Ted Cruz is a sleazy liar: He should have stayed in Cancun

January 6 insurrection led by #TFG was sedition. Where was #CruzToLoose? He was hiding, that's where he was, while brave Capitol security and Washington DC police were saving his life.

Gotta love it that Dr. Anthony Fauci continues to be in the face of Senator Ted Cruz and Senator Rand Paul!  #FauciStrong!

#CruzToLoose  Senator Ted Cruz has zero health care provider credentials. His sleazy political accusations made while trying to intimidate Dr. Anthony Fauci, who is a respected medical scientist, are examples of a desperate scum bag Republican who is circling the  right wing extremism's drain.

#CruzToLoose should have stayed in Cancun, when he tried and failed to escape the Texas power grid failure. Who let Cruz back into the U.S.? Cruz was born in Canada!  Rafael Cruz, the father of Ted Cruz, was a Cuban immigrant to Canada!

FACE THE NATION echo report by David Edwards, published in RawStory:

Dr. Anthony Fauci responded on Sunday after Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) suggested that he should be prosecuted for his role in the Covid-19 pandemic.

CBS host Margaret Brennan asked Dr. Fauci about the Texas (CruzToLoose!) senator's threat, during an interview on Face the Nation.

"I have to laugh at that," Fauci told Brennan. "I should be prosecuted? What happened on January 6, Senator?"

"Do you think that this is about making you a scapegoat to deflect from President Trump?" Brennan wondered.

"Of course," Fauci replied. "You'd have to be asleep not to figure that one out." 

"I'm just going to do my job," he added. "And I'm going to be saving lives and they're going to be lying."

Chris Christie as Trump apologist

Former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie has an obsession with Donald Trump.  He has become a Trumpian apologist. In boisterous political style, he speaks out of both sides of his mouth.

Former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie

"But our leaders of today have decided it's more important to be popular, to say and do what's easy, and say yes rather than to say no, when no is what is required," Chris Christie. (Maine Writer: "If only.....")

The only fraud in the 2020, presidential election is the false allegation that it was fraudulent! (Quote attributed to Maine Senator Angus King.)

This following echo opinion was published in The New Yorker by David Remnick:

For a long time now, the American electorate has been resigned to a “permanent campaign,” an unceasing carnival of exploratory committees, chicken dinners, and cable excitements. The 2024, campaign for the Presidency is unique in that it kicked off at around 2 a.m. on November 4, 2020, with a brazen act of seditious rhetoric broadcast live from the East Room of the White House.

With the outcome still in question, Donald Trump declared “fraud.” And, when all the votes were counted with Biden as the winner, Trump set about fomenting the insurrection that ended with a mob of his delusional loyalists storming the U.S. Capitol.

Trump remains unapologetic, even serene, about those events. He told the journalist Jonathan Karl that he recalls January 6th as “a very beautiful time with extremely loving and friendly people.” Five people died as a result of that “very beautiful” moment, and nearly seven hundred of the “loving” marauders have been charged with various crimes. No matter. Just as pro-slavery Southerners refused to accept Lincoln as their President after the election of 1860, millions of Americans have been convinced by Trump and the social-media swamp that Joe Biden’s Presidency is illegitimate.

Even as Trump is threatened with prosecution, he could run again. And he could win. Or he might step aside for one of his maximalist imitators: Ron DeSantis, of Florida; Josh Hawley, of Missouri; Ted Cruz or Greg Abbott, of Texas. The recent gubernatorial race in Virginia, however, hints at another sort of Republican future. Glenn Youngkin, a demi-billionaire, who made his pile in private equity, defeated the Democrat, Terry McAuliffe, an echt Clintonian, by carrying out a shrewd strategy of maga lite. Youngkin, a sober cynic, recognized that, in a state such as Virginia—which went for George W. Bush twice, then Barack Obama twice, then Hillary Clinton, in 2016, and Biden, in 2020—he would do well to gesture in Trump’s direction without mimicking his most lurid tactics. Youngkin never quite endorsed Trump’s election-conspiracy theory but said that he would vote for him if he got the Republican nomination in 2024, and that he was all for “election integrity.” He made a point of vowing to ban critical race theory in schools, even though it’s not part of the state’s curriculum. This kind of slick signalling allowed him to hold on to the Trumpian purists in rural areas, while luring back just enough swing voters in the suburbs. Youngkin beat McAuliffe by two per cent in a state that, just a year before, Biden won by ten.Last week, Chris Christie, the former governor of New Jersey, published “Republican Rescue,” a book that seeks, in effect, to take the Youngkin strategy national. Many erstwhile members of the Trump circle have written books or blabbed to receptive journalists in the hope of cleansing their reputations. Christie is going to the literary laundromat because he may want to run for President in 2024. It’s hard to see how he has enough detergent.

Chris Christie’s hypocritical transformation

Christie has been Trump’s friend, dinner companion, and adviser for two decades. He endorsed Trump early, wrote memos for him, prepped him for debates with Clinton, and encouraged him to appoint right-wing judges and to follow the path of America First. He ran Trump’s transition team—until Jared Kushner and Steve Bannon pushed him out. In fact, he writes, “very few people were as publicly invested in the success of Donald Trump as I was.” (Maine Writer: Obsession?)

Christie wants Republicans to accept him as the one member of Trump’s circle who always gave him unvarnished advice, who was always out for the good of the country and the Administration, never for himself: “I told him hard truths when no one else would.” 

But, the portrait he paints of his friend is laughably selective. He ignores or doesn’t much care about the racism, the cruelty, the assault on voting rights, the authoritarian impulses. He describes Trump’s fits and furies as quirky charm—“norm-busting behavior.” As governor, Christie revelled in his own tantrums. And so, when he allows that he admires Trump’s “let-’em-squirm fearlessness,” he is also admiring himself.

Christie finally reaches his limit when Trump refuses to accept the election results and helps provoke the January 6th insurrection. Not that Christie, for all his insider status, had thought it was in Trump’s character to do so. The night before the election, he assured a Canadian interviewer that Trump and Biden were “both responsible men” and that, should Biden win, there was “no question in my mind that President Trump will participate in a peaceful transition of power.” Rather than admitting that he was wrong all along about Trump, he touts his own bravery when he tells George Stephanopoulos, on ABC, that “I disagree” with Trump’s seditious course. This is rather like disagreeing with the assault on Fort Sumter.

Christie is a canny narrator. He maintains over-all fealty to Trump, but wants you to know that he understands what kind of human being Trump is. In the waning months of the Administration, Christie was invited to the White House to attend the Rose Garden introduction of Amy Coney Barrett as a Supreme Court nominee and to help prepare Trump for a debate with Biden. Christie confirms how heedless Trump and his Administration were about COVID—masks were scorned in the White House—and, predictably, many officials and visitors, including Trump and Christie, got sick. While Trump was hospitalized at Walter Reed, he called Christie, who was suffering at a hospital in New Jersey. The President wanted to know one thing: “Are you gonna say you got it from me?”

Christie doesn’t blame Trump. He doesn’t dare. He lets him off the hook. “And that was the last call I got in the hospital from Donald Trump,” he writes.

Christie will never say bluntly what he knows to be true: that Trump’s Presidency had dire consequences for the country. Trump was impeached twice, yet Christie does not grapple much with that record. Instead, he insists that the Republicans must look forward. They must part ways with the militia crazies and the conspiracy theorists, to be sure, but above all they must wage battle with Biden, an “anticapitalist” who is imposing critical race theory on “unsuspecting” children. The climate catastrophe, the menace of authoritarianism at home and around the world—the biggest challenges that we face seem to interest Christie no more than they do the political party he hopes to lead. In “Republican Rescue,” he is asking the G.O.P. to support him because he was by Trump’s side until the ugly coda, when he wasn’t. The campaign slogan that comes out of this book might as well be “Vote for Chris Christie. Saner than Rudolph Giuliani.” Not exactly “Tippecanoe and Tyler too,” but it’s what he’s got. 

Published in the print edition of the November 29, 2021, issue, with the headline “Reputation Laundering.”

Senator Angus King- "repeating a lie doesn't make it true!"

“We Are At A Hinge of History” – Senator King Delivers Impassioned Speech On the Senate Floor Urging Action to Defend Voting Rights

Senator King’s remarks come as the Freedom to Vote Act faced a key procedural.

Senator Angus King

Mr. President, the United States of America is an anomaly in world history. We are a two-hundred-and-forty-five year old experiment in self-government which is based upon an idea which was radical in 1776, was tested at Gettysburg, Antietam, Shiloh, and The Wilderness, was defended at Anzio, Iwo Jima, and Normandy, and was codified in 1965– an idea that the people—all the people—are the ultimate source of power and can govern themselves through their elected representatives. 

Yet, the historical norm is just the opposite—kings, pharaohs, dictators, czars, warlords, emperors, and, more recently, presidents-for-life. Throughout most of human history—and right up to the present in many countries around the world—the people have little or no say in the decisions that determine their fate. And these rulers are rarely, if ever, beneficent; in fact, again, the historical norm is just the opposite—pervasive corruption, the pursuit of power for its own sake, the crushing of dissent, sham elections, and the abuse or even elimination of anyone not sufficiently loyal, or useful, to the leader. There’s nothing surprising about this for it reflects human nature; history fairly shouts at us that power corrupts and, more ominously, that absolute power corrupts absolutely. Given the consistent history of this experience, it’s clear that our experiment is fragile, that what we have and take for granted is in no way guaranteed. As has been the case with democratic experiments throughout history, it can fail—rarely from external attack, almost always from erosion from within. On the surface, our democratic system protects us by resting upon our ingenious Constitution, the primary purpose of which is to establish an effective government while at the same time dividing and dispersing power to “oblige that government to control itself,” in Madison’s evocative phrase. And of all the safeguards built into the Constitution—two Houses of Congress, vetoes, division of the war power, advise and consent, enumerated powers, federalism, the Bill of Rights—the most fundamental and essential is regular elections, the clearest expression of the people’s will. For most of my life, I’ve not thought much about how elections actually work. You go to the town office or a school gym, check in at the desk where your name is crossed off a list, are handed a ballot, and go into a booth to make your choices. You then put the marked ballot into a box or hand it to a clerk (usually a volunteer doing their civic duty) who runs it through a counter. Or, you get a mail-ballot from the town clerk, mark it at home and send it in, or, in my town, drop it in a drop box in front of the town office. And that’s it, until later that night, when the results— either from the automatic counters or from hand counting the ballots themselves—are announced, precinct by precinct, town by town, county by county, and state by state. 

And then you go to bed, happy or unhappy, energized or discouraged, either reveling in the victory of your preferred candidates or determined to work harder next time to get a better result (and thanks to the Framers, there always is a next time, usually in a couple of years). The next day, you go about your business, trusting that the system was operating according to the rules and that the announced vote counts accurately reflect the preferences of you and your fellow citizens. The miraculous result of this entire process is something we completely take for granted but is exceedingly rare in human history—the peaceful transfer of power, whether on the town council, in the Congress, or in the presidency itself. 

But two interrelated things are happening right now with regard to this system that are unprecedented in my lifetime and that are profoundly dangerous to our fragile republic; one is the breakdown of trust in the system itself, and the other is an overtly partisan attempt to use this loss of trust as a pretext to change the results of future elections by limiting the participation of voters deemed unworthy (although this is rarely said out loud) or unlikely to vote for your particular political party. This discussion is usually framed in terms of “election integrity”—the prevention of widespread voter fraud which, it is argued, is tainting the outcome of our elections. Unfortunately, these so-called “election integrity” measures almost invariably end up limiting the participation of a substantial number of voters—many of whom have historically been denied the right to vote by one device or another for over a hundred years—either as inadvertent collateral damage or (more likely) as stone cold partisan voter suppression. When I used to interact with the Maine Legislature, either as a private citizen or as Governor, the inevitable first question from the committee chair about any proposed bill was, “What’s the problem we’re trying to solve?” In this case, is the problem really voter fraud, or is it election results the party in power in a particular state don’t like? The implicit burden this question puts on those who would change a law is to demonstrate by reliable evidence that there is a problem in the first place. And simply saying—or endlessly repeating—that there is a problem doesn’t make it so. To put it another way, repeating a lie doesn’t make it true.

Every objective study done to try to detect widespread voter fraud has failed to produce credible evidence of anything but scattered and vanishingly rare cases. Even the overtly partisan so-called “audit” of the votes in Maricopa County in Arizona failed to find what they were so desperately looking for. Failed to find what they were so desperately looking for. The key question is not whether such fraud exists at all, but whether it is so widespread as to change the results of an election involving a substantial number of voters. In the wake of the 2016 Presidential election, President Trump convened a commission to access this very question, but the commission was disbanded eight months after its formation with no published finding of significant election fraud whatsoever. Further, as I mentioned, I know of no objective study of this issue that has concluded that such widespread fraud exists anywhere in our country. Even more compelling is that in spite of herculean efforts by the former president and his supporters over the course of the months following the 2020, election, no credible evidence has yet been produced to support his allegations, and all such allegations have been rejected by every court (more than 60) that have considered them. 

The only fraud here, Mr. President, is the allegations themselves. In other words, not only is there no evidence of substantial fraud, what evidence there is reaches the opposite conclusion. But chillingly, fully one-third of Americans (and two thirds of Republicans) now believe that the 2020 presidential election was not legitimate, that there was widespread fraud, and that the election was somehow “stolen”—not based upon evidence (because there isn’t any), but based upon the repeated assertions of the former President and his supporters. The problem with this goes well beyond the wave of voter suppression legislation sweeping the country; the deeper problem is the massive and unprecedented erosion of trust in the electoral system itself, the beating heart of our democracy. Of all the depredations of the former President, this is by far the worst. In relentlessly pursuing his narrow self-interest, he has grievously wounded democracy itself. And by the way, I mean “narrow self-interest” quite literally; he doesn’t give the slightest damn about any of us—any of you—and will cast any or all of us aside whenever it suits his needs of the moment. Everyone in this room knows this to be true. The reason this so destructive is if you can’t trust elections, what are your options? One is to change the rules to discourage your perceived enemies from voting; check—that’s in the works.

Another is to change the rules to give partisan legislatures the power to override election results they don’t like; check—also in the works. Another is to contrive pseudo-legal arguments to justify the corruption of the counting of electoral votes and pressure the vice president to carry out the scheme. Check—we now know that was very much in the works in the days leading up to January 6. Or finally, try to change the results through violence or threats of violence; check—January 6, and death threats to election officials of both parties across the country. January 6 was not a random day on the calendar; it was the day appointed to finalize the results of the November election. Many of those who came to Washington that day were not there to protest, but were there with the explicit purpose of disrupting and stopping this crucial final step in our democratic process. The rallying cry that day wasn’t “protest the steal”; it was “stop the steal.” It’s important to remember that most failures of democracy started with legitimate elections, but once in office, the leader manipulated the electoral process to consolidate their hold on power, just as was attempted here last winter. And once power is seized, the control and reach of the modern surveillance state is truly terrifying. Ask the Uighurs in China, or members of the opposition in Russia, if you can find any alive. Russia, Turkey, Venezuela, and Hungary are examples of the slide into authoritarianism just in our lifetimes; those countries still have elections, but they don’t mean much. And what if the current wave of voter suppression legislation succeeds and keeps tens of thousands of people from voting, or what if in 2024 a partisan legislature in a swing state votes to override the election results and send its own set of electors to Congress? Then it won’t just be Republicans who distrust elections, and we will be left with a downward spiral toward a hollow shell of democracy, where only raw power prevails and its peaceful transfer becomes a distant memory. There has been a great deal of talk in recent months of a possible Constitutional crisis in 2022 or 2024; Mr. President, we don’t have to wait that long; we are in the midst of such a crisis right now. One of our great political parties has embraced the idea that our last election was fraudulent, that our president is illegitimate, and that they must move legislatures across the country to “fix” the results of future elections. A substantial proportion of our population has lost faith in our democratic system and seems prepared to accept authoritarianism; all but the most extreme sources of information have been devalued; and violence bubbles just below the surface.

But it doesn’t have to be this way. We in this body, perhaps more than anyone else in the country, have the power to change direction, to pull our country back from the brink, and to begin the work of restoring our democracy, as we did in the Revolution, the Civil War, and the civil rights struggles of sixty years ago, first, by simply telling the truth, and then by enacting a set of basic protections of the sacred right to vote. It won’t be easy and will involve risk, particularly when we are asked to speak hard truths that many of our more ardent supporters don’t want to hear. But the alternative is worse, worse even than losing our job. The alternative is the loss of our identity as a people, the loss of the miracle of self-government, and the loss of the idea of America. I don’t think it’s an exaggeration to say that we are at a hinge of history, that circumstances have thrust us—those of us in this body—into a moment when the fate of the American experiment hangs in the balance. We are the heirs—and trustees—of a tradition that goes back to Jefferson and Lincoln, to Webster, Madison, Margaret Chase Smith, and, yes, our friend John McCain. All were partisans in one way or the other, but all shared an overriding commitment to the idea that animates the American experiment, the idea that our government is of, by, and for the people, all the people. Now is the moment to reach beyond region, beyond party, beyond self, to save and reinvigorate the sputtering flame of that idea. Yes, democracy is an anomaly in world history and what we have is fragile; it rests upon the Constitution and laws to be sure, but it rests even more so on the trust our people place in our democratic system— and in us. Deliberately undermining that trust for short-term political advantage—which is exactly what is happening right now—is a tragic and dangerous game. No election, no endorsement, no Senate seat, no presidency is worth it. Nothing is worth destroying what our forebears fought and died for. Nothing. Several weeks ago, a bipartisan group of us went to Gettysburg and walked the battlefield with two leaders from the Army War College. I have been there many times before, but have never been so moved by the experience as I was on this trip The stories of valor and supreme sacrifice—the 20th Maine at Little Round Top, the 1st Minnesota at the exposed center of the Union line, the Iron Brigade on the first day, the colossal losses on both sides—were a sobering reminder of what it took to preserve this country. But we learned something else that day—that it was a near thing.

If a Union officer named Strong Vincent had hesitated in moving those three regiments to Little Round Top or if William Colville had hesitated in leading the 1st Minnesota on a suicidal charge into the teeth of the Confederate advance, our country would have been lost. And so it is today, only the test is not on the battlefield and no one here is being asked to give up their lives. We are simply being asked to tell the truth, to recommit to the ideal of democracy, to keep faith with our history and inheritance. And if we hesitate, all could be lost. As we now know from the events of January 6th and the relentless attempts to subvert the results of the 2020 election in the last days of the prior Administration, it was – and still is – a near thing. As it is in the old Protestant hymn, so it is today, “Once to every man and nation Comes the moment to decide, I believe this is that moment for each of us. The concluding words of Lincoln in his message to Congress in the dark winter of 1862 have never been more apt, and are eerily applicable to us today: “Fellow citizens, we cannot escape history. We of this Congress and this Administration will be remembered in spite of ourselves. No personal significance or insignificance can spare one or another of us. The fiery trial through which we pass will light us down in honor or dishonor to the latest generation.” “… will light us down in honor or dishonor to the latest generation.” Indeed, destiny has placed us here at one of history’s fateful moments; our response to it will be our most important legacy. I believe that we all know our responsibility—and whether we like it or not, history will record whether we, each one of us, meets it.

"Mr. President, may God, working through each of us, save the United States of America," Senator Angus King of Maine.

Hanukkah: symbolic lights burn against anti-Semitism

Echo opinion by Sue Winthrop published in the Daily Camera newspaper, in Colorado: Hanukkah: A gift of light to the world today.

Hanukkah 2021

Every year at about this time I think about the story of Hanukkah. Though considered a minor Jewish holiday, this year the story of Hanukkah seems to have greater significance. 

This historical event took place in the 2nd century BCE (Before Christian Era). At the time King Antiochus IV outlawed any Jewish practice and defiled the Jewish Temple. A small army of men that were Jewish, the Maccabees, rebelled against this religious persecution and regained control over the temple. The eternal flame in the temple seemed to only have enough oil to last for one day. Instead the eternal flame lasted for eight days, until more oil could be found. Therefore, the eight days of Hanukkah.

It seems to me, this year the story of Hanukkah signifies the survival of the Jewish People. As anti-Semitism and hate crimes are on the rise I think about what we can do as a nation. While our days are shorter and this is the darkest point of the winter, people all over the world are lighting the menorah. Bringing the gift of light into their homes. The lighting of the menorah seems to stand for hope, peace and change.

I hope that this year can be different. That our country will start to heal its wounds and come together. To quit the fighting amongst us over differences in our beliefs and the way we look. 

That leaders in Washington will start setting a better example.

That people in our nation will start thinking about others and put their selfish behavior behind. From Sue Winthrop in Longmont, Colorado 

Health care burnout and The Great Resignation

The Great Resignation

Echo essay published in Med Page Today.

ZDoggMD, discusses the recent trend in healthcare workers quitting their jobs: What exactly is The Great Resignation?

The Great Resignation

You know, what's interesting about this is it's not like this is new. Healthcare sucked for many people before COVID. This was something we talked about on this show quite a bit. We talked about moral injury, this idea that we call healthcare workers burned out because it's an easy way to blame a victim, right? It's an easy way to say, you're not strong enough, you're not resilient enough, and you couldn't hack what's a really hard job.

So, maybe you should meditate; maybe, lavender essential oils will help. Maybe, you should get a massage, take a little "you time." 

Let's do a little corporate wellness stuff. We'll hire a consultant. We'll hire a corporate wellness officer. We'll do these kinds of things that will, you know, help with your resilience.

And I think what people realized very quickly when they introspected is that they were miserable. There's a deep, deep, deep, deep suffering that was happening, and it's, many could not put their finger on what it was, but they were miserable. For many, they felt trapped in a job by loans, by expectations, by social pressure, by identity issues. Imagine you trained most of your adult life to do some medical thing, whether you're a doctor, a nurse, a pharmacist, whatever it is, physical therapist, occupational therapist, dietitian -- and you're miserable.

You're absolutely unhappy. You're emotionally detached. You feel completely unaccomplished. You feel like an imposter doing what you're doing. You're worried you're going to hurt somebody. Maybe you're abusing substances. Maybe you're clinically depressed, but you're scared to talk about that because you have to disclose that on your license renewal or to get your hospital privileges. You feel like you are treating a computer screen instead of the patient in front of you, and you didn't go to school and sacrifice your 20s to do that.

You work for an organization that's owned by a private equity firm whose bottom line is the bottom line -- not patients, not you. You are a resource in an assembly line of Health 2.0, where the product is a patient that got through the system and they could bill for. You are paid and your system is paid to do things to people, not to do things for people.

You feel expendable. You've been told you're expendable. 

Moreover, the leadership of your organization has told you that if you quit, you will never find work that is as good as this, that has the benefits and the privileges, and you will be blacklisted. So don't you dare try to leave.

You're morally conflicted because you know the right thing for that patient in front of you is for you to spend that extra 5 minutes getting to understand their hopes, dreams, and fears, understand why they're resistant to getting a vaccine or whatever it is, instead of having to chart in front of the patient in order to get through your day so you're not cutting into pajama time with your kids. And you're saddled with all this debt, so you're afraid that if you leave, you'll lose your identity and you'll lose your livelihood, and you won't be able to support yourself or your family -- your family, by the way, who's already miserable because you're miserable, and because you can't be present with them because of this distraction of mind that has you back at work even when you're at home.

That was before COVID, for many, many, many, many, many people. Now, I was one of them! 

What happens during COVID? 

You guys, do you remember that I did a video in the beginning of the pandemic, saying there will be a reckoning? We will never forget what happened in the early days, when there was no PPE, and where was the leadership, and we were asked to risk lives, our lives, the lives of our family, during a pandemic, and the public was s***g on us, afraid to go near somebody in scrubs, ostracizing us at gas stations because we were wearing scrubs because they were afraid of this disease. 

And then, you know, leadership puts up a sign: "Heroes Work Here."

Well, that got better, they got some PPE. Then what happens? Wave after wave, after surge, after surge, which, if you go on social media, there are people denying that it even happened, and you're going every day, risking your life, taking care of patients who are dying, for which at those stages of illness, we have nothing. 

We have nothing we can do, prone patients dying in the ICU, most of them elderly, most of them with comorbidities, dying alone, and we are tasked with enforcing the hospital rule that a patient must die alone, even though it feels in every way, morally, ethically, psychologically wrong, spiritually wrong, but we're the arbiters of that.

Then we're asked to do overtime shifts. Then we're asked to continue to suck it up and given pizza slices. Pharmacists are asked to vaccinate the entire population and given pizza, while continuing to work under metrics, oppressive metrics at places like CVS and Walgreens, and then they get yelled at by patients because they had to wait.

Patients will come to the ICU with COVID having declined vaccination and continue to ask for ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine and be so misled by the misinformation online and by ideology and so on, with good intent, they're good people, and then healthcare workers have to deal with that when they know that to some degree this is preventable. 

Now, add all of this to the fact that when people do quit, they're replaced by traveling nurses, say, who make two to three times what the people who stayed are making, and they have to work side by side.

This post appeared on ZDoggMD, where you can find the complete transcript for this article.

Cult Republicans are obsessed with tanking American democracy

#RepublicansAreTheProblem!

Maine Writer- In a court of law, it would be very easy to accumulate a preponderance of evidence to prove how deep Republicans are willing to sink our American democracy for the sake of obstructing progress.

This echo opinion letter was published in The Day, a New London, Connecticut newspaper 

"This moron Gosar has to go. He really seems to be out of touch", wrote Richard McGill in The Day.

Dear Editor: I was disgusted to watch the cult Republicans in the U.S. House of Representatives discuss censuring Rep. Gosar for his nasty, immature, malignant, and inappropriate cartoon depicting killing other members of the House and attacking President Joe Biden. 

The fact that only two Republicans stood up to say it was wrong is equally frightening. Rep. McCarthy's* speech did not address the behavior but was another of his diatribes against the opposing party. Can they not see the act of Mr. Gosar as wrong?

The party of "Lincoln, law and order and Reagan" seem to be confused. I do not believe that either Lincoln or Reagan would condone this behavior and treatment of another citizen or member of Congress. They certainly would not condone ignoring subpoenas from Congressional hearings, storming the Capital or just being anti everything the other party suggested just to be on the opposite side.

Americans would benefit from our representatives, by insisting that they  listen to the other side, discuss differences and work to come to consensus. Both parties were elected to do our business, not theirs and to work for us, not themselves, their party or past office holders.

Be Americans, not partisans or cult obstructionists for a change.

From Alan Armstrong in Mystic, Connecticut

Charlie McCarthy and ventriloquist Edgar Bergen

*Rep. Kevin McCarthy speaks like he is controlled by ventriloquist #TFG (aka "Trumpty-Dumpty").

President Joe Biden advanced "gigantic legislation"

Echo New York Times essay by David Brooks*:

President Joe Biden came to the White House at a pivotal moment in American history. We had become a country dividing into two nations, one highly educated and affluent and the other left behind. The economic gaps further inflamed cultural and social gaps, creating an atmosphere of intense polarization, cultural hostility, alienation, bitterness and resentment.

As president, Biden had mostly economic levers to try to bridge this cold civil war. He championed three gigantic pieces of legislation to create a more equal, more just and more united society: the COVID stimulus bill, the infrastructure bill and what became Build Back Better, to invest in human infrastructure.

All of these bills were written to funnel money to the parts of the country that were less educated, less affluent, left behind. 

Adam Hersh, a visiting economist at the Economic Policy Institute, projects that more than 80 percent of the new jobs created by the infrastructure plan will not require a college degree.

These gigantic proposals were bold endeavors. Some thought them too bold. Economist Larry Summers thought the stimulus package, for example, was too big. It could overstimulate the economy and lead to inflation.

Larry is one of the most intelligent people I’ve ever known and someone I really admire. If I were an economist, I might have agreed with him. But I’m a journalist with a sociological bent. For over a decade I have been covering a country that was economically, socially and morally coming apart. I figured one way to reverse that was to turbocharge the economy and create white-hot labor markets that would lift wages at the bottom. If inflation was a byproduct, so be it. The trade-off is worth it to prevent a national rupture.

The Biden $1.9 trillion stimulus package passed and has been tremendously successful. It heated the overall economy. The Conference Board projects that real G.D.P. growth will be about 5 percent this quarter. The unemployment rate is falling. 

Retail sales are surging. About two-thirds of Americans feel their household’s financial situation is good.

But the best part is that the benefits are flowing to those down the educational and income ladder. In just the first month of payments, the expanded child tax credit piece of the stimulus bill kept three million American children out of poverty. Pay for hourly workers in the leisure and hospitality sector jumped 13 percent in August compared to the previous year. By June, there were more nonfarm job openings than there had been at any other time in American history. Workers have tremendous power these days.

The infrastructure bill Biden just signed will boost American productivity for years to come. As Ellen Zentner of Morgan Stanley told The Economist recently, it’s a rule of thumb that an extra $100 billion in annual infrastructure spending could increase growth by roughly a tenth of a percentage point — which is significant in an economy the size of ours. Federal infrastructure spending will be almost as large a share of annual GDP as the average level during Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal.

But Summers was right. The stimulus — along with all the supply chain and labor shortage disruptions that are inevitable when coming out of a pandemic — has boosted inflation. In addition, Americans are exhausted by a pandemic that seems to never end.

And they are taking it out on Democrats. A recent ABC News/Washington Post poll revealed that voters now prefer Republican congressional candidates in their own districts by 51 percent to 41 percent. That’s the largest G.O.P. lead since this poll started asking the question, 40 years ago.

If presidencies were judged by short-term popularity, the Biden effort would look pretty bad. But that’s a terrible measure. First-term presidents almost always see their party get hammered in the midterm after their inauguration. That’s especially true if the president achieved big things. Michigan State political scientist Matt Grossmann looked at House popular vote trends since 1953. 

Often when presidents succeeded in passing major legislation — Republicans as well as Democrats — voters swung against the president’s party. Look, just to take a recent example, at how Obamacare preceded a Democratic shellacking in 2010. People distrust change. Success mobilizes opposition. It’s often only in retrospect that these policies become popular and even sacred.

Presidents are judged by history, not the distraction and exhaustion of the moment. Did the person in the Oval Office address the core problem of the moment? The Biden administration passes that test. Sure, there have been failures — the shameful Afghanistan withdrawal, failing to renounce the excesses of the cultural left. 

But the President Biden administration will be judged by whether it reduced inequality, spread opportunity, created the material basis for greater national unity.

It is doing that.

My fear is not that Democrats lose the midterms — it will have totally been worth it. My fear is that Democrats in Congress will make fantastic policies like the expanded child tax credit temporary to make budget numbers look good. If they do that the coming Republican majorities will simply let these policies expire.

If that happens, then all this will have been in vain. The Democrats will have squandered what has truly been a set of historic accomplishments. Voters may judge Democrats harshly next November, but if they act with strength, history will judge them well.

48th President of the United States

*David Brooks is a conservative political and cultural commentator who writes for The New York Times.

I can't believe "snake oil" ivermectin is still in the news!

#SIASD- One Twitter response asked if the seven "doctors" reported in this article were impersonators. 

How could these people possibly be real "doctors"?

Seven doctors contract COVID infection, after attending Florida anti-vaccine summit: Doctors tested positive or developed symptoms ‘within days’ of conference at which alternative treatments were discussed.

Echo report published in the Guardian

Seven anti-vaccine doctors fell sick after gathering earlier this month for a Florida “summit” at which alternative treatments for COVID-19 were discussed.

“I have been on ivermectin for 16 months, my wife and I,” Dr Bruce Boros told the audience at the event held at the World Equestrian Center in Ocala, adding: “I have never felt healthier in my life.”

The 71-year-old cardiologist and staunch antivaxxer advocate contracted COVID-19 two days later, according to the head event organizer, Dr. John Littell.

Littell, an Ocala family physician, also told the Daily Beast six other doctors among 800 to 900 participants at the event also tested positive or developed COVID-19 symptoms “within days of the conference”.

Littell raised the suggestion the conference was therefore a super-spreader event but rejected it, vehemently saying: “No.

“I think they had gotten it from New York, or Michigan or wherever they were from,” he told the Beast. “It was really the people who flew in from other places.”

He also said: “Everybody so far has responded to treatment with ivermectin … Bruce is doing well.”

The Beast said sources close to Boros said he was gravely ill at his Key West home.

Ivermectin is an antiparasitic which has uses in humans but is predominantly used in livestock, such as cows and horses. Authorities say it has no proven use against COVID-19 and can be dangerous if taken in large quantities. The US Food and Drug Administration has not authorized or approved ivermectin as a COVID treatment and has said clinical trials are continuing.

Ivermectin is an antiparasitic 

Boros has claimed ivermectin is “working where it’s being used around the world” as a COVID treatment.

In the same Facebook post, he (wrong-mindedly) condemned Dr. Anthony Fauci (infectious disease expert!) , Joe Biden’s chief medical adviser, as “a fraud” and said “big pharma is playing us for suckers”.

In a July interview with Florida Keys Weekly, Boros responded to criticisms of his post, saying: “It breaks my heart that a town like this has made something so political and hateful. What’s wrong with people? I just want to help patients and keep them from dying.”

He also claimed that he gave a seriously ill COVID-19 patient ivermectin and “within six hours he was talking without coughing”.

At the summit in Ocala, Boros criticized his 97-year-old father for getting a COVID vaccine, saying: “He had been brainwashed … He got it. He didn’t tell me. I was very upset. I wanted to give him a spanking. He got both jabs.”

Earlier this year, a significant study supporting ivermectin as a COVID-19 treatment was withdrawn, after data was found to have been falsified and patients nonexistent. (Maybe these people who called themselves "doctors" were professionally non-existent as well.)

The FDA says people should “never use medications intended for animals on yourself or other people. Animal ivermectin products are very different from those approved for humans." 

Moreover, "Use of animal ivermectin for the prevention or treatment of COVID-19 in humans is dangerous.”

Charlottesville riot in 2017 reignites antisemitism

Echo commentary about the Charlottesville Virginia riot and antisemitism:

Conspiracies about a ‘catastrophic takeover’ by Jews have long been an American problem: In the late 19th century, a satiric weekly stoked fears about how Jewish immigrants would change New York City’s character.

An antisemitic cartoon called “The Dream of the Jew Realized,” in The Judge magazine. (The Judge magazine 1882)

(Published in the Religion News Service - RNS- and The Conversation, by Jonathan D. Sarna*) — “Jews will not replace us,” demonstrators chanted at the “Unite the Right” (evil!) rally organized by armed white nationalists in Charlottesville, Virginia, in August 2017, to stop the removal of a statue dedicated to Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee.

Heather D. Heyer, a 32-year-old paralegal from Charlottesville, Virginia was killed, and 35 others were wounded, when a 20-year-old neo-Nazi, James Alex Fields, intentionally drove his car into a crowd of counter-protesters during the rally.

Now a federal trial in Charlottesville aims to extract damages from those who organized and led the deadly rally. Lead plaintiff Elizabeth Sines, a law student at the University of Virginia at the time of the rally, believes that the lawsuit carries an important message. In an interview with The New York Times, she said, “If you plan and execute violence – toward Jewish people, people of color, diverse communities like Charlottesville – you will be held responsible for your actions.”

At first glance, it might not be clear what the demonstrators meant in chanting “Jews will not replace us.” Only about 2,000 Jews live in Charlottesville, out of a total local population of 47,000. Nationally Jews number no more than 7.6 million, meaning that just over 2% of Americans are Jewish. Indeed, recent studies suggest that America’s Jewish birthrate has fallen, and Jews are barely replacing themselves, let alone the white population as a whole.

What, then, could explain Charlottesville demonstrators’ fears?
White nationalists’ fears

Scholar of Jewish history Deborah Lipstadt, who has been nominated by President Joe Biden to serve as special envoy to monitor and combat antisemitism, argued in an expert report presented to the court concerning the history, ideology, symbolism and rhetoric of antisemitism – subsequently summarized in her personal testimony – that the Charlottesville chant carried several meanings.

“In its simplest and most straightforward interpretation,” she explained, “that chant can be understood to say Jews will not replace ‘us,’ i.e., white Christians in our job or our dominant place in society. 

(OMG! Evil!) We as whites will remain the dominant and supreme force in society.”

She also pointed to a “subtler but deeply ideological meaning to this chant,” rooted in the fear referred to by white nationalists as the “great replacement” or “white genocide.” The Charlottesville chant is expressing centuries-old fears that Jews, in league with peoples of color, are engaged in a nefarious plot to destroy the white Christian civilization.

David Lane, a white supremacist convicted, among other crimes, of conspiring in the 1984, machine-gun assassination of the Jewish talk-radio host Alan Berg in Denver, did much to publicize this idea. “The Western nations,” he wrote, “were ruled by a Zionist conspiracy … [that] above all things wants to exterminate the White Aryan race.” His 14-word goal, today a central plank of white nationalist ideology, declares that “we must secure the existence of our people and a future for white children.”

Alex Linder, a neo-Nazi who operates the racist website the Vanguard News Network, has written that Jews merely pretend to be white “in order to shame, discredit, blame, mock, harass and otherwise discomfit and discredit white people and the white race.”

The chant “Jews will not replace us,” Lipstadt explained to the court, serves as the white nationalist response to these fears. To avoid “catastrophic takeover,” it calls upon white people to “band together, arm themselves and go on the offensive,” she noted.

Lipstadt dates this antisemitic theory back to early 20th-century tsarist Russia, where a notorious forgery, now known as “The Protocols of the Elders of Zion,” purported to “prove” that Jews were engaged in a vast conspiratorial plot to subvert Christian society and culture. According to the protocols, Jews aimed at nothing less than world domination.

Today’s anti-semites likewise believe in a vast Jewish-led conspiracy that seeks to undermine all that they hold dear. The cry “Jews will not replace us” reflects this fear and, according to Lipstadt, served as “one of the motivating underpinnings of the Unite the Right rally.”
Antisemitic cartoons

Lipstadt’s evidence is persuasive, but, as a scholar of American Jewish history, I know that the fear of “replacement” dates back even earlier.

In 1882, with thousands of Jews pouring into New York in the wake of Russian pogroms and anti-Jewish legislation known as the May Laws, (...temporary regulations regarding the Jews..., May laws affected German Catholics, too) similar fears surfaced, even though Jews at that time made up far less than 1% of the U.S. population.

Antisemitism is as old as Judean Hills and remarkably diverse.

The well-known American-born cartoonist James Albert Wales, who died in 1886, stoked fears about how Jewish immigrants would change the city’s character, in depictions in the satirical weekly The Judge.

Wales portrayed New York as becoming, by 1900, the “New Jerusalem,” where Canal Street would be renamed “Levi Street,” Jewish-owned businesses would replace Christian ones and a Jewish feather merchant would serve as the city’s mayor. He portrayed long-nosed Jewish soldiers as a militia of pawnbrokers parading down Broadway. They were seen to be supplanting the so-called bluebloods of the famed 7th Regiment of the New York Militia, the city’s prestigious national guard founded in 1806, and mustered into federal service during the Civil War.

Published on July 22, 1882, as a colorful two-page chromolithograph, a colored picture printed by lithography, the cartoon was one of a series in The Judge that warned readers to beware of Jews, who supposedly looked to replace them.

Another of Wales’ black-and-white cartoons, titled “The Dream of the Jews Realized,” which likewise appeared in The Judge in 1882, depicted an imaginary Jewish celebration marking the removal of the city’s last store sign with a characteristically white Christian name, “John Smith,” an enterprise purportedly established back in 1820.

Replacing it was a sign bearing the Jewish name “Moses Eichstein.” In the background of the cartoon, a banner illumined by upraised thumbs, considered to be a typical Jewish hand gesture, gave voice to the nativist fears that The Judge sought calculatingly to inflame: “We own the Town,” it announced.

The 2017 Charlottesville chant, “Jews will not replace us,” reflects those same kinds of fears.

As the trial in Charlottesville moves toward its conclusion, it bears recalling that the fantasy that Jews seek to recreate America in their own image, to the disadvantage of white natives, is as old as mass Jewish immigration to America’s shores.

*Jonathan D. Sarna, University Professor and Joseph H. & Belle R. Braun Professor of American Jewish History, Brandeis University. The views expressed in this commentary do not necessarily reflect those of Religion News Service.

How to Trump Fake News

Maine Writer- And the moral of this report is this: Even the contributors to #FakeNews have a ceiling threshold to oppose fakery!

Echo resignation blog: The Dispatch, published by conservative pundits Steve Hayes and Jonah Goldberg: 

We joined Fox (Fake!)News as contributors in early 2009. Combined, that’s more than 20 years of experience, relationships, and friendships. 

For most of that time, we were proud to be associated with the (#FakeNews!) network, if not necessarily with every program, opinion, or scandal that aroused controversy. 

Moreover, we believed, sincerely, that the country needed Fox (Fake!) News. Whether you call it liberal media bias or simply a form of groupthink around certain narratives, having a news network that brought different assumptions and asked different questions—while still providing real reporting and insightful conservative analysis and opinion—was good for the country and journalism.

Fox (#Fake!) News still does real reporting, and there are still responsible conservatives providing valuable opinion and analysis. But the voices of the responsible are being drowned out by the irresponsible.

A case in point: Patriot Purge, a three-part (#FakeNews!) series hosted by (#JunkNews) Tucker Carlson.

The special—which ran on Fox’s (#FakeNews) subscription streaming service earlier this month and was promoted on Fox (#Fake) News—is presented in the style of an exposé, a hard-hitting piece of investigative journalism. In reality, it is a collection of incoherent conspiracy-mongering, riddled with factual inaccuracies, half-truths, deceptive imagery, and damning omissions. And its message is clear: The U.S. government is targeting patriotic Americans in the same manner —and with the same tools—that it used to target al Qaeda.

“The domestic war on terror is here. It’s coming after half of the country,” says one protagonist. “The left is hunting the right, sticking them in Guantanamo Bay for American citizens (#BigBigLie!) —leaving them there to rot,” says another, over video of an individual in an orange jumpsuit being waterboarded.

This is not happening. And we think it’s dangerous to pretend it is. 

If a person with such a platform shares so much misinformation loud enough and long enough, there are Americans who will believe—and act upon—it.

This is not theoretical!

In fact, this is what actually happened on January 6, 2021.

Over the past five years, some of Fox’s (#FakeNews!) top opinion hosts amplified the false claims and bizarre narratives of #TFG Donald Trump or offered up their own in his service. In this sense, the release of Patriot Purge wasn’t an isolated incident, it was merely the most egregious example of a longstanding trend. Patriot Purge creates an alternative history of January 6, contradicted not just by common sense, not just by the testimony and on-the-record statements of many participants, but by the reporting of the news division of Fox News itself.

Indeed, the news side of Fox (#FakeFoxNews) routinely does what it is supposed to do: It reports the truth. COVID-19 is deadly, vaccines work, Joe Biden won Arizona, the election was not stolen, January 6 was not a Deep State-orchestrated “false flag” operation but was an assault on the Capitol as part of a broader attempt to steal an election: The people who put the “news” in Fox (Fake!) News have reported all of these (#FakeNews!) things.

This is not the place to expound at any length on the many problems and challenges facing the country. But we sincerely believe that all people of good will and good judgment—regardless of their ideological or partisan commitments—can agree that a cavalier and even contemptuous attitude toward facts, truth-seeking, and truth-telling, lies at the heart of so much that plagues our country.

We started The Dispatch two years ago “to do right as we see it, by providing engaged citizens fact-based reporting and commentary on politics, policy and culture—informed by conservative principles.” We made a promise to our readers and members that we’d challenge our own assumptions as we challenged theirs, and that we wouldn’t pull punches. The tension between doing that work well and remaining loyal to Fox has tested us many times over the past few years. But with the release of Patriot Purge, we felt we could no longer “do right as we see it” and remain at Fox News. So we resigned.

We remain grateful for the opportunities we’ve had at (#Fake) Fox and we continue to admire many of the hard-working journalists who work there. This is our last recourse. 

We do not regret our decision, even if we find it regrettably necessary.

P.S. Maine Writer - Thank you Steve Hayes and Jonah Goldberg

There is zero pro-life message in the Rittenhouse murder verdict

Pro-life gun control zealots are rabid about being pro-second amendment.  This wrong-minded logic is the highest level of hypocrisy.

Pro-life hypocrites are also likely to support the death penalty!

Maine Writer - In my opinion, if Kyle Rittenhouse had been a man of color, he would not have lived long enough to have a trial in Kenosha, WI,  because the police would have seen him as a perpetrator and considered him a threat to the public safety.  Just my opinion. In other words, American justice was not blind in the Rittenhosue jury trial.  Instead, the jury was "blindsided" by a biased judge who was apparently influenced by Second Amendment rights being somehow at risk if the defendant Rittenhouse were convicted. 

Editorial board echo published by the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, in Missouri:  The American justice system has performed its job in the murder trial of teenager Kyle Rittenhouse, but in no way can this verdict be deemed to have served the cause of justice. 

Rittenhouse was the beneficiary of a Kenosha, Wisconsin, judge who did everything in his power to ensure Rittenhouse walked free despite clear evidence that the teen had inserted himself into a dangerous situation, goaded confrontation with Black Lives Matter protesters and recklessly endangered others with an assault rifle the boy never should have had.

To the jury’s credit, it deliberated for three days before issuing not-guilty verdicts on all five felony counts. 

The length of their deliberations suggested jury members at least weighed the considerable evidence pointing to Rittenhouse’s guilt in the assault-rifle killings of two men and severe wounding of a third. The video evidence was incontrovertible that Rittenhouse recklessly inserted himself into a violent protest situation while brandishing a fully loaded AR-15 rifle.

A member of a self-appointed group of citizens who undertake law enforcement in their community without legal authority.

The vigilante community across America must be jubilant with the knowledge that it’s possible to go out hunting for violent protesters, provoking confrontation, and then successfully claiming self-defense to avoid prison time for murder.

The weapons possession part of this case alone should have yielded a quick-and-easy guilty verdict since Rittenhouse was 17 at the time and not permitted under Wisconsin law to possess a gun. Rittenhouse violated a curfew in order to join other vigilantes as rioters attacked and burned businesses in Kenosha. But Judge Bruce Schroeder dismissed a misdemeanor weapons possession charge before the jury could hear it. He also dismissed a non-criminal count for violating the curfew.

Schroeder hamstrung the prosecution at every turn. He banned use of the word “victims” to describe the people Rittenhouse shot but allowed defense lawyers to refer to them as rioters and arsonists. Bad guys who deserved what they got, in other words. At one point during the trial, Schroeder’s cellphone rang. His audible ringtone was a portion of “God Bless the U.S.A.,” whose command to “stand up!” has gained particular popularity among conservatives in response to Black athletes kneeling in protest of racism.

Schroeder also blocked the prosecution from showing photos of an unrepentant Rittenhouse celebrating and posing in a bar after the killings with members of the Proud Boys, a group linked to white supremacy.

Even if the jury believed Rittenhouse shot in self-defense, it’s unfathomable how jurors could conclude he had not recklessly endangered others, the topic of two counts against him. There was ample video available with Rittenhouse stating openly that he thought his “job” was to run toward danger. 

No, his job as a 17-year-old was to obey the curfew, stay at home, and leave his assault rifle locked up and unloaded until he was old enough to carry it responsibly.

Teenage vigilante Kyle Rittenhouse quite literally has gotten away with murder.

Maine Writer post script: In my mind, the Rittenhouse jury's verdict just proves that right wing zealots who claim to be pro-life, really love their guns more than they value any kind of life. 

Here is a prime example at this link here. 

"‘Pro-Life’ Texas Representative Threatens Beto O’Rourke With an AR-15", published in The Cut, by Bridget Read.  "Briscoe Cain has been reported to the FBI for his violent speech, which you might think would fly in the face of the 'sanctity of life' –type rhetoric..."

Senator Ted Cruz needs an ethics refresh!

Ted Cruz is circling the political drain. He is further polluting the decline in ethics and values among Republicans.

Echo opinion published in the Hickory Daily Record,  in the community of Hickory, North Carolina: 

#CruzToLoose! Remember when Ted Cruz fled to Mexico with his family because his wife found a cheap hotel deal to stay in a luxury Cancun resort? So, who let Cruz back in the US? He was born in Canada! (Rafael Edward Cruz was born on December 22, 1970, at Foothills Medical Centre in Calgary, Alberta, Canada, to Eleanor Elizabeth -née Darragh- Wilson and Cuban immigrant, Rafael Cruz.) Check out the article Ten things you did not know about Ted Cruz.

Ted Cruz's winter getaway - published in The Washington Post

To the Hickory Daily Record Editor: 
Obviously, Texas Senator Ted Cruz must have slept through his ethics classes at Harvard Law.

Or, maybe he was permanently warped by the treatment he received from Trump in the 2016, primary election when Trump made negative comments about his wife and insinuations that his father was somehow linked to Lee Harvey Oswald.

Maybe the recent tweet printed in the Hickory Daily Record is reflective of who he has always been. 

#CruzToLoose is circling the political drain!

To refresh your memory the tweet said: “The Biden DOJ has embraced Critical Race Theory. AG Garland’s son-in-law makes big money from a company involved in teaching CRT. So I asked if he sought an ethics opinion. He refused to answer my question. Apparently ethics aren’t a high priority in the Biden admin.”

Typically stupid! Cruz took something he probably heard on Fox (Fake!) who then took something they picked up from some right-wing blog and ran with it, without fact checking.

Attorney General Garland’s son-in-law does have ownership in a company that sells educational support products to schools, but CRT is not on the list of products and services. The company is Panorama Education based in Boston if you desire to check for yourself.

Ted Cruz is in no position to question anyone’s ethics. For a man with his education and (pseudo!) smarts, his decision to spread falsehoods is a poor use of that Harvard degree. I am disappointed in the Hickory Daily Record printing the tweet. I accept and support printing balanced political views, but this is not a view, it is malicious misinformation.

People run with garbage like this as fact without regard for the potential ramifications. The manufactured crisis over CRT has been the source of conflict and potential violence at school boards. 

People get threats, they drop out of public service, but the Cruz’s of the world justify their behavior as it's doing whatever it takes to win.

This is just one example of so many showing the decline in ethics and values within the Republican Party, beginning before Trump but getting doused with gasoline by Trump. We can count on two fingers the number of Republicans in Congress who have the courage to defend the Constitution and the Republic against those willing to lie, defame, suppress the vote, attempt a coup or whatever they deem necessary to win.

From David Turman, in Hickory, North Carolina