What a month December is turning out to be. A month ago it looked as if democracy was being conquered all over the world, but now suddenly...the opposite is occurring. We can only have hope for the same in the United States. So let's move beyond and plan for the future. What can we do differently?
Here on the ground, change happens fast. Problems feel frequent and urgent. It's loud and anxiety runs high. From a satellite view, the Earth looks the same as it did thousands of years ago. We've been here before. Let's learn from our past and shoot for a better hello, and welcome to this episode of A Satellite View. I'm Todd Mickelson, your host, speaking at you from, um, Sunday, Dec. 8, 2024, in the space and time continuum. Haven't spoken at you for two weeks now. Last week seems like two weeks ago, and two weeks ago seems like a month ago. Time has just come to a standstill. It would seem like we were in New York City visiting our daughter a week ago, and that seems like forever ago. But now I'm back. Wow, December is turning out to be a crazy month. A lot of really good things going on. Uh, what all different countries. Romania has done what many think the United States should do and called this, called their election a, uh, farce and are doing a reelection. Pretty incredible. Pretty incredible thing. The Assad, uh, regime has completely collapsed. Just last night, rebels in Syria taking over from his horrible dictatorial regime where he was illegally killing and jailing people. We don't know what the future is going to be like there, really. But, uh, we do know that it's a good thing to at least free these people from jail and have people in the country feel they're saying things like, we can go back home. What happened in South Korea? The South Korean Trump tried to instill martial law, and the people just stood up and said, uh, no, you didn't. No, you're not gonna. We do have power. We are empowered, don't feel powerless. There are going to be some surprising changes still occurring in December. It's going to be, I think, quite interesting. Quite interesting. We're not going to be talking about that, though. What happens in all these other countries? Really good things happening. Democracy on the rise. A month ago, it felt opposite in the whole world in Europe, how things have turned around in just a few weeks. And it's going to keep happening. But what I want to talk about is where we go from here. What can we learn about this election? One point I want to make. Kamala Harris did an incredible job. She was an incredible candidate. I think if she would have been left to her own devices, she would have won. She was pressured by too many people to do too many things that when you think about how she first began running her campaign in July, she wasn't doing those things. She was talking about price gouging and how she was going to get rid of price gouging. She said, hey, we have made a lot of great changes in the economy. We have brought jobs, record, uh, breaking amount of jobs in the Biden Harris administration. We have, uh, you know, uh, passed legislation that's going to create even more jobs. There's more work to do. I still realize some people are hurting and that some prices are too high. A lot of that's because of price gouging and we're going to fight this. And then she stopped talking about some of those things and she was hanging out with Liz Cheney. She was not allowed to say that she would do anything different than the Biden administration. Joe Biden, one of the best presidents that we have ever had, made incredible changes, uh, saved us from one of our biggest catastrophes certainly in our lifetimes and over the last hundred years. Now, some mistakes may be there. Joe is old fashioned. I think that Kamala Harris was waiting to get in the White House and I think she was ready to make changes. For instance, in the whole debacle going on between Israel and Gaza, I really think that that would have been a difference. You know, when she was asked, what would you have done differently than Joe Biden? I think her real answer in her head was, well, I would be harder on Netanyahu. I would be challenging what he's doing and holding our providing him with weapons as leverage to get him to stop committing genocide in Gaza. Now, she was the vice president under the current president, so that gets really complicated to be able to answer that question. Maybe she should have answered it in like, you know, I am still the vice president, Joe Biden is still the president. I can talk about that maybe at a later date, but right now I'm not going to go against the current presidency. That would have at least given people speculation that what I just said might be true about possibly handling, uh, Netanyahu differently. Joe Biden is in the old school of, uh, Israel is our closest ally. And I don't agree with him on that. Maybe Israel, the people of Israel, but not Netanyahu, not the government of Israel. Now, I haven't talked much about this, partially because it is so contentious and partially because it can be a distraction from the overall things, overall. And I'm not saying it's not an important thing, but is Trump going to be better on that? No. And now we have Trump with all of his craziness. By the way, Donald Trump was interviewed just this morning and we now see why he has been kept from the public since Election Day. We can see why his people are making sure he doesn't speak into a microphone. He is delusional. He is delusional. Among other things. He was asked, are you going to deport people the way you said you were? And he said, yes. He was asked, are you going to get rid of birthright citizenship, meaning if you're born in the United States, you are a, uh, United States citizen. That was instilled as part of the constitution in the 14th amendment, which was passed in 1866. It was ratified by all the states in 1868. It guarantees anyone born in the United States is a United States citizen. He said this morning he wants to deport anybody who was born in the United States to an undocumented citizen or an illegal citizen. Melania was an illegal alien, and she worked without a work visa in the United States. She was an illegal alien. Barron was born to her. Is he going to deport Barron? Is he going to deport his son? Is he going to deport Melania's parents who were brought under chained migration? He's against that as well. You can't go against blatantly the Constitution of the United States. And, um, the 14th Amendment is part of the Constitution. This guy cannot do this. Now, I know everybody's thinking, well, he can do anything. He's breaking laws. He's going against all of our institutions. He's going to do it. No, he's not. He doesn't know how to do it. We've talked about this in past shows. Who's he going to get to go gather all these people? There aren't enough law enforcement agents, including police and sheriffs in the country to do this. There are many reasons why he is not going to do this. He says he's going to pass these tariffs on the first day. He's going to deport all these people on the first day. Notice I'm not imitating him. Really trying to not imitate Trump. We're all sick of it. We're sick of hearing him. We're sick of seeing him. We didn't think we would have to. And we are having to still tariffs if he doesn't do it. The Democratic Party needs to keep repeating that he lied. I said this to Heidi and she said, yeah, but they don't understand tariffs and they don't understand how they work. So it doesn't matter. You know, we don't talk about how tariffs work. We don't talk about whether or not the tariffs would be good or bad. We just Say Trump said he was going to instill all these tariffs and he didn't. He's a liar. He lied to you. Of course, these people don't understand how tariffs work. And by the way, Trump keeps saying, I almost did it. I almost changed my voice and went into imitating him. So in the 1890s, he has said this throughout his campaign. The 1890s was by far the best economic time in the United States history. Of course, he also says that when he was president pre Covid, we had the best economy in the United States history. So, you know, but who's keeping track? Not him. Anyway, the 1890s, and he says it's because of tariffs. The McKinley tariffs began. He was in the House of Representatives. He was not yet the president. He wasn't, uh, elected to the presidency until, uh, 1896. This is when he was in the House of Representatives. It was actually called the McKinley tariffs because he pushed for these massive tariffs. That happened. What happened? Prices went up on mostly poor and middle range people. Prices of clothing and a lot of foods. The necessities that normal people need to buy. Rich people were hurting also. They had a big scare. So the tariffs ended up causing prices to go way up for Americans. And it also caused the Republicans to lose everything in the midterm in what, uh, would it be 18? Uh, no, in the next election. Actually, in 1892, they lost their majority in the House and the Senate and they lost the White House. And the Democrats worked very quickly to get rid of those tariffs, but too much damage had already been done. A couple other circumstances came together and there was what's called the panic of 1893. It was the worst depression in the history of the United States. The worst depression the United States has ever suffered until the 1930s when another Republican regime ruined the economy and it had to be fixed by Roosevelt. And the Democrats had power on Capitol Hill for 40 years. Do you see these patterns? So if he doesn't pass the tariffs, we just have to say he didn't pass the tariffs. He broke his promise to you, the voter who voted for him. If he does pass the tariffs, our economy will very quickly turn around in a negative way. And we point that out. We got to be louder and more together on this. We got to yell how much of a liar he is and or yell that he is ruining our economy. And that's just talking about the tariffs. If he doesn't deport 11 to 20 million people, we say he lied to you. You voted for him because you wanted him to deport 11 to 20 million people. He lied to you. If he does, he's not going to. But if he does deport even a couple million, it's going to hurt the economy because farmers will lose many, uh, many of their workers. If you talk to business owners on the border in Texas, they're like, hey, we're going to lose workers. No white person will pick strawberries for any, uh, wage. The strawberries will go unpicked. They will die on the vine, literally, as will the American economy. And then we yell about how he is ruining our economy. We gotta be louder. That's the first part of it. We gotta be louder. But, uh, we also gotta be prouder. Let's take a short break, and when we come back, I'm gonna talk about how we need to be prouder. You're listening to a satellite view. I'm Todd Mickelson, your host. We'll over these Neanderthals, right? These anti science, anti vax, these, these low IQ Neanderthals who have conquered the United States of America at least in 24, right where it stands right now, we have lost to the Neanderthal class. And you expect us to lay down before them instead of challenging them? You cannot. Our, uh, only chance of stopping this is to be absolutely fearless. Period. And if there's anybody who's scared about their livelihood or their lives, they're not prepared for what's getting ready to come. They have already made it clear that they want retribution. They've already made it clear that they want to undermine democracy. They've made it clear that they don't want us to be able to vote them out of power ever again. So, yeah, I'm with you. You know, I was in a little different position when my forefathers came here, but it's all good. Because that promise of a more perfect union eventually extended to black folks. And so I still, even though my history is different here, my m. Ancestors history is different, I still buy into the same thing that you did. I was properly indoctrinated as an American by the time I was in second grade. I still remember it to this day. We, the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, to establish justice and secure domestic tranquility, to provide for the common defense and to promote the general welfare, do ordain and establish this Constitution of the United States of America. You think I'm gonna lay that down for some moron like Donald Trump? Yeah. That is Pastor Benjamin Dixon speaking off the top of his head. Can you Cite that much of the, uh, Declaration of Independence, or is that the Constitution? Uh, right. I mean, this is our United States. It's not Donald Trump's and it's not the idiots who voted for him. And yes, I'm calling you an idiot. If you voted for Donald Trump, you're an idiot. And I am pissed as hell at you. I'm doing well off enough that it, for me will probably just be like a pain in my balls. All right? You are going to get hurt worse than me. And a lot of people I know are going to get hit. They're going to get hurt by what Trump is going to do if he ends up doing these things, which in the last segment we talked about. He's not. He can't. And the people around him are just as dumb as he is. Now, I said we were going to talk about being proud. The Democratic Party. We need to be loud. We need to be proud. Do you remember what we used to talk about? Do you remember when we used to point things out? Like, say, for instance, starting in 1980 is when wages for low income and middle income people have stayed pretty close to the same since 1980. Little fluctuation here and there, maybe gone up about 15%. But for the richest people in the country, it's gone up close to 90%, almost two times more. So what started in 1980? Ronald Reagan. What else did Ronald Reagan do? He changed FCC rules so that politics could be talked about in an, uh, unbalanced way. We had rules. The FCC had rules in media. If you, during a campaign, had an interview of a Republican, you had to also interview that Republican's opponent. The, you've heard about it. The equal time measure. He got rid of that very soon after. Who pops up? Rush limbaugh. In the 70s, they began their planning for, they were actually seriously going to call it GOP TV ended up morphing, uh, into Fox News. Now that's the thing that's most out of control. Our media. We used to talk about money in politics. Citizens United happened when in 2010, the Supreme Court passed Citizens United, I believe it was in 2010. And it is wrong. It legalized bribery for politicians. It made it legal for rich billionaires to bribe elected politicians. Right now Trump is having cheap auctions for his cabinet members. And I m almost went into his voice again. Who gave me the most money? We got Secretary of the Interior going, whose ham he? 150 million. Hey, Pop Hunt. 152 million on here. Going once, going twice. That's what Trump is doing with his cabinet members right now, all of which are billionaires. We're used to calling countries like Russia as being ran by oligarchs. It's here. It's been here for a long time. So I propose Democrats rethink about how we talk about protecting our institutions and our democracy. Do we still have our democracy? I'm talking about before this reelection. I'm talking about before 2016. I'm talking about what happened in the 1990s with Bill Clinton. We're going. If you notice, I haven't done the roll back, but that's what we've been doing this whole show, having history lessons here and there. Did we have our democracy in the 1990s when Bill Clinton was scared to go against the Republicans because there was just too much money involved? We have not stuck to our principles on this side. We're progressives. You know who the first progressive president was? He was called a Republican Theodore Roosevelt, 125 years ago. Funny thing tied to, uh, McKinley. McKinley was assassinated in 1900, right after he was reelected. And he didn't even know who he had chosen as his vice president. McKinley was a Republican. He hadn't even gotten to know Theodore Roosevelt. I'm not sure they actually spent any time together before McKinley was assassinated and Theodore Roosevelt became president. And he was a progressive. He re ran for the presidency in 1912, and he named his party the progressive party. He was a progressive. He set aside the first national parks, Protecting land from greedy people. He was a progressive. We are progressives. This country is progressive. Overwhelmingly progressive. The Republicans have been finding ways to stay in power by cheating, gerrymandering, meddling with foreign issues to gain power in the White House a number of times, getting help from other countries in elections, which has happened recently, of course. We're going to be learning a lot more about that, I believe, in the coming weeks and months and years. So, huh, how long? When did we lose our democracy? And if we still have our democracy, is it the democracy we want? These institutions, are they what we want? We used to. Not very long ago, 10 years ago, we used to talk about reforming a lot of these institutions. We used to talk about reforming our democracy. We talked about getting money out of politics. Why don't we say that anymore? You know that I think Kamala Harris did a great job. She had so much going against her, including this whole worldwide push, uh, because of inflation and all of these things. And it got scary there. The right wing was taking over all over the place. And now, just this weekend, just over the last week, their side is failing, and it's because they're all ran by idiots. How stupid was the president of South Korea? He didn't even have his own party show up in Parliament to be a part of the argument as to whether or not to keep his martial law. He just went on TV and said, I'm claiming martial law. The parliament went in and voted him down, and the people stood up against him. He had to take down martial law. They said, you either resign or we're going to impeach you. We still don't know what's going to happen with how he does that, what he's going to do, or if he's going to make another deal or whatever. But he's an idiot. The guy in Romania, he's an idiot. And they decided that his side cheated, so they're going to redo the election. Donald Trump is saying he's going to just go against the 14th Amendment of the United States Constitution. Okay, let's get back on track here. Is this the democracy we want? Oligarchs have been running our country for decades now. They've been in control. And Republicans have empowered them more and more. Why don't we talk about Citizens United anymore? I mean, uh, are there even people who know it? I'm not sure that my daughter Eve even knows what it is. She was 8 years old, 7 years old when it came in. Obama was president. That seems like 100 years ago. Do you remember when we used to talk about that? Do you remember when, in the 90s, we passed an assault weapons ban? And then George W. Bush cheated to become president twice, and the Republicans let it expire after 10 years? We were almost done with assault weapons 20 years ago, and the Republicans let that lapse 20 years ago. Okay, we need to get back this. Relatively speaking, that's not that long ago in American history. And sadly, if you're as old as I am, it many ways seems like last year, although last month seems like last year. At the same time, I don't know. I don't know what's. I do. The space and time continuum is way off kilter. But we need to change how we talk, and I think it's pretty easy. We go back to how we were talking relatively not long ago in our history. I agree with pretty much everything Bernie Sanders said over the last. Actually, more than 20. Uh, I became aware of him in something like the year 2000 and was like, I agree with everything this guy says. I don't know why he's constantly so pissed off. And I don't like his wagging finger. So to me he was never the guy aoc. She's the guy. She's the guy to push this stuff. But there are others. There are others who aren't as young as she is. I 100% agree with her and I feel like she would be a great representative for this and she is working to do so. She's going to be a huge part of our future starting right now. I think it's already actually began. But we need to not be afraid of our principles and we need to brag. This is what I'm most disappointed with Joe Biden on. Why did so many people, uh, we can never underestimate the stupidity or at least the ignorance. That's maybe more fair. Ignorance. You can be an intelligent person and still be ignorant to something because you have ignored that particular thing. So you just don't know about that particular thing. So let's say at least people are ignorant. We can't underestimate the ignorance of Americans. We need to yell into a microphone every day. We just passed this. It caused this bridge in your town to get rebuilt. And by the way, it added 4,000 jobs to your town that are good paying union jobs that are going to last for at least a year. And then we're going to find more projects for those people to do. Those jobs are not going away. We did that by passing this bill last week. Okay, we need to yell that into a microphone every day. Why did Joe Biden not do that? Why was there so many Americans who don't know that Biden has, uh, he worked magic on this economy? Why do people think that we were producing less energy when we were producing more energy than we ever have in the history of the United States? I don't even like that. I want us to get off of oil. But we produced more oil and turned it into gas and everything like that. We were doing that more under Biden than ever before. Why do people think that we shut off our oil spigot? Why were people so misinformed? A, um, big part of it was because we weren't informing them with the real information. We need to start doing that. We need to say, yes, we want to keep this institution, but we need to reform it. There are things like ICE didn't exist before 9 11. The Department of Homeland Security didn't exist before 9 11. Both of those things were meant to be temporary, but now they're institutions. I think that's not very good. Maybe we don't Completely get rid of them. Maybe we reevaluate to see what their benefit is. But certainly changes need to happen. Here's a simple one. I think it's just so idiotic that we still have to take our shoes off to get on an airplane. What in the hell is that? Because one guy tried to light a match in his shoe 25 years ago. Come on. Come on. There's a lot of work to be done in reforms of our institutions and our democracy. That's what we need to point out. And when we do good things, we need to let people know. God damn it. Why are we walking around on eggshells when Trump and his minions are just flinging feces all over the place? And we're trying to be careful not to upset anybody. Oh, uh, don't call any of those people stupid, because they'll get really upset. Yeah, but they are stupid. Don't call them stupid. Shh. Don't want to upset them. Well, why? They're just flinging feces all. We don't want to upset them. Okay. Come on. Since 1989, 52 million new jobs have been created in the United States. 50 million of them by the Democratic Party. Only 2 million of them by the Republican Party. As a matter of fact, the Republican Party. The reason their numbers are so low is because they often lose. Donald Trump's the first president to have less jobs at the end of his tenure than at the beginning. He keeps saying he doesn't want to be Hoover. Too late. We need to talk about these things. This election was incredibly close, by the way, and we've gone over time, uh, uh, and I haven't even really started on my notes, as usual. 100,000 votes across three states would have changed this election result into Kamala Harris being our next president. And 4,000 votes total in the many House races, 4,000 votes total would have made the Democrats gain the majority in the House. That's how close this election is. The Republicans have no mandate, and we need to shut them the fuck up every time they say it. We need to grow a backbone. Enough, uh, that you can tell. I have decided that every once in a while, at least, I'm going to cuss on my show. It's the least I can do to grow a backbone. Right. I still think it's more funny to make up, uh, different words, you know, to replace the cuss word. But I just have. I've been less creative and more pissed off lately. So these are my thoughts for this week. Um, things are changing incredibly, uh, intensely and quickly, in the month of December, there's more change to come. I think we're all going to be quite astonished by a few things. And if we're not going to still be, we have plenty to be astonished about right now. And I have gone through some of that stuff, so don't feel distraught. We are empowered. We need to fight, and when we fight, we win. I'm going to keep saying the stuff that Kamala Harris said because she's right and she ran a great campaign. It was about positivity and the light instead of fear and darkness like the Republicans have been running on. We're on the right side of things. And by that I mean the left side of things. You know what I mean? Anyway, now's not the time to give up. We need to stay together. That's another thing Kamala kept saying. We are in this together. Don't isolate yourself. My nephew played bass in his little band for their very first gig. I shouldn't say little band. It's a band. They had their first gig at this little bar on Thursday night. We went out to see it, to see him play. My brother, his father was there. Of course he was there. His brother, my nephew, other nephew was there. Uh, his, uh, wife was there. It was a blast. It was so good to get out and talk to people. I talked to the owner of the bar a little bit. He's also a, uh, guitar player. It was so good to get out, go in the city, be around people. Don't isolate yourself. We are finally starting to invite friends over for dinner and things like that. Don't isolate yourself. Get out. Talk to people. Talk to your friends that you think alike. Call them. Stay in touch. Let's all stay in touch with each other. Let's help each other get through this incredibly chaotic time. But I'm telling you, things are getting better. The shifts that are happening again, it's the, you know, gotta die before you go to heaven. It's the end of something and the beginning of something. The darkness has left the earth. Things are getting better. Believe it or not, things are getting better. We're going to get through this together. And that's what this show is all about. Let's stay together, keep each other sane. Thank you so much for listening. I'll be back next week for sure. I can tell you that. I think I'll be sticking around during the holidays as well. I think we're going to have a lot to talk about. We all need to stay together, so let's do it to it again. Thank you so much for listening. I'll speak at you next week. You've been listening to a, uh, satellite view with Todd Mickelson. Go to ToddMichelson.com for links and more information. Someday soon we'll be on.