Our current disfunction began when the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor. Our country rose up in great anger and sought vengeance. Nearing the end of a brutal war the Japanese military was determined to defend their home island at all cost- to us and to them. Firebombing Tokyo (100,000 dead and 1,000,000 homeless) left the Japanese military undeterred.
President Truman dropped atomic bombs on Japan – arguably the worst single war crime of the war. The Japanese military was still ready to fight to the finish.
Fortunately the Japanese Emperor was wise enough to announce the surrender of Japan and the Japanese people obeyed . Dropping the atomic bombs saved millions of lives and gave the Japanese a new and much better government – it was the best thing to do.
But the commission of terrible war crimes did not go unpunished. The people of the United States were now the most powerful people on earth. We had atomic bombs and we were the mightiest on the earth. We were not humble and grateful.
President Truman should have led our country in sackcloth and ashes in a sincere prayer for forgiveness for committing the terrible act of dropping two atomic bombs on Japan. He should then have worked to eliminate all atomic bombs.
Instead our pride led to maintaining a more powerful military than everyone else. Our political parties vied to spend the most money on the military. Social Security was moved into the main federal budget to hide the size of military spending.
Ronald Reagan’s unwillingness to collect taxes to pay for the military spending led to national budget deficits and the obscene number of billionaire oligarchs whose money is now distorting the political process. Taxing the poor is easy (look at the Tennessee lottery and the Tennessee sales tax that started at 2 percent in 1947) but taxing the wealthy is difficult. For unprincipled oligarchs it is cheaper to buy politicians than pay taxes.
I am 90 years old and cowardly politicians now in charge won’t much affect my remaining years but you younger people have big problems to solve:
1. Climate change is real and the cause is obvious. Read the Keeling curve and be wise.
2. Get rid of nuclear bombs or someone will use one. We live in a Mexican standoff.
3. Tax the oligarchs. Only aware voters can do it – nothing else will work.
The 2024 election seems to be overwhelmed by Elon musk, who has bought several media platforms and eliminated fact checking. The result is quite disgusting. I will give one example and then tell you don’t believe anything – particularly on a so-called “conservative” website – that you haven’t fact checked yourself.
I condensed this from a longer article that is posted below in full.
I think she (Harris) zeroed in on this for a couple of reasons. When she was the San Francisco district attorney, she was learning things about who were the city’s homicide victims and who was committing homicides. And in both cases, she found that a lot of them were high school dropouts. And that’s when she started to think about truancy, because missing a lot of school is linked to dropping out of school.
one of the initiatives that has drawn the most attention is the truancy program that she pushed for in the state legislature. Passed in 2011, the law allowed district attorneys to charge parents with a misdemeanor if their children missed 10 percent of the school year without a valid reason.
The law she passed is still in place, and there was another truancy law on the books before she passed this one. For jurisdictions that mainly use the law to cite parents and take them to court, they’ve tended to use the law Harris fought for to bring up more serious charges. Other jurisdictions have embraced the spirit of her program, and use the law that she passed as the threat, in order to get parents to come to conferences and sit down with school officials and talk through what the issue is. So both things are happening.
I visited one jurisdiction where they’ve set up truancy courts, usually under the auspices of the existing family court. And that’s a place where they can get parents to come in on a regular basis, and the judge checks and makes sure that they’re complying with attendance requirements. And then once that happens, usually it goes off their record and doesn’t end with a fine or jail time.
Harris talked about regretting that some district attorneys had used this law, which she had fought for with good intentions, to crack down really hard on and to criminalize the parents. She has talked a lot about how her law was intended to give schools the tools to make sure parents work with them to solve these problems
Cheree Peoples.lived in Orange County, which is a fairly conservative, “law and order” type of county. The district attorney there was up for reelection, and he did a big truancy sweep under this law, which Kamala Harris had fought for when she was the D.A. of San Francisco and oversaw its implementation when she was attorney general. There was a big sweep, and one of the parents arrested that morning and perp-walked in front of some cameras was Cheree Peoples.
She was in her house one morning, and the police showed up and handcuffed her. She had time to put on a jacket over her pajamas. And when she was walked by the police out of her apartment where she lived with her daughter, there were news cameras waiting, and she was booked by the police.
The truancy sweep was part of a joint effort by the OC Gang Reduction Intervention Partnership and teams from the Buena Park Police Department, Orange County District Attorney’s Office, Orange County Probation Department, Orange Police Department, Santa Ana Police Department, and Santa Ana Unified School District Police Department.
Note that “district attorney there was up for reelection,” Who was that district attorney who wanted publicity for his election campaign? Republican Todd Spitzer. So the policeman and Robert Kennedy are wrong. The person who violated Cheree Peoples was not Kamala Harris but an unethical Republican district attorney.
Note that there were “news cameras waiting “.
Robert Kennedy posted a description showing how terrible Kamala Harris had been in treating a poor woman miserably. The police dragged the poor woman away early in the morning in handcuffs in her pajamas because her daughter had excess absences in school and the arresting officer said “you can thank Kamala Harris”.
The newspaper reporters and photographers were there for the arrest.
Most of the commenters on the post we’re enraged over how Kamala Harris had treated this woman.
But the bad guy was Republican Todd Spitzer – did Robert not know that?
This is the whole article I was using:
The Story Behind Kamala Harris’ Truancy Program
Kamala Harris, then California attorney general, speaks to reporters on July 11, 2012.
Justin Sullivan/Getty Images
Our latest episode of Code Switch, we took a look at vice presidential candidate Kamala Harris’s record as a prosecutor, and how she used her power as San Francisco’s district attorney and later, as California’s attorney general to shape the criminal justice system.
And of that record, one of the initiatives that has drawn the most attention is the truancy program that she pushed for in the state legislature. Passed in 2011, the law allowed district attorneys to charge parents with a misdemeanor if their children missed 10 percent of the school year without a valid reason.
In 2019, HuffPost reporter Molly Redden wrote about the families affected by this truancy program, including a Black mother named Cheree Peoples, who was arrested in April of 2013. She came on the show to help explain why this program, which initially launched without much criticism, ended up becoming so controversial, and why it disproportionately affected families of color. Here’s the extended cut of our conversation, which has been edited and condensed for clarity.
So I guess we should start with Cheree Peoples. Who was she, and how did she get ensnared in this truancy program?
Cheree is a mother in California, and her daughter has a chronic illness. Her name is Shayla, and she has sickle cell anemia, a really painful genetic disease that causes lots of complications. It’s pretty typical for people who live with this disability to miss a lot of school if they’re children. As her daughter missed a lot of school for valid medical reasons, Cheree and the school were in a dispute about how to accommodate and account for those absences.
She lived in Orange County, which is a fairly conservative, “law and order” type of county. The district attorney there was up for reelection, and he did a big truancy sweep under this law, which Kamala Harris had fought for when she was the D.A. of San Francisco and oversaw its implementation when she was attorney general. There was a big sweep, and one of the parents arrested that morning and perp-walked in front of some cameras was Cheree Peoples.
Take us through this perp walk. What happened?
She was in her house one morning, and the police showed up and handcuffed her. She had time to put on a jacket over her pajamas. And when she was walked by the police out of her apartment where she lived with her daughter, there were news cameras waiting, and she was booked by the police. What she said to me was that she was shocked. She was really floored. And she said to me, “You’d swear I’d killed somebody.” It felt to her like a really excessive show of force for what was essentially a misunderstanding between her and her child’s school.
So she sort of became the face of the truancy program in a way, as one of the most visible “perpetrators.” Can you walk us through Harris’s truancy program: what it was, how it came to be, how it worked?
[Harris] fought for this law, which raised the financial penalty and made it a criminal misdemeanor for parents, up to a year in jail, when their children missed at least 10 percent of school time. Big picture, [Peoples’s case] was one of the most extreme examples of how this law was used. More broadly, what the law did was create a more standardized way for local law enforcement officials to get involved with making sure kids go to school every day. And so very few parents were arrested and perp walked in this really punitive and splashy way. But what did happen to a lot of families is that they were ushered into a system that asked parents: Why can’t why can’t you get your act together? Why can’t you send your kids to school?
I thought it was really interesting to look at [Harris’s] involvement in this issue, because she didn’t invent the idea of punishing parents when their kids miss school. California already had a law on its books. Her innovation was to build a really standardized way for local district attorneys to get involved in pressuring parents to make sure their kids go to school. And a lot of education advocates were happy that she brought attention to the issue, because they say attention is actually the number one way we solve truancy. They think it’s really important to call people’s attention to the fact that, Hey, it adds up when your kids miss school.
What Harris also intended to do was to build a system where the school district officials, teachers and parents could all sit down and talk through the problems: Why isn’t your kid coming to school? What are the resources that we could give you to help make sure that your child goes to school every day? And what she sort of layered on top of that was, You will get a series of increasingly scary warnings from the district attorney if this problem doesn’t get solved. And that’s what people really put their finger on as what they disliked about this program: As the [absenteeism] issue continues, the blame increasingly turns toward the parents. The message becomes: We’re giving you everything. Why can’t you make this work?
And the reality is that the reasons why kids miss school so often are not totally under the parent’s control. But we just increasingly blame the parents. And that is a very typical American way of dealing with school. I mean, that goes back decades, and even hundreds of years. So it’s not fair to lay that all at Harris’s feet. But what people would say in response is that when you use the criminal justice system to solve social problems, you will criminalize people no matter how good your intentions were.
Just hearing how this plan was conceived, it was not hard to sort of surmise who was going to get caught up in the system. It was probably going to be mothers of color, probably mothers with disabilities or mothers of children with disabilities, mothers who might be housing-insecure or who were experiencing homelessness. Is that who ended up getting tangled up in this initiative?
It’s a little bit hard to answer that question, because California also hasn’t kept great data on who got caught up in this initiative. Harris wanted them to keep better data, but she didn’t get everything she wanted. But generally, when you look nationwide, all of the studies of truancy have found that the children most likely to be labeled truant are Native American children and Black children. And I think what’s really important to keep in mind is that education advocates have started talking about the issue as one of chronic absenteeism, rather than truancy. And part of the reason why is because if a child misses school for a valid reason, like they’re sick a lot, that’s an excused absence. But those missed days of education still add up, and still can cause some problems.
Truancy is more of a measure of blame rather than a measure of how much you’ve missed school. It’s saying; How much did you miss school? Oh, and it’s your family’s fault. And blame is subject to a lot of kinds of biases when we start making judgments about why kids go to school. And then there’s the fact that the reasons why children tend to be absent are all issues that impact people of color more and uniquely, like chronic illness, facets of poverty, access to reliable transportation. Everything that contributes to truancy is a factor that tends to overly impact Black and Native American families.
So when Kamala Harris is spinning up this idea in San Francisco, who supported it, and who was opposed to it?
I think she zeroed in on this for a couple of reasons. When she was the San Francisco district attorney, she was learning things about who were the city’s homicide victims and who was committing homicides. And in both cases, she found that a lot of them were high school dropouts. And that’s when she started to think about truancy, because missing a lot of school is linked to dropping out of school.
The way she described why she wanted to get involved was, “We need to do things differently.” But I also think she knew that, at the time in the mid-2000s, there wasn’t really a political downside to saying, “These parents are not meeting their responsibilities, it’s causing problems for society at large, and we should crack down on them for the good of the children.”
The law passed with pretty broad support. But some public defenders and others were like, Hey, wait a minute. Don’t you think that this is just going to be another way we crack down on people of color, on parents who are facing a whole lot of issues, some of which the state has caused? But at the time, those were not calls that were echoed more broadly. The skepticism was fairly limited.
It’s interesting if you think about the sort of conclusion she’s making. So if you don’t complete high school, you have a much higher likelihood of being the victim of violent crime or to perpetrate violent crime, and to have all this contact with the criminal justice system. And she was like, Okay, the solution to that is to open up another opportunity for them to have contact with the criminal justice system.
This is really, really common, right? I think it’s a case of looking at two symptoms of a really complicated web of problems and treating one of the symptoms. It speaks to the fact that she was a prosecutor, and so she had only the tools of a prosecutor. Part of the reason why she was looking at the symptoms and treating the symptoms [instead of the root problems], is that’s what we make law enforcement do in this country. We don’t spend money and commit resources to fixing the host of problems that precede that.
Kamala Harris’s record as a prosecutor had come under a lot of scrutiny even before she was named as Joe Biden’s running mate. So how has she addressed this program?
After we reported on Cheree’s case, Harris talked about regretting that some district attorneys had used this law, which she had fought for with good intentions, to crack down really hard on and to criminalize the parents. She has talked a lot about how her law was intended to give schools the tools to make sure parents work with them to solve these problems. But the general response to that has been something that you mentioned earlier, which is that this law brings parents and students into contact with law enforcement, often at a time when these families are really vulnerable, having issues with job loss or moving because of housing instability.
Part of why I wanted to look at this also was because to me, it kind of speaks to the limits of using the criminal justice system,which Kamala Harris has been a part of for so much of her professional career, to solve really big overarching problems. She’s talked about working from within the system to change it. And I think this is a really clear case of how there are limitations to that.
What is the legacy of the program? Is it still in place in some capacity?
The law she passed is still in place, and there was another truancy law on the books before she passed this one. For jurisdictions that mainly use the law to cite parents and take them to court, they’ve tended to use the law Harris fought for to bring up more serious charges. Other jurisdictions have embraced the spirit of her program, and use the law that she passed as the threat, in order to get parents to come to conferences and sit down with school officials and talk through what the issue is. So both things are happening.
I visited one jurisdiction where they’ve set up truancy courts, usually under the auspices of the existing family court. And that’s a place where they can get parents to come in on a regular basis, and the judge checks and makes sure that they’re complying with attendance requirements. And then once that happens, usually it goes off their record and doesn’t end with a fine or jail time.
An unfortunate thing is that California keeps changing the way that it measures truancy. Part of that is to keep up with our evolving understanding of what is actually important to measure. But they keep changing it, ask schools to measure it, and then they don’t really centralize that data very well. So we can’t really say if the law that Harris fought for brought the truancy rate up or down or made no change, because they’re not counting very well. And that’s not on her; she wanted the state to keep count. But it’s telling about the way that we approach criminal justice a lot in this country. We identify a problem. We pass a law. It goes into the bureaucracy. And now with Harris’s case, there’s a law on the books, and we don’t really know how this is impacting people’s lives.
What happened to Cheree Peoples and her daughter?
Cheree Peoples wound up fighting these charges in court for a really long time. They got passed among different prosecutors and detectives, and for a long time, there was pressure on her to plead guilty to this. And she wouldn’t do it. She felt like this was really unfair. She knew that the issue wasn’t that her child was skipping school willy-nilly; she had a good reason that the school was aware of, and that the issue was that she and the school needed to come to an agreement about accommodating her daughter’s disability. She held fast, and eventually the charges were dropped. To this day, she doesn’t completely know why.
While she was fighting this in court, she was also caring for her daughter. She struggles with employment because her daughter’s illness really takes a lot of care and management. It can be all-encompassing in their lives sometimes. This was a really tough time for her.
Market Street in Knoxville is unique with statues celebrating women’s suffrage. Men didn’t want women voting. Many men identify with politicians who are aggressive, loudspeaking jerks. Most women don’t identify with jerks and tend to vote for kinder and more intelligent candidates – and women have changed politics.
The Republican party hasn,t caught up with women. With some exceptions (John Kasich and Nicki Haley), Republicans recently have chosen little puffed up men as their leaders.
Newt Gingrich shut down the country because President Clinton didn’t invite him back for a chat on an airplane trip.
Donald Trump wouldn’t allow a ship holding 21 Covid patients into the United States because they would have increased “my number” of Covid patients (we ended up killing 1,200,000).
Cameron Sexton wanted everyone to vote for him for house speaker. Gloria Johnson alone voted against him and the little puffed up man exposed himself by assigning Gloria Johnson to a tiny office. And an unhealthy closet for her assistant. (Gloria moved her desk into the hall and gave her assistant the office.)
Our current senator, Marsha Blackburn, is advertising about how tough she is on “big tech”. She doesn’t advertise is how “tough” she was on “big pharma” when she changed the law to allow “big pharma” to flood the country with opioids ( we ended up killing 500,000 ). It was “unintended” but forewarned! But “big pharma” donated big dollars . The Republicans get some credit though – she is not a little puffed up man.
Knoxville’s current state representative, Gloria Johnson, is what the suffragettes immortalized on Market Street dreamed of. Gloria Johnson is a woman of courage, intelligence, thoughtfulness, experience, kindness and a genuine public servant who serves everyone while she is in public office. Gloria will be an excellent senator.
This is what I wanted to say but I cut it to 300 words for the paper:
Market Street in Knoxville is quite unique with the statues celebrating women’s suffrage. Men didn’t want women voting. Many men identify with politicians who are aggressive, loudspeaking jerks. Most women don’t identify with jerks and women tend to vote for kinder and more intelligent candidates – and women have changed politics.
The Republican party has not caught up with the women. With some occasional exceptions (John Kasich and Nicki Haley ?), the Republicans recently have chosen little puffed up men as their leaders.
Newt Gingrich shut down the country because President Clinton didn’t invite him back for a chat on an airplane trip.
Donald Trump wouldn’t allow a ship which had 21 Covid patients to land in the United States because they would have increased “my number” of Covid patients (we ended up losing 1,200,000).
Cameron Sexton wanted everyone- Democrats and Republicans -to vote for him as speaker of the Tennessee house of representatives. Why should the Democrats hold their noses and vote for a little puffed up man? Gloria Johnson was the only representative to vote against him. His response was to exercise his power by assigning Gloria Johnson to a tiny office with an unhealthy closet for her assistant. (Gloria put her desk out in the hall and gave her assistant the office.)
Our current senator, Marsha Blackburn, is spending a fortune advertising about how tough she is on “big tech”. What she doesn’t advertise is how “tough” she was on “big pharma” when she changed the law to allow “big pharma” to flood the country with opioids ( we ended up losing 500,000 mostly young ? people). It was unintended but forewarned. But “big pharma” kicked in big dollars so she could advertise her virtues. You have to give the Republicans credit for originality though – she is not a little puffed up man.
Knoxville’s current state representative, Gloria Johnson, is what the suffragettes who are immortalized on Market Street dreamed of. A woman of courage, intelligence, thoughtfulness, experience, kindness and a genuine public servant who will serve in public office.
Some politicians are genuine public servants and some are in politics for personal gain ( and remember Republicans recently are characterized by the little puffed up man who is their leader). I hope you watched him squirm when faced with Kamala Harris-another exceptional woman.
I postulate that a “dark quark” exists. It is almost identical to an up quark except that the up quark has a charge of +2/3 and the dark quark has no charge. I postulate that all the standard model elementary particles are made of fundamental particles which I am naming “knucks”. Both the up quark and the dark quark have a triangular “ring” composed of two positive and one negative knucks. Each has a fourth knuck oscillating back and forth through the center of the triangular ring of two positive and one negative knucks. In the up quark the fourth knuck is positive and the charge on the up quark is +2/3. In the dark quark the fourth knuck is negative and the charge on the dark quark is zero. The energy of the two configurations should be almost identical since the oscillation of the fourth knuck is probably due to magnetic attraction and probably little effected by the electrical charge differences.
The anti-dark quark is similar except it has a positive fourth knuck oscillating back and forth through the center of a triangular ring of one positive and two negative knucks.
The dark quark has mass and it may move rapidly or slowly but its movement is altered only by gravity since it has no net electrical or magnetic charge. Its mass is essentially the same as an up quark – about 2.2 MeV/c^2 – which is about five times the mass of an electron but unike the electron it may have a very short lifetime. It is likely that dark quarks will interact with other dark quarks to form “darkons”.
I postulate that a “darkon” is a hadron formed from three dark quarks held together by gluons. It has no charge and it is slightly lighter than a proton. It does not have the ability to bond with other hadrons. Protons and neutrons can bond together to make atomic nuclei but the darkon is not included in a nucleus. The darkon, like the proton, probably has an infinite life. The darkon is attracted by gravity but does not interact with electrical or magnetic forces.
Whatever process originally formed the up quarks in the universe probably also formed dark quarks and they may be currently formed in interactions involving W+ and W- bosons along with neutrinos.
I don’t think you will see this theory anywhere else.
Existence is. Things happen in existence – and that is profound. This is one thing people will never understand.
Existence is infinite. Existence has never had a beginning and will never have an end.
The chemistry and physics that our senses detect lie in three dimensions but existence is infinite in distance , time, and probably in the number of dimensions. We think ours is the lowest dimension but there may be an infinite number of lower dimensions that probably do not have chemistry and we will never have a way to detect them. There may be an infinite number of higher dimensions that may or may not have chemistry and we currently have no way to detect them. (I am saying the fourth dimension is a higher dimension than the third dimension.) There is certainly a fourth dimension that effects us and probably a fifth and sixth dimension that effects us.
The total of everything in existence is zero. For every thing in existence its exact opposite thing also exists (for every up there is a down, for every in there is an out, for every positive there is a negative , for every left there is right , for every clockwise there is a counterclockwise– you get the idea) and was formed simultaneously with it and when it meets an exact opposite thing both thing and its opposite thing will disappear. Fortunately for us opposites can exist near each other for a long time.
Existence is steady state. Everything that possibly can happen has happened in every possible sequence an infinite number of times (but some things more than others). All things that can possibly be created are being created continuously and an equal number of things that have been created are ending continuously (some things take a long time to disappear).
There is no such thing as a particle. Everything that appears to be a particle in one dimension is a wave in the particles in the next higher dimension.
The Nature of Our Universe
I postulate that our universe is a pair of hollow hyperspherical waves in fourth dimensional particles expanding away from an initial point at the speed of light in the fourth dimension.The two waves are the opposite of each other – if they were combined there would be nothing left but (fortunately for us) they do not combine in such a way as to disappear (at least not yet). I call them the universe and the negaverse. The wave length of the universe is probably twice the Planck length and the universe has been recreated about 1.59E+61 times (with many more to go) during the 13.8 billion years of its existence.
Our two hyperspherical waves probably started from a single pointlike disturbance. With each wave cycle the universe creates a new negaverse one wave length further from the initial point and the negaverse creates a new universe one wave length further from the initial point. Ad infinitum. In our universe the principle of linear superposition holds – at least generally.
I believe the universe was initially two tiny parallel continuous hyperspheres made of small particles – half of them electrically positive and half of them electrically negative. Each pair of particles created similar pairs of particles as the universe expanded outward from its starting point at the speed of light. For some reason the universe broke continuity (when it was about the size of a softball?). The universe did not have any energy prior to its break in continuity but in the disorder following the breakup the attraction between the positive and negative particles and the velocity that resulted caused the creation of the energy of the universe.
Time
Time only means that something happened. It will never happen again. Something exactly like it may occur after it. The reverse may occur. But that only means that the thing and its duplicate and its reverse have all happened. Our concept and perception of time is a comparison between what happened and cycles we are aware of that occurred while it was happening. Our concept of a day is obviously the appearance and disappearance of the sun every day. For greater precision in time we compare things that happen with cycle times of light emitted from atoms. But all of our calculations involving time use units that can be converted to seconds which were originally based on the solar day.
Nothing happens to time when an object approaches the speed of light because time is not anything – cycles can speed up or slow down and we measure the change in cycle time by comparison with other cycles.
I wrote this site for my campaign – which I lost. The ideas and issues are still relevant. Just put in the name of RENEE HOYOS as the good guy and TIM BURCHETT as the bad guy. Actually Tim is a nice person but his election will be a step backward and Renee will be the voice of the future.
I did not write this but everyone who vilifies “the LEFT” needs to read it over several times (but they won’t)
0 THE BLOG 08/07/2008 05:12 am ET | Updated May 25, 2011
Right-Wing TN Church Shooter is Fan of O’Reilly, Hannity, Savage
By Jonathan Kim
On Sunday, 58-year-old Jim Adkisson entered the Tennessee Valley Unitarian Universalist Church during a children’s performance of the musical “Annie Jr.” In a guitar case, he carried a shotgun and 76 rounds. Adkisson killed two church members, Greg McKendry (60) and Linda Kraeger (61), and wounded six more before he was wrestled to the ground as he tried to reload. What was Adkisson’s motive? From RawStory:
A report from the local Knoxville news details the findings from Adkisson’s home, along with key statements from a document written by Adkisson related to an apparent motive behind the violent attack that rocked the suburban community:
“Adkisson targeted the church, [Investigator Steve] Still wrote in the document obtained by WBIR-TV, Channel 10, ‘because of its liberal teachings and his belief that all liberals should be killed because they were ruining the country, and that he felt that the Democrats had tied his country’s hands in the war on terror and they had ruined every institution in America with the aid of media outlets.’
“Adkisson told Still that ‘he could not get to the leaders of the liberal movement that he would then target those that had voted them in to office.’”
If any of that sounds familiar, it’s because you’ve been hearing the exact same claims coming from the right wing’s most prominent stars and spokespeople for years. It’s all there: liberals are ruining the country, Democrats are letting the terrorists win, liberals hate America, the liberal media is bamboozling the nation.
Carol Smallwood, a longtime acquaintance of Adkisson’s, said he hates “’blacks, gays and anyone different from him,” which is also consistent with right-wing ideology. In a four-page note Adkisson left in his car, he explicitly noted his hate for the “liberal movement” — the Unitarian Universalist church is well known for its liberal stances on homosexuality, civil rights, opposition to war, women’s rights, and multiculturalism. While another major cause of Adkisson’s rage was his inability to find work and having his foodstamps reduced, Knoxville Police Chief Sterling P. Owen IV noted “[Adkisson] did express frustration that the liberal movement was getting jobs.”
And how do we know that Adkisson was a consumer of popular right-wing thinking? Anticipating that he would be shot by police, Adkisson left the door to his house open to make it easier for authorities to enter. He didn’t want his motive and the ideology it sprang from to be a secret. From the Knoxville News Sentinel:
Inside [Adkisson’s] house, officers found “Liberalism is a Mental Health Disorder” by radio talk show host Michael Savage, “Let Freedom Ring” by talk show host Sean Hannity, and “The O’Reilly Factor,” by television talk show host Bill O’Reilly.
The right has already begun and will continue to claim that Adkisson is just a crazy nut, is not really a conservative (or is actually a liberal), that his stated motive of carrying out right-wing ideology means nothing, and that it is “inappropriate” to discuss politics in relation to such a heinous crime. But they are wrong on all counts. While Adkisson’s money problems surely caused him to snap, it was the words of the right’s loudest voices and brightest stars that gave him the justification for his rampage. Some quick Google searches turned up these quotes from prominent right-wingers:
“I’ll tell you who should be tortured and killed at Guantanamo — every filthy Democrat in the U.S. Congress.” — Sean Hannity
“To fight only the al-Qaeda scum is to miss the terrorist network operating within our own borders… Who are these traitors? Every rotten radical left-winger in this country, that’s who.” — Michael Savage
“Liberalism is the greatest threat this country faces.” — Rush Limbaugh
“It is not a stretch to say that MoveOn is the new Klan.” — Bill O’Reilly
“I’m thinking about killing Michael Moore, and I’m wondering if I could kill him myself, or if I would need to hire somebody to do it. No, I think I could.” — Glenn Beck
“We need to execute people like John Walker in order to physically intimidate liberals, by making them realize that they can be killed, too.” — Ann Coulter
“I don’t see any difference between [Arianna] Huffington and the Nazis.” — Bill O’Reilly
“The Islamofascists are actually campaigning for the election of Democrats. Islamofascists from Ahmadinejad to al-Zawahiri, Oba — Osama bin Laden, whoever, are constantly issuing Democrat talking points.” — Rush Limbaugh
“There are things in life worth fighting and dying for and one of ‘em is making sure Nancy Pelosi doesn’t become the [House] speaker.” — Sean Hannity
Obviously, this merely scratches the surface of what issues daily from the mouths and keyboards of right-wing pundits.
And let’s make one thing very clear: these are not quotes from the fringes of the right, opinionated actors, and anonymous bloggers marketing to a small number of depraved kooks. These are from the right’s best-selling authors, their most popular radio hosts, and their most prominent TV personalities with audiences in the millions. Just this month, ABC Networks and Premiere Radio Networks gave Sean Hannity a five-year $100 million contract and Clear Channel gave Rush Limbaugh a staggering eight-year $400 million contract. O’Reilly, Savage, and Coulter’s books consistently land on the New York Times’ best-sellers list, many at #1. In fact, all three of the known right-wing books found in Adkisson’s house were NYT best-sellers.
Let’s just call this what it is: the right wing openly, proudly, loudly, and repeatedly advocates violence against liberals and Democrats. In fact, they are paid millions to do it and are given national platforms to spread their message. You cannot say that liberals and Democrats actively and purposefully want to destroy the United States and equate them with Nazis, Al-Qaeda, and the Ku Klux Klan, then claim that you don’t want them to get hurt. You can probably guess how Hannity, O’Reilly and their ilk feel terrorists should be dealt with, and it isn’t a fair trial with the full protection of the law and the Geneva Convention.
Now the right will claim that it is the left that is hateful and violent and that the left is “just as bad” or worse. To that I say: Prove It. And I don’t mean some comment on a blog from crazylib420 — I mean a quote from a prominent, best-selling liberal or Democrat who commands salaries in the millions of dollars. Show me when Arianna Huffington, Keith Olbermann, Bill Moyers, Al Franken, Michael Moore, Rachel Maddow, Markos Moulitsos, or someone from the “liberal” media repeatedly said that the News Corp. building should be blown up, Republican senators should be executed, that the only way to talk to conservatives is with a baseball bat, or that John McCain should be assasinated. If liberals are truly more violent than conservatives, this should be an easy task. Yes, Keith Olbermann has said that George W. Bush and his administration practiced fascism with their criminal collusion with telecom companies to spy on Americans without warrants, but that would only be offensive if you didn’t know what the definition of fascism is (according to Encarta: any movement, tendency, or ideology that favors dictatorial government, centralized control of private enterprise, repression of all opposition, and extreme nationalism).
The right-wing myth that it is actually liberals who are hate-filled and violent would be laughable if it wasn’t so dangerous. Because it is this perception that liberals are out to physically harm or kill conservatives that justifies the right actually committing violence against those whom they consider liberals. If conservatives feel a violent “war” is being waged against them by minorities, gays, judges, and liberals who want to see America destroyed physically, culturally, and spiritually, how are they supposed to fight back? The right consistently uses violent and warlike words and imagery to describe the domestic enemies they face, including the “liberal” media that Adkisson also blamed for the decline of America.
Adkisson did not open fire in that church because he was obeying imaginary voices in his head and did not know right from wrong. The voices in his head were from the likes of Savage, O’Reilly, Hannity, Coulter, and Limbaugh, and they were telling him exactly what was right (conservatives) and what was wrong (liberals, gays, minorities, Democrats) and who he should blame for all his and the nation’s hardships. I haven’t read the books Adkisson read, but I’m guessing they did not fill him with love and tolerance. My guess is that the books accomplished exactly what they were written to do — fill readers with fear and rage towards liberals. Adkisson himself said that he would’ve rather killed liberal leaders, but thought that killing liberal voters was a suitable alternative. Would Ann Coulter, who claimed “My only regret with Timothy McVeigh is he did not go to the New York Times Building”, disagree?
Meanwhile, back at FOX, they have imposed a near media blackout of this story, despite the involvement of its two biggest stars. I’ve watched enough FOX to know that stories about mass shootings, sensational murders, and missing white children/women are their bread and butter, filling the times when they aren’t attacking Democrats. But as of 9:28pm PT, a search of the foxnews.com website turned up not one story about the shooting. Neither O’Reilly nor Hannity mentioned the shooting on the Monday or Tuesday after the shooting. In contrast, both O’Reilly and Hannity devoted large blocks of their shows to the Virginia Tech shootings, and FOX did stories about it around the clock. But when their books helped provide the justification for politically motivated murder, Hannity and O’Reilly apparently can’t be bothered to address it, or even acknowledge that it happened. O’Reilly and Hannity are quick to blame violence on video games, rap music, liberals, and the decline of American culture, but they are silent when the hatred they explicitly espouse is acted upon. By not covering the story, FOX, O’Reilly and Hannity are not just protecting themselves, but also the violent right wing ideology that created the Frankenstein’s Monster that was let loose on the victims of the Tennessee Valley Unitarian Universalist Church.
Even though FOX won’t cover this story, it cannot be allowed to fade because some network or editor feels the murder wasn’t gruesome enough or the body count was not high enough to officially constitute a national tragedy and the accompanying media frenzy. Because no matter what conservatives will say, this shooting in Knoxville says something very important about the right wing and the messages its most prominent, powerful, most highly-paid voices are sending to millions of Americans. To be honest, I’m surprised that incidents like this are not more common, though I suppose it happens every time a gay person or any other minority is attacked simply for being who they are. But if a bout of economic hardship is enough to cause a right-wing true believer to aim a shotgun at his imagined liberal oppressors, this sad episode may be repeated for years to come.
(Research for this post by Max Schulman and Colin Eldred-Cohen)
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In thinking about socialism our government – almost without exception only gets involved or takes something over when the private sector can’t or won’t do that something in the best interests of the country. I have worked where companies polluted the environment and they would not stop unless they were made to stop. Kingston Pike in Knoxville was once a private toll road- can you imagine if all roads were little toll roads? They have private armies in some countries- no one thinks that is a good idea. Private health care has resulted in many people who don’t get the care they need. Well paid publicly employed police are needed to protect all the public and prevent corruption. The availability of patents is really appreciated by inventors. The private sector can do many things very well but often regulations are needed to prevent a race to the lowest cost regardless of any unpleasant consequences.
Unregulated capitalism quickly deteriorates to oligarchy. For a great example look at what happened to the poor Russians- they went in a few months from communism to unregulated capitalism with wealth concentrated in a few oligarchs. There should always be evaluation and correction but capitalism with well considered regulation and some functions run by government is the best current system even if people who don’t like government involvement want to label it a dirty word-SOCIALISM. If this be socialism, make the most of it.
Single Payer Medical
I have had medical insurance- I am currently on Medicare- for most of my adult life and I appreciate the feeling of security it gives me. The people who are against Obamacare and single payer insurance do not have any thing that will give everyone the feeling of security that we who are insured have. I pay more for my insurance than it pays for my illnesses and surgeries and I am happy to do so.
Medicare for all would be a very good system- Medicare has one serious problem, however. The US congress decides how much the doctors and hospitals are paid and congress- particularly when controlled by Republicans- will not pay what is needed for doctors and hospitals to thrive. A good single payer system- like Medicare for all- would be a benefit to our country and a person who knows about Medical costs like Phil Bredesen could really help -in that or in any debate on changes to the medical care system. The pharmaceutical industry spent 2.3 billion dollars in this decade lobbying and It shows incredible lack of understanding of reality for a recipient of a lot of that money to criticize a person with a degree in physics who has worked in the pharmaceutical industry and founded a large health maintenance organization. Or maybe she thinks voters won’t bother to discover that Phil Bredesen knows what he is talking about.
Please do not elect a climate denier to anything.
Carbon dioxide is a waste product when people burn coal, oil and natural gas and it is mostly disposed of into the atmosphere. Worldwide fossil fuel burning will result in about 35,000,000,000 tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere this year and this will raise the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere from 411 to about 413 parts per million, When I first saw the Keeling curve ( look it up) I thought it was interesting but not worrisome- the carbon dioxide yearly rise was only about 2 parts per million- but it has kept on going up from 315 to over 410 ppm and is still going up.
What does carbon dioxide do in our atmosphere? It controls the earth temperature. If we had no carbon dioxide in the atmosphere all the oceans would freeze. Do climate deniers know that? If we have too much carbon dioxide the oceans will get too warm and the ice caps will melt and raise the oceans by several hundred feet- goodby Florida!
Our generation must quickly stop extracting fossil fuels from the ground and go to massive solar power installation. We have the technology now- we never had it before and we have been given the technology just in time. All that is needed is the political will to lead the world into power generation without carbon dioxide.
People in the past have done remarkable things- the Egyptian pyramids, the pre Columbian Indian towns made without iron, the mound builders. Now it is our turn to do something wonderful for our children but like the great wall of China it can’t be done without political leaders who have the ability to understand the damage climate deniers are doing right now and stand up as leaders.
Everything else can wait- we humans have to turn the Keeling curve downward and do it now.
Do not vote for any candidate for any office who will not promise to lead on cutting out carbon dioxide emissions by massively increasing renewable power generation. Find out who they are.
Abortion letter
We got a blind phone call from a man who said he represented a “ pro life “ organization. This was a misrepresentation- he represented an organization that opposes legal abortions. The pretext is that Roe vs Wade initiated millions of abortions and repealing it will save millions of unborn children. Anyone who favors legal abortions is a baby killing murderer. The facts are never stated- only the emotional scream that the Democrats are evil people who “rip the innocent baby out” and murder it and sell the parts for a profit.
Worldwide about half of all pregnancies are unwanted and about half of the unwanted pregnancies end in abortion – whether they are legal or not. If you really want fewer abortions then you need to have abortions safe and legal so you can know how many there are and devise policies to reduce the number. If you want to stop all abortions you should move to another planet. Making birth control readily available seems to be the most effective way to reduce the number of unwanted pregnancies and concurrently the number of abortions. Good education also helps.
Under presidents Clinton and Obama the number of abortions in the United States was trending down. The Republican fight against birth control and safe, legal abortions will reverse the downward trend and there will be more abortions but screaming about murdering babies will still blind many well intentioned people and raise money and influence votes. And people who voted for Trump and believe Fox News are probably not willing to understand this.
If you think outlawing abortions solves problems then maybe you think outlawing alcohol and drugs solves problems?
Theodore Roosevelt National Park Is one of our country”s treasures.
I have worked in refineries and chemical plants and I know they are serious sources of air pollution because the operators cut corners and ignore spills and venting. A responsible company would not be building next to a national park and the fact that a company plans such a plant is evidence that it is irresponsible and it will have poor management. Responsible management starts at the top and there is essentially no chance the plant will be run to minimize air pollution. It will be run to lower operating costs. I ask you to google Bhopal to see how poorly irresponsible plants are run. The Bhopal plant management removed the air conditioning on a tank and didn’t even reset the alarm temperature- and killed thousands of people. I have seen how poorly some companies act and the fact that this company is siting a plant next to a national treasure is an Indictment- whatever they pontificate about how great they are.
There is a more suitable location. Large-scale industrial development does not belong next to a national park.
I hope you care about America’s natural and cultural heritage. I hope you will reconsider the significance of this storied landscape and relocate the refinery to a more suitable location where Theodore Roosevelt National Park will not be affected.
Why would Bob Scott- or anyone else- put grapes in his washing machine?
I have to toot-my-own-horn in my run for US Representative so I want to illustrate my ability to visualize solutions to problems that are not obvious – and certainly not obvious to most congressional Republicans (who control a congress with an approval rating of 13 Percent). Please vote after you read this story.
When I lived near Princeton I had a small farm (very small) with a lot of concord grape vines. I harvested about 500 pounds of grapes and I planned to make juice by stomping the grapes ( yes, barefooted) and squeezing the juice out using cheesecloth. The stomping works fine but there is a reason people don’t use cheese cloth for this- it is S L O W. I was in my basement (and my wife was elsewhere) and I realized that we had a wine press in the basement. It was being used as a washing machine most of the time. I rinsed out the washing machine and set it on spin cycle and dumped in crushed grapes. The juice came out the drain line. It worked beautifully. Since then I have always evaluated our potential replacement washing machines for suitability in squeezing grapes.
I was born with an ability to make a high score on tests of mental ability- I am a member of Mensa. This mental ability coupled with a wide experience gives me insights into solutions to problems. Many of my solutions are idealistic but there are enough pessimists everywhere to counterbalance new ideas and work for a consensus solution to problems.
Anyone can find my positions if they wish to be informed.
On November 4 every person who is registered to vote has a civic duty to cast an informed vote. In the August election the uniformed voters combined with the blind partisan voters were about 60 percent of the Knox County voters. Every informed voter needs to get out and cancel the vote of an uninformed voter-
AND IF THERE IS A GOOD TURNOUT THEN THE INFORMED VOTERS WILL CARRY THE DAY !
It will only be a good turnout if you- the reader of this- vote
I, Bob Scott, will send a message to many Facebook pages. Since I hope there will be 200,000 votes cast in the second congressional district- I need every person interested in fair elections to LIKE AND SHARE my message with all their social media contacts and urge all their contacts to get out and be informed voters.
I, Bob Scott, Candidate for US Representative, disapprove of this NEGATIVE campaign ad I am writing ( I disapprove of all negative campaign ads)
I say most (but not all) of the people who have early voted are from the 30,427 “Knee Jerk Republicans“* who are the voters who put ignorance ahead of thought and voted for unqualified Eddie Pridemore to replace highly respected Knox County chancellor Daryl Fansler in August 2014.
In their endorsement of John Duncan the Knoxville News Sentinel said that “his opponents- Democrat Bob Scott…..have little hope of putting a scare into Duncan, much less winning.”
Jimmy Duncan spent about $8 per vote in his primary and his opponent got about 40 percent of the vote. Jimmy has spent very little in the general election and he is not scared.
Based on past elections:
There will be about 20 percent of the voters who will vote for Bob Scott, the Democrat.
There will be about 30 percent of the voters that usually vote for the Republican (but many of those voted for a change).
There will be 50 percent of the voters who will vote for either a Republican or a Democrat but if they don’t get out and vote then the Knee Jerk Republicans will win again.
The most negative thing from the Duncan point of view would be If the young people and the other people the Republicans are trying to suppress will get out and vote. There could be a surprise.
If people turn out and a surprise happens, a Bob Scott WIN WILL BE BY ONLY ONE VOTE! Will it be your vote?I stood by a fire hydrant at market Square in Knoxville and thought that it hadn’t been used much since the old market house burned. But in all the years since that fire people have accepted the inconvenience of parking somewhere away from the fire plug and walking a few extra minutes because parking somewhere away from the fire plugs is their civic duty. I estimate the value of the cumulative lost time since the big fire for this fireplug to be $30,000 . Voting is also our civic duty and our one vote has as little effect on the election outcome as parking one time next to a fire plug has of impeding the firemen. But the firemen go out to a fire many times a week and each time they need access to the fire plug. We all do our civic duty.
I watched this cute dog trying to get educated about the other dogs (candidates) and then it decided to not do its civic duty and walked away. Are you a voter or are you like a cute fluffy dog that won’t do its duty?
*As depicted by columnist Betty Bean before the August election “Daryl Fansler… will win another term on the Chancery Court bench…. if he had to have an opponent,… “Eddie” Pridemore will give us a good idea of the number of knee-jerk Republicans in Knox County.”
