And BOOM!!!! goes the dynamite!

First, you got it wrong. AOC is making political hay by highlighting her discomfort working with Repug Seditionists in the House & Senate. It's a no-brainer to bash Repugs for this.

Second, the Dems have to talk about "unity" because us Libtards like that whole idea of Kumbaya (as opposed to many Repugs who'll brook NO compromise with The Godless Enemy.)

Third, seeking "bipartisanship" back in 2009-10 got the Dems and idiot Obama BURNED. While the Dems are IMO as right-center Corporatist as the Repugs, it still matters to the politicians themselves who wins. And that's why the Dems (off the record) are understandably "fuck unity." Once bitten twice shy, one would hope.

Fourth, you've added "Get Credible" to your closing admonishments. How that working for you?

get edible.

I grew up in Detroit and I remember how dreary winters were.

Um, yeah. I read, research & study politics at least 50 hours per week, so I truly jones for it when, say, a snowstorm* shuts down my internet.

*8+ feet of snow (5 in the last week) thus far this winter in Green Valley Lake, California. What about you in Kitchener?

Regarding whether Trump is removed via Impeachment -- in Joe's first 100 days:

YES, Trump is toast is paying 12.5:1
NO is paying only 1.09:1

SNDP* theme could be pairing two different versions of a given song, to wit:

Black Hole Sun -- Soundgarden

Black Hole Sun -- Eydie Gormé & Steve Lawrence

Or...

Dancing in the Street -- Martha & the Vandellas

Dancing in the Street -- Grateful Dead

*Sunday Night Dance Party, yeth

Joe didn't play the Reefer Card to juice turnout in 2020. I think he'll hold off until, say, mid-2022 to play it. Reefer will get those youngsters to vote, methinks.

I think that's a great idea. Tons of political fodder for these upcoming Election cycles.

[80]

Yeah that, too. Not only is it sometimes hip to be square but sometimes something is so baaad it's goood

I agree with you, John. It seems to me that honing FTPs down to sub Twitter brevity is difficult and very time consuming. I just wrote my Seditionist Repug Congressman who voted against Joe & the Impeachment. Then I decided to Tweet in reply to his tweet. Boy, 280 characters goes by real quick! Short & punchy is tough but it can go viral if it's especially good.

Nothing to do with your FTP column. But I find it interesting that with Dems in control of the Senate you haven't explored what that means for cannabis "regulation."

Granted the events of the last few weeks are overwhelming, but that really hasn't stopped you in the past.

While their majority is slim, they don't actually need all Dems, they can replace some Dems with Repubs in legal states, some of which have pushed Congress in that direction.

The majority point is that such bills would actually get a vote in the Senate, not just ignored. That's huge.

We've disagreed in the past about what's important here, but the big players (who I don't like, but acknowledge that we need them if we want to see real change b/c money) want banking/finance reform. In my view, that's one of the two big impediments.

The other is tax law (can a cannabis business write stuff off like any other business).

I don't expect travel thru states to differ in concept from alcohol and I don't expect usage to differ from tobacco smoking. But even allowing to those levels would be huge (you've mentioned those as your big things).

We were in CA before the pandemic and I was shocked at how difficult it was to purchase legally. There are lots of places where you can't. I mean, seriously, I can't purchase in Santa Barbara? It's a college town! Why the heck not???

Looking forward to you taking a break from the horrors and playing with this once, at least.

Dammit, Elizabeth I plumb forgot about Dance Party. I'll check out your generally excellent DJing tomorrow.

Listen wrote,

I, personally, believe that any day now we will wake to the news that half of the GOP has been arrested and indicted for their part in the January 6 insurrection attempt at the Capitol. It will be a huge operation involving countless federal and state law enforcement agencies conducting warrant services all at the same time in locations all across the nation. They have to swoop in and grab the leadership of the various militia groups at the same time Trump and GOP leadership are arrested to prevent an armed uprising once the news of their arrests breaks.

I'm down for this! But I wonder if the QAnon folks will feel vindicated because they finally got The Storm. Can't be too careful with these loonies!

whatever insane theories senate republicans may be using to signal their not-guilty verdict, not a single one to my knowledge has claimed that the factual basis for the charge is untrue.

so i say make them vote on the substance of the charge separately, before the verdict is issued. if schumer is able to make it happen, that should result in quite a bit of squirming, and lots of fodder for 2022 campaign ads.

JL

I do apologize for all of the mix up with links. Good show there was no one around to notice. Heh.

Until next Sunday ... keep rockin!

I do hope I have this link right ;)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N7pZgQepXfA

'cause that link up there is the wrong one. :-)

Here ya go ... it's never too late,

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kfORcR2VSbc&list=RDkfORcR2VSbc&start_radio=1&t=31&t=31&t=31

See ya next week!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eLmlnNXtW04

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eLmlnNXtW04

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=haeni0hu7LY

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=haeni0hu7LY

It's called Six Degrees of PRiSM (Ron Tabak era to present).

Been getting into all kinds of music since the pandemic began and especially during the lockdowns. What has struck me is how interconnected musicians, bands, and the music industry as a whole are.

And, so - Six Degrees of PRiSM (RTE to present)!

You know, like the Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon. But, in this game, Six Degrees of PRiSM (RTE to present), players would challenge each other to find the fewest connections between a musician/band and PRiSM! Whoever could make the connection in the fewest links would win.

Who will be the first to play!? Give me a favourite band or musician and I will try to find connections to PRiSM in six degrees of separation or less ...

And, I have a tune to go with that! This may be the first time I've posted a Prism tune without their definitive lead vocalist, Ron Tabak. Don't Let Him Know features Henry Small and was the most commercially successful for PRiSM and their biggest US hit, reaching number one on the Mainstream Rock chart and 39 the Billboard Hot 100. As a single it made it to 49 on the Canadian Singles chart. Well, the departure of Ron Tabak was very hard to accept for Canadian fans but, most of us have come around. :)

This song was off the fifth PRiSM studio album in 1981. Here it is from the Over 60 Minutes With ... Prism, a compilation album released in 1988,

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tCrl-TO1Ghw

Welcome everyone to the CW Sunday Night Music Festival and Dance Party!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KHZQ054xMqM

I agree with your assessment of my post. When I type up a longwinded train of thought to post here, I write it in Notes and then cut and paste it to the website when it is ready. I do this for multiple reasons: 1 ) Over the years, I have spent countless hours typing these rambling comments up only to lose them all when my browser chose to refresh the page once I hit “Submit”. 2 ) Because I know that I am prone to rambling, it is easier for me to edit my own posts by cutting out paragraphs that I determine are not necessary to get my point across effectively.

Why am I sharing far more about the process that goes into the creation of my posts than you ever wanted to know? Because I spent 6 or 7 paragraphs arguing your points, but removed them for brevity. Unfortunately, I took out the one paragraph that I note that Trump stupidly believed that the American people would see the insurrection as a positive and patriotic act! Trump was not prepared for a police officer being killed by his crowds. He never considered that Americans might not see his actions in a positive light. I believe that one reason no one could get Trump on the phone when it became obvious that it was going South real fast was because Trump & Friends were scrabbling on how they were going to deal with the shitstorm that they had unleashed. Trump was lucky that his minions were as inept as he is — because had they captured the Congress and held them hostage, Trump could read the room well enough to know he had to distance himself from them as quickly as possible. Trump would have had them killed to silence them from testifying against him if he could have.

So I agree that Trump had not planned on turning on his base originally, but I still believe that Trump would have done whatever he believed was necessary to save his own skin...no matter the cost of life to others not named “Donald J. Trump”!

y'know, just for example...

This is good news!

News reports are inaccurate - surprise, surprise.

Canada is actually contributing 200 million dollars to the World Health Organization's COVAX facility to purchase vaccines for low and middle income countries.

I'm assuming the US is doing the same ...

That's great. That's more than five times our population!!??

Un-freakin'-believable.

I'll be spending some time today looking into this absurdity with the hope that all of the extra vaccines doses we have will very soon be shared with low income countries so that they may be able to vaccinate their most vulnerable populations. While more than two or three doses may eventually be required to boost immunity, what Canada is doing is, on the surface at least, disgraceful. I will report back ...

All the indications I can see suggest that the organized group expected to take Congress hostage, execute the leaders, and use the threat of further executions to force the body to 'count' the ballots in a way that would "legally" make Donald Trump the victor in the Electoral College and so president for a second term.

Realistic? Well, sure, when it comes to hogtying and shooting politicians. Not so much when it comes to dictating who will be inaugurated on January 20th in the face of a resistant political establishment, majority electorate, and United States Army.

But we know that the organized mob believed it was doing Trump's bidding, and that as president in power and as president now "elected" thanks to them to a second term he would be able to protect them from the remaining traitors who might try to rectify the situation after the blood-stained 'vote' that evening.

If Trump was planning on declaring martial law in reaction to the Capitol take-over and his forced re-election by a cowed and tormented Congress, it would not have been to take back the Capitol from his team. It would have been to protect his team, and enforce the electoral college results they'd so bloodily engineered.

And of course we have every reason to believe a martial law declaration would have been ignored by the military, no matter what the president and his toadies in the Pentagon civilian leadership wanted. But the horror-show of the mob actually carrying out its plan, and the coup actually being proclaimed over the corpses of Pence, Pelosi, Schumer, and Ocasio-Cortez, and then suppressed at whatever cost by a Special Forces team, would have had a far worse impact on our political structure and future than we're seeing from the actual results.

I think your scenario depends on Trump making rational and carefully thought-out plans, which every indication tells us he has been incapable of doing since the early 2000s.

I can tell you what Trump planned on doing had they taken the Capitol hostage — Trump would have declared martial law and sent troops in to put down the “terrorists” holding it hostage! Face it, we know that Trump had been considering declaring martial law if he lost since before the election occurred. Trump knew that he could not just declare martial law without there being some major event that could be used as the reason for him needing to declare it! Terrorists “pretending to be Trump supporters” and taking Congress hostage would be seen by some as a legit reason to declare martial law. The day before the insurrection, the My Pillow Guy was photographed with notes that he had written that said Trump should declare martial law. Coincidence? I think not.

The real kicker would be that countless Americans would have been tricked into sacrificing their own lives believing they were doing it for one reason when Trump’s real reason was something completely different! Those Trump loyalists would have been sacrificed by Trump without any hesitation, and you can bet that they were not read in to this portion of Trump’s plan. Trump supporters support a man who does not care for them beyond what they can do for him at any given moment. There is no other scenario that seems like it could have been the expected outcome.

wow, that was some heck of an article.

Seriously, right?! I was blown away at just how transparent Miller seemed willing to be with the author. Usually authors embedded with military higher ups are overseas in war zones...so having one traveling all over the country with the acting Sec of Def really gave us a view into things that I know I have never felt privy to before.

What little we were allowed to get to know Ms. Miller was more than enough for me to know that I LOVE her!

CW's book does merit a sequel, however.

JL

https://www.amazon.ca/How-Democrats-Take-Back-Congress/dp/0977775909

"I very much liked the social security tax proposal. It speaks directly to those for whom the burden is most oppressive ..."

So, I ask again, why haven't Democrats jumped all over this?

Do you have CW's book, How Democrats Can Take Back Congress...I'm gonna brush up on it again, especially the parts about social security.

Because, now, it's all about how to keep Congress and increase members to a filibuster proof majority!

Yes, we need to talk more about scrap the cap and why wouldn't Biden want to do this??

no, that's not accurate.

where social security is concerned, scrapping the cap means people who rake in ridiculous money would pay the same percentage of their income as everyone else, instead of paying a significantly lower percentage of their income than everyone else.

as for pay-outs, it was conceived out of the great depression, to provide a safety net in case someone old goes completely broke and needs a little extra to survive. doesn't matter if they were a gazillionaire or destitute, they get exactly the same benefits.

even without the cap, it would be a completely flat tax, which by definition is not progressive at all. it would just cease to tax the ultra-rich at significantly lower rates than everyone else.

JL

In the beginning, the Soc Sec system was envisioned as pretty much of a flat tax- flat benefits program, but it has evolved (as most taxes do) over the decades, until at this time, high earners already pay substantially more than low earners, and while they do receive slightly higher benefits, not NEARLY in proportion.

And I'm betting that while you wish to "scrap the cap" on contributions, you'd be far less eager to "scrap the cap" on benefits, am I right?

Doesn't it always distill down to 'We all want somebody else to support us'?

I completely agree with you that the fact that one officer died on January 6 seems not to have bothered the Republicans too much. It should also be pointed out that two officers involved in trying to combat the riots have committed suicide in the aftermath.

I have not heard anyone questioning whether the Capitol Police involved in the events of January 6 were ever given a debriefing of any kind that would have been the first step in addressing any mental or emotional trauma that the officers are suffering from as a result of that day’s events.

http://www.chrisweigant.com/2012/12/10/if-were-going-to-tax-the-rich-then-lets-tax-the-rich/

scrap the cap! didn't CW write an article about that at some time or another? it bears repeating.

JL

wow, that was some heck of an article.

JL

No, I realize that Cruz was not at the Stop the Steal rally on January 6, but I believe he did speak at one of the smaller ones on January 4 or January 5. The video I saw him in was reporting on the Stop the Steal bus that toured across the country trying to rally supporters to be at the Jan 6 event. They were really pushing this event big time — because they needed the masses to help make it look like the riot was a spontaneous event and not the poorly planned and even more poorly executed attempt to overthrow our government that it truly was.

https://apple.news/A36Rd3SBzQx612yWlJg5DvA

Maybe this could be deferred to later in Biden's first term, given the current circumstances. Or, maybe it should be front and center BECAUSE of the current circumstances!

It's written by Robert Harris, who used to be a close advisor to prime minister Tony Blair. This book is pure fiction, if you believe the author! Heh.

It's called The Ghost. Roman Polanksi made a film based on it called The Ghostwriter (or, the Ghost Writer), which is also very well worth the time to watch! I was wondering how the movie would deal with the ending and it was pretty well done.

http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/letter_fromlondon/2007/10/the_ghost_and_mr_blair.html

It is the very definition of page turner. I've never read a book faster, before or since. And, the ending is a veritable shocker!

We can keep all of the Republican shenanigans and worse in the spotlight AND come up with more effective ways to get the better counter-message out, no?

Of course, Democrats will have to start delivering on the message, too.

https://www.businessinsider.com/russia-cultivating-trump-asset-40-years-says-ex-kgb-spy-2021-1

I would bet that there are hundreds of potential FTPs hidden away in there!

I could get behind that effort!

I stand more with italyrusty on this.

How many people do you think will be persuaded by Democrats who take the easy route and condemn rather than try to explain why the Democratic party is the only party right now who is looking out for the interests of all Americans.

Yes, this way will take more effort and the FTPs won't be writing themselves but I think it is well worth the effort to raise the level of dialogue and surprise more than a few voters.

JL

Republican Congresscritters never met a strawman argument they didn't like. With all apologies to rusty, sometimes the only way to fight back is to double down. E.g. "of course mr.gaetz would think it's socialism. He thinks social security is socialism. He thinks the social network is socialism. It explains his fear of social distancing..."

These days, it's just a matter of setting the record straight, point by point.

Which is a lot easier said than done. But, you know what they say, nothing really worthwhile is ever easy. And, I truly believe that the art of persuasion is not completely dead. Otherwise, why bother with any of this?

But, the whole point behind the FTPs started out as being tips for how Democrats could get their message out and garner support for their way of meeting the challenges of the day and demonstrate that Democrats had better solutions to problems than Republicans.

And, by the way, one stimulus cheque to desperate Americans doesn't seem like it will be enough to get them through this pandemic.

In just the first week of the Biden administration, there are so many issues being tackled, not least of all is how to get the American people through a deadly pandemic that threatens lives, livelihoods and the very health systems that are on the front lines of the pandemic response.

There are, undoubtedly, many more than seven talking points that would help Democrats and, perhaps, even a few sane Republicans come together to pass desperately needed COVID relief. And, president Biden and his team would most assuredly welcome the assistance in getting the 'response to COVID' message out to the American people.

Who knows, FTPs that would seek to do that may even translate into more votes - for the COVID package and for the 2022 midterms. Stranger things have already happened.

You seem to imply that Cruz was addressing the 'Save America' rally in D.C. where the president and others revved up the crowd that then stormed the capitol building.

As far as I can tell, Cruz was in the Senate or House chanmbers at that point, leading the resistance to the electoral vote certification.

Not that your bigger point is wrong. Cruz has used the '1776 moment' line, common among right-wingers, often enough. And yes, the phrase is deceptively pseudo-patriotic while actually inciting revolution against our elected government (which the Revolution of 1776 was fought to establish, not overthrow).

I'm not holding my breath waiting for the FBI to sweep up half the Republican party and its armed gangs. That seems to me to be a liberal mirror-image fantasy of the QAnon nonsense.

the silence from Republican politicians on facing up to and countering this threat is deafening.

I'm not sure how this is a useful strategy.

Under the second Bush administration, the DHS began an internal investigation into domestic terrorism that wasn't meant to be widely released to the public in which it reported that soldiers coming back from deployments overseas were targets for recruitment by domestic terrorist groups.

The report was leaked to the media in the early days of the Obama administration and created such an uproar over the notion that members of the military were joining these groups that the then secretary of DHS, Janet Napolitano, was forced to apologize for the report and its conclusions about recruitment of former military members by groups like the American Legion.

Fast forward to Jan 6, 2020 and we learn that 20% of those arrested for the insurrection at the US Capitol have backgrounds in the military and law enforcement.

My point - it may not be a very good idea to politicize the challenge faced by these extremist groups. In fact, this should be one of those issues that transcends partisan politics.

I can understand that this is a delicate issue but pointing out that extremist groups in the US are actively targeting people with military and law enforcement backgrounds shouldn't be avoided to appease military organizations like the American Legion.

Domestic extremism needs to be understood and addressed, not made into a political wedge issue.

Get back to me when your obsession with Republican antics passes and you get tired of telling Democrats to chase Republicans around the toilet bowl.

These words were screamed out to the Stop the Steal crowds by none other than Sen. Ted “Teenwolf” Cruz. I have yet to hear anyone explain how this is not meant to convey the message that the crowd was to rise up and overthrow the government in order to install their own leader! What does 1776 refer to if not “Revolution”? Are we supposed to believe that they were telling the crowd to trade in their assault rifles for muskets? Was this a lifestyle statement that powdered wigs were fashionable again? Or maybe it was a way of letting the crowd know the local Starbucks’ bathroom code? No, it was a call to Rise Up!

I also love that Ted Cruz can always be counted on to play the semantics game with his comments to the Republican base that he views as being complete idiots! It’s NOT “OUR 1776 moment”; because Ted is a coward and knows that the crowd is being worked up to commit sedition and does not want to associate himself with those crimes.

I, personally, believe that any day now we will wake to the news that half of the GOP has been arrested and indicted for their part in the January 6 insurrection attempt at the Capitol. It will be a huge operation involving countless federal and state law enforcement agencies conducting warrant services all at the same time in locations all across the nation. They have to swoop in and grab the leadership of the various militia groups at the same time Trump and GOP leadership are arrested to prevent an armed uprising once the news of their arrests breaks.

I look forward to the day that when someone says “2021”, we all know that is a reference to how our nation put down those who would seek to overthrow our great country!

If you're explaining, you're losing.

As much as we hate it, it's got to fit on a bumper sticker or a headline. It then needs to be repeated, ad nauseam.

We protested for over a hundred consecutive days here in PDX. Sometimes, as few as hundreds, other days, over ten thousand. We protected Moms, we fought cops, we were gassed (yeah, that sucked just as much as it did the last time I experienced that (40 yrs ago)). And yet, we didn't kill a single cop.

I asked my wife to research this b/c I already had, fruitlessly, and y'know, if a cop was killed at any BLM protest, I'm pretty sure we'd have heard about it from RW media non-stop for a month. Heck, a store had a window broken and it was RW headline for days.

We found exactly one in the entire country. One of those [expletive deleted] bois pretending to be a BLM protester in Oakland shot a cop during a protest.

That's it. RW whackos protest/riot for a few hours and cops are killed (and many, many more seriously injured and even a bunch get Covid).

This needs much more Talking-Points push. Cotton wanted to send the military to PDX to put us down, but is OK with cops getting killed. We need to say this and be very loud about it.

Vice-President Harris, as well, for going to AZ and WV to deliver speeches, I mean, to put pressure on Senators Manchin and Sinema to deliver for the people.

Heh.

That Nikki Haley really gives women a bad name. I doubt she'll be relevant in 2024.

The big question is whether Biden's vaunted push for bipartisanship will have the slightest chance of success, given the daunting math involved. Are 10 Republican senators really going to vote for an enormous pandemic relief bill?

That question kind of answers itself, no?

I mean, why not split the bill, putting the stuff that 10 Republicans will vote for - like the stimulus cheques directly to the American people and the UI benefits - or risk ending their careers and then using budget reconciliation for the rest of it, if need be.

You know, Biden could deliver his first SOTU address and have it completely devoted to passing the COVID package. Would it be possible to do it virtually as in a TV address to the nation? Because, that would be better than the usual setup under the circumstances.

Chris always gives his points a header, which are pretty decently short but don't always actually state the point. I took my final line from his header.

A header to go with my short version might be,

Haley, Haley, the chain gang's all here!

Yes, let her statements speak for themselves ... er, for herself.

There will be many more where that came from, I am very certain.

Of course, this tactic applies to any number of her fellow Republican presidential contenders. Ahem.

Yeah, I don't think Biden will want to address Congress before Trump is acquited by the senate.

No, he'll probably wait longer than that, until he has a good sense of where everything stands and most, if not all, of his cabinet secretaries are confirmed.

After all, we don't want to hear Biden just talk about the state of affairs he inherited, do we? NO! We do not.

I hope that is true. I hope the immunity rendered by the vaccines will last longer than a year.

I hope we all wake up and finally realize what it is that we all have to do to break the chains of tramsmission while we wait for vaccine production to ramp up and people to actually be vaccinated because if we fail to adhere to ALL of the public health measures that work to break the chains of transmission then we will see more and more variants - or, at least, we'll see the impact of them if we don't step up targeted genomic surveillance - and more of them may prove to be even more transmissable, vaccine resistant and deadly than the ones we know about today.

If we continue on the way we are, relying solely on vaccines and making sure that rich countries horde them, then we will lose this fight, I'm afraid to report. And, so-called herd immunity may prove quite elusive.

Just one or two lines of simple to read, easy to understand, nastily phrased English?

Why don't you give us an example of what you mean?

Biden did 're-join' the WHO, didn't he?

Will all adult Americans be vaccinated before all of the world's health workers, elderly and people with suppressed immune systems?

Silly questions, both. Or, perhaps, not. Maybe one of the reasons Biden wants the US in the WHO again is because he understands the mission of the WHO and America's role within it as a member state. Maybe Biden understands that while vaccines are not in plentiful supply right now, it is enough for the US and Canada and all of the developed world to vaccinate the most vulnerable of their citizens and then share what excess they have to ensure that the most vulnerable people in the low and middle income countries can be vaccinated as soon as possible.

No one and no country is safe until everyone and all countries are safe.

National unity and global solidarity.

I'm not sixty yet. Nor am I a health worker or volunteer. I don't have any known co-morbidities. Consequently, I am making a pledge not to get vaccinated until it is truly my turn. That is to say not until every country has vaccinated its most vulnerable populations.

And then it struck me: right, that's exactly how Trump *doesn't* speak. Hateful as he is, his "Talking Points" are truly that, points. He snarls out a few simple words in the English language, easy to understand, easy to get angry about. One critic guessed, as his campaign revved up in 2015, that the real-estate billionaire with an Ivy League degree spoke at roughly a fourth-grade level.

This led me a final thought. What if, at the ends of your eloquent and well-argued talking points, you gave the TLDR (Too Long, Didn't Read) "Trump" versions? The ones that someone having an internet argument in the coming week could really use to squelch those people. Just one or two lines of simple to read, easy to understand, nastily phrased English?

Biden certainly has not been bidin' his time (our apologies, but we're probably going to overuse that pun repeatedly for about the next four years, so be just warned...).

About the next four years.

Don't you mean, at least the next four years? I'm just sayin' ...