SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 22, 2025
But also, what Lincoln once said: A treasured word was (almost) completely missing from this morning's Fox & Friends Weekend. That treasured word was this:
Communist Communist Communist Communist Communist Communist Communist!
In recent weeks, it happened again and again. Rachel would call Candidate Mamdani a Communist. Charlie would then go with this:
"A full-blown Communist!"
So it would go on Fox & Friends Weekend as Charlie would make the whole thing even dumber. On various Fox News Channel shows, the personalities would tell Fox viewers how many tens of millions of people had died, during the past century, under worldwide Communist rule.
Today, the friends were pushing a newer line right from the start of the program:
Yesterday's friendly session in the Oval Office was the latest masterpiece by the infallible President Trump.
During the New York City mayoral campaign, President Trump had also routinely denounced Candidate Mamdani as a Communist. But now the transformed prince of peace had showered Mamdani with praise.
(Our own reaction? Good!)
Suddenly, the magic word was missing from Fox & Friends. In this morning's first ninety minutes, it was mentioned only when Griff Jenkins brought on a guest at 6:25 a.m.:
JENKINS (11/22/25): New York Post columnist Karol Marcowicz, who fled Soviet Communism as a child, joining us now to react.
Eventually, the chyron said this as Marcowicz stated her views:
KAROL MARCOWICZ / FLED SOVIET COMMUNISM AS A CHILD
"We didn't come here to have Communism follow us," she eventually said, apparently referring to Mamdani's proposal to have free buses.
We're glad that Marcowicz and her family were able to leave the Soviet Union—and she's of course entitled to state her views. That said, we were surprised to see the "Communist" taunt disappear as three friends discussed yesterday's meeting during several chunks of the program's first ninety minutes.
Campos-Duffy seemed to have dropped her favorite word, but she continued to spill with praise for the masterful President Trump. As for Mayor-elect Mamdani, possibly not so much:
"We still don't know if he can run a lemonade stand," she said of him at one point.
That claim struck us as technically accurate. Also, if less colorfully, we ourselves don't know how the mayor-elect will end up performing in office.
Soon, though, the friends were advancing the standard bogus statistics about the way President Trump has supposedly brought inflation down during this term in office. We had to chuckle when Campos-Duffy eventually complained about the way liberals won't spend time with people who don't share their views, not even on Thanksgiving Day.
Frankly, we had to chuckle! When did these three friends ever bring a guest on their show who was going to disagree with their infallible claims? When one of the analysts asked that question, we could recall no such time!
The flooding of the zone now moves at the speed of light. Within a day, we moved from the president's furious response to a somewhat peculiar presentation by six congressional Democrats to yesterday's extremely friendly Oval Office session.
There is no way to keep up with this flow. We can say that because we've tried.
That said, also this: We don't think a modern nation can prosper under current pseudo-journalistic arrangements, in which MAGA supporters are aggressively scripted by personalities like these while our own news orgs in Blue America agree to avert their gaze.
Yesterday, we had occasion to discuss President Lincoln with a lifelong friend. We recalled Sandburg's poetical account of the president-elect's last meeting with his stepmother, Sally Bush Lincoln.
In Sandburg's account, she knew what her stepson, the president-elect, would be thinking as he was cheered in vast parades in New York City or in D.C. He'd still be thinking about the ways of life on her small farm in Coles County, Illinois, where he'd partially been raised.
That said, we also went back and reread the text shown below. Our friend was present, long ago, when we read that text for the first time, accompanied by a group of Baltimore City fifth graders on a field trip to Washington:
Lincoln's astounding second inaugural address is inscribed, opposite the text of the Gettysburg Address, on a wall inside the Lincoln Memorial. Reading this text for the first time, we instantly knew that Abraham Lincoln had plainly not been human.
This is the bulk of the text:
Lincoln's Second Inaugural Address
[...]
On the occasion corresponding to this four years ago all thoughts were anxiously directed to an impending civil war. All dreaded it, all sought to avert it. While the inaugural address was being delivered from this place, devoted altogether to saving the Union without war, insurgent agents were in the city seeking to destroy it without war—seeking to dissolve the Union and divide effects by negotiation. Both parties deprecated war, but one of them would make war rather than let the nation survive, and the other would accept war rather than let it perish. And the war came.
One-eighth of the whole population were colored slaves, not distributed generally over the Union, but localized in the southern part of it. These slaves constituted a peculiar and powerful interest. All knew that this interest was somehow the cause of the war. To strengthen, perpetuate, and extend this interest was the object for which the insurgents would rend the Union even by war, while the Government claimed no right to do more than to restrict the territorial enlargement of it. Neither party expected for the war the magnitude or the duration which it has already attained. Neither anticipated that the cause of the conflict might cease with or even before the conflict itself should cease. Each looked for an easier triumph, and a result less fundamental and astounding. Both read the same Bible and pray to the same God, and each invokes His aid against the other. It may seem strange that any men should dare to ask a just God's assistance in wringing their bread from the sweat of other men's faces, but let u
The prayers of both could not be answered. That of neither has been answered fully.
The Almighty has His own purposes. "Woe unto the world because of offenses; for it must needs be that offenses come, but woe to that man by whom the offense cometh." If we shall suppose that American slavery is one of those offenses which, in the providence of God, must needs come, but which, having continued through His appointed time, He now wills to remove, and that He gives to both North and South this terrible war as the woe due to those by whom the offense came, shall we discern therein any departure from those divine attributes which the believers in a living God always ascribe to Him?
Fondly do we hope, fervently do we pray, that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet, if God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by the bondsman's two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said "the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether."
For the full text, click here. When we first read that astonishing text, we were astounded to think that a human being had ever said any such thing in public here on this earth.
We did this too, the president said. We in the North are one of the parties "by whom the offense came."
(It's said that Lincoln added the line which starts with "It may seem strange" because he knew that many people in the victorious North wouldn't like his fuller assessment. We don't know if that's accurate.)
We did this too, that president said—and then he took things a great deal farther. In our own estimation, we Blues would do well to remember that astonishing judgment as we try to assess the devastating war of the worlds into which our two Americas, Red and Blue, have been so unhelpfully thrown, out in Coles County and everywhere else, over the past many years.
Monday: Greg Gutfeld RE President Trump, back then as compared to now. To read ahead, click here.
Abraham Lincoln had very little formal schooling, amounting to less than a year total in his childhood. OTOH, college graduates today don’t write this well. Modern day education is not working right.
ReplyDeleteImplying that formal schooling is all there is to education is hugely misleading, David. Lincoln "read" law, which means he studies the law in a lawyer's office with a mentor, in preparation for joining the bar and becoming a lawyer himself. That is education. Lincoln read books and that is where he acquired a sense of language. Note that Somerby is praising the content of Lincoln's speech, the meaning, not the wording of it.
Delete
ReplyDelete"We had to chuckle when Campos-Duffy eventually complained about the way liberals won't spend time with people who don't share their views, not even on Thanksgiving Day."
Chuckle away, Bob, you're perfectly entitled to it. You're sooo superior to 'em Others, 'em smelly Walmart shoppers. So, so smarter. You da Man.
Why would anyone want to disturb the pleasure of the holiday arguing with people like Cecelia. Just imagine her around your Thanksgiving dinner table and you'll see why liberals have cut-off their divisive friends and relatives. Life is too short to spend it arguing politics with peope who are unwilling to see what they did to our country.
DeleteAnonymouse 11:13am, it wouldn’t go like that. By the time we got the dishes put away, we’d practically be sisters.
Delete“Why would anyone want to disturb the pleasure of the holuday arguing with people like Cecelia.”
DeleteIt looks to me like you’re itching to pick a fight with CC. So, you seem to be the one who can give us the answer to your question.
AKA DG, I’m aware of the CC thing.
Delete"smelly, Walmart shoppers."
DeleteDidn't know you shopped there.
"In our own estimation, we Blues would do well to remember that astonishing judgment as we try to assess the devastating war of the worlds into which our two Americas, Red and Blue, have been so unhelpfully thrown..."
ReplyDeleteWe are not engaged in a "war of the worlds" but in a political struggle between two parties, just like we encounter every four years as we elect a president and every two years for members of congress.
War of the Worlds is the name of a sci fi book written by H.G. Wells, in which the world is invaded by aliens from outer space. It was made into a movie with Tom Cruise. It has nothing to do with current politics and there is no reason why Somerby should have "borrowed" that title to refer to American politics.
Our main problem today is that the right wing aided by Russia has put a conman and criminal into office. He has destroyed American institutions and ignored both laws and norms to acquire great wealth in office and now his crimes are coming to light. We will shortly go through another impeachment and hopefully the Senate will remove him this time. That so many Republicans support this fraud is what is ailing our nation today, not any fundamental conflict between red and blue, much less aliens. (Is that a shout-out to Q-Anon and their reptilians, Somerby? If so, it is venal to encourage craziness as if it had some real place in politics on either side.)
Meanwhile, there is now evidence that Epstein talked about Katie Johnson, and more support for her testimony that Trump raped her when she was 13, along with another girl who was 12. There is also evidence showing that Epstein considered himself a Trump supporter, was in constant touch with Steve Bannon, helping him strategize on behalf of Trump, and that Epstein denied being a Democrat but never denied being a pedophile.
There is a lot going on in our country. None of it concerns a civil war and none of it concerns aliens. It is about getting rid of a man who should never have been elected president, if the press had done its job and covered the lawsuits of Katie Johnson (back in 2016, before Trump's first election). The mainstream press is still not covering her story. Why?
"War of the worlds" can be used to refer to Wells' story, but since it is comprised of two common, everyday words, 'war' and 'worlds', it can be applied in any way a writer chooses to.
DeleteYou're a bit persnickety in your criticism.
“if the press had done its job and covered the lawsuits of Katie Johnson”
DeleteUnknown person files, then immediately dismisses, lawsuits against Trump. What more is there for the press to cover?
Lincoln's second inaugural address was given a month before the Civil War ended. Somerby implies that it had ended when the address was given, but it had not.
ReplyDeleteSomerby reads this as Lincoln blaming the war on both the North and South, but look what he says:
"Both parties deprecated war, but one of them would make war rather than let the nation survive, and the other would accept war rather than let it perish. "
The North accepted war to preserve the nation. The South made war because it would not accept the law imposed by the NATION on slave-owners. The South would not accept the will of the people and abide by the laws enacted which threatened slave ownership. So, the civil war was about slavery, yet, but also about wealth. The rich men who owned slaves wouldn't surrender their wealth to free men held in bondage. That is not the offense of the North which Lincoln says fought to preserve the nation as a unified whole comprised of states under the same government.
Somerby keeps babbling about secession, asserting that the red states have engaged in a secession from the blue states. There are people who might wish for that outcome, but I do not see what Somerby thinks is so wonderful about Lincoln's address. It seems obvious that both the North and the South were involved in the civil war, with different purposes, but how is that some wonderful revelation. There is greater nobility in fighting preserve the union than in fighting to own slaves.
Today, there is no nobility whatsoever in defending the pedophile and con artist, the greedy bastard who allied with a foreign enemy to put himself in office, solely to exercise power and acquire greater wealth. Trump must go. He is not now and never was fit to be our president. We are waiting him out -- he will have to leave office at the end of his term (if not before), but any attempt to stay beyond that will result in more fighting to preserve our law-governed nation.
Blues are not now fighting against red America. We are resisting the dissolution of our government and rule of law because we do not support tyranny. That is far from Lincoln's context, no matter how much Somerby gushes over Lincoln's address, simply because it holds the North complicit in Civil War, to prevent the South from dissolving the union. Somerby does not exactly say what he considers so wonderful about that. It IS consistent with his repetitive theme that Blue America is as complicit as Red America in our current conflicts -- except that is untrue. We didn't give Trump authority to loot our nation, red America did that. We are the only ones fighting to keep America free and to restore prosperity (against Trump's destructive actions). We are the only ones who care about ALL of the people of our nation -- not Red America, who is scapegoating diversity and trying to restore bigotry to American life.
Meanwhile, Somerby has nothing to say about the daily revelations about Epstein and Trump's relationship, Trump's participation in the rape of underage girls, and his efforts to conceal his wrongdoing. Lincoln had nothing to say about pedophiles, but he was certainly against slavery and he said so. Somerby will not do the same. He pretend to admire Lincoln's moral courage while failing to endorse the only side against pedophilia and greed these days, blue America. We do not deserve Somerby's chiding. It is aimed at the wrong people.
“Somerby has nothing to say about the daily revelations about . . . Trump’s participation in the rape of underage girls”
ReplyDeleteI missed today’s revelations about Trump raping young girls, and yesterday’s, too. Perhaps you could fill me in. (And, please, spare me a rant about the unverified, decade-old “revelations” by an anonymous accuser.)