The Craziness That is the GOP Now

So it's been done. Republicans voted to oust Lix Cheney from her positino in their party because she wouldn't support the lie that Donald Trump won the election last November. Insane that's still going on. So here we are.

I love quoting Republicans themselves on this situation.

The insanity that is today's Republicans Party.

Joe Walsh has been speaking up about them for some time.

We must vote them all out.

Whither the Republican Party?

Bill Moyers makes a great statement today and then asks an also excellent, fair, even important question today.

There is no real Republican Party anymore, it has morphed into the Party of Trump. Will democracy survive if people continue to believe whatever they want to believe, if truths, facts, and respect for the rule of law are eliminated?

Bill Moyers talks with noted lawyer Steven Harper and distinguished historian Heather Cox Richardson about threats to democracy and the future of democracy after Trump.

Link:

PODCAST: Democracy on the Edge

Quote of the Day -- Democracy Edition

 

"This is an election between Donald Trump and Democracy and Democracy must win."

--Bernie Sanders

Vote, folks.

And vote blue.

#BlueWave

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BYEDON

"Pity the Nation"

A friend on Facebook posted the following poem written by Lawrence Ferlinghetti.

I thought it uncannily appropriate and timely.

"PITY THE NATION"

(After Khalil Gibran)

Pity the nation whose people are sheep

And whose shepherds mislead them

Pity the nation whose leaders are liars

Whose sages are silenced

And whose bigots haunt the airwaves

Pity the nation that raises not its voice

Except to praise conquerers

And acclaim the bully as hero

And aims to rule the world

By force and by torture

Pity the nation that knows

No other language but its own

And no other culture but its own

Pity the nation whose breath is money

And sleeps the sleep of the too well fed

Pity the nation oh pity the people

who allow their rights to erode

and their freedoms to be washed away

My country, tears of thee

Sweet land of liberty!

Kudos to The New York Times: "The Truth Is Hard"

The New York Times today ran a full page ad in their paper on "the truth." As with so much at The Times, it's intelligent and simple and correct. It's even strong. And we need it now, especially with this obfuscator/hypocrite/redefiner of the truth in the White House. The paper is also doing this, tonight:

Truth Is Hard,' Says New York Times' First-Ever Oscars Ad

Seems they're also going to hit The Orange One where it hurts--on one of the most-watched nights of television in the year. Here's the ad:

So good for them. Good for The Times and good for us. Great for us. We need to hold this man accountable, to all of us. We need to hold him accountable to, yes, the truth but to justice and equality and a host of other things that, from anyone else, we could assume.

Teddy Roosevelt On the Presidency---From Our Own KC Star

"The President is merely the most important among a large number of public servants. He should be supported or opposed exactly to the degree which is warranted by his good conduct or bad conduct, his efficiency or inefficiency in rendering loyal, able, and disinterested service to the Nation as a whole. Therefore it is absolutely necessary that there should be full liberty to tell the truth about his acts, and this means that it is exactly necessary to blame him when he does wrong as to praise him when he does right. 

Any other attitude in an American citizen is both base and servile. 

To announce that there must be no criticism of the President, or that we are to stand by the President, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public. Nothing but the truth should be spoken about him or any one else. But it is even more important to tell the truth, pleasant or unpleasant, about him than about any one else."

--President Theodore Roosevelt, Kansas City Star, May 7, 1918

Quote of the Day, of the Year

Quote of the Day -- Timely

After this election, H.G. Wells' quote seems even more poignant. Carl Sagan pointed this out, too, years ago.

"Civilization is in a race between education and catastrophe. Let us learn the truth and spread it as far and wide as our circumstances allow. For the truth is the greatest weapon we have.”

--H.G. Wells

Quote of the day -- on speaking up

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Quote of the day--on truth

"The truth is not always beautiful

Nor beautiful words the truth."

--Lao Tzu

Happy birthday, Albert Einstein, belated

"The ideals which have lighted my way, and time after time have given me new courage to face life cheerfully, have been Kindness, Beauty, and Truth. The trite subjects of human efforts, possessions, outward success, luxury have always seemed to me contemptible."

--Albert Einstein, 14 March 1879 – 18 April 1955

Link: 

Albert Einstein Official Site

Albert Einstein - Wikipedia

Albert Einstein - Biography

Albert Einstein Quotes 

Quote of the day

“Go outside and get some fresh air or cuddle with a loved one and you don’t feel any better, only more upset at being unable to feel the joy that everyone else seems to feel,” Swartz wrote. “Everything gets colored by the sadness.”

Link:
Tech Prodigy and Internet Activist Aaron Swartz Commits Suicide

The good and bad

The good thing--great, really--about accepting that organized religion is silliness, is that you know you're on solid ground. You know you're not blowing smoke up your own skirt, so to speak. You know you're not kidding yourself.  You know there's no pretense.

The bad?

The bad thing?  Things?

You realize that everything is, to an extent, to a large extent, absurd.

All that matters is relationships.

All that matters is doing right.

Doing good.

Doing well.

And doing well by another human being.

Helping others.

Family.  Friends. Colleagues.  Acquaintances.  Heck, even strangers.

And love.  Ultimately, love.

But ultimately, too, truthfully, as John Cougar Mellencamp so rightfully said, in naming his album, "Nothing really matters, and what if it did?"

Most of us can't handle that kind of blunt truth.

What becomes most important, after people and relationships and love and truth and beauty is art and light and all these really wonderful things that are out there.

From the movie, "Moulin Rouge" (forgive me):

"The greatest thing you'll ever learn, is just to love, and be loved in return."

It's a blessing and a curse.

It's a helluva way to go through life.

It's a helluva way to go on.

Quote of the day

"The words used by statesmen in our day no longer have a common meaning. Perhaps they never had. Freedom, democracy, human rights, international morality, peace itself, mean different things to different men. Words, in a constant flow of propaganda - itself an instrument of war - are employed to confuse, mislead, and debase the common man. Democracy is prostituted to dignify enslavement; freedom and equality are held good for some men but withheld from others by and in allegedly "democratic" societies; in "free" societies, so-called, individual human rights are severely denied; aggressive adventures are launched under the guise of "liberation". Truth and morality are subverted by propaganda, on the cynical assumption that truth is whatever propaganda can induce people to believe. Truth and morality, therefore, become gravely weakened as defences against injustice and war. With what great insight did Voltaire, hating war enormously, declare: 'War is the greatest of all crimes; and yet there is no aggressor who does not colour his crime with the pretext of justice.'" --Ralph Bunche, Nobel Lecture, 1950

"A seeker after truth must shun no science, scorn no book, nor cling fanatically to a single creed." --A 10th Century faylasuf (a person who tries to interpret Islam through rationalist philosophy. A type of philosopher).

Quote of the day

"These days, facts seem overmatched by falsehood, too slow to catch them, too weak to stop them.

Indeed, falsehoods are harder to kill than a Hollywood zombie. Run them through with fact, and still they shamble forward, fueled by echo chamber media, ideological tribalism, cognitive dissonance, a certain imperviousness to shame, and an understanding that a lie repeated long enough, loudly enough, becomes, in the minds of those who need to believe it, truth." --Leonard Pitts

The entire, great article here: http://www.miamiherald.com/2012/06/30/2876574_when-lies-triumph-over-facts-were.html#storylink=addthis#storylink=cpy

Two rules of life

Number 1: No one knows what you're going through. Number two: Everyone thinks they do.

Quote of the day

“What is a man born for, but to be a Reformer, a re-maker of what man has made; a renouncer of lies; a restorer of truth and good; imitating that great nature herself, yielding us every morning a new day, and with every pulsation a new life?” --Ralph Waldo Emerson, essayist and poet (1803-1882)

Important column from our own Arthur Brisbane

Former Kansas Citian and Star employee Arthur Brisbane asked what I think is both an important question and a stupid one, all at once, recently in The New York Times. It was: "Should The Times Be a Truth Vigilante?" (link at bottom). I'm sure he/they meant well but it has to be asked, if the newspaper media and PBS and NPR can't be "truth vigilantes" for society, who, exactly, is going to perform that role? This becomes even more important and true as we get more and more dependent on computers and websites for information and current events. We have already been made far too keenly aware of the fact that people only go to sites to reinforce beliefs they already hold, instead of to be told what actually is, even if it disagrees with already-held beliefs. My question is, if not you, NY Times, and again, PBS and NPR, then to whom are we to turn for hard data and "truth", instead of opinion? Link: http://publiceditor.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/01/12/should-the-times-be-a-truth-vigilante/?pagewanted=all

Quote of the day

"Unthinking respect for authority is the greatest enemy of truth." --Albert Einstein