November 3rd:
August 31, 2020 |
KNOW YOUR RIGHTS |
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Your Rights, Your Vote This November, whether you choose to vote by mail or at your polling place, you have rights when making your voice heard. Here are a few things to keep in mind if you decide to cast your ballot in person:
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To learn more about your rights while traveling, working, protesting, and more, visit aclu.org/kyr. |
Sun Valley loses a beloved friend.
August 30, 2020
Todd Anthony Rippo
1964 – 2020
“The edge…There is no honest way to explain it because the only people who know where it really is are the ones who have gone over…”
– Hunter S. Thompson
Todd Anthony Rippo was born on December 14th, 1964 in San Diego California. A true native San Diegan, his early years were spent in Point Loma, Ocean Beach, Mission Hills, La Jolla, Del Mar and Rancho Santa Fe. He received a bachelor’s degree from UC San Diego.
Todd was a rock star in every sense of the word. Music was his pulse. He awoke each morning with a song in his head and had an uncanny ability to spontaneously riff remarkable lyrics. Band night with Todd was legendary. His taste in music was original and eclectic. You never knew if Miles Davis, Bowie or Hiss Golden Messenger would be spinning on his old-school turntable while he enjoyed a cigar. In 2018, Todd released his first album, “Thought I Knew You.” This was a compilation of many of his favorite original songs. The album is a raw and soulful glimpse into Todd’s captivating mind, his life and his loves.
Todd was larger than life. His remarkable energy captivated all who met and knew him. Todd was always the coolest guy in the room, but not for the reasons one often associates with the word. He was cool because he was both unsettlingly powerful and profoundly fragile all at once. Todd was fearless and brave, yet had no fear of showing you his vulnerabilities. He was the epitome of manliness, yet fostered and proudly displayed his feminine side simultaneously.
A beautiful man, he was generous, sexy, elegant and romantic. Todd was a deep thinker, inquisitive, complex and clever. He was superstitious, stubborn, spiritual, political and soulful. He was remarkably intelligent, funny and fiercely loyal to those he loved. When Todd loved you, you felt chosen. He was magic. There wasn’t a disingenuous bone in his body. He was a profoundly sensitive old soul.
He had a singular, enviable sense of style and impeccable taste. Aside from music, Todd loved art, passionate and creative people, skateboards, dive bars, live concerts, socks, beach walks, leather jackets, a chain wallet, motorcycles, beautiful women, a great cigar and a “good” margarita. He kept treasures and talismans in his pockets – a coin given to him by his Navy Seal friends, a knife from his father and a Chimayo cross from his sister.
Todd loved his home. It was a magical place to gather for sunsets, Todd’s “Almost Famous Cookies” and cigar nights lasting well into the night. His house was full of albums, art, trinkets and mementos from his colorful life – heart rocks, beach glass, cigar wrappers, flowers, candles, pinup girls, musical instruments, interesting books, hot wheels, peanut M&Ms, icons of every sort and a well-adorned jackalope at the top of the stairs.
Todd had beautiful, singular friends in this life’s journey – people that loved him dearly and whose love he reciprocated with equal passion. He had magical stories of traveling the world and told remarkable tales of the characters he met and the music he heard along the way. Todd always said, “I love you.” He often cried. Todd greeted you with a bear hug and a kiss.
Todd adored his beautiful daughter, “Frankie” Francesca Rippo. She was the light and love of his life. He beamed with pride when she rode on the back of his motorcycle or learned to skateboard, ski or surf. They shared a love of music and had their own language. He was so proud to be anywhere with Frankie. Their connection profound, Todd was a “Rad Dad.”
The Idaho Java coffee shops – located in Ketchum, Hailey, Boise and Twin Falls – are his legacy. It all started with pre-law student Todd studying in coffee shops in San Diego. Todd fell in love with the coffee culture. He bought a motorcycle and took some time off of school to figure out his life. That motorcycle took him out of California and to the front door of what is now Java on Fourth in Ketchum, Idaho. You could be anywhere – any random place in the world – and someone would always recognize the “guy from Java.” Todd was and still is the heartbeat, soul and rock & roll of this thriving business.
Todd passed away in his home in Del Mar, CA on Wednesday, August 19, 2020. Todd was proceeded in death by Anthony J. Rippo, MD. He is survived by his daughter Francesca Rippo, mother Madeline D’Atri Rippo, father Rick Maxey, sister Annie “Belle” Rippo-VeneKlasen, brothers Tobin and Josh Rippo, step brothers and sisters and innumerable in-laws, aunts, uncles, cousins, nieces and nephews.
Todd’s departure from this life will leave a lasting void in all our lives. He was the brightest of shooting stars. Fly free, soar with the angels and rock the heavens Todd.
https://www.legacy.com/obituaries/idahostatesman/obituary.aspx?n=todd-anthony-rippo&pid=196714659
Chadwick.
The Russo Brothers:
“He inspired an entire generation to stand up and be king. Honor him by emulating him…show kindness and love to others. Share your talents in ways that impact. Always strive to be a light in the darkness.”
President Barack Obama:
“To be young, gifted, and Black; to use that power to give them heroes to look up to; to do it all while in pain–what a use of his years.”
AP News
At the 2019 Screen Actors Guild Awards, “Black Panther” won best ensemble, electrifying the room. Before an auditorium full of actors, Chadwick Boseman stepped to the microphone. He quoted Nina Simone: “To be young, gifted and black,” and put the moment in context.
“We know what it’s like to be told there isn’t a screen for you to be featured on, a stage for you to be featured on. … We know what’s like to be beneath and not above. And that is what we went to work with every day,” said Boseman. “We knew that we could create a world that exemplified a world we wanted to see. We knew that we had something to give.”
NPR
Chadwick Boseman speaking at his alma mater, Howard University, to the class of 2018:
“Sometimes you need to get knocked down before you can really figure out what your fight is and how you need to fight it. Whatever you choose for a career path, remember, the struggles along the way are only meant to shape you for your purpose. When I dared to challenge the system that would relegate us to victims and stereotypes with no clear historical backgrounds, no hopes or talents, when I questioned that method of portrayal, a different path opened up for me, the path to my destiny.”
‘Live amongst people in such a manner that if you die they weep over you and if you are alive they crave for your company.’
-Ali ibn Abu Talib
♥
‘…make of us a garland.’
And if our earth needed to
She could weave us together like roses
And make of us a garland.
-Rilke
✿`*•✿ ✿`*•✿
Gaia will be fine. She will rejuvenate and make new. Humanity…our species…must decide now if we are to survive. Gaia wants to make us a garland. And we continue destruction…politically, socially, economically.
~
How many times does a person have to lie before you stop listening to them?
If he is given, or steals, another election, greater karmic forces are at play beyond what we know.
We have so much to atone.
C O V I D
Masks work. It’s a pandemic. P A N D E M I C.
U.S. tops 6 million Coronavirus Cases
Deaths: 183,000 +
Daily COVID U.S. deaths: 1,200 +
Visual: Picture the 1,500 people attending the White House Lawn/GOP political event this past week. That’s how many American’s die every. single. day.
Global cases: 25,079,330
Global deaths: 843,842
How Democracy Dies
Carole Cadwalladr is a British author and investigative journalist/The Observer.
“We are what happens to a western democracy when a hundred years of electoral laws are disrupted by technology. Is this what we want? To let them get away with it?”
A Kenosha Militia Facebook Event Asking Attendees To Bring Weapons Was Reported 455 Times. Moderators Said It Didn’t Violate Any Rules. It remained up. Two people were shot dead. Then it came down.
Their excuse? ‘Operational mistake.’
https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/ryanmac/kenosha-militia-facebook-reported-455-times-moderators
Free Press:
“Over and over again Facebook fails to stop the glorification and celebration of white supremacist violence. It’s disgusting and unacceptable.”
Jay Rosen, Journalism professor at NYU:
“The conservative commentator Ben Shapiro has gotten 56 million total interactions on his Facebook page in the last 30 days. That’s more than the main pages of ABC News, NBC News, The New York Times, The Washington Post and NPR combined.”
Seth Godin, author and former ‘dot com’ business executive:
‘Systemic problems demand systemic solutions.
First, we have to pay attention.
Then we need to acknowledge that a solution is possible.
And then we need to commit. To the long, persistent road to altering the status quo.
The world is forcing us to pay attention to lingering problems more urgently than ever before. Real change on issues of dignity, justice and health are long overdue
Urgent problems are too important to earn only a moment of our attention. Important projects demand that we keep showing up to make the change we seek. Showing up and showing up, at the root and at every turn, consistently working toward systemic solutions.
When we think about the problems we’ve solved as a community, this is the way it always happens. Making things better, over time, with focus. Persistent commitment doesn’t lower the urgency of the moment, it acknowledges it.’
Kevin Roose, NY Times Columnist:
“If you don’t think DT can get re-elected in November, you need to spend more time on FB. The result is a kind of parallel media universe shaping its own version of reality.”
August FB interactions:
CNN: 21 million
NYT: 8M
Ben Shapiro: 55M
August FB video views
CNN: 73M
NYT: 12M
The Hodgetwins: 84M
August FB shares:
CNN: 2.2M
NYT: 800K
Dan Bongino: 5.6M
CNN’s Brian Stelter talks ‘Citizens Agenda’
#MSM
The news media needs a reset.
Jay Rosen explains ‘Citizen’s Agenda.’
The Citizens Agenda is a model for generating more responsive, inclusive & useful news coverage for voters.
www.thecitizensagenda.com
Center for Action & Contemplation, Aug. 28th:
‘Group egocentricity is even more dangerous than personal egocentricity. It looks like greatness when it is often no more than disguised egotism. Loyalties at this level have driven most of human history—and most wars—up to now.’
Iowa, California, Lousiana, Greenland…
#ClimateEmergency
Hopeful thoughts from a climate correspondent.
“The climate emergency is very bad. Over the past few days, disasters have cascaded around the world. But no matter how dire the pandemic-climate-racial uprising emergency gets, there is never, ever a reason to give up.” -Eric Holthaus
On climate doom
Hi,
Over the past few days, disasters have cascaded around the world. More of California burned in a one-week span than in almost any other full year in recorded history. Hurricanes have battered the Caribbean and the US Gulf Coast. The strongest typhoon in North Korea’s history made landfall. Scientists unveiled doomsday updates from Greenland, Antarctica, and the North Pole.
Watching all this, I felt a familiar sense of despair settle in. When disasters are in the headlines, I often have a counter-intuitive response. My mind automatically races to the countless everyday changes in weather that go largely unnoticed, but in aggregate add up to civilisation-altering, fundamental changes that once manifest, become irreversible.
I find myself noticing the impulse to give in to climate doom.
This thread from my friend and former podcast co-host Jacquelyn Gill explains how this instinct is partly a result of privilege in climate spaces. It’s often easier to imagine the apocalypse than the systemic changes necessary in every aspect of society to steer us away from oblivion.
The climate emergency is very bad. It magnifies inequalities. It’s a manifestation of hundreds of years of injustice and erasure.
But if you find yourself thinking “we’re screwed”, here’s a gentle reminder to ask yourself who “we” is. This has been happening for a long time.
This week’s good news on climate
We need to move past the “we’re screwed” narrative on climate change and ecosystem collapse. Fast. A dead world is not our destiny.
Yes, the odds are against us as long as we stay on our current path. But we can and must radically change that path. We can do this, and we will.
We’ve reached the point in the pandemic-climate-racial uprising emergency that there are multiple versions of reality floating around and it’s very difficult to keep track of reality.
Hope is hard work.
and some people just aren’t willing to do it.
I’ve subscribed to the concept of atmospheric harm reduction. Harm reduction is a strategy that’s used to de-escalate violence and self-harm, and involves things like sanitised needle distribution or legalising and regulating marijuana.
The same applies to the climate emergency. Every tonne of carbon avoided through developing tough new habits, every climate denier voted out of office and replaced with an imperfect-but-better candidate, every difficult conversation that helps you articulate your ardent love for the world and everything that’s worth saving – all of those help make the world a measurably better place.
There are days when it will feel like you can’t go on, that all your work is pointless. But in those days remember that a better world is always possible. We can take breaks. We can endure setbacks. But we can never, ever give up. You were born just in time to transform the world.
https://thecorrespondent.com/652/on-climate-doom/86316088628-71047c4c
“…a true ideologue, a true fanatic.”
“(Jean Guerrero) describes the ideological arc of Miller’s life and investigates his ties to right-wing mentors and far-right groups. She adds, many are baffled at how someone so young with so little policy or legal expertise gained so much power.”
I remember, you know, the incredible anti-immigrant hostility that was pervasive in California at the time, which may be surprising to people because California is known as such a deep-blue state and kind of leads the charge against the Trump administration today. But in the ’90s, it was sort of ground zero, like a microcosm for what we’re seeing nationally today. There were unprecedented attacks on immigrants through a proposition called Prop 187, which, you know, targeted social services for children of undocumented migrants. It was later ruled unconstitutional. There was also attacks on bilingual education statewide. There were attacks on affirmative action.
And the Republican governor of California at the time, Pete Wilson, you know, was repeatedly railing against what he called the invasion at the border – the same language that you see Trump using today – and blaming all of the state’s fiscal problems on immigrants, you know, running these ads on television that I remember watching about how – you know, showing families coming across the border, and there’s this ominous narrator over the video saying, they keep coming.
And from my reporting, it became clear to me that Stephen Miller is truly a product of this environment. He was internalizing a lot of these white supremacist and racist narratives that were common in the state and acting them out, you know, in his high school.
-NPR’s Fresh Air
Important and necessary read–solid investigative reporting from former KPBS San Diego reporter and Emmy award winner Jean Guerrero.
“A vital book for understanding the still-unfolding nightmare of nationalism and racism in the 21st century.” –Francisco Cantu, author of The Line Becomes a River
‘Hatemonger’ Paints Trump Advisor Stephen Miller As A ‘Case Study In Radicalization’
LATimes
Guerrero told The Times that Miller, unlike Bannon and others surrounding the president, is not an opportunist or self-promoter but “a true ideologue, a true fanatic.” Much has been made of the question of what motivates Miller, 35, whose prior experience consisted mostly of PR work for C-list lawmakers before leveraging a single-minded obsession with immigration into the office of then-Sen. Jeff Sessions — and then into speechwriting for Trump’s nascent 2016 presidential campaign.
Guerrero’s book is an exhaustive investigation into not just the how, but the why. She continues to brave threats of violence after conducting more than 100 interviews and researching the darkest corners of the American consciousness to unpack a strange (but not rare) phenomenon: the radicalization of a privileged young white man — though this one, the descendant of Jewish refugees, grew up in an increasingly diverse Southern California.
Guerrero spoke with The Times over the phone from her home in San Diego, a conversation edited for clarity and length. By her account, Miller was primed and groomed — starved for attention, yearning for belonging, and fighting what was, then, a lonely war.’
I honestly believe that the most important reason Miller has been able to stay so long and have such an outsize impact is that he is a true ideologue, a true fanatic. More than anyone else in the White House, he believes that he is actually saving the world through what he is doing. Strategically that has worked out for him — and Trump has found whenever he takes a more moderate line on immigration or anything, he ends up getting ridiculed as weak, which Trump hates.
…nowhere in the book do I call Miller racist or xenophobic, or anything like that. We don’t know what is in a person’s heart with absolute certainty. I grappled with that. Neutrality is necessary for journalistic integrity, an integral pillar of our democracy, and we absolutely need that, but also this reluctance we’ve had as journalists to use these words has created space for white supremacists to operate with impunity.
What I tried to do in the book is show what Miller is doing and saying, and the white supremacist sources, so that people can draw their own conclusions. I did not write this book to tell you that Miller hates anyone. I can say, with the confidence of my reporting, that he is fluent in hate and deliberately traffics in hate and communicates with people who hate.
I think Miller is always going to have allies in the nativist movement and the white nationalist movement, he’s always going to find a place. He is very ambitious. … He’s told people his ultimate goal is to become a senator, and I wouldn’t be surprised if he ran for office somewhere. But I don’t think he’s allowed himself to envision an alternate reality where Trump doesn’t win reelection.
I don’t think Miller and everything he represents is going to go away after November. He’s going to continue to rally people around his ideas, which are not just his ideas.
The thing with Bannon and Donald Trump is, they’re out to con people. … Miller is accountable for his own actions and responsible for everything he’s done, but he was indoctrinated at a very young age into this idea that he needed to save the United States from this imagined threat of Black and brown people.
Full LATimes interview with Jean Guerrero and reporter Molly O’Toole:
Renewal & Reordering
August 26, 2020
Image credit: Garden of Wish Fulfilment (detail), Arshile Gorki, 1944, Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, Lisbon Portugal.
Fr Richard Rohr, Center for Action & Contemplation
- Order
- Disorder
- Reorder
In times of Disorder and deconstruction, we long for Reorder on a personal level—to be made new and whole again. But the Scriptures tell us that restoration will also happen on a communal, planetary, and even universal level! Jim Antal, a climate justice leader with the United Church of Christ, reminds us of our ability and responsibility to participate with God…Gaia…in the renewal and reordering of the earth.
“How can you know all these facts [about climate change] and still have hope?” For me, faith and hope are rooted in the conviction that, regardless of how bad things may be, a new story is waiting to take hold—something we have not yet seen or felt or experienced. . . . God…Gaia…is calling us—as individuals and congregations—to work with God and others to champion that new story.
For the vast majority in our society, that new story remains unseen. Wresting our future from the grip of fossil fuel seems impossible—our addiction is too strong, affordable options are too few, and the powers that defend the status quo are mighty, indeed. . . . We cannot be freed by chipping away at this millstone.
We must begin to live into a new story by changing the human prospect [of destruction] and restoring creation’s viability.
That’s what the Water Protectors of Standing Rock have done. Their courageous, unflinching discipline inspired thousands to join them and millions to imagine with them the new world that is waiting to be born. They prepared themselves through prayer and ritual to face down sheriffs, paramilitary contractors, attack dogs, rubber bullets, pepper spray, and high-pressure water cannons in subzero temperatures. They were fueled by hope, hope for a revolution rooted in love—love for God’s great gift of creation. . . .
We can’t accept God’s…Gaia’s…invitation to help create a new story unless we are willing to take action. We become partners with God when we act in unfamiliar, untested ways. Those new actions will be guided by a preferred future that embraces:
- resilience in place of growth
- collaboration in place of consumption
- wisdom in place of progress
- balance in place of addiction
- moderation in place of excess
- vision in place of convenience
- accountability in place of disregard
- self-giving love in place of self-centered fear . . .
As broken-hearted as God…Gaia…must be over what we have done to the gift of creation, God still has a dream. . . . God dreams that humans seek spiritual rather than material progress. God’s dream envisions a just world at peace because gratitude has dissolved anxiety and generosity has eclipsed greed. God dreams of a time when love and mutual respect will bind humanity together, and the profound beauty of creation will be treasured. Let us embrace God’s…Gaia’s…dream as our own. Suddenly, the horizon of our hope comes nearer.
1920-2020
August 25, 2020
“…buildings and landmarks across the country will light up in purple and gold on Wed., Aug. 26th as part of the Commission’s nationwide campaign, named in honor of the historic suffrage slogan, “Forward through the Darkness, Forward into Light.”
Focus. We the People have the power.
Eugene Victor “Gene” Debs was an American socialist, political activist, trade unionist, one of the founding members of the Industrial Workers of the World and five times the candidate of the Socialist Party of America for President of the United States. Debs was noted for his oratory, and his speech denouncing American participation in WWI led to his second arrest in 1918. He was convicted under the Sedition Act of 1918 and sentenced to a term of 10 years. (His first arrest was related to the railroad and union/strike activities.) President Warren G. Harding commuted his sentence in December 1921. Debs died in 1926, not long after being admitted to a sanatorium due to cardiovascular problems that developed during his time in prison.
[wikipedia]
Pretty much.
‘No Body of Men:’ A militia movement, recast, takes to the streets of North Idaho
“This has been just the gasoline on the fire for civil war. If it’s coming, North Idaho is the heart of the new confederacy.”-Rebecca Schroeder
For North Idaho residents like Schroeder, who have watched warily as armed militia groups gain a foothold in their town, the area’s history — the leveled Aryan Nations compound lies just seven miles from Coeur d’Alene — doesn’t feel so far away.
“They have been calling for a civil war for a long time. I mean, this is a perfect excuse. The Black Lives Matter protests layered in with the COVID pandemic and the restrictions placed on movement and masking and things like that in our community,” Schroeder said.
When Rebecca Schroeder reported the increase in death threats — she estimates she’s blocked 1,000 people on Facebook in the past month — to the police department and to various levels of leadership in the city, she received no offer of protection.
“I needed to get the hell out of town,” she said. “There wasn’t anyone in local leadership who was going to hold these folks accountable.”
Schroeder says combating right-wing extremism in North Idaho could be like firing at a shifting target.
“Because it’s hidden under this guise of ‘patriotism,’ and it kind of co-opted that word and that identity, it’s much more difficult to single out and oppose those folks,” Schroeder said.
For (one resident), who previously hoped to retire in Coeur d’Alene, the recent trend toward open right-wing extremism has also become untenable. After events this summer, he no longer wants his granddaughter to visit. He plans to sell his house and leave town for good as soon as possible.
https://www.idahostatesman.com/news/northwest/idaho/article244699972.html?
Are you tired?
August 21, 2020Me, too. Exhausted.
Everyday endless push notifications reminding us that We the People are getting close to falling off the existential cliff that is our American experiment.
We can’t look away from any of it.
CNN:
Joe Biden’s campaign and the DNC raised $70 million during the convention.
— 122M people watched, including 35M streams. Another 128M views across Biden/convention social
— 1.1 million people texted 30330
— 700K uniques on IWillVote
We can do this. YOU can do this.
Our latest institution to be attacked and depleted is the United States Postal Service. This one must hold our focus beyond the explosive 24 hour news cycle.
Make a plan. Request an absentee ballot now. And vote early.
Eye On Sun Valley
Voting Options Questioned Due to Post Office Chaos, Pandemic
by Karen Bossick
How to vote?
That’s the all-consuming question with just 77 days left until the 2020 November election.
The U.S. Postal Service has warned that it may not be able to get ballots to election offices in time because of lags in mail delivery. And it’s anyone’s guess at this point whether Wood River Valley residents will be able to vote in-person.
The Blaine County Election Office will begin early voting at the courthouse on Tuesday, Oct. 13, provided the county is not seeing a surge in coronavirus that would cause the office to be closed to the public.
Hailey Postmaster Ken Quigley has been praised by those at Blaine County’s Election Office for going out of his way to gather ballots by hand and deliver them to the Election office as deadlines approach.
This is what it’s going to take as voter suppression continues, all of us to do what we can to protect votes.
Postmaster General Louis DeJoy has reportedly removed mail processing equipment, eliminated overtime and slowed some mail delivery. DeJoy, who is reported to have financial stakes with competitors of the U.S. Post Office, has been accused of trying to handicap the Post Service to hinder mail-in voting.
The Guardian: DeJoy, conceded on Friday [August 21] he had implemented recent changes that led to mail delays at the USPS but said he would not reverse the decision to remove mail equipment ahead of the election.
DeJoy has moved to the top of the deplorable list, and while the Senate remains silent & Congress cries foul…and does nothing…We the People know what we have to do and encourage everyone in our communities to do:
V O T E
Dayle’s Community Cafe started posting about the post office and the GOP plot to diminish and privatize our sacred institution.
Before they declared their independence, the American colonists decided that they needed a better way to communicate with one another. In the summer of 1775, at the Second Continental Congress, they created the Postal Service and named Benjamin Franklin its first Postmaster General. Where before letters or packages had to be carried between inns and taverns or directly from house to house, now there was a way for Americans to safely, discreetly, and reliably correspond across long distances. After the Revolution, when Congress ratified the Articles of Confederation, legislators included the Post Office in the ninth of those articles, and later enshrined it in the first article of the Constitution.
The Founders saw the Postal Service as an essential vehicle for other rights, especially the freedom of the press: one of the first postal laws set a special discounted rate for newspapers. But they also understood that a national post unifies a nation, allowing its citizens to stay connected and connecting them with their federal government. When Alexis de Tocqueville toured the young country several decades after its founding, he travelled partly by mail coach, noting in “Democracy in America” how “the mail, that great link between minds, today penetrates into the heart of the wilderness.”
Senator Bernie Sanders was talking about re-establishing banking services at the post office to help lower income and Americans and strengthen the middle class. I had hopes about developing community communication centers at post offices, newspapers and local non-profit community radio stations. Instead, now we’re just trying to save the institution.
“Abraham Lincoln was U.S. postmaster and a storekeeper in the original version of this restored building in New Salem, Illinois.” -Historian Michael Beschloss
Senator Sanders: “We have a president who has admitted that he is trying to destroy the Postal Service to prevent people from voting. This election is about whether we retain our democracy. […] I stand with Danny Glover. We will not let Trump destroy a generational source of good, unionized jobs for Black Americans. We will save and expand the U.S. Postal Service—not privatize it.”
The founders were right to realize that the Postal Service isn’t only a way of moving thoughts and goods from every corner of America to any other, but also a way of uniting one of the largest and most diverse nations in the world. At a time when too few things connect us as a country, and too few of us have faith in our public institutions, we can’t afford to lose the one we trust the most. -Casey Cep, May 2020
Author Ari Berman:
USPS ordered to remove 671 mail sorting machines under DeJoy:
59 in Florida
58 in Texas
34 in Ohio
30 in Pennsylvania
26 in Michigan
15 in North Carolina
12 in Virginia
12 in Wisconsin
11 in Georgia
Really, how did we get here?
Maybe, collectively, what we’ve realized is that democracy is fragile and progress is not permanent. And 44 million people can not choose not to vote…like in 2016.
Michelle Obama:
“We have got to grab our comfortable shoes, put on our masks, pack a brown bag dinner and maybe breakfast too because we’ve got to be willing to stand in line all night if we have to.”
60 years ago.
Eleanor Roosevelt
DNC in the summer of 1960.
From her book The Moral Basis of Democracy [1940/2016]:
“Therefore, as their elders leave the stage, it remains for youth to find a way to face the domestic situation, to meet the conditions which confront their country in its relationship with the other countries of the world” (p. 43).
The democratic theory of government and of life in a democracy opposes one-man rule, and holds to the belief that the individual controls his government through active participation in the process of political democratic government, but bows to the ill of the majority, free expressed” (italics mine) (p.7).
Hillary Clinton won the election by 2,864,974 votes. A handful of Electoral College members voted against the popular vote to put a man, wholly unqualified, into the presidency.
“…it remains for youth to find a way to face” this assault on the majoritive. If you register and VOTE, you will give the democratic process back to the American people.
Please. Vote. And find five friends to register. We need you. This country needs you.
NOVEMBER 3, 2020
National Radio Day, Thursday, August 20th
August 20, 2020
In honor of National Radio Day, posting one of the best air talents in San Diego radio broadcast history, Bill Moffit.
Here’s his air-check tape from circa 1974. What a pro. I listened to him on the radio when I was 14, in junior high school. Fourteen years later, I had the joy of being on the same radio station with him, at powerhouse radio station KCBQ! The best. Man I loved being on the radio. Miss it everyday.
Me, broadcasting live from Disneyland, circa 1991 on KBest 95.
“In radio, you have two tools. Sound and silence.” ~ Ira Glass
Each year on August 20th, National Radio Day recognizes the great invention of the radio. Celebrate the news, information, music, and stories carried across the airwaves.
‘Entertainment and music didn’t always fill the airwaves. In fact, the radio’s first function was much more practical. First, the wireless radio served the military. The radio also provided a regular public service role. Much like the dits and dots of a telegram, the wireless transmitted information. Aboard the Titanic at the time of its sinking, a Marconi wireless broadcast the ship’s distress signal. In 1906, the first radio broadcast of voice and music purely for entertainment purposes aired. Reginald Fessenden transmitted the program from Brant Rock, MA for the general public to hear. The Canadian born scientist would go on to many more successes in his lifetime.
An American contributor to the radio, Lee de Forest invented the Audion vacuum. This invention made live broadcasting possible. Born in Iowa in 1873, de Forest would become the chief scientist for the first U.S. radio firm, American Wireless Telephone, and Telegraph.
The 1920s brought the first broadcast stations to the forefront. Around the world, listeners tuned in for news and world events for the first time. Other radio facts include:
- Radio ownership grew. In 1931, two out of five homes owned a radio. By 1938, four out of five owned a radio.
- According to FCC statistics, at the end of 2012, more than 15,000 licensed broadcast radio stations were operating in the U.S.’
https://nationaldaycalendar.com/national-radio-day-august-20/
