By Michael Woyton
Facebook is increasingly becoming totally useless to me. The posts of “real friends,” not FB friends, are not showing up in my news feed any longer.
Lately, there are what can only be called algorithmic “jokes” being played on me with post after post asking me to follow news and weather from north of the Schenectady area — New York is a pretty big state — or “brain teasers” that wouldn’t tease the brains of second graders.
However, every once in a while, the Memories feature will pleasantly or not-so-pleasantly surprise me.
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Today, FB reminded me of a post from eight years ago.
Think back. What were we doing eight years ago?
Oh yeah, that was the start of the first administration of Pres. Donald J. Felon.
I had posted something by former Clinton administration labor secretary Robert Reich who called the newly elected president “the greatest threat to American democracy in living memory.”
Reich asked, “Where’s the Democratic Party?”
“With the exception of a few notable and courageous Democrats, the Party as a whole has practically disappeared,” he wrote.
Have we learned nothing in the past eight years?
Where are the leaders of the Democratic Party who supposedly are working for us in the Washington, D.C.?
Sure, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer gave a full throated criticism of, as he said, “one of the cruelest actions” he has ever seen the federal government do: the federal funding freeze. (FYI, the president rescinded the funding freeze Wednesday after a federal judge temporarily blocked in Tuesday.)
At the same time, though, Schumer isn’t whipping his caucus to pushback en masse against the felon-in-chief’s cabinet nominees.
Billionaire Scott Bessent, a hedge fund manager, was confirmed to become head of the Treasury Department with 15 Democrats voting for him. NY Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand was one of those Aye votes.
By the way, Bessent is against raising the federal minimum wage and is totally behind tariffing anything and everything. Are those Dem votes going to change his mind or his boss’s? Nah.
Tim Walz, on The Rachel Maddow Show Tuesday, called out members of Congress.
“There’s no spine among those folks,” he said, though he didn’t specify which side of the aisle. He added that people should contact their senators and representatives and tell them what’s on their minds.
Walz said the freeze seemed buffoonish at first in its execution, but he thought it was really a trial balloon “to see how much tolerance we had.”
He also said that the red states who are being pretty quiet about the repercussions of the freeze are going to be hit much harder than the blue states.
So how much tolerance do we have for what is coming out of this vile administration with its deep Project 2025 roots?
If we don’t have much of any tolerance, we must let our elected representatives know what is on our minds, as Walz suggested.
You can do a search on the internet for your senator or congress person or use this website to find out how to contact them.
Call them or email them. Tell them what you are thinking.
Don’t give them an opportunity to hide in the shadows saying they never hear from their constituents.
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Lead art by Michael Woyton
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