IMPORTANT READS

PERSPECTIVE--On November 23^rd. NPR Reporter Brian Naylor wrote and reported that President -elect Joe Biden announced his intent to nominate Alejandro Mayorkas, a Cuban American to head and become the Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security.

LABOR POLITICS--Late last year, Congress allowed federal mandatory emergency paid leave benefits to expire.

PERSPECTIVE--President-elect Biden frequently calls for “healing the soul of our country.” Lincoln wrote of “binding up the nation’s wounds.”

A NEW WORLD-We did it. We took control of the Senate from Mitch McConnell.

COUP POLITICS--The year 2020 will be remembered in history for a deadly pandemic and a deep economic crisis that touched almost every country on earth. Hopes for a brighter 2021 were one of the few things most people could agree on. 

GUEST WORDS--Americans often ask what a President’s “legacy” will be. Donald Trump revealed a great and terrible truth: who America “really” is.

IN DEFENSE OF DEMOCRACY-On January 5, 2021, one day before Trump sparked his fascist Attack on the Capitol, the liberal New York Times columnist Michelle Goldberg called for Americans “to defend democracy” by “investigating” Trump and wrote these words: 

RIGHTING HISTORY’S WRONGS-Here’s a hard but undeniable truth: America has a short memory and a long tradition of revising history.

TEST FOR DEMOCRACY--I still see the noose in front of the capitol building, dangling oh so metaphorically.

SAVING DEMOCRACY-The answer to what happened in Washington last Wednesday is what happened in Georgia last Tuesday.

VIEW FROM HERE-In the bloody wake of an insurrection on the Capitol by hordes of armed white supremacists and naive Trump supporters, the President-elect issued the following statement on Twitter.

SEDITION--Whatever you want to call the violent assault in Washington on January 6, 2021—a mob action, a siege, a coup attempt, a riot, domestic terrorism, an insurrection—the fault clearly lies with the president.

AN OPEN LETTER TO MAGA MARCHERS--When Donald Trump incited you to assault the Capitol, he said he would be with you.

He wasn’t.

POLITICS--“No one other than President Donald Trump himself is more responsible for Wednesday’s [January 6^th] coup attempt at the U.S. Capitol than one Joshua David Hawley, the 41-year-old junior senator from Missouri, who put out a fundraising appeal while the siege was underway.” 

WHO WE ARE OR WHAT WE’VE BECOME?-What’s wrong with people? Has the savagery, selfishness, and raw, animal hatred within the human species finally come out of the darkness to devour our society? 

FANATICISM AND RAGE--You know and I know it. This is how Trumpism was always going to end.

DERELICTION OF DUTY-Will he leave in the middle of the night, embarrassed by his four years of crude, rude, lying, and beyond belief incompetence? 

ELECTION TAMPERING-Donald Trump’s telephone conversation with Georgia’s secretary of state will go down in history as a classic case of election interference, totally in keeping with Trump’s disdain for democratic processes and perfect willingness to use any means, legal or otherwise, to get his way.

TRUMP TIRADE-In his infamous one-hour shakedown of Georgia’s Secretary of State, wise-guy Donald Trump TWICE calls himself a “schmuck.” It’s a gross undershot. 

DEMOCRACY--On October 7, 2020, Republican Senator Mike Lee of Utah tweeted, “Democracy isn’t the objective; liberty, peace, and prosperity are.  We want the human condition to flourish.  Rank democracy can thwart that.”

SHOULD NOT SEE TV-A few years ago, there was an obscure little broadcasting channel called AWE that referred to themselves as “Wealth TV.”