What the F**k, Joe Manchin?!!!

WV Senator Joe Manchin, contemplating how he’s going to screw the Democrats.

I don’t get it.

Seriously, I really don’t.

Senator Joe Manchin just announced for Biden’s Infrastructure bill to pass, it has to be ‘bipartisan’. Yes, you saw that, ‘bipartisan’. Joe seems to think the GOP is ready and willing to pass anything that might help average Americans, and thus maybe reflect well on President Joe Biden. No, Joe, that won’t happen, ever, not if the Republicans can help it. And Hey! With the help of their buddy Manchin, they can help it!

Joe Manchin is helping to kill the very popular agenda of a Democratic president, a member of Manchin’s very own party. This is a bill that would greatly benefit his own constituents, the very people who elected him to help them!!!

I…It’s just that... It’s like…

I got nothing.

It’s just fucking insane.

I’ve been buying this ‘man of the Senate’ crap, at least for a while. I gave him some line... Let it play it out... Thinking, ‘Well, maybe he’s sincere about this’ but now… gotta cut that line. He’s not interested in actually helping people, even those back in his home state. He seems to care more about burnishing his own brand than helping his voters. He’s playing to his base, without actually delivering for that base. He’s David Copperfield, preforming the illusion of legislating while actually just waving his hands and throwing up smoke.  

In other words, he’s a Republican.

He was already in cement up to his knees with the ‘no tampering with the filibuster’ pledge, now he’s up to his neck, dead set on killing the infrastructure bill, hell, the whole Biden agenda, unless ten Republicans sign on.

I don’t understand what his game is here, unless he’s playing a re-election game with the people of West Virginia, polishing his ‘bipartisan, man-in-the-middle’ image at the expense of, well, our democracy. Kyrsten Sinema’s game is more transparent and pretty damn disgusting, but comes down the same thing, but with more “maverick” trimmings ala the rep John McCain was supposed to have during his senate tenure. Could it really be that openly callous? Or is he actually that clueless as to who and what the current bunch of radical Republicans are? They’re not conservatives and haven’t been since Reagan; they’re insurgents, radicals pretending to be ‘conservative’ but unable to define what they are for, only what they are against. And what they are against is allowing Democrats air to breathe… literally.

Senator, we need to talk.

———————————————-

Dear Joe, old buddy, ‘ol building-and-loan-pal,

Well, Joe, where are they? Where are the Magical Republicans, ready and eager to sign on to help save the crumbling physical and mental infrastructure of America? Where are the ten brave GOP souls who want to bust out of Mr. Mitch’s Reform School for Trumpaholics (secret cure, more Trump), step into the sun and proclaim they want to help Americans?

Yes… that is the sound of crickets, and not the cool Buddy Holly kind.

Joe, if you want this bill to be bipartisan, why don’t you and Kyrsten get out there and convince those ten to step forward and vote with you? Frankly, because you can’t. I do believe if the filibuster weren’t in play (though it always is, isn’t it?) you just might get those votes. But, since this is the party of Trump, and especially the Senate of Mitch McConnell, (Minority Leader be damned) you won’t get them. You know it.

You know it, Joe.

Time to pack it up. You lost this one. Time for the agenda that 80 million people voted for to go forward. Time for you and Senator Sinema to accept the fact you’re being/been played. Time to help the people of West Virginia get their roads, bridges fixed, get the childcare they need, and help with their aging parents. Time to give them the relief promised. Time to be a different kind of hero, Joe, one that gets things done for the people who elected him.

Time to deliver for the people.  

Magical Republicans be damned.

Cover Your Neighbor’s Ass as You Would Cover Your Own.

Two people who should be out of a job.

Kevin McCarthy is screwed.  

Rightly so. How is he screwed? He just showed the country and his own party just how weak a ‘leader’ he is. He sent Rep John Katko (R-NY) to negotiate with the Democrats over the makeup and reach of the January 6th commission, adding a bunch of demands that McCarthy figured the Democrats would never go for; equal representation, subpoena power for both parties, with both the chair and vice-chair having to agree on the issuing of the subpoenas, you know stuff the GOP would never agree to. You just have to look at the biased Benghazi ‘investigations’, controlled by a Republican majority and designed to drive down Hilary Clinton’s polls numbers (which McCarthy admitted) for proof of what McCarthy thinks is a ‘fair’ committee. He figured the Democrats wanted a political witch hunt, because that’s exactly what he would do, so he would undermined it from the start.

While Katko negotiated in good faith, McCarthy gave him nothing but a bottle of what he figured were poison pills to offer the Democrats. The problem was, McCarthy was too cynical for his own good. He figured the whole investigation was a show, ‘insurrection theatre’ designed to just embarrass the GOP. He was wrong. The Democrats actually accepted the GOP demands. They wanted a bi-partisan commission, and they agreed to just that. Katko succeeded when he was supposed to fail, so that when he failed, McCarthy could show that the whole thing was a cynical ploy by Pelosi and the Democrats. Checkmate!

The political cynicism though was all on McCarthy, like pie on Stan Laurel. His version of 3-D chess was actually one-finger checkers, and he had just jumped himself. Hard. Now, he had to deny his own deal, lie about it, calling it a one-sided sham (it wasn’t), and throw his own hand-picked negotiator under the bus. And then back it up over him. He demanded his members vote against the bill, and the GOP House Whip, Steve Scalise announced he would whip his members against the commission.

Kevin and Steve failed.  

35 Republicans broke with their leadership to support the commission. 35. Might not seem a huge number (it should be much bigger, really) but to the credibility of McCarthy’s leadership, and to the extreme partisanship of the GOP, this is a foghorn, a wrecking ball, a Spinal Tap goes-to-eleven feedback blast.

It’s an embarrassment. And all poor Kevin’s fault.

Word is leaking out that many members were pissed off over McCarty’s shameful treatment of Katko, and they just couldn’t go along with the transparent nonsense of ‘peaceful tourists’ invading the Capitol on January 6th to take selfies and admire statues. They remember hiding behind seats, barricading themselves in their offices, fearing for their lives while armed officers kept the insurrectionists at bay with pointed weapons on the floor of the US House of Representatives. They remember calling family to tell them they loved them one last time.

Like the Democrats, those 35 Republicans want answers, Kevin McCarthy be damned.

But…

Oh, there’s always a ‘but’ with today’s GOP, isn’t there? 175 Republicans — That’s 84% of the Republican conference — voted to memory-hole the insurrection. Voted to shrug and walk away. Like they did at both impeachments, like they’ve done over and over since 2015 when Trump descended that ridiculous gold escalator and started his campaign against democracy. A campaign that in January turned into open warfare.

175 Republicans who would rather let Trump and his insurrections control their party than stand up for democracy, stand up to the very people who came to kill them. Make no mistake, the people who stormed the Capitol, by their own account, were armed and looking for blood. Trump has sent out his orders about the commission on his pitiful little blog calling it a “democrat trap” to “shut it down” and they bowed and tried.

Then Mitch McConnell joined in. Both McConnell and McCarthy after the insurrection, blamed Trump. Both said he was culpable. Both have now forgotten all about that, preferring to toe the Trump line and undermine democracy. It’s what Donny would do (is doing), after all. McConnell will now direct the Senate to vote against the commission because… vague reasons. He cited overlap with the DOJ investigation, which he knows is a criminal one, not one into the origins of the mob and the violence. He has no real reason or excuses, except protecting the guilty infesting his own party.

Cover your neighbor’s ass as you would cover your own.

It is essential not only for the GOP to kill the commission, but to hide why they want to kill it. They love to go on about ‘re-litigating 2020’ (isn’t that what these Republican demands for recounts are?), but what they’re really afraid of isn’t exposing the past, it’s the threat of daylight on their on-going campaign against democracy, to undermine confidence in our elections and their fairness. They are laying the groundwork, right in the open, to deny the electoral victory of a Democratic candidate and install a losing Republican one, regardless of the outcome.

They’ll do it, or will at least try.

That’s why the commission must die.

With the bill for the commission now passed in the House, it will go to the Senate, where it will surely be filibustered. If all the Democrats vote for it, that means they have to get 10 Republicans to cross party lines for it to pass. Don’t hold your breath. McConnell has a much better hold on his caucus than McCarthy, and few have shown much will to buck him. I can see a few that might; Romney, Murkowski, maybe Collins. Maybe there are enough secret, closeted Republican senators that will put country over party.

This is where we are, hoping that sanity will break out in the GOP, and enough will step forward to actually do the right thing.

This is where we are.

They Can Run, But the GOP Can’t Hide from Trump

Trump, probably lying. Again.

We all have a lot of hope that the new Biden/Harris administration will bring some sanity, dare I say ‘normalcy’ to the country, but we also are staring at a Republican party determined to stop them from doing, anything, that will actually help the country. Mitch McConnell and the Republicans under Obama made the recovery from the Bush crash longer and more painful than it needed to be, simple as that, and did so deliberately knowing they were hurting people. As McConnell said, his job was to make Obama a ‘One-Term President’. It wasn’t to legislate, it wasn’t to help right the country after eight years of ruinous leadership, no, his only job was to ‘win’, not help. Obama had to fix the economy and pass the ACA without help from the GOP.

Obama had Mitch and the co-opped ‘Tea Party’ to contend with, Biden and Harris will have a GOP that is even father right. The Tea Party believed Obama was a Muslim radical, born in Kenya. The new version of the Tea Party, Oanon (with has taken over a lot of the base, and electing followers) believe all Democrats are Satan worshiping pedophiles who torture children to harvest a drug called Adrenochrome. Qanon is what is firing up the Republican base, and the god of Qanon is Trump. The leaders of the GOP have a choice;

One: cast off Trump and all the ugly he has revealed about the party,

Two: try to court Qanon and keep it under control, or

Three: just dive in and go nuts.

Far so, they’re doing both two and three.

The push since the election is just go plain full-on crazy, the more the better. I don’t see any signs of that stopping anytime soon. Going forward, the GOP/Trump/Qanon party, already a party of White grievance, will become all about that, it will fuel and drive it. It will be about ‘stolen elections’, about the shrinking White demographic, about ‘biased media’ (even Fox is taking hits for not towing the Trump line and lies), it will retreat even further into its bubble world, and it will strike out with the blind fury of a wounded animal. Trump knows a good grift when he sees it, and so does his family and all their enablers. He’s already shown he doesn’t care about the country, he’ll burn it all down just to get his way, so he’ll keep pushing, keep lying and keeping telling the people who want to believe that he, and they, were robbed.  

And they’ll believe him.

The Georgia and national Republicans are looking at polls showing the two senate races there either tied of the Democrats slightly ahead. Those polls are also showing them something else; Trump’s lies of ‘voter fraud’ and ‘rigged elections’ are causing some of his more fevered supporters to stay home. This can’t be good for them, but they can’t say anything out loud, even Perdue and Loeffler, the Republicans in the race, have to finesse their way around the crazy, calling the election and unfair while at the asking people to vote for them.

Crazy, right?

In 2022 we’ll see a wave of the crazy unlike anything we’ve seen before. Those Republicans running for reelection will have to either take the pledge and be just as crazy as the rest, or run the risk of being primaried by someone who is crazier than they are, or at least does a good job of acting that way.

So, what’s the Biden/Harris administration going to do the get even some of their agenda through the coming wall of craze?

Biden has a couple different ways to deal with this. Hopefully, he will not try to be collegial and work with them. I know, I know, that’s always the goal, to ‘work across the aisle, be bi-partisan. If Biden learned nothing from the Obama years, he should have learned that the Republicans are bad actors, they do not negotiate in good faith. Even those that might agree in private are going to be pushed, squeezed to the wall by the base who will demand blood… and they don’t really care which side bleeds; the Satanist Democrats, or the RINO’s who let their beloved Trump down. It’ll a race to prove which Republican is the most irresponsible, and that’s the Republican that will go forward. 

Right now, McConnell is saying the new administration won’t even get cabinet positions confirmed unless he personally approves of them, won’t even get a vote. No, unless he gets the Senate, (and maybe not even then) Biden will have to go it alone as much as possible, get things done administratively rather than through congress. And it won’t be easy, as every more will be protested, will be dragged into the courts. It wouldn’t surprise me to see the Republicans filling out lawsuits now, to fill in the blanks later.

Biden is going to have to move fast, blitz the field before 2022, when chances are he might lose his House majority. He can do this with multiple teams pushing his agenda at the same time. I assume right now they’re readying Executive orders to sign, and they should do as much as they can as fast as they can, confuse and disorient the opposition into trying to figure out and deal with the numbers of different things coming out. Just as Trump does with outrages, committing new ones before the furor over the last one died out, Biden can do with policy. A Trump tactic for the good of the country.

That might be the best thing we’ll learn from Trump.

The Republicans Hate Our Democracy, They Just Hate it.

The poor, harried and over worked election officials of Clark County listen while a fool Trump supporter goes off on an angry, incoherent rant. They’s been hearing this cap all night at this point. He went away and they went on with their business.

2020, the year the GOP stopped trying to hide their slow destruction of democracy, and openly took sledgehammers, jackhammers, and bulldozers, setting them loose on the foundation of our country; specifically, our right to vote and have that vote counted.   

This is not new, the GOP has been suppressing votes and intimidating voters for decades (the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, William Rehnquist, used to challenge Latino voters who would dare to try and vote in Arizona back in the 1960’s), in fact, this was the first time in decades that the GOP wasn’t under consent decree to not intimidate voters. Oh, you don’t know about that? Okay, let’s have Politico explain it to you:

“The decree, which dated to 1982, arose from a Democratic National Committee lawsuit charging the RNC with seeking to discourage African-Americans from voting through targeted mailings warning about penalties for violating election laws and by posting armed, off-duty law enforcement officers at the polls in minority neighborhoods.” 

Yep, that’s true. The GOP posted armed ‘watchers’ at ‘certain’ (read ‘Black or minority) communities and were righty slapped down for it. 2020, that didn’t apply anymore, because (as Chief Justice Roberts reasoned in gutting the Voting Rights Act), since it worked, it’s not needed anymore. We don’t need to protect the votes of Black folks because you know, racism is gone, everyone will play fair and do the right thing… right?

Right.

As soon as that ruling was published, states rushed to pass laws they’d already written, restricting voting; shortening, or taking away early voting, requiring voter ID’s, requiring street addresses, passing ‘exact match’ rules on voter registration, blatant gerrymandering by race, doing away with polling places in poor and minority neighborhoods, all affecting those non-White voters who stubbornly refuse to vote for the one-true party, the GOP.

Trump has been setting his plan in motion for months by crippling the United States Post Office, lying about the ‘dangers’ of vote by mail, refusing to say whether he would abide by the results of the vote, questioning whether ‘late’ ballots (those postmarked by election day and arriving during the legal window) should count, and if we should just stop counting altogether at the stroke of midnight. He wants to disenfranchise millions of legal votes, and many ion the GOP are either actively helping, and trying to ignore it.

It’s insanity, and we would never allow any elected official to go off like this without serious consequences. Yet, there’s Trump, running down democracy for all the world to see. And the world is watching and wondering what the hell is wrong with us.  

Now, we and the world are seeing Trump not only refusing to concede an election he lost by 7 million votes, he is actively undermining the election and the election officials themselves by claiming massive ‘vote fraud’ (really election fraud) perpetrated by Democrats and Republicans somehow working with the Democrats (yet, somehow, the Democrats weren’t able to steal the senate outright? And down ballot races the GOP won are still good?). And he has plenty of help from far-right media such as NewsMax (rapidly growing as Fox can’t lie fast enough anymore) and OAN, an outlet that will say or do anything to support far-right power and Trump. The fact that this threatens to tear the country apart seems to be the goal; grab and hold to power, no matter what.  

For the Republicans, it’s always about power, whether that power be in the form of money, influence, threats, or armed far-right terrorists in the streets. Right now, they still control the presidency and the senate and will use them both as weapons against democracy. This minority government will work to undermine confidence in the vote, in elections, in government, in democracy itself because those institutions are a threat to their power, and a constraint on their permanent hold on that power.

Burrowing in for destruction

How will they continue their destruction once they are out of power? By making sure they are never out of power. They have been constructing a minority government and judiciary, impervious to votes and who or what the majority wants. Running down and choking the vote is just one way of doing it. Another is to take over the government itself without have to win any votes. To this end, Trump has stripped by Executive Order, thousands of civil servants of their job protections (ones that protect them from political whims) claiming them to be 'policy making' positions. Trump then demanded lists of those workers made up that fit his new guidelines. These lists are due by January 19th, the day before inauguration. The goal here is the mass firing of thousands of essential government workers, to be replaced by 'presidential appointments', basically turning purposely non-partisan positions into politically partisan ones. It is called 'burrowing', placing political allies into civil positions, but this is on a mass scale unlike anything ever done before, and of questionable legality.

Jason Briefel, director of policy and outreach for the Senior Executives Association, a professional organization for senior civil servants, called the order “a constitutional dumpster fire that everybody’s going to have to figure out how to put out together.”

Trump soaks the place in gasoline and throws a match on the way out the door.

Boom. Doesn’t care. Anything he and the GOP can do the destroy the place, our place, our democracy, they will do. It’s what they do.

This is a Republican takeover of the government, a government-wide minority power grab of a government they, by democratic vote, lost. They have to be called out, exposed, dragged into the sunlight to show everyone what they have been doing and how close we could be to losing our democracy.

The Republicans don't care about democracy if it gets in the way of their power. They will choose power over country every time.

They Can Run…

Mitch, in the shadows, ready to jump out at democracy.

The GOP is showing how scared they are…

Right now, 66% of Americans want the selection of the next Justice for the Supreme Court to be done after the election, by the next president. 50% of Republicans think so as well. That’s according to a Reuters/Ipsos poll released Sunday.

It’s pretty obvious most American do not want Donald Trump anywhere near the next SCOTUS pick. Rushing a new nominee, and shoving it though in what would have to be record speed is incredibly unpopular. In fact, it’s suicidal to the GOP senate majority. This most shows the Republicans not only to be blatant hypocrites, but not caring in the least about the will of the people in replacing the most admired Justice on the Supreme Court. Don’t care, gonna do it anyway, screw you.

The GOP majority is near and dear to McConnell, why would he throw that away, and cause a (hopefully) ton of bricks to fall on him and his precious majority?

Joe Biden is ahead in the polls by 7 points, and he’s been leading since he secured the nomination. Trump has never led in the polls, unlike 2016 where it was close and leads traded a few times.

Never once.

That’s why: they think Trump is going to lose. Big time. If you going to get evicted anyway, why not burn the house down on the way out?

Over the weekend, from Friday when Justice Ginsburg’s death was announced and McConnell’s callus announcement minutes later that he planned to move forward with a nomination vote, ActBlue, a non-profit dedicated to helping Democratic candidates fund elections, raised over 100 million dollars. Individual Democratic candidates around the country saw their fundraising numbers shoot up. The GOP is defending 23 Senate seats this election year, with an incredibly unpopular president whom they cannot let go or their Trump loving base will turn on them. Many of those seats are underwater; Arizona (Martha McSally), and Colorado (Cory Gardner) look to be lost, Maine (Susan Collins) is behind, others like South Carolina (Lindsey Graham) are tied. South Carolina! With so many seats up, so many close or look to be gone, why do something that will make an already angry electorate even angrier?

Well, if you’re being evicted, and you are burning it anyway, might as well have something to show for it. The control of the Supreme Court, something the right has been wanting to decades, is that thing. McConnell must believe it’s worth killing his majority for that control (Trump doesn’t think that far ahead, it’s Mitch calling this one). Now comes the best, biggest, and baddest ‘own the libs’ campaign ever. They don’t need a senate majority now, they can have the SCOTUS kill anything the Democrats might pass.

This now puts them in place to destroy the ACA and take insurance away from millions, to finally kill abortion rights, the minimum wage, and all the other far-right things they have been promising since the formation of the Birch Society and the Goldwater campaign. I imagine they’ll try to repeal the entire Civil Rights Era, especially voting laws. Expect nothing the least bit progressive to be allowed to live for a generation. At least.

The problem is (there are many, but this is the biggest) these are popular programs with majority support. This new SCOTUS will not be the least bit interested in justice, but settling grievances with ‘libs’ and ‘atheists’ and host of others they feel have harmed them or their community. They will be going down a long list of perceived slights, gathered over decades, and start ticking them off one-by-one. We will have a Supreme Court not answerable to the will of the people, and, frankly, not ready paying any attention to precedent or settled law. It will be a far-right organization bent on repealing as much of the 20th century as it can get its hands on.

It’s Minority rule, basically what we’ve had in government for the past four years, but this time write large and lasting for decades. Now the GOP, who never liked governing anyway, can sit back while the SCOTUS, and all the federal judges they’ve appointed, do their work.

They don’t need a majority anymore.

This is why if the Democrats get control, they need to kill the filibuster, admit DC and Puerto Rico, and even the Virgin Islands as states, expand the federal judiciary, pass laws to kill partisan gerrymandering, and yes, expand the SCOTUS. The GOP will jump up and down, screaming, but let them. They don’t matter.

As they taught us, if you have the majority, the other side loses. Make them feel it.

More Than Roe…

Many will tell you that nominating a new Justice for the Supreme Court is just about filling one seat, that’s all. No big deal, right? What’s the fuss?

Either they have no idea what they are talking about, they are deliberately distorting the situation, or they are lying. This is not about ‘one seat’. This the culmination of a near 50-year campaign to turn the court, to finish the politicization, (or the ‘right-ization’) begun under Reagan. Some say it started earlier, under Nixon. The court right now sits as one of the most far-right courts in history, at an ideological 5-4 split, with Chief Justice John Roberts a sometime swing vote. That is/was until the death of RBG. That now all changes with a Trump appointee.

The right has insisted on basically one test for their increasingly far-right judges, ‘will you kill Roe v Wade?’, so the center-to-left has to play that game and ask them ‘will you overturn Roe v Wade?’, and that has been the test to get on the court since the 80s. From both sides.

So, here we are. With the death of Justice Ginsberg, and before her admirers are even allowed to morn, we have the Trump and McConnell GOP rushing at full speed to shove someone, anyone as far right as they can, into that seat, NOW. No idea if McConnell will even allow the whole kabuki dance of hearings or not. I’d be somewhat surprised if he did, but I assume they’ll have to do something to sell whatever nominee they choose to a public that is now more divided than ever. Even if it means destroying the legitimacy of the Court, something they really don’t care about anyway (that took a big hit with the stealing of a seat from Obama).

But this is much more than just Roe v Wade, for Republicans and Democrats, this is about the changing demographics and the shifting society. The Republicans know that their time as a national force is limited by the fact that America is becoming less White, less Christian, over all less religious, and less rural. This is the GOP’s base, the ones they have relied on for decades, and they are becoming a minority. Instead of trying to expand that base, as their own research showed they needed to do (the famous ‘autopsy’ in 2013) they instead decided to keep people out. They turned their back on anyone not White, not Christian, and doubled down on what was left.

The GOP gave up on outreach, and instead went with fear, went with hate, and since they could not grow their base, they made sure anyone not part of it wasn’t allowed to vote, to thrive, to grow.

But to achieve this, they needed the courts.

Every year, the number of people voting for the GOP declines, it’s a fact. So you gerrymander, you put restrictions on voting; who can vote, where they can vote, how they can vote. Now, for the most part, judges don’t like these kinds of tactics, and the Voting Rights Act was often cited. In fact, the VRA was passed specifically to stop those sorts of tactics. So, you get Justices who will kill the enforcement part of the VRA, you get far-right judges appointed who will agree with your ‘these people shouldn’t vote’ philosophy, you couch it in enough legalese, or hide your true motives just enough to give cover to their rulings.

The GOP has giving up governing, given up legislating, (what great bill has McConnell passed? What grand compromise has he made?) given up caring about anything but getting massive amounts of far-right judges appointed. Compromise, and learning to work with the other side is difficult, it’s a lot of work and you probably won’t get the result you wanted, so just get the courts. They know they’ll soon not be able to win national elections (they’ve recently had two presidents who’ve served without winning the popular vote) and might be soon reduced to a regional party. But if they can appoint enough judges, that won’t matter. If they can’t get national electoral power, they’ll rule though the courts. Long after the country has changed, long after the White majority is no longer the majority, the GOP can hold power over a country that has rejected their ideals by capturing, and keeping, the courts.

More than Roe, that is what this is about.

This is why the Democrats will need to appoint more Justices. They will never be anything slightly left of center upheld by the conservative SCOTUS, never. And a conservative court will then start on killing the entire Civil Rights Era. It’s been on the GOP list for years, and they’ve been itching to do it. Anything that might smell of progress will be slapped down, if it even gets past the GOP/Trump circuit and appeals courts. 2-4 new seats will restore balance. The Democrats will also need to expand the number of Federal judges as well, (they could use it) to rebalance a system that has been purposely skewed, to ensure justice.

 And that’s what this needs to be about, justice.

None of this will be easy, but if McConnell pushes this through, it will not only be needed, it will be necessary.

What is Legal, and What is Just.

Lady Justice, blindfold in place and holding her scales high.

Friday night, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg passed at the age of 87. She was a legal giant, beloved by people everywhere, an icon. Hell, she’s on t-shirts, earrings and brooches! One of the greatest legal advocates for women of the 20th century until two days ago.

The reaction was immediate; tributes poured in from friends, colleagues, and admirers… and then many from the right started in calling her ‘baby killer’, celebrating her death, and calling for her immediate replacement. Within an hour of her death.

She had stated, shortly before her death that she did not to be replaced before the election, it was her dying wish. It will likely be ignored by the GOP, who has vowed to forget about the bogus ‘McConnell Rule’ they used to block a nominee under Obama, and push through a nominee at lighting speed. Thus, stealing a second Supreme Court seat. They will jam though the farthest right judge they can find, designed to dishonor and undo as much of Justice Ginsburg’s legacy as possible.

Is that legal? Yes.

Is it just?

No.

There is a difference between what’s legal, and what's just. So far, the GOP has stolen one seat by extra-legal means, and not paid any sort of price for it. Now, they propose to throw out the slim 'justification' they use to steal that seat to, basically, steal this one. This may be ‘legal’, but it is not 'just'.

If they do this, and they will, as being hypocrites is their preferred managerial style, they will tear the country apart and destroy the reputation and authority of the SCOTUS, probably forever. They should understand they are finally freeing the Democrats to ignore any objection the GOP will have when the GOP is, inevitably, back in the minority. And if polls are correct, that day may be soon. The Democrats will have to make the GOP pay for their destroying of the moral guidelines of the government, and they will have to put in place rules, with consequences, to make sure the behavior of the McConnell years does not happen again, to make sure a Trump can’t thumb his nose at the law again.

The entire country is living the nightmare many warned about during 2016. We are on a precipice right now, threatening to tip over into minority, authoritarian rule. We can work to right and then fix the nation, or we can tear the place down and wander the ruins. These are the choices; is it legal, or is it just?

It is time for justice.

The Coming Fight

My last piece ended:

And the world will burn.

And it very well might, but what do we do about it? The public expects very little integrity out of the GOP these days, (not their brand in the Age of Trump) and blatantly ignoring the bullshit rule they used to steal a senate seat under Obama will be met by their followers with nothing but excuses, and hypocritical praise. You know, the ‘own the libs!’ mantra the Trump base so dearly loves. The Democrats are the ones expected to be ‘big’ about the whole thing, and not too ‘political’, because how is anyone going to expect maturity from the Trump Party?  It’s always defaulted to clean the GOP’s messes.

Trump will name a nominee (no doubt picked weeks, if not months ago) probably tomorrow or Monday and McConnell has proclaimed he’ll jam it through come hell or high water, hell being the more likely. Lindsey Graham has gone back on his word to hold any other president to the ‘McConnell Rule’, as I figured he would, so that’s a possible ‘vote against’ gone. But really, I never counted him in the first place; he’s an iron mote attracted to the strongest magnet in the room. That magnet used to be John McCain, now it’s Donald Trump. He will always go where Trump goes.

There is still the hope of conscience and integrity (that odd, odd word again) in the rest of the GOP Senate caucus, but that’s really just a sick joke, isn’t it? I am not an expert in the Senate rules, but I bet the parliamentarians on both sides are feverishly combing through the rules at this moment looking for ways to speed up and slow down the process. The Democrat’s will throw everything they can at the process, and the GOP will ignore any rules they don’t like, like always (skipping hearings and maybe just going to the vote? Would not surprise me). What can be done?

Maybe nothing at the moment, it’s very likely Trump and McConnell will get their pick. It’s going to be ugly, but if they have the votes, the process might be slowed but doubtfully stopped. What can be done, needs to be done is fight, and tell the GOP what the consequences will be if Biden is president.

One: Biden needs to be out in front of this now. A speech pointing out the divisiveness of the GOP’s actions and their lawless behavior is needed, one that trurns Trump’s so-called ‘LAW & ORDER’ nonsense on its head. It the GOP and violent police that are the problem and the lawlessness of the GOP is stopping the root from being dealt with. Their drive for power at all costs has corrupted this country of its government and courts, and need to be stopped.

Two: If the Democrats take the Senate, probable Majority Leader Sen. Chuck Schumer has said he will ‘keep the filibuster in his back pocket’ like it’s some kind of threat against the GOP. This is insanity. The GOP doesn’t care, they’ll blow it up if they get the chance. No progressive legislation will get passed if they have to court far-right votes. It changes and compromises the bills down to nothing, and still won’t get any GOP votes. Didn’t they learn anything from Obamacare? Day one. It’s gone; majority rules.

Three: Expand the courts.

Yes, expand the courts. If the GOP, once again, pulls off a seat-stealing move like this, like Merrick Garland, there will be nothing they will not try. They have become an extra-legal gang in the government, roaming the halls and vandalizing the structure. This has to stop, there has to be consequences. The Constitution has no set number of judges to the Court, that limit is set by congress. The court over its history has been expanded five times; starting at six seats, going up to ten in 1837-1866, and then back to the current nine in 1869. If the Democrats take the Senate, expand the Court to 11-13 justices, negating the two stolen seats and restoring balance to the SCOTUS. It’s fair, legal, and needed. And not just the Supremes, the federal judiciary at-large should be expanded as well.

Announce this plan now. The GOP might actually think and back down, I doubt it, but they might. This entire Trump term has been about smashing and trashing the rules, and the checks and balances of the government itself, stripping out the oversite and grabbing power. Nowhere is this more evident than in the judiciary. Not just the Supreme Court, but the lower courts as well. Lists of unqualified, far-right ideologues were thrown robes and told to take a seat on the bench. This cannot be allowed to continue.  

Look at the damage to the integrity and reputation of the court wrought by the GOP and the conservatives on it: from the 2000 Bush V Gore travesty (a decision not driven by law but politics) and then the McConnell gambit of making up a ‘rule’ out of whole cloth to deny Merrick Garland a fair hearing, staining the eventual holder of the seat, and all their decisions, with illegitimacy.  

 Four: You got the senate? Vote in Puerto Rico and Washington DC as states, that will give the Democrats a possible four more senators to form a bulwark against the GOP, one that will be hard to overcome. Then, start passing the rule changes needed to stop this nonsense that Trump and McConnell have been pulling for the past four years.

Action is needed. People are tired, people are angry. This is the action needed.

The Fire This Time

Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg has died. In case you’ve been living under a bush the past several decades, she was a hell of a woman. In her 21 years on the bench (appointed by President Clinton) she has been an inspiration to friends and not-friends, ruling with passion and honor. During that time, she’s personally battled both with colon cancer, and won, and then pancreatic cancer in 2009. She fought it hard for 11 years, but succumbed on Sept 18th, in the Year of our Hell, 2020.

We have now gone from ugly election, in the middle of a pandemic that has killed 203,361 Americans, to a full-pitched political battle for the direction of the country for decades to come.

It didn’t have to happen. It really didn’t.

In 2016, Justice Antonin Scalia, died suddenly. With 11 months still left on his term, President Obama nominated Merrick Garland, just the kind middle-of-the-road jurist that was Obama’s speed. All taht threre was to do now for the Senate was to follow the Constitution, hold hearings and a vote. Easy.  

No. Anything but a far-right fire breather would sway the court and change the majority, which is historically one of the farthest-right ones in decades. This can never be. So, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, already famous for a reputation of ignoring rules when it came to accruing himself and his party power, literally just made up an excuse not to do his job.

“The American people‎ should have a voice in the selection of their next Supreme Court Justice. Therefore, this vacancy should not be filled until we have a new President.”

Mitch McConnell, 2016.

Complete bullshit, with no legal or Constitutional basis, but the right-wing Senators and pundits cranked out volumes defending it, casting aside any reputation for seriousness they might have left. Really, they’re a machine of obfuscations and out-of-context quoting. They were fooling nobody, probably not even themselves. This was no stand of integrity by a man who has displayed little his entire career, this was yet another smash the rules power grab.

And he got away with it. 

And the GOP and Trump have gleefully proclaimed their willingness to destroy the remaining public legitimacy of the Supreme Court.

Full screeching stop.

It didn’t have to happen. Still doesn’t.

Here we are, another justice beloved by their ‘side’ and died, some 40 days before a presidential election. How is that infamous ‘McConnell Rule’ applied?

“President Trump’s nominee will receive a vote on the floor of the United States Senate,”

Mitch McConnell, 2020.

One Mitch, two different rules for two different presidents. And this is why the GOP is a party of hypocrites.

I’m just totally shocked. This is my shocked face. May never go back.

How bad is the hypocrisy? You have probably seen the quotes a dozen times by now, but here they are:

Lindsey Graham (R-SC), 2018:

“I’ll tell you this...if an opening comes in the last year of president Trump's term and the primary process has started we'll wait to the next election.”

“I want you to use my words against me. If there’s a Republican president in 2016 and a vacancy occurs in the last year of the first term, you can say Lindsey Graham said let’s let the next president, whoever it might be, make that nomination."

Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.)

Late in 2016, in an op-ed defending the McConnell’s decision: “voters — not a lame-duck president — should decide the composition of the highest court in the land.”

Sen. Cory Gardner (R-Colo.)

“The next president of the United States should have the opportunity to fill the vacancy on the Supreme Court. Our next election is too soon and the stakes are too high; the American people deserve a role in this process as the next Supreme Court Justice will influence the direction of this country for years to come.”



Sen. Susan Collins (R-MN) have said similar things, as has Sen. Lisa Mukowski (R-AK), Mitt Romney (R-UT) is a wild card in this, sometimes showing some backbone. We’ll see.

Now, I suppose they’re not actually hypocrites yet, as they haven’t announced which they’ll vote, but past performance predicts future actions. They’re already coming up with bullshit exemptions to a bullshit rule, like the kid in a cops and robbers game calling out excuses why he wasn’t really shot.

Now, the question is; will they hold to what they have said in the past, or will it be exposed as so much ‘of-the-moment, forget-it-later’ hypocrisy? Well, looks like McConnell has probably solved that one for us. He will gather, pressure and threaten his caucus until he gets the result he wants, he sees what as his job; principles are things that stand between him and what he wants, he doesn’t understand them. This was already going to be a divisive election, one with decades long implications poised to make or break us as a country; now it could be a bloodbath.

It doesn’t have to happen, it really doesn’t. If Trump, McConnell and the GOP would put, for once, country above party, we can step back from the abyss. McConnell would abide by his completely made-up rule, and the choice would go to whomever won the presidential election. McConnell, of course, would never consider such a thing. He makes and breaks rules as it occurs to him to do so; when one is no longer convenient, new one’s spring forth from the head of Zeus, given the little ‘legitimacy’ that McConnell has left, and is treated as if it was always there in the first place.

Maybe the far-right’s beloved Federalist Society could step in to halt the coming destruction, announcing that the seat open should be left open. This would go a long way to cooling the flames and give cover to Republicans who might not to burn down the SCOTUS, not so soon at least.

There is literally no way this will happen.

The Federalist Society, McConnell and the GOP have been on a literal RBG death watch for years now, probably hitting refresh on their browsers to keep check, lists of names already disseminated and ready to announce.

Do I sound cynical? Decades of watching the GOP has made me so. I know to put nothing past them, to ‘trust but verify’ in Reagan’s smug but utterly nonsensical phrase. But I can’t even do that anymore.  

Mitch McConnell could have ended it, simply by following his nonsense ‘rule’ (not a rule), but he cannot pass up yet more power for his dying party. So, he will not.

Trump also could stop it, but he also cannot. This is his ultimate owning of the libs’ and he lives for the moment he can put his boot to the back of his ‘enemies’ neck and grind their face into the dirt.  

They like to see the world burn and fate has given them a blowtorch.

Maybe, just maybe, those Republican senators quoted above, maybe joined by Mitt Romney, will step up to save their party and country and vote either ‘no’ or ‘present’. Or just announce their intentions, denying McConnell and stopping the official vote at all.

But that wouldn’t stop them; the right would tar and feather them, in the press and literally if they could. They’d be fielding death threats like leaves in a windstorm. And Trump and McConnell would hold their vote anyhow.

Save the party or the country.

And the world will burn.

They Just Don’t Care About You

Mitch McConnell, looking to get the F’ out of Dodge.

Congress has left town. They left for a ‘vacation from… what? The House has actually been doing something, they’ve passed some 400 bills that Mitch McConnell is using to hold up his TV so he and Lindsey can watch their ‘stories'. Not read the bills, not allow them to go to an up or down vote… nope, just sit there while Mitch puts up his feet and laughs. Now, they’re gone. They packed up their little brief cases and figured out ways to avoid their voters. Vacation until September 8th.

Of course.

So, no covid relief bill, Right now, the GOP is pretending to be ‘concerned’ about ‘spending’. They’re a couple months early, they usually only get concerned when a Democrat is in the White House. They probably wanted to be back in practice as they have faced the probable reality of Trump going down in a crushing Blue Wave (gonna capitalize that, yep). Maybe the GOP will lose the senate as well.

So, what happened? The GOP did. They’re busy denying the pain of millions of unemployed so they can politicize the virus even further. They don’t care. They will use the virus to pass tax cuts, to deregulate our water, air, and land, to try and protect companies from any responsibility for their re-opening and the safety of their workers, but they won’t help the ordinary people, you know, the people who can’t afford their own politician. They didn’t even bother to start ‘work’ on one until a couple days before the last one ran out. They don’t care.

Well, what about the Democrats? What have they been up to, huh? Yeah, huh? What?!!

Well, the Democrats passed a bill, two months ago that would help with virus relief. It's a big and pretty thorough bill with money for schools, cities, states, individuals, and extends the unemployment payments. But the bill would do something else; it would help Donald Trump.

Yep, it would help Donny.

 You get money out to people, they will spend it; pay bills, pay rent, buy food, the money going right back into the economy. This is what Trump supposedly wants, get the economy going or at least in a place where it's not going down anymore.

And he said 'no.'

And the GOP backed him up. Mark Meadows, professional bomb-thrower is supposedly 'negotiating' a deal. This is a guy who have never saw in deal in congress that he didn't blow up, and he's doing the same here. The whole Tea Party DNA is deep with this one.

The whole thing is not only against the interest of the people, but against the interests of Trump and the GOP as well. His policy of, basically, letting people die and now making sure those still here will be as miserable as possible is hurting us and hurting him. It's building a huge blue wave that is coming right at them. Their actions seem to welcome it.

And now congress has left town. Even the latest Fox News poll tells us people are hurting and need help. This would have made Trump and the GOP look good. For a change.

But… No.

The whole thing is insane. I'm not being cute calling it that, it is literally not sane.