A New Year's Message From Dan Rather

The following New Year's message is by Dan Rather and Elliot Kirschner:

A new year is invariably a time for reflection. 

We take stock. We wonder. We make resolutions. 

There is a lot of looking back at what happened. And we try to imagine what the coming year will bring. 

But such anticipation is to some extent futile and a lesson in humility. As we reckon with our current world, let us try to remember what we expected from 2022 — and how the year both conformed to and defied our expectations.

Entering 2022, there were big, broad patterns driving deep concern. And many of these remain: threats to American democracy, assaults on our civil and constitutional rights, the pollution of our planet and its dangerously changing climate. These powerful forces are less swayed by short-term actions, individual efforts, and quotidian fluctuations. They span years and even decades, requiring eternal diligence. 

But even as these challenges remain pressing and urgent, we can find reasons for hope that we couldn’t have known a year ago. A midterm election, defying historical precedent, saw a strong showing for those who rejected the Big Lie. There was also a rallying to candidates and ballot initiatives supporting women’s autonomy over their bodies. And Congress passed the most significant climate action legislation in this nation’s history. In all these areas, the battle for a more just and safe world remains; yet we enter 2023 with foundations of resilience upon which to build.

Some of today’s headline stories were unforeseeable a year ago. While there were rumblings of a full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine, few if any predicted how it would unfold, thanks to the bravery of the Ukrainian military and people, the country’s steadfast leadership, and support from the United States and our allies. 

We have continued to see extreme wealth exert its power in troubling ways on our society. This year, the phenomenon included the purchase of Twitter by a billionaire who appears intent on polluting our political discourse. And yet perhaps this past year also represented an apogee for how we as a society revere extreme wealth. It turns out billionaires may not all be geniuses after all. That 2022 also saw at least some resurgence for organized labor may be part of the same story. Economic fairness and a healthier business environment could be emerging trends. 

What new movements will arise in 2023? And what will falter? What change will come to our political world? Our economy? Our social cohesion? Will we look back a year from now and see more progress than setbacks? Will some completely new challenge appear that upends us? Will there be new fountains of resilience and hope?

 

The new year forces us to recognize the unpredictability that governs our personal lives, as well. We wonder who might not be with us a year from now. Where will we find joy? And where will there be pain? We understand that some years bring more of the former and others more of the latter. We brace for hardship and pray for happiness. 

As we reflect on all that is unknowable, we wrestle with the fact that much of what will affect us in 2023 will be beyond our individual control. And yet, we endeavor not to be stymied by cynicism. New years represent occasions to embrace new resolutions for actions to benefit ourselves, others, and our larger communities. We can see that our own efforts, when combined with the efforts of others, can multiply in their impact. So let us consider how we may work together in 2023.

 

Each year represents a cycle. We travel in our orbit around the sun in a journey that returns us to where we have been. But in other ways, we do not return. Time marches in one direction. We can look in the rearview mirror and understand what we see. But we cannot turn around and go back. 

New Year’s can help us refocus what we do with the lives that we have. We can see that new beginnings are possible, in ways big and small, even for those of us who have had many trips around the sun. We can embrace hope and resilience while acknowledging life’s inherent uncertainty.

The days will get longer. The weather will warm. And Earth will bloom once again. Isn’t this proof enough of a happy new year? And isn’t it a reason to resolve to protect and defend all that makes life special and beautiful? 

Knockout!

Political Cartoon is by Clay Jones at claytoonz.com.
 

Blessings For The New Year

 

Happy New Year!

 

The Gun Violence Epidemic In U.S. Continued In 2022

Congress passed a gun bill in 2022, but it was a very weak and ineffectual bill -- and had very little effect on the gun violence that plagues the United States. In 2022, there were 44,148 deaths by gun in this country. And there were 646 mass shootings (a shooting in which at least four people were shot).

Both of those numbers were less than in 2021 -- but only slightly less. And both numbers were still far to high. The country averaged about 121 gun deaths per day, and about 1.77 mass shootings per day. That is certainly no reason to celebrate!

There is no excuse for allowing this to continue. No other developed nation even comes close to those numbers -- and most third world nations don't either. That's because other nations have sensible gun laws. They don't let dangerous people have guns.

Right-wing Republicans whine that sensible gun laws would be a violation of the Constitution's Second Amendment, and that supporters of stricter gun laws want to take guns away from Americans. Both of those claims are lies! They are just excuses to protect the profits of gun manufacturers (and the campaign donations those manufacturers send to GOP politicians).

There are two sensible things Congress could do -- and both are constitutional. Both are also supported by a substantial majority of Americans. Congress could plug the loopholes in the national background check law for anyone wanting to purchase a gun or for anyone to receive a gun as a gift. Congress could also ban the sale (and possession) of assault-style weapons. These are weapons of war designed to kill as many people as possible in a short time. They are not appropriate for either hunting or self-defense.

Unfortunately, Republicans took control of the House in the last election, and have enough votes to filibuster any gun laws in the Senate. That means the carnage will continue for at least two more years!

Is this really what we want? If not, the gun-lovers must be booted out of Congress in 2024.

Some sensible gun laws would not prevent very gun death in the country. But they would save thousands of innocent lives each year.

NOTE -- the numbers in the charts above are from the Gun Violence Archive.

A Predictable Pattern

Political Cartoon is by Jen Sorensen at jensorensen.com.
 

2023 Should Bring Indictments For Donald Trump

The following is just part of an excellent op-ed by Colbert I. King in The Washington Post:

I fervently wish that 2023 will bring about a reckoning between Donald Trump and the law; that in the new year, the former president will be called to account for betraying his oath of office — and, if there is sufficient evidence to prove he has committed other crimes, that he be indicted. Neither is too much to hope for, and both are much desired. Trump, who is divisive and demagogic at home and favors autocratic regimes abroad, is the United States’ greatest scourge on public service in the 21st century.

Among U.S. presidents, Trump stands out most for his dereliction of duty.

His oath was simple and direct: “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.”

But on Jan. 6, 2021, when the Capitol — the symbol of U.S. democracy — was assaulted by a mob summoned to Washington by him, Trump did nothing.

It was the most violent domestic attack on the U.S. government since the Civil War. There it was: a mob seeking to delay and disrupt a joint session of Congress empowered by the Constitution to transfer presidential power. . . .

We watched for hours as law enforcement, including a large contingent of courageous D.C. police officers, fought to clear the mob of insurrectionists out of the Capitol and off its grounds.

The president of the United States watched, too. . . .

As commander in chief, Trump had the capacity to marshal the power of the U.S. government to stop the blatant attack on a constitutional process. For more than three hours — 187 minutes, as the committee clocked it — Trump sat back and didn’t lift a finger.

Despite his sworn obligation to “protect and defend the Constitution,” Trump shamefully and shamelessly violated his oath. . . .

The Jan. 6 committee, concluding an 18-month investigation, said Trump did more than sit in the White House and sulk on Jan. 6.

In a referral of criminal charges to the Justice Department, the committee said that the former president, among other things, incited or assisted the Jan. 6 insurrection and obstructed an official proceeding of Congress. The committee unanimously agreed to the referral.

More to the point, Attorney General Merrick Garland has appointed a special counsel to oversee two criminal investigations that involve Trump: First, whether there was any unlawful interference with the transfer of power following the 2020 presidential election or the certification of the electoral college vote, and second, the alleged mishandling of classified documents and other presidential records and possible obstruction of an investigation.

Trump is up to his eyeballs in both.

Partisan GOP grousing and Trump’s witch-hunt claims notwithstanding, the Garland-led Justice Department can be expected to follow the facts and the law in reaching decisions about Trump and his confederates.

Here’s hoping 2023 will see Trump meeting at the bar of justice, with verdicts to follow.

Competence Leaves The House

 Political Cartoon is by Clay Bennett in the Chattanooga Times Free Press.

She Broke The Glass Ceiling In News Reporting

 

Electoral College Makes A Mockery Of "One Man, One Vote"

 

As Santos Showed, Lying Has Become A GOP Value

The following op-ed is by Eugene Robinson in The Washington Post:

Sooner or later, the Republican Party’s devolution was bound to saddle GOP leaders with someone exactly like Rep.-elect George Santos of New York: a glib, successful candidate for high office who turns out to be pure fantasy with zero substance.

Santos, 34, who helped give Republicans their slim House majority by winning an open Long Island seat previously held by a Democrat, has admitted to “embellishing” his résumé and using a “poor choice of words” in touting his credentials. Those are understatements akin to calling the Amazon a creek or the Grand Canyon a ditch.

After initial reporting by the New York Times, journalists have discovered that, basically, Santos’s whole life story — as he sold it to voters — is a lie. He did not attend the exclusive Horace Mann Prep school in the Bronx, according to school officials. He did not graduate from Baruch College, as he had claimed. He did not climb the ladder of Wall Street success via Goldman Sachs and Citigroup, as he boasted. He is not “a proud American Jew,” as he wrote in a campaign document seeking support from pro-Israel groups, but instead considers himself “Jew-ish, as in ‘ish.’” Which apparently means not being Jewish at all.

Those are just a few of the acknowledged or apparent lies Santos told. He presented himself as the made-for-television incarnation of the vitality and diversity the Republican Party would like to project: a handsome gay Latino man, wealthy and self-made, whose very existence refuted the charge that today’s GOP shamelessly panders to racism and bigotry.

With that existence now revealed to be an illusion — with the “George Santos” voters elected shown to be a fictional character — most leading figures in the GOP have been silent. One exception is Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (Ga.), who defended him with tweets acknowledging that Santos lied but accusing “the left” of lying, too, although most of the examples she cited were not lies at all. “The left said George Floyd didn’t die of a drug overdose, they lied,” she wrote. Fact check: Floyd wasmurdered, and a jury convicted former police officer Derek Chauvin of the crime.

Some Democrats have called for Santos not to be seated in the new Congress; others have called for an immediate House Ethics Committee investigation. GOP leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.), hoping for Santos’s vote to help him be elected House speaker, has offered no comment as to what steps, if any, the incoming Republican majority might take.

The most honest thing House Republicans could do, in my view, is welcome Santos with open arms. The party embarked on the path of make-believe politics long before Santos came onto the scene. All he did was expand the frontier.

For me, the key moment came when Republicans decided not to write a platform for the 2020 presidential election — when, in effect, they refused to tell voters what they would do if elected. They pledged only to enact whatever policies President Donald Trump might propose, ceding their political philosophy to a man who, by Post count, told more than 30,000 lies during his four years in the White House.

The party can’t blame it all on Trump, though. In today’s GOP, a leading figure such as Sen. Ted Cruz (Tex.) — a cum laude graduate of Princeton University and a magna cum laude graduate of Harvard Law School who clerked for Supreme Court Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist — routinely rails against smarty-pants “elites” who supposedly look down on regular folks like him.

Greene and others have shown that the way to prominence in the party is not through legislative or administrative accomplishments but via attention-grabbing displays of performative outrage. If you can “own the libs” on Fox News and on Twitter, you can raise a lot of campaign cash; and if you can raise tons of money, you can have tons of power. What does it matter if what you say has no grounding in fact? By the time you get called on it, you’re off to the next over-the-top statement.

Santos’s carapace of lies is so elaborate and encompassing that it may suggest psychological issues we should hope he gets help in addressing. And there are serious legal questions about the source of $700,000 he reported lending to his campaign, with both local and federal prosecutors now said to be investigating.

But his idea of building a political career in the Republican Party on sharp-edged rhetoric and audacious lies was hardly original. Santos just took that routine further than his soon-to-be colleagues have done. We’ve had lots of metaphorical empty suits in Congress over the years. Now comes the emptiest yet.

Delayed

Political Cartoon is by Rob Rogers at TINYVIEW.com.
 

Trump Taxes From 2015 Through 2020

From ABC News
 

A True Sports Legend Has Died