The events of the past several weeks in Puerto Rico, leading to the ouster of the island's corrupt Governor, ought to be an object lesson for all of us in the rest of the United States. And yes, this is your periodic reminder that, contrary to what the crypto-fascists in social media tell you, Puerto Rico is part of the United States, even if it isn't yet an actual state itself.
As if the residents of Puerto Rico haven't suffered enough at the hands of Hurricane Maria, and the far tinier hands of T****, it has also had to deal with extensive abuse of power within its own territorial government, abuse that has added to the slowness of the island's recovery from Maria. Puerto Rico, in that sense, has been a mirror image of government on the mainland, where we have a national government that is paralyzed by Republican corruption and Democratic fecklessness.
Which brings to mind a question I have been asking myself many times, as I look at the streets of this country, and especially the streets of our nation's capital:
Where are the people?
In earlier times of crisis, the people--the ultimate government not just of democracies, but of any society, as the end of the Cold War demonstrated--took to the streets, just as the people of Puerto Rico did over the past fifteen days.
They marched.
They demonstrated.
They occupied buildings.
They made themselves the focus of media attention, not just here but around the world.
And, perhaps above all, they did one thing that was perhaps more important than all of the other things.
They didn't go away.
Woody Allen is famously credited with saying that 80 percent of life is showing up. Woody is a former cultural hero of mine (former for reasons that I hope are obvious), so I would like to be able to attribute that quote to a better human being. As it turns out, I probably can't.
And that's a shame, because it's absolutely true. And, when it comes to protecting the rights of all of us, it's absolutely essential.
Almost from the miserable moment T**** was elected, perhaps by the Russians, the MSM mantra has been that American institutions are big enough, powerful enough, and enduring enough to contain and repair any damage that might be done to our system by the Slumlord-in-Chief. The MSM wanted to believe it, and, frankly, so did the rest of us.
The ugly truth of the matter is that, when it comes to the need to fight for freedom, a necessity that the founders of this nation were not afraid to look right in the eye, we've become fat and lazy. We are victims not only of our accrued political, military and economy power, but also of our own material standard of living, which has successfully managed, to a far larger extent than we realize, to separate the words "hard" and "work" from each other. We have so many devices taking care of so many aspects of our lives that we assume our political system works the same way, and that (for better and for worse) it will just keep running on cruise control without any need for us to do more than perhaps press an occasional button by voting. But only when we're in the mood, of course.
Well, folks, if running on cruise control worked for us in the recent past (and I'm definitely a dissenter on that point), it sure isn't working now. Because our institutions are, literally right and left, failing us.
Wall Street? It's too busy licking its chops at the fruits of tax cuts and deregulation, even as basic services wither away and our planet melts around us. The media? Yes, the supposedly knee-jerk-liberal MSM. Please. Give me a break. They're so completely corporate in their outlook on life that they only care about getting clicks and eyeballs. Say whatever else you will about T****; he routinely delivers those with Prussian efficiency.
And our national government? Our marvelous system of checks and balances? It's almost entirely a system of donor checks and campaign account balances. This is why we have a Supreme Court stuffed in the least democratic way possible with right-wing ribbon clerks. This is why the White House has a Grifter-in-Chief leading an Administration of lobbyists and other grifters. It has, for all practical purposes, become a henhouse not merely guarded by foxes, but full of them--and all of them whining that we haven't been cooperative enough in feeding them.
And, perhaps worst of all, it's why we have a Congress divided into a Senate led by a Senator who almost surely is a foreign agent, and a House led by a Speaker more enamored of keeping her job rather than keeping the Republic a Republic, hoping that Robert Mueller will do her job for her.
Well, he tried. He did his loyal and honest best, in testifying last week before then House Judiciary Committee. And, because he stammered a little and had to walk back one answer to a question, the right-wing echo chamber was ready to declare him an incontinent puppet of Hillarycrats. So much for Mueller. So much for the Democratic House. So much for the willingness of the Republican Party and its supporters (with a handful of noble exceptions) to put country first, and party second. For that matter, so much for the willingness of Mueller's detractors, who overlooked the withering substance of his testimony, to obey the law and not diagnose a patient they have not met, nor one that they are qualified to diagnose.
Do you get it now?
Do you really wanted to be saved from the T**** nightmare that continues to unfold? The one that may very well never end with the next election?
Then be like Puerto Rico.
Take to the streets, as its people did.
As your ancestors did.
As your grandparents, parents, aunts, uncles, cousins, and in-laws did.
And, above all, before it's really too late.
Sunday, July 28, 2019
Sunday, July 21, 2019
D***** T****, Would-Be Editor-In-Chief
There have been times in the past when I have praised the New York Post for publishing stories that not only acknowledged the reality of climate change, but the extent to which it is actually happening in real time. I've been surprised by these stories, inasmuch as the Post is a staunchly conservative paper, and climate change denial is the default position modern conservatism takes on the issue, viewing it as essentially a backdoor path to some sort of "socialist' nightmare.
Recently, the Post did it again, publishing a story about the record heat from last month that also contained a prediction that this month might set yet another record. I added the story to my Diigo account, where I save stories to be incorporated in a blog post. Today, I sat down to do exactly that with the Post story.
And what did I find?
This.
Yep, you guess it. The Post took down the story. Curiously, the URL lingers, like a ghostly reminder of the story and its heretical content. But the actual article has digitally disappeared.
I smell a whiff of desperation in this. Not quite so much on the part of the Post, or its right-wing billionaire publisher, Rupert Murdoch. But on the part of the President that Murdoch and the Post are doing everything they can, against their better judgment, to try re-electing.
D***** T**** is an anti-environmentalist. He is this, of course, only because the better President whose skin color he despises, Barack Obama, accomplished more for the cause of a clean environment and clean energy than any President before him, and incorporated his effort to do so into the economic policies that led to the economic recovery T**** is now taking credit for. Obama is, in fact, T****'s only frame of reference for any decision he makes; he's too full of hate, and too lacking otherwise in judgment, to run his Presidency in any other way.
D***** T**** also follows conservative media religiously, including the Post, for daily updates on changes (up or down) in his popularity, the only concern that gets him out of bed at 11 a.m. every day. And he is narcissistic enough to bully anyone he feels he needs to bully in order to promote himself--the only person he cares about.
So you can be sure about how and why the story was "disappeared."
Which is exactly what will happen to you, me, and everyone else, if T****''s willingness to destroy the world for the sake of re-election is thwarted.
Recently, the Post did it again, publishing a story about the record heat from last month that also contained a prediction that this month might set yet another record. I added the story to my Diigo account, where I save stories to be incorporated in a blog post. Today, I sat down to do exactly that with the Post story.
And what did I find?
This.
Yep, you guess it. The Post took down the story. Curiously, the URL lingers, like a ghostly reminder of the story and its heretical content. But the actual article has digitally disappeared.
I smell a whiff of desperation in this. Not quite so much on the part of the Post, or its right-wing billionaire publisher, Rupert Murdoch. But on the part of the President that Murdoch and the Post are doing everything they can, against their better judgment, to try re-electing.
D***** T**** is an anti-environmentalist. He is this, of course, only because the better President whose skin color he despises, Barack Obama, accomplished more for the cause of a clean environment and clean energy than any President before him, and incorporated his effort to do so into the economic policies that led to the economic recovery T**** is now taking credit for. Obama is, in fact, T****'s only frame of reference for any decision he makes; he's too full of hate, and too lacking otherwise in judgment, to run his Presidency in any other way.
D***** T**** also follows conservative media religiously, including the Post, for daily updates on changes (up or down) in his popularity, the only concern that gets him out of bed at 11 a.m. every day. And he is narcissistic enough to bully anyone he feels he needs to bully in order to promote himself--the only person he cares about.
So you can be sure about how and why the story was "disappeared."
Which is exactly what will happen to you, me, and everyone else, if T****''s willingness to destroy the world for the sake of re-election is thwarted.
It's A Very, Very, Very, Very, Post-MAD World
The recent news that MAD Magazine is shutting down publication after nearly 70 years of making mostly young Americans--including me, back in the day--laugh at the various foibles of our country and its culture hit me very hard. Part of that, of course, was nostalgia for my long-lost and occasionally misspent youth. Of greater significance to me is what the departure of MAD means for the current state of satire in this country.
MAD began in the 1950s not as a magazine, but as a comic book published by EC Comics, a comic-book company known for its willingness to push the boundaries of acceptable content, especially when it came to graphic violence, but also in presenting plots that increasingly mirrored liberal concerns about modern society. That willingness, and the willingness of other companies to experiment in less radical ways with the art and storylines they put into their comic books, led to a form of '50s insanity that was a kind of second cousin to Senator Joe McCarthy's Communist witch-hunts in Hollywood. Alarmed by some of the "revelations" about modern comics in a book called "Seduction of the Innocent," Congress began to investigate the industry to the point of putting several companies out of business. This led to the creation of the Comics Code Authority, a kind of Good-Housekeeping-type of seal-of-approval for comic companies that abided by certain restrictions on content.
How did EC respond? By abandoning all of its books except MAD, and changing MAD from a comic-book to a magazine format. By doing so, they liberated themselves from the authority of the CCA, and were free to say what they wanted about whatever they wanted to talk about. And, in more ways than one, and without going beyond the parameters of "obscenity" laws that were still on the books, they exercised that freedom fairly liberally.
That's not to say that MAD was a part of a vast, left-wing conspiracy. It lampooned politics, but always in a way to make sure that politicians in both major parties (and, sometimes, in some minor ones) got their just desserts. It made fun, sometimes gently (and other times not so gently) of everyday American life, whether bowling, barbecuing, baseball, or anything else. Most especially, it mocked our cultural life, most especially in its parodies of popular films and TV shows. I don't presume to speak for everyone, but the lampooning of plots and caricatures of actors (the latter most notably by the great Mort Drucker) made me feel that I hadn't really, truly seen the movie or show in question until I had seen MAD's take on it. Even when they blatantly mocked one of my all-time favorite movies, I still felt that way.
Just take a look at what MAD did to the famous--or infamous, if you will--"horse's head" sequence from "The Godfather." Every time I think of it, I think to myself "Leave it to MAD to take a classic movie moment, and turn it into a classic moment of satire."
Satire.
Does it have a place in America anymore?
Is it possible to poke fun at a society in which everything seems to be more and more of a joke? Or, at least, a society in which there are no true boundaries? And where the boundaries that are left feel more and more vulnerable with each passing day?
It's a question I find myself asking when I watch "Saturday Night Live," which I do these days with decreasing frequency. Yes, Alec Baldwin's imitation of T**** is spot-on. But so what? The outrageousness of the original is almost impossible to surpass. And even a lot of their original material seems more and more unconnected to the experience of the show's audience.
Satire depends on the ability to go at least one step farther than the original. It relies on the idea that there's a range of human behavior that's "out-of-bounds" in the everyday lives of most people. And it's within that range that satire finds the freedom to openly laugh at what happens in those everyday lives.
Where is that range now? Does it even exist, in a world of social media where people are constantly destroying old boundaries, setting new ones, and then tears those down without a second thought? Can it exist, in a world in which the only surviving "ism" is narcissism? Where we can laugh at everything except ourselves? In a world in which a President like T**** is possible?
I don't think so.
And that's why I'm not surprised about MAD's demise. Saddened, of course, almost as if I have lost an old friend. But not surprised.
I am, however, far sadder about the thought, the likelihood, that we now live in a world that no longer has the ability to laugh at itself. I hope I'm wrong.
MAD began in the 1950s not as a magazine, but as a comic book published by EC Comics, a comic-book company known for its willingness to push the boundaries of acceptable content, especially when it came to graphic violence, but also in presenting plots that increasingly mirrored liberal concerns about modern society. That willingness, and the willingness of other companies to experiment in less radical ways with the art and storylines they put into their comic books, led to a form of '50s insanity that was a kind of second cousin to Senator Joe McCarthy's Communist witch-hunts in Hollywood. Alarmed by some of the "revelations" about modern comics in a book called "Seduction of the Innocent," Congress began to investigate the industry to the point of putting several companies out of business. This led to the creation of the Comics Code Authority, a kind of Good-Housekeeping-type of seal-of-approval for comic companies that abided by certain restrictions on content.
How did EC respond? By abandoning all of its books except MAD, and changing MAD from a comic-book to a magazine format. By doing so, they liberated themselves from the authority of the CCA, and were free to say what they wanted about whatever they wanted to talk about. And, in more ways than one, and without going beyond the parameters of "obscenity" laws that were still on the books, they exercised that freedom fairly liberally.
That's not to say that MAD was a part of a vast, left-wing conspiracy. It lampooned politics, but always in a way to make sure that politicians in both major parties (and, sometimes, in some minor ones) got their just desserts. It made fun, sometimes gently (and other times not so gently) of everyday American life, whether bowling, barbecuing, baseball, or anything else. Most especially, it mocked our cultural life, most especially in its parodies of popular films and TV shows. I don't presume to speak for everyone, but the lampooning of plots and caricatures of actors (the latter most notably by the great Mort Drucker) made me feel that I hadn't really, truly seen the movie or show in question until I had seen MAD's take on it. Even when they blatantly mocked one of my all-time favorite movies, I still felt that way.
Just take a look at what MAD did to the famous--or infamous, if you will--"horse's head" sequence from "The Godfather." Every time I think of it, I think to myself "Leave it to MAD to take a classic movie moment, and turn it into a classic moment of satire."
Satire.
Does it have a place in America anymore?
Is it possible to poke fun at a society in which everything seems to be more and more of a joke? Or, at least, a society in which there are no true boundaries? And where the boundaries that are left feel more and more vulnerable with each passing day?
It's a question I find myself asking when I watch "Saturday Night Live," which I do these days with decreasing frequency. Yes, Alec Baldwin's imitation of T**** is spot-on. But so what? The outrageousness of the original is almost impossible to surpass. And even a lot of their original material seems more and more unconnected to the experience of the show's audience.
Satire depends on the ability to go at least one step farther than the original. It relies on the idea that there's a range of human behavior that's "out-of-bounds" in the everyday lives of most people. And it's within that range that satire finds the freedom to openly laugh at what happens in those everyday lives.
Where is that range now? Does it even exist, in a world of social media where people are constantly destroying old boundaries, setting new ones, and then tears those down without a second thought? Can it exist, in a world in which the only surviving "ism" is narcissism? Where we can laugh at everything except ourselves? In a world in which a President like T**** is possible?
I don't think so.
And that's why I'm not surprised about MAD's demise. Saddened, of course, almost as if I have lost an old friend. But not surprised.
I am, however, far sadder about the thought, the likelihood, that we now live in a world that no longer has the ability to laugh at itself. I hope I'm wrong.
Saturday, July 13, 2019
Nancy Pelosi, Continued
You might think that, after devoting the entire contents of my blog for the month of June to lecturing Nancy Pelosi on the subject of impeaching D***** T****, I was entirely done with the subject of Madame Speaker.
But you would be wrong.
At the end of June, after pressure from an outraged public that had finally seen enough of the worse-than-deplorable conditions in the concentration camps T**** has built at the border for Central America refugees, Congress passed a bill that provided additional money to alleviate, if not exactly improve, those conditions.
But the bill that was passed was passed was a bill that was forced on Pelosi by--you guessed it--the Senate's majority leader, Mitch McCONnell, who insisted that the legislation not include any restrictions that would restrict the use of the money for so-called "enforcement"--translation: "torture"--purposes.
In my "open letter" to the Speaker, I had pointed out that, on the subject of impeachment, McCONnell was manipulating her and the members of the majority caucus into refraining from using a power that not only is manifestly theirs, but for which popular support was far greater than they were allowing themselves to believe. In conjunction with that, I expressed concern that Pelosi's supposed "prudence" on the subject of impeachment was in fact telegraphing weakness to her opponents--a weakness that could end up limiting what House Democrats can do with regard to other issues.
That's why I'm writing about this now. It was in the back of my mind when I was writing my "open letter." because the kerfuffle over the bill took place just a few days prior to my doing so. But I needed space to catch up on and address other aspects of the failure-to-impeach crisis, and so I'm keeping a promise to myself that I would come back this month and address the migrant funding legislation.
And, as the fallout from the passage of the bill has shown, there's no reason to not do now, and expand on the points I made previously.
All the more so because, in addition to illustrating how T**** and McCONnell are exploiting the vacuum Pelosi has created by not leading on the impeachment process, it also illustrates how they are using that exploitation to weaken, and potentially destroy, the fragile unity that Pelosi has (to her credit) thus far has created and maintained between progressive and moderate Democrats. For, in the final House vote on the bill, while three-fourths of all members voted for it, it was passed with far more Republican votes than Democratic ones.
Who were the Democrats who voted against it? The progressives, who saw through McCONnell's bluff about the absence of restrictions on the use of the money. They felt that the facts, combined with the Administration's well-earned lack of support, justified their inclusion. Moderates, on the other hand, worried about the prospect of holding children hostage for the sake of what they felt their constituents would perceive to be little more than a political food fight.
In doing so, however, the moderates failed to take into account the fact that McCONnell had, in effect, already taken the children hostage, and was merely including the lack of restrictions at the behest of T****, for whom he has become little more than a legislative ribbon-clerk. This should have been a fight worth having, and one that could easily have been explained to most if not all Americans. But, for reasons that continue to elude many people, including me, moderate House Democrats are afraid to do that.
Is their fear of T**** that great? Do they perceive has power to actually be that great? If they're unable to go to the proverbial mattresses for the sake of children whose lives are at risk, the answer to that question has to be "yes."
I don't know what can be done to get them past that fear. Maybe nothing. Maybe they're so afraid of T****'s "hidden power" (e.g., dark money from Russia) that they don't dare fight him and his political allies on anything. Even something that all of us should be willing to support. Like, for example, doing the most we can for vulnerable children at our doorstep.
I have no illusion that there's a path to getting a House of Representatives with 218+ AOC's is going to happen in the short-term. Or even the long-term. It would be easier to get to a Senate that has 51 members with a "D" after each of their names, and that seems impossibly hard to imagine right now. But we, as a part and a people, have simply got to do much better than this.
And, in the short run, the responsibility falls on the shoulder of one person: Pelosi.
And, rather than stepping up to meet the crisis, she seems to be shrinking further and further away from it. Or attempting to.
Take, for example, her handling--or, for the moment, her failure to handle--of the fallout of the Jeffrey Epstein child abuse scandal on T****'s Secretary of Labor, Alex Acosta, the former federal prosecutor who let Epstein spectacularly off the hook in an earlier child abuse case. As ever, Pelosi quickly telegraphed her willingness to be timid in the face of a need to act. Luckily, Acosta resigned anyway, which is a tribute either to public outcry or the potential for the Epstein case to expose even more T**** perfidy. That sound, in any case, like a blog post--or, perhaps, a series of posts--to be made at a later date.
But, even worse, Pelosi seems to be willing to use her press contacts to go on the offense against the progressive members of her caucus. Take, for example, this interview with Maureen Dowd, in which she dismisses four of the most progressive, and politically intriguing, members of her caucus as "four votes," with their "public whatever and their Twitter world." With that quote, she became every bit as rhetorically hard on them as she has been on her Republican opponents.
To what end? This is beginning to feel more than anything like Pelosi is more concerned about the generational gap within the Democratic Party than she is about advancing causes that a truly focused leader could use to bring Democrats together. She's term-limited herself to January of 2023, by which time she hopes a Democratic President, coupled perhaps with a Democratic Senate, will allow her to finish her career with a flourish.
Is she willing to do that with what amounts to a coalition of moderates in her party and Republicans, as she did with the migrant relief bill? Is she so focused on the short-term finish of her career that she is willing to sell out not only the future of her party, but also the most sensitive needs of those with the most to lose?
I'm afraid that Madame Speaker may very well find that, if she continues to run from the clear and present danger that T****, McCONnell, and their cronies pose, she may never get to that future glorious send-off she imagines. If she continues to act more like a Republican leader than a Democratic one, the power she's trying to protect may evaporate right in front of her eyes--and, with it, the shared hopes of most Americans of different ideological stripes.
For G-d's sake, Nancy, fight! Find some of your father's guts, and use them. Otherwise, the future that you want, and the future that all members of your party want, may never arrive.
But you would be wrong.
At the end of June, after pressure from an outraged public that had finally seen enough of the worse-than-deplorable conditions in the concentration camps T**** has built at the border for Central America refugees, Congress passed a bill that provided additional money to alleviate, if not exactly improve, those conditions.
But the bill that was passed was passed was a bill that was forced on Pelosi by--you guessed it--the Senate's majority leader, Mitch McCONnell, who insisted that the legislation not include any restrictions that would restrict the use of the money for so-called "enforcement"--translation: "torture"--purposes.
In my "open letter" to the Speaker, I had pointed out that, on the subject of impeachment, McCONnell was manipulating her and the members of the majority caucus into refraining from using a power that not only is manifestly theirs, but for which popular support was far greater than they were allowing themselves to believe. In conjunction with that, I expressed concern that Pelosi's supposed "prudence" on the subject of impeachment was in fact telegraphing weakness to her opponents--a weakness that could end up limiting what House Democrats can do with regard to other issues.
That's why I'm writing about this now. It was in the back of my mind when I was writing my "open letter." because the kerfuffle over the bill took place just a few days prior to my doing so. But I needed space to catch up on and address other aspects of the failure-to-impeach crisis, and so I'm keeping a promise to myself that I would come back this month and address the migrant funding legislation.
And, as the fallout from the passage of the bill has shown, there's no reason to not do now, and expand on the points I made previously.
All the more so because, in addition to illustrating how T**** and McCONnell are exploiting the vacuum Pelosi has created by not leading on the impeachment process, it also illustrates how they are using that exploitation to weaken, and potentially destroy, the fragile unity that Pelosi has (to her credit) thus far has created and maintained between progressive and moderate Democrats. For, in the final House vote on the bill, while three-fourths of all members voted for it, it was passed with far more Republican votes than Democratic ones.
Who were the Democrats who voted against it? The progressives, who saw through McCONnell's bluff about the absence of restrictions on the use of the money. They felt that the facts, combined with the Administration's well-earned lack of support, justified their inclusion. Moderates, on the other hand, worried about the prospect of holding children hostage for the sake of what they felt their constituents would perceive to be little more than a political food fight.
In doing so, however, the moderates failed to take into account the fact that McCONnell had, in effect, already taken the children hostage, and was merely including the lack of restrictions at the behest of T****, for whom he has become little more than a legislative ribbon-clerk. This should have been a fight worth having, and one that could easily have been explained to most if not all Americans. But, for reasons that continue to elude many people, including me, moderate House Democrats are afraid to do that.
Is their fear of T**** that great? Do they perceive has power to actually be that great? If they're unable to go to the proverbial mattresses for the sake of children whose lives are at risk, the answer to that question has to be "yes."
I don't know what can be done to get them past that fear. Maybe nothing. Maybe they're so afraid of T****'s "hidden power" (e.g., dark money from Russia) that they don't dare fight him and his political allies on anything. Even something that all of us should be willing to support. Like, for example, doing the most we can for vulnerable children at our doorstep.
I have no illusion that there's a path to getting a House of Representatives with 218+ AOC's is going to happen in the short-term. Or even the long-term. It would be easier to get to a Senate that has 51 members with a "D" after each of their names, and that seems impossibly hard to imagine right now. But we, as a part and a people, have simply got to do much better than this.
And, in the short run, the responsibility falls on the shoulder of one person: Pelosi.
And, rather than stepping up to meet the crisis, she seems to be shrinking further and further away from it. Or attempting to.
Take, for example, her handling--or, for the moment, her failure to handle--of the fallout of the Jeffrey Epstein child abuse scandal on T****'s Secretary of Labor, Alex Acosta, the former federal prosecutor who let Epstein spectacularly off the hook in an earlier child abuse case. As ever, Pelosi quickly telegraphed her willingness to be timid in the face of a need to act. Luckily, Acosta resigned anyway, which is a tribute either to public outcry or the potential for the Epstein case to expose even more T**** perfidy. That sound, in any case, like a blog post--or, perhaps, a series of posts--to be made at a later date.
But, even worse, Pelosi seems to be willing to use her press contacts to go on the offense against the progressive members of her caucus. Take, for example, this interview with Maureen Dowd, in which she dismisses four of the most progressive, and politically intriguing, members of her caucus as "four votes," with their "public whatever and their Twitter world." With that quote, she became every bit as rhetorically hard on them as she has been on her Republican opponents.
To what end? This is beginning to feel more than anything like Pelosi is more concerned about the generational gap within the Democratic Party than she is about advancing causes that a truly focused leader could use to bring Democrats together. She's term-limited herself to January of 2023, by which time she hopes a Democratic President, coupled perhaps with a Democratic Senate, will allow her to finish her career with a flourish.
Is she willing to do that with what amounts to a coalition of moderates in her party and Republicans, as she did with the migrant relief bill? Is she so focused on the short-term finish of her career that she is willing to sell out not only the future of her party, but also the most sensitive needs of those with the most to lose?
I'm afraid that Madame Speaker may very well find that, if she continues to run from the clear and present danger that T****, McCONnell, and their cronies pose, she may never get to that future glorious send-off she imagines. If she continues to act more like a Republican leader than a Democratic one, the power she's trying to protect may evaporate right in front of her eyes--and, with it, the shared hopes of most Americans of different ideological stripes.
For G-d's sake, Nancy, fight! Find some of your father's guts, and use them. Otherwise, the future that you want, and the future that all members of your party want, may never arrive.
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