The question came up this week about favorite stories on Daily Kos. The truth is there are so many I found it hard to choose. It’s not just the incredible work that writers like Joan McCarter do every day, day in and day out (not to play favorites … but everyone has favorites). It’s DarkSyde putting together some of the best popular science pieces found anywhere. And Chris Reeves giving a masterclass in how to run for office. It’s the Daily Bucket guys putting together a natural history feature every single day. And the best elections team in any media — and I really believe that.
But what struck me as I scrolled back through the last fifteen years is how much it is about the community. That sounds sappy, I know but ... While looking through my own old pieces to see if there was anything that still held up, I found the most recommendations I ever got came from a post that had nothing to do with Donald Trump, or Russia, or coal mining, or the war in whereever-we-are-warring this week. It came from something that didn’t appear in any headlines outside of this community. It came from this, a short eulogy I wrote for my father on his death in 2008.
None of you knew my father. But later that week, when it was time to deliver an actual eulogy in front of a room of tearful people, many of them who not been back to my home town in decades, both I and the pastor delivering the message used quotes and comments from the responses to that eulogy on Daily Kos. The community didn’t just help me grieve my father. It helped me honor him.
Speaking of dad … If you asked most people what defined my father, they’d have told you it was the town where he worked as city administrator for more than forty years. Or his fifty-four year marriage. Or his friendships that spanned hundreds of miles in all directions. Or the moments of triumph, mountains of work, and the painful grinding decline of owning a small independent retail store in a small rural town in an age when both were slowly fading.
He would have accepted all that, but he would have also mentioned something else. My dad was in the military for only three years. Next to the decades he spent doing other things, it was over in a flash. But it was hugely important to him.
That’s my dad on the left in this picture, holding a rifle made by the Singer Sewing Machine folks, doing their bit for the war effort. No idea who the guy on the right was, but he looks ready to join the Howling Commandos and rip open a tank or two.
Even though my father had been home from the service by well over five decades when he died, a nice group of young soldiers from Fort Knox showed up to play taps on a bugle and fold a flag for my mom. I had absolutely no doubt, then or now, that their presence on that day would have been really appreciated by my dad.
He’d also be very pleased by the little flag they’ll bring him this weekend.
It’s Memorial Day weekend, folks. Share some memories.
But also come inside and read some pundits.
Leonard Pitts reminds everyone that more than Ben Jacobs’ glasses was damaged this week.
Some people will call it surprising that a reporter was reportedly assaulted Wednesday night by a political candidate. Truth is, it is not surprising in the least.
Pitts goes on to detail the events, and Gianforte’s blatant lies in defense of his actions. Being a violent liar was enough to get like-minded people to send Gianforte over $100,000 this week. Apparently as a representation of just how much they would like to be able to punch someone how had the temerity of asking them a question.
Many adjectives might apply to all this. The incident is appalling, infuriating, disturbing. But no, it is not surprising. Not after a congressman threatened to throw a reporter from a balcony. Not after the arrest of reporters covering a protest in Baton Rouge and the arrests and intimidation of reporters covering unrest in Ferguson. Not after a West Virginia reporter was jailed for shouting questions.
And especially not after Donald Trump declared journalists “enemies of the people.” That was not unlike a home invader declaring the family Doberman an “enemy of the house,” but his fans bought it, snarling at reporters and dismissing as “fake news” every fact that intruded upon their fantasies.
Kathleen Parker demonstrates the universality of Trump’s kill-the-press message.
The shocking thing about Greg Gianforte’s assault on a journalist isn’t that he body-slammed and punched a reporter but that it took so long for the inevitable to occur.
Such an attack was foreshadowed way back in March last year when tough-guy Corey Lewandowski grabbed a female reporter who, apparently, was too brash for the tender sensibilities of then-candidate Donald Trump’s inner circle.
If you’re wondering what’s up with Lewandowski these days, it appears he’s back on the Trump Train. He’ll be part of the new “War Room” that the Trump White House is assembling to fight against the press. So expect even more glasses breaking, enemy-naming in the near future.
While Trump’s reflexive rudeness [in Europe] was merely embarrassing, Gianforte’s attack was frightening. Both actions, however, flow from the same spout — our ever-coarsening culture and partisan hostility that erased all boundaries of civility during the 2016 election. It would be unfair to pin this evolution on Trump alone, but broadening acceptance of bullying tactics undoubtedly has been aided by the commander in chief’s own embrace, even celebration, of resolving differences by force, if necessary.
Richard Wolffe and Trump’s torture test for the First Amendment.
How did we get to this point? When did our public standards fall so low that charges of physical assault were met with the sound of crickets across the Republican side of Congress?
Is anyone allowed to answer this question? Can we get “Little Katy” Tur to voice an opinion, or does Trump still have his press pool in a cage somewhere so people can spit and throw beer bottles?
You can trace back the decline in our politics to a single campaign and a single candidate, who riled up his crowds to turn on the press and hurl abuse in their direction.
That’s the same candidate who longed for the days when he could punch protesters in the face. Sure enough, his supporters ended up punching people in the face.
Fortunately the rule of law still endures in the courts, where a Kentucky judge recently denied the candidate’s claims that he was just exercising his rights to free speech and couldn’t be sued for inciting violence.
The candidate is of course now president of the United States, who calls the media “the enemy of the American people.”
Some enterprising Trump supporter is probably going to set up a GoFundMe page then go punching “liberal” judges. Though that might not exactly work out as expected.
Ruth Marcus finds Gianforte more a symptom than disease.
This national distemper, the sour, angry mood infecting the body politic, was evident before Montana congressional candidate Greg Gianforte body-slammed a reporter for daring to ask a question; then had his campaign lie about it; then failed to apologize — until after he won the election.
It was evident before Gianforte’s current allies and future colleagues were muted, to put it mildly, in the face of his audio-taped assault. “We all make mistakes,” said Rep. Steve Stivers (R-Ohio), who chairs the House Republicans’ campaign arm. This was not a mistake; it was an assault on a reporter doing his constitutionally protected job.
It was, but the displays of pure political cowardice put forward by the GOP this week were still shocking. Marcus goes on to note a number of Not Normal moments, but I particularly like this one …
Something is not right when President Trump’s commerce secretary, Wilbur Ross, marvels, after traveling with the president to Saudi Arabia, that “there was not a single hint of a protester anywhere there during the whole time we were there. Not one guy with a bad placard.” Note to Ross: The absence of protest is not good news — it is evidence of the absence of democracy.
Team Trump. Brining more of its international experience to the fore.
I just wanted to mention that, while I make it a practice to never link to or discuss George Will in this feature, his post this morning is such an astounding combination of heartlessness, preening pseudointellectualism, and blindness to his own failings, that it could, all on it’s own, inspire people to go out and head-butt journalists just on the assumption that any profession that admits Will to its ranks deserves it.
The New York Times on the cruelty behind Trumpcare.
Any doubts about the senseless cruelty underlying the health care agenda put forward by President Trump and Congress were put to rest last week by two government documents. The fantasy that Mr. Trump intends to fight for the health of long-suffering working people should be similarly interred. ...
Consider the fate of Medicaid, a program that provides health insurance to more than 74 million people, among them 60 percent of nursing home residents and millions of people with disabilities. Trumpcare would slash Medicaid spending by $834 billion over 10 years, according to the C.B.O. The president’s budget would take a further $610 billion from the program under the pretext of reforming it. Taken together, this amounts to an estimated 45 percent reduction by 2026 compared with current law, the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities says.
Out of unfortunate necessity, I’ve looked at some long term care facilities lately, and the only word I have for the best of them was simply “grim.” It’s hard to imagine what these people-warehouses would be like with hundreds of billions less to spend on a population that’s growing ever larger.
Adam Gaffney and where health care goes from here.
The US healthcare system – and with it the health and welfare of millions – is poised on the edge of a knife. Though the fetid dysfunction and entanglements of the Trump presidency dominate the airwaves, this is an issue that will have life and death consequences for countless Americans.
The Congressional Budget Office’s (CBO) dismal “scoring” of the revised American Health Care Act (AHCA) on Wednesday made clear just how dire America’s healthcare prospects are under Trump’s administration. But while the healthcare debate is often framed as a choice between Obamacare and the new Republican plan, there are actually three healthcare visions in competition today. These can be labelled healthcare past, healthcare present, and healthcare future.
John Wagner, Robert Costa and Ashley Parker are reporters, not pundits, but I grabbed this piece anyway.
President Trump and his advisers, seeking to contain the escalating Russia crisis that threatens to consume his presidency, are considering a retooling of his senior staff and the creation of a “war room” within the White House, according to several aides and outside Trump allies.
Following Trump’s return to Washington on Saturday night from a nine-day foreign trip that provided a respite from the controversy back home, the White House plans to far more aggressively combat the cascading revelations about contacts between Trump associates — including Jared Kushner, the president’s son-in-law and senior adviser — and Russia.
Sure. Team Trump could really use more obstruction tactics and a more hostile relationship with the press. It’s well known that being too open and gosh-darn-charming is what got them in trouble so far.
That includes proposals for more travel and campaign-style rallies nationwide so that Trump can speak directly to his supporters, as well as changes in the pace and nature of news briefings, probably including a diminished role for embattled White House press secretary Sean Spicer.
What the world needs now, it more mini-Nuremberg rallies.
Stephen Rodrick thinks Mike Pence may be the man nobody wants — but everybody gets.
The remarkable thing about Vice President Mike Pence is that he is not remarkable at all.
That’s one of the first things I learned last December when I arrived in Indiana to report on — let’s face it — the next president of the United States. The man takes up very little space, and undoubtedly this was his great appeal to Donald Trump, one of the great oxygen consumers of our time.
Of course, Mr. Pence’s great appeal to many people now is that he is not Donald Trump. Liberals salivate that Robert Mueller might metaphorically reverse an election they see as stolen by a steak salesman and his Moscow buddies. Conservatives dream of ridding themselves of a nutbag and installing a man who can pursue tax cuts and a few more Justice Neil Gorsuches without the fear of a third world war being started because of something Mr. Trump heard on Infowars.
My only concern is that Pence might simply rubberstamp bills without having enough personality to demand any changes. That’s why I like the idea of two years of drawn out, in depth hearings — before Trump is impeached.
It is possible that we could replace the most flamboyant and flamboyantly unqualified president in history with the most quietly unqualified and unexamined president since Warren Harding. (He has never answered whether he believes in evolution, but the evidence is not encouraging.) ...
Mr. Pence was elected governor of Indiana in 2012 with less than 50 percent of the vote. Many of the politicos I talked to in Indiana described him as ambitious for the sake of ambition, with no ideological compass other than his evangelical Christianity. They thought that, unlike the previous governor, Mitch Daniels, Mr. Pence was interested in the job mainly to check off executive experience on his presidential-candidate résumé.
Mike Pence is the guy who holds your beer when you say hold my beer. But he takes a drink when you’re not looking.