Wow, wow, wow! Flake! The ONLY thing I choose to add

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Jan 17, 2018 at 9:44 PM 312

Quote:

Wow, wow, wow! Flake!

The ONLY thing I choose to add is,.'no shit!?'

...Listening to Jeff Flake.

This is what we've been waiting for, whatever the impact or outcome. A Republican speaking truth to power against his own party's president on the Senate floor, and boy, is he bringing it!

It's not about this conservative Senator's voting record, we all know he's sowing what he's reaped, to his benefit, or not. It's the portrait that most Americans will see of this dyed-in-the-wool republican calling out his own president with strong and persuasive language that each and every one here should endorse.

Skepticism is well and correct when dealing with republicans, but cynicism serves no one except demagogues and those resigned to fate.

This is one for the history books, folks.

read Jeff Flake's speech:

excerpt:

"Mr. President, near the beginning of the document that made us free, our Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson wrote: "We hold these truths to be self-evident ..." So, from our very beginnings, our freedom has been predicated on truth. The founders were visionary in this regard, understanding well that good faith and shared facts between the governed and the government would be the very basis of this ongoing idea of America.

As the distinguished former member of this body, Daniel Patrick Moynihan of New York, famously said: " Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not to his own facts." During the past year, I am alarmed to say that Senator Moynihan's proposition has likely been tested more severely than at any time in our history.

It is for that reason that I rise today, to talk about the truth, and its relationship to democracy. For without truth, and a principled fidelity to truth and to shared facts, Mr. President, our democracy will not last.

2017 was a year which saw the truth -- objective, empirical, evidence-based truth -- more battered and abused than any other in the history of our country, at the hands of the most powerful figure in our government.

It was a year which saw the White House enshrine "alternative facts" into the American lexicon, as justification for what used to be known simply as good old-fashioned falsehoods.

It was the year in which an unrelenting daily assault on the constitutionally-protected free press was launched by that same White House, an assault that is as unprecedented as it is unwarranted. "The enemy of the people," was what the president of the United States called the free press in 2017.

Mr. President, it is a testament to the condition of our democracy that our own president uses words infamously spoken by Josef Stalin to describe his enemies. It bears noting that so fraught with malice was the phrase "enemy of the people," that even Nikita Khrushchev forbade its use, telling the Soviet Communist Party that the phrase had been introduced by Stalin for the purpose of "annihilating such individuals" who disagreed with the supreme leader.

This alone should be a source of great shame for us in this body, especially for those of us in the president's party. For they are shameful, repulsive statements. And, of course, the president has it precisely backward -- despotism is the enemy of the people. The free press is the despot's enemy, which makes the free press the guardian of democracy. When a figure in power reflexively calls any press that doesn't suit him "fake news," it is that person who should be the figure of suspicion, not the press."

read more: http://www.cnn.com/2018/01/17/politics/jeff-f...index.html

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