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An upcoming challenge for the not so Supremes

Monday, December 5, 2022

It will be interesting to see how the Supreme Court handles these cases if they make it to the highest court in the land:

The ACLU is bringing a suit against Indiana’s regressive, sadistic abortion ban based on the fact that it infringes on the religious rights of anyone who doesn’t subscribe to the fantasy that life begins at dinner the night before. Jewish people, for instance, don’t believe the fetus has a soul until it draws its first independent breath. We prioritize the life of the pregnant person above the life of the fetus for the entirety of the pregnancy, including in situations that put the pregnant person’s emotional health at risk. With the imposition of the GOP’s fetus-fetish laws all over the nation, however, Jews and others whose religions don’t subscribe to the ideology of these nutters are fighting fire with fire.

Right now the court is poised to rule that a business can refuse to do business with gay people on religious grounds. There have already been a host of rulings exempting Christian fundamentalists from following facially neutral laws, such as the Hobby Lobby decision in which the court essentially ruled that a corporation, a creature of statute and not, despite what Mitt Romney and most other Republicans may think an actual human being, can have a religion and is therefore entitled to some of the protections provided in the so called Religious Freedom Restoration Act.

So, eventually, the court is going to have to come up with a rationale for ruling that a cake maker can refuse to make a cake for a gay wedding based on his or her deeply held religious conviction that gay people should not be allowed to marry, while at the same time ruling that the extreme religous beliefs of extreme Christian sects should bind people who do not share those religious beliefs.

It should be an easy task for a court that is willing to look to the writings of a 17th century witch burner to determine what women can do with their bodies in the 21st century. Besides throwing democracy out the window, the court has pretty much given up on being consistent or intellectually honest.

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Looking ahead

Sunday, December 4, 2022

Over at Hullabaloo Tom Sullivan writes about one of the many problems besetting the Democrats: the aging and consequent ossification of many of their elected officials, 89 year old Diane Feinstein, who is almost certainly in at least the beginning stages of dementia, being a prime example. Not only do these politicians lose touch with their constituency as they grow older, but they tend to become more bound to a way of thinking that exalts members of the club over duty to constituents. Why, for example, did Nancy Pelosi and her minions do everything in their power to protect Henry Cuellar during his primary, when he votes against virtually everything they try to do?

At least Nancy had the grace to step aside recently.

Here in Connecticut we have a few aging politicians who should consider retirement as an option in the near future. I have no quarrels with Blumenthal or Courtney, but at some point you have to step aside and let the younger generation take charge, for after all, it is they who will be living with the results of what Congress does now. I’m not suggesting either of them, or any other Connecticut politician that shall go unnamed, should step aside immediately, but I do think it might not be a bad idea for them to be looking for potential successors and doing what they can to make sure they are replaced by a young Democrat with good progressive credentials. Blumenthal will be 82 when his new term expires. That would be the optimal time for him to close out an honorable career in favor of a younger person who can carry on in his place. In Courtney’s case, in an ideal world he and party leaders would scout out for an ideal replacement, and spend some time preparing the district for that person’s candidacy. The Second is sort of a tough district, considering all the yahoos, whose numbers increase as you drive up 395. “Grooming” a potential replacement might not be a bad idea, and anyway isn’t grooming what we evil Democrats do?

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All your base are belong to us

Friday, December 2, 2022

There certainly is a difference between the two parties in this country. The Fascist Republican party goes out of its way to cater to its fringe base, while the Democratic Party goes out of its way to alienate what should be its base. In this case, I’m talking about unions, which were once a major political force in this country and were also a solid part of the Democratic base.

Unions have lost a lot of their power, and some of that loss is attributable to their own missteps. I recall, for example, the unions abandoning the Democrats in 1972 because the party dared to nominate a guy who opposed a war that subsequent history has proven we should never have fought.

But lets get back to the present, when the Democrats see fit to pass legislation that imposes a settlement on railroad workers that essentially sells out the union members and gives a gift to the railroads, which have been systematically exploiting the workers and allowing rail services to deteriorate in order to maximize their own profits. We read here that a group of labor historians has penned a letter to Biden opposing what the Democrats are doing:

That view, expressed in an open letter to Biden and Secretary of Labor Martin Walsh, was that Biden screwed up. The letter, which Barker helped write, said the historians are “alarmed” by his decision to impose a contract four unions rejected despite the “eminently just demands of the railway workers, especially those that provide them with a livable and dignified work life schedule.” Railroad workers are fighting a corporate regime that has shrunk the industry’s workforce by 30 percent in recent years then blamed crew shortages on the “supply chain” and imposed draconian work schedules that have workers tired, sick, stressed, and unable to spend meaningful time with their friends and families, all while raking in record profits. Four unions have rejected the tentative agreement and freight rail workers generally support a strike because they view the corporate greed motivating these decisions as an existential threat to their industry and the safety and economic security of the American people.

How can I complain? The legislation was bi-partisan after all! Of course, these days almost all bi-partisan legislation amounts to a Democratic surrender to Republicans along with Manchin and Sinema. The Republicans got a bill that benefits corporations that will no doubt contribute to their coffers, while the Democrats got a bill that will make it easier to lure more working class folks to vote against their own interests and for the Republicans. So, a great opportunity for the republicans to firm up their monetary base and add to their whackjob base. Win-win for the Republicans, lose-lose for the Democrats.

By the way, if the grammatically defective title to this post confuses you, the explanation is here.

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I’m on Mastodon

Tuesday, November 29, 2022

I’ve never been much of a Twitter user, and I very much welcome its possible demise as a result of the Elon Musk wrecking ball. I haven’t gotten around to terminating my account, since I’m a very lazy person, and they likely make it as hard as possible, but I have signed up for the open source, non-profit alternative: Mastodon. It appears to have all the functionality of Twitter but has enough protections built in to avoid becoming the right wing cesspool that Twitter is fast becoming.

I’m still experimenting. I haven’t yet posted anything, but I’m going to post a link to this article as soon as I upload it, mostly just to get myself going. My Mastodon handle is: @ctblue@mastodon.world. You have to choose a server, as there are a lot of them scattered all over the world, but you still have access to Mastodoners everywhere. I recommend it to anyone not wishing to massage the egos of billionaires.

One of the folks I’m following is George Takei, of Star Trek fame (if, like me, you’re old enough to remember the original series). He “reblogged” (I guess it makes sense that they can’t use “retweeted”) a post from a guy named Jay Kuo, about election denialism in Arizona. I thought’s I’d pass this along from Kuo’s piece, since this post has to have some sort of subject.

Kuo relates that there are a couple of counties in Arizona, with whack-a-doodle majorities on their election boards that have threatened to refuse to certify their results in accordance with state law. One has caved, but the other has not, though neither has come up with a legitimate reason for the threat. Here’s what I thought was sort of funny:

In a twist of irony, if the 47,000 Cochise county votes were ultimately are excluded from the final official tally, that would flip Arizona House District Six and the state schools’ chief winner from Republican to Democrat, earning the GOP a truly karmic result. The exclusion of so many votes is highly unlikely; most election lawyers view the case as open and shut and expect the courts to compel the Cochise County supervisors to perform their ministerial duties and certify the damn election results

You have to suspect that the election denials and the voter suppression tactics of the fascist party have, in many instances, dampened their own voter turnout. It would seem, for instance, that mail in voting would be a natural for its aging base and telling people their vote won’t count is hardly a good way to get them to the polls. They are likely betting that they come out as net winners, but one must wonder. Who knows how this last election would have turned out had the Republicans not killed so many of their voters by discouraging them from getting vaccinated.

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A transatlantic myth

Sunday, November 27, 2022

I ran across this article in my news feed today. It’s from the British newspaper, the Guardian. The title is what drew me to read it:

Competence, what competence? Tory chancellors like Jeremy Hunt always spell disaster

British politics are a lot like US Politics these days, with the Tory party becoming more and more the preserve of loonies, as the Republican Party has been for some time.

I gather from the article that in Britain, as here in the USA, the party of the right is credited with having a better ability to handle the economy than the party of the “left”. This is certainly a pervasive attitude here in this country, borne out by polls and much of the media. As the Guardian columnist proves, it’s not true in England, and it’s not true here. In short, it’s a myth that’s quite handy for the Republicans.

The Republican have decided to destroy the economy here, so that they can blame the Democrats, and there’s every reason to believe they will get away with it.The Tory’s don’t have the leeway that the Republicans do, because there’s no such thing as divided government there. It’s becoming more and more clear to the British people that the Tories are indeed incompetent and are interested only in benefitting the rich. It’s harder to assign responsibility here, since when the Republicans refuse to raise the debt limit and the economy crashes, they will blame the Democrats and the media will both sides the issue. That will be the case with everything else they do to tank the economy, and make no mistake they will tank it if it is to their political advantage.

But the myth will likely persist.

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A Republican with Principles! (An oxymoron, I know)

Tuesday, November 22, 2022

Who says that our fascist overlord wannabes have no principles? Well, I’ve probably said it, but look, there are definitely exceptions, and I firmly believe all the other election denial liars should follow this Arizona woman’s principled example:

Liz Harris, recently elected to represent Legislative District 13, issued a statement on her campaign website saying, in part, that “it has become obvious that we need to hold a new election immediately.”

“Although I stand to win my Legislative District race it has become obvious that we need to hold a new election immediately. There are clear signs of foul play from machine malfunctions, chain of custody issues and just blatant mathematical impossibilities,” she wrote. “How can a Republican State Treasurer receive more votes than a Republican Gubernatorial or Senate candidate?”

“I call on all state legislators to join me in demanding a new election,” she added. “I will now be withholding my vote on any bills in this session without this new election in protest to what is clearly a potential fraudulent election.”

I absolutely agree than any Fascist Republican elected official who lies about election theft should take the principled position that they will not vote in state legislatures, the Congress, or any other elected body until they get a do-over, something that doesn’t exist. Obviously it’s too much to ask that they turn down the paychecks they’ll get for doing no work for their constituents.

Also, just to answer her question: a Republican candidate for treasurer can get more votes than Republican candidates for governor or Senator if the Republican candidates for governor and Senator are total whackjobs, who are so whackjobby that they can’t even put one over on Arizonans.

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Looking ahead to a Republican House Majority

Sunday, November 20, 2022

I have read in multiple places that the Fascist Party has promised to spend the next two years avoiding doing anything that might benefit the citizenry, while engaging in fake investigations of Biden, his son Hunter, and even of Dr. Fauci. The hypocrisy is of course, mind-numbing, given that they will also shut down Congressional investigations of Trump, who attempted to overthrow the government, and have turned a blind eye to the corruption of Trump’s family. It is taken for granted that they will do nothing to deal with the economic problems that they squealed about during the election and will, in fact, obstruct any attempt by the Democrats to do anything that will actually alleviate those problems.

So, the obvious question is: will it work? The objective, one must assume, is a complete takeover of Congress, and a presidential victory, which, with the sanction of the Supreme Court, will allow them to complete the transition to fascism. Unfortunately for them, they weren’t able to elect the secretaries of state that would rig future elections for them, so we can assume that the 2024 election will be at least as honest as the 2022 election. If they do win in 2024 they will complete the transition to a system in which elections are mere formalities, with the outcomes pre-determined, with an opposition party retained purely for show. That process has been underway for years, with the ever more sophisticated gerrymandering that computers make possible. There is also, the probability that the Supreme Court will give Republican majority legislatures a license to steal elections.

To get back to the question, “will it work” we must consider two things that will be of central importance. How will the media cover the Republican shitshows, and will the public buy into the implied Republican argument that punishing Hunter Biden is more important than dealing with things like inflation, climate change, etc.

As to the media, I think it’s instructive to recall the Clinton years, and how the media covered the Lewinsky affair. Keep in mind that nothing he was alleged to have done came anywhere near the criminality in which Trump engaged, which the media largely wrote off as Trump being Trump. My impression then was that the media pretty much assumed that the American people were too stupid to dismiss Clinton’s sexual escapades as being largely beside the point. It was assumed that there would be a massive wave of revulsion and a demand for his impeachment and conviction. That wave never materialized, but in no way was that because the media put the matter in proper perspective. We may get a repeat of the media performance this time around, though it’s possible it won’t be so extreme as during the Clinton years, as much of the media didn’t take the Benghazi hearings too seriously.

I personally like the guy, but I do hope they go after Fauci as well as Hunter, because that would be a massive error and lead to a tremendous amount of revulsion from much of the American public, and even some in the media would tell it like it is. Even without Fauci hearings I think it’s highly likely that the Republican escapades will not go over well with the public, and that while most Fox viewers have no problem with extreme hypocrisy, that is not the case with the people in the mythical “middle” whose votes they will need in order to complete the transition.

A lot depends, of course, on how the Democrats respond. I seem to recall that Harry Truman did well running against a do-nothing Congress. Biden and the Democrats should propose a raft of popular programs, all of which will be obstructed by the Republicans. Doing only that will do no good unless people are aware of what is happening, which means that the Democrats have to speak with one voice and pound away at their talking points. It’s also time for the Democrats to start working the media refs, because by doing exactly that the Republicans were able to get the media to adopt its current both siderism.

In the end, I’m somewhat guardedly optimistic that things may turn out okay, especially if Trump is the 2024 candidate. They won’t be in a position to cheat on a widespread enough basis to steal the election, and by 2024 Trump will be weighing them down. In fact, he already is. The Republican Party will be more accurately perceived for what it is, and the Democrats will, we can hope, take back the House and keep the presidency. A lot may depend, unfortunately, on how the upcoming election in Georgia pans out, since if Warnock loses, we will still be held hostage by Sinema and Manchin.

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Here we go again

Wednesday, November 16, 2022

I am in Vermont at the moment, looking out of window at a snow scene, wondering why we ever came up here in the first place, given that we knew this snow was coming. Featured in the view from here is an extremely muddy road, recently scraped by a snow plow and now being sopped by the rain. When we got here we experienced a rather inconvenient thing: no heat. The propane company actually sent someone out right away, so we’re warm enough now, but not quite ready to hazard a trip outside. I’ve no doubt we can get out of the driveway, but I’m not quite sure we can get back in.

All of which should give me some impetus to put something on this now only occasional blog. What else is there to do?

I understand that the very stable genius has announced his candidacy for president in 2024. Opinions differ about his reasons for doing so. It is, of course, entirely possible he thinks he can win, though the recent results have to cast a bit of a pall over such thinking, since all of the folks promising to steal elections who were running for Secretary of State lost.

Personally, I think one of his motivations is his belief that announcing his candidacy somehow exempts him from being criminally charged for fomenting an insurrection and/or for stealing state secrets. It would not occur to him that such a dodge would be available to any criminal, which is why it’s unlikely to be a winner, lest the DOJ chooses to bring charges in Aileen Cannon’s court.

If he does manage to escape prison, my guess is that he’ll get the nomination, unless the Republican establishment (what’s left of it) can somehow jigger the system to eliminate primaries. Here in Connecticut we just experienced a textbook example of the influence of the whackjobs in primaries. Turnout was low in the Republican primary in August, but those who did turn out voted for Leora Levy, who was promptly crushed by Richard Blumenthal. Blumenthal would likely have beaten the endorsed candidate, but not by as much. Levy was hardly an outlier, Trumpists had a fairly high mortality rate in the recent election, though, alas, some broke through.

If Trump doesn’t get the Republican nomination, and isn’t in jail in 2024, I can easily see him running as a third party candidate. It’s not a scenario I’ve seen elsewhere, but I think it’s plausible. He’ll want to get his revenge on whoever is the nominee. We must always bear in mind that he really has no principles, so it’s all the same to him who’s president, if it isn’t him. That turn of events is probably the one that would be best for the Democrats, as he would siphon off enough voter to guarantee a Democratic victory.

The Republicans, of course, could have avoided all this by voting to convict him in the second impeachment. It was the obvious thing to do, but they didn’t do it, and it’s now coming back to haunt them.

At least we have to hope it will be haunting them.

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Election Reflections

Wednesday, November 9, 2022

I still haven’t totally unwound from my pre-election fetal position, as I still can’t bring myself to look at my blogs and other news sources to see how things are going in detail, though my general sense is that the march toward fascism has been somewhat slowed, but certainly not averted.

I spent Election Day as a poll worker, registering voters, as Election Day registration is allowed here in Connecticut. My job was to hand people a ballot and explain how to put it into an envelope for future processing, as the registrations all take place in a room next to the registrar’s office, and the new voters vote there, each given a ballot for their particular voting district.

I played a little game with myself, trying to predict what party, if any, with which they would affiliate themselves. I think I batted way above .500, because it’s really not that hard to spot a sure fire Republican, though not quite that easy to spot a potential Democrat. What did surprise and depress me was the number of young people, particularly young men, who registered as Republicans. It was my understanding that the party is aging, so it is double depressing to think that any new blood is entering.

When I was assigned to help with the registration process, I figured I’d be sitting idly most of the day, but that wasn’t the case. We had a steady stream of registrants, 166 in all. That may not sound like many, but each has to be processed, which is fairly time consuming. For instance, if the person had been registered somewhere else in Connecticut, an attempt had to be made to determine whether they had already voted there. We were hampered somewhat because for reasons that the Groton tech guy could not fathom, the computers set up for us refused to log in to the state voters website, and one decided that it simply didn’t care to work with its internal hard drive anymore. But he persisted, and after several hours he was able to get all three up and running. Based on what I observed, it was a significant achievement of which he should be proud. While he was doing that, we made do with computers in the registrar’s main office.

I was there from 5:00 AM until 8:30 PM, with one short 15 minute break. I could have taken more time off but didn’t really feel like it. After I got home, I avoided any opportunity to find out how things were going nationally. I’m still in that mode as I write this, though some things are filtering through. It looks like we have another tough two years ahead of us, as even if we manage to hold the House, which seems unlikely, we’ll still be held hostage in the Senate by Manchin and Sinema, assuming we also hold that august institution.

I think I’ve mentioned before that when the noted mathematician, Kurt Gödel, became a citizen, he was dissuaded by Einstein from telling the authorities that the constitution has a fatal flaw. We don’t know what flaw he had in mind, but it’s now plain as day that the constitution has a number of fatal flaws, one being the overrepresentation in the Senate of nutjobs from underpopulated states, and another being the ability of entrenched politicians to create the American equivalent of British pocket boroughs. Add a hyper-politicized Supreme Court to the mix, and you have a recipe for destruction of true representative government.

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The Supreme Court: “See, we’re impartial!”

Wednesday, November 2, 2022

It’s entirely possible that I’m repeating something I’ve written before, but Driftglass, one of my favorite bloggers, does that all the time, so I will proceed.

It came as no surprise to me that the Supreme Court told Lindsay Graham to pound sand when he asked them to protect him from testifying in Georgia about his attempts to undermine the 2020 election. (Though they did leave Lindsay a bit of an out, as he can drag things out be interposing bullshit objections to specific questions. )His legal theory was, of course, preposterous, but that it and of itself means nothing to the current court.

Roberts, et. al., are concerned, you see, about the court’s credibility. They have what they want at the moment, a secure fascist majority intent on rubbing out the constitutional rights they don’t like, while inventing new ones to assist Republicans generally. But you have to do these things, as the Wicked Witch said, “Delicately”. That means trying to maintain a facade of impartiality while taking a wrecking ball to the Republic.

One way of doing that is by refusing to bail out folks like Lindsay, the January 6th rioters, and ultimately, most likely, Donald Trump. They don’t need these guys anymore, as they’ve got what they want, a lifetime appointment to a court that increasingly sees itself as the final authority on all things. And they don’t really have to worry if the folks that got them there end up in jail, as they’re busy making sure that folks whose politics align with theirs will be “elected” in the future, to replace any poor sap who has to go to jail in order to assure the public that the court is entirely non-partisan and totally objective. They are about, for instance, to rule that Republican dominated state legislatures are free to overrule the will of the people in their states if those people, already gerrymandered out of a chance to have a representative state legislature, should dare to vote for a Democrat for a statewide or federal office.

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