Thank you for your exceptional clarity in debunking the notion that our votes don’t count unless we are a select few living in swing states. That is flat out wrong for all of the reasons you laid out tonight. Every vote counts. Every vote! Now let’s get to work!
As an example, our county council where I live is rife with corruption and a new MAGA assault on our library system because we failed in the last election to seat a Democratic majority. We were able to elect a Democratic member of congress in our red purple district. But we can’t do that if we don’t field strong candidates and support them with a sense of urgency.
My view is that the only votes that don't count are the ones that are not cast. If you don't exercise your right to vote, you shouldn't exercise your right to complain about the outcome. I feel we have a duty to vote.
I live in a very red district. I vote in every election and serve as a poll worker for the Democrats. I won't give in to defeatism.
I have voted in every election since 1972, even when I lived in red districts in red states. I voted for Jimmy Carter in 1980 and Mondale in 1984. People in so many other countries are not permitted to vote. Not voting ensures that your voice will not be heard. (I flew my flag at half staff when Reagan was re-elected. I was right; it was a grievous occasion.)
Bravo, Jenn! I think I've voted in every General, but not every Primary. I now vote in every Primary, even when candidates run unopposed. Even unopposed folks need and deserve our support.
I was in college during the second election of Ronald Reagan. I was attending a liberal arts college for women in Massachusetts, and I would say pretty much the whole campus voted for Jimmy Carter, including me. The day after the second election of Reagan, everyone, including the professors, dressed in black. It was a day of mourning for us.
I have voted in every election I was eligible to vote in. My daughter and I just updated our mail-in-ballots to include our addresses in Germany. I have been talking to all of the youth I know, and it seems they are going to vote too.
I wish I'd had a flag back then, and the sense to go half staff on RR's re-election. His influence greatly damaged our country, both increasing inequality and reducing the strength of our Democracy.
I totally agree that Ronald Reagan was the beginning of the corporate takeover of America we are living through now. His drastic changes to the tax code have been disastrous for America and working people.
And equally disastrous was Reagan’s selling of the canard that “government is the problem”.
Many prominent liberals exacerbated that problem by taking stances that denigrated “bureaucrats” (some of whom were Nobel Prize winners), puffing up their public egos and playing into conservatives’ hands by snobbily denigrating government.
As a molecular biologist and biochemist (now retired), I offer my very strongest support to modified mRNA vaccines. These vaccines offer strong protection to lethal diseases and help protect the greater population from disease spread. Modified mRNA vaccines have proven to be exceptionally safe, long lasting and effective. I very much hope that modified mRNA vaccine use will be applied to additional infectious diseases in the future. Nakedly political attempts to undermine use of modified mRNA vaccines are astoundingly irresponsible and harmful to US society. The Federal Drug Agency has been very responsible in application of such much needed medicine.
Hi, ZB. First, I am honored that you are a reader of my newsletter. More importantly, I really appreciate having your voice and expertise added to the conversation on Ladapo's opposition to mRNA vaccines. If you write on this topic, please send me a link to your column at rhubbell@outlook.com and I will promote.
Hi Robert--many thanks for your wonderful substack. I love reading what you write. In the upcoming election, may America defeat the Nazis (gQp; *republicans*) once again.
I've been watching mRNA research for nearly 20 years! I am keeping my fingers crossed that this time next year we will have them for the flu, RSV, etc. It's also very promising in different types of cancer and other immunological diseases. Yay!
My deepest appreciation for your clarity in giving us factual information consistently, Mr Hubbell, but more importantly giving us hope. Your inspiring encouragement is desperately needed by me. Thank you..🙏🏻
Robert, thanks for bringing up the latest lunacies of the quack Ron DeSantis installed as surgeon general. I was surprised that nobody brought up this insane choice during the short-lived run of DeSantis for the GOP nomination. Same with the fact, that through action and inaction tfg was directly responsible for a good part of the COVID deaths in the US. No president in history was accountable for as many deaths of Americans as tfg. But it is Anthony Fauci the MAGA crowd likes to crucify, go figure.
And the 5th Circuit Court is at it again. Their crusade is just the tip of the iceberg, of course. Just take the case described in this NYT piece (should be accessible to all)
Sounds dystopian, but this is reality. Not in Texas but in Ohio. Incidentally the same state that went after the people who assisted a 12-year old raped child to get an abortion in neighboring Indiana.
Let's hope the November elections will not give renewed meaning to the saying "As Ohio goes so goes the nation."
Well Robert, as I mentioned to all on Heather's letter tonight, a good night's sleep is in order, if one can get it. I can't wait to read Clarence Thomas' opinion for the majority in the Colorado case.
I have some questions for the readers regarding Substack and getting in touch with individuals at MSNBC
what does it mean to “restack an article? Why do it?
Re: MSNBC. How can you contact Chris Hays or Mika or Joe or any others to comment, criticize, or offer suggestions? I’ve tried unsuccessfully.
Also Robert speaks frequently about receiving emails. Not wanting to burden him, but how does one comment to him in that way?
On today’s newsletter, I am getting more and more convinced to stop listening to so many of the pollsters, naysayers, and minimizes of all of our efforts and actions. I’m just going to keep on keeping on.
Again, thanks for making my getting up early worthwhile.
I you want to write directly to me, just "reply" to the newsletter email. I am working on the issue of a reporter database so readers can easily contact them.
Robert, if people are reading your column on the website, what email should they write to? (I have too much stuff in my email - so I've turned off those notifications, and just read it on Substack.)
Ilene, thank you for asking these questions! I haven't been able to find out about some of the ways Substack works. I don't have much time to go digging around, so hope people here can help us - perhaps someone could provide a useful link? (Robert, I join all the others in thanking you for what you do!)
I have shared some of Robert’s columns to my Facebook feed and then been happy to see a notification of people who subscribed because of the share! It’s easy to do with the Share button.
The one good piece of news about "Dr" Ladapo and the other anti-vaxxers is that enough Republicans who passed the IQ test low enough to gain membership in the party have listened to them and as a result, the majority of COVID deaths have been Republicans. That's a good thing! We have to get rid of them somehow, and letting their own stupidity do the job makes it easy.
This reminds me of how it only highlighted the extremely narcissistic stupidity of the defendant when he mishandled the pandemic in 2020. (Remember how he promoted that we would have "packed churches" on Easter in April 2020? ) In every way that he mismanaged the pandemic in 2020, all I could think is "this numbskull is killing his own voters!" It seems many tRumpublicans don't have the ability to learn, though obedience is an important characteristic for cult members in maintaining devotion to their leader.
Now he is campaigning on “Was your life better five years ago than it is now?” Echoing Reagan’s Champaign about Is your life better than it was four years ago. But Trump has to say five years, because four years ago was 2020 when he made such a mess of things and people were dying left and right.
Great comment, but please don't conflate the derriere--an oft attractive secondary sex characteristic, which also is part of a suite of adaptations which made it possible for H. sapiens to run--with the friggen former guy or his effing party.
Red states also have some of the worst education and healthcare systems in the US. In addition, doctors are fleeing places like Idaho, Texas, and the deep south for fear of being prosecuted for doing their jobs. Also, many of these states refused to take the Medicaid extension that President Obama offered under the ACA, therefore creating a situation where certain low-income people without disabilities had no access to healthcare. Republican people in Congress seem to want to kill off their constituents.
After watching another poorly-done "interview" on CBS this morning, I sent the following letter to CBS:
My wife was an award-winning journalist at CBS news for most of the 1980s. We place a good deal of faith in CBS News to deliver accurate and fair/balanced news (unlike some other networks who make that claim).
So, I was quite disappointed in seeing Tony Dokoupil's piece interviewing Alejandro Mayorkas this morning. Tony kept pushing the Republican line "What are you willing to do right now"....and Mayorkas, with barely-contained contempt, attempted to answer responsibly, prefaced by a refusal to play politics with this important issue. He politely and correctly identified the root of the problem as the failure of Congress (and specifically the House of Representatives) to provide resources adequate to address the problem. What Tony ignored / never mentioned is the fact that the Congress could solve this problem any time they wanted to - as they could have done anytime in the last 10 years, in particular between 2017 and 2021 when Trump was president, and they had a majority. He did not provide any context (and dismissed Mayorkas' factual contextual statement that we're experiencing an unprecedented immigrant migration in the entire northern hemisphere). It is crystal clear to anyone paying attention that the Republicans are purposefully stalling any progress on this in order to make Biden look bad in this election .
I like Tony; he's an engaging guy, but he is an ENTERTAINER not a journalist; the way he ended the interview ("both sides are equally playing politics" )is not true, not accurate or supported by the facts, and highly misleading to people who consume CBS's sound-byte news on this program.
Dokoupil is a former news correspondent but gave that up (for the most part) to be part of the news-adjacent anchor table at CBS Mornings. That show, in daily competition with TODAY and Good Morning America – does not originate from the CBS News Broadcast Center but from a glitzy studio on Astor Place and is nominally part of the news division.
...
For CBS, this is journalistic malpractice; the stakes are too high to brush this off as 'politics as usual'. CBS needs to wake up and start reporting the full story, something they were once famous for. Your standards have dropped, and you owe the American public an apology and a thorough correction of this sloppy, untruthful and incompetent piece of tv infotainment.
One of my pet peeves is these guys on MSNBC, Fox News, et al, call themselves “journalists”. You’re correct: They are entertainers and probably wouldn’t know a journalistic take on a story even if it stared them in the face. I love your letter and perhaps this Sub Stack group would like to know if there’s a reply.
Richard - Will definitely share with the group any reply I get (other than the pro-forma acknowledgment I got from CBS, establishing a "case #"! Hey, I'm not filing a lawsuit!!).
As my wife (my managing partner) pointed out, CBS Morning is part of the entertainment division, not the news division. No such excuse for Chris Hayes, to whom I also wrote...
Thank you, Robert. Working our tails off on a flippable state house race here--truly a race where we need every, single vote. To insinuate that 2024 is about only one race is just wrong. To provide comment to MSNBC, I found address below (and pasted my brief comment).
I beg ChrisHayes and others to motivate and emphasize the urgency of ALL voting in ALL states, rather than focusing on only swing states.
EVERY position is important, as we know well here in Texas, and intimating that there is only one race and only people in swing states need vote is dangerous.
“It is a ‘fundamental principle of our representative democracy,’ embodied in the Constitution, that ‘the people should choose whom they please to govern them.’ “
Referring to the above quote from trump’s appeal, Joyce Vance wrote today that irony is dead.
In the 14th amendment, Section 3, it very clearly and succinctly states that it is NOT always up to the”the people” to decide who can be President. Besides being a natural born citizen, and the age 35, they carved out the stipulation that no one who has committed insurrection against the United States, having previously sworn to uphold and defend the Constitution, or who gives aid and/or comfort to an insurrectionist can serve as President. Those in the southern states who waged war against the United States were NOT given the right to “let the people decide”, and tRump should not be given that right either.
Democrats are missing a bet by not making immigration our issue. Most Americans agree that Dreamers need a path to citizenship. Most Americans understand the need for asylum programs. Most Americans understand giving new immigrants the right to work (not the right to scab as it is in some states). Most Americans know that the overwhelming majority of those who trek through South and Central America are not criminals, but poor people who long for the American Dream, and are willing to go through hell to get a chance for it. We need to stand up and say that, and to call out Republican blackmail for what it is.
I’m not so sure, unfortunately. Many Americans may and ought to show sympathy to individual (even many collective) migrant stories, but how will they stack it against the costs, local disruptions, etc., due to large numbers of migrants (not *im*migrants)?
The sense that things are out of control has, historically, worked to the political advantage of budding dictators.
One of the things the bad guys learned is that the best tactic is often to take on your opponent's strongest argument. There's lots to show that Republicans are fakes, hypocrites and blackmailers (criminals) on immigration. We should not just accept that it's their issue.
Jon, couldn't agree more - tRump's pronouncements about our laws and our country have always struck me as sloppy, betraying the razor thin depth of his understanding about the constitution and governing laws of our democracy. These laws and documents are, for the most part, incredibly condensed, exactly-worded; they do not ramble, or slobber over the boundaries of their subject. Jefferson, Madison et al were phenomenal word-smiths. Because of the poor public education (yes, even in California and Connecticut) many Americans do not know what the laws and founding documents say, much less what they mean.
I strongly agree that every vote should and must be solicited and then counted!!! Statements that either explicitly or implicitly counter that fundamental fact or truth should be challenged as you do. I also suggest that all of us, including especially commentators and “influencers,” stop using “conservative” and “ultra conservative” as adjectives when describing judges and other public officials who make egregiously erroneous decisions or statements. Those adjectives either lack useful definition, when so used, or they are used as ostensibly polite coverups for the unfounded decisions or statements reportedly made.
Yes, it is a shame to pollute the otherwise honorable word "conservative" by applying it to the point-of-view of those who just want to blow things up.
I agree with everything you said here. I'm trying to think of a more appropriate adjective for judges who make ridiculous and dangerous decisions. Fringe? Extremist? Biased? Unhinged?
Robert, thank you for clarifying the barrage of news items that we are hit with daily. I’m slowly weaning myself off of MSNBC and their unending focus on Trump and listening more to Substack, especially your daily commentary. I enjoy your reader’s comments almost as much as your commentary. Thank you!
BS. That's what “The election will be decided by 100,000 people in seven swing states.” is. Chris Hayes and others should stop this awful dis-information. Think about the down ballot. In deep red Texas, that's how we got border-line criminals like Ken Paxton. In deep blue NY, that's how we got MAGA champion Elise Stefanik. Not voting is how Ron Johnson bubbles to the top out of the goo he spreads in WI. You gotta VOTE! And, OBTW, that's also how Biden will beat RFK, Jr.
The votes-don't-count statement is so wrong. The national tally of votes, which should be the way the election is won or lost, matters enormously. In order to fight against the electoral college system (which was created to protect slavery states and get them to ratify the Constitution), we must emphasize the popular vote tally as being the essential vote, the true will of the people. Only then are all votes equal.
Robert,
Thank you for your exceptional clarity in debunking the notion that our votes don’t count unless we are a select few living in swing states. That is flat out wrong for all of the reasons you laid out tonight. Every vote counts. Every vote! Now let’s get to work!
As an example, our county council where I live is rife with corruption and a new MAGA assault on our library system because we failed in the last election to seat a Democratic majority. We were able to elect a Democratic member of congress in our red purple district. But we can’t do that if we don’t field strong candidates and support them with a sense of urgency.
My view is that the only votes that don't count are the ones that are not cast. If you don't exercise your right to vote, you shouldn't exercise your right to complain about the outcome. I feel we have a duty to vote.
I live in a very red district. I vote in every election and serve as a poll worker for the Democrats. I won't give in to defeatism.
I have voted in every election since 1972, even when I lived in red districts in red states. I voted for Jimmy Carter in 1980 and Mondale in 1984. People in so many other countries are not permitted to vote. Not voting ensures that your voice will not be heard. (I flew my flag at half staff when Reagan was re-elected. I was right; it was a grievous occasion.)
Bravo, Jenn! I think I've voted in every General, but not every Primary. I now vote in every Primary, even when candidates run unopposed. Even unopposed folks need and deserve our support.
I flew mine upside down during tRump's reign...a signal of dire distress.
And the dire distress continues...
I was in college during the second election of Ronald Reagan. I was attending a liberal arts college for women in Massachusetts, and I would say pretty much the whole campus voted for Jimmy Carter, including me. The day after the second election of Reagan, everyone, including the professors, dressed in black. It was a day of mourning for us.
I have voted in every election I was eligible to vote in. My daughter and I just updated our mail-in-ballots to include our addresses in Germany. I have been talking to all of the youth I know, and it seems they are going to vote too.
I wish I'd had a flag back then, and the sense to go half staff on RR's re-election. His influence greatly damaged our country, both increasing inequality and reducing the strength of our Democracy.
I totally agree that Ronald Reagan was the beginning of the corporate takeover of America we are living through now. His drastic changes to the tax code have been disastrous for America and working people.
And equally disastrous was Reagan’s selling of the canard that “government is the problem”.
Many prominent liberals exacerbated that problem by taking stances that denigrated “bureaucrats” (some of whom were Nobel Prize winners), puffing up their public egos and playing into conservatives’ hands by snobbily denigrating government.
My sentiments exactly, Janet. And also what Michael Alexander said
.
Thanks.
Now it’s “above”, not “below”, David. One never knows what the Substack gods will do to the order of comments :-/
Bob, you are a rock star!
A great comment. NC was in the same boat but this year fielded a great group of candidates
As a molecular biologist and biochemist (now retired), I offer my very strongest support to modified mRNA vaccines. These vaccines offer strong protection to lethal diseases and help protect the greater population from disease spread. Modified mRNA vaccines have proven to be exceptionally safe, long lasting and effective. I very much hope that modified mRNA vaccine use will be applied to additional infectious diseases in the future. Nakedly political attempts to undermine use of modified mRNA vaccines are astoundingly irresponsible and harmful to US society. The Federal Drug Agency has been very responsible in application of such much needed medicine.
Hi, ZB. First, I am honored that you are a reader of my newsletter. More importantly, I really appreciate having your voice and expertise added to the conversation on Ladapo's opposition to mRNA vaccines. If you write on this topic, please send me a link to your column at rhubbell@outlook.com and I will promote.
Hi Robert--many thanks for your wonderful substack. I love reading what you write. In the upcoming election, may America defeat the Nazis (gQp; *republicans*) once again.
I've been watching mRNA research for nearly 20 years! I am keeping my fingers crossed that this time next year we will have them for the flu, RSV, etc. It's also very promising in different types of cancer and other immunological diseases. Yay!
My deepest appreciation for your clarity in giving us factual information consistently, Mr Hubbell, but more importantly giving us hope. Your inspiring encouragement is desperately needed by me. Thank you..🙏🏻
“The election will be decided by 100,000 votes in 7 swing states” is the best reason for implementing the National Popular Vote Compact.
No kidding!
Robert, thanks for bringing up the latest lunacies of the quack Ron DeSantis installed as surgeon general. I was surprised that nobody brought up this insane choice during the short-lived run of DeSantis for the GOP nomination. Same with the fact, that through action and inaction tfg was directly responsible for a good part of the COVID deaths in the US. No president in history was accountable for as many deaths of Americans as tfg. But it is Anthony Fauci the MAGA crowd likes to crucify, go figure.
And the 5th Circuit Court is at it again. Their crusade is just the tip of the iceberg, of course. Just take the case described in this NYT piece (should be accessible to all)
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/01/03/us/brittany-watts-ohio-miscarriage-abortion.html?unlocked_article_code=1.LE0.6uHk.xf216skDCDSR&hpgrp=k-abar&smid=url-share
Sounds dystopian, but this is reality. Not in Texas but in Ohio. Incidentally the same state that went after the people who assisted a 12-year old raped child to get an abortion in neighboring Indiana.
Let's hope the November elections will not give renewed meaning to the saying "As Ohio goes so goes the nation."
Well Robert, as I mentioned to all on Heather's letter tonight, a good night's sleep is in order, if one can get it. I can't wait to read Clarence Thomas' opinion for the majority in the Colorado case.
Could you please call Chris Hayes for all of us?
Thank you Robert.
I have some questions for the readers regarding Substack and getting in touch with individuals at MSNBC
what does it mean to “restack an article? Why do it?
Re: MSNBC. How can you contact Chris Hays or Mika or Joe or any others to comment, criticize, or offer suggestions? I’ve tried unsuccessfully.
Also Robert speaks frequently about receiving emails. Not wanting to burden him, but how does one comment to him in that way?
On today’s newsletter, I am getting more and more convinced to stop listening to so many of the pollsters, naysayers, and minimizes of all of our efforts and actions. I’m just going to keep on keeping on.
Again, thanks for making my getting up early worthwhile.
Q
I you want to write directly to me, just "reply" to the newsletter email. I am working on the issue of a reporter database so readers can easily contact them.
I can provide you with a spreadsheet for NY if you'd like?
Thanks, especially re the reporter database.
Robert, if people are reading your column on the website, what email should they write to? (I have too much stuff in my email - so I've turned off those notifications, and just read it on Substack.)
Ilene, thank you for asking these questions! I haven't been able to find out about some of the ways Substack works. I don't have much time to go digging around, so hope people here can help us - perhaps someone could provide a useful link? (Robert, I join all the others in thanking you for what you do!)
Ditto, Jocelyn! I'm working my way through publishing, but it's disorganized and NOT easy.
Found some You Tube videos that I'm hoping will help:
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLripwV1Ak52nqQpM-GDCCFCfvvqql9sT0
Thank you Ilene for asking these questions. I hope some folks can share some ideas here.
I think restacking is to repost an article and any followers of yours will see it? I have restacked articles and they show in my profile.
I have shared some of Robert’s columns to my Facebook feed and then been happy to see a notification of people who subscribed because of the share! It’s easy to do with the Share button.
Ilene, I only know the answer to your final question. You can reach Robert by email by replying to the email notification of the newsletter.
The one good piece of news about "Dr" Ladapo and the other anti-vaxxers is that enough Republicans who passed the IQ test low enough to gain membership in the party have listened to them and as a result, the majority of COVID deaths have been Republicans. That's a good thing! We have to get rid of them somehow, and letting their own stupidity do the job makes it easy.
This reminds me of how it only highlighted the extremely narcissistic stupidity of the defendant when he mishandled the pandemic in 2020. (Remember how he promoted that we would have "packed churches" on Easter in April 2020? ) In every way that he mismanaged the pandemic in 2020, all I could think is "this numbskull is killing his own voters!" It seems many tRumpublicans don't have the ability to learn, though obedience is an important characteristic for cult members in maintaining devotion to their leader.
We were thinking the same thing: he is killing off his base! Wow.
Now he is campaigning on “Was your life better five years ago than it is now?” Echoing Reagan’s Champaign about Is your life better than it was four years ago. But Trump has to say five years, because four years ago was 2020 when he made such a mess of things and people were dying left and right.
Great comment, but please don't conflate the derriere--an oft attractive secondary sex characteristic, which also is part of a suite of adaptations which made it possible for H. sapiens to run--with the friggen former guy or his effing party.
Shades of Jonathan Swift. Surgeon General report.: "Believing Republican medical lies can be harmful to your health."
How about publishing a weekly Lapado Index? List the obits of Republicans who died of COVID.
Darwin's Theory proved right once again.
Unfortunately, like guns, they take a lot of us down with them. 😞
Yep.
Tom, your putting "Dr." in quotes reminded me of a self-deprecating riddle a chiropractor friend once shared:
"What do you call the person who graduates from med school with the lowest grades? ... 'Doctor!' "
Red states also have some of the worst education and healthcare systems in the US. In addition, doctors are fleeing places like Idaho, Texas, and the deep south for fear of being prosecuted for doing their jobs. Also, many of these states refused to take the Medicaid extension that President Obama offered under the ACA, therefore creating a situation where certain low-income people without disabilities had no access to healthcare. Republican people in Congress seem to want to kill off their constituents.
Indeed they do.
After watching another poorly-done "interview" on CBS this morning, I sent the following letter to CBS:
My wife was an award-winning journalist at CBS news for most of the 1980s. We place a good deal of faith in CBS News to deliver accurate and fair/balanced news (unlike some other networks who make that claim).
So, I was quite disappointed in seeing Tony Dokoupil's piece interviewing Alejandro Mayorkas this morning. Tony kept pushing the Republican line "What are you willing to do right now"....and Mayorkas, with barely-contained contempt, attempted to answer responsibly, prefaced by a refusal to play politics with this important issue. He politely and correctly identified the root of the problem as the failure of Congress (and specifically the House of Representatives) to provide resources adequate to address the problem. What Tony ignored / never mentioned is the fact that the Congress could solve this problem any time they wanted to - as they could have done anytime in the last 10 years, in particular between 2017 and 2021 when Trump was president, and they had a majority. He did not provide any context (and dismissed Mayorkas' factual contextual statement that we're experiencing an unprecedented immigrant migration in the entire northern hemisphere). It is crystal clear to anyone paying attention that the Republicans are purposefully stalling any progress on this in order to make Biden look bad in this election .
I like Tony; he's an engaging guy, but he is an ENTERTAINER not a journalist; the way he ended the interview ("both sides are equally playing politics" )is not true, not accurate or supported by the facts, and highly misleading to people who consume CBS's sound-byte news on this program.
Dokoupil is a former news correspondent but gave that up (for the most part) to be part of the news-adjacent anchor table at CBS Mornings. That show, in daily competition with TODAY and Good Morning America – does not originate from the CBS News Broadcast Center but from a glitzy studio on Astor Place and is nominally part of the news division.
...
For CBS, this is journalistic malpractice; the stakes are too high to brush this off as 'politics as usual'. CBS needs to wake up and start reporting the full story, something they were once famous for. Your standards have dropped, and you owe the American public an apology and a thorough correction of this sloppy, untruthful and incompetent piece of tv infotainment.
One of my pet peeves is these guys on MSNBC, Fox News, et al, call themselves “journalists”. You’re correct: They are entertainers and probably wouldn’t know a journalistic take on a story even if it stared them in the face. I love your letter and perhaps this Sub Stack group would like to know if there’s a reply.
Richard - Will definitely share with the group any reply I get (other than the pro-forma acknowledgment I got from CBS, establishing a "case #"! Hey, I'm not filing a lawsuit!!).
As my wife (my managing partner) pointed out, CBS Morning is part of the entertainment division, not the news division. No such excuse for Chris Hayes, to whom I also wrote...
Thank you, Robert. Working our tails off on a flippable state house race here--truly a race where we need every, single vote. To insinuate that 2024 is about only one race is just wrong. To provide comment to MSNBC, I found address below (and pasted my brief comment).
MSNBCTVinfo@nbcuni.com
I beg ChrisHayes and others to motivate and emphasize the urgency of ALL voting in ALL states, rather than focusing on only swing states.
EVERY position is important, as we know well here in Texas, and intimating that there is only one race and only people in swing states need vote is dangerous.
Thank you for that link and for your message to them. I will follow suit.
“It is a ‘fundamental principle of our representative democracy,’ embodied in the Constitution, that ‘the people should choose whom they please to govern them.’ “
Referring to the above quote from trump’s appeal, Joyce Vance wrote today that irony is dead.
Here are my thoughts (for what they’re worth:
In the 14th amendment, Section 3, it very clearly and succinctly states that it is NOT always up to the”the people” to decide who can be President. Besides being a natural born citizen, and the age 35, they carved out the stipulation that no one who has committed insurrection against the United States, having previously sworn to uphold and defend the Constitution, or who gives aid and/or comfort to an insurrectionist can serve as President. Those in the southern states who waged war against the United States were NOT given the right to “let the people decide”, and tRump should not be given that right either.
Democrats are missing a bet by not making immigration our issue. Most Americans agree that Dreamers need a path to citizenship. Most Americans understand the need for asylum programs. Most Americans understand giving new immigrants the right to work (not the right to scab as it is in some states). Most Americans know that the overwhelming majority of those who trek through South and Central America are not criminals, but poor people who long for the American Dream, and are willing to go through hell to get a chance for it. We need to stand up and say that, and to call out Republican blackmail for what it is.
I’m not so sure, unfortunately. Many Americans may and ought to show sympathy to individual (even many collective) migrant stories, but how will they stack it against the costs, local disruptions, etc., due to large numbers of migrants (not *im*migrants)?
The sense that things are out of control has, historically, worked to the political advantage of budding dictators.
One of the things the bad guys learned is that the best tactic is often to take on your opponent's strongest argument. There's lots to show that Republicans are fakes, hypocrites and blackmailers (criminals) on immigration. We should not just accept that it's their issue.
Jon, couldn't agree more - tRump's pronouncements about our laws and our country have always struck me as sloppy, betraying the razor thin depth of his understanding about the constitution and governing laws of our democracy. These laws and documents are, for the most part, incredibly condensed, exactly-worded; they do not ramble, or slobber over the boundaries of their subject. Jefferson, Madison et al were phenomenal word-smiths. Because of the poor public education (yes, even in California and Connecticut) many Americans do not know what the laws and founding documents say, much less what they mean.
I strongly agree that every vote should and must be solicited and then counted!!! Statements that either explicitly or implicitly counter that fundamental fact or truth should be challenged as you do. I also suggest that all of us, including especially commentators and “influencers,” stop using “conservative” and “ultra conservative” as adjectives when describing judges and other public officials who make egregiously erroneous decisions or statements. Those adjectives either lack useful definition, when so used, or they are used as ostensibly polite coverups for the unfounded decisions or statements reportedly made.
Yes, it is a shame to pollute the otherwise honorable word "conservative" by applying it to the point-of-view of those who just want to blow things up.
I agree with everything you said here. I'm trying to think of a more appropriate adjective for judges who make ridiculous and dangerous decisions. Fringe? Extremist? Biased? Unhinged?
Robert, thank you for clarifying the barrage of news items that we are hit with daily. I’m slowly weaning myself off of MSNBC and their unending focus on Trump and listening more to Substack, especially your daily commentary. I enjoy your reader’s comments almost as much as your commentary. Thank you!
BS. That's what “The election will be decided by 100,000 people in seven swing states.” is. Chris Hayes and others should stop this awful dis-information. Think about the down ballot. In deep red Texas, that's how we got border-line criminals like Ken Paxton. In deep blue NY, that's how we got MAGA champion Elise Stefanik. Not voting is how Ron Johnson bubbles to the top out of the goo he spreads in WI. You gotta VOTE! And, OBTW, that's also how Biden will beat RFK, Jr.
The votes-don't-count statement is so wrong. The national tally of votes, which should be the way the election is won or lost, matters enormously. In order to fight against the electoral college system (which was created to protect slavery states and get them to ratify the Constitution), we must emphasize the popular vote tally as being the essential vote, the true will of the people. Only then are all votes equal.