watchman, what’s left of
the night, morning is coming …
but also the night

Adapted from the Book of Isaiah, Chapter 21 where we read …

“Watchman, what is left of the night?
Watchman, what is left of the night?”
The watchman replies,
“Morning is coming, but also the night.
you would ask, then ask;
and come back yet again.”

This passage was in my morning reading before I got the Guardian opinion piece, Three speeches on a single day signaled a dying American democracy by Robert B Shpiner who wrote:

The presumption that US elections are legitimate died last week in Washington. It was 237 years old. It did not die of one wound. It died of three, inflicted in a single day, in daylight, on the record. And the country, running to the loudest of them, never examined the one most likely to kill.

In critical care we distinguish the mechanism of death from its cause. The mechanism was a Thursday. The cause was chronic, progressive and untreated.

Mr. Shpiner points to a speech made by the deputy chief of staff of that man in office to the US State Dept. Ministerial on the Resurgence of Political Terrorism, where he said:

He called “leftwing political terrorism” a “fatal cancer of civilization”.

He said that its politics, left to run its course, “always becomes a gulag”.

He said antifa demonstrators are “all deformed in some way, in their appearance, in their dress, in their mannerism”, that “their outer appearance becomes a manifestation of their inner hatred”, and he asked why there is “not one normal-looking person among them”.

I MUST INTERJECT – this deputy chief of staff asked why there is “not one normal-looking person among them”. REALLY?

REALLY???

But I digress.

He said that when the leftist protests that his rights are being violated, those appeals “must fall on deaf ears”.

He urged the assembled governments to be “completely unflinching in the pursuit of justice against these enemies of civilization”.

And he described the work already under way in six verbs: “disrupt, identify, defund, debank, arrest and prosecute”.

Mr. Shpiner closes with:

In 40 years of intensive care, I have pronounced death many times. The criteria are strict because the declaration is irreversible, and so we are taught to be certain before we speak. I have also, more than once, seen a rhythm return after the room had gone quiet, when someone refused to stop compressions on schedule. This notice is filed in the knowledge that pronouncements can be premature. It is filed in the fear that this one is not.

Watchman, what is left of the night?”

The watchman replies,

“Morning is coming, but also the night.

You would ask, then ask; and come back yet again.”

For so long the mid terms have been promised as our morning in America.

“Morning is coming, but also the night.

The presumption that US elections are legitimate died last week in Washington. It was 237 years old. It did not die of one wound. It died of three, inflicted in a single day, in daylight, on the record.

part is that folks don’t
expect the U.S. Senate
to be functional

For the article, Who Should Represent Michigan?, the New York Times assembled a panel of experts with a range of viewpoints for a new installment of The Choice, aimed at guiding Michigan voters through the core issues in this election.

The article had a lot to say about my home state and the people who live in my home state and how the people who live in my home state vote in elections in my home state.

But there was one sentence that spoke to the country as a whole in my opinion.

A sentence that spoke to the problems we are having to deal with as an evolving democratic society.

Those founding father, to use the phrase coined by Warren Harding, put together a country that worked fairly well for the last 250 years.

It has survived wars, depressions, pandemics and who knows what else.

It has survived because 250 years those feller designed safe guards to keep things going in spite of ourselves.

The strongest links in that chain of safeguards was that the government was made up of three equal parts that checked and balanced each other out.

It wasn’t by accident.

Each part had a significant and special role to play.

In this article, Who Should Represent Michigan?, the Times panel were asked several questions and each panel member was allowed to answer.

This style of opinion piece would surly produce lots of statements that stood out.

But it was the response to the question on the Economy, How effective do you think the candidates would be at championing legislation to bring good-paying jobs to Michigan?, of panel member Sarah Anthony, a State senator from Lansing that got me.

Because to the question How effective do you think the candidates would be at championing legislation to bring good-paying jobs to Michigan?, State Senator Anthony said: So from a federal perspective, I think part of this is that folks don’t expect the U.S. Senate to be functional anyway. I think we’re looking for someone who will just speak to us and say, “Hey, man” — to whomever, the 22-year-old that’s in their mom’s basement that’s just trying to figure out life or the struggling single mom or the senior citizen who’s thinking that their grandkid won’t get it out of their kid’s basement. Those people are looking for someone who’s just going to be our loudest champion, not this thoughtful, creative policymaker.

Lots of wisdom in that statement but look at the foundation of the statement.

So from a federal perspective, I think part of this is that folks don’t expect the U.S. Senate to be functional anyway.

I think part of this is that folks don’t expect the U.S. Senate to be functional anyway.

Folks don’t expect the U.S. Senate to be functional anyway.

The next time you ask how does that current man in office get away with all this nonsense, just say to yourself, Folks don’t expect the U.S. Senate to be functional anyway.

We got to get that back,

We got to get them people in office to realize we ARE watching and they are doing nothing.

That not expecting the U.S. Senate to be functional will not be accepted.

The Senate has learned the less they do, the less that will be expected and I guess, the more they can get away with.

And that may some of the most lasting damage done to this country.