Lobenthal.com

PART II OF HIS OPEN LETTER

AND YET…

Decades ago, Rupert Murdoch openly espoused that there was more personal gain in ginning up the right. Upon that realization he “converted” from being left leaning to being a far-righter. Sounds frustratingly familiar today. As such, and for half a century, he and his outlets have directly profited from undermining democracies in the U.S., Great Britain, and his native Australia. Fox News is clownish despite the fact that there is nothing funny about the damage they continue to cause, and yet is the single most watched “news” outlet in the country and is a staple ON MILITARY BASES. Let that not be lost on any of us as we watched our military training on full display on January 6^th . The liberals supposedly own the media, and the entertainment outlets, and our advertising agencies. AND YET…

Luigi Mangione murdered a man. While the press continues its abrogation of responsibility by focusing on the non-news aspects of this issue (“if it bleeds it leads”, a topic unto itself) instead of the real issue of why so many people of all political and societal stripes support him. He is a murderer and that’s not the way we should solve issues. But his victim was part of an industry that profits directly off of practicing the very definition of 2^nddegree manslaughter. Isn’t the story that our healthcare system is a gigantic rip off, shackles us to our jobs, is unfair, and bankrupts individual? Isn’t that why so many people express their pain by supporting a murderer? The Dems are arguably the party of healthcare.

AND YET…

America’s farmers overwhelmingly voted for republicans who have returned the favor by ruining their labor force with their immigration policies, their foreign markets with their tariffs, and their cost of capital with their economic policies. And now the republicans, the “party of fiscal responsibility” are offering to bail them out? Should that fail, and is likely to, none of this is any  surprise as the republican corporate benefactors will scoop up the remaining independent farms at distressed prices.

I have heard each of you be increasingly forceful in articulating Democratic strengths and republican weaknesses. Even more encouraging, your are increasingly vocal that the Democratic Party needs to be. THANK YOU! We are terrible at doing so and repeatedly cede the narrative and credit for our successes to the GOP and then play defense which is self-defeating and weak. 

Both sides are being controlled by their extremists. As anyone who has run a competitive bid process knows, the highest and lowest bids are discarded and the remaining bids are within the realm of reasonability. It is time that both parties cut off or at least temper the influence of the wings of our political bell curve. I believe that this will resonate with most Americans.

So, in conclusion, proudly, loudly, with strength and conviction, articulate the policies and successes of the Democratic party while holding the republican party responsible for every failure. Bullet point all of them and connect those dots to what they all mean to the people If, “it’s the economy, stupid”, and it is and the republicans are bad for it, then ensure that it is a component of every line item on both lists. Above all KEEP THE MESSAGE SIMPLE AND STAY ON IT!

A personal note to each of you:

Messrs. Murphy and Himes, I am a W. Htfd. native and UConn alum, I am immensely proud of CT.  “Pizza, A Love Story”, is a work of emotional beauty about New Haven’s world’s best abeets, of the only correct definition of the lobster roll, of the Htfd. Yard Goats, the erstwhile Whalers who live on in our hearts (and have a consistent top-3 merch ranking), and I have to add The Danbury Trashers, short lived though they were.

Mr. Torres, as a NY resident for over 30 years (mother’s side of the family from/is here, her father grew up on St. Nicholas & 119^th St.), despite my immense respect for your strength through thoughtfulness and kindness, I cannot support your district’s baseball team, being a New England native and all…LGM!

Ms. Slotkin, I am a HUGE fan of Founders’ All Day IPA and dad was a very proud University of Michigan alum. GO BLUE!

Mr. Newsom, please help the Dodgers to not take a page from the yankee$’ terrible playbook. Despite Mookie having been “Babe Ruthed” to them, by my Red Sawx, we thank them for 2024! (sorry Mr. Torres).

Mayor Pete, I am a card carrying member of yours from 2016. Your gift of communication is a gift to the nation.

Thank you,

Michael

that his handlers can’t risk him appearing in public: he’s obviously been sequestered since his off-the-rails, sniff-riden marathon of madness last Tuesday.

In the meantime, J.D. and Thiehl are trying on coronation robes.

keen in chorus that Newscom isn’t serious enough! Their baggy-pants antics don’t allow for shame or even self-respect, as their performative hypocrisy renders them more ludicrous than ever.

about children being massacred, they would do a lot more than just advocate thoughts and prayers.

Always remember, when it’s something that the GOP cares about, like tax cuts for the wealthy and tearing health care away from the poor, then they take action. No stopping at thoughts and prayers when it’s something they really want.

Wherever he goes, there they are surrounding him, his obsequious courtiers emitting inane, nervous titters at every miserably, chillingly unfunny and treasonous punchline he manages to pronounce.

waving his hands around frenetically like the madman he is. And this is what his propaganda mill tell us is actually a sign of stamina.

Meanwhile, Jake Tapper refuses to acknowledge Trump’s senility, calling these daily displays of addled debilitation simply indices of Trump’s character–c.f. David Pakman. For Tapper to acknowledge the reality of Trump’s condition would, of course, further indict his and the rest of the corporate media’s shameful normalization of Trump’s decline and its instead directing the public’s focus on the much less virulent cognitive issues of Biden.

It might also diminish book sales of Original Sin, and that’s what really important, no?

I remember being hyped in high school about seeing Shampoo, The Exorcist, Chinatown, et. al. as soon as they first appeared. I didn’t experience anything comparable in the ’80s. Maybe it was because I was so involved in ballet and putting together my book on fashions of the ’60s. But Steve Vineberg’s No Surprises, Please: Movies in the Reagan Era describes a sea change:

“What happened to movies in the eighties—and has continued into the nineties—was not that good movies no longer got made, though there certainly seemed to be fewer of them. It was that, with shockingly few exceptions, they were ignored, dismissed, buried by a combination of studio publicists who felt they couldn’t sell them, critics who didn’t understand them or didn’t feel secure praising anything that was so clearly falling by the wayside, and audiences that never heard of them (blame the publicists and the critics) or assumed that they couldn’t be any good if they weren’t being hyped and systemically dragged into the national consciousness by massive ad campaigns.“

Yes, the 1980s really were a fateful turning point in American culture as well as politics.

Jane Raleigh, director of dance programming at the Kennedy Center, was fired for the most transparently specious reasons: “While I was told my dismissal was due to a ‘loss of confidence in my leadership,'” Raleigh said in a statement, “I believe this firing to be in retaliation for my public support of the ongoing union organization drive at the Center.”

Ccorporate media “journalists” have undoubtedly been told to stand back from reporting on Trump’s physical and mental decline. Remember, it’s what the mogul wants, not what the public is entitled to, that drives editorial decisions in these places.

Part one of my second cousin Michael Mindell’s letter, written last May.

To: The Honorables Elissa Slotkin, Ritchie Torres, Jim Himes, Chris Murphy, Gavin Newsom, and Pete Buttigieg.

While I am not the constituent of any of you, you give me hope as some of the Democrats who are “getting it”.

It’s the Republican Party, Stupid.

(in case it’s necessary to explain, I’m not calling you stupid, I’m quoting James Carville)

The Dems’ intense focus on Trump and the accountability for the fetid policies and consequences thereof, is somewhat misguided or at least incomplete. As much of a foul person as Trump is, he would not be able to do what he does without the republican politicians who are prostituting and ruining America for personal gain. If they are given a pass by the Dems’ focusing too intently on Trump, the voters will not link their own problems to these politicians and will not hold them accountable at the voting booth.

AND YET, for half a century, the Dems have failed to articulate why their policies, their successes, and their hearts are better for America than those of the republicans’, and worse, ceding them to the republicans. To wit…
Newt Gingrich put the nail in the coffin of any shred of republican decency, of true patriotism, and of a functioning 2 party democracy with his orders to his fellow republicans to pursue total victory for the republican party, no cooperation or fraternization with “the enemy”, etc. How does that help Americans?

AND YET…
Through the decades-long PATTERN of Dems having to correct our economy after republican financial malfeasance by running up the credit card bill to line the pockets of the rich, while lying to the people by telling them that it would trickle down. Yet they continue to have the reputation of being the party of fiscal conservatism while the Dems are the “tax and spend” party?

AND YET…
Bernie Sanders routinely attracted 30,000 people to political speeches in his 2016 presidential bid and he still does. The Dems learned NOTHING from this phenomenon in 2016 and there still does not appear to be sufficient learning. I voted for Berny in the 2016 primary for precisely that reason. I wanted the Dems to learn from his good stuff and from his intuitions but I intended to, and did, vote for Hillary as I felt that she was the most qualified person for the job and beyond that, had the right heart for America. It is arguable that perhaps the “likeability problem” that cost her the election could have been helped by learning from Berny, an octogenarian who appealed to the entire age AND POLITICAL spectrum. As a U.S. born dual Israeli citizen, I have serious issues with Berny for obvious reasons, but still recognize and value his positive qualities.

*Side note to the above. Elissa, I agree with you on the use of the word “oligarchy” but be careful to not insult people by assuming they don’t understand the word even if many may not. Such patronization, real or imagined, continues to cause serious damage to the Dems over the years. Perhaps a solution is artfully working the definition into speeches and communications to be sure everyone understands the full meaning and ramifications of the word and its practice.