kommonsentsjane

4/11/2024

ttps://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/pulitzer-winning-photographer-quits-ford-foundation-board-in-protest-of-cheney-snub/ar-BB1lq2SN?ocid=msedgdhp&pc=U531&cvid=05f7456561344aaca16a6cf5614f9515&ei=21

Acelebrated photojournalist who was the chief White House photographer during Gerald Ford’s administration resigned on Tuesday from the foundation that bears the former president’s name, accusing it of succumbing to the “tidal wave of timidity and fear” created by Donald Trump.

David Hume Kennerly said in a letter that the organization’s board of trustees had rejected Liz Cheney for its top annual honor, the Gerald R. Ford Medal for Distinguished Public Service, over “agita” that Trump might retaliate should he win re-election.

“Some of you raised the specter of being attacked by the Internal Revenue Service and losing the foundation’s tax-exempt status as retribution for selecting Liz for the award,” he wrote in the letter, which was first obtained by Politico. “The historical irony was completely lost on you.”

Kennerly pointed out that Ford had ascended to the presidency because his predecessor, Richard Nixon, left office after the Watergate scandal, during which it was revealed he had ordered his underlings to retaliate against his enemies, sometimes through the IRS.

“That’s exactly what the executive committee fears will happen if there’s a second coming of Donald Trump. Did LT Gerald Ford meet the enemy head-on because he thought he wouldn’t get killed?” Kennerly asked. “No. He did it despite that possibility.

This executive committee, on the other hand, bolted before any shots were fired.”

Pulitzer-winning photographer quits foundation after it snubs Liz Cheney.

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The 77-year-old said that Cheney, a fierce Trump critic, had been the obvious choice for the medal this year. In his letter, he outlined how he’d fought for her nomination, only for his fellow trustees to beat him back three times.

“When you rejected her again in favor of a third person, it became crystal clear to me that something else was going on,” he said. “The process for honoring President Ford by recognizing his virtues in others was being undermined by the same pressures weakening Republican institutions and many conservative leaders.”

Kennerly called the decision to spurn Cheney “inexplicable” and “short-sighted,” decrying it as a missed opportunity to send a clear message that the foundation stands against tyranny.

“If the foundation that bears the name of Gerald R. Ford won’t stand up to this real threat to our democracy, who will?” he asked.

Politico reported that Mitch Daniels, the former governor of Indiana, would receive the 2024 medal in June, citing an email that the Ford Foundations’ executive director sent to trustees after the publication of Kennerly’s letter.

The executive director, Gleaves Whitney, told Politico in a statement that the organization’s executive committee had decided, under legal counsel, it wouldn’t have been “prudent” to award Cheney the medal.

“At the time the award was being discussed, it was being publicly reported that Cheney was under active consideration for a presidential run by No Labels,” the statement said, referring to the nonpartisan organization that had flirted with the idea of a third-party ticket before mothballing it last week.

“Exercising its fiduciary responsibility, the executive committee concluded that giving the Ford medal to Cheney in the 2024 election cycle might be construed as a political statement and thus expose the Foundation to the legal risk of losing its nonprofit status with the IRS,” Whitney added.

After Politico’s report was published, Kennerly tweeted that his resignation had been “a painful decision,” but necessary. “I hope more people around the country will follow @Liz_Cheney’s example and speak out about the threat to our democracy,” he added. “Time to step up.”

A longtime staff photographer for United Press International, Kennerly also worked for Newsweek and Time. He won the Pulitzer Prize for Feature Photography in 1972 for his “dramatic photographs of the Vietnam War” the year prior, as the organization puts it on its website.

He joined the Ford Foundation’s board in the early 2000s.

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Problem – He is on the wrong side of history. The story is still in the weeds and needs to be fact-u-ated. Liz got what she deserved – she is a traitor to the people who trusted her when she posed as a conservative and voted for her. We seem to have a lot of those in the Republican Party who need to be weeded out.

My question is to all of those who pose as a conservative and then weasel with the liberals – what are you achieving for our country? Nothing, but end up making a bad name for yourself – like Romney – and then people lose all respect for them. When I see his/her photo I want to throw up.

kommonsentsjane

4/10/2024

An oldie – but still a goodie – very valid due to the left’s having fallen in Obama/Biden/Hillary Socialist rat trap.

Socialism is, broadly speaking, a political and economic system in which property and the means of production are owned in common, typically controlled by the state or government. Socialism is based on the idea that common or public ownership of resources and means of production leads to a more equal society.

In other words, you don’t own anything- everything down to your last penny will be taken out of your old/old penny loafers. You are stuck in the mud and no way out of it.

Trump has been hot on their tails to prove that DEMOCRACY is not what they are delivering.

They are calling it DEMOCRACY which is false. They haven’t seen the Constitution from the day Biden/Obama were placed in position by the media/deep state.

Don’t let Obama/Biden fool us again.

kommonsentsjane

4/10/2024

Your Question – Above all, I’m asking this: What can my country do for me?

The answer is below:

As we all know, none of us were asked to be born – you know the rest of the story. Therefore, you have a choice – make the best of what you have or take a long walk off a short pier.

Attitude is the name of the game.

“GIVE TO THE WORLD THE BEST YOU HAVE,

AND THE BEST WILL COME BACK TO YOU.”

KOMMONSENTSJANE – SONG OF THE WEEK 3 | kommonsentsjane

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Illustration by Elizabeth Brockway/The Daily Beast© Provided by The Daily Beast

Kennedy got it wrong. The real Kennedy, not the nepo baby crackpot currently rasping around trying to get Trump elected. I’m talking about his presidential uncle, JFK, who famously declaimed: “Ask not what your country can do for you. Ask what you can do for your country.”

It’s a good line. Folks love that line. It’s also total BS.

The fact is, most of us are here by happenstance. We found ourselves pushed into a world neither of our making nor our choosing. The fact that we find ourselves in this particular nation at this particular time is no more than luck of the draw. So why do I owe a single, solitary thing to this landmass on which I find myself?

Why should I ask myself what I can do for America when America is letting so many of us down?

There are many ways to think of a nation. One way is the JFK model: The nation is a home and all of us are responsible for maintaining and improving that home. That’s a pleasant way to think of it, but it also implies a family structure because a home, after all, is a place to house a family.

So what happens when the other family members aren’t holding up their end of the deal? What happens when Mom and Dad won’t stop bickering long enough to make sure the light bill gets paid? What happens when the family is a dysfunctional mess? What if I’m doing my part by washing the dishes but the roof is falling on my head?

Kennedy Campaign Staffer Outlines RFK Jr.’s Alleged Goals to ‘Get Rid of Biden’

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I used to think of my nation as a home and my fellow Americans as, in a sense, my family. I feel that less and less. Not because I’ve “given up” on America, but because I’m not sure I ever understood America to begin with.

I’ve started to think about Kennedy’s words with something resembling bitterness. Yes, I’m grateful for the opportunities I’ve had in my life. But I can’t honestly say they were given to me by “America” any more than I can say the macaroni and cheese I made for lunch was given to me by Kraft. I paid for that mac and cheese and I have paid for America.

And America continues to let me down.

What does any nation owe its citizenry in return for the citizens’ allegiance? Safety, certainly. Can the U.S. be said to be holding up its end of the deal when people are routinely slaughtered in shopping malls, churches, concerts, and schools?

What about health care? Education? Infrastructure? What about opportunity-for-all? Is this nation, the richest and most powerful that history has ever known, using its vast resources to improve the lives of all Americans?

The question is rhetorical because the answer is obvious.

I’m not even going to even talk about our foreign follies over the last 80 years. I’m confining this conversation to our domestic situation and the lack of a cohesive national vision. We haven’t known who we were since the Soviets tapped out in the early ’90s.

Even then, what were we? A beacon of freedom in a darkening world? That’s the story we liked to tell ourselves, but it was always, at best, an exaggeration. Since World War II, what we’ve mostly been is a war machine sponsored by Ronald McDonald. The Soviets just gave us a place to point our missiles.

The values we claim to support: democracy, freedom, equality. Those same values we bomb other countries into accepting aren’t even being practiced at home. We’re neither the freest, most democratic, nor most equal nation.

Not even close.

Instead, we’re backtracking as we relitigate important questions about reproductive rights, freedom of self-expression, and the ability of any and all of us to rise through the narrow chokepoint of American opportunity to become, to quote the old Army recruitment poster, all we can be.

This isn’t about the 2024 election. I’m not going to embody the cliche of so many liberal Americans of privilege—saying I’m going to flee the nation if Donald Trump wins.

Increasingly, I’m not sure it matters who wins in November. Can any person reorient this hobbling and sclerotic nation in four years? In eight? What can be done to reinvigorate/redefine our national identity? Must we have another goddamned world war for Americans to find purpose?

If we’re going to defend so-called “American exceptionalism,” then let’s start by making this place exceptional. Not just for attendees of the Met Gala but for everybody.

I’m going to continue to advocate for this nation right up until the moment I leave it (should that day ever come). I’m going to advocate for the things I used to believe about this nation, not because I owe it anything, but because it owes me, just as it owes all of us. Allegiance is a two-way street. If you want ours, you’ve got to give us yours.

So I’m asking questions.

Why are health care costs out of control? Why are students starting their professional lives saddled with a hundred thousand dollars or more in student loan debt? Why can’t families survive on a single income? Why doesn’t the nation offer daycare for working mothers?

Why are educational outcomes in this country so bad for so many people? Why do minorities die at a higher rate than the majority population? Why does the richest nation in the world have falling life expectancy while other nations are seeing their citizens live longer lives?

Above all, I’m asking this: What can my country do for me?

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You were born and the rest is up to you. Your country is a place in time and you are wasting a lot of your precious fleeting time. Actually, here is a time duration calculator.

Time Duration Calculator (thetimecalculator.org)

Good luck!

kommonsentsjane