DANGEROUS TIMES
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Day 1073

12/29/2019

1 Comment

 

AMERICAN GRACE

Many people were kind in 2019. Will they turn the tide in 2020?
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I HAVE NO IDEA how the election will turn out. After all, I'm just a dog.
   I know this: if Trump wins a second term, our democracy may not survive. If he loses, we have a chance to rebuild the country and address even greater problems like climate change and disappearing jobs.
   Our saving grace may be grace itself. I believe – and not just because I’m famously a “Sweet Dog” – that our ability to rid ourselves of Trump will be our shared, innate kindness.
   Every day, in every state, people serve food to people who are hungry, hold babies born to drug dependent parents, raise money for sick folks, pull unconscious people out of burning cars, phone neighbors living alone during blizzards, wash cars to pay for school field trips. And so on and on.
   Will people who do these things really support the cruel man who turns away or locks up families escaping murderous dictators and gangs, who encourages racists and bigots, who sneers at science, who betrays allies, who pardons war criminals, who assaults women, who calls the media the “enemy,” and who every day tells multiple lies, while Tweeting slurs and insults?
   With the New Year only two days away, I'm remembering some examples of kindness that everyday Americans performed in 2019, stories about kindly Americans who will decide the fate of our country and planet in 2020.

VERMONT NICE

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   SHORTLY BEFORE CHRISTMAS, The Grouchy One and I drove to Vermont, where he was born and his sister still lives, and we happened to pass through Chester - but not too fast, as you will see.
   Not only does Chester, population 3,144, have more than one stoplight – it also puts out four of those radar displays that tell drivers how fast they’re going compared to the speed limit.
   However, when Christmas comes around, Chester adds a kindly touch that Santa would approve, if he existed.
   What happens? When a car is going at or below the speed limit, the sign displays the word “NICE.”
   But when a driver is too much in a hurry to get out of Chester, the sign flashes “NAUGHTY.”
   It takes a lot to get Grouchy to smile, but when he saw this, my sensitive dog ears picked up an actual laugh.
   Returning to Rhode Island, we phoned Deborah Aldrich, the town clerk. First thing, Ms. Aldrich gave credit where it belonged, because that’s what they do in Vermont.
   Chester, she told us, wasn’t the first to reprogram its radar alerts. That honor belongs to Manchester, population 4,391, about 30 miles to the east.
   “We thought that would be fun to do,” said Ms. Aldrich, noting that the signs have brought more than smiles – they've produced lots of great press about Chester, including a piece on CNN.
   It’s been such a pleasant way to persuade drivers to creep-don't-race through Chester, that the town is considering similar messages pegged to other holidays.
   “So there may be other changes,” Ms. Aldrich said, keeping the still-forming plans confidential for now.
   We asked what the signs normally say after Christmas cheer fades.
   “Slow down,” when drivers are too much in a rush, she said.
   And when they obey the speed limit? “Thank you.”
   Well, that sounds kind of nice, too, we told her.
   She laughed, but resisted the temptation to brag about these and other touches that make Vermont compulsively civilized.
   If you live in a place like Chester, you already know it’s a kindly place. But if someone from “away” wants to spread the word, well, that’s nice,too.


AN APRON IS SAVED – AND THEN SOME

TRUCK, MY YELLOW LAB FRIEND from next door, is associated with a Human who is an enterprising jack-of-all trades, sometimes working as a freelance chef and caterer for large gatherings.
   Truck’s Human looks after his neighbors, shoveling and snow-blowing their sidewalks in the winter, holding a woodworking clinic for developmentally disabled school kids and helping a friend with some hurry-up painting when he’s getting ready to sell his house.
   The other day, Truck’s Human was chatting with a woman who lives nearby and is a talented seamstress, telling her that his favorite chef’s apron was torn and couldn’t be used.
   Could she fix it?
   Not a problem, she said. And a few days later, she returned the apron, repaired and ready for duty at the grill and cutting board.
   But she didn’t stop there. She handed him three new aprons that she had sewn, using the old one as a template and fashioning them with same kind of tough materials used in the original.
   The moral of the story? You never know when an extra apron or three might come in handy.

A FOX STAYS PUT

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 ON OUR WALKS in Newport, Grouchy and I sometimes pass a fox scampering along a high stone wall fronting an estate on Narragansett Avenue.
   Not a real one. He/she is made out of some kind of metal. It’s fun to see it, and obviously has caught the eye of many passersby, including at least one thief.
   The fox-napping happened a while ago and prompted an outcry on a local social media site.
   That may have led to the creature’s safe return, but there were fears the fox's handlers might withdraw it from public life for safety. Instead, the fox’s handlers returned it to its rightful place on the wall, much to the delight of the city's non-farming residents and visitors.
   No fools, however, the handlers also tacked up a couple of surveillance cameras high up a tree to keep an eye out for would-be predators.
   What’s more, the handlers every Christmas loop a large, red holiday ribbon around its neck.
   It’s a defiant move, which probably makes the fox an even more tempting target for the Dark Side, but which also casts the fox as a heroic and determined messenger of holiday cheer and goodwill.

HOPE SOAP

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THE BOX WITH A BAR OF SOAP shown above is an example of how seemingly overwhelming problems like homelessness can be tackled when grassroots groups and giant corporations alike take small, but thoughtful steps to help.
   First, the soap bar symbolizes the work of House of Hope Community Development Corporation, a non-profit agency that helps one-fourth of all Rhode Islanders who are homeless.
   One of House of Hope’s recent accomplishments has been fielding a “Shower to Empower” trailer, which includes two built-in shower stalls, a medical exam room and space for haircuts and hair dressing.
   Towed by a pickup truck to places around Providence, the mobile unit provides much-needed opportunities for people living on the street to freshen up, as well as to find out about social services.

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   Coincidentally, the giant Unilever Corp., whose products include Dove soap and Ben & Jerry’s Ice Cream, has developed special all-purpose soaps as a way to raise money for emerging mobile programs; a $10,000 grant went to House of Hope.
   A second coincidence: Unilever developed both liquid and bar forms of its soap and subcontracted production of the bar kind to Bradford Soapworks, headquartered in West Warwick, R.I.
   Obviously, mobile showers and bars of soap won’t end homelessness. But they are reminders to the rest of us of how hard the lives of homeless men and women can be – not even having a regular place to bathe – and they provide practical steps for people who House of Hope say can help them find safe, permanent homes.
   The soap comes in four fragrances, including “Hope," Rhode Island's motto, and you can buy them at Whole Foods and Amazon. They’re not cheap – the idea, after all, is to raise money. But they're high quality, with environmentally sound ingredients and packaging.
   You can learn more about House of Hope at its website:
www.TheHouseofHopeCDC.org
    And about about Unilever’s program
at https://www.therighttoshower.com/

CHRISTMAS STORY

MY HUMANS  – The Nice One and The Grouchy One – were talking the other evening, with Grouchy telling her about a conversation he overheard when he and I were visiting Grouchy’s sister in Vermont.
   The Humans had gone to a restaurant cheerfully decorated for Christmas,  and were seated at a cozy table in front of the fireplace. At the next table, a man was eating by himself, and seemed lonely, given how he began chatting up his server.
    “How was your holiday?” the diner asked.
   “It was all right,” answered the waitress, who seemed the younger of the two.
   “What do you mean?” said the man, picking up on her less-than-enthusiastic answer.
   “Well,” she said, “my sister died.”
   “Oh?”
   “She had two children.”
   “Really? What happened?”
   “She had an infection. And no insurance.”
   “When did she die?”
   “Last spring. So this was her kids' and our first Christmas without her.”
   “How old are they?”
   “Four and 7. They’re living with my parents.”
   The diner kept the conversation going, as the waitress went about her several duties, clearing tables, lugging a bin of dirty dishes to the kitchen.
   “Are you living with them, too?”
   “Nope. With my boyfriend.”
   “How long have you been together?”
   “Fifteen years.”
   “Fifteen years?”
   “Yup.”
   “Isn’t it about time to get him to ask the question?” the diner said, maybe to lighten up the conversation.
   “It’s more like the other way around,” the woman answered, with a hint of sternness.
   The Nice One asked Grouchy what they said next. He didn’t know, because by then, the waitress had delivered his and his sister’s food.
   Listening to Grouchy and The Nice One – dogs are skilled, if involuntary, eavesdroppers – I thought the restaurant exchange was the right kind of Christmas story.
   A man, lonely, eating by himself two days after a holiday when no one wants to be alone, listened carefully and kindly to someone else’s honest words about grief and uncertainty.

MISSING CAT

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  STILL NO WORD FROM CAT.
   I think about him every day.
   As some readers know, he was a co-founder of the Tracking Trump blog, and he was our rational, practical voice.
   Cat died Nov. 14, and today would have been his 15th birthday.
   Cat was a piece of work: he really hated dogs – all dogs – as well as other cats. But he was a great comfort to Humans. And our house still seems empty without him.
   I expect to hear from him every day. But so far, nothing.
   Why?
   I have no idea. I guess that death, like life, is a mystery.
   When I get to feeling sorry for myself, I take out an illustration that our friend and artist Frank Gerardi thoughtfully created a few days after Cat went off to the vet and didn’t come back.
   The drawing shows a cat – our Cat – lying on a cloud, a halo over his head. Below him is someone who looks like the 45th president, sporting a red tie, with two horns protruding from his head and sitting in a pillar of orange flame.
   Frank sent me this kind message to go with his drawing:
   “Better to be in Cat's heaven than in Trump’s hell.”

1 Comment

Day 1057

12/14/2019

2 Comments

 

ANGST

IT'S TRUMP'S FAULT WE'RE SCARED SILLY.
BUT OUR ANGST COULD BE HIS DOWNFALL

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IT'S NOT ONLY FEAR. It’s not just depression. And it’s not exactly terror.
   But combine all these emotions and you end up with what I have, something that’s gotten worse over the past three years.
   Call it angst. The relentless, on-going, persistent, unrelenting, pervasive dread that I experience all day, every day, and maybe you do, too - the obsession that we’re losing the battle to stop Donald Trump from destroying democracy.
   I admit this reluctantly.
   Before Cat died – he was a co-founder and an author of the Tracking Trump blog – we agreed that going into 2020, we were going to keep positive when it comes to talking about Donald Trump.
    The danger, we agreed, is that acute angst can be a self-fulfilling disaster, so that we become so worn down, even paralyzed, that we become unfit for the job of countering Trump’s drive to wreck everything.

BUT CAT AND I WERE WRONG. Sort of.
   Take this week’s cascade of high-tension news about impeachment: Are the Democrats screwing up the process? Why aren’t Republicans held to account for spreading phony conspiracies? What’s with the screaming and name-calling? Why are the Democratic primary candidates tearing each other to pieces? And how does Trump seem always, no matter what awful thing he does or Tweets, keep on getting away with it?
   If that doesn’t bother you – if you aren’t going to bed anxious, if you aren’t waking up anxious, if you aren’t anxious on the way to work, at lunch, on your way home, anxious during and after supper, then that’s just not normal.
   Heading into the fourth awful year of Trump – with the real possibility there’ll be four more, but worse – we all should be infused with angst, our brains at the boiling point, about to liquefy.
   You’re saying that dog and cat brains are too insignificant to explain what’s going on with  Human voters, the ones with gigantic, enormous, humongous brains.
   Here’s the thing: dogs are angst experts.
   your average dog spends at least half her waking hours obsessing about the next possible catastrophe, an instinct bequeathed by our wolf forebearers, who struggled every day not to be someone’s next breakfast.

I'M SAYING THAT IT'S NOT WRONG TO BE ANXIOUS ABOUT ANGST.
   This was reinforced by two pieces I read in yesterday’s New York Times: a column   by the excellent Michelle Goldberg, and a  feature/news story by Sarah Lyall. Both deal with angst. (I've linked to them; click on the bylines or headlines to read).
   Goldberg’s column, headlined:  Democracy Grief Is Real, quoted a Georgia woman, Katie Landsman:

“It’s like watching someone you love die of a wasting disease,” she said, speaking of our country. “Each day, you still have that little hope; no matter what happens, you’re always going to have that little hope that everything’s going to turn out O.K., but every day it seems like we get hit by something else.” Some mornings, she said, it’s hard to get out of bed. “It doesn’t feel like depression,” she said. “It really does feel more like grief.”
   Lyall’s article, datelined South Carolina, carried understated headline: Democrats Agree on One Thing: They’re Very, Very Nervous.
Some people are suffering from general political angst. Others have specific qualms: a concern that their favorite candidate lacks that essential quality, electability; a worry that fellow Democrats will become disillusioned if their chosen candidate fails to get the nomination and will vote for a third-party candidate, or for Mr. Trump, or for no one at all — the “Bernie or Nobody” scenario.
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"NERVOUS." ARE YOU KIDDING ME?
   Every news story sets off a neural meltdown.
   How about the week’s big story – not the supposed China trade war settlement; not Trump’s tweet about Greta Thunberg, the 16-year-old environmental crusader, advising her to work on “anger management” because she ended up on the cover of Time and he didn’t; not the assassination of Jews in Jersey City; and not the erupting volcano in New Zealand that killed 16 people.
   The story that set my heart a-thumping is Boris Johnson’s big election win on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean. Why that story? We – the U.S. and the U.K. – have got a lot in common, and one of those commonalities is that Prime Minister Boris is a near doppelganger of President Donald.
   Both do strange things with their hair; both are political opportunists with thin belief systems; both are seasoned liars; both traffic in insults and slurs; both have little regard for their nations’ democratic traditions; and both are fools, but dangerous fools.
   Boris now has won control of Parliament, meaning Merry Old England is in for what could be five ruinous years, beginning with Boris following through on his promise to get Brexit “done,” pulling the U.K. out of the E.U., aka, the European Union that has made the region one of the world’s economic powerhouses. Just speculating here, but leaving the E.U. will send Britain to the economic dog house.
   You could see that one coming from 3,281 miles away, hoping it wouldn’t happen, but knowing that it would.
   Pre-election opinion polls indicated that Boris’ Conservatives were likely to win; and that Liberals were led by a substandard and widely disliked leader, so that once dependable industrial voters who have lost better-paying jobs were easy, gullible targets for demagogues and snake oil salesmen.
   You didn’t have to be a stray dog from the Show Me State to suspect the outcome. And you don’t have to be a rescue from Missouri to see where the U.S> is heading in the 2020 election.

THE DEMOCRATS ARE IN DISARRAY.
   No candidate for the party’s nomination has captured voters’ imaginations. Impeachment, like the Mueller Report, is on its way to being an anticlimactic flop. The recapture of the House by the Democrats after the mid-term elections turns out to be ineffectual compared to the powerhouse alliance of the White House’s Tweeter-In-Chief, Trump-worshipers in Senate and Trump-toadies at the Supreme Court.
   It’s not that the Democrats aren’t trying hard to do the right things.
   Democrats did win the House; the Mueller Report did document Trump’s coziness with the Russians; Trump’s offenses are impeachable. A score of talented candidates are stepping up to the plate to run against him.
   The problem is that no matter what the Democrats do, nothing seems to work. Which is where our increasing angst comes in.
   Johnson’s crushing victory in England is yet another dire warning that an Election Day Disaster in the former Colonies could be just months away, with the cruel reality that bad things really can and do happen to nice nations.
   Which is why angst is appropriate, and why I can offer some advice.
   After all, I’m licensed by the City of Newport, just not as a therapist. But like I said, as a dog, I am an angst specialist. I’m perpetually scared. I go nuts every time the mail is delivered to our house or when a dried leaf scuttles by on the sidewalk out front.
   So, here goes:
   Don’t waste your time trying to get over your deepening, all-consuming, never-ending angst. Embrace it. Use it.
   With angst, we have two choices:
   Hide under our favorite blankets.
   Or, do what wolves and their wily successors have learned to when scared out of their teensy-weensy minds by hungry rivals hoping to use their Dine Out cards: snarl, attack, fight, run, organize, howl, compromise, drool, snarl, ingratiate, slink, maneuver, jump, bite, and most of all, evolve.
   We have nothing to lose by acknowledging and acting
on our angst.
   But we have everything to lose by succumbing to it.
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2 Comments

Day 1052

12/9/2019

0 Comments

 

MICHELLE!

THE WORD THAT CAN LIFT
DISPIRITED DEMOCRATS

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I WAS CHATTING the other day with a bunch of other dogs at the park near our house in Newport, R.I., and everyone was pretty glum. Since we were all Democrats, I don’t have to tell you why.
  Reality is starting to sink in – one of the folks polling at the top of the candidates’ “field” is actually going to run against Donald Trump, and this excites exactly nobody.
  Then I said the magic word:
  “Michelle!”
  Immediately, everybody perked up, looked at me, wagging their tails, all smiles, barking, chasing each other around. It was like the whole park lit up, turned from winter to summer; night to day, from despair to absolute joy.
   Let's call it The Michelle Effect.
  When folks hear her name, read about her, catch a glimpse of her on TV, to say nothing of seeing her in person, they pay attention. They listen. They clap, laugh, cheer. Stand up. Sign up. Show up. And vote.
  Michelle Obama can beat Donald Trump.

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MICHELLE at a 2008 campaign rally for her husband, Barack Obama, in Jackson, FL. CREDIT: Craig ONeal, under a Creative Commons license
 BUT YOU SAY that everybody knows the one thing that Michelle LaVaughn Robinson Obama does not want to do is have anything to do with politics.
  Take it from her best pal, Barack, who put it this way when asked the question in 2016: “There are three things that are certain in life: death, taxes and Michelle is not running for president. That I can tell you.”
  Michelle has said it over and over and even in her autobiography, “Becoming,” which is the best selling book of 2019, hitting the top of the New York Times list 15 times this year and five times last year, to give you just a little hint of how incredibly popular she is.
  And I can hear Cat saying: “Phoebe, you’re an idiot. Leave the poor woman alone. She’s done her part. Eight years in the White House. Raised two beautiful kids. All the while, living with a guy with enormous ears and a weird name. If anybody deserves a break. I mean, she's (only) 55 and can make up her own mind."
  Actually, I’d be interested in what Cat would think now, given how things are shaping up with the election less than a year away.
  The horror: Less than a year!
  
  ANYWAY, I WAS SAYING about our focus group at the park....
  You’re saying: “It’s not a focus group, just a bunch of dogs at a playground, no less.”
  My response: Try it at home. At the office, around the water cooler, (if they still have those in today’s Gig Economy). Try it at a store, at Sunday dinner, at the casino, the beach cleanup, the Christmas party, the supermarket check-out line, at a park of your choosing, wherever. Just say it.
  “Michelle.”
  Conversation stops, people look at you, pay attention, wanting to know more, demanding to know more. Tell us what you know.
  You don’t need to be a professional campaign consultant, a scientific pollster, a pundit, a poet or a prophet. You just need to make sure there are other people in the room. Then say it and see what happens.

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IT’S NOT GOING TO BE UNANIMOUS, of course not. In fact, at the park, there was this brute of a Golden Retriever (Humans think that Goldens are so,well, "golden" - but it's just another generalization that doesn't hold up at parks, in Red states, Blue states). The particular Golden Dork sneered at the Michelle idea with a pretend question:  “What are her qualifications?”
  A softball, even that wasn’t his intent. Princeton undergrad. Harvard Law School,  snotty sounding law firm, posts in the administration of then-Mayor Richard M. Daley (the son, not the mean father of the1960s), executive director of the Chicago office of Public Allies, (it lures idealistic young people into low-paying careers at non-profits and government agencies), associate dean at the University of Chicago and executive positions the University of Chicago Hospitals.
  And, of course, she was First Lady of the United States from early 2009 to early 2017. That would be eight years in the White House. Eight years in which she learned how that place really works, which is something you can’t know until you’re actually there. So, she'll get right to it, cleaning up the Trump disaster, to rescue the environment, foreign affairs, immigration, education, housing and respect for democratic ideals and institutions.
  Want to know what else works for Michelle Obama as the nominee? She’s Most Admired Woman in the World. She’s also the Most Admired Woman in the USA.
  That’s from a survey by YouGov, a research group out of London, which reported this past July that Michelle replaced Angelina Jolie for first place in the ladies' world category. To put these kinds of surveys in perspective, here's who it found to be the World’s Most Admired Man  – hold still for this  - Bill Gates! Who knew?
   But you get the point. People know who she is.

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MICHELLE, at her dramatic address to a New Hampshire audience in 2016, calling out Donald Trump for his lewd comments on tape about women. TAP photo to go the Guardian newspaper's transcript and video. CREDIT: The Guardian
MY BIG ARGUMENT is this, and I probably should have made it earlier:
  You might remember a speech that Michelle gave in the closing days of the 2016 election – Oct. 13, to be specific – when she was campaigning for Hillary Clinton in Manchester, N.H.
  It was about a week after the tape surfaced on which Trump is heard boasting to a guy from the “Hollywood Access” TV program about Trump’s long history of abusing women. Trump says: 
You know, I’m automatically attracted to beautiful — I just start kissing them, It’s like a magnet. Just kiss. I don’t even wait. And when you’re a star, they let you do it. You can do anything… grab ’em by the pussy. You can do anything.
In an auditorium at Southern New Hampshire University, Michelle tells the crowd how proud she had been just days earlier at the White House, assuring a group of girls about how much they had to look forward to in an emerging age in which women are equals, with ever increasing opportunities. But now:
The fact is that in this election, we have a candidate for president of the United States who, over the course of his lifetime and the course of this campaign, has said things about women that are so shocking, so demeaning that I simply will not repeat anything here today. And last week, we saw this candidate actually bragging about sexually assaulting women. And I can’t believe that I’m saying that a candidate for president of the United States has bragged about sexually assaulting women.
   Her voice is shaking, but it never fails, as Michelle Obama describes how thoroughly shocked and angry the “candidate’s” words have made her – she never speaks Trump’s name.
  She talks for nearly a half-hour, never missing a word, sentences complete, even though it’s obvious she’s not using a Teleprompter, but she speaks from deep within, as her indignation, her outrage, her disdain and anger sweeps through the room.
   This is a speech for the ages, but as eloquent and seamless as it is, a transcript hardly does it justice. You need to watch it and hear her speech as it happened. It’s easily found on the Internet, and I’ve LINKED to a version that’s on the website of the Guardian newspaper.
   You will be transfixed, and you’ll have two thoughts. One is that although Michelle was campaigning for Hillary, it's impossible to miss the point that Michelle would have been the better candidate.
 
And two, that if you change just a couple of references about the 2106 campaign to apply to an imagined 2020 election, that speech will be as fresh, insightful and relevant now as it was then. 
Because here’s the truth: either Hillary Clinton (Michelle Obama) or her opponent will be elected president this year. And if you vote for someone other than Hillary (Michelle), or if you don’t vote at all, then you are helping to elect her opponent. And just think about how you will feel if that happens. Imagine waking up on November the 9th  (November the 3rd) and looking into the eyes of your daughter or son, or looking into your own eyes as you stare into the mirror. Imagine how you’ll feel if you stayed home, or if you didn’t do everything possible to elect Hillary (Michelle).
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  Deja vu all over again. The difference now being that we know Trump, the president, is worse than Trump, the candidate. And we know how much worse his second term would be than his first, with another four years perhaps ending the United States as we know it.
   Speaking for myself, if Joe Biden or Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, Pete Buttigieg, Amy Klobuchar or others currently and officially in running is nominated, each is talented and capable of running the country, and I will do anything possible to make it happen, as will lots of others.
  But the chances of winning are so much better if Michelle is the candidate. Nothing is guaranteed. She won’t get many votes from Trump’s famous “base.” Race and bigotry will explode along with misogyny, greed, false stories, violence and all the other awful forces that surround and are propelled by Trump.
  Obama, with her unique oratorical gifts, her universal appeal, her experience, her deeply held beliefs, high standards, and quick mind can transform the election. She can bring people to the polls to vote who otherwise won’t.
  As for her clearly stated reluctance to run, and her well-earned disdain for politics, I get it. I'm a dog, so I know what it's like to have people boss you, tell you what to do, when to do it, how to do it, when you have absolutely no interest.
  But I refer Michelle toher own words from that that October day four years ago. They challenge her now in the same way she summoned that New Hampshire audience to rescue an endangered nation.

Imagine how you’ll feel if you stayed home … We simply cannot let that happen. We cannot allow ourselves to be so disgusted that we just shut off the TV and walk away. And we can’t just sit around wringing our hands. Now, we need to recover from our shock and depression and do what women have always done in this country. We need you to roll up your sleeves. We need to get to work.
  A call to action that can be distilled into a single word:
  “Michelle.”

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    A "sweet dog" and a smart opossum consider a nation at risk.

    The writers

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    PHOEBE, a "sweet dog" who came to Rhode Island in 2010 as a stray puppy from Missouri, was a political agnostic until Trump's catastrophic election. She tracked his presidency in a blog, which she decided to resurrect it this year  when it became obvious that Republicans are committed to Trump's destructive policies
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    MR. O, an opossum, showed up in Phoebe's backyard somewhat mysteriously. He turned out to have genuine insight into political matters, and he agreed to assume co-author duties of the blog after Phoebe's previous writing partner, Cat, a cat, died.
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    CAT

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