This new category of posts will profile those who are resisting the toxic politics of fear being imposed by the current president, abetted by his kowtowing flunkies and fanatical followers.
One story at a time, I’ll chronicle what moves people to protest and how.
This administration ranks as one of the most dangerous events in our history, along with the Civil War, the Great Depression and the insurrectionist assault on the U.S. Capitol.
During those first two events, we had the blessing of being guided through them by extraordinary presidents. Now it is We the People who must achieve something extraordinary: prevent a plunge into dictatorship.
According to our Declaration of Independence, this is our duty.
Even though the poor and powerless always suffer first and most, everyone will be harmed. This includes those who voted for Trump and the rich and powerful who aid him, all reassuring themselves with the comforting lie, “He’d never do that to us.”
Dissenters must choose whether to resist, leave the country, suffer in silence or feign approval. Fight, flight, freeze or fawn.
And when it’s over, we must learn how to reconcile with one another so we become, finally, one nation, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.
The eight richest people in the country could fund SNAP, which provides food benefits to 42 million low-income families and individuals, for almost two months by donating 1 percent of their net worth. This would amount to $15.79 billion.
Elon Musk, net worth $342 billion; 1 percent: $3.42 billionMark Zuckerberg, net worth $216 billion; 1 percent: $2.16 billionJeff Bezos, net worth $215 billion; 1 percent: $2.15 billionLarry Ellison, net worth $192 billion; 1 percent: $1.92 billionBernard Arnault and family, net worth $178 billion; 1 percent: $1.78 billionWarren Buffet, net worth $154 billion; 1 percent: $1.54 billionLarry Page, net worth $144 billion; 1 percent: $1.44 billionSergey Brin, net worth $138 billion; 1 percent: $1.38 billion
The average monthly SNAP benefit is $187 a month per person. Households can’t have more than $3,000 to $4,500 in available cash (a bank account) and net income that is at or below the poverty line to qualify. The 2025 poverty line varies from $15,650 for a single person to $67,710 for a family of eight in Alaska, the state where benefits are highest. Trump is cutting SNAP benefits in half.
Jimmy Chen of Brooklyn, N.Y. started a company called Propel that provides a free app to 5 million SNAP recipients, who use it to manage their benefits. He has partnered with the nonprofit GiveDirectly to raise money and funnel it to people on SNAP.
For what would be a pittance to them, America’s eight richest billionaires have an opportunity to help millions of the country’s poorest, many of them children and seniors. We don’t need a gilded ballroom at the White House. We need those who have benefited the most from our economy to step up.
“With God all things are possible.” That Bible quote (Matthew 19:26, New King James Version) hung two days ago on the door to the Recorder’s office in the Lake County (Indiana) Government Center. It’s visible to everyone entering or leaving the building through the main entrance.
Recorder Gina Pimentel, re-elected in 2024 for a second four-year term, has posted campaign photos on Facebook that show her family posing in front of a church, or in front of a giant wooden cross (from which I cropped her three young children) and a post celebrating the National Day of Prayer. This is not a problem.
Making a display of religious belief in a high-traffic area of a government office building is a problem.
It crosses a well-established legal line of long standing between religion and government. I hope she decides to tuck it into a private area of her work space in the office, where it can’t be taken as an attempt to proselytize a religious belief in a place of secular activities that should be welcoming to people without a reference to any faith.
If you think Trump’s brown-nosed minions, billionaire backers and Project 2025 blueprint won’t hurt you, read these books and view the video linked below:
“It Can’t happen Here,” by Sinclair Lewis, 1935;
“The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich,” by William L. Shire, 1960;
Submitted online to endDEI.edu.gov, which encourages citizens to become snitches: “The U.S. Department of Education is committed to ensuring all students have access to meaningful learning free of divisive ideologies and indoctrination. This submission form is an outlet for students, parents, teachers, and the broader community to report illegal discriminatory practices at institutions of learning. The Department of Education will utilize community submissions to identify potential areas for investigation.
PLEASE DESCRIBE IN AS MUCH DETAIL AS POSSIBLE THE DISCRIMINATORY PRACTICE TAKING PLACE”
Thank you, President Trump, for this bold initiative!!! Black History month and Juneteenth are brainwashing Black children with propaganda that they deserve special privileges (“civil rights”) for not being White in a White country. And don’t get me started on MLK Day, for a womanizer investigated by the FBI for his ties to Communism. P.S. I can’t wait to replace that with Donald Trump Day!!! He can’t help it if women are overcome by his animal magnetism, and his sly cozying up to Vladimir Putin will save us from Communism!!!
Being president of the United States isn’t good enough for DJT. He wants to be king, according to one of his posts on Truth Social, accompanied by a cheesy depiction of him wearing a crown.
Next, he’ll want an army of soldiers dedicated only to him, not to the Constitution. He’ll want to turn the White House into a tacky version of Versailles, with huge portraits of himself on every wall and liveried servants standing silently by to open a door or hand him toilet paper (wait: the king shouldn’t have to wipe his own ass!).
He’ll have so much fun designing the uniforms.
He’ll designate his youngest son, Barron, as the heir apparent. He and Melania also will get crowns. Should the taxpayers get obstreperous about this extravagance, while their medical benefits, food stamps and housing vouchers are slashed in the name of “government efficiency,” he’ll throw McNuggets at them much as he threw rolls of paper towels as “relief aid” to victims of Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico while blocking $20 billion in recovery aid.
He’s not much acquainted with facts or history, so someone should remind him how things turned out for the last king of Versailles.
Sally Field, the actress whose iconic roles range from Gidget to Norma Rae to Mary Todd Lincoln, is warning voters about the dangers of electing a president who doesn’t firmly support a woman’s right to abortion that is safe, legal and quickly obtainable nearby.
She made a video describing how, at 17, her doctor drove her to Tijuana in Mexico, handed her some money and told her which building to enter. She endured molestation from a man prepping her for the procedure, followed by an abortion without anesthesia.
My experience was similar but not nearly so harrowing.
As a pregnant 17-year-old in 1969, the only doctor I’d ever seen was an elderly pediatrician. Knowing I couldn’t turn to him or to my parents left me one option: an illicit, black-market abortion arranged through a word-of-mouth network that stretched 30 miles from the South Side of Chicago to the suburbs.
Friends drove me into the city for my evening appointment. We entered a bungalow indistinguishable from all the others in the neighborhood and sat down in the living room. Our host offered us drinks made from Tang (an orange-flavored powder) and vodka. Then he excused himself and went downstairs to the basement.
When he returned, he was wearing a formerly white, knee-length lab coat like doctors wear, although he was not a doctor. The front of it was covered in old, dried blood stains. He stood in front of me, counting the wad of bills I handed him from my purse while I stared at those stains. Getting that money had required begging, borrowing and stealing. I was gambling that he wouldn’t turn me away because I was $50 short of the $500 he’d expected.
He didn’t, but I had to swear to him I would send the 50 bucks as soon as I could.
He led us downstairs. Most of it was a dark, but furnished basement. A closet off to one side had been turned into an operating room. He gave me three injections of who-knows-what, and I soon became insensible, waking only once while in the closet to feel one of my friends stroking my hair and assuring me it would be over soon. Later, she told me she’d thrown up twice, that our host had performed abortions on two other girls while I was there and that the mother of one of them had been screaming at him that her daughter was bleeding too much.
I was lucky. I felt no pain, wasn’t sexually assaulted and suffered no injuries threatening my health or even my life. That is the way every abortion should be. Which is why they must be safe, legal and readily available wherever a woman lives. Unless, of course, you wouldn’t mind your own wife, daughter or sister having to rely on unsafe, illegal and hard-to-get surgery in another country or in somebody’s basement.
Thank you, J.D. Vance, for opening my eyes to the dangers of childless cat ladies.
How clever they’ve been! Masquerading as harmless, even caring, while insidiously spreading their status-obsessed misery to the rest of us. If this sounds confusing, since childless cat ladies are not known for their obsession with status, let J.D. explain.
Childless cat ladies “are miserable in their own lives and want to make the rest of the country miserable, too,” he told Tucker Carlson on Fox News. https://www.foxnews.com/video/6359536060112
“They live in one-bedroom apartments in New York City. They’re obsessed with status, wealth, fortunes.
“They hate normal Americans for choosing family over these ridiculous DC and New York status games.
“If you’re a miserable cat lady, you should not force your misery on the rest of the country.”
Until J.D. went on to point it out, I had not realized that Democrats and corporate oligarchs are childless cat ladies. Or that such people live in one-bedroom apartments.
“For a healthy ruling class,” he said, we need leaders with children. Those without children “have no personal and direct stake in the country.”
Wow! I didn’t realize how close I’d come to falling into that trap. I’m childless, a Democrat and a cat owner. Even worse, I used to work as a newspaper reporter. The only thing that saves me (besides J.D.’s clear-eyed and brave revelation) is that I also own a dog.
But she’s not the kind of canine you’d expect a real woman to own – not a robust family protector but a 30-pound lap lover named Sugar.
She and Karma are buddies.
Gosh, “Karma” sounds a lot like “Kamala,” doesn’t it?
Are you ready for something different this Thanksgiving? Have your rituals of food, family and football become ruts?
Try sitting on the other side of the table, so to speak – the Indian side. After all, November is Native American Heritage Month.
Here are a few suggestions to get you started.
-Learn what really happened at that first Thanksgiving Feast, and a whole lot more besides. “This Land Is Their Land: The Wampanoag Indians, Plymouth Colony, and the Troubled History of Thanksgiving” by historian Daniel J. Silverman busts the myths of our grade-school pageants while introducing us to Indian reality in 17th century Massachusetts. Deep divisions opened within tribes over whether to welcome or attack ever-more-numerous colonists. Trading for European goods bolstered a tribe’s power and prestige, but the costs of contact included plague, violence and alcohol.
-Plan to attend a powwow. The website PowWows.com offers a state-by-state listing of events, as well as an etiquette guide and Native American sources of powwow supplies and regalia.
-Research whether you have enough Native American ancestry to join a tribe. The U.S. Department of the Interior offers a “Trace Indian Ancestry” page to get you started.
-Visit a museum of American Indian history, art and culture. PowWows.com has compiled a list of 10 (https://www.powwows.com/10-of-the-best-native-american-museums-in-the-united-states/). They’re located in Taos, New Mexico, Pittsburgh, Clewiston, Florida, Salamanca, New York, Phoenix, Warner, New Hampshire, Indianapolis, Onchiota, New York, Rapid City, South Dakota and Washington, D.C.
-Donate; see the Native American Heritage Fund, the American Indian College Fund, the Warrior Women Project and the covid fund at First Nations.
-Attend the National Day of Mourning in Plymouth, Massachusetts. Since 1970, the event on Thanksgiving Day has acknowledged the genocide, land theft and strength in action of Native Americans.
Uncle Sam has heard from another American industry that needs a bailout.
This time, it’s newspapers. But they aren’t just another business. They’re one of the pillars of our democracy, and they’re crumbling.
They’re in the same position as buggy whip makers after Henry Ford’s Model Ts started rolling off the assembly lines. This time the Internet is the technological advancement threatening old ways.
Nineteen U.S. senators have joined a group of journalism professionals and nonprofits in asking Congress for stimulus money to keep newspapers publishing.
Would there be a conflict of interest in covering the Newspaper Czar who decides which papers get money? Of course. Accepting money from any source can raise that problem for newspapers. Nonetheless, newspapers sometimes bite the hands that feed them in order to do their jobs.
To see the proposal in detail, check out “Life-saving news needs a stimulus” at https://newsguild.org/.
Then subscribe to a newspaper. Unless, of course, you’re comfortable getting your news from the likes of Facebook.
Subversive Speech 