Where This President And His Followers and Republican Party Have Brought Us

Did you see the latest? It's come far closer to home now.

Kansas mayor resigns over violent threats for backing mask mandate: ‘I do not feel safe anymore’

A bit of the story.

The emails and voice mails to Dodge City, Kan., Mayor Joyce Warshaw began pouring in last month, after the city commission voted to require everyone in town to wear masks indoors.

Some anonymous messages told her that she was restricting civil liberties, Warshaw told The Washington Post. Others said she should go to jail over her vote.

But after the western Kansas city’s uphill battle against the coronavirus pandemic was highlighted in a USA Today feature on Friday, the messages grew more frequent and aggressive: Burn in hell. Get murdered. One person simply wrote, “We’re coming for you.”

So after nearly eight years in government, she called it quits Tuesday.

“They were loud, and they were aggressive, and they frightened me and my family,” said Warshaw, who had been serving her second stint as mayor. “There’s a strong part of me that wants to say they are only words. But people are angry right now, and I don’t know that for sure.”

So here we are. Thanks so very much, Mr. President. Thanks, Republicans. In the middle of the worst, most killing, deadly international pandemic of the last more than 100 years, now you're threatening local, legally elected government officials who are, by the way, just trying to get and keep us safe, trying to keep us well and alive.

Y'all must be so proud.

Ladies and Gentlemen, the Republican Party

 Yes, Mr. and Mrs. America, here is your Republican Party and Right Wingers and conservatives, down through American history.

So proud, no doubt.

And now they have Donald J Trump.

God help us all.

Quotes of the Day -- On Dangerous Denial of Science

"Nothing disturbs me more than the glorification of stupidity."

"Avoidable human misery is more often caused not so much by stupidity as by ignorance, particularly our ignorance about ourselves."

"One trend that bothers me is the glorification of stupidity, that the media is reassuring people it's alright not to know anything. That to me is far more dangerous than a little pornography on the Internet."

All from Carl Sagan.

It's as though he's still alive and speaking of this President and his supporters.

Thanks, Republicans.

Those Rotten Libruls

The Racist, Misogynist, Elitist World That Is Donald Trump's America

It has been quite a week.

It's been nearly stunning what all took place in the last 7 days. First there was this:

Contentious Memo Strikes Nerve

Inside Google and Out

It seems a young engineer at Google wrote not just a sexist memo but a very sexist one, declaring Google's inclusive culture, including women, if you can imagine that, was not just negative but "bad for business."  From the NYT:

His 10-page memo, titled “Google’s Ideological Echo Chamber,” argued that “personality differences” between men and women — like a woman having a lower tolerance for stress — help explain why there were fewer women in engineering and leadership roles at the company. He said efforts by the company to reach equal representation of women in technology and leadership were “unfair, divisive, and bad for business.”

So women, who make up more than half of our nation's population, shouldn't be included in technology, according to this young man, this Einstein.

Wonderful, right?

The week got worse.

This happened Friday night.

White Nationalists March on University of Virginia

I thought we were better than this. I thought we were smarter than this. I thought we learned all these lessons, especially about race but about sexism, too, certainly.

When you pair this with the fact that a President and an entire political party just tried to pass a "health care law" in our nation's capitol that would have cut between 22 to 32 million Americans from health insurance rolls, it's easy to see that Donald Trump's America, the nightmare come true, is, in fact, a racist, sexist, misogynistic and elitist one. Great for white people and wealthy ones, at that, and corporations but God help you if you're anything else. If you're female or Black or Hispanic or poor or, heck, middle-class and/or working-class, it sucks to be you just now.

And this doesn't even touch the subject of the ugliness and stupidity and vitriol that came out of the White House and this President's mouth this last week. That may get us all, not just the nation but the world into a nuclear war and nuclear winter. I'm not even touching that.

Welcome to Donald Trump's and the Right Wing's and the Republican Party's America.

Again, God help us.

Trump Supporters

Homer and Goober discuss national and international politics.

It's Cool to Trash Gubmint

I am really more than a bit tired of the trend--because that's all it is, a trend--to be against or to out and out hate government.

Like most trends, it's tiresome but this one goes beyond that. It's not just wrong but wrong-headed, too

Seems Right Wingers and Republicans and Libertarians, all, at minimum, like to rail against government. They sometimes literally say or will write, on social media, that "government doesn't do anything right."

To that I like to point out just a few of the things government has gotten us all.

The Interstate Highway System

The Social Security system, which lifted millions of Americans out of poverty and keeps millions more out of same.

Social Security Keeps 22 Million Americans 

Out of Poverty

And then there's Medicare.

Medicare Keeps Americans Healthy for the Past 50 Years

And Medicaid.

Medicaid keeps adults healthy and employed

Note that's "healthy and employed" so they can stay at work and be productive and benefit our society, locally and nationally. So there aren't just costs to Medicare and Medicaid, to be clear. There are benefits as well.

Heck, "gubmint" took us all, took man to the moon, for God's sake, no small task.

May 25, 1961: JFK's Moon Shot Speech to Congress

Government cleaned up some of our dirtiest and most-polluted rivers.

A Brief History of the Clean Water Act

Including, of course, the EPA, the Environmental Protection Agency.

These Photos Show How the EPA 

Transformed America

Heck, at one point, at least a few of our rivers were so polluted, they actually caught fire.

Cuyahoga River Fire

And these are just a few, quick examples of how government actually not only works for us but helps us all, individually and collectively.

A Success Story, with Many Chapters Still to Come

Breathing Easier Because of the Clean Air Act

Cleaner air linked to bigger, stronger lungs 

in Southern California

Again, this is a case of all of us benefiting, too, due to "gubmint", these regulations called the Clean Air Act of 1970 and what it's done for us. We live longer lives, better lives, healthier lives and so, more productive lives because we require companies to pollute less. It's a total win for all, including those companies.

Have governments, has our government, at times gone wrong, done wrong by the very people it is to serve?

Of course.

Has there been, is there waste in government?

Most certainly.

But it's up to us, the people, to keep our government on the "straight and narrow." Things will go wrong, things will be done poorly or wrongly and/or not at all, at times. But government can do and has done great things, over time, certainly.

Government is, after all, us, we the people.