One of his most important points is that redistricting is the last gasp of the confederacy. The Republicans flipped sides in the South in the 60’s. You have to wonder how that came about. Was it because the Republicans are the party of wealth historically and found common cause with disgruntled descendants of white southern slave owners? The civil rights movement and the great society came right at the same time when progressive taxation in this country was at its zenith. That must have really ground their gears.

Then Reagan sped that process up with his southern strategy, welfare queens and trickle down economics.

It’s also no wonder why Republicans feel that it’s illegitimate if Democrats win elections. They’ve bought this country. They bought the farmers and evangelicals and petty working class men and macho white guys. Yep, bought all of their politicians. And so far, after 40 years of an all out assault on middle class prosperity and human rights for women and black people, they’ve got to the point that no matter how much you hate what they’ve done to your future and savings, you should not be allowed to vote them out.

They are massively unpopular so they joined arms with the left over racists and domestic terrorists from the old south to get their redistricting because they can’t win any other way.

Amen to this guy. We need him to make more speeches. He’s good at it.

You need to start paying attention to how government ACTUALLY works, not how some favorite news outlet tells you it works.

Look, there are subjects I have zero interest in and don’t want to spend my time learning. Coding Java comes to mind. Or sports teams. I like a good Pirates baseball game at PNC Park in Pittsburgh and I’d dearly love to go to a Steelers game sometime in my life. But I’m not going to be as good at telling the quarterbacks what to do as my Aunt Mary Ellen.

Fortunately, my life doesn’t depend on knowing the intricacies of football or Java classes. But it does depend on knowing who is in the majorities in the Senate and House of Representatives in both the state I live in and the US Capitol. It depends on knowing how each house operates and what each party can and can not do

It depends on knowing a little something about how economics works. For our purposes, we need to know about scarcity and consumption. You don’t need to know a lot of fancy math. It depends on knowing who is in the line of succession if the president has to be replaced quickly. It depends on knowing something about constitutional rights, especially voting rights.

If you can’t take the time to understand these things, then for your own sake and for your friends and family, don’t vote. Your vote for Trump indicates you don’t know what you’re doing or any indication that you will know when you’re being lied to.

A brief description of what you apparently weren’t thinking about when you cast your ballot last time:

The government currently has a one party system. The executive branch is run by Trump and his loyal friends. The Supreme Court is run by 6 Republican appointed justices and three Democratic appointed Justices. The decisions are almost always along party lines and the 6 Republican justices have deep ties to the ultra wealthy.

The Congress is majority Republican in BOTH houses. When Trump tells them to vote for something, the Republicans almost always do exactly what he wants.

In other words, Trump can do whatever ge wants, write himself a check from the treasury for whatever he wants, cut off healthcare to any state that displeases him, go to war with OUR military, put our troops’ lives in danger for oil and cause severe economic consequences whenever he wants.

And there’s not a damn thing you can do about it except vote.

Right now, he and his Republican controlled states are working very hard to make sure you get no opportunity to stop him from indulging in corruption and acting like he owns every tax dollar you send to the IRS from paychecks or social security.

If you don’t start paying attention, if you find politics distasteful because you don’t understand it or everyone seems crooked to you then you will be letting Trump and his corrupt Republicans do and take whatever they want.

That’s the bottom line.

You have a choice: you can go along with the Republican Party YOU voted for because you didn’t bother to learn enough about politics to know they were leading you into a trap, or you can vote to put a stop to Trump looting everything not nailed down. And the way you do that is vote for anyone who is NOT a Republican.

Once the Congress is not completely controlled by the Republicans, there is no way for Trump to threaten them to make them do what he wants.

There is no other choice. I’m not saying that for partisan reasons. I have good reason to loathe the Democrats right now because they are absolutely not risk takers and they were more likely to give in to Republicans when they should have been looking out for your future.

But at this point, the Democrats are the only people who have enough candidates in enough states who if they are elected to Congress, they can stop Trump. The Republican Congress has shown that it doesn’t want to stop him.

If you don’t like Democrats and there is an independent who has enough support to win an election, go with the independent. Vote GREEN party if they have a chance of winning.

But for godssakes don’t go to the precinct believing Trump is going to turn this all around. He has only one goal and that is to gorge himself and his family on your money and our national power. If you don’t flip the majorities in Congress, there will be absolutely nothing you can do to stop him in the next two years.

You have no excuse. You need to study the political plays. Team America has to win in November, not team Trump.

You have one job this November. We have no reason to believe you won’t f*ck it up again. But if you don’t wise up, the gas prices of 2026 will look like a picnic compared to what comes next.

You have been warned. Don’t say “oh I didn’t know” or “I didn’t vote for that”. We know you hate our guts for reasons we don’t understand. But if you screw it up this fall, you’re only going to hurt yourself.

Younger people are exhausted. America is expensive, they’re working multiple jobs and they’re justifiably angry. Probably more angry than they let on.

But there are only so many no-kings rallies you can go to without it making a ripple in the media or the Trump admin blinking an eye.

What they will show up for is something in between a no-kings rally and pulling a Luigi Mangione. They’re angry enough for a Luigi but they’d prefer a general strike to violence. Just hit the rich people where they live. When everyone walks off the job for a week or two (you can’t pay your bills anyway), that’s what they’ll show up for. Or so I’ve been told.

I wouldn’t rule out some event that galvanizes everyone against Trump and the Republicans in some irreversible way. We’re getting there slowly but you never know what that tipping point might be. It might be something you never saw coming.

Mark explains the fallout from the USSC’s historic decision to invalidate black districts and it’s not what you might think. It’s worse. At the end he calls on us to defend our black and brown Americans and their representatives. It’s really pretty moving.

Pass it around.

Whoa. Maybe everyone else has already come to this conclusion but this is the first time for me.

It makes perfect sense. If you are going to be a nationalist, you’re not going to be welcome in a lot of social circles in the early days. You might get fired from your job or fail to get a platform to spread your message. Being unpopular can be impoverishing to the bank account or circle of friends.

So, a dedicated loud patriot nationalist is going to need a sponsor. we’ve known some kind of financial relationship was going on but I just thought it was ad money on social or traditional media outlets, like throwing money at a podcast you like.

But to really spread that message, you’ve got to be popular and popular means getting big megaphone up front and financial plot armor, you’ve got to look nice and be able to withstand the blowback in case you say something truly offensive or stupid. You’ve got to look invincible to other people who also want to say offensive and stupid things under the guise of an Everyman or patriot.

And for that, you need a backer.

In her videos, she breaks down how universal healthcare works and shows how much more Americans pay for our healthcare. We pay insanely more for everything. Her recent experience in a American emergency room shows that the person who attended her in the ER turned out to be a nurse practitioner who worked for a private equity medical staffing company who billed her directly for her services. These videos must be like campfire horror stories to Europeans.

If you’re traveling to Europe, you probably should do as TypeAshton does and buy a traveller’s healthcare insurance policy. But from the anecdotal experiences of Americans traveling in Europe who have to use European healthcare systems, the services are just as good and the price is much lower or free.

For example, my dad was a cancer patient when he traveled to England for my brother’s wedding. When he got out of the taxi that drove him to the place we were staying, he left an important piece of his medical equipment in the boot of the car.

He got a little panicky and upset because without the equipment, he couldn’t sleep through the night. My host suggested I call the NHS hospital to see if they had what he needed. I made a couple calls and like magic, I got exactly what he needed and all the paraphernalia within a couple of hours. They even delivered it to our door. When I asked how much I owed them, they said…

It didn’t cost anything.

Welcome to the UK.

I’ll never forget it because the NHS people I contacted were so nice about solving the problem.

If you have one of those family members who are skittish about switching to a universal healthcare system because they’re been soaked in right wing profit driven propaganda for about 70 years (yep, I was surprised at how long we’ve been fighting this battle in the US) send them this video where TypeAshton compares US costs to Europe’s. It’s cheaper and no one goes bankrupt.

She also states that Obamacare is a failure. I felt it was doomed to failure from the beginning because it did not even attempt to impose cost controls. (Its policies like this that give Democrats a bad name. You can’t do good public policy if you don’t really believe in it.) That’s because Americans are convinced that your purpose in life is to create profit for yourself and everyone you interact with on a daily basis. It’s a mindset that for some reason we have not limited in any way when it comes to healthcare private equity and insurance companies whose primary incentive is increasing shareholder value. For some stupid reason, Americans in need of healthcare never stop and ask, “it’s great you’re making a profit off my gallstones but what’s in it for ME?” Even asking that question gets you labeled as a communist and yelled at that if you don’t like it, why don’t you leave the country.

She also has videos about what labor and delivery are like in the German healthcare system, which, by the way, is a universal healthcare system comprised of private insurers.

It can be done. There will be a lot of screaming and tantrum throwing by the insurance and private equity companies. Americans have to be more parental about this and say “No more. You’re not going to get everything you want anymore. Get over yourselves.”

To stay out of jail, he’s got to make sure he doesn’t lose his congressional majorities. He’ll do anything to prevent that. So will the Supreme Court, apparently. We don’t know all the ways the MAGA Republicans are getting ready to rip the election out of our hands. Let’s assume it’s going to take a certain amount of suppression and physical coercion.

Trump on the other hand, has to work with his media partners on persuasion.

Now, I’m going to float a theory about why he keeps bringing up his cognitive tests. He’s targeting a particular segment of his audience. They’re in their 80s and their memories are glitching. So he’s bringing up this dementia test as a sort of “man of the older people”. He’s on your side. He’s fine. He knows what those animals are. There’s nothing wrong with him. There’s nothing wrong with you. He’s one of you.

Trump may have signs of dementia. Or he might be staying up all night because he’s afraid that if he doesn’t hold onto Congress, he’s screwed. Sleepiness with make you stupid and in Trump’s case, that’s stupid squared. Trump’s real problem is his personality disorders.

He doesn’t really care about the 80 year olds going through their savings at an assisted living facility. He just wants their votes. After the election, those places can kick them to the curb for all he cares.

Anything he says from now until Election Day is going to be scripted to go after the votes of his still loyal base. No matter how crazy it seems, he’s got a specific audience in mind.

His media partners are going to enforce learned helplessness. I saw an example of this from a Fox News focus group. I swear there are plants in that group. The one that stood out to me the most was an independent who wasn’t sure she was going to vote in the midterms. She was really disappointed in Trump but she was so confused. The Fox facilitator reinforced that thought. You poor independent. Who can you trust? Who will give you shelter, you orphan of the storm? It’s so frustrating. We understand why you might not want to vote.

The cohort they really want to stay at home is the independents who are furious with Trump. They’ll tell them that Democrats are no better. Might as well do nothing. You can’t make a difference. Look at all your past votes. Did anything change? No, things have only gotten worse no matter who you voted for. We feel your pain. Learned helplessness.

I’m seeing signs that Democrats are starting to figure out how to work around this narrative. The problem is are there enough of the right kind of candidates?

Stay tuned.

Just a heads up: Fetterman’s downtown office is blocks away from where I work and I will be giving his office an earful at the top of my lungs complete with expletives if he votes for this budget reconciliation bill. I don’t care. I have had it up to here. Not one nickel for the ballroom or the security bunker under it. Do you hear me, JOHN?? Not one nickel.

That goes for you too Schumer. Whip the vote or leave the senate. No more spoilers.

Let that demolition site hole in the ground on the east side of the White House be Trump’s permanent monument. I want it to be his only legacy, a testament to the worst person ever elected to the presidency. Who the f does he think he is?? Shiva the destroyer??

If he thinks he can break us over gas prices, well, he’s got another thing coming.

Not a nickel.

I want the oil companies to give up their subsidies. Now. I’m sick and tired of having to subsidize them for my entire working life and placate them in case they get temperamental and take refineries offline “for maintenance” whenever a Democrat gets elected to the White House. Yes, YES, I HAVE been paying attention.

No more funding for ICE or CBP.

I WILL NOT PAY FOR OR PARTICIPATE IN MY OWN OPPRESSION.

And whatever else Republicans have up their sleeves, thinking they can concretize their radical agenda and hit job on the public, and extend the Iran war indefinitely to reward their friends in the defense industry? Here’s a spoiler alert:

You are signaling to the rest of us that in spite of the gerrymandering and murder of the voting rights act, you are flailing and can’t prevent an extinction event in the fall. Whatever you are doing isn’t working. So you’re trying to smash and grab everything before you are voted out.

Think about that. Do you really want to broadcast your strategy to THIS country?

It’s going to get out. Everyone will know exactly what you’re up to as soon as they see how much money you’re willing to give Trump to replace the east wing when he said it would be privately funded.

If I were you guys, I’d go into hiding before your base finally gets clobbered with a sledge hammer dope slap and sees exactly what you’re up to.

You don’t have much time. Start looking for countries without extradition treaties with the US.

Not only that but in the last 160 years, black Americans became middle class, overcoming obstacle after obstacle. It’s the dumbest thing I can think of to make our black coworkers and managers feel like they didn’t work hard and achieve their titles through merit.

What is the point of that? Seriously? The rest of us moved forward but the MAGA guys and the Opus Dei contingent in the federalist society felt it was their moral obligation to give the South to little white men who thought they were too good for the modern world?

I’m sitting here thinking about my dad explaining slave markets and plantations to me with I was a little girl living in Charleston, South Carolina. Showing me where segregated schools still existed. Explaining to me why we fought the Civil War when he pointed at Fort Sumter across from Charleston harbor as we kids climbed all over the cannons.

Those experiences made a difference to me. As a military brat, most of my schools were desegregated. I didn’t grow up feeling like black, brown, Asian, Hawaiian students were different. We grew up with lessons about not judging people because of how they looked.

So, I just don’t get it. The Southern states grew up with the remnants of slavery all around them. You’d have to be deprived of all your senses to not stumble across all that evidence. They had to know that forcing people to live in a tiny slave shacks after endless days of planting rice or picking cotton and having their children sold from them were terrible things to do to human beings. That was followed by decades of terror and poverty.

There are a lot of MAGA voters who are younger than me who should know better and should have just gotten used to the new normal that was already about 50 years old when Trump came down that elevator.

“He says what everybody’s thinking”. Really? Is that what everybody is thinking? Is it all really about not learning anything in school or from your parents or from lived experience? People just wander through the world oblivious to the living culture around them? Is it really the case that underneath the tender skin of so many Americans there is an itch that can’t be scratched when it comes to black, brown, or female Americans? It’s just there in case of an emergency like when wealthy selfish people need to get away with theft of our national treasure?

Honestly, we’ve come so far in the last 60 years that it is impossible to put the genie back in the bottle. We rely on each other to keep the economic engine going. You can’t cut out that many people from future prosperity and enfranchisement without the entire country suffering as a consequence.

If that was the goal of the moneyed overlords who used MAGA and Catholicism and evangelicalism to overturn the rule of law and the pursuit of happiness of the majority, well, they certainly got their money’s worth.

It won’t last. You’ve got a madman in the Oval Office, gas is at $4.69/gallon in Pittsburgh, and the governor of Louisiana declared a state of emergency so he could screw all of the voters in his state in order to deprive the US Congress of two black congressmen.

Even two is too much. Two.

How miserably petty and small can the white guys get?

Nobody’s perfect and we don’t want student body presidents or lifeguards.

But in our form of democracy it is crucial to elect people who have gone through some kind of adversity without selling their souls. The three presidents who consistently rank as the top three greatest presidents in our history are exemplars.

Washington, Lincoln, Franklin D Roosevelt, all three struggled and endured either war, poverty, or crippling illness. They weren’t perfect people but they could be counted on to reach down deep in their souls and find the right way foreword to lead, unify and direct.

They weren’t in it for personal gain or fame. They weren’t in it for golden parachutes. They didn’t harbor any overt antipathy towards other human beings who weren’t like them but treated them with respect and dignity.

When it comes right down to it, in a crisis, party affiliation doesn’t matter as much as dedication to the country and character. And after they do their terms, they leave it all on the table and the country is better for them being the leader. Americans were united and gaining in prosperity.

There have been many presidents who knew that the norms were full of loopholes but refrained from taking advantage of them. Maybe they never met a national emergency to bring out the best in them. And there have been presidents who violated the norms and the country paid a price for that. We recovered because our challenges weren’t dire.

It’s just that when the country is falling apart, you do not want an amoral, selfish, greedy, power hungry, shameless, con man in charge of a country that runs on the honor system.

A line from a Chinese drama about the Qing dynasty goes, “If swearing were truly useful, why would we need iron rules?”. You might think that is the standard operating procedure of the current Chinese government. Too much constriction could be a problem as well. Our commonly understood norms give our presidents flexibility in emergencies.

But it might be time to crack down on the unitary executive theory and tighten the restraints on the president. At least take them back to the time when we learned from the Nixon Experience.

As we have seen, swearing an oath is not sufficient restraint for presidents of low character. And for some peculiar reason, a lot of Americans can’t discern good character from bad.