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John Hammond's avatar

Thank you for this, Mark. The Springsteen lyrics are a perfect message of hope amid all the misery from Trump and the Republicans who make the worst happen.

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Dr. Deborah Hall's avatar

I've got a little book

with pages three

And every page

spells liberty 🔔🎶

This vile obscenity

shall not stand

No one can destroy

our Republic 🇺🇲

because each one

of us patriots

IS the Republic

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Robert J Hankes's avatar

We live in dark times now. Be careful! Not sure who will be attacked next. But dreams eventually will not be thwarted.

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Leigh Horne's avatar

Preach it!

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SUE Speaks's avatar

Prayers that a pony could be lurking in this crapping up of America. Maybe it's exchanges like the one going on here. First thing is to show up, and we are at least beyond the passivity that was letting post-capitalism take us to hell. Some rubbing calls in the genie of movement in a better direction.

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Mark F Owens's avatar

I have read the bill. I see the potential problems.

I also lived through four years of the Biden administration that insisted that I inject myself with mystery drugs or lose my job and allowed the border towns to be overrun with drugs and thugs.

Trump is a symptom. The mouthpiece of fifty percent of America who felt disenfranchised and have come out swinging. The fact that the other fifty percent is now screaming “foul” but said nothing when our constitutional liberties were violated in the name of “public safety “ is another symptom.

The real truth is that the fifty percent in the middle get screwed regardless. We have to stop allowing ourselves to be divided and find a way to come together without government mandates and empty legislation.

I’m the least political person on the planet. Both parties suck. It’s time to be Americans in spite of them.

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Mark McInerney's avatar

This is beyond the pale - there is no equivalence here. Sorry. Whataboutism doesn't work this time.

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Mark F Owens's avatar

Hmmm. Maybe Truman and his determination to drop the bomb on Nagasaki. Maybe Nixon and the carpet bombing of Cambodia. Maybe George W. and his weapons of mass destruction.

Or perhaps Lincoln and his war of aggression against a sovereign nation. Or Jackson and his eradication of the natives.

American politics are filled with horrible things. Let’s be honest.

Chances are, very little changes. Most pork filled legislation fails in the implementation. In the meantime, find a family that needs help and help them. Do something locally that makes a difference. And pray we have a real slate of viable candidates next time around.

(I love the Springsteen reference, by the way. )

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Mark McInerney's avatar

There is a critical difference between action and law. Between the misjudgments—even crimes—of individual presidents and the willful passage of legislation that enshrines injustice into the structure of the republic.

Nagasaki, Cambodia—yes, history stains all sides. But none of those were passed by both houses of Congress with cheering party-line votes. None were budgeted into law with sunset clauses and signing pens.

What passed this week is not just a policy. It’s a blueprint for extraction. It’s the state declaring the vulnerable expendable and the wealthy untouchable. That is not Truman’s bomb. That is a political machine writing cruelty into statute.

And still, for all that—we remain, as Lincoln said, “the last best hope of earth.” But hope demands vigilance. And patriotism, if it means anything, demands more from us than a shrug and a prayer for better candidates. It demands resistance when the moral arc is bent backward.

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Leigh Horne's avatar

This is true, but does not represent an equivalency as much as it does a portrait of who, or what, is the actual enemy of the people: greed, as a form of addiction. While both parties have had members who embraced (or were seized by) greed, only one has been it's slave and acolyte. And I don't know what Kool-Aid you've been drinking, but all that about the Covid vaccines? They saved my life, and my husband's life, and despite any government overreach during an unprecedented and poorly understood, once in a lifetime pandemic which had been show to be deadly, we ought to be grateful that our government was acting on our behalf. You can't count on something like Bush's 'thousand points of light' to accomplish something like that, which is exactly why we have government.

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Leigh Horne's avatar

Sorry to say you are both dead wrong and shortsighted, that is if you aren't a bot or a Russian asset.

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Mark F Owens's avatar

I agree. It demands action in the back yard. I drive a school bus for substandard wages. I love kids who don’t look like me. My son in law is a Vietnamese refugee. My grandchildren have foreign features. I am a follower of Jesus but have no faith in church.

This moment will pass. If we all take care of our back yards, we will survive.

I love your passion. I’m too old to see things in left and right.

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Linda McCaughey's avatar

I would no longer raise a finger to help or benefit this shithole country. Outta here as soon as I can manage it.

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