The Case for Eight Justices

Our own Lindsey Graham is having just too darn much fun at his town halls.  He loves the attention, loves to perform.  And doesn't give a rat's ass what we Dems have come to say.  He's not there to listen.  Buffered by misinformation about Planned Parenthood and abortion funding, a now regular misquote of Joe Biden's, and truly ironic comments about Democratic partisanship, his message is basically that Donald Trump is president, and we should just "get over it."

Graham justifies defunding Planned Parenthood to prevent the government from funding abortions, which it doesn't.

And after House republicans voted over fifty times to repeal the Affordable Care Act at an estimated cost of over $75 million, with big money behind challenges going to the Supremes, Graham is accusing DEMS of being partisan, and advising us to "get over it?"

And then there is the Joe Biden quote, that he has gleefully dragged out whenever asked about the Senate's refusal to even hear Merrick Garland's nomination by President Obama.

First of all, since when do republicans propose to follow anything Joe Biden advises?

Apart from that, the reality is that Joe Biden actually suggested that IF a seat became vacant during an election year, the nomination should not happen until after election day -- NOT until the newly elected president takes office.  The reasoning being that an election season should not be sullied by a contentious Supreme Court nomination debate (There are plenty of other things with which to sully it.).  His point being that the nomination should occur by the sitting president, but after Election Day.

Never passing up an opportunity to twist the truth to their advantage, republicans quickly named the misquote the "Biden Rule," and drag it out whenever convenient, happily during Obama's last year in office.

So let's stick the "Biden Rule" where it belongs and get on with the real issues about the Gorsuch nomination.

Most of us plain old American citizens don't really understand how important the Supreme Court is to the actual face of our day to day democracy.  We know about Roe v. Wade, and the more political of us know why Citizens United was bad, but truly, as we go about our daily lives, the make-up of the Supreme Court is the most important force in America.  The successful nominee will determine the direction of our country, and our lives, for decades.

It has been a bad time for the country because the Supremes have been ruled by narcissistic right wingnuts like Scalia, paranoid right wingnuts like Clarence Thomas,  and bought and paid for right wingnuts like Chief Justice Roberts for a very long time.  I can imagine the rage over the vacancies leading to the appointments of Sotomayor and Kagan during Obama's term.  After the initial shock, I imagine the republican response to Scalia's death was, "enough is enough --  NO MORE OBAMA JUSTICES!"

Of course we were stunned when McConnell pulled the "Biden Rule" from out of his ass, although we should not have been.  The republicans in Congress had done nothing other than plot to retake control for the eight years of Obama's presidency.  Their entire agenda had been centered around "NO."  They were primed to obstruct.

So, all the excuses to keep the quite moderate and well-respected Merrick Garland off the court are bullshit.  He was the legitimately chosen and extremely competent nominee and was denied a hearing and a vote.  The end.

But Dems being Dems, we are witnessing the waffling and spinning off that seems to always go on, and always results in splits that diminish our power and our message to the people.  That message being that we are standing together because it is the right thing to do and we feel that strongly about it that we will risk our careers to stand together.  You know, like the republicans did to regain Congress.

So, whether to filibuster or not?  Jeez, the justifications I've heard for voting for Gorsuch rather than filibuster have truly made me want to pull out my white hair.  He's going to get the votes anyway?  So I'll just help them along???  How about:  We don't want the republicans to change the rules and eliminate the filibuster, because then we can't use it next time.  Now that is truly the Democratic principle we all know and love, the one that says we should all cower and hope nobody notices that we aren't taking a stand.

Then we've got our perennial Dems in name only:  Joe Manchin and Heidi Heitkamp, this time joined by Joe Donnelly.  Overlooking what was done to their sitting president and his nominee, they are claiming that they are voting yes because Gorsuch is qualified.  And they are afraid if they vote no they won't get re-elected.

Neil Gorsuch is the kind of right-wing obsessive-compulsive weasel who has made lots of bad decisions, but know just how to cross his t's and dot his i's so that they won't be overturned.  He is farther right than Antonin Scalia, and doesn't have his sense of humor.  He is John Roberts on steroids.  He is a moral twin to Mike Pence, who believe that God has granted them the power to make the poor and powerless swing in the breeze.

Fun fact:  Mike Pence reports that he will not dine alone with a woman who is not his wife.  I imagine his hair turned white from the amount of scrubbing he does to try to get the dirty thoughts out of his head.  I also wish the not-dining-with-women-alone thing were true of Gorsuch; it would be a great relief to our three woman justices once he is confirmed.

But enough comic relief.

The big money is on Gorsuch.  There are lovely ads put out by the Judicial Crisis Network telling us to call our Senators and tell them to confirm this wonderful man.  No surprise, the Judicial Crisis Network is a right wing dark money group which in fact fueled their self-named judicial crisis immediately after Obama nominated Merrick Garland.  It appears that McConnell isn't all that smart or politically determined; what it takes is those big guys who have kept the idiot in office all these years to tell him what stand to take.

Googling these dark and dirty groups, going backwards till my head spun, I came up with the Wellspring Committee run by Ann Corkery, moneyed religious right attorney who doesn't just put her money where her mouth is; she puts her mouth there too, as with an article for RealClearPolitics explaining how the Dems opposition to Jeff Sessions is based on falsehoods and,

"One, the left's reflexive opposition to all things Donald Trump.  Two, the left's prep work for the next confirmation battle over Trump's nominee to the U.S. Supreme Court."

As far as facts and arguments go, we could say she's like Ann Coulter, but smarter.  And much richer.

The other nice thing about Corkery, Wellspring, Judicial Crisis Network, and all those other dark money groups is that they don't have to tell you who they really are and what they really do.  Corkery's twitter feed is a private group -- I didn't know you could even do that.  Secret money, secret affiliations, secret lives.  What we do know about all these groups and all this money behind Gorsuch is that their primary function is to protect their own power.  They are the people behind the corporations that run the country.  They are the "christian" conservatives that continue to put their money into controlling the rest of us with their fake family values, funding opposition to women's rights so that only women with money and influence can determine their reproductive lives and their futures.  They include the NRA and the Kochs.  JCN not only welcomes into their fold Dems who cave like Manchin and Heitkamp, they take to task their right-wing Supreme Court jurists who find against their interests, calling out Chief Justice Roberts for his decision on Obamacare.

If you want to try to follow the money, this is the article to read:

https://www.opensecrets.org/news/2013/11/wellsprings-flow/

And while you are there, please feel free to donate to Open Secrets, a group that we are really going to need to ferret out the dark money during these dark days.

So, we have Dems that are doing all they can to slow down the inevitable appointment of extremist Neil Gorsuch.  He will rule against minorities, against women, against voting rights.  He will always, always rule in favor of corporations and the religious right.

A shame the Dems couldn't get it together, like, right from the beginning of this battle.  They knew Trump couldn't have come up with a qualified nominee (one who could speak in complete sentences with words of more than one syllable, and who hadn't been indicted on anything) all on his own.  The deal that has made Paul Ryan Trump's lapdog may have had more to do with choosing the right Supreme Court justice than with agreeing on repealing Obamacare.  We all know that other than furthering Trump's fame and fortune, he really doesn't care what gets done.  We know he was handed a list of acceptable nominees, and can only assume he closed his eyes and pointed to Gorsuch.

Dems united in this battle, refusing to accept anyone who was not Merrick Garland, and the DNC putting money into ads and publicity insisting on same, might have still gotten us Gorsuch, but might have put things off for quite awhile.  The fuss about having to have nine justices just doesn't hold water.  I think the Supremes have done just fine with four and four.  Because in order to accomplish anything, four would have to be persuasive enough to convince a fifth to come over.  I put my money on my team.  I believe the women justices are smarter and more determined than those characters on the right.  I believe Kennedy has been persuaded more than once since his pal Scalia has found out once and for all whether satan really exists.

Without a skeevy Mike Pence being able to cast a deciding vote as he does in the Senate, an eight judge court might be the closest thing to nonpartisan, democratic decisions we will have.

What can we do?  We can make that call that the Judicial Crisis Network wants us to make.

Call your Senator:  202-224-3121 and tell them NO to Neil Gorsuch.

Another Sleepless Night

It is 5 a.m. and I am lying in bed, and I am crying.  This is not me.  Or, at least, it is not the person I was before November 8.  As I lie in bed, I think, desperately, about my options.  I am tempted to clear my DVR of all the MSNBC and CNN news shows I tape regularly; I listen to them during the day and they haunt me at night.  I think I might try a couple more Tylenol, or a cup of tea.  Then I decide to get up and post.

After a lifetime of being afraid of dying, I find myself relieved that most of my life is past.

I try not to think about my kids.

It is quite amazing, watching our democracy being destroyed.  We have seen the wealthy fighting with their many dollars to take over the whole thing for decades now, since they nearly lost the fight in the middle of the last century.  They won't let that happen again.  Irony is the policy that prevails as Trump lines up an anti-education billionaire to run the department of education, an anti-worker billionaire to head the department of labor, an oil billionaire to run the EPA (into the ground), a billionaire whose life goal is privatizing Medicare to head HHS,  a racist to run the department of justice, and for balance, a couple of idiots for HUD and the UN.

And these are not the scary appointments.  They are the ones that can take down our programs, but it is the military arm of our new cabinet that will take down our democracy.

Our furor enjoys his Victory Rallies (He wanted to call them "Thank You" rallies, but KellyAnne advised him to tone it down.).  He especially likes the cheers he gets when he proclaims General "Mad Dog" Mattis as his choice for secretary of defense.  His voice gets all funny when he says, "Mad Dog" and as much as I fight it, I can imagine him lying on his side of the bed getting hot over the thought of the Mad Dog.  "Be polite, be professional, but have a plan to kill everybody you meet," is a quote for which Mad Dog Mattis is famous.  He has a lot of them.

On our own shores, Trump has picked paranoia and son, General Michael Flynn and Jr., for national security adviser, the latter more in an advisory role.  He was pursuing a security clearance for junior, who came close to blowing it by having his crazy tweets implicated in the incident of the nutcase who "self-investigated" the satanic cult hiding in a pizza parlor.  I say, came close to blowing it, because we all know that Trump sees the word "no" as only a temporary barrier, a challenge, one that money and influence can easily remove, and these days he has ever more of both.

National security adviser.  If you can continue reading after that, there is indeed more.  On the foreign front is Mike Pompeo, proposed head of the CIA, who can now continue to investigate Hillary with new purpose and energy.  Here on the home front, to head the already creepily named Department of Homeland Security, will be another retired general, John Kelly.  He will be in charge of rounding people up:  Hispanics, Muslims, and I imagine anybody that gets in the way of his round-up.  Maybe journalists and, I don't know, bloggers.  There will certainly be investigations of commie groups like the American Civil Liberties Union and the Southern Poverty Law Center.  And Kelly is the moderate of the bunch.

Also lined up to militarize these United States is David Petraeus, maybe for the big enchilada, Secretary of State.  But first they have to figure out what to do about his guilty charge for mishandling classified materials, leaking secrets to his lover.  Wonder where Jason Chaffetz and Trey Gowdy are these days?  I would think that after all the Sturm und Drang (yeah, I know how appropriate that is) over Hillary's emails, they would at least wake up long enough to make a statement of concern.

Here is the thing.  Trump is an insecure, obsessive narcissist who we know is motivated by revenge.  And he has -- oh, I haven't mentioned it yet? -- Steve Bannon as his Trump-whisperer.  This is how bad Bannon is -- Karl Rove and Glenn Beck have spoken out against him.  Bannon is the secular evil to Mike Pence's religious evil.  Bannon is Hitler's adviser, and Trump adores Bannon.  Bannon knows just the right way to flatter the leader of the once-free world.  He also knows how to rile the crowd.  Breitbart.com was his trial run for taking over the country.

I know where in Trump's brain the billionaires came from.  Helped along by the right-wing GOP and huge donations, those picks were no-brainers.  But the military, the military came from the kind of evil that is Steve Bannon.

I am thinking in phrases of 140 characters these days.  And hashtags.  When I wake up in the middle of the night I find myself thinking of tweets that I could send out like alarms to people who could save us.  To the Democrats, who at this point can't even get it together to fight for the one Senate seat up for grabs in Louisiana, much less fight for our democracy.  And who continue to want to prove that they aren't obstructionists.  To the media, who mostly I think we should give daily, "Most Inane Question" awards to.  Just how many times can you ask various Trump minions whether Mitt Romney is still being considered for Secretary of State?

My heart goes out to the Democrats who are smart and courageous enough to see this threat for what it is, and who plan on fighting.  And journalists who will in the days to come be risking their careers (maybe even their freedom; remember Judith Miller).  I hold great hope for Obama to come forward and fight to maintain the democracy he has already saved from the brink of economic failure.  And after a time, Hillary will join the fight.  But there may be a day, with all those generals and all those police forces that Trump courted with his vows of "law and order," when imprisoning political enemies in the United States of America becomes a reality.

No, I am not paranoid.  I know just enough history to see the signs.  Thinking that we are above the fray because we have a strong democracy means that our leaders, from the spineless Paul Ryan to the West Virginia "Democrat" Joe Manchin, would have to fight the abhorrent and extremely telling staff choices Trump has made.  And they won't.  Biden and Harry Reid have both made conciliatory noises pretending to like some of Trump's picks.  Will Dems run scared and choose someone safe to lead their party over progressive black Muslim-American Keith Ellison?  Boy, now is not the time to cower, folks.  (Note to media:  the most pressing issue about Ellison's bid is NOT whether he stays in Congress while he serves as DNC chair.)

Well, the sun is coming up.  I had an emergency piece of medicinal chocolate that I smuggled home from Denver before I began my blog, and I am hoping I will be able to escape through sleep for a couple of hours.  But we all have to keep returning to the reality of a Trump oligarchy.  We have to stop trying to find the good in the turd.  We have to keep trying things we've never done before, like appeal to the Electors to dump Trump.  We can't use ignorance as an excuse.  We can't let Democrats compromise us out of our democracy.

We can't let the generals take over.  And we have to #StopBannon.

Trump is an idiot.  But he is a rich and powerful idiot, and he knows how to buy smart and powerful people.

Silver Lining

It occurs to me that Silver Lining is the color of the roofing tiles I am having installed this very minute, with great noise and fanfare, thanks to Hurricane Matthew.  There have been a few Hispanic men hammering away since minutes after seven, no coffee break, no stopping to talk, just hard, physical work.  I don't know if they are legal immigrants or not, and, honestly, nobody really cares if it keeps the price of their new roof lower.  All the protests are bullshit and dog whistles, shamefully attacking and victimizing good people.

But other than the coincidental title of this post, that is not what I need to talk about today.  Today I'm not quite through my period of mourning, for Hillary, for our country, for all the mean and ignorant or just naive and foolish voters who hammered their own nails into all our coffins on Tuesday.  But I have been commiserating with friends, and posting on facebook, and talking to my kids, and just as with George W. Bush in 2000, there is a day after this one too.

In fact, I have started to compile a list of all the things we have to look forward to during the "presidency" of He-Who-Just-Cannot-Be-Named.

For one thing, once they have worked through their own mourning, our wonderful comedians will have far better fuel than they would have had with Hillary in the White House.  I imagine Samantha Bee has only just been getting warmed up during the election season.  And Alec Baldwin, after working so hard to nail Trump, surely will be willing to show up (or call in) to SNL from time to time.  After all, we did miss Tina Fey's Sarah Palin once we didn't have the original around anymore.

I am also thinking that, given Trump's failure to grasp economics and his need to continue to be adored by those undereducated and underpaid workers, it is just possible that those of us liberals who work hard for too little will also reap the benefits, at least till the crash.  And as long as Donald doesn't insist on an ideological test for us white Americans, I should be okay for awhile.  It occurs to me with some relief that when the Bush years started I was on the low end of the wage scale, so when they ended I hadn't lost anything.  And now that I am attempting to live on Paul Ryan's social security, it seems not that much has changed.

Let's be honest, Donald Trump is a hoot.  He is every bit as stupid as W., but without the charm.  I am looking forward to those 365 day calendars of Trumpisms, and for a couple of reasons.  Not only were those idiotic gems ("More of our imports come from overseas.") something to brighten the dark days, but at the end of the Bush years I had stacks of scrap paper, perfect for phone messages and grocery lists.  And I am running low.

The younger generation, those we have been falsely accusing of being disinterested in politics, are infuriated.  They have truly had it with people trying to legislate their bodies, and sexual and marital choices.  They are sick to death of big corporations getting handouts from the government while they are spending their young lives trying to pay back student loans while failing to get a job that pays what they are worth.  They are not going to tolerate intolerance of race or religious choice.  The riots and protests over racism aren't going to stop, and women are not going to be forced to choose between an unwanted  pregnancy or a backroom abortion.  My son, who could be safely ensconced in his Ph.D. program, has told me that as he has become an activist, he knows he may someday be arrested, and it is a risk he is willing to take, a sentiment that fills me with pride even more than fear.

It will be fun to see the reaction of Trump supporters when Congress finally succeeds in repealing Obamacare.  They apparently had forgotten that before the ACA insurance premiums rose precipitously each year.  That will be a happy thing to watch, for me anyway.  As long as the Democrats are ready to yell loud and long when the right wingnuts try to blame it on Obama -- and probably Hillary as well.

And while they are targeting others for their failures, let us also remember that our new "president" gets bored with people when they have outlived their usefulness.  I can only imagine that it won't take long for the smugly pious Mike Pence to get under Donald's skin.  Imagine the name calling, followed eventually by the inevitable tweets.  And wouldn't it be fun at some point to hear that Pence has been "fired."

Of course, once Pence is gone it will be safe to impeach Trump.  And wasn't that clever of whichever brains-behind-the-boss manipulated Trump into choosing the white-haired Satan for his running mate?  Anyway, point being, nothing lasts forever in Trumpworld.

Along the way, it isn't going to take long for these characters to put the economy into the toilet.  And once it is there, I would say by 2018, the voters will be ready to appeal to a Democratic Congress to get us out of the toilet.

Again, though, let us not forget the Bush years.  And Trump's reigning philosophy.  When some lose, others win.  For a couple of years I had been able to afford amazing timeshare rental vacations, weeklong getaways at resorts for $500 a week, the cost of the annual maintenance fee for those who needed to recoup the cost more than take the vacation.  That ended with the resurgence of the economy (thanks, Obama).  Now, the vacations that went for $60 a night are up over $300 a night.  But when the economy tanks, and until they take away my social security, I'll be able to get in on a couple of weeks a year of vacations on the beach once again.

I honestly can't believe that here we are, doing the Bush years over again.  But our electorate truly does have a short memory.  And they are gullible, easily manipulated.  It takes the pain of an interminable war and the tanking of the economy to the point of loss of jobs and homes before they realize that those sugar-spun fantasies of cutting taxes in order to make us rich are just fantasies.

On Tuesday afternoon, before the end, it occurred to me that this race was more like Nixon than Bush.  The Trump crowd that adopted "lying Hillary" as their mantra and made excuses for Trump's blatantly illegal and immoral behaviors could have been the same hardhats that chanted that they would rather have a crook in the White House than Hubert Humphrey.

It is hilarious that in retrospect, Nixon doesn't look that bad.  It is criminal though, that our memories have been so thoroughly wiped of all the damage done in the Reagan years that Democratic and republican politicians alike would no sooner fail to mention Ronald Reagan than walk onto a stage without a flag pin.

And then there were the Bush years, as we went from a growing economy to the brink of disaster.  Bad choices made by a gullible president at the behest of the evil Dick Cheney.  And surrounded by a cabinet of ideological idiots.

And finally, here we are again, with a growing economy, a strong military, better foreign relations than we have had for quite a while, more jobs and even wages slowly rising.   Instead of Bill Clinton, we have the most admirable couple to grace the White House maybe in my memory.  And instead of Al Gore, we have Hillary Clinton.

Instead of the evil capitalist Dick Cheney behind the wheel, we have the evil religious fanatic Mike Pence.  And then we have the proposed cabinet of deplorables:  Chris Christie, the guy who claims he didn't know about "bridge-gate;" Newt Gingrich, the man who ended his marriage at his wife's hospital bed, and last but truly least, Rudy Giuliani, whose contact with reality is so completely shot that he believes the US was not attacked on George W. Bush's watch.  That same Giuliani by the way, who giggled like a madman a couple of weeks ago when he alluded to his knowledge of the FBI re-opening the investigation into Hillary's emails as another surprise.  Yeah, he's going to be the next attorney general.

So, lots of reasons to weep, and hopefully lots of comedy potential as well.  And lots of reasons to get fired up to fight.  It is true that we will be fighting two branches of government rather than just congress.  But with a cast of characters as shady and corrupt as this bunch, as long as we fight as fearlessly as did Bernie and Hillary for what is right, as long as we don't let the bullies intimidate us, we can not only survive but win this thing.  And by "this thing" I pretty much mean our country and our freedoms.