343 Comments
Dec 2, 2023Liked by Robert Reich

The correct answer is " all of the above".

Expand full comment

John, In my view, when only 1 choice entails an action that could cause immeasurable harm—“should never again hold office”—that choice supersedes all the other mere descriptors.

Expand full comment

John Breen and Barbara Jo Krieger:

I agree with both of you.

When I like more than one answer, I will find or write in "all of the above."

Expand full comment

Jonathan, Because some times in life we must choose, I persistently press fellow travelers to prioritize verbs (behaviors) that can result in great benefit or harm more so than nouns and adjectives.

Expand full comment

Right you are!!!!! I had a heck of a time making one choice.

Expand full comment

Same here, Carol.

Expand full comment
Dec 2, 2023·edited Dec 2, 2023

I read the first response, and then clicked Yes, and then the 2nd, and said "that too, and then the following response especially resonated!!! so Yes, all of the above.

Expand full comment

I came to the comments to say the same thing, but the most important one is that they should never again hold public office.

Expand full comment

I was about the say the same thing, John. ''All of the above'' is actually spot on for those two despicable monsters. Filthy, low down garbage is what they are.

Expand full comment

Exactly

Expand full comment

Nope, 4 does not apply to Trump.

Expand full comment

Sadly, the roots of MAGA Trumpism are evident in the elitist, Federalist, corporate politics of the Republican Party from the 1980s and even from the 1890s. Yes, they have “gone off the rails”, but even when they were “on their rails”, they were not acting in the best interests of our country.

Expand full comment

I think it includes not just the Orange god & the Prince of Pants on Fire but all of the spineless shouting or whimpering MAGA MOCs. The rest the former GOP are just bought votes for the Dark Money Polluters.

Expand full comment

It does now.

Expand full comment

Who doesn't it apply to? They may be less obvious versions, but the same.

Expand full comment
founding

Huh?

Expand full comment

I read in the Atlantic this week,that Kissinger also did this same thing in Pakistan/Bangladesh back in the 70s,and 1,000s of people were killed in that war.Kissinger didn't like the "Bengalis"that lived in Eastern Pakistan,and encouraged their killing.India eventually stepped in,forced Pakistan to stop the fighting,and helped form Bangladesh.

It all started over an election that Kissinger didn't like and he goaded the leadership who was like 1,000 miles away to step in.The Bengalis didn't feel represented by a government that was so far away and wanted their own representation closer to home.

I have been reading also about how he was given several"birthday parties"just this year,and nary a peep about his many(!)war crimes.How the hell does that get excused so easily? People talked about him like he was practically God,and ignored any mention of his war crimes in numerous countries.

Expand full comment

Well, at least, Robert, this time you were both better about Palestine/Israel. But the Palestinians and Israelis are not equally wrong at all. Israel has control and has oppressed the Palestinians right from the start. Israel drove 750,000 Palestinians from their homes at Israel’s inception, and the Palestinians did not do the same to Israel. Israel has murdered Palestinians and denied their rights in many ways, all along. It’s like saying Black and White Americans, or American Indians and White Americans, were equally wrong. Yes, Black people and American Indians did do some wrongs. But by far the lion’s share of the blame goes to my race, the White. It was a LONG time before many White people admitted it. The White people were in charge and were the oppressors. There’s still a long way to go on that. It’s what’s happening here. Please go farther in your perceptions. It’s not that I’m smarter than you are, but I guess I know more. 🥸

Meanwhile, thanks for the explanation of the difference between stopping inflation and lowering prices.

I did get one negative impression of Sandra Day O’Connor. (It’s interesting that she retired rather than keeping her position a lifetime appointment.) When W. Bush won his first election because the Supreme Court wouldn’t call for a recount, it became clear that certain Supreme Court Justices stood to gain financially from it. One of them was O’Connor. At least that’s what I heard.

Expand full comment

I think the biggest story of the week was the one reported in the NY Times by two veteran, Israel-based journalists on the overwhelming evidence that Israel's leaders knew of Hamas' attack plans over a year in advance of the October 7 invasion. They disregarded the plans as being beyond Hamas' capability.

Why did it take over six hours for the IDF to respond to the attack? Because most of the resources they would have used to defend the south were assigned to the West Bank -- protecting all of the illegal activities regarding new settlement building. There WERE some IDF forces in the south, but these were mainly troops dedicated to keeping watch over Gaza's border. AND, in the weeks before October 7, these observers ("spotters") were noticing and reporting exercises in Gaza that aligned with Hamas' attack plans. The spotters were told to disregard the activities. There is much, much more to this developing story.

In August 2019, former prime minister Ehud Barak told Israeli Army Radio that Netanyahu's "strategy is to keep Hamas alive and kicking … even at the price of abandoning the citizens [of the south] … in order to weaken the Palestinian Authority in Ramallah." Netanyahu recently told his far-right supporters that only he could prevent a two-state solution.

Expand full comment

I have been saying for years that Netanyahu is Israel’s trump and the Proud Boys are America’s Hamas. He used Hamas as part of his strategy to stay in power just as trump used Proud Boys and Oath Keepers. And just like trump, he surrounded himself with incompetent sycophants incapable of protecting Israel. And yet 40% of Americans want to put that monster back in the White House.

Expand full comment

Israel has been developing its weapons technology and supplying weapons and intel for genocides around the world for decades. Chile, Guatemala, Rwanda.

They have now been afforded the opportunity to test out new systems using AI for targeting in Gaza. They will surely market these as soon as they have been "proven."

Expand full comment

As anti semitic a trope as Jews causing the bubonic plague.

Expand full comment

Regarding bubonic plague. I do not know the death rate in any two month period, but here in the 21st century we know that approx. 6000 innocent children in Gaza have died as a result of Israeli actions within 60 days. not a bacterium.

Expand full comment

Point Two: This is very recent and being reported on by Israeli journalists, among them Yuval Abraham. He reports that Israel is using artificial intelligence to draw up targets and how Israel has loosened its constraints on attacks that could kill civilians. One former intelligence officer says Israel has developed a, “mass assassination factory.”

In one case, sources said the Israeli military approved an assassination strike on a single Hamas commander despite knowing the strike could kill hundreds of Palestinian civilians.

“Nothing happens by accident. When a 3-year-old girl is killed in a home in Gaza, it’s because someone in the army decided it wasn’t a big deal for her to be killed — that it was a price worth paying in order to hit [another] target. … Everything is intentional. We know exactly how much collateral damage there is in every [home],” unquote.

These are ISRAELI sources. It's important to examine Abraham's report in +972 magazine.

Expand full comment

Let's allow readers to fact check these things. (I never use the word "Jews" in this context. For me, as a ben Noach, the values of the Torah run contrary to the actions of Israel.)

Point One:

Sam Russek writes in a recent New Republic article, the following: "Israel Arms the World’s Autocrats—With Weapons Tested on Palestinians." “The Palestine Laboratory” -- written by Antony Loewenstein -- outlines how Israel sells its “battle-tested,” “field-proven” weapons and spyware to practically anyone, no matter how malevolent. Regarding Rwanda, Loewenstein documents "before and during the genocide,” even after much of the world enacted an embargo, the Israeli government had sent weapons to Hutu forces—Uzi submachine guns and Galil assault rifles, grenades and ammunition, in several shipments worth millions of dollars."

Loewenstein examines Israel’s modern war exports to Augusto Pinochet’s fascist junta in Chile, the repressive Shah of Iran, the Guatemalan genocide (where the country’s right wing called openly for the “Palestinianization” of Indigenous Mayans), and, more recently, authoritarian regimes in Russia, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Hungary, India, and Azerbaijan, which earlier this year ethnically cleansed thousands of Armenians from its southwest. -- Excuse me for detecting a pattern here.

Despite being a rather small nation, Israel ranks among the top 10 arms sellers. By "small" I mean a land area the size of Massachusetts and less than 10 million in population. Point Two to follow.

Expand full comment

It's important to note that Arabs/Palestinians are also semitic peoples. Accordingly, "antisemite" has broader implications than its recent common use.. (Unless the implication is that the above groups do not count.)

Expand full comment

Do you live on Mars? 6,000,000 dead in the Holocaust. Church policy. Spanish Inquisition.

Expand full comment

I urge you to read Thom Hartmann's Saturday Report. He has taken down the paywall. The information concerning Bush v. Gore and the politicized US Supreme Court Justices is shocking. Thanks to Reich, Hartmann, and others in the Substacks for helping us learn and understand why our government hasn't been working for us. Btw, I believe the Biden administration needs to do more than "urge" Israel to use restraint against Palestine. As Sanders said, we need to stop giving them 3.8 billion dollars per year without strings attached.

Expand full comment

Agreed! Especially since Israel is a major arms dealer

Expand full comment

"Drove 750,000 Palestinians from their homes" is bull. In 1947 The Arab Legion TOLD some to leave because that were going to burn everything and kill everyone "from the river to the sea." Some left. Those that stayed became Israeli citizens, with greater civil rights than Arabs in any Moslem country. The analogies are false.

Hamas, Islamic Jihad and others want to kill every Jew, anywhere, any time and any place.

Expand full comment

That’s totally incorrect. Israel has lied about this.

Expand full comment

"totally incorrect" -- the second paragraph about Hamas. etc. is correct. They have said this many, many times. In my opinion, it is the reason why Israel is doing what it is doing, regardless of all the history that is being discussed here.

Expand full comment

The far-right lies about EVERYTHING.

Expand full comment

Lehi was a Zionist paramilitary organisation that operated primarily against the British forces in Mandatory Palestine, but it was also among the groups that carried out the 1948 Deir Yassin massacre, killing at least 107 Palestinians. Four years earlier, the group had assassinated Walter Guinness, also known as Lord Moyne, the British minister resident in the Middle East. Later terrorist attacks included the assassination in 1948 of the Swedish diplomat Folke Bernadotte, the United Nations mediator between Israel and Arab countries.

Thirty years later, Israel introduced the Lehi ribbon, honoring the militant group’s ‘activity in the struggle for the establishment of Israel’ and in 1983 a former leader of the organisation, Yitzhak Shamir, became prime minister. It was around this time that the plaque was placed in front of the Great Synagogue commemorating its role in the Zionist struggle for liberation – namely, hiding arms deployed in Lehi’s terrorist attacks.

Expand full comment

All disputed. The Irgun were not the Israeli Army. Were not the reason virtually all left. This is propaganda. What ACTUALLY happened is that Arab/Moslem countries waged war, appropriated the Jewish quarter of Jerusalem.

Expand full comment

No. The Balfour Declaration gave Israel land belonging to others without consulting with them. The forced upheaval is documented.

Expand full comment

Killing Jews is not the appropriate solution. Land for peace was the solution.

Expand full comment

Who said it was the solution?

Expand full comment

Thinking of the Palestinians in Gaza [let us be clear -- I abhor all that Hamas does, I only speak of the Palestinians kept in an open cage for 25 years, their water aquifers re-routed to private swimming pools while they are left without even drinking water]

I am reminded of the Melian Dialogue. As Thucydides mentions -- the Athenians gave ultimatum to the citizens of Melos, and hearing of their entreaties, the Athenian ambassador replied:" the Strong will do what it likes, and the Weak must suffer"

Expand full comment

Sure sounds like the same bull from the middle ages -- Jews attributed for the plagues, for bad weather, for anything.

Expand full comment

THE PLAQUE INSIDE THE GREAT SYNAGOGUE IN ALLENBY STREET---Written in Hebrew and English, it says: ‘The Lehi used the basement and attic of this synagogue as a secret arms cache. It was discovered by the British during the “great curfew” imposed in July 1946, and the weapons were confiscated.’

Expand full comment

Not a surprise when it comes to empires. Took 400 years for the world to recover from the Roman Empire aggression and superiority. Nothing is new on earth...even a fright like Trump.

Expand full comment

2 plus 2 equals 4, not 22. That building was taken by the Arabs in 1948.

I saw what you said about Gaza. Gaza was the province of Egypt until 1979 when Sadat bargained with the US for land for peace. Ceded by Israel in 2006 . By now should have been developed. Blame Hamas for funding for missiles, rockets, munitions and tunnels.

Just another antisemite.

Expand full comment

Netanyahu funds Hamas for his mercenaries.

Expand full comment

The House finally had a belly full of George Santos, his parting remark was fittingly appropriate. The extreme Southern reaches of the underworld might offer Mrs. Santos a great vacation destination as she and Mr. Trump could have a lot to talk about. With the passing of Henry Kissinger and Sanda Day O'Connell we lost two Americans who possessed a quality that is difficult to find in today's thinkers, integrity. If you looked at the foundation of this country, you would be hard pressed to find better rocks with which to build a future.

Expand full comment

I disagree. Sandra Day O’Conner stayed in the court to make sure a Democrat did not get President! Gore won the Presidential election but she made sure that her buddy Conservative Bush won! That was also the year of “hanging chads” favoring Bush but that wasn’t enough cheating for the Republicans !

Expand full comment

Sandra--She had good points, especially on abortion which was recently overturned. She also paved the way for others to follow in her footsteps, an inspiration to many young women.

Expand full comment

Sandra--SDO graduated second in her class from the Harvard school of law. With those credentials the only job she could get was that of a legal secretary. She helped open doors that previously had been closed for most women. That is the rock I was speaking of.

Expand full comment

If he wasn't so outrageous and gay he would still be there. He must have angered Trump.

Expand full comment

My understanding is that very few had the option of staying

Expand full comment

The Arab community, spanning various religions excluding Judaism, accounts for 21% (around 2.048 million) if Israelis. An additional 5.5% (roughly 534,000 individuals) are classified as "others".

Your understanding is based on BS.

Expand full comment

AND THOSE ARABS HAVE THE RIGHT TO VOTE????

Expand full comment

Not only vote, some are in the Israeli government.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Arab_members_of_the_Knesset

Druze in the military.

Expand full comment

O'Connor retired to personally take care of her husband who had dementia. She regretted her involvement in the Bush fiasco. I think she was a first class person!

Expand full comment

See my comment below. IMHO she was farblunget for a long time. Bush v Gore is the greatest miscarriage of justice in US history.

Expand full comment

Probably, but corporations are people, started with a lie to the Supreme Court in an 1881 case, Southern Pacific Railroad that ultimately led the way to Citizens United. I read this in The Atlantic, March 5, 2018, article by Adam Winkler.

It is so much easier to use my cell phone to look up words as I often must to understand your posts, than to drag out my unabridged dictionary. farblunget definition: hopelessly lost; aimless wandering

Expand full comment
Dec 2, 2023·edited Dec 2, 2023

I agree that Israel is the dominant power in the region and has oppressed Palestinians. As such, Israel has the ability to choose a path toward peace. Israeli politics however are deeply divided around making peace. Netanyahu's coalition includes factions that have been waging war against peace for decades.

In my view the complex history of the conflict offers little of value. Both are right about some things and guilty about others. The issue is what do people want to create now? How can we stop the chain-of-pain? Israels current approach is not moving us in the right direction.

Expand full comment

Land for peace. Oslo Accords.

Where have you been?????

Expand full comment

Yes, but there are strong forces on both sides opposing any such deal. Rabin was assassinated and Arafat "refused to sign his own death warrant". So there has to be a process and dialog to build a new consensus, and a shift to a new generation of leaders.

Expand full comment

Never up never in. Blinken in Ramallah. Read the news.

Expand full comment

Carol, every single time that Israel has put forth a peace PROPOSAL (not a peace MANDATE, peace cannot be mandated), whoever the Palestinian leadership was at the moment has flat out rejected it. Those in Palestinian leadership do not want peace with Israel, period, end of story. They want the full, wholesale destruction of Israel and the slaughter of every Jew on earth. When Israel PULLED OUT of Gaza, what was the first thing that the Palestinians did? They ripped out the hydroponic gardens left by the Israelis, that’s what they did. They wiped out a way to produce food for themselves. That’s akin to saying, “I’m so mad at you, I’m gonna cut off my own hand. That’ll show you who’s boss”. You cannot negotiate with people whose primary goal, written into their governmental charter, is to kill you. And do not conflate the struggles of Black Americans, and Native Americans, with Palestinians, or any other group. That is dehumanising all the very people whose side you claim to “be on”. Every group has their own history; the particulars of people’s stories vary from group to group. Israelis have NEVER fought to erase the Arabic language, as did the White American government in the US towards the Native American population. The Israeli government NEVER moved to erase all (or any) Muslim holiday/Holy Day observance. Which is the opposite of what the Palestinian leaders do. When do they attack Israel? On Jewish Holy Days. You might recall the Yom Kippur War - do you know anything about the meaning of Yom Kippur, Carol, and its spiritual and religious significance to Jews? And are you aware that the October 7 massacre occurred on the holiday of Simchat Torah? Do you know what Simchat Torah is? We Jews celebrate the conclusion of reading the entire 5 Books of Moses (the Torah), AND THEN we begin to read those same books all over again. In other words, Carol, Simchat Torah honors and celebrates the first part of the Bible- your Bible, and mine. That’s what Hamas decided to desecrate. In THAT sense, it is Hamas that is very much like the American colonial and governmental powers, who wanted to wipe out Native American culture, holidays, religious and spiritual observance, the very language of the Native peoples, etc. When Hamas was elected by the Palestinians to be their governing body in Gaza, there’s so much that Hamas could have done to empower, educate, and lift up their own citizens. Instead, they built underground tunnels to be used to attack Israelis. Yes, there are lots of issues to be addressed and resolved in terms of how both Israelis and Palestinians can live together, given that both peoples have had a presence on this land going back thousands of years. “This land is your land/this land is my land”. However, to equate the Palestinian struggle with the Black struggle with the Native American struggle demeans and diminishes and, frankly, white washes (pun utterly intended) the nuanced histories and concerns of all parties. And, frankly, it disempowers the very people you claim that you want to lift up.

Expand full comment

Woah, Mitzi. I write as a ben Noach -- if you know what that is. Born as a non-Jew, I'm on the road to conversion. I've been through over a dozen cycles of the Torah now. I feel HaShem had a purpose placing me in birth where HE did. Baruch HaShem.

Because of my path, I am tuned into broadcasts from orthodox rabbis. In late September / early October, I heard one of them talking about the concert that was being held in the south. To say he was unhappy would be an understatement. He mentioned a large statue of Buddha would be set up on Simchas Torah, and the festival would attract many "lefties" and homosexuals from Tel Aviv. Those who don't mind desecrating Shabbat.

Hamas' plans for attack were provided to the intelligence services in Israel over a year prior to the attack. The exact date was not known. In August of 2019, former prime minister Ehud Barak told Israeli Army Radio that Netanyahu's "strategy is to keep Hamas alive and kicking … even at the price of abandoning the citizens [of the south] … in order to weaken the Palestinian Authority in Ramallah."

Abandoning the lefties and peaceniks of the southern kibbutzim. In the weeks prior to October 7, the small complement of IDF "spotters" on the border with Gaza noted and reported increased activity that looked like the training prior to an attack. They were told to stop reporting. This is ALL reported from Israeli sources.

Your Zionist indoctrination is very evident. Someday, I hope you'll start to deal with reality. Suggest spending some time with Rabbi Yaakov Shapiro > "How Zionism hijacked Judaism." May HaShem open your eyes.

Expand full comment

Thomas, I’m very aware what/who a ben Noach- a son of Noah, as in, Noah of the Flood, is. Mazal Tov v’Yasher Koach on your path to conversion. As you and I are both writing on Shabbat, I’d say that neither one of us is completely Shomer Shabbos. In fact, our exchange here is not doing a terrific job of bringing Shalom to our Shabbat.

That said, I am also quite aware that those concert-goers on Simchas Torah were NOT observing Simchas Torah, in any meaningful, religious way at all. I can totally understand any Orthodox Rabbi, anywhere in the world, being very upset by the actions of those people. I come from a very Orthodox family myself, Thomas, with a long line of highly observant, Orthodox Rabbis. I do understand these things quite well.

For the last 40 years of my life, I behave and feel myself to be a “Reformative” Jew, if you understand. Somewhere between Reform and Conservative. I cannot be Orthodox at all, as I am a Cantorial Soloist/Schlichat Tzibburah. Orthodox folks, Rabbis and others, think that I’m desecrating G-d’s Name by singing in front of men and women, G-d forbid!!!!!!! One of the gifts that HaShem gave me is the gift of song, music, and some very powerful and spot-on pitch vocal cords :-) When I sing in my synagogue community, my kavannah is to do what I can to lift ALL our voices to HaShem, min HaShamayim.

My brother is a Haredi Jew who lives with his wife and 5 children in Beit Shemesh (their eldest daughter became married on November 5, Baruch HaShem, amazingly, with all the fighting going on, is now out of the house). He’s also super musically gifted, by the way. I have often thought that if the stars had been aligned differently (they weren’t), my bro and I would have been the Jewish version of the Carpenters, as in Karen and Richard Carpenter. It has always been beyond sad to me that he and I will never be able to share our creativity together. Very sad.

My son attends a Jewish high school.

Would you like to talk Torah together, and discuss Parasha Va’yishlach? It’s still Shabbos in LA, CA, so I’m still studying it.

I wrote all this to say that you may be judging me, my thoughts, and my values a bit prematurely. To say I’m an “indoctrinated Zionist” doesn’t actually describe who I am.

If it’s still Shabbos where you are, I wish you a Shabbat Shalom.

Expand full comment

A Noahide is not required to keep Shabbos as a child of Israel does. We recognize that the mitzvah of Shabbos was given to Israel.

If I judged you in any way, it is out of the impression that you do not have a single close Palestinian friend. I was raised in a part of Michigan that counted MANY from Palestine, Syria, Lebanon, etc. in my community as dear friends and classmates.

Expand full comment

I do have a few friends - not many, as you do - who are Palestinian. The Hamas leadership are the people I have huge issue with. I don’t like Netanyahu, by the way, either. His policies, in my opinion, have NOT been good for the Jews, or for anyone else in the region - especially the Palestinians.

As I said in my first comment, there are many, many problems to be dealt with and resolved. I honestly don’t know though if anything is resolvable at this point, there has been so much bloodshed. I really don’t know what to say Thomas, other than, I wish you well. And I’m glad that you’ve found a spiritual path and a spiritual home that feels right to you. Everyone deserves that.

Expand full comment

Thank you, Mitzi. May the coming of Moshiach be soon ... in our time. Shalom

Expand full comment

From the Ten Commandments...thou shall not kill, steal, Lie and bare false witness. Don't talk about Jews but humans. God loves us all. Love they neighbor. Not liking Netanyahu yet you still talk like that? RW con Netanyahu paid for and formed Hamas.

They are his mercenaries and you are being used. Putin has mercenaries too. In thou neveyUS they call them contractors. Form two states or one and live in peace. We are stick of giving Israel billions yet you never change, 75 yrs. We're fed up. You are a welfare state paying for Jews to come and settle in other countries land. Many saying they are Jews but are not. We Americans could use housing and free health care.

Expand full comment
founding

Sandra Day O’Connor retired because her husband had dementia and she went home to be with him. Even tho someone has a life time appointment one does not have to stay for a life time. That is sort of like slavery. After her retirement her husband was in a care facility and fell in love with another woman and did not recognize or acknowledge Justice O’ Connor. It must have been heartbreaking.

Expand full comment

My twin sister has dementia. I blame her years of Valium use. She betrayed me too. She was outright nasty. Her daughter not admitting she had a problem til she was around her more. All her children want is my sister's money. What a terrible disease. We just called it old age years ago.

Expand full comment
Dec 2, 2023Liked by Heather Lofthouse

I’m assuming these were all rhetorical questions. That said, I answered “other” on the question. It should be ALL OF THE ABOVE!

Have a great weekend everyone...:)

Expand full comment

How the hell did Kissinger get the Nobel peace prize and gosh darn Medal of Honor?

Expand full comment

I wondered the same. Undeservedly awarding him those prizes devalued their worth!

Expand full comment

Maybe by leaving office he gave peace a chance and thereby received the prize?

Expand full comment

Kissinger also had a great big 100th birthday party at the New York Public Library earlier this year, and lots of prominent Americans were in attendance, including Antony Blinken and Samantha Powers (another Peace Prize winner for her book on genocide.) I'm certain that Daniel Ellsberg was not invited!

Expand full comment

When you look at the list of Peace Prize winners, it is clear that several mistakes have been made in the past in awarding them. I recall that a North Vietnam guy won the "Peace Prize" with Dr. K.

Expand full comment

All of the above! Despicable deplorables!!!

Expand full comment

The House should perform an inventory of the work spaces of George Santos to determine what stuff he stole from the House! I bet some things are missing!

Expand full comment

Good point. He skipped Brazil to get out of legal trouble and he may disappear from the U.S. to avoid the charges.

Expand full comment

All of the above.

Expand full comment
Dec 2, 2023Liked by Robert Reich

Although…it’s really all of the above, in answer to this week’s question, I chose should never hold office again b/c that is the most important consequence of all the others!!

Expand full comment

Trump and Santos are the poster boys of different kinds of privilege. Trump benefits from #OrangePrivilege where because of his bluster and distain for Democrats, he can do no wrong.

For Santos, his privilege is derived from clinging to the coattails of Trump. By sneaking into the House atop a mountain of lies, Santos felt he could breeze through any ethical travesties in the same manner.

That even Republicans found this beyond the pale is remarkable. There’s a very low bar for acceptability. Let’s hope that five years from now, Santos has no other options but to be spraying bowling shoes behind the counter in his next career.

Expand full comment

I hope he doesn't even have that option. Spraying bowling shoes is still honorable work, and this type of job should be filled by honorable people. Santos should pay back his debt to society by picking up trash from the side of the highway.

Expand full comment

My thought was that nobody would ever hire him to do anything, so what lies ahead for him is in a way fortunate: a ward of the state with three squares and a cot.

Expand full comment

He's a professional con artist! After he leaves jail (assuming he actually goes to jail), he'll make a good living conning suckers out of their money and material processions. He won't need to work for a living.

Expand full comment

Equating Trump and Santos is making light of a dangerous situation. Even Republicans joined to oust Santos. They stand with Trump and in fear of him. Trump endangers our country. Santos a is a joke. What they have in common was voters who fell for them, but Santos has no base. Trump’s base is firmly rooted.

Expand full comment

See the Guardian article I wrote about Mad Poll Disease in America… https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/dec/01/polls-joe-biden-election-2024-democrats

Expand full comment

Thanks for the link to your article on the anti-MAGA majority and polls. I wish you included the real danger of other well funded candidates splitting the anti-MAGA vote. I see that as a real danger and it might be too late to focus on once these candidates get some traction as a reasonable choice between Blue and Red.

It needs to be emphasized that it is VOTE BLUE or else the fascists may win without a majority.

Expand full comment

Without a doubt, voting BLUE from school board, local elections all the way to the top is critical. Regarding “I wish you had included”…I wrote a comment, not an article. You can and did note other candidates…that’s your opinion.

My opinion on that is that they are irrelevant. Once again pointing to what the article says..this is more about Dem hysteria than fact. Biden won by 8mil BEFORE the trump indictments, BEFORE women’s right to choose was removed by rt wingers in many states, BEFORE the push to reverse equality laws for LGBTQIA, BEFORE the religious nut cases pushed religion into public schools and banned books! And suddenly-it’s a close call! 🤦🏻 We must stop falling for whatever right wing media puts out there. We are a very large majority!

Expand full comment

If your opinion is right that other candidates are irrelevant then all is good, but if you’re mistaken then we’ll find ourselves in trouble. As you must know our system with the electoral college means that 8 million more votes doesn’t mean victory as a majority didn’t in 2016. In competitive states the other candidates can make a difference and we ought not wait till they are beginning their campaign in earnest, and they will with money from the enemies of democracy, to make it clear it’s only Blue that will defeat Red.

Expand full comment
Dec 2, 2023Liked by Robert Reich, Heather Lofthouse

Robert, Thank you for discussing that monopolies can keep prices higher than they should be and hoard even more wealth.

And don’t forget about the perpetual sales that make it appear they are lowering prices! They’re not.

Heather, Yes please! Explainer videos and encourage sharing. These are so important, especially now with the hysteria over polls that simply aren’t true about Trumpanzee having any chance if winning! (See the Guardian article 12/02/23) “Mad Poll Disease” M Podhorzer) Please read!

Expand full comment

That's eliding past the fact that they should never have won public office.

Expand full comment

Totally agree Jeanette!

Expand full comment

I chose that that neither George Santos nor D. J. tRump should ever be allowed to serve in public office ever again.

Expand full comment
Dec 2, 2023·edited Dec 2, 2023

Why was “All of the Above” not an option? Each option was equally bad & just as true of both of them.

Expand full comment

These two MINOs (pronounced 'minnows' for Men In Name Only) have no redeeming features. They are the apotheosis of evil, encompassing 'all of the above' with gusto,

Expand full comment

So unfair to limit us to one devastating insult each!

Expand full comment