Some powerful Christmas messages

Holiday greetings from alternate universes

And then, there's this

With humor and candor, Hillary tells Providence audience her views on truth and democracy

At Brown, Hillary Clinton reflects on her career, encourages the pursuit of truth and diplomacy

Brown University

Looking back on her five-decade career in public service, Hillary Rodham Clinton can count numerous accomplishments and successes from her tenure as U.S. secretary of state, first lady, U.S. senator and other roles as a leader and advocate.

But what would she do differently? Without hesitation, she said it would be the 2016 U.S. presidential election.

“Obviously, I’d win,” Clinton declared to a packed house in Brown’s Pizzitola Sports Center during the University’s 104th Stephen A. Ogden Jr. ’60 Memorial Lecture on International Affairs on Thursday, Oct. 30. 

“I should caveat that — I’d win the electoral college,” she quipped, eliciting a burst of cheers as she nodded to having won the popular vote.

Presidential politics, tales from the world of diplomacy, and U.S.-international relations were among the topics that Clinton discussed in a wide-ranging conversation with Brown University President Christina H. Paxson. 

Clinton was the latest among dozens of leaders and diplomats to participate in the 60-year-old Ogden Lecture series, which has hosted everyone from His Holiness the Dalai Lama to New York Times publisher A.G. Sulzberger to heads of state including Jacinda Ardern (New Zealand), Mikhail Gorbachev (Soviet Union) and Theresa May (U.K.). 

Clinton’s visit was co-presented by Brown 2026, an initiative to observe the U.S. semiquincentennial and the role of research universities in advancing democratic societies, and by the University’s Thomas J. Watson Jr. School of International and Public Affairs, which celebrated its launch during a public event at Brown on Oct. 25.

How Trump and Musk are marching America into fascism

When Fascism Comes to America

Bill Durston for Common Dreams

There's a relatively obscure quotation, sometimes attributed to the 20th-century American author Sinclair Lewis, that reads, "When fascism comes to America, it will be wrapped in the flag and carrying a cross."

Although no one’s actually sure that Sinclair Lewis ever wrote or said this, his 1935 novel, It Can't Happen Here, centers around a flag-hugging, Bible-thumping politician named Berzelius (”Buzz”) Windrip. 

Despite having no particular leadership skills other than the ability to mesmerize large audiences by appealing to their baser instincts (and to bully those people who aren’t so easily mesmerized), Windrip is elected President of the United States. 

Shortly after Windrip takes office, through a flurry of executive orders, appointments of unqualified cronies to key governmental positions, and then a declaration of martial law, Windrip quickly makes the transition from a democratically elected president to a brutal, fascist dictator. The novel’s title, It Can’t Happen Here, refers to the mindset of key characters in the novel who fail to recognize Windrip’s fascist agenda before it’s too late.

Written almost a century ago during the rise of fascism in Europe prior to World War II, It Can’t Happen Here is disturbingly prescient today. Buzz Windrip’s personal traits, his rhetoric, and the path through which he initially becomes the democratically elected U.S. president, and soon afterward, the country’s first full-fledged fascist dictator, bear an uncanny resemblance to the personality traits and rhetoric of Donald Trump and the path through which he has come thus far to be the 47th President of the United States, and through which he appears to be on course to become our country’s first full-fledged…. But no! It can’t happen here! Or can it?

Trump’s uncanny resemblance to the fictional dictator in Sinclair Lewis’s 1935 novel is disconcerting. The far more important concern, though, is the degree to which Trump resembles real-life fascist dictators, past and present. A study of notorious 20th- century fascist dictators, including Hitler and Mussolini, concluded that they and their regimes all had several characteristics in common. (The current regimes of Vladimir Putin in Russia, Xi Jinping in China, and Kim Jong Un in North Korea also share these characteristics.)

Trump's National Security Advisor Has Used Personal Email and 20 Other Signal Threads for Government Affairs

Despite relentless attacks on Hilary Clinton, Trump tolerates far worse breech by his own guy 

By Sharon Zhang, Truthout

Donald Trump’s national security adviser Michael Waltz and his staff have used personal Gmail accounts to conduct government business, a new report released Tuesday reveals, in the latest instance of Waltz seemingly using methods of communication that are unsecured and vulnerable to breaches.

In at least one instance, a senior aide to Waltz used Gmail to discuss “sensitive military positions and powerful weapons systems relating to an ongoing conflict,” according to The Washington Post, which viewed the emails. In other instances, Waltz himself used his personal email to review documents and discuss matters like his work schedule.

Government officials have secure, encrypted services for communications that are less vulnerable to hacking and other cyber attacks. Gmail is not one of those services, and “the contents of a message can be intercepted and read at many points,” Electronic Frontier Foundation cybersecurity director Eva Galperin told The Washington Post.

The news comes after The Atlantic revealed in a bombshell report last week that Waltz had seemingly inadvertently added Jeffrey Goldberg, the publication’s editor in chief, to a group chat on the messaging app Signal that was dedicated to planning and discussing the Trump administration’s strikes in Yemen that killed dozens of civilians.

The news also adds to a growing picture of a seemingly blasé attitude toward secure communications within the office of a U.S. security official. These lax security practices leave the U.S. vulnerable to hacks, while also potentially breaking federal laws regarding archival of federal communications, experts have said.

On Wednesday, Politico reported that Waltz and his team “regularly” use Signal to coordinate issues relating to foreign affairs. This includes issues regarding Gaza, the Middle East, Ukraine, China, Africa, and other places — with sensitive information often shared. Citing four people who have been added to the chats, Politico said that there are at least 20 such chats.

Sources said that the use of Signal isn’t just common with Waltz and his office — it’s effectively standard practice.

Trump Administration clowns practically write Onion satire

Can you just imagine what would happen if Joe Biden or Hilary Clinton had put war plans out on a commercial chat site? Let's treat this the way MAGA treated Benghazi or Hilary's e-mails

In his mind, they've all be naughty

No country still uses an electoral college − except the US

Too often, Presidents get elected even when they lose the popular vote like Trump did in 2016 and Bush in 2000

Joshua Holzer, Westminster College

Every four years, Congress gathers to count electoral votes. 
AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite

The United States is the only democracy in the world where a presidential candidate can get the most popular votes and still lose the election. Thanks to the Electoral College, that has happened five times in the country’s history. 

The most recent examples are from 2000, when Al Gore won the popular vote but George W. Bush won the Electoral College after a U.S. Supreme Court ruling, and 2016, when Hillary Clinton got more votes nationwide than Donald Trump but lost in the Electoral College.

The Founding Fathers did not invent the idea of an electoral college. Rather, they borrowed the concept from Europe, where it had been used to pick emperors for hundreds of years.

As a scholar of presidential democracies around the world, I have studied how countries have used electoral colleges. None have been satisfied with the results. And except for the U.S., all have found other ways to choose their leaders.

Election 2024 Could Stir Up Another Witch’s Brew

Why do so many support a convicted felon, sexual predator, serial liar, grifter and racist?

By Gerald E. Scorse

Eight years ago, Hillary R. Clinton seemed certain to derail Donald J. Trump’s barely begun political career. Instead, a witch’s brew of misogyny, mistakes and the Electoral College gave us our second minority-vote President of the early 21^st century. 

Eight years later, here we are in the final days of a second presidential matchup with an equally possible stark and dark outcome, Trump versus Kamala Harris.  

Demented Donald would turn America into His Own Special Hell (HOSH, not MAGA). Harris would not lead us to heaven, but she’d take us to a better place and spare us from any of Trump’s shenanigans. If she wins, she’d also finally add the United States to the list of nations together enough to elect a woman to the highest office in the land. 

Now let’s examine some aspects of Election 2024, starting with the one that tops all the others: the almost-laughable axiom that character counts in the race to the White House. This year, in the large, character counts for approximately zero. 

The Republican candidate is a convicted felon, a sexual predator, a serial liar, a grifter, a racist, a poster boy for moral bankruptcy. None of which matters: unfathomably, unbelievably, tens of millions of Americans will vote to put him back in the Oval Office for another four years. 

Underlining the point—the irrelevance of character in Election 2024—the best comes last. A 449-page book by Vincent L. Sterling, published this June, argues (seriously) that Donald J. Trump has been chosen by God.  Of course, of course; how could any character-conscious voter miss the divine clues that Sterling spies? 

The Democrats pulled off a surprise by nominating little-known Tim Walz for vice-president, and he returned the favor with a surprise of his own. The headline of one news report summed it up: “Tim Walz’s simple takedown of Republicans goes viral.” 

Walz’s plain words, stinging sharply, gave the Harris-Walz ticket an exhilarating liftoff: "These guys are creepy and yes, just weird as hell.” 

When was the last time that major members of a political party openly opposed their chosen presidential nominee?  Good for you for remembering it was only four years ago, and the candidate they couldn’t and wouldn’t vote for was Donald Trump. 

Among the non-Trumpers were scores of marquee names, headed by former president George W. Bush. The nays also included three former Secretaries of Defense (William H. Cohen, Chuck Hagel and James Mattis) and Colin Powell, the former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff who went on serve as Bush’s Secretary of State. 

The number of Republicans repelled by Trump is only half the story in 2024, and it’s the other half that’s rocked and shocked both parties. In addition to opposing The Donald, droves of GOPers have also publicly declared they’ll be voting for Harris. 

Once again there’s a glittering roster of Republican turncoats, topped off this time by one of the most committed right-wingers ever to occupy the ranks of the Right. That would be former vice-president Dick Cheney, who finally showed just a touch of the spine of his daughter Liz. 

Cheney not only matched his daughter, he out-matched the man he served as vice-president. Former President George W. Bush has no plans to endorse anybody in 2024. According to his office, “President Bush retired from presidential politics years ago.” (Note: Bush the retiree personally revealed that his vote in 2020 went not to Trump but to Condoleezza Rice.) 

National security officials normally keep their presidential politics to themselves; not so, though, in the abnormal year of 2024. 

Hundreds of high-ranking security personnel have not only thrown their support behind Harris, they’ve described Trump as ‘impulsive and ill-informed.’ They see him as lacking in leadership and subject to a ‘scary authoritarian streak.’ There were 741 signers to the letter that lays out their views, including U.S. Navy Rear Admiral Michael Smith, the president of National Security Leaders for America. 

Come November 5, none of these ingredients will decide Election 2024; that power lies solely with the Electoral College. 

America’s Founding Fathers left us so much to be proud of. The Electoral College, on the other hand, is nothing to be proud of. It’s been with us for our entire history, ever since the country was formed in Philadelphia in 1787. It was a compromise, inserted into the Constitution essentially to appease slaveholders in the colonial South.

Constitutional law expert Wilfred U. Codrington III describes it as a lasting stain: “More than two centuries after it was designed to empower southern white voters, the system continues to do just that.”

Stay tuned for Nov. 5 (or the next day, or the next…) 

This article was originally published by Common Dreams. Gerald is a regular contributor of op-eds to Progressive Charlestown. He usually writes about taxes and economics, sometimes baseball. 

Why Trump accuses people of wrongdoing he himself committed

"Projection" - a symptom of narcissism

April Johnson, Kennesaw State University

After complaining about how Hillary Clinton handled classified
documents, Donald Trump stored national secrets in a bathroom. 
Justice Department via AP

Donald Trump has a particular formula he uses to convey messages to his supporters and opponents alike: He highlights others’ wrongdoings even though he has committed similar acts himself.

On Oct. 3, 2024, Trump accused the Biden administration of spending Federal Emergency Management Agency funds – money meant for disaster relief – on services for immigrants. Biden did no such thing, but Trump did during his time in the White House, including to pay for additional detention space.

This is not the first time he has accused someone of something he had done or would do in the future. 

In 2016, Trump criticized opponent Hillary Clinton’s use of an unsecured personal email server while secretary of state as “extreme carelessness with classified material.” 

But once he was elected, Trump continued to use his unsecured personal cellphone while in office. And he has been criminally charged with illegally keeping classified government documents after he left office and storing them in his bedroom, bathroom and other places at his Mar-a-Lago estate.

More recently, the Secret Service arrested a man with a rifle who was allegedly planning to shoot Trump during a round of golf. In the wake of this event, Trump accused Democrats of using “inflammatory language” that stokes the fires of political violence. Meanwhile, Trump himself has a long history of making inflammatory remarks that could potentially incite violence.

As a scholar of both politics and psychology, I’m familiar with the psychological strategies candidates use to persuade the public to support them and to cast their rivals in a negative light. This strategy Trump has used repeatedly is called “projection.” It’s a tactic people use to lessen their own faults by calling out these faults in others.

The evolution of MAGA

Traitorous Trump is way beyond 'weird'

He's a traitor, and not just because of his collusion with Putin

Robert Reich 

By Steve Cousineau

I’m glad Democrats are finally hitting back at Trump. Enough with the “high road.”

They’re calling him “weird.”

They’re mocking him. “Donald Trump fell asleep at his own trial,” Hillary Clinton sneered at the Democratic convention. “When he woke up, he’d made his own kind of history — the first person to run for president with 34 felony convictions.”

Barack Obama noted Trump’s “weird obsession with crowd sizes.”

Michelle Obama asked, “Who’s going to tell him that the job he’s currently seeking might just be one of those ‘Black jobs’?”

Trump hates to be laughed at. He cannot abide ridicule. So, keep it up.

But in addition to the mockery, we must not forget Trump’s treachery.

The values a president enunciates and demonstrates ricochet through society, strengthening or undermining the common good.

George Washington biographer Douglas Southall Freeman noted that by June 1775, when Congress appointed him to command the nation’s army, Washington had already “become a moral rallying post.”

In the 2016 presidential campaign, 240 years later, candidate Donald Trump’s moral squalor was on full display. When accused of failing to pay his income taxes, he responded, “That makes me smart.”

He thereby signaled to millions of Americans that paying taxes in full is not an obligation of citizenship.

Trump also boasted about giving money to politicians so they would do whatever he wanted. “When they call, I give. And you know what, when I need something from them two years later, three years later, I call them. They are there for me.”

In other words, it’s perfectly okay for business leaders to pay off politicians, regardless of the effect on our democracy.

After Trump launched an attack on NFL players who kneeled during the national anthem, Steve Kerr, coach of the Golden State Warriors, explained that the players were trying to protect a core American value. “They’re protesting excessive police violence and racial inequality,” said Kerr. “Those are really good things to fight against. And they’re doing it in a nonviolent way. Which is everything that Martin Luther King preached, right?”

Before Trump, the peaceful transfer of power was assumed to be a central feature of American democracy.

As Harvard political scientist Archon Fung has noted, when losing candidates congratulate winners and deliver gracious concession speeches, they demonstrate their commitment to the democratic system over the result they fought to achieve — an important means of reaffirming the common good.

Think of Al Gore’s gracious concession speech to George W. Bush in 2000, after five weeks of a bitterly contested election and just one day after the Supreme Court ruled in favor of Bush:

“I say to President-elect Bush that what remains of partisan rancor must now be put aside, and may God bless his stewardship of this country …. Let there be no doubt, while I strongly disagree with the court’s decision, I accept it …. And tonight, for the sake of our unity as a people and the strength of our democracy, I offer my concession.”

Consider what might have occurred had Gore bitterly accused Bush of winning fraudulently and blamed the five Republican appointees on the Supreme Court for siding with Bush for partisan reasons. Or if, during his campaign, Bush had promised to put Gore in jail for various alleged improprieties, and then, after he won, accused Gore of spying on him during the campaign and trying to use the FBI and CIA to bring his downfall.

These statements — close to ones Trump actually made — might have imperiled the political stability of the nation.

Instead, Gore made the same moral choice his predecessors made at the end of every previous American presidential election, and for the same reason: He understood that the peaceful transition of power confirmed the nation’s commitment to the Constitution, which was far more important than his own loss.

Trump has had no such qualms. When he lost, he embarked on a coup against the United States and instigated an assault on the U.S. Capitol, resulting in five deaths.

At this moment, Trump and his lackeys are installing loyalists in state and county election offices to deny certification to the Harris-Walz ticket and other Democrats down the ballot.

The essence of Trump’s failure as president — and the fundamental reason he doesn’t merit a second term — is not that he has behaved in childish and vindictive ways or is “weird.”

It is that he sacrificed — and continues to sacrifice — the processes and institutions that undergird America to achieve his own selfish aims.

He abused the trust we place in a president to preserve and protect the nation’s capacity for self-government.

Trump is a traitor.

He and the Republican Party — now a personality cult based on Trump’s Big Lie — violate everything America stands for.

We cannot and must not forget his treachery and the GOP’s complicity. It is a despicable blot on America.

Robert Reich is a professor of public policy at Berkeley and former secretary of labor. His writings can be found at https://robertreich.substack.com/

Why isn't the media reporting on Trump's increasing dementia?

It's not just that he's stupid (he is) but he's also sick

Robert Reich

Trump held an hourlong news conference in the main room at Mar-a-Lago. He insulted Kamala Harris’s intelligence, lied about the state of the U.S. economy, and claimed the country would be in mortal danger if he didn’t win the election.

In other words, the usual Trump torrent of lies and insults.

But what got my attention was his description of his departure from the White House as a “peaceful” transfer of power, his insistence that the group that mounted the assault on the Capitol was relatively small, and his boast that attendance at his January 6 rally preceding the assault was larger than the crowd Martin Luther King Jr. drew on the National Mall for his “I Have a Dream” speech.

“If you look at Martin Luther King, when he did his speech, his great speech, and you look at ours — same real estate, same everything, same number of people, if not — we had more.”

Friends, these are not the statements of a sane person.

GOP attacks against Kamala Harris were already bad – they are about to get worse

To no one's surprise, MAGAs have already started racist, sexist attacks

Stephen J. Farnsworth, University of Mary Washington

Vice President Kamala Harris attends a political event on July 17,
2024, in Kalamazoo, Mich. Chris duMond/Getty Images

Public opinion polls suggest that U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris is doing slightly better than Joe Biden was against Donald Trump, but Republican attacks against her are only now ramping up.

Even as a candidate for vice president, Harris was the target of an intense barrage of conservative attacks that claimed, among other things, that she slept her way to political prominence, a common slur against women in power. 

The anti-Harris rhetoric is part of what a report by the Wilson Center, a nonpartisan think tank, described as a broad pattern of gendered and sexualized attacks on prominent women in public discourse.

More recently, those comments were joined by conservative attacks branding Harris as the “border czar,” part of an effort to tie her to immigration, a hot-button topic for conservatives.

The intense attacks so far are only a fraction of what will come. Trump is skilled at both character assassination and political self-defense. Together, they translate into an exceptional ability to defeat his political rivals once they enter the presidential campaign arena.

But Harris also has sharp rhetorical skills that could make this a fierce election fight.

Trump’s alternative facts

As I discuss in my book “Presidential Communication and Character,” Trump is highly skilled at both channeling white working-class anger into political support for himself and at convincing his supporters to disregard the former president’s own well-chronicled professional and personal failings.

Trump’s character generates enduring contempt among liberals, but those voters will back the Democratic nominee.

The projector

Happy 90th birthday!

Is Trump’s MAGA Base Really the White Working Class?

Don't miss the profiteers

LES LEOPOLD for Common Dreams

When we hear the words “MAGA base” we think “white working class.” Right?

“I love the poorly educated.” —Donald J. Trump, February 24, 2016

“You know, to just be grossly generalistic, you could put half of Trump’s supporters into what I call the basket of deplorables. Right? The racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamaphobic—you name it. And unfortunately, there are people like that. And he has lifted them up.” —Hillary Clinton, September 10, 2016

Eight years after Hillary Clinton and Donald J. Trump made this connection part of our conventional wisdom, the idea is still presented as gospel in the New York Times.

On January 15, 2024, its front page article (“How College-Educated Republicans Learned to Love Trump Again,”) starts with this sentence: “Working-class voters delivered the Republican Party to Donald J. Trump.” (A day earlier its online edition started with “White working-class voters are Donald Trump’s base.”)

No evidence at all is provided because none is needed, we’re all supposed to know it is true.

Why Trump loves the poorly educated

The Garbage of 'Lesser of Two Evils' Discontents

"Biden is not evil. Trump is truly evil."

ROBERT REICH in Robertreich.Substack.Com

Before he enter on the Execution of his Office, he
shall take the following Oath or Affirmation:–
“I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully
execute the Office of President of the United States,
and will to the best of my Ability, preserve,
protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.”  
- US Constitution, Article II, Section 1, Clause 8

Some people tell me they hate Trump but don’t particularly like Biden. They say Biden is too old, or he’s not doing enough to stop Israel’s bombing of Gaza, or he’s caved to Big Oil, or he isn’t tough enough.

So they tell me they’re not going to vote next November. Or they’ll vote for a third-party candidate.

Maybe you know someone like this. Or you yourself fall into this camp.

Here’s what I tell them: By not voting or voting for a third party, they’re actually casting a vote for Trump.

Some respond by saying that Trump may be a curse, but they’re sick and tired of voting for the lesser of two evils.

Wrong. Biden is not evil. Trump is truly evil.

Courage under fire, right?

 

A tale of two districts

Spencer Dickinson of So. Kingstown the only outlier in CD-1 race - he doesn't live in the district

By Christopher Shea, Rhode Island Current

A map of Rhode Island’s split congressional districts.
Not pictured is Block Island, which is a part of the
Second Congressional District.
(Source: Federal Election Commission)

Looking at the border of Rhode Island’s 1st Congressional District, it’s shaped a bit like an upside down pirate hook. 

The base is configured around towns along the northern border with Massachusetts as it curves through Bristol and Newport counties, the bend starting in Providence — a city that shares both the 1st and 2nd congressional districts.

“It’s sort of just capturing the Eastern part of the state,” said John Marion, executive director for Common Cause Rhode Island. “There’s for sure some politics in play.”

Beginning in North Smithfield, the congressional line follows a mostly straight line south as it hits the Woonasquatucket River in North Providence.

In Rhode Island’s capital city, the dividing line snakes behind Providence College and through the Smith Hill neighborhood, bulging around the State House, and narrowing around the Providence River only to reopen around the Southeast part of the city at Roger Williams Park.

The Providence split exists for a reason, said Providence College political science Professor Adam Myers. 

“Congressional districts have to be exactly equal in population after a U.S. Census,” he said. “You can’t really do that without splitting Providence.”

Though Myers said the line “won’t matter after 2030 because, by that point, we surely won’t have two congressional districts. 

“These are artificial creations that exist for 10 years,” he said. (The state was within 14,000 people of losing a congressional seat heading into the 2020 census).