Quote of the Day -- On Kindness. And Hope

“I'm so tired of waiting, aren't you, for the world to become good and beautiful and kind?” —Langston Hughes

One Week In

 One week into this new Joe Biden Presidential Administration. This is where we are. Already.

1. We can now ignore Twitter
2. The White House briefing room is not an Orwellian nightmare of lies
3. We are now confronting white domestic terrorism
4. We are not paying for golf trips
5. There are no presidential relatives in government
6. The tenor of hearings is sober and serious
7. Qualified and knowledgeable nominees have been selected for senior spots
8. We have a first lady who engages with the public
9. We have not heard a word from presidential children
10. We are now tough on Russian human rights abuses
11. We get normal readouts of sane conversations between the president and foreign leaders
12. The White House philosophy is to underpromise and overdeliver, not the other way around
13. Manners are in, bullying is out
14. You feel calmer after hearing the president
15. Fact-checkers are not overworked
16. Quality entertainers want to perform for the White House
17. We have seen the president’s tax records
18. The president is able to articulate policy details, coherently even
19. The worst the press can come up with is the president’s watch
20. We have a White House staff that looks like America
21. We have a national covid-19 plan
22. Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Anthony S. Fauci is liberated, sounds happy and even looks younger
23. Fauci, not the president, briefs on the science of covid-19 and efficacy of vaccines
24. Masks and social distancing in the White House
25. The White House has policy initiatives and proposals, not merely leaving it all to Congress
26. The administration is committed to releasing information, not covering it up, on the slaughter of journalist Jamal Khashoggi
27. The Muslim ban is gone
28. It is the Republicans not the Democrats who are in disarray
29. The national security adviser has not been fired for lying to the FBI
30. No Soviet-style fawning over the president by his subordinates
31. The president takes daily, in-person intelligence briefings
32. The president does not care about Air Force One colors
33. We have a president familiar with the Constitution
34. Real cable news outlets get high ratings, others not so much
35. President Andrew Jackson is out of the Oval Office, Benjamin Franklin is in
36. Voice of America is back in the hands of actual journalists
37. We get memes about Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), not crowd size
38. We are back in the Paris climate accord and the World Health Organization
39. Instead of running it like a business, the new administration will try running government competently
40. We have a president who doesn’t think military service is for “suckers” and who doesn’t send his “love” to people assaulting law enforcement
41. The secretary of treasury nominee has her own Hamilton lyrics
42. Amanda Gorman is a household name
43. More than two-thirds of Americans approve of the White House covid-19 approach.
44. No more work-free “executive time” in the presidential living quarters
45. We have a churchgoing president “who has spent a lifetime steeped in Christian rituals and practices.”
47. The vice president’s spouse does not teach at a school that bars LGBTQ students
48. The White House takes the Hatch Act seriously
49. The administration wants as many people as possible to vote
50. The president will talk more to our allies than to Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Not perfect, certainly. But it's good. It's very good. It's a huge, huge improvement.

Good on you, America. 

No, great on you.

Hope--- And a Way to Stop Trump

I was heartened, very heartened, in fact, today by a column in the New York Times. It's by none other than George Conway, Kellyanne Conway's husband, the outspoken Republican, conservative and  critic of this President.

We Are Republicans, and We Want Trump Defeated

The president and his enablers have replaced conservatism with an empty faith led by a bogus prophet.

By George T. Conway III, Steve Schmidt, John Weaver and Rick Wilson

The authors have worked for and supported Republican campaigns.

Just a bit of the article:

"Patriotism and the survival of our nation in the face of the crimes, corruption and corrosive nature of Donald Trump are a higher calling than mere politics. As Americans, we must stem the damage he and his followers are doing to the rule of law, the Constitution and the American character.

That’s why we are announcing the Lincoln Project, an effort to highlight our country’s story and values, and its people’s sacrifices and obligations. This effort transcends partisanship and is dedicated to nothing less than preservation of the principles that so many have fought for, on battlefields far from home and within their own communities.

This effort asks all Americans of all places, creeds and ways of life to join in the seminal task of our generation: restoring to this nation leadership and governance that respects the rule of law, recognizes the dignity of all people and defends the Constitution and American values at home and abroad."

So there's some hope for the day, hope for the country, for the nation, for us all. Between this and the fact that most of the nation, according to polls, want Mr. Trump out of the White House and that all the Democratic candidates with big support poll far better than this President and have for some time, it all gives me, us, hope.

Have a great day.

Link. Go here to join:

The Lincoln Project 

The Lincoln Project is holding accountable those who would violate their oaths to the Constitution and would put others before Americans.

More information, additional link:

George Conway, Other Prominent Republicans Create PAC to ‘Defeat President Trump and Trumpism’

Oh, Happy Day! Hope For and In America

   

We Missourians got a pretty huge, very unexpected "two-fer Tuesday" yesterday.

A racist got fired from her own TV show and an extramarital sex blackmailing Missouri Governor had to resign from his job, all on the same day.

All in all, a great, if unexpected day.  Enough to give a person hope for us.

Next up? The Orange Man? And his entire administration?

Hey. We can hope.

Have a great day, y'all.

Think happy thoughts.

Very happy thoughts.

Link:

Roseanne Barr tweet backfires, Eric Greitens resigns

This Headline Hurts

So I was on Facebook, just scrolling through posts and suddenly I saw one with a headline from an article published out of the UK. This one:

Decline and fall: 

how American society unravelled

And damn.

That hurt.

That hurts.

With Trump President, I've been hoping this is just a swerve, a bump in our road to and of progress, you know? Just a brief mistake, if, yes, more than just slight.

But then, you look at the already-wealthy and corporations of the nation, firmly in control, creating more and yet more ways to shovel money their way since they own the Republican Party, at minimum. And you look at the way the NRA owns them and so, runs America, getting and keeping far too many weapons out there in the nation, on our streets. People being shot and lots killed, needlessly.

Then there's the opioid crisis, killing thousands of Americans and all because Big Pharma also has their sway with our government and so, us.

And now, this President Trump putting more and yet more science deniers in charge all over our government, in the EPA and at NASA, etc. Then putting people from the big banks in offices to support the banks and not the people, not protecting the people, you and I.

Then China has stepped up on the international politics and leadership field since there's a yawning gap of leadership with The Orange One in the White House.

I think, maybe they're right.

I still hope they're wrong but maybe we have, in fact, already begun to slike, as a nation and society and "great power."

Damn.

Our best days behind us?

No longer the world's leading power and "beacof light", "beacon of hope"?

Damn.

Links:

Trump stacks administration with climate change skeptics

Study: US is an oligarchy, not a democracy

American Kakistocracy

Donald Trump ushers in a new era of kakistocracy

Entertainment Overnight -- On Christmas

Someday at Christmas men won't be boys

Playing with bombs like kids play with toys

One warm December our hearts will see

A world where men are free

Someday at Christmas there'll be no wars

When we have learned what Christmas is for

When we have found what life's really worth

There'll be peace on earth

Quotes of the Day -- Sunday Edition

"Religion. A daughter of Hope and Fear, explaining to Ignorance the nature of the Unknowable."

"Faith: Belief without evidence in what is told by one who speaks without knowledge, of things without parallel."

"Sabbath - a weekly festival having its origin in the fact that God made the world in six days and was arrested on the seventh."

"Impiety. Your irreverence toward my deity."

--Ambrose Bierce

Links:  Ambrose Bierce Quotes 

Ambrose Bierce - Biography and Works. Search Texts

The United States of America?

It hurts, of course, that there's any truth to this:

What Hope Looks Like

From Robert Reich



In spite of a Republican Congress in the new year, here's to hope.

Entertainment Overnight -- Imagine

I hope some day we'll join up, and the world will live as one.

Quote of the day -- on human and even national potential

"In just one year, the expenditure of of the U.S.'s military budget is equivalent to the entire 50-year running budget of NASA combined."  

--Neil deGrasse Tyson

Imagine

Quote of the day -- Sunday edition

Looks like another great documentary coming

From IMDb:

Jeremy Irons sets out to discover the extent and effects of the global waste problem, as he travels around the world to beautiful destinations tainted by pollution. This is a meticulous, brave investigative journey that takes Irons (and us) from skepticism to sorrow and from horror to hope.

Link:   Trashed (2012) - IMDb

Quote of the day

Quote of the day

"The times are too grave, the challenge too urgent, and the stakes too high to permit the customary passions of political debate. We are not here to curse the darkness, but to light the candle that can guide us through that darkness to a safe and sane future. As Winston Churchill said on taking office some twenty years ago: if we open a quarrel between the present and the past, we shall be in danger of losing the future."

--President John F. Kennedy

Some hope for America after a sometimes ugly election

From Sunday's New York Times:

"Mr. Obama and the Democrats have an opportunity to bridge the racial and cultural divides that have been widening and to begin to reconfigure the country’s political landscape. Although this has always been a difficult task and one fraught with peril, history — from Reconstruction to Populism to the New Deal to the struggle for civil rights — teaches us that it can happen: when different groups meet one another on more level planes, slowly get to know and trust one another, and define objectives that are mutually beneficial and achievable, they learn to think of themselves as part of something larger — and they actually become something larger.

Hard work on the ground — in neighborhoods, schools, religious institutions and workplaces — is foundational. But Mr. Obama, the biracial community organizer, might consider starting his second term by articulating a vision of a multicultural, multiracial and more equitable America with the same insight and power that he once brought to an address on the singular problem of race. If he does that, with words and then with deeds, he can strike a telling blow against the political racism that haunts our country."

--Steven Hahn, Professor of History at the University of Pennsylvania and author of “A Nation Under Our Feet: Black Political Struggles in the Rural South from Slavery to the Great Migration.”

Here's hoping.

Quote of the day

The coming election

What concerns me most about the coming November election is that both sides, if we must assume there are only two--either Democratic vs. Republican or Right Wing vs. Left Wing or whatever--seem to be predicting the same thing.

That is, both sides seem to be thinking and then saying aloud or writing publicly (on Facebook or their blog or as a comment somewhere out on the internet) that if the opponent's leader is elected (Romney or Obama), that it's somehow "the end" or that they'll leave the country or we've lost all hope or some such.

It reminds me of the quote from the movie, "The Big Chill" at the beginning, at the recently-deceased character, Alex's, funeral when the minister asks "Where did our hope go?"

Why are so many of us expecting an apocalypse?

Can we not have hope?

Can't we see any way forward?

Is that no longer possible?

Isn't this America? Are we not Americans? Can we not work together? Can we not address and solve our problems? Together?

It needn't be the end of the world as we know it.

Not unless we give up and give in, anyway.

I don't think so, for what it's worth.

Quote of the day

‎"The hope of a secure and livable world lies with disciplined nonconformists who are dedicated to justice, peace and brotherhood." --Martin Luther King, Jr.