"Democracies don't have to die at the end of a rifle. They can die when people are silent, when they fail to stand up or condemn the threats to democracy... This MAGA threat is a threat to the brick and mortar of our democratic institutions, but it's also a threat to the character of our nation that gives our Constitution life."

-- Tyler Pager and Yvonne Wingett Sanchez, WaPo

We live in difficult times; there are events impossible to ignore; turning to poetry breathes life into my soul...

"When despair for the world grows in me...  
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free."      
-- Wendell Berry

"Self-compassion is the ability to connect to our feelings, to respond to our suffering with kindness, and to desire that our suffering be ameliorated."        
-- Chanequa Walker-Barnes

As Maya Angelou advised: "Do the best you can until you know better. Then when you know better, do better."

A leader without followers is someone out for a walk.

Never mind who did not vote for Jordan; the concern should be those who did...

We need leaders who believe Character Counts.      
Speaker of the House is a Constitutional Office;      
the order of succession specifies that the Speaker of the House follows the vice president to act as president when filling a vacancy.

The House Republican majority is playing a game of chaos;       
they demean the office they hold.        
We all lose the game they are playing.

Republican members of the House have the responsibility to elevate someone - it need not be an elected official - to the office of Speaker of the House.  

How do we resist going along to get along?

Are we willing to be brave?

Our politics is nothing more than an apparatus to vent our feelings.

Do we have the character to confront our division, and find a way through and beyond our divided times?

"... Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation... can long endure...    "          
-- Abraham Lincoln

It was true then. It is true now.

MAGA Mike Johnson ascended to House Speaker for the same activity others are pleading guilty.

Abraham Lincoln at Gettysburg: "...now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether this nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure..."

Today we are at war with ourselves. Our culture war is testing us and tearing at us.

We can pray that our culture war like  
"Every storm runs out of rain."  -- Maya Angelou

and listen to others, especially those we disagree with, and communicate in gentle and constructive ways.

Janis Kliphardt Emery wrote:

"Imagine a faith so empty that you think bringing prayer into a school is following Jesus, but bringing (in subsidized) free lunches is not."  -- Unknown

As long as there are tests in schools and hungry children, there will be prayers in classrooms. No one can stop that kind of quiet but urgent prayer.

Do Christian 'out loud' prayers solve the problem of hunger for hungry kids?

I think Jesus is all in on any prayer that leads to feeding the hungry.

Centuries ago St Augustine wrote:              
"Hope has two daughters. One daughter's name is 'Anger'; the other daughter's name is 'Courage'. Anger at what is but ought not to be, and Courage to make what ought to be come to be."          
 

Janis Kliphardt Emery wrote:

It's amazing what can happen when character and competence work together for the common good. Biden is a man who has been deeply wounded in his life; he has allowed the suffering he has experienced to be his teacher. Quite different from his predecessor who carries deep wounds, but is afraid of looking inward; he tries to heal himself by passing his suffering on to others.

Democracy is once again being cherished - there is music at The White House again.

Joe Biden is not perfect, but he looks for solutions and surrounds himself with capable men and women who are all in on a government that's of the people, by the people, and for the people - all the people.

"No more apologies for a bleeding heart when the opposite is no heart at all. Danger of losing our humanity must be met with more humanity."  -- Toni Morrison

We should make a big noise for what is good, beautiful, honorable, and true.

"The world will not be destroyed by those who do evil, but by those who watch them without doing anything."  -- Albert Einstein

Janis Kliphardt Emery wrote:

In politics unintended consequences are common.       
Is our current political struggle endangering our form of government?

Let's walk the talk and take care of the institutions of government that protect our republic.

Janis Kliphardt Emery wrote:

As required, I have avoided making political comment on the original Message Forum. I felt / feel compelled though to correct an inaccurate report that seems to linger out there.

For all the heinous atrocities that were committed on October 7th,

Babies were NOT beheaded.

The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is too complex to post back and forth about, tragically there is no end to the conflict in sight. 

Babies were NOT beheaded,

Israelis themselves, some time ago, corrected their initial report that some were.

At this time when the survival of the middle-east and the world is at stake, I am dismayed that such politically inflammatory inaccuracies are shared on the website, let alone appear on the Message Forum.

I support Israel; I condemn Hamas.

I am appalled by the anti-Jewish eruptions across the U.S.

I reject Netanyahu's assertion that disagreeing with Israel - his government - makes me anti-Semitic. [It is noteworthy to remember that Palestinians as well as Jews are Semites, both Hebrew and Arabic are Semitic languages.]

Evangelicals are celebrating in anticipation of the Rapture while innocent children and Palestinian Christians are being slaughtered in Gaza.

The conflict is so complex I do not know what more we can do than pray for a miracle and in the meantime not publish falsehoods or inflame passions.

  In the West Bank 'Peace Candles' are burning in the Palestinian

     town of Bethlehem amid escalating violence in the region.

          "O  Little  Town  Of  Bethlehem"   

                   May you know Peace this year.

  Who are we?        
  How low is low?          
  Trump is manipulating the system,      
   to boot he is a master showman.            
  Now he's trying to delegitimize the NH Primary.

Trump uses legal liability as political opportunity.

Has Donald Trump and his MAGA movement totally extinguished the GOP?

Tim Scott too has capitulated to Donald Trump.        
Republicans are rare as hens' teeth.

It is Trump who is the RINO extinguishing the Republican Party.