On This Easter Sunday, Lest We Forget Our Nation’s Past

I wasn’t going to post anything today, but I saw this piece at DailyKos and I think it is an important reminder of America’s history:

The Easter Sunday massacre in Colfax, Louisiana, and the awful Supreme Court decision that followed

By Denise Oliver Velez

When Christians think of the meaning of Easter Sunday, it symbolizes resurrection and hope. When I think of Easter Sunday in the black community, I think of all the ladies in their wonderful hats heading off to church. However, I don’t ever forget that Easter Sunday also marked one of the most horrible massacres of black citizens in U.S. history. It’s hard to erase the images in my mind of black bodies riddled with bullets, blown apart by cannon fire. They died at the hands of white supremacists who lost the Civil War but who won the years ahead, because they were able to destroy Reconstruction. I take a moment of silence and say a prayer for the dead, many of whose names we will never know.

This story from The Root on the Colfax Massacre, written by Dr. Henry Louis Gates Jr., gives the details. It’s worth reading in its entirety.

In Colfax, La., on Easter Sunday 1873, a mob of white insurgents, including ex-Confederate and Union soldiers, led an assault on the Grant Parish Courthouse, the center of civic life in the community, which was occupied and surrounded — and defended — by black citizens determined to safeguard the results of the state’s most recent election. They, too, were armed, but they did not have the ammunition to outlast their foes, who, outflanking them, proceeded to mow down dozens of the courthouse’s black defenders, even when they surrendered their weapons. The legal ramifications were as horrifying as the violence — and certainly more enduring; in an altogether different kind of massacre, United States v. Cruikshank (1876), the U.S. Supreme Court tossed prosecutors’ charges against the killers in favor of severely limiting the federal government’s role in protecting the emancipated from racial targeting, especially at the hands of the Ku Klux Klan.

Historians know this tragedy as the Colfax Massacre, though in the aftermath, even today, some whites refer to it as the Colfax Riot in order to lay blame at the feet of those who, lifeless, could not tell their tale. In his canonical history of the period, Reconstruction: America’s Unfinished Revolution, 1863-1877, Eric Foner has called the Colfax Massacre “[t]he bloodiest single instance of racial carnage in the Reconstruction era.”

Listening to the testimony of now Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch (heaven help us all) in which he harped on “judicial precedent” over and over again brought to mind Supreme Court precedents like Dred Scott v. Sanford, Plessy v. Ferguson, and the aforementioned United States v. Cruikshank—all of which have the dubious distinction of residing on lists of the worst Supreme Court decisions of all time.

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The America’s “Two Party System” Isn’t Working.

As a political “junkie” one of my main interests is our American Constitution as this link will show.  I was cognizant of the problems inherent in our Constitution when I wrote America’s Greatest Strength Is Also America’s Greatest Weakness,  Our Constitutional problems came to mind this morning when I read an insightful piece by the superb Ian Millheiser at Think Progress.   His article Democratic senator will introduce Trump’s SCOTUS nominee at his hearing. WTF discusses his annoyance at the fact that the Democratic Senator from Colorado Michael Bennet,  will be one of three Senators to introduce Supreme Court nominee Neil Gorsuch at his Senate Hearing on 3/20. Bennet claims he is doing it only as a courtesy to another Colorado resident, but Millheiser (and I) see it differently.  Millheiser describes the fact that Gorsuch is even farther to the right than the radical judicial extremist Antonin Scalia,  though with a far handsomer visage.

Millheiser describes the pressures upon Bennet,  pressures which seem to be leading him away from solidarity with his Party on the SCOTUS nomination. This Court nomination was literally stolen by the Republicans, who literally refused to even give a hearing to Barack Obama’s nominee for SCOTUS.  So when faced with the nomination of this Judicial extremist Gorsuch ,  logic dictate that Democrats should do everything in their power to de-legitimize  Gorsuch and stop his approval.  Millheiser’s piece discusses that viewpoint and rejects it.  Reading the article today though sent my musings into a tangential train of thought, which is that America’s  “Two Party System” is failing us miserably.

When your country has the political reality that any political advance can only be accomplished legislatively via one of two political parties, of necessity each party must encompass a broad spectrum of political viewpoints. Although the Founding Fathers never really conceived of political parties when writing the Constitution and in fact did not like the concept of “Party”, in less than a decade after the adoption of the Constitution political parties began to form. As    these nascent parties evolved they roughly took the form of “traditionalists” (conservatives) vs.  “modernists” (liberals).  For its’  70 years or so, up until the Civil War the United States was an agrarian oligarchy under the format of a Republic.  The party system reflected the differences between the various American oligarchs regarding their vision for the country’s future. Those differences boiled down to those who advocated change and growth of this burgeoning country and those who wanted to maintain the status quo and the socio-economic structure of their forebears.  As time went on these differences became the driving impetus of various faction within each Party, but the Party structure itself calcified into a system which made political change, from forces outside of the two party system very difficult. After all with only two party’s offering choices to the electorate, it made the system far easier to “game”,  for the oligarchs of entrenched wealth.

Having two party’s,  each encompassing an entire spectrum of political views, limits the philosophical and political choices of the party and the electorate.  Stultified leadership structures evolve and the “party establishment”, as humans are wont to do, focus as much on maintaining their own power, as they do on the Party advancing its’ own needs for power. Now there are arguments to be made that in America the two party system has added to the country’s stability and there is some merit to that, especially seeing the rather messy and sometime dangerous effects on a country’s stability in parliamentary Republics.  However, conversely there is a great argument to be made that the American “Two Party System” has served as an impediment to progress in providing all the citizens of America with socioeconomic equality and justice under the law.

For much of our history our “Two Party System” has proven it can supply a good mixture of stability and growth, even though there was a terrible price to be paid if your skin was dark, if you were an immigrant, or if you were born without wealth.  However, we saw that to make the system work what was necessary was a general agreement to abide by the Law and by the traditions of the system.  As long as most members of one of the two parties agreed that cooperation under the existing structures was necessary, than the “Two Party System” could be viable generally, while failing many specifically.  The first great rift in the Country’s fabric came about due to Slavery.  Abraham Lincoln was duly elected President, but the oligarch slaveholders of the South immediately refused to accept the results of the election, leading to revolution and the bloodiest war in our history.  After the Civil War, stability reigned until the throes of the Great Depression threatened again to tear the country apart. The election of Franklin Delano Roosevelt set up a conflict between the banking and industrial oligarchs.  It is rarely mentioned now though, but those financial oligarchs went as far as the Business Plot:  

“a political conspiracy in 1933 in the United States. Retired Marine Corps Major General Smedley Butler claimed that wealthy businessmen were plotting to create a fascist veterans’ organization with Butler as its leader and use it in a coup d’état to overthrow President Franklin D. Roosevelt. In 1934, Butler testified before the United States House of Representatives Special Committee on Un-American Activities (the “McCormack–Dickstein  Committee”) on these claims.^[1] No one was prosecuted.”

One of the central figures in the Business Plot was Senator Prescott Bush, father of one President an grandfather of another President.  FDR survived that plot and even an assassination attempt and went on to create the New Deal which widely changed the economic and social climate of the country.  Among the patrician class, of which the Roosevelt family were charter members,  FDR was never forgiven for his class treason and his New Deal was never accepted.  As World War II began to overrun Europe and Asia,  many in the business oligarchy actually favored the Fascism of Adolph Hitler and an America First Movement burgeoned around the leadership of American hero and Hitler friend Charles Lindbergh.  The Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor effectively ended the America First Movement and brought us into the war.  After World War II America was clearly the most powerful nation on Earth and assumed that mantle in opposition to the USSR and it proto communist system of government. This “Cold War” with the Russians created an uneasy bi-partisanship between the conservative and liberal factions of each Party and Republicans were content to bide their time and accept the political structures put in place by the New Deal.

Since both Parties were observing political norms and traditions the system seemed to be working up until the 1960’s when all hell broke loose.  The popular Democratic President JFK was murdered early in his term and his speeches which evoked hope of positive political change became bitter memories.  People of Color, recognizing that the former counsel of their elders to work through the system was a failure, took to the streets with a Civil Rights Movement that showed America the true violence, viciousness and vindictiveness that characterized Southern Segregation and Northern racist hypocrisy.  The Movement against the Vietnam War erupted also into the street and the social fabric of the country began to fray. The murders of RFK, Martin Luther King and Malcolm X disabused many leftists, including me, of the notion of American Democracy and the disdain for the “Two Party System” grew when the Democratic Convention erupted in 1968.  The heretofore unpopular Richard Nixon won election on a platform promising peace, as Henry Kissinger worked behind the scenes to  prevent peace in Vietnam before the election.

Nixon actually escalated the Vietnam War, but curiously maintained a rather liberal economic agenda, thus dissatisfying his Oligarchic allies.  While Nixon was forced to resign and his successor Gerald Ford lost his bid for a second term,  the reactionary oligarchs were grooming a champion to regain power. Ronald Reagan was elected on a platform suspiciously similar to the “Make America Great Again” of of Trump and the corporate establishment news declared it a “revolution”.  Not so curiously perhaps, all three major television networks fell under the ownership of conservative minded corporations. The Network News began then to treat each news story with false equivalency. 

So successful was the corporate media in promoting the “Reagan Revolution” and its tax cuts for the rich, slashing social programs and de-regulating the markets that it even got the less than charismatic George H.W. Bush elected as President.  Bush was done in though, despite fighting a popular war on behalf of Saudi Arabia,  because the tax cuts for the wealthy and the inequality of the nation caught up with him.  The election of Bill Clinton enraged the reactionary oligarchs who had begun to believe that control of the government was their right by birth. What made them most mad though was via his political strategy of triangulation which actually turned the Democratic Party into Centrists Republicans. In other words he used Republican memes like small government and less taxes against them.  Republicans spent 8 years and extremist oligarchs tens of millions of dollars to impeach him, but failed.

While Clinton actually pursued Republican Party policies as a Democrat, he may have maintained his Presidency, but severely hurt the Party in the process.  Al Gore’s loss in 2000 had as much to do with the fact that he ran as a Centrist, as it did with the unprecendented decision of an extremist SCOTUS majority led by Scalia.  George W. Bush became President ceding much control to the loathsome Dick Cheney,  who never let civic duty interfere with his making a buck.  Bush Junior had the extreme good fortune to benefit from one of America’s greatest misfortunes,  9/11. Using the support mustered in a bi-partisan manner from a distraught and depressed country, he launched the two longest wars in American history to the profit of the Saudis, the oil cartels and the Military/Industrial/Intelligence Complex (CMIC).

Barack Obama was elected on a quite Progressive platform and proceeded to govern as a Clintonesque lite Republican.  Even Obama’s health care victory was based upon a plan devised by a Republican governor and actually ensured large profits for corporate health care insurers. Yet Obama became among the most reviled Presidents in American history, at least from the extremist Republican side,  simply because of the color of his skin.  The dirty little secret of the Republican Party, ever since Nixon was elected, with his Southern Strategy, was that they appealed to the sizable percentage of Americans who harbor racial prejudice and general bigotry. The election of a Black Man, indeed a handsome, eloquent and elegant Black Man, was an anathema to this group of bigots. It allowed the Billionaire Koch Brothers and their allies to fund a fake, grass roots movement, the Tea Party and from that racist movement take over the Republican party.  It was that Tea Party takeover that paved the way for the election of Trump.

Nothing is of course that simple.  The Democratic Party was controlled by an establishment that adhered to the Bill Clinton’s triangulation and indeed his wife was the standard bearer.  They were too slow to come to the conclusion that Bernie Sanders was quite popular, not for his charisma, but for his ideas of economic social justice.  After all, how could they see Sander’s message as anything but an outlier to their own centrist, pro corporate messaging?  This was the message that got both Bill Clinton and Barack Obama elected twice?  What they failed to see was that while the Presidential ticket fared well, the power of the Democratic Party in the Congress and at State and Local levels was disappearing.

In an America where Citizens United isn’t the Law of the Land,  in an America where the political structures of centuries are honored and where its governmental representatives are not completely beholden to campaign funding from the Corporate Oligarchy the “Two Party System” could remain viable. This is not unfortunately the America we are living in.

Senator Michael Bennet (D) Colorado

Higher Power or Else!

Since the suspicious election of our unfit President, there has been cause for worry about the retrenchment from many aspects of what was thought settled law, or progressive legislation. Perhaps the strangest facet in the support of this amoral, un-religious libertine is that the Evangelical Christian Right Wing is smitten with him.  The support of this community of Christian Fundamentalists was about 80% as reported in Christianity Today. Trump bowed to this unlikely support by naming Mike Pence as his Vice President,  seeding his administration with radical Christian Fundamentalists like Betsy DeVos as Education Secretary and moving on a number of legislative fronts to support Christian Religious causes like banning a Woman’s Right to Choose.  From an ideological perspective though most significantly this Administration agree with the specious notion that there is somehow a War on Religion by liberals in America and so that White Christians are really the biggest victims in America.

The Christian Evangelical Right Wing, for many years, has claimed that there is a “war on religion” taking place in America. This “so-called war” has been the result of many rulings that have tried to enforce the cherished principle of “freedom of religion”, but of necessity could also be called “freedom from religion.” When I was young, most of the stores in my neighborhood were required to close on Sunday, the Christian Sabbath. This was a hardship for Jews that celebrated their Sabbath on Saturday and Muslims that celebrated their Sabbaths on Friday. It affected Asian merchants, with their own religious beliefs, that didn’t have a formal Sabbath. Many of these so-called “blue laws” have been repealed because of the reality that they are showing preferential treatment to one particular religion, in a country that is made up of many religions and whose Constitution is believed by many to ban such preferential treatment.

The Supreme Court’s most important case on “blue laws” is McGowan vs. Maryland.

“The Supreme Court of the United States held in its landmark case, McGowan v. Maryland (1961), that Maryland‘s blue laws violated neither the Free Exercise Clause nor the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment to the United States Constitution. It approved the state’s blue law restricting commercial activities on Sunday, noting that while such laws originated to encourage attendance at Christian churches, the contemporary Maryland laws were intended to serve “to provide a uniform day of rest for all citizens” on a secular basis and to promote the secular values of “health, safety, recreation, and general well-being” through a common day of rest. That this day coincides with Christian Sabbath is not a bar to the state’s secular goals; it neither reduces its effectiveness for secular purposes nor prevents adherents of other religions from observing their own holy days.^[9]

There were four landmark Sunday-law cases altogether in 1961. The other three were Gallagher v. Crown Kosher Super Market of Mass., Inc., 366 U.S. 617 (1961); Braunfeld v. Brown, 366 U.S. 599 (1961); Two Guys from Harrison vs. McGinley, 366 U.S. 582 (1961). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_laws

I personally disagree with the SCOTUS decision in these cases and think that the logic used is disingenuous. The purpose of the Sunday “blue laws” was of course to promote religious attendance and encourage that attendance at Christian services on Sunday. A secondary reason was one of respect to Christianity and its belief that the Sabbath day of rest demanded in the Ten Commandments was Sunday. To say that it was to serve as a “uniform day of rest for all citizens” is frankly an untruth and adds intent to these laws that was never present in their imposition.There are currently 29 States that still have Sunday “blue laws” and many localities.

There is another ruling from what I see as a related case involving what I see as our right to have “freedom from religion”.

“SAN FRANCISCO (RNS) An atheist parolee should be compensated by California after the state returned him to prison for refusing to participate in a religiously-oriented rehabilitation program, a federal court ruled Friday (Aug. 23).

A three-judge panel of the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals unanimously ruled that a lower court judge erred when he denied Barry A. Hazle Jr., a drug offender and an atheist, a new trial after a jury awarded him no damages.

In a move that could have wider implications, the appeals court also ordered a Sacramento district judge to consider preventing state officials from requiring parolees attend rehabilitation programs that are focused on God or a “higher power.”

Hazle was serving time for methamphetamine possession in 2007 when, as a condition of his parole, he was required to participate in a 12-step program that recognizes a higher power. Hazle, a life-long atheist and member of several secular humanist groups, informed his parole officer that he did not want to participate in the program and would prefer a secular-based program.

According to court documents, the parole officer informed Hazle the state offered no secular treatment alternatives. When Hazle entered the program but continued to object, he was arrested for violating his parole and returned to a state prison for an additional 100 days.

Secular Organizations for Sobriety, a 12-step program with no emphasis on God or a higher power, runs multiple programs in California, but had none near Hazle’s home in Northern California during that period.

Hazle sued, alleging his First Amendment rights had been violated. The district court agreed, citing well-established rulings supporting Hazle’s claim, but allowed to stand a jury’s conclusion that he deserved no compensation.

Friday’s ruling requires Hazle be awarded a new trial for damages and compensation.

“The jury’s verdict, which awarded Hazle no compensatory damages at all for his loss of liberty, cannot be upheld,” Judge Stephen Reinhardt wrote in the court’s opinion.

“The jury simply was not entitled to refuse to award any damages for Hazle’s undisputable — and undisputed — loss of liberty, and its verdict to the contrary must be rejected.”

The case now returns to the district court in Sacramento.” Barry A. Hazle Jr., Atheist, Should Be Compensated By State For Religious Rehab, Says Court

The final ruling in this case can be found here in a link with a self-explanatory title: Barry A. Hazle Jr., Atheist, Wins Nearly $2 Million In Settlement Over Faith-Based Rehab Program. As someone with some expertise in drug addiction treatment and who is also quite familiar with “12 Step Programs”, I have always been troubled by the prominence of appealing to a “higher power”, to which they give a great deal of significance. I understand that Bill W. in his original formulation was trying to cater to people of varied religious beliefs and in truth that was a good thing in that it created a somewhat universal methodology. The 12 Steps were an appeal to humanity’s spiritual nature and were also developed in the context of a world where religious beliefs held far more sway than today. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_W. As interpreted then and today, the appeal to a higher power is referent to a divine being. This is not really necessary,  nor is believing in a higher power necessary for a 12 Step Program to work. The proof of that was mentioned in the body of the quote above which names “Secular Organizations for Sobriety” as one example of a 12 Step Program that does not deal with a deity or paranormal force.  In general though I am suspicious of the theory and the efficacy of 12 step programs as I wrote in The Pseudo-Science of Alcoholics/Narcotics Anonymous.

As this quote from Wikipedia shows that the idea of spirituality can take many different forms other than the belief in God of a Higher Power:

“There is no single, widely-agreed definition of spirituality.^{[1][2][note 1]} Social scientists have defined spirituality as the search for the sacred, for that which is set apart from the ordinary and worthy of veneration, “a transcendent dimension within human experience…discovered in moments in which the individual questions the meaning of personal existence and attempts to place the self within a broader ontological context.”^[8]

According to Waaijman, the traditional meaning of spirituality is a process of re-formation which “aims to recover the original shape of man, the image of God. To accomplish this, the re-formation is oriented at a mold, which represents the original shape: in Judaism the Torah, in Christianity Christ, in Buddhism Buddha, in the Islam Muhammad.”^{[note 2]} In modern times spirituality has come to mean the internal experience of the individual. It still denotes a process of transformation, but in a context separate from organized religious institutions: “spiritual but not religious.”^[5] Houtman and Aupers suggest that modern spirituality is a blend of humanistic psychology, mystical and esoteric traditions and eastern religions.^[6]

Waaijman points out that “spirituality” is only one term of a range of words which denote the praxis of spirituality.^[10] Some other terms are “Hasidism, contemplation, kabbala, asceticism, mysticism, perfection, devotion and piety”.^[10]

Spirituality can be sought not only through traditional organized religions, but also through movements such as liberalism, feminist theology, and green politics. Spirituality is also now associated with mental health, managing substance abuse, marital functioning, parenting, and coping. It has been suggested that spirituality also leads to finding purpose and meaning in life”. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spirituality

It is quite easy for me to envision that someone can undergo a major transformation in their life, to even conclude there is meaning to it for them and yet not believe in any God or Higher Power. This transformation can be deemed spirituality in my book and yet have nothing to do with supernatural phenomena. Perhaps you differ, but I would caution you to at least consider that Mr. Hazle, in the case above, may well transform his life even if he is a confirmed atheist. He need not believe in a higher power in order to end his addiction and forcing him to serve another hundred days was indeed an unwarranted punishment.

Another case though which for me details the belief that a “war on religion” , which really means “war on Christianity” as defined by the Fundamentalist Right Wing, deals with their notion that regulations on matters which their doctrine prohibit, are attacks upon their religious freedom. Such as the Affordable Care Act mandating that employer provided Health Benefits include payment for contraception for women. In the case Burwell v. Hobby Lobby Stores, Inc..

“A landmark decision^[1][2] in United States corporate law by the United States Supreme Court allowing closely held for-profit corporations to be exempt from a regulation its owners religiously object to if there is a less restrictive means of furthering the law’s interest, according to the provisions of the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA). It is the first time that the court has recognized a for-profit corporation’s claim of religious belief,^[3] but it is limited to closely held corporations.^[a] The decision does not address whether such corporations are protected by the free-exercise of religion clause of the First Amendment of the Constitution.“

Of course Burwell was decided when Christian religionist Justice Antonin Scalia was still on the Supreme Court giving it a Conservative majority of Justices. Judge Gorsuch, nominated by Trump to fill the Scalia shoes,  calls himself a disciple of the loathsome Tony S. and his name was provided to Trump from Right Wing Christian Fundamentalist groups looking to be paid off by Trump for their support.

While the overwhelming majority of people in the United States identify themselves as Christians, the idea that they are somehow being oppressed, seems to me to be merely a public relations scam to excite their base.  Their agenda in not now, nor ever has been their religious freedom.  The agenda is to twist the meaning of the First Amendment into imposing their beliefs upon all those who do not choose to follow them, or who do not believe in them. There is no War on Christianity.  What there is remains a war to impose Christian Fundamentalist beliefs upon all Americans.

 

Nobody Asked Me……But: As My Trump Depression Continues

Nobody Asked Me………But:

Is there a significance that almost all Republican spokespeople of the female variety are peroxide Blondes?

How many Trump voters are still enraged over the media’s ignoring the terrible carnage of the horrific “Bowling Green Massacre“?

What does the conservative Australian Prime Minister think of our illegitimate President now?

Why were all of Trump’s phone calls to Heads of State taped, except for the one to Putin?

Isn’t it annoying that the broadcast media still takes Kellyann Conway’s lies seriously?

The supposed Christians who supported Trump are most likely hypocrites and too dense to know it.

The Right Wing Jews who supported Trump either have forgotten, or never fully learned the lessons of the 1930’s and the 1940’s,  that the friend of my enemy, IS MY Enemy.

Any American Muslim who voted for Trump is simply an idiot.

Isn’t it curious that born wealthy Paul Ryan, who is so enamored of corporations and laissez faire capitalism, has always worked for the Government, except for two school break summers when he worked in McDonald’s and then drove the Oscar Meyer Wienermobile?   Isn’t it also curious that Paul Ryan, used Social Security Survivors Benefits to pay for college and now wants to cut Social Security benefits?

Would you be surprised to know that Mitch McConnell, that champion of small government and free enterprise, has never worked outside of government or politics?

Why is it that so many Republican conservatives that have spent their lives living off of government and politics, appear to be anti-government?

Wouldn’t you know that Sean Spicer’s wife is: “the top communications officer at the “National Beer Wholesalers Association.” ?

Am I the only one who thinks Jared Fogle from Subway and Sean Spicer look alike?   What conclusions can we draw from that alternative fact?    

 

 

 

Is anyone but me alarmed that Neil Gorsuch formed and was President of a Fascist Club in College?

Why do all the heroes and heroines of Ayn Rand novels seem like NAZI archetypes?

The only good thing about Atlas Shrugged is that it was far too long a novel for Donald Trump to read,  even though Steve Bannon probably explained it to him.

This was the last book that Trump read and it took him two weeks to do it, because he needed to bone up on what he was now supposed to believe in to carry off the role of being President:  Here.

This biggest problem of the Trump Puppet Presidency will be the battle between Steve Bannon and Vladimir Putin as to which one gets to pull the strings.

The truth is that besides being a better executive Government leader, Arnold Schwarzenegger also has been a far better businessman than Trump and Arnold did it on his own.

Maybe the reason so many retailers are dropping Ivanka Trump’s products is because they only sold when people believed the Trump name stood for something of quality?  Do those people who are upset that people are criticizing Trump’s kids and wife Melania remember that in the 70’s some Republicans called Amy Carter unattractive and in the 90’s  Mitch McConnell called the teen-aged Chelsea Clinton ugly,  or other Republican Congressmen recently called the beautiful Michelle Obama apelike? Finally, while I think almost all politicians are hypocrites, it seems to me that our Republican and Conservative stalwarts have elevated hypocrisy to an art form and to that extent they have killed irony.

 

 

Nuclear Option Mitch McConnell? Make My Day

With the nomination of Neil Gorsuch to fill slimy Scalia’s Supreme Court seat, our illegitimate President has picked someone even more vile then the departed Awful Antonin.  Gorsuch eclipses the notorious Scalia in that he is far younger and at least from a judicial PR standpoint far more handsome.  Gorsuch,  for whom frog-like Tony S,  served as a model and as an idol, represents all of the idiotic partisan “originalist“ ideas of that late Justice and barring accident can be befouling SCOTUS for the next 40 years.  There is widespread sentiment among Democratic voters that Democratic Senators should prevent Gorsuch from attaining the 60 Senate votes needed for confirmation. Since the Republicans have on 52 Senators,  this is certainly an attainable possibility.

Consider the Republican refusal to even consider President Obama’s rightful nominee Merrick Garland.  Consider as well the statements during the election campaign by many Republican Senators (including John McCain), that they would not allow any SCOTUS appointments if Hillary Clinton won the Presidency.  Given those Republican positions,  which given past circumstances are promises rather than threats,  for any Democratic Senator to vote for Gorsuch, would seem to me to be grounds for us to try to defeat them in their next electoral foray.

Under current Senate Rules the Democratic Senators can indeed deny Gorsuch, or any other of his ilk, SCOTUS confirmation.  Since this is apparent to even the dimmest politicians among us,  the illegitimate President himself has demanded that Mitch McConnell use the dreaded “Nuclear Option“.   What the “Nuclear Option“ means is that the Senate Majority Leader McConnell can with a simple majority of 51 votes change the Senate Filibuster Closure Rule back to a simple majority rather than 60 votes as it now is.

This is considered the “Nuclear Option“ because for many in the Senate, it would actually make passage of Legislation in the Senate far easier to accomplish. Regarding Judicial appointments the Senate Rules were changed in 2013 to allow a simple majority vote on all Presidential appointments, but the Supreme Court Here.  We also must note that in 2012, the rule allowing for the so-called Silent Fillibuster came into  widespread use in which a Senator did not have to actually speak and hold the Senate floor to filibuster. To give you an idea of how this requirement of 60 seats plays out, I am going to quote a selection from a piece I wrote for the Jonathan Turley blog back in April 2013 titled America’s Broken Legislative System: