Notes from Underground – November 2022

11/30/22 – The American people need to stop glorifying rich, stupid a—holes and start demanding better compensation. The US is the most anti-labor country in the western world, and that’s one of the key reasons we have so many problems. “The idea that a job is fundamentally a generous favor granted to you by your boss is woven deeply into American law and culture, and one president can’t unwind it completely. But Biden could give voice to the Americans who know there’s something deeply wrong with how we think about work.” (Also, the shallow, sell-out Boomers are the worst generation in recent American history.)
Biden is averting a railroad strike but missing an opportunity

11/30/22 – “It’s profit over people in America, and it’s very frustrating.” We must bring an end to the plutocracy.
Railway union organizer has a message for Biden

11/30/22 – So true! If the evil one, Trump, becomes the Republican nominee again (God-forbid), they will all fall behind him. “What’s really going on here is something once explained to me (in a different context) by a China-watcher: ‘They say that an official who has done wrong will lose power. But what really happens is that an official who loses power will be accused of doing wrong.’” They are just trying to get rid of him because they think he’s a political loser not because they are outraged by any of his outrageous actions. The GOP is morally bankrupt.
A Ploy, Not a Principle

11/30/22 – Absolutely! “Both the impulse and the means [to steal an election] remain alive. That should be cause for action. Trump’s brazen effort to overturn U.S. democracy has created fleeting and unusual bipartisan urgency for [ECA] reform. It would be the height of folly to let that slip away.”
New Trumpist threats in Arizona make electoral college reform urgent

11/29/22 – What the f—k?
Russia’s Wagner Group recruits prisoners in Africa to fight against Ukraine

11/29/22 – Of course, the evil monster Hitler used a sacred symbol for the profane. The Nazis also called themselves, “Aryans,” even though that term has been used to describe the Aryans (basically Persians) who invaded India. Don’t let Hitler destroy a religious symbol as he tried to destroy a religious people, the Jewish people. Don’t let him win anything. “‘You cannot call it a symbol of evil or (deny) other facts that have existed for hundreds [thousands, actually] of years, just because of Hitler,’ he said…. Jain wishes people would differentiate between their symbol of peace and Hitler’s swastika just as they do with the hateful burning cross symbol and Christianity’s sacred crucifix.”
Asian faiths try to save swastika symbol corrupted by Hitler

11/29/22 – Wow, are these crazy people dumb! “If votes from this Republican stronghold somehow went uncounted, it could flip two races to Democrats.”
Rural Arizona county delays certifying midterm results as election disputes persist

11/28/22 – Fully agree! The West needs to give a full-throated defense of and material support to the Iranian protesters. “Now the talks are widely regarded as dead — and rightly so. Democratic leaders need to rethink their relationship with a barbaric regime that has no compunction about killing its own citizens. For too long, rather than placing the emphasis on Iranians’ human rights, the West has naively prioritized short-term goals of containing the Islamic republic’s nuclear ambitions through diplomacy.”
The West is finally waking up to the real problem in Iran

11/28/22 – Sanity is saving the Democrats and democracy.
Suburbanites are saving the Democrats in Georgia — and elsewhere

11/27/22 – Happy Advent! “China might not immediately come to mind when you think of Advent, but roughly 5.1% of the population of 1.41 billion is Christian. Chinese Christians light up their homes with colorful paper lanterns during Advent, and you might find red paper pagodas cut out and placed in windows. They follow many of the traditions that were brought by Western missionaries. An emerging Christmas tradition is the giving of apples, sometimes sold in stores wrapped in colored paper.”
What is Advent? And what traditions do people follow worldwide?

11/27/22 – Voter: What are you for? GOP: We’re for lower taxes for the rich, taking away your rights, and authoritarianism. Voting should be easy because that’s how democracies should work. Republicans want to suppress the vote because they know that when the people speak, it won’t be for this. “Griffin, a Republican, said she is concerned that the extra day will help Democrats. ‘I’m afraid it will. It is a fear, and Sunday also, because then they can bus the church people,’ she said.” If you’re afraid of the people’s voice, then your party and candidates have a problem. “‘We’ll do it again and again and again,’ said Robert Schofer, a Warnock supporter from Kennesaw. ‘And again.’” Vote blue Georgia, and shut out the crazy!
Early voters in Georgia head to the polls Saturday for Senate runoff

11/27/22 – Why are so many “conservatives” corrupt? SupremeKKKourt “Americans want the court to be above partisan politics…, but a growing number of voters think that the court is a partisan institution. Now, it seems the justices are not just delivering policy wins to one side of the aisle but have developed inside relationships with conservative organizations…. (The Code of Conduct for United States Judges provides ethical guidance for lower court judges but specifically does not cover Supreme Court justices.) The court seems convinced that it can continue on its current trajectory no matter how unhappy Americans are…[which] would be dangerous for American democracy.” Supreme Court justices should also be required to follow the Code of Conduct.
Opinion: Bombshell report deals another blow to the Supreme Court’s reputation

11/27/22 – Russia’s terror strategy is backfiring. Instead of reversing course, it’s doubling or tripling down. Genius. “But hope, resilience and defiance? Kyiv has all those in abundance. And perhaps more so now than at any time since Russia invaded Ukraine nine months ago…. ‘Anger turned into donations to charities to defeat the enemy as soon as possible,’ she says. ‘I plan to stay in Kyiv, work, study and donate to the armed forces.’… ‘The birth of a girl,’ says Mandrygol, ‘brings us peace and victory.’”
Hardship and hope: Winter, missile storms show Kyiv’s mettle

Never underestimate a group of people this tough.
Bombed, not beaten: Ukraine’s capital flips to survival mode

“He scoffed at Moscow’s attempts to intimidate Ukrainian civilians, saying that was the Russian military’s only option after a string of battlefield setbacks. ‘Either energy terror, or artillery terror, or missile terror — that’s all that Russia has dwindled to under its current leaders,’ Zelenskyy said.” Ukraine. Respect.
Europe scrambles to help Ukraine keep the heat and lights on

11/26/22 – Holodomor, 90th Anniversary “On Nov. 26, amid Russia’s war, Ukraine commemorated the victims of another tragedy: Holodomor, a man-made famine that killed millions of Ukrainians in 1932-1933.

Holodomor was imposed on Ukrainians, primarily Ukrainian villagers, by the Moscow-based Soviet authorities led by dictator Joseph Stalin. Ukraine has been fighting to get Holodomor recognized globally as an act of genocide against Ukrainians.

‘Ukraine has gone through one genocide,’ President Volodymyr Zelensky said in his address on Nov. 26. ‘And today we are doing everything possible and impossible to stop Russia’s yet another genocidal policy – although a new one, it is so similar to the one that killed millions of people in the 20th century.'”

11/26/22 – White people in particular are drawn to atheism because they love worshipping themselves.

11/26/22 – If there’s one group of people you can count on to do the wrong thing, it’s Germans. They are the worst of the worst.
Too many German voters are gravitating to the political extremes

11/26/22 – No matter how the disgraceful Ilhan Omar, who is not a congresswoman but an opportunist with no principles or values, votes, the Ottoman-era slaughter of Armenians was also a genocide.

11/26/22 – Academic opinion can go f—k itself. Pope Francis is right. The Holodomor was a genocide. Russia’s current terrorism is also a genocide. “Saturday [today] marks the 90th anniversary of the start of the famine, which Ukraine commemorates every fourth Saturday of November with a Day of Memory.” Pray for Ukraine. Слава Україні
Pope links plight of Ukrainians today to Stalin’s ‘genocide’

11/25/22 – The plutocrats are an abomination.

11/25/22 – The evil one, Trump, needs to be treated like everyone else. Lock him up.
Legal experts in new report conclude there’s a ‘strong basis’ to charge Trump

11/25/22 – It’s just a matter of time before Elon Musk’s selfishness and irresponsibility gets someone killed if it hasn’t already.

11/25/22 – What kind of an ally is this? “He said that the United States has an ‘ethical responsibility to protect the Kurds from being ethnically cleansed from this region.’ He urged U.S. officials to pressure Turkey to de-escalate its attacks before there is a disaster.” The US absolutely has an obligation to protect the Kurds. Do your jobs, Gen. Mark A. Milley, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, President Biden!
Turkey is playing with fire in northern Syria

11/25/22 – “Now a holiday has no connection with using a man either by beating or feeding him. When you give a man a holiday you give him back his body and soul.” G.K. Chesterton

11/24/22 – We’re thankful for freedom, democracy, and always and above all else, God. Happy Thanksgiving!

11/23/22 – “The French historian Ernest Renan said a nation is a ‘daily plebiscite.’ Ukrainians cast their votes daily by putting their lives in mortal peril. It does not diminish their individual heroism to note that they are well led. ‘In no field of man’s activities,’ Churchill wrote, ‘is the tendency to mass effects and the suppression of the individual more evident than in modern war.’ On this day, give thanks that you have lived to be reminded by Zelensky that some pugnacious individualism is magnificently resistant to suppression.”
Be thankful for the pugnacious Zelensky’s magnificent resistance to suppression

11/22/22 – “Musk’s ‘decisions over the last month have been erratic and alarming, but this decision is dangerous and a threat to American democracy,’ tweeted Anti-Defamation League CEO Jonathan Greenblatt. ‘We need to ask — is it time for Twitter to go?’” Yes.
Advertisers are dropping Twitter. Musk can’t afford to lose any more.

11/21/22 – DeSantis is not as evil as the evil one, but DeSantis is an autocratic monster. This is also the state of the GOP. “DeSantis’s contempt for dissent and his crackdown on critics should not be discounted. This is the profile of a constitutional ignoramus, a bully and a strongman. Voters should be forewarned.”
Beware, DeSantis is as much a threat to America as Trump

11/21/22 – It wasn’t the racism, sexism, religious bigotry, extortion, treason, traitorousness, evilness, incitement of insurrection, calling on other politicians to be murdered, authoritarianism, or attack on our democracy. It was that he has been losing. All else equal, if he hadn’t been losing, Paul Ryan and other Republicans would still support the evil one, Trump. This is the state of the GOP.
Paul Ryan invents a new category of anti-Trumpism

11/20/22 – Until it touches the Russians personally, they don’t care. “Sokolova said that the relatives of mobilized men ‘realize what is going on but people whose relatives were not mobilized see the world through rose-colored glasses. They have no idea what’s going on and they’re not interested.’”
And even when it touches them, they still believe the lies. This is MAGA. “She said she fears for her husband’s life but said she does not blame Putin, ‘because he is a smart person.’ ‘We are absolutely confused, at a loss and we feel abandoned,’ she said. ‘We’re crying from morning till night.’”
Angry families say Russian conscripts thrown to front line unprepared

11/20/22 – Don’t be deceived by the lies. (See Josh Hawley et al.) The GOP wants to enslave American workers and undermine the power of labor and the labor movement.
How the pandemic ended America’s bad romance with work

11/20/22 – Democracy is threatened by MAGA and the GOP. It is Americans’ civic obligation to step up and save it.