November 21, 1945 200,000 members of the United Auto Workers went on strike against General Motors, the first major strike following World War II. The UAW’s demand for a 30% wage increase was based on the increase in the cost of living during the war (28% according to the Department of Labor), the wartime freeze on wages, and the cut in the average workweek with the disappearance of overtime pay in manufacturing. But the UAW also considered profits and prices a subject for negotiation, a position rejected by GM. The union did not merely say that labor was entitled to enough wages to live on. It also said that labor was entitled to share in the wealth produced by industry.“… Unless we get a more realistic distribution of America’s wealth, we won’t get enough to keep this machine going.”–Walter Reuther, UAW President More about the strike
November 21, 1973 President Richard Nixon’s attorney, J. Fred Buzhardt, revealed the existence of an 18 1/2-minute gap in one of the subpoenaed White House tape recordings of Watergate conversations made by President Richard Nixon in the days after the Watergate break-in.The erasure was blamed on an accident by Nixon’s private secretary, Rose Mary Woods, but scientific analysis determined the erasures to be deliberate. White House Chief of Staff Alexander Haig later attributed the gap to “sinister forces.” Rose Mary Woods, demonstrating how she might have created the Watergate tape gap More about Rose Mary Woods
November 21, 1974 Both Houses of Congress voted to override President Gerald Ford’s veto of updates to the Freedom of Information Act. Originally passed in 1966, it required federal agencies to release information upon request to citizens and journalists.The amendments put an end to governmental resistance to compliance, including excessive fees, bureaucratic delays, and the need to sometimes resort to expensive litigation to force the government to share copies of documents. Ford advisors Chief of Staff Donald Rumsfeld, his deputy Dick Cheney, and government lawyer Antonin Scalia advised him to veto it. Chief of Staff Donald Rumsfeld, President Gerald Ford and Deputy Chief of Staff Richard Cheney April 28, 1975 What was the dispute?
November 21, 1975 The Senate Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities, led by Senator Frank Church (D-Idaho), issued a report charging U.S. government officials were behind assassination plots against two foreign leaders – Fidel Castro (Cuba) and Patrice Lumumba (Congo), and were heavily involved in at least three other plots: Rafael Trujillo (Dominican Republic), Ngo Dinh Diem (Vietnam), Rene Schneider (Chile). Senator Frank Church, left, chairman of the Senate Select Intelligence Committee, displays a poison dart gun as co-chairman Senator John Tower (R-TX) watches.
The committee, a precursor to the Senate Intelligence Committee, was established to look into misuse of and abuse by intelligence agencies, particularly the CIA and FBI, some of which had been revealed by the Watergate investigations. Fidel Castro / Patrice Lumumba / Rafael Trujillo / Ngo Dinh Diem / Rene Schneider Read more
November 21, 1981 More than 350,000 demonstrated in Amsterdam against U.S. nuclear-armed cruise missiles on European soil.
November 21, 1985 A full-scale summit conference, the first of five between the President Ronald Reagan of the U.S. and General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev of the Soviet Union concluded. There was optimism over beginning a more productive and cooperative relationship between the two countries, each of which had thousands of nuclear warheads targeted at the other.The U.S. had proposed building a space-based anti-ballistic missile system, commonly known as “Star Wars,” which the Soviets had strongly opposed as an escalation of the nuclear arms race.In an unofficial meeting the previous evening, President Reagan had noted that he and Gorbachev were meeting for the first time at this level and had little practice. Nevertheless, having read the history of previous summit meetings, he had concluded that those earlier leaders had not accomplished very much. Therefore, he suggested that he and Gorbachev say, “To hell with the past, we’ll do it our way and get something done.” Gorbachev concurred. Reagan and Gorbachev at their first summit
November 21, 1986 National Security Council member Oliver North and his secretary, Fawn Hall, began shredding documents that would have exposed their participation in a range of illegal activities regarding the sale of arms to Iran in an attempt to free hostages, and the diversion of the proceeds to an insurgent Nicaraguan group known as the contras. Fawn Hall Oliver North More on Fawn Hall
November 21, 1995 China officially charged well-known human rights activist and political dissident Wei Jingsheng with trying to “overthrow the government.” Wei had not been seen for a year and a half after disappearing into police custody after meeting with a U.S. assistant secretary of state for human rights and humanitarian affairs.“If the people allow the power holders, in the peoples’ name, to violate and ignore the rights of some of the people then, at the same time, they are giving the power holders the power to violate the rights of all the people.” “ Most people wait until others are standing to make their move, very few are willing to stand up first or to stand alone. That’s why my friends call me a fool! But I don’t have any regrets.” – Wei Jingsheng Wei Jingsheng He had been imprisoned previously for his involvement with the Democracy Wall movement, including years in solitary confinement. He had also spoken out on behalf of the Tibetans.
if we all click our heels together three times, everything will be okay Read on Substack (Language NSFW, as always with Jeff Tiedrich’s writing)
the worthless scribblers of the corporate-controlled media utterly failed us during the 2024 campaign season.
New York Times executive editor Joe Kahn came right out and said it: defending democracy is a ‘partisan act,’ and we won’t do it — and, fuck us all, the press kept their word, and didn’t do it. they enthusiastically put their fingers on the scale for Donny Convict.
arguably, the media’s worst transgression was the sanewashing — the cleaning-up of Donny’s incomprehensible blitherings, to hide his obvious cognitive disintegration and make him sound coherent.
a minutes-long disjointed word-salad about how tariffs on Chinese goods were going to lower the cost of childcare became “a major economic speech.”
Donny’s inability to keep his increasingly-demented mind on the topic at hand — his crazypants pinballing from they’re eating the dawgs to Hannibal Lecter wants to have you for dinner to would you rather be eaten by a shark or electrocuted — was explained away by Donny as his brilliant “weave.”
[Wishcasting is] the act of interpreting information or a situation in a way that casts it as favorable or desired, despite the fact that there is no evidence for such a conclusion; a wishful forecast.
sure enough, the media has now gone into overdrive, churning out piece after piece in which they promise us that if we all click our heels together three times, everything will be okay.
not twelve hours after the election had been called for Donny, the Times wasted no time in assuring us that the election of a vindictive fascist is an amazing opportunity for vindictive fascism not to happen.
what kind of magical, everybody-gets-a-pony thinking is this? just fucking stop it.
did Ezra Klein and Ross Douthat both experience some kind of recent head trauma that has caused them to forget the years 2017 through 2020? Donny’s first presidency was a dumpster fire of corruption, mismanagement and mass death — but somehow now, given a second chance to fuck shit up worse, Donny’s going to bring us an “American renewal”?
anything’s possible, right? overnight, Donny Convict could magically become a wise and fair statesman — also, technicolor pigs could fly out of my ass.
oh my god, the media never stops imagining that Donny is going to somehow become presidential. during his first term — over and over — every time Donny stopped short of taking out his dick and pissing on the floor, the press would fall all the fuck over itself in a mad dash to proclaim him presidential.
spoiler alert: Donny never became presidential. not from the the first time he threw a ketchup-hurling tantrum in the White House, to the moment he absconded back to his Florida golf motel, taking with him boxes of stolen classified documents.
the premise here is that if we’re respectful to Donny — if we fucking kowtow to him, and stop opposing him — he’ll be nice to us in return. he’ll become — dare I say it? — presidential.
Stop indulging the fantasy that outrage, social stigma, language policing, a special counsel, the Twenty-Fifth Amendment, or impeachment will disappear him. And stop talking as if normal political opposition is capitulation.
Everyone should normalize Trump. If he does something good, praise him. Trump is remarkably susceptible to flattery.
okay, I will grant that Newsweek may be half right. Lisa Murkowski seems to genuinely loathe Donny, and we can probably count on her to vote against the worst of his fuckery — but Susan Collins? the credulous naïf who assured us over and over again that Donny had learned his lesson, and would never transgress again?
now, let’s bask under some rays of hope from people who aren’t just blindly wishcasting, but are actually offering reasoned arguments.
in the middle of a fairly clear-eyed assessment of the Trumpian horrors to come, the Guardian gives us this:
Elaine Kamarck, a former official in the Bill Clinton administration, said: “For him to expand presidential power, Congress has to give up power and they’re not in the mood to do that. They’ve never done that. There are plenty of institutionalists in Congress.”
Kamarck also expressed faith in the federal courts, noting that judges appointed by Trump only constitute 11% of the total placed on the bench by former presidents. A Trump dictatorship is “not going to happen,” she added. “Now, there might be things that the president wants to do that people don’t like that the Republican Congress goes along with him on but that’s politics. That’s not a dictatorship.”
Paradoxically, however, Trump’s reckless venality is a reason for hope. Trump has the soul of a fascist but the mind of a disordered child. He will likely be surrounded by terrible but incompetent people. All of them can be beaten: in court, in Congress, in statehouses around the nation, and in the public arena. America is a federal republic, and the states—at least those in the union that will still care about democracy—have ways to protect their citizens from a rogue president. Nothing is inevitable, and democracy will not fall overnight.
Americans cannot vote themselves into a dictatorship any more than you as an individual can sell yourself into slavery. The restraints of the Constitution protect the American people from the unscrupulous designs of whatever lawless people might take the reins of their government, and that does not change simply because Trump believes that those restraints need not be respected by him. The Constitution does not allow a president to be a “dictator on day one,” or on any other day. The presidency will give Trump and his cronies the power to do many awful things. But that power does not make them moral or correct.
I sure hope to fuck they’re right.
This is going to be my closing message for the foreseeable future:
practice self-care. do what you need to do to keep sane. if that means disengaging with my daily posts for a while, I get it. this community of ours will still be here when you return.
to all the people who have signed on in the days since the election, welcome aboard. settle in as we all try to deal with the shitfuckery that’s ahead of us.
we are all in this together, and we are all here for each other.
This short clip is great. The point she makes is the same one I made about the Democratic Party sliding right to get dissatisfied republican voters. Her point, we should have paid more attention to the people who left the Democratic Party than those who were never tRumpers or left the republican party due to tRump. Again it is the party of the working person not the party of republican lite. Hugs
While I find it easier to follow Sam’s reasoning on some issues, while he is out on funeral leave after his mother died, I am glad it is Emma explaining this. Listen to what tRump was saying about women. He wanted to see Harris in a ring getting beaten by Mike Tyson. He said he would protect women if they liked it or not. So she says two themes, I say three. She says fear stoking by bashing immigrants and misogyny. I say it was them plus racism. The first thing he said about her was she changed to being black for advantage, then started calling a black woman retarded. But if you remember the things he said about women in the 2016 election about Clinton and the grab them by the pussy tape. Sad that so many of our fellow people have these feelings in 2024. Hugs.
in this video both Matts are upset with the culture of democrats in office refusing to do what is needed instead patting each other on the back as infallible. Trump attacked both democrats and republicans who did not follow the ideas he pushed. Ideas that he felt people wanted, and it became true the more he said it. Even when they failed to actually help the lower incomes and did increase greatly the incomes of the upper incomes / very wealthy. They mention that again in 2023 the mean average income was lower than in 2019. Lower incomes are still losing and have been since the 1980s. While harder to listen too it is all about the conditions on the ground vs words used by democrat candidates. Brandon talks about the influencers on podcasts / social media. Matt Bender continues that conservation. Hugs
This video is about Joe Biden and him staying in until the last minute. How there was no primary and no time for Harris to introduce herself to the public. How Biden did not promote her publicly until he dropped out. How Biden kept her sidelines because her age made him look older by comparison. How the democrats need to do more to run to their extremer base like the republicans do. Hugs
In video Emma points out that the covid recovery plan of massive help for the lower incomes made the Biden administration very popular, but when that changed in 2022 for a more austerity program pushed by bipartisan republicans and Manchin / Sinema … or should I say by the republicans and Biden’s need for the feeling of bipartisanship. Once people realized again they wouldn’t be getting the help promised them by the democrats they again felt the democrats left them behind. The lower incomes feel betrayed by the democratic party and they feel used. Paid attention to only every four years and promised table scraps so the democratic candidate can keep the corporate dollars flowing. Hugs
November 9-10, 1938 Nazis looted and burned synagogues and Jewish-owned stores and homes, and beat and murdered Jewish men, women, and children across Germany and Austria. Known as Kristallnacht, it was a night of organized violence against Jews marking the beginning of the Holocaust with the killing of 91 and the deportation of 30,000 to concentration camps. The German word translates to “the Night of Broken Glass,” so called because of the vast number of broken windows in Jewish shops, 5 million marks worth ($1,250,000). Read more
November 9, 1965 At the first draft-card burning [see November 6, 1965], a heckler shouted that they should burn themselves, not their draft cards. Three days later Roger LaPorte, a student of religion and a Catholic Worker volunteer, poured gasoline on himself and struck a match to it in front of the United Nations headquarters in New York. Police managed to douse the flames. Roger LaPorte On his way to the hospital he said, “I’m a Catholic Worker. I’m against war, all wars. I did this as a religious action.” He died 33 hours later. Dorothy Day, founder of the Catholic Worker movement and a speaker on the 15th, wrote that she believed that LaPorte knew it was wrong to take his own life. But she explained his desire to end the Vietnam War; in the previous few days, six massive air strikes had made it the deadliest week since the war began. Read more
November 9, 1984 U.S. peace activists sailed a shrimp boat into the Port of Corinto to confront U.S. warships threatening Nicaragua. The U.S. had mined the harbor in violation of international law, and had invaded Nicaragua through this port in 1896 and 1910.
November 9, 1989 For the first time since World War II, free travel between East and West Germany was allowed. The Berlin Wall, built to stop the exodus from the Communist-controlled East in 1961, was opened in response to nonviolent popular action.
November 9, 2002 Somewhere between 450,000 and a million Europeans in Florence, Italy, peacefully protested the threatened U.S. invasion of Iraq. Florence, Italy 11.9.2002 The inaugural meeting of the European Social Forum had just concluded there.It was a regional part of the framework established at the World Social Forum which had met in Porto Alegre, Brazil, first in 2001. Read more about this protest The Forum is a citizens’ movement exploring alternatives to globalization and the inhumane consequences of the changing world order. They focus on sustainable development, social and economic justice. Those who were part of the Forum come from a broad range of civil society, including: pacifists; environmentalists; those in nonprofit, volunteer and non-governmental organizations; representatives of religious and lay groups; those in the anti-globalization and anti-capitalist movements; and, for the first time in Florence (Firenze), significant involvement of the labor movement, notably the European Trade Union Confederation (ETUC), and trade unions or national confederations from nine European countries, including Russia.
Republicans love third party candidates and ghost candidates when it helps them. They get Jill Stein to run in every swing state every presidential election. And only during the presidential election. But like all republicans they end up whining when things don’t go their way. Democrats stood up and admitted their loss and conceded with grace. I know people will suffer, but I hope the republicans so over play their hand that even their base turn against them … but it could be like the 1930s Germany all over again. I have a doctor’s appointment today so will not be on the computer until later in the morning. Hugs
Republicans would never use a fraudulent candidate for the purpose of siphoning votes.
Is this the country the maga cult wants? Yes? but what about all the rest who wouldn’t vote for a black woman? Those who claimed that they wouldn’t vote for Harris because she did not say the right words on Gaza? Well Israel now has no restraints, good choice you made for them, right? The brownshirts, the people who want to act like kids in gangs, want to have rule by thugs, that believe might makes right are going to find out it take far more than pretend bravado to keep a country this size running. The movie Idiocracy was not a how to do it show, but a warning. Right now we have moved a lot closer to the movie. Hugs
They always claim to be joking but their intention is to “move the Overton Window” so that when executions do happen, the public is well used to the prospect.
Wallnau cures Rush Limbaugh’s terminal cancer in the name of Jesus. Wallnau claims there are “high levels of angelic activity” at Trump’s DC hotel. Wallnau claims the MAGAbomber was possessed by Satan to make Trump look bad. Wallnau claims the Charlottesville Nazis were “paid actors” because right wing white supremacists do not exist. Wallnau declares that God killed Antonin Scalia to “wake up America” on how much they needed Trump. Wallnau “takes authority” over Hurricane Maria in the name of Jesus, orders it not to hit Puerto Rico. Wallnau claims Hurricane Irma bypassed Mar-A-Lago because Trump is under God’s protection. Wallnau releases the “Jezebel spirit” on Robert Mueller. Wallnau prays to protect Trump from “witches, jinxes, and demons that jump into dogs.” Wallnau prays for God to “unleash his holy sword” and smite Trump’s enemies. Wallnau claims angels literally dusted his face with gold flakes as a reward for loving Trump. Wallnau prays away obstruction of justice charges against Trump in the name of Jesus. Wallnau claims a gay bar owner was “cured of homosexuality” after eating a slice of anointed cake.
DeSantis is the first Florida governor to threaten TV broadcasters with criminal charges unless they stopped running ads he didn’t like. He’s the first governor to send his election police to knock on the doors of Amendment 4 supporters and the first to employ a last-ditch “investigation” of signatures gathered to get that amendment on the ballot. And credit, too, DeSantis for hiring just the right kind of election police.
Read the full editorial. As the paper points out, both measures passed with majority support and DeSantis “only had to shave off a few points” from the required 60% margin.
November 5, 1872 Susan B. Anthony and a few other women in Rochester, New York, voted in the presidential election, all of them for the first time. Susan B. Anthony She wrote later that day to her fellow suffragist Elizabeth Cady Stanton, “If only now—all the women would work to this end of enforcing the existing constitution—supremacy of national law over state law—what strides we might make . . . .” Anthony’s vote went to U. S. Grant and other Republicans, based on that party’s promise to consider the legitimacy of women’s suffrage. Elizabeth Cady Stanton Read Susan B. Anthony’s speech On Women’s Right to Vote
November 5, 1949 The Peace Pledge Union in Great Britain set up the Non-Violence Commission to study nonviolent resistance and how the ideas of Gandhi could be used to reach the Union’s goals of getting U.S. troops out of Britain and to end production of nuclear weapons there.
November 5, 1969 Bobby Seale Bobby Seale, a founder of the Black Panther Party, was sentenced to four years in prison on sixteen counts of contempt of court during the federal Chicago Eight trial in Chicago; he was charged for his insistent claims to the right to choose his own lawyer, or to represent himself. After the Chicago Eight verdict, the contempt charges were withdrawn.
November 5, 1982 36 were arrested in a demonstration at Honeywell, Minnesota’s largest defense contractor. The “Honeywell Project,” a local campaign against the arms maker, dogged the company for over three decades, at times with success. It continues today, targeting Alliant Technologies, the arms-making branch of Honeywell that was spun off in the 1990s. Protests at Alliant continue today. Alliant is the manufacturer for the Pentagon of artillery shells made with depleted uranium (DU or U-238, a by-product of uranium enrichment) which have been used extensively in Iraq and Kosovo. The Defense Department denies any health effects from use of DU (though army manuals warn soldiers of its toxicity), and contests accusations of DU’s role in Gulf War Syndrome. More about the Honeywell project from War Resisters’ international
November 5, 1987 Govan Mbeki, an early leader of the African National Congress, was released from South Africa’s Robben Island prison after serving twenty-four years (for treason). He served his sentence alongside Nelson Mandela, Walter Sisulu and many others who fought apartheid. Govan Mbeki His son, Thabo Mbeki, was elected in 1998 (and force to resign in 2008) to succeed Mandela, who was the first president elected following a new constitution which granted the right to vote to the entire non-white population, comprising 85% of the country’s population. Read more about Govan Mbeki
November 4, 1811 A group of men in Bulwell, near Nottingham, England, armed with hammers, axes and pistols in the dark of night, broke into the workshop of a master weaver named Hollingsworth and smashed six weaving machines the men thought threatened their jobs. They and their supporters opposed the industrialization that had turned home-based sustainable textile work into factory work with significant loss of jobs through mechanization (and those at much lower wages), as well as the attendant air and water pollution. Luddites smashing loom. They called themselves followers of the probably fictional General Ludd and continued their attacks for months, with over a thousand knitting machines destroyed. In response, thousands of troops were sent to stop the rebellion, and Parliament passed a law making destruction of weaving machines a hanging offense. Luddites has since become a term used for those who oppose technology.
November 4, 1956 Two hundred thousand Russian troops with 1000 tanks stopped an anti-Stalinist uprising in Hungary and installed a new pro-Soviet government. Although civilians had set up barricades along all the major roads leading to Budapest, the Soviet air force bombed the capital and troops poured into the city in a massive dawn offensive. Hungarian Army and National Guard troops participated in the resistance; only Communist Party functionaries and security police fought alongside the Warsaw Pact troops. The help promised from the U.S. to protect and aid the anti-Stalinists never came. 20,000 Hungarians ultimately died as a result (as well as 4000 troops), and ten times that many left the country permanently. Hungarian ‘freedom fighters’ temporarily forced back Soviet tanks and troops. Soviet tanks in Budapest. Pictorial history of the Hungarian Uprising
November 4, 1984 The first free elections in Nicaraguan history were held. Nicaragua’s ruling Sandinista Front claimed a decisive victory (70%), defeating six other parties, in the country’s first elections since the revolution the Sandanistas had led five years previous. The high-turnout election (83%) was monitored by 400 independent election observers who said the election had been fair. Read more
November 4, 1995 Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin was fatally shot minutes after speaking at a peace rally held in Tel Aviv’s Kings Square in Israel. The rally in Kings of Israel Square Yitzhak Rabin Read more
November 4, 2008 The first African American ever nominated by a major political party as candidate for president went before the electorate. Senator Barack Obama of Illinois and his Democratic vice-presidential running mate, Senator Joseph Biden of Delaware, faced Republican Senator John McCain of Arizona and Alaska Governor Sarah Palin; independent candidates Ralph Nader and Matt Gonzalez; Green Party candidates former Representative Cynthia McKinney and Rosa Clemente; and former Repepresentatives Bob Barr and Wayne Allyn Root.
and reblogging this one from Keith. I hate giving the Don any time at all, but the bottom line of this is that the young people are seeing this, some for the first time, as they were in middle and high school in 2016.
This was really difficult to get through. As angry as I get just speaking these words, they don’t express a fraction of my true feelings. I don’t know if there are words for that. I don’t know if this will help, but I feel helpless, so I’m using my platform, which is something most people don’t have. At first, I wondered if it conflicted with my previous video, but after some contemplation, I realized that it doesn’t. My previous video never advocated disregarding injustice and atrocity. It never advocated abdicating righteous indignation. It was an anti-hate video. On the contrary, my commitment against hatred is what compelled me to make this video.
I think I’m done trying to make moral arguments. They all feel like bad faith now, like a waste of time. I guess if I ever do bring them up again, I’ll really have to consider who exactly I’m trying to convince, because some people have proven to be so completely delusional or dishonest, that it would be useless to argue – like talking to a tree.
Reagan and Gorbachev at their first summit
Fawn Hall
Oliver North
Florence, Italy 11.9.2002
Susan B. Anthony
Elizabeth Cady Stanton
Bobby Seale
Protests at Alliant continue today.
Govan Mbeki
Luddites smashing loom.
Hungarian ‘freedom fighters’ temporarily forced back Soviet tanks and troops.
Yitzhak Rabin
Scottie's Playtime 