Happened to catch a clip of Last Word from a recent show, where Lawrence O’Donnell really stood up for John Fetterman after what, by most accounts, was not exactly a stellar debate performance on Fetterman’s part.

The fact that he’s only a few months beyond suffering a stroke seems to be playing mainly to his detriment at the moment. Many in the press and of course the noisy Fox News crowd pounced, doing the predictable piling on, questioning his fitness and the wisdom of continuing to campaign. But O’Donnell reminded his audience that there have been two members of Congress who suffered strokes earlier this year and are back on the job. He also brought Churchill and FDR into the conversation, as examples of notable leaders who were dealing with physical ailments and limitations throughout their tenures.

It remains to be seen to what extent Fetterman recovers from the stroke. Doctors seem to think he’s making good progress. Obviously, the stakes are high, and if things were different– i.e. a less controversial opponent– maybe Fetterman would bow out and understandably take time to heal more fully. As things are, though, the need will remain for an alternative to Dr. Oz– an out-of-touch, out-of-state opportunist, and the embodiment of a scary proposition.

May Mr. Fetterman continue to heal and prove the skeptics wrong.

Following up on a post from earlier this month, it is ever clearer that Republican strategy is to offer a slate of candidates running the gamut from heartless to clueless to extraordinarily inept. On purpose.

Because, apparently, their concern lies not with good, rational governance but instead with letting Democrats know just how angry they are about… everything. The worse the candidate, the better.

They are willing to let the union go to hell just to prove a point. The point being?

Races that in more sane times one might think wouldn’t be close (or happening at all) are turning into nailbiters. Raphael Warnock in a dead heat with Herschel Walker? John Fetterman in a dead heat with Dr. Oz. Ron Johnson in a statistical dead heat with his Democratic challenger. The list goes on, across the nation.

Let’s cut to the chase: we are heading toward a day of reckoning. The healing did not begin, nor was anything settled at Appomattox.

The latest math and reading test scores for 4^th and 8^th graders were predictably low. Quite low, and trending that way before the pandemic, but exacerbated by Covid-19 and the attendant upheaval.

Before the finger-pointing has a chance to fester, I hope educators can sidestep the blame game and address ways to make up for lost time, which happened through no one’s fault—left or right, red or blue. It’s best we remember that we were dealing with A PANDEMIC, uncharted territory for everybody.

Let’s leave it at that and commit to finding ways to reverse the trends.

Ron DeSantis was recently put on the spot in a debate with Charlie Crist. Crist asked him directly whether or not he intended to finish out his term if he were to be reelected, and the best DeSantis could do was offer up a predictable and pathetic burn, along with total avoidance of a real answer to the question. Everyone in Florida and anyone else who’s been following the trends knows DeSantis has his sights set on the White House, which of course means Florida will be looking for a new Governor about this time next year, or sometime early 2024. It probably won’t matter. People will vote for DeSantis anyway, just because.

On another depressing note, Lindsey Graham got what he was looking for from Clarence Thomas- an injunction from a sitting Supreme Court justice that keeps Graham from having to answer a subpoena in Georgia. On its face, this seems like overreach and an inappropriate ask on the part of Graham, but he obviously knew what he was doing, that he had a friend in high places who should have recused himself but didn’t. So the sniveling, conniving wiener avoids the hot seat, for now.

When do these people have time to actually do their jobs? They seem to be very busy saving their own asses or furthering their careers.

The electorate are taken for idiots. Between the tenor of political advertising, and the way certain candidates behave and speak, it’s apparent that more than a few running for office lack a certain faith in humanity. They appeal to fear and ignorance. In fact, they bank on fear and ignorance, since an informed and reasoning electorate would be more likely to steer clear of these people.

I cannot remember an election cycle, besides the last two, where there were such stark contrasts between candidates and platforms. After wading through the invective and dark, grainy advertising coming from both sides, the real substance of arguments and platforms clearly resides with blue. They are the ones addressing real needs, or at least trying to.

Red are fear-mongering, narrow-minded, Christian conservatives who have never understood or simply chosen to ignore the separation of church and state, who cannot shake the outsized reverence for free market capitalism, low taxes, small government, and the 2nd Amendment. Red, ironically, is too enthralled with the ideal of freedom. Freedom is paramount, even as they seem to not understand that there is much more to that concept than whether or not we can own a home arsenal or say “Merry Christmas.”

The DJIA has its best week since June while the rest of the world is going up, or down, in flames. A telling juxtaposition of fortunes and priorities. A jarring disconnect that momentarily distracts from the horrific nature of what’s happening in Ukraine, or a hospital in Dallas, or wherever. Probably won’t be long before all those gains disappear again.

All the while, the people of Ukraine continue to struggle to survive. That glimmer of hope, of a turning tide, is fast fading with news that power is out over wide swaths of the country. Russia is doubling down, attacking the power grid, the internet, making life even more of a slog than it already was. And this as the cold weather soon arrives. Ruthless, heartless monsters.

But hey, the Dow gained over 700 points on Friday! What’s not to like about that?

I had a check-up the other day and asked the doctor about the latest Covid booster—whether I should get it or not. In a matter-of-fact manner, he said “You can’t have too many antibodies,” or something like that. So, yes on getting the booster.

But it was what else he said that made me a bit angry with the coverage the latest variants are getting in the media. It’s the 5-alarm fire again, warning of a fall and winter spike with several variants on the attack. I forget exactly how he phrased it, but the doc said that Covid has been weakened and most of us have a decent level of immunity, either from the vaccines and boosters, or from contracting the illness. Let’s just say he wasn’t joining the media in sounding the alarm.

I know news outlets play a role in keeping us informed, but it seems like they’re making more out of this than they need to, as they have a tendency to do. It’s not that we don’t need to know what’s going on with Covid. It’s more that we’re getting beaten down with unnecessary drama and hype.

I suppose there are still alot of vulnerable people who are unvaccinated or insufficiently boosted, but there’s a good chance they’re not watching the networks who are sounding the alarm.

America really is a remarkable experiment. Immigrants, or descendants of immigrants living in a place where they dared conceive of a life marked, to some extent, by self-determination and having choices.

Franklin, Hamilton, Jefferson, Washington, Madison and the rest created this simultaneously robust and fragile entity in which people, at least on paper, were granted those inalienable rights, along with certain responsibilities. What we’ve learned since is that those rights were enjoyed largely by white northern European immigrants who gave no quarter to indigenous people and to others who didn’t look like them or worship like them or talk like them. Most of us know this by now. It’s still the case, though things are changing rapidly.

Maybe we’re disappointed by the reality, by the hypocrisy and biased history taught as truth when we were growing up. Yet the ideal still motivates.

I mention all this because we’re living, once again, in a time when this grand experiment is under assault. Once again, people seem to be forgetting how hard it is to maintain this fragile space, not fully understanding or appreciative of what they have. They’re slipping into default mode, where the only seemingly viable form of governance finds expression in the loudest talkers– the self-serving autocrat, the promise-spewing, power-hungry despot for whom government of the people, by the people, and for the people presents too much of a challenge, is too cumbersome, too hard. Maybe even a quaint, ridiculous notion.

It might get one thinking that representative governance, with its attendant messiness, give and take, winning AND losing, and the need for a cosmic, color-blind perspective and sense of unity, is somehow always going to be beyond too many of us, destined to remain an ideal and not much more.

Maybe the best we can hope for is that enough of us are on the same page, working toward that more perfect union.

Ghastly violence perpetrated on innocent citizens of a sovereign nation. Live and let live are just words on a page, a laughably empty cliche for someone like Vladimir Putin and whoever else is calling the shots in Moscow.

No one, except maybe Putin himself and the hardliners around him, deserves to die a victim of a suicide drone or other means of indiscriminate, cold-hearted aggression.

I’m not saying this the way I’m feeling this, which is really frustrating. It’s been difficult to verbalize the vehemence and anger that have been stirred up since word of a troop buildup on the Ukraine border hit the news cycle in, when, December of last year?

No one has a say in being here. No one has knowingly signed up for living a life destined to be cut short because an out-of-touch oligarch deems it so. It seems unfathomable to me that people are born into the world merely to suffer, born to die without ever getting a taste of self-determination. This in itself is absurd to me, and as good a reason as any for not wanting to become a mere statistic in a senseless battle of wills.

History is littered with vanquished “leaders” who have surrendered to the siren song of power. People who are convinced, wrongly, of their own importance and the propriety of whatever misguided vision drives them. The tragic reality is that their insistence on getting their own way leads to incomprehensible suffering and death. And the most disgusting thing is that they don’t care about tearing so many lives apart.

These are crimes against humanity that, one might think, deserve eternal damnation and permanent residence in a hellish place. Or at least a tribunal at The Hague. The only trouble is, Vladimir Putin and others like him don’t buy into the whole consequences thing. They’re somehow above all that, yet still blind, faithless, and getting desperate, oblivious to anything other than preserving their offensively garish lifestyles and saving their own hides.

The previous entry was not exactly brimming with optimisim. Apologies must somehow be in order, but I just can’t bring myself to do that.

I want so much to believe that humans are capable of virtuous behavior on a corporate scale, able to unify and steer the ship away from the rocks before disaster ensues. There’s always a flicker of hope that we can learn from previous egregious mistakes. But it’s not looking that way, currently. After all, there are a lot of people on the planet, and there’s liable to be a few bad players who somehow manage to end up in positions of power.

We possess some fatal flaw, some unevolved, lingering weakness that overrules and undermines our better angels, that keeps us mired in tribalism, motivated by pride and distrust, and a need to prevail.

It is difficult to find the words to adequately plum the depths of the depravity currently on display in Ukraine. The stakes are high for everybody, outcomes seemingly in the hands of people who would love nothing more than to continue preying on peoples’ fears, creating chaos and instability and some new world order.

They of course have to be stopped, which leaves us having to contemplate—yet again!—committing to ridding the world of the latest Hitler wannabes.

Sorry. Just can’t shake this lack of faith in humanity.