather low-key article over at Atlantic just now that I think nearly every adult a  American should read, I think.

Will America Earn the Right to Survive?

William Faulkner’s provocative question from 1955 echoes loudly in 2016.

This, below, isn't the point of the article--and it's a great point--but I love this author's comparison of one of Faulkner's characters compared to current Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump.

Faulkner had created in his fictional universe a minor Southern incarnation of Trump: Flem Snopes, an unscrupulous and voracious predator with “eyes the color of stagnant water”, who claws and lies his wily way to power, cheating and conning anyone naïve enough to think they can outsmart him. In Flem and his clan, Faulkner excoriated many of his fellow citizens who “know and believe in nothing but money and it doesn’t much matter how you get it.” He harbored no doubt about the harm people like the Snopes tribe could inflict if allowed to reign and proliferate, if their “stupid chicanery and petty corruption for stupid and petty ends” were ever to prevail. Given the latest polls, such an electoral apocalypse seems increasingly unlikely, but the mere fact that Trump is even a viable candidate, would be terrifying to the author of "Absalom, Absalom."

It's a terrific, brief read. I'd argue it's nearly an important read, for all of us.

Today's "Gilded Age" and This Presidential Election (Guest Post)

"Not nearly enough has been said about the tax cuts for the rich now being proposed by Trump, Cruz, and Rubio. They’re larger, as a proportion of the government budget and the total economy, than any tax cuts ever before proposed. 5 things you need to know:

1. Trump’s proposed cut would reduce the top rate from 39.6 percent to 25 percent – creating a giant windfall for the wealthy (at a time when the wealthy have a larger portion of the nation’s wealth than any time since 1890).

2. The Cruz and Rubio plans would abandon our century-old progressive income tax (whose rates increase as taxpayers’ incomes increase) altogether, and instead tax the amount people spend in a year and exclude income from investments. Such a system would burden lower-income workers who spend almost everything they earn and have few if any investments.

3. Cruz also proposes a 10 percent flat tax, which would lower tax rates on the rich and increase taxes for lower-income workers.

4. The Republican plans also repeal estate and gift taxes – now paid almost entirely by the very wealthy, who make big gifts to their heirs and leave them big estates.

5. These plans would cut federal revenues by as much as $12 trillion over the decade -- but neither Trump, Rubio, or Cruz has said what they’ll do to fill this hole. They'll either explode the national debt, or have to cut Social Security, Medicare, and assistance to the poor (they’ve called for more military spending).
Bottom line: If any of these men is elected president, we could see the largest redistribution in American history from the poor and middle-class of America to the rich.

This is class warfare with a vengeance."

--Professor, author, columnist, economist Robert Reich.

6 Responses to Sanders Skeptics

From Professor, economist, writer, political commentator Robert Reich.

He's for you, folks. He's for you and me.

#FeeltheBern

What Is It That's Different About This President, Anyway?

Last week, this took place:

GOP Congress Breaks With History For First Time In 41 Years 

GOP Denies Hearings for Obama's Unseen Budget

Congress Declines to Hear Obama's Budget Proposal in Person

Then, this, yesterday.

Agencies of the U.S. government make regulations to implement acts of Congress – such as the Environmental Protection Agency’s regulation limiting carbon emissions from power plants, under the Clean Air Act. Sometimes plaintiffs challenge the legality of such a regulation, arguing the agency exceeded what Congress intended – as plaintiffs have done in this case. Occasionally, plaintiffs ask the courts to put the regulation on hold until the courts have fully considered their lawsuit – arguing they’ll otherwise suffer irreparable harm while awaiting a ruling. Often, as in this case, the lower court refuses. But never before in history has the Supreme Court overruled a lower court that refused such a stay, and decided itself to put a regulation on hold. Yet that’s what the five Republican appointees on the Court did yesterday evening -- blocking the Environmental Protection Agency’s landmark regulation. They gave no reasons.

The result is to freeze the heart of Obama’s climate policy until the courts have fully considered its legality. When might that be? The D.C. Circuit’s Court of Appeals has scheduled oral arguments for July 2, so a ruling from that court could be early next fall. The Supreme Court might then hear an appeal in late 2017 and decide by 2018. Of course, the five Republican appointees might then decide the regulation is illegal, or by then a Republican president might simply refuse to put the rule into effect. (Several Republican candidates, including Marco Rubio, don’t believe carbon emissions are contributing to climate change.)

In this case, the five Republicans on the Court decided that the plaintiffs – coal companies, power plants, utilities – will suffer irreparable harm over the next two or three years if the regulation is put into effect. But what about the irreparable harm to the environment from two or three more years of gunk being spewed into the atmosphere? Why should harm to profits take precedence over harm to life on earth? What planet are the five Republicans on, anyway?         --Robert Reich

What is it?

I'm trying to think.

What is it about this President, this one President that's different that Congress treats him differently than any other.

Let me see...

How Do We Fix the Broken Government? (Guest Post)

Author/economist/professor Robert Reich writes:

The Chicken and the Egg 

At the core of crony capitalism lies a chicken-and-egg dilemma: 

How is it possible to get big money out of politics when the political system is controlled by big money? 

Even candidates who pledge reform but depend on big money to get elected give up on reform. Bill Clinton said he’d clean up the system but once in the White House did no cleaning (in fact, he offered the White House’s own Lincoln Bedroom to wealthy campaign-donors). Barack Obama bemoaned the role of big money but in 2008 became the first candidate of a major party to decline public financing — and the spending limits that went with it — since the system was created in 1976, after the Watergate scandals, and has since done nothing to stem the tide.

Since the Supreme Court's “Citizens United" decision, that tide has been washing away what's left of our democracy. By the 2012 election, donations from the richest 0.01 percent were 40 percent of all campaign contributions.

The only answer is a citizen’s movement that propels a candidate into the White House who’s not only committed to ending crony capitalism, but whose campaign is based on small donations. That movement is occurring right now, and that candidate is Bernie Sanders.

Missouri Black History

From today's New York Times today.

It’s fitting that today, the birthday of Langston Hughes — the poet and leading figure of the Harlem Renaissance — is also the start of Black History Month.

His novels, stories, plays and poems opened the eyes of many to the African-American experience. And they continue to do so.

Hughes got his break while working as a busboy at a Washington hotel. He slipped his poems next to the plate of the poet Vachel Lindsay who read them and was immediately impressed.

Introductions were made and Hughes was soon a published poet. He received a full scholarship to Lincoln University in Pennsylvania, and his debut book, “The Weary Blues,” was released even before he graduated in 1929.

Hughes was born in Joplin, Mo., and his parents’ divorce forced him to move around a lot.

One of those moves was fortuitous. He was named “class poet” in grammar school in Lincoln, Ill. He later said he believed he was chosen because of a stereotype that blacks had rhythm.

“There were only two of us Negro kids in the whole class and our English teacher was always stressing the importance of rhythm in poetry,” he said.

It led Hughes to try his hand at writing, and the rest is literary history.


Additionally, the famous and widely and some would say, wildly popular Scott Joplin lived in Sedalia, Missouri and created some of his most famous and celebrated work there.

Links:  Langston Hughes | Academy of American Poets

Langston Hughes - Wikipedia

Scott Joplin - Pianist, Songwriter - Biography.com

Scott Joplin - The State Historical Society of Missouri