The homelessness figures for 2024 were released on Friday. The highest ever homeless rate recorded in the history of our land. Coupled with 11 million children living in poverty is not a good look for the so-called greatest country in world history.
Alarming. And with the Billionaire Class looking for more money from the poor over the next four years, the darkness will get darker.
Our adjoining countries are in for a very rough ride in the next 4 years. Some may escape unscathed, but the majority will carry the wounds inflicted by a self-important and self-aggrandized nut case for years to come. Welcome to 2025.
I am not surprised by the homelessness figures :( I live in Maryland, just blocks from Washington, DC. There is a homeless shelter near my apt. and the number of people lining up for food and roaming around with no place to go is heartbreaking. There is even a young couple that sleeps on the sidewalk with their cat. I give what I can, but it doesn't really help. Tragic.
I was caught off guard by the numbers that were just released, but it really is no surprise. I have people — entire families with kids — not far from me living in rusted out shacks. My own eyes, like what you are seeing, tell me we are in trouble.
All because he’s uber wealthy! Since when is being wealthy a sign of good character? Most of these Uber wealthy people are selfish and greedy it seems! They use their money to buy POWER!
What Ms. Burgess said, 100%; no love is ever wasted. It might just be the fraction of a percent that individual(s) needed to win the balance of the day to get to tomorrow.
If we never give love, in light of the overwhelming weight of despair, there will never be “the spark” that lights the blaze that leads to better tomorrows.
Exactly, Mr. Glassanos. We must keep the ember alive for that fraction of a percent moment. It’s the way out — the handle we can grab when darkness is all around — and all the moving of mountains too.
I weep recalling this speech especially because Frost was my favorite poet and JFK my favorite president and my first vote..a month later on Fri Nov 22 1963 I was working in downtown Boston..the city closed for 3 days ..words fail..
I have seen a lot since then but I am sure that nothing has prepared me for what lies ahead in the next 4 years..how far we have fallen..
I feel the same way. We had the privilege of knowing a great man who had a way with words that always brings tears for what might have been. As we prepare for 2025 we realize we failed to educate the masses or teach them empathy. We will pay a high price for that neglect.
My favorite class ever was my 8th grade civics course. Ironically, I was in that class when it was announced that JFK had been shot. To illustrate what a momentous learning experience it was, my teacher was grief-stricken and decided that she and some friends should travel to DC for the funeral. Yes, we watched it on TV but she made history come to life with her descriptions of the event.
I do not understand how so many Americans have been taken in by Trump and think he really doesn’t mean all his threats about Medicare and Social Security etc! For heavens sake why do they think he’s making all these threats ? He means them it’s frightening how naive these people are why else would he say them? The Republicans have hated Social Security since 1935 because their wealthy donors don’t want to contribute and help anyone else because they are selfish jerks that’s why and Insurance companies hate Medicare etc American companies and businesses are Extremely SELFISH and CHEAP and do not care about us, period frankly this is a very SELFISH Country that’s always been that way and the Republicans are always selfish too! Sick of their cheap ways and trying to take away peoples Social Security after they worked for it their entire working lives! They actually think Trump doesn’t mean it! How stupid can you be? He’s the most selfish man on earth!
This is the first time I read it, I was a senior in a Jesuit HS near Portland OR, words do fail……JFK had the potential for greatness, it’s clear in this speech. We were robbed.
I encourage all young folks I meet to get active, talk to everyone about the current situation, and run for office if they can. Who knows, maybe the next JFK, or the equivalent of, will arise. I was in third grade that fateful day, and knew then that the loss was monumental.
Kennedy's intelligence and foresight, not to mention compassion are considered weaknesses by the MAGA regime and those that worship an ignorant, demented orange snake. We are doomed as a culture if we can't turn all this negativity, cruelty and greed around. Maybe Elon is half right concerning one of his comments: Americans will have to feel pain before things get better. My hope is that in the end, his statement will actually mean that the pain we will ALL feel will drive many Trump voters to finally rise up and walk away from the MAGA movement. We are living in a cultural tug of war. We need more people on our side to win so we can pull the rest over the line.
If only we had someone of Kennedy’s stature, intelligence, leadership and moral integrity who would now be the leader of our country! Sadly, it will not even remotely be the case!
We can not give in to defeat of poor heath policies. Our senate has responsibility to vote for the best head of departments. Also people must push for what they need.
What if . . . it’s discovered and proven with indisputable evidence that this election was stolen. The hour is getting late but I feel that in my bones.
JFK was not m so well-regarded in his lifetime. And he was quite flawed, lacking both honor and integrity. Obama was smarter and more honorable. But he lives in a much crueler and dumber time.
"There is inherited wealth in this country and also inherited poverty."
As Kennedy said later in his speech, privilege comes with responsibility. He recognized how dangerous an ultra wealthy class which took its wealth for granted would be to the Republic; how much harm an entitled monetary aristocracy could do to democracy and America values. We are living his fear as Maga oligarchs are hell-bent on squeezing every penny out of ordinary Americans who provide them with the wealth and lifestyle they love. And under the guidance of Trump they are now threatening Canada, Panama, Mexico and other nations as part of their plan to gain more wealth for THEMSELVES from foreign nations, while looking the other way as Putin pursues his quest for wealth and power in Ukraine and Israel, under Netanyahu, does the same in the Middle East.
I truly fear Trump's impulse to acquire unwilling sovereign nations. We know he likes to float his miscreant ideas out to the public before deciding to implement them. Instead of letting his posted imperialistic fantasies hang in the wind indefinitely, he needs to hear a hard, "NO."
I think we have that leader in Steve. This was an amazing speech to share with us. I loved the line “men who question power make a contribution just as indispensable,” and my hope is Steve will listen to the teachers - at WhiteChalkCrime.com - questioning the power they’re up against that they know has dismantled democracy yet no one listens to them because they’re “just teachers.” They aren’t Robert Frost either, but they hold the answer to why Trump happened to this beloved country.
JFK was insightful. But it was Steve who reminded us.
The sickness in American culture existed long before Donald Tr*mp arrived to personify and profit from it. We should see in him no Svengali-like deviant brilliance, but rather a reflection of who and what a great many of us are. How can we have so many billionaires in an era of rampant homelessness? How can we maintain a democracy when those billionaires can buy all three branches of our government while pandering to the artificially aggrieved and gullible about inconsequential “issues”? Sickness? Let’s destroy the Department of Education, gut the IRS, facilitate the expansion of monopolies, throttle speech, vilify and prosecute those we find disagreeable, etc.,etc., ad inf, all while calling ourselves “Christians”. We are here due to decades of conscious effort by reactionary elitists coupled with the dereliction of those of all stripes who chose to go along to get along. Dog whistles became dinner bells, and millions enthusiastically rushed to the trough. Reversing course and repairing the damage may require something “radical”.
I have to disagree. The sickness in our society predates Trump. He is the symptom, not the disease.
Where did it begin? I always like to look as far back as I can. The two earliest English "plantings" in the colonies featured people who practiced a busybody form of righteousness (Massachusetts Puritans 1620) and people who built profits on a foundation of cruelty to "others," their slaves and indentured servants (Virginia plantations 1607). A third strong thread appeared with Dutch businessmen in New Amsterdam (1624) whose forte was trade without regret.
Trumpism is profiteering, married to busybody righteousness, with a sidepiece of cruelty.
Well, I think there are writers much better equipped to delve into it than I am; but I have noticed strands of "values" that persist through my different family lines, as far as I can trace them, and I have read analyses of regional architecture, language, and religion that indicate persistent patterns. No doubt there has been scholarly work on the subject. Now that you mention it, though, I'll look and see.
When I listen to the intelligent and compassionate words delivered by Kennedy, I know now deep in my soul that we are no longer the country we once were.
But count me as a member of the "Defiant Believer in Renewal Club". Certainly a voice must soon rise up from among us.
I fear that we are so fractured that even if we had that “voice” it would strain to be heard. The media is Balkanized and the right has a dominant position in messaging. The media totally failed us in how they covered the election and the candidates, that happened as a policy that was enacted. Just like muck put him over the top so too did the media with a few exceptions.
The Trump/ GOP lies, lawlessness, greed and treason run so deep and wide across America—from corporate CEOs to Congress, to government agencies, judiciary, law enforcement, military and media—that they are making a mockery of the rule of law, government, justice, democracy and everything America stands for . . . It is now up to all of us to prevent the irreversible implosion of the rule of law, democracy and America.
I just read every remark on today’s board. Of note the discourse is elevated greatly. The Kennedy speech upgraded the day for us, imagine a shift to this verbiage permanently, it only took listening to one great speaker, a President. If we had a steady diet of it the future could bend as it should toward a new age of humanity. But we have mud wrestling instead, outside this board it is continuing despite the possibilities of true greatness and great art. That was JFK’s final speech.
I never thought I would agree with Vivek Ramaswamy on anything. But his analysis of the stupidification of 'Murka is pretty right on. I would remove the word 'math' and substitute 'engineers' with 'leaders,' because we need music, literature, philosophy and arts as well (all of which have been decimated by the focus on STEM), but otherwise this seems pretty right on. (thanks to Heather Cox Richardson for drawing attention to the right-wing mud-wrestling contest this morning.)
"Ramaswamy posted that tech companies hire foreign-born and first-generation engineers rather than native-born Americans because “American culture has venerated mediocrity over excellence for way too long…. A culture that celebrates the prom queen over the math olympiad champ, or the jock over the valedictorian, will not produce the best engineers.” He called for “[m]ore math tutoring, fewer sleepovers. More weekend science competitions, fewer Saturday morning cartoons. More books, less TV. More creating, less ‘chillin.’ More extracurriculars, less ‘hanging out at the mall.’”
“If you grow up aspiring to normalcy, normalcy is what you will achieve,” he warned. “‘Normalcy’ doesn’t cut it in a hyper-competitive global market for technical talent. And if we pretend like it does, we’ll have our a**es handed to us by China.” He called for America to embrace “a new golden era,” but warned it was possible “only if our culture fully wakes up. A culture that once again prioritizes achievement over normalcy; excellence over mediocrity; nerdiness over conformity; hard work over laziness. That’s the work we have cut out for us, rather than wallowing in victimhood & just wishing (or legislating) alternative hiring practices into existence.”
We now reside in an idiocracy run by an autocrat for the benefit of himself and extreme right wing oligarchs. You could not conjure up a scenario more contrary to that envisioned by JFK in his speech at Amherst. I can’t imagine how any of this ends well.
When one reads the speeches of great leaders like JFK, FDR and Reagan, it is a sad and profound reminder of the ignorance and cloddishness of the dimwit we have just elected to be our 47th president. Way to go, America.
No doubt the TikTok “squabble” is a table on which There is now open warfare inside MAGA. Which way will Trump go. Tech Bros or xenophobics? If one realizes the narcissist loves only one person (period), it is easy to see Trump kissing up next to the tech oligarchs. (Sorry, Loomer.) If you think otherwise, you clearly do not understand narcissism. Likewise, the TikTok “squabble” is a grifter unable to do a grift, and blackmail for his cut of that pie.
You MUST remember the narcissist loves only one person. The xenophobics are no longer of any use to Donald.
All we can do is watch this infighting, and pick up the screaming that the price of groceries are going up. It is now our turn. Turnabout will be hilarious. We must, as Robert Hubbell said this morning, start building the 2026 and 2028 platform. I started one…https://hotbuttons.substack.com/p/create-a-platform-for-all?r=3m1bs
The homelessness figures for 2024 were released on Friday. The highest ever homeless rate recorded in the history of our land. Coupled with 11 million children living in poverty is not a good look for the so-called greatest country in world history.
Alarming. And with the Billionaire Class looking for more money from the poor over the next four years, the darkness will get darker.
Our adjoining countries are in for a very rough ride in the next 4 years. Some may escape unscathed, but the majority will carry the wounds inflicted by a self-important and self-aggrandized nut case for years to come. Welcome to 2025.
I am not surprised by the homelessness figures :( I live in Maryland, just blocks from Washington, DC. There is a homeless shelter near my apt. and the number of people lining up for food and roaming around with no place to go is heartbreaking. There is even a young couple that sleeps on the sidewalk with their cat. I give what I can, but it doesn't really help. Tragic.
I was caught off guard by the numbers that were just released, but it really is no surprise. I have people — entire families with kids — not far from me living in rusted out shacks. My own eyes, like what you are seeing, tell me we are in trouble.
Horrible. We are definitely in trouble with the likes of Musk being treated like a king on Capitol Hill. SICK.
All because he’s uber wealthy! Since when is being wealthy a sign of good character? Most of these Uber wealthy people are selfish and greedy it seems! They use their money to buy POWER!
What Ms. Burgess said, 100%; no love is ever wasted. It might just be the fraction of a percent that individual(s) needed to win the balance of the day to get to tomorrow.
If we never give love, in light of the overwhelming weight of despair, there will never be “the spark” that lights the blaze that leads to better tomorrows.
Exactly, Mr. Glassanos. We must keep the ember alive for that fraction of a percent moment. It’s the way out — the handle we can grab when darkness is all around — and all the moving of mountains too.
Well said, thank you!
Of course it helps. Every small gesture helps. No love is ever wasted.
Good point, thank you!
Darkness will disperse under the weight of its own burden. Meanwhile use this time to create a good and sound replacement plan to have ready.
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/homelessness-record-level-2024-up-18-percent-housing-costs-migrants/
I weep recalling this speech especially because Frost was my favorite poet and JFK my favorite president and my first vote..a month later on Fri Nov 22 1963 I was working in downtown Boston..the city closed for 3 days ..words fail..
I have seen a lot since then but I am sure that nothing has prepared me for what lies ahead in the next 4 years..how far we have fallen..
I feel the same way. We had the privilege of knowing a great man who had a way with words that always brings tears for what might have been. As we prepare for 2025 we realize we failed to educate the masses or teach them empathy. We will pay a high price for that neglect.
Entirely correct..a good start would be civics classes in elementary school because sadly, we cannot assume it’s being taught at home
My favorite class ever was my 8th grade civics course. Ironically, I was in that class when it was announced that JFK had been shot. To illustrate what a momentous learning experience it was, my teacher was grief-stricken and decided that she and some friends should travel to DC for the funeral. Yes, we watched it on TV but she made history come to life with her descriptions of the event.
I do not understand how so many Americans have been taken in by Trump and think he really doesn’t mean all his threats about Medicare and Social Security etc! For heavens sake why do they think he’s making all these threats ? He means them it’s frightening how naive these people are why else would he say them? The Republicans have hated Social Security since 1935 because their wealthy donors don’t want to contribute and help anyone else because they are selfish jerks that’s why and Insurance companies hate Medicare etc American companies and businesses are Extremely SELFISH and CHEAP and do not care about us, period frankly this is a very SELFISH Country that’s always been that way and the Republicans are always selfish too! Sick of their cheap ways and trying to take away peoples Social Security after they worked for it their entire working lives! They actually think Trump doesn’t mean it! How stupid can you be? He’s the most selfish man on earth!
This is the first time I read it, I was a senior in a Jesuit HS near Portland OR, words do fail……JFK had the potential for greatness, it’s clear in this speech. We were robbed.
No I am terrified by these heartless creatures!
Indeed.
I guess actually nothing gold can stay
I encourage all young folks I meet to get active, talk to everyone about the current situation, and run for office if they can. Who knows, maybe the next JFK, or the equivalent of, will arise. I was in third grade that fateful day, and knew then that the loss was monumental.
Kennedy's intelligence and foresight, not to mention compassion are considered weaknesses by the MAGA regime and those that worship an ignorant, demented orange snake. We are doomed as a culture if we can't turn all this negativity, cruelty and greed around. Maybe Elon is half right concerning one of his comments: Americans will have to feel pain before things get better. My hope is that in the end, his statement will actually mean that the pain we will ALL feel will drive many Trump voters to finally rise up and walk away from the MAGA movement. We are living in a cultural tug of war. We need more people on our side to win so we can pull the rest over the line.
Either that or just agree to put the rope down and lock arms.
If only we had someone of Kennedy’s stature, intelligence, leadership and moral integrity who would now be the leader of our country! Sadly, it will not even remotely be the case!
Instead we’re hostages to brain worm Kennedy. Even his brothers and sisters can’t stand him.
We can not give in to defeat of poor heath policies. Our senate has responsibility to vote for the best head of departments. Also people must push for what they need.
What if . . . it’s discovered and proven with indisputable evidence that this election was stolen. The hour is getting late but I feel that in my bones.
Me too, The Republicans can not be trusted ever again!
Jamie Raskin.
JFK was not m so well-regarded in his lifetime. And he was quite flawed, lacking both honor and integrity. Obama was smarter and more honorable. But he lives in a much crueler and dumber time.
"There is inherited wealth in this country and also inherited poverty."
As Kennedy said later in his speech, privilege comes with responsibility. He recognized how dangerous an ultra wealthy class which took its wealth for granted would be to the Republic; how much harm an entitled monetary aristocracy could do to democracy and America values. We are living his fear as Maga oligarchs are hell-bent on squeezing every penny out of ordinary Americans who provide them with the wealth and lifestyle they love. And under the guidance of Trump they are now threatening Canada, Panama, Mexico and other nations as part of their plan to gain more wealth for THEMSELVES from foreign nations, while looking the other way as Putin pursues his quest for wealth and power in Ukraine and Israel, under Netanyahu, does the same in the Middle East.
I truly fear Trump's impulse to acquire unwilling sovereign nations. We know he likes to float his miscreant ideas out to the public before deciding to implement them. Instead of letting his posted imperialistic fantasies hang in the wind indefinitely, he needs to hear a hard, "NO."
Oh what we could do if we had someone so visionary and articulate as JFK in the White House.
I think we have that leader in Steve. This was an amazing speech to share with us. I loved the line “men who question power make a contribution just as indispensable,” and my hope is Steve will listen to the teachers - at WhiteChalkCrime.com - questioning the power they’re up against that they know has dismantled democracy yet no one listens to them because they’re “just teachers.” They aren’t Robert Frost either, but they hold the answer to why Trump happened to this beloved country.
JFK was insightful. But it was Steve who reminded us.
We had Obama. He had much more honor and integrity than JFK.
The sickness in American culture existed long before Donald Tr*mp arrived to personify and profit from it. We should see in him no Svengali-like deviant brilliance, but rather a reflection of who and what a great many of us are. How can we have so many billionaires in an era of rampant homelessness? How can we maintain a democracy when those billionaires can buy all three branches of our government while pandering to the artificially aggrieved and gullible about inconsequential “issues”? Sickness? Let’s destroy the Department of Education, gut the IRS, facilitate the expansion of monopolies, throttle speech, vilify and prosecute those we find disagreeable, etc.,etc., ad inf, all while calling ourselves “Christians”. We are here due to decades of conscious effort by reactionary elitists coupled with the dereliction of those of all stripes who chose to go along to get along. Dog whistles became dinner bells, and millions enthusiastically rushed to the trough. Reversing course and repairing the damage may require something “radical”.
You are absolutely correct. This did not start with Trump.
I look forward to an america not afraid of peace and beauty and love, Thank you, robert frost, Thank you, Steve.
It’s here. It’s just under reported.
I have to disagree. The sickness in our society predates Trump. He is the symptom, not the disease.
Where did it begin? I always like to look as far back as I can. The two earliest English "plantings" in the colonies featured people who practiced a busybody form of righteousness (Massachusetts Puritans 1620) and people who built profits on a foundation of cruelty to "others," their slaves and indentured servants (Virginia plantations 1607). A third strong thread appeared with Dutch businessmen in New Amsterdam (1624) whose forte was trade without regret.
Trumpism is profiteering, married to busybody righteousness, with a sidepiece of cruelty.
Interesting post, Em. I've noticed there are many readers here who appreciate the historical context that Steve brings. I'd like to hear more.
Well, I think there are writers much better equipped to delve into it than I am; but I have noticed strands of "values" that persist through my different family lines, as far as I can trace them, and I have read analyses of regional architecture, language, and religion that indicate persistent patterns. No doubt there has been scholarly work on the subject. Now that you mention it, though, I'll look and see.
When I listen to the intelligent and compassionate words delivered by Kennedy, I know now deep in my soul that we are no longer the country we once were.
But count me as a member of the "Defiant Believer in Renewal Club". Certainly a voice must soon rise up from among us.
I fear that we are so fractured that even if we had that “voice” it would strain to be heard. The media is Balkanized and the right has a dominant position in messaging. The media totally failed us in how they covered the election and the candidates, that happened as a policy that was enacted. Just like muck put him over the top so too did the media with a few exceptions.
The Trump/ GOP lies, lawlessness, greed and treason run so deep and wide across America—from corporate CEOs to Congress, to government agencies, judiciary, law enforcement, military and media—that they are making a mockery of the rule of law, government, justice, democracy and everything America stands for . . . It is now up to all of us to prevent the irreversible implosion of the rule of law, democracy and America.
I just read every remark on today’s board. Of note the discourse is elevated greatly. The Kennedy speech upgraded the day for us, imagine a shift to this verbiage permanently, it only took listening to one great speaker, a President. If we had a steady diet of it the future could bend as it should toward a new age of humanity. But we have mud wrestling instead, outside this board it is continuing despite the possibilities of true greatness and great art. That was JFK’s final speech.
I never thought I would agree with Vivek Ramaswamy on anything. But his analysis of the stupidification of 'Murka is pretty right on. I would remove the word 'math' and substitute 'engineers' with 'leaders,' because we need music, literature, philosophy and arts as well (all of which have been decimated by the focus on STEM), but otherwise this seems pretty right on. (thanks to Heather Cox Richardson for drawing attention to the right-wing mud-wrestling contest this morning.)
"Ramaswamy posted that tech companies hire foreign-born and first-generation engineers rather than native-born Americans because “American culture has venerated mediocrity over excellence for way too long…. A culture that celebrates the prom queen over the math olympiad champ, or the jock over the valedictorian, will not produce the best engineers.” He called for “[m]ore math tutoring, fewer sleepovers. More weekend science competitions, fewer Saturday morning cartoons. More books, less TV. More creating, less ‘chillin.’ More extracurriculars, less ‘hanging out at the mall.’”
“If you grow up aspiring to normalcy, normalcy is what you will achieve,” he warned. “‘Normalcy’ doesn’t cut it in a hyper-competitive global market for technical talent. And if we pretend like it does, we’ll have our a**es handed to us by China.” He called for America to embrace “a new golden era,” but warned it was possible “only if our culture fully wakes up. A culture that once again prioritizes achievement over normalcy; excellence over mediocrity; nerdiness over conformity; hard work over laziness. That’s the work we have cut out for us, rather than wallowing in victimhood & just wishing (or legislating) alternative hiring practices into existence.”
We now reside in an idiocracy run by an autocrat for the benefit of himself and extreme right wing oligarchs. You could not conjure up a scenario more contrary to that envisioned by JFK in his speech at Amherst. I can’t imagine how any of this ends well.
When one reads the speeches of great leaders like JFK, FDR and Reagan, it is a sad and profound reminder of the ignorance and cloddishness of the dimwit we have just elected to be our 47th president. Way to go, America.
Reagan was not a great leader. That’s where our current decline and selfishness began.
No doubt the TikTok “squabble” is a table on which There is now open warfare inside MAGA. Which way will Trump go. Tech Bros or xenophobics? If one realizes the narcissist loves only one person (period), it is easy to see Trump kissing up next to the tech oligarchs. (Sorry, Loomer.) If you think otherwise, you clearly do not understand narcissism. Likewise, the TikTok “squabble” is a grifter unable to do a grift, and blackmail for his cut of that pie.
You MUST remember the narcissist loves only one person. The xenophobics are no longer of any use to Donald.
All we can do is watch this infighting, and pick up the screaming that the price of groceries are going up. It is now our turn. Turnabout will be hilarious. We must, as Robert Hubbell said this morning, start building the 2026 and 2028 platform. I started one…https://hotbuttons.substack.com/p/create-a-platform-for-all?r=3m1bs
What you wrote is amazing and has tons of useful facts. Thank you for this.
I wrote this for you alone. But you can share. lol.