The Liberal Politics & Current Events Book Club discussion
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Lisa wrote: "Mary wrote: "I dropped in to vent about the latest outbreak of fake outrage. I thought the one benefit of having an insane, pussy-grabbing maniac in the White House is it would end all of the polit..."Exactly. Occasionally his tweets are important, like when he lied on our former President, but while he's distracting us with his tweets, he's quietly signing executive orders that undermine our democracy.
While the country sat mesmerized watching the Comey hearing, the House voted to repeal key provisions of Dodd-Frank. Now it goes to the Senate. Get on the phone everyone and tell your Senators to vote against this bill.
Lisa wrote: "While the country sat mesmerized watching the Comey hearing, the House voted to repeal key provisions of Dodd-Frank. Now it goes to the Senate. Get on the phone everyone and tell your Senators to v..."I don't have to worry; my Senators will. But let's hope a couple of Republicans will join the Democrats in resisting the attempt to let the banks destroy our economy again.
A vote is also coming up in the Senate for Trump's unhealth care plan. I think I saw this Tuesday. People in red states get on the phone and call your Senators ASAP!
Of all the Executive Orders signed by all the presidents of the U.S., the one today (trump signing off on overturning the ACA) has got to be the most evil! People are going to literally die becuz of this, literally die! Here's a link to an article by 1 of my fave authors which she actually wrote bk in July but I bet she feels even more like this today: https://www.kameronhurley.com/open-le...When is that planet-killing asteroid supposed to get here, again?
What he did seems like it should be illegal. Hopefully, there will be a court injunction.
I really hope so, Lisa. This is 1 of the *many* things that scares me about trump, as I was telling a trump supporter b4 the "election", this guy is nuts, stupid, etc.; what would stop him from starting another darn war? & she says to me, "Oh, don't worry about that; only congress can declare war." Oh, really? That didn't stop Reagan from starting that sh*t in Grenada (& the Iran/Contra crap, etc. etc .). An excellent book, if you haven't already read it, that covers how Reagan in that case--& other presidents have done it too--shredded the Constitution to do whatever the hell they wanted, btw, is Rachel Maddow's Drift: The Unmooring of American Military Power
. The book's about 5 yrs old but timely as all getout unfortunately.
I read that book when it came out. Think I should go back to my Nook and re-read it.So many things scare me about Trump that I just don't know where to start.
I know, Kathy; it's like that old saying, "I don't know which direction to turn to first." Well, nowadays I find myself saying, "I don't which direction to spit at first." (Becuz in addition to trump, I also despise Pence, Ryan, McConnell, etc.; oh there are so many...)
Same here! And about Pence et.al. too! It's exhausting every day.
About 15 minutes ago, I saw an action on Facebook to call the Attorney General of my state Illinois and request that we join California and New York in the lawsuit against T withholding the health subsidies. I was told that Illinois is joining them. If you live in any other states, please call your attorney general and ask them to do the same. It only takes a minute of your time. The more states that join the lawsuit the better.
I live in NY but will pass this on to friends and family in other states.
Thanks, gals, this is good to know.I forgot to mention above another good book I read recently that is timely: Rise of the Warrior Cop: The Militarization of America's Police Forces by Radley Balko
Welp, I guess if we were feeling generous, we could send bandaids to the school district offices in Biloxi, Miss ("District Erases 'To Kill a Mockingbird' from Lesson Plan": http://my.xfinity.com/articles/news-e...). Becuz as the article says, the district removed the book from the junior high reading list becuz some of the book's language "makes people uncomfortable"; so the bandaids'd be for their knuckles all banged up from dragging on the ground.
A quote by Miss Manners I just became aware of:"Observing minorities using solidarity and pride to bind together and protest discrimination has given members of the majority the idea that the technique can be applied to competing with them at this to obtain additional advantages."--from "Miss Manners on Rudeness in the Age of Trump" by Judith Martin (Miss Manners), www.theatlantic.com, 2/16/2017.
Brings tiki torches to mind, sigh...
Great Goodreads update I got from 1 of my fave authors, Wm. Kent Krueger, "A Word Against the Wall": https://www.goodreads.com/author_blog....
One of my favorite progressive authors (& also stand-up comedian) Trae Crowder says in his latest YouTube vid (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6SBP0...) that Roy Moore seems to think that the Devil created dinosaurs & gays. Hell, who knew the devil was that cool?! ;-)
To paraphrase Yeats, And what rough beast, its hour come round at last, slouches towards Montgomery (Ala.) to be born?Why it's the same kinda beast occupying the White(s Only) House!
(Hope I'm wrong--the vote count isn't in yet--but I'm scared to death I'm not.)
Thank you, thank you, THANK you Ala. Jones, voters, YAY! A good guy won finally, yay!
Moore was so disgusting that even those Alabama Republicans couldn't vote for him. This isn't a sign of a changing tide, but it's good news. One more Senate flip and T's odious agenda can be blocked. Hooray!
Just finished watching the documentary The Rape of Recy Taylor, a STARZ tv orig., excellent!
Lynn wrote: "Just finished watching the documentary The Rape of Recy Taylor, a STARZ tv orig., excellent!"I saw that too, Lynn. It was a great documentary, reminding us of what we already knew if we read Richard Wright's "The Ethics of Living Jim Crow," which is that black women were more likely to be raped by white men than white women by black men. I've been absent from this group because I've just been pissed at everybody, plus I've found some groups on Facebook (Joy Reid Fan Club, Protest Trump) where I can sound off. I can see that not much is happening here. Hang in there, and let's hope this "Russia thing" as Trump calls it will take him down soon.
Mary, I've found a couple of other sites--one you have to be 40 or older & the other you have to be 48 or older--that each have a liberal/progressive (i.e., anti-Trump) group that if I didn't have those to sound off on, I think I'd be in a strait-jacket. (Some days I feel like I need one anyway, sigh.) Anyway, I really appreciate those 2 groups on those sites becuz they're more active than this one's been lately & it's rare to find online groups for older people that aren't so darn conservative. So since IIRC we're not supposed to promote other sites on here, msg. me directly & I can let you know what they are. You hang in there too...oh, for better days for our country...
I have found groups to be active in where I can sound off in person. This is more satisfying to me. One is Indivisible which is a national group and they're organized in a very localized area. Look for it on-line where you live. I've also gotten involved in a local group doing voter registration drives and another one involved in making phone calls and postcard campaigns to people in red districts. I need to do these things because otherwise I vent all day at home and drive my husband crazy.
Lynn wrote: "Mary, I've found a couple of other sites--one you have to be 40 or older & the other you have to be 48 or older--that each have a liberal/progressive (i.e., anti-Trump) group that if I didn't have ..."Have you found Pantsuit Nation, Lynn? That's a group on Facebook. They're not as active as some of the other groups (they're more like this group), but it's an all-female group.
Lisa wrote: "I have found groups to be active in where I can sound off in person. This is more satisfying to me. One is Indivisible which is a national group and they're organized in a very localized area. Look..."I like what Indivisible is doing, Lisa. One California branch forced a sleazy GOP Representative (Issa I think his name is; there are so many sleazy GOP Representatives now that the names of the ones I used to despise have faded in my memory) to retire. But I don't like marching and meeting. I work much better as a writer. I lose control of my temper too easily in person, and it's worse now than ever. In fact, I've become more emotional in the Trump era (some of it might be caused by age; I was very emotional in my youth, so I might be going through my second adolescence). I also become very impatient with liberals. I went ballistic when the Democrats stupidly got rid of Al and even worse John Conyers. I can't stand the METOO movement, which I call a witch hunt. I distinguish between the women's movement, which focuses on equal pay, the right to choose, and electing women to office, and the METOO focus on sexual misconduct. I say once the white women and the white evangelicals voted for a man who bragged about grabbing pussies, sexual misconduct should have been off the table. I also point out how many black men have been taken down by this movement, and I wonder what white women would do if we had the choice between Obama and Trump, voted for Trump, he started raping and beating women, and we started complaining about racism. Except for the right to choose issue, Trump is not attacking women, he's attacking nonwhites, you know, the people who voted for Hillary. I say it's a rough time to be a thinking black woman (thinking white men like conservatives George Will and David Frum aren't exactly enjoying themselves either). But as I think, I reassess some situations. It used to annoy me when the liberals in this group and a group on Google+ would become silent when they disagreed with me but would attack each other. Now I appreciate their response. Maybe they were treating me better, not because they feared my scary black rage or were worried I'd accuse them of being racist but because they realized that I had been treated worse than other people for decades and so deserved better treatment. If that's the case, thanks Goodreads liberals. And if there's anyone here still claiming to be colorblind and to treat everyone the same, don't let me catch you saying that because I will unleash my very scary black rage. As Agent Orange might say, "there will be fire and fury." Hang in there, Lisa, (and other liberals); let's hope the clueless Democrats will figure out how to defeat these racist traitors.
Thanks, gals for the info about the other groups; unfortunately I'm not on Fb or Twitter; the nearest Pantsuit Nation group to me is 2 hrs away--too far for me to drive, not sure how much longer I'll be able to drive at all, in fact--and there are 3 Indivis. grps here in town but one is only joinable thru Fb & another only joinable thru Twitter, tried to sign up for email to see about joining the 3rd but the site appears to be broken, won't let me sign up; I'll try again later.
You may want to send an e-mail to the national indivisible and tell them your problems trying to join. I think there is another way to join a local group. Good luck finding something in your area. I am blessed to live in Evanston, Illinois and there are so many groups here popping up that it's amazing. Some of them are groups that started as friends and kept getting bigger. Two examples are Getting Stuff Done and a Huddle I joined that is going to all different places to register people. That's another thought. If you have a few friends with similar political ideas, you could start your own group. If nothing else, it feels good to vent to someone face to face. We're going through the worst time in American history - when a Fascist has been elected President. There is no precedent in American history for this and it's impossible to guess what's coming next. Unless you want to study Hitler's rise to power.
That's a good idea, Lisa; thanks, I'll try it. (How I wish more & more I hadn't stranded myself in a rural, conservative area...)
I imagine the isolation is terrible now. I moved from a suburban Republican leaning suburb about 14 years ago where I felt like I was in political exile. Now I live in Evanston right over the city line from Chicago. Republicans here are almost non-existent. It makes it much easier to get through these times.
Yep, terrible isolation is a good way to put it. Also, another good description (from a book I re-read recently (
A Gift Upon the Shore by M. K. Wren) is the "savage loneliness." There are a few liberals around here but near as I can tell, they're all at least 25 yrs younger than I and nice as they can be but sometimes I long for the female companionship of somebody closer to my age who understands what it's like to feel old. (Being around gals my age, seems like all I hear about is grandkids, Jesus, & the "good" old days...the "good" old days: yuck! Deliver me from the "good" old days!)
Good luck, Lynn wherever it is that you live. I hope that you can find at least a few people there that you can talk to.
Thanks, Lisa; I keep (& have been for a long time) trying to find a group of like-minded women closer to my age but it gets discouraging (espec. when the *one and only* feminist grp here in town only allows those with degrees or in the process of getting one to join). Sometimes I fear that even if I ever do find such a group, I'll have forgotten how to talk to people. Thank goodness for sites such as this.
Well, I was bragging earlier in this thread about the online grps I'd found for older liberals/progressives/left-of-center and I guess I spoke too soon: I've discovered that what most elderly online groups mean when they say they're "liberal/progressive/left-of-center" is that they *almost* voted one time for a moderate Republican (our right-wing party here in the States). It is so hard to find, both online and face-to-face, elderly people who are really liberal/progr./left of center, sigh. Espec. if you're out in the country as I basically am. Oh do I miss more & more the big-city area I grew up in...
I feel so bad for you, Lynn. I didn't even like living in a Republican leaning suburb, but at least I was close to Chicago. If you want to skype with me occasionally, I'd be happy to talk and vent with you.
Oh, Lisa, that is so nice of you but I don't have skype; what I do is just chat with people thru the messaging system of sites like this. I really appreciate the offer to skype, tho; you are a very nice person! :-)Say, do any of you know anything about a site called liberalforum.org? I joined up but haven't had a chance yet to look around at it yet. (You know what's sad? When I googled "liberal chat sites" and then in desperation just "liberal sites" only that site came up. Holy cow, is this whole doomed planet going completely far-right?)
No,I never heard of it. Just remember that Hillary Clinton won the popular vote by 3million. Just keep repeating what my Congresswoman Jan Schakowsky reminds us at every rally: There's more of us than there are of them.You've just gotten yourself moved to a conservative place. Do you have any possibility of moving?
"You've just gotten yourself moved to a conservative place. Do you have any possibility of moving?"Unfortunately no; my husband abso. loves it here--he's gotten more conservative in his old age, even voted for Trump...aaaaagh!!!..and even if we could afford to move somewhere nearer a big city, it would put us much farther away from the little bit of family we've got left--we never had kids--so I'm afraid we're stuck here.
You know, I keep reading that this is at least part of the reason that there are so many lonely elderly (in this country anyway); they're living somewhere where they'd rather not for whatever reason but just can't afford to move. Not only this country but much of this whole planet has gotten into a sad, bad state, I'm sorry to say. I feel like we're heading back to feudalism, I really do.
I'm so happy, I've just got to tell somebody--and all the IRL people I know very well are conservative--so I'm going to share it here: I'm going to be published on a elderly liberals site! OMG! It's not for $$, but I'm so happy my article got picked, yay! (If interested in checking it out, it will go up next Tues., Sept. 18 on timegoesby.net; the title is "The Grapes Aren't Sour; They're Just Not On the Menu Often Enough" and I'm not sure if she's going to use my username for her site --officerripley--or my pen name Jane T. Godfrey or maybe even my real name.)Now I now what the writer's (espec. an internet writer's) dilemma feels like; I'm already dreading the comments; the gal running the site is an old lefty liberal like me who I think maybe is living in a conservative area & does this site partly to keep sane; and there have been some mean ol' far-righters leaving some mean comments on it sometimes. But I'll just have to be strong, lol.
Thanks, Lisa! Now my rant for today is: So I read Bob Woodward's book about Trump, Fear; loved it; tried to leave a positive review for it on doggone Amazon; wouldn't let me, kept telling me "This product currently has limitations on submitting reviews. There can be a number of reasons for this, including unusual reviewing activity." But as I'm watching the screen, new reviews are being added to it all the time annnnnd, near as I can tell the new ones being added are *negative*. Uh huh. Very interesting, huh?I contacted Amazon about it & got "Oh, so sorry, will look into that for you, have a nice day." I was able to leave the review on Barnes&Noble's site...makes you wonder about Amazon; I'd heard Jeff Bezos was a conservative but c'mon.
I would keep trying. But I've always been suspicious of Amazon even though I have my book on it.
Well, after contacting amazon twice I finally heard this bk from 'em: "...We couldn’t accept a review for Fear: Trump in the White House because we detected unusual review behavior on this product. We place limits on reviews to preserve trust in customer reviews. This can include limiting submission of all reviews or limiting reviews to Amazon Verified Purchase reviews." And "...there is no issues[sic] with you[sic] account, there is a small technical fault from our end and it will be resolved as[sic] the earliest."So my review was not a Verified Purchase review; but just for fun yesterday, I successfully left 2 non-Verified Purchase reviews, both for political books I read without purch. from Amazon. I guess this one being Bob Woodward's book generated even more crazy reviews than usual, hence the clamp-down.
Interesting (i.e., awful) times we're in, huh?
We definitely live in interesting times in the spirit of the Chinese curse.
If I ever have to go into court & be sworn in, I'm gonna refuse to; I'm gonna tell 'em, "No! What the hell's the point of me swearing in?! I'm not a rich, white guy, so you're not gonna believe a word I say anyway!"
I'm sure that I'm too opinionated to ever be selected for a jury.
I have just joined the group and would love reviews and input from of some strong, secular humanists on my new book, "China: Morons Like Us." (Only available on amazon as an e-book.) I lived in China just before the twin disasters of T***p and COVID 19, and I hope my book can help people understand cultural differences, laugh at our (American)/their (Chinese) mutual foibles and be afraid - very afraid of allowing con artists and totalitarians to distract us all from real problems like global warming, superstition, and greed. Could anyone please give it a look?
The Liberal Politics & Current Events Book Club
Books mentioned in this topic
A Gift Upon the Shore (other topics)Rise of the Warrior Cop: The Militarization of America's Police Forces (other topics)
Drift (other topics)
Drift (other topics)
What Hath God Wrought: The Transformation of America, 1815 - 1848 (other topics)
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You're so right, Mary. It all boils down to people focusing on trivia such as their President's tweets instead of the substance - the 1st Amendment being on the table, ending our social safety net, pulling out of the Paris accord. In just a few months, he has gone a long way to destroying American democracy. We have to stay focused and keep protesting the important things.