Will Republicans Ever Wake Up?

I mean they champion their own oppression….why?

That’s right I said ‘oppression’!

I recently ask this question of my fellow Mississippi voters….

Magical Time In Mississippi

(This had been sent to a magazine, Mississippi Today, but so far no word if they will run it)

Now I see people are starting that very question of GOP voters as well….

When will Republican voters figure out how badly they’re getting screwed by Republican politicians?

— Desperate workers struggle with soaring rents (courtesy of Republican-donor hedge funds);
— lack of healthcare (12 GOP-controlled states still refuse to expand Medicaid for under-$15,000/year workers) is literally killing Americans;
— wages have flatlined since Reagan declared war on workers in 1981 while the merely rich have become the morbidly rich;
— Americans pay 10 times as much as Canadians for some drugs because Republicans block any effort to bring competition to that marketplace;
— at the same time Trump and his GOP buddies in the House and Senate borrowed $1.7 trillion to fund a tax giveaway to his billionaire buddies, student debt passed the $1.7 trillion mark…

Yet somehow the “conservative” base voters never seem to figure it out. Why?

Most Republican voters don’t think much about it, but there are two very distinct layers to the GOP. It’s like a pyramid with a capstone at the very top.

The vast base of the pyramid are the white voters who Richard Nixon invited into the party after the Democrats embraced racial equality in 1964/1965 with the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act.

https://www.rawstory.com/thom-hartmann-2665383048/

So basically it is a racial thing?

Well….yeah!

Have you ever thought about what will replace t6he smartphone?

Just as the land line and the flip phone were replaced so shall the smart phone….but with what?

If aliens landed on Earth today and reported back what humans looked like, they might describe a glowing rectangular appendage attached to one of our dangling limbs.

Virtually everyone carries a smartphone today — about 93 percent of Americans — which makes it the most used technology in our lives, second only to TVs at 96 percent. (More Gen Z and millennials have a phone than a television.)

ven more impressive, perhaps, is the fact these things didn’t exist until just over 15 years ago.

And no wonder: Your smartphone has evolved into a digital Swiss Army knife, of sorts. Along with serving as a critical messaging tool, it’s also your web browser, camera and camcorder, music player, gaming console, navigation unit, step counter, flashlight, personal AI assistant, and digital wallet.

Oh, and the damn thing makes calls, too.

So, what’s next now that smartphones are mature and every new iPhone or Android is just a slightly faster and better version of the same glass slab?

One prediction is more screens — and perhaps even closer to (or on) our faces, such as mixed reality headsets that fuse the real world around you with digital information superimposed on top of your view. The other school of thought is fewer screens, maybe with smaller wearable devices, à la Internet of Things (IoT), and an “ambient computing” approach in which technology seamlessly (and somewhat invisibly) integrates into our daily lives, allowing us to return to being present.

https://www.inverse.com/tech/next-in-tech-after-smartphones

Smart phones is as far as it will go for me.

 

America The Beautiful

The other day Sue and I went grocery shopping and parked next to us was a white Jeep (Junk Each and Every Part)….behind the wheel was an old fat white dude and on the bumper were an American flag and a Trump flag…..I thought how disgusting that was for in my mind that is like spitting on the symbol of our country.

That experience got me to thinking about our country and our government…..and yes our democracy.

Democracy is in trouble in the U.S. “Illiberal democracies” exist in Hungary, Poland and elsewhere. Why is democracy dying? How to save it? Harvard Professors Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt argue that democracies don’t die from outside forces such as coup d’états. “We must prevent it [democracy] from dying within,” they write at the conclusion of How Democracies Die, their comparative analysis of how democracies have died and how to save them. “Since the end of the Cold War, most democratic breakdowns have been caused not by generals and soldiers but by elected governments themselves,” they warn, with obvious reference to Donald J. Trump and his past and potential future presidency. But what they miss is that “elected governments” were chosen by citizens. Despite all the brouhaha about Trump’s legal difficulties and his attacks on democratic institutions, Trump remains extremely popular among Republicans; he is neck-and-neck with President Biden in a potential 2024 contest.

So while a Democracy can die as a formal political system, democracies die because of a failing civic culture. In that sense, Levitsky and Ziblatt are wrong. Democracies don’t die because of elected governments; it is citizens who choose the elected governments. It is citizens who cause democracies to live or die.

75 million American citizens voted for Trump in 2020, and his popularity continues. Despite indictments – Trump faces 91 criminal charges across four cases – Trump dominates all Republican challengers by widening margins in national polls. A Quinnipiac University poll — conducted after Trump’s Aug. 1 federal indictment but before his indictment in Georgia — had Trump with a 39-point lead over Florida. Governor Ron DeSantis for the Republican nomination. Trump got support from 57% of Republican registered voters, DeSantis 18%. No other Republican candidate got more than 3% in the Quinnipiac poll.

In terms of a 2024 rematch of the 2020 presidential election between Trump and Biden, Trump trailed Biden by one percentage point in the latest Quinnipiac poll, 47 to 46 percent. A one percentage point difference is a small number between a sitting president and someone historically twice impeached and currently facing four major indictments.

As the indictments continue, Trump’s fundraising improves as well. He raised about $12 million in the first three months of this year. Seven days after the first indictment, he raised $13 million. As he quipped after one of his indictments: “I need one more indictment to ensure my election!” he joked.

Democracy, “democracy,” and Trump’s Faithful Followers

I wish I could be optimistic but all I see and read tends to the pessimistic side.

The divisions are looking insurmountable at this time….I know things can change but I think the biases, hatred and no concern for the rule of law will be our undoing.

But that is just me….if you have a different perspective then please share.

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”