Which Goat Will They Scape?

Tis the season to make scapegoats. The Republicans don't need no stinkin' lessons, they seldom learn from them anyway. But don't worry. They have something better; they have each other to blame.  All that is missing is a collective decision as to who the scapegoat will be. That is not as easy as it might sound. The problem is that few if any of the potential members of a group that could make that decision have the courage to stand up to anyone who might have enough political power to retaliate.

In August of this year I posted a piece entitled “Mitch McConnell's Goat” in which I said that Moscow Mitch “cannot allow people to blame the likely Republican loses on a reaction to the Dobbs decision. Those losses have to be the result of someone, not Moscow Mitch, helping unelectable candidates get nominated to represent the party!” The problem then and now is that McConnell cannot say it is Donald Trump's fault that the Republican Party nominated sanctimonious fascists, crack pots, and delusional election deniers as Republican candidates without putting himself on the MAGA Mob's hit list.

Much to my amusement, McConnell's 's opponents have a similar problem. As Politico  points out, Rick Scott and Cancun Cruz are accusing Moscow Mitch of losing the senate to the Democrats because the “... McConnell-aligned super PAC, Senate Leadership Fund, did not see eye-to-eye with Scott’s NRSC on spending decisions and candidate quality.”  Notice that Moscow Mitch's critics are not saying anything about women being absolutely furious over Moscow Mitch's packing of the Supreme Court with the sanctimonious fascists who overturned Row v. Wade. The Republicans must avoid blaming the Dobbs decision at all general election costs because the theocratic MAGA base wants to deprive women of the right to control their bodies, make their own reproductive choices, or exercise any of the rights they have gained since the nineteenth century. Therein lies the problem. The tea baggers who inflicted Trump on us, morphed into MAGAs, and sold the fascist's delusions about white nationalism to the paranoid base Republicans still hold that party in what we rational beings hope is a death grip!

So now we see the fruitless flailing, the gnashing of teeth, and a goatless meal of sour grapes served up with statements maligning the “libs” and the RINO s who consort with the evil “woke” crowd.  In other words, with their goats “scaping” the intended sacrifice, the Republicans are doubling down on their normal diatribes in crazy town. Do not let what might appear to be a drift away from election denials and Donald Trump fool you. Even if Trump losses in the primaries the MAGA fascists will still control the party.  Furthermore, Ron DeSantis is a horrible second choice! How many Floridians died of Covid19 because of DeSantis' opposition to vaccinations and other effective preventative measures recommended by the CDC?   And his economic policies are as bad as his health policies.

According to Mother Jones DeSantis’ policies are terrible for moms:

“DeSantis passed several laws around parents’ rights signature issues—most notably, the “Don’t Say Gay” law strictly limited how teachers can discuss sexual orientation and gender identity; another of his measures bans Covid vaccine requirements at schools.”

As for DeSantis small government.  Mother Jones described many of the egregious policies that help impoverish women and families and said that “A 2021 report by the Annie E. Casey Foundation ranked Florida a mediocre 35th in children’s wellbeing—it found that kids in the Sunshine State were substantially less likely than the national average to have parents with secure employment, to have health insurance, and to graduate from high school on time.

Mother Jones also stated that “...[b]etween 2018 and 2020, the state had the second-highest number of maternal deaths in the country, behind only Texas. In 2020, just two-thirds of babies in Florida were born to women receiving adequate prenatal care, compared to three-quarters nationally. Florida’s women lack health insurance at a rate of 16 percent, well above the national average of 11 percent, and more than two-thirds of them experience domestic violence, compared to the national average of about 25 percent.”

And now for the sanctimonious elephant in the room: As per USA TODAY NETWORK – FLORIDA, DeSantis said, “Florida will 'work to expand pro-life protections' after fall of Roe v. Wade.”

If we judge Ron DeSantis by his words and his policies, we have to conclude that he has as little regard for family values and working Americans as he has for asylum seekers.

We dodged a bullet this time, but we are still in for a rough ride, my friends. Take a deep breath, have a celebratory drink, and prepare to continue the good fight for democracy, sanity, and country!

Fascism v. Democracy

 Trump Won!

In which court?  In order to overturn an election in this country or any other democracy you have to go to a court of law and present clear and convincing evidence that the election you want to overturn is invalid. This rule of law is absolutely essential because any democratic nation that overturns elections as a result of unproven allegations will not be a democracy for very long. To see how grave a threat Trump's big lie is to democracy just look at the number of R-fascists who now say they will not accept the result of any election they lose!

By “take America back” Trump's chumps mean to retore the absolute rule of privileged white males. I am not just being hyperbolic here. The white nationalists believe their culture and fragile manhood are under attack, and they are more than willing to give up democracy to keep what they perceive to be their racial, ethnic, religious, and gender superiority. The January 6 insurrection bears no resemblance to 1776 or even 1860. If the secret service had allowed Trump to go to the capital during the January 6 insurrection we would now be talking about Trump's putsch – assuming that the first amendment still protected free speech. The slogan Trump took from Ronald Reagan, “Make America Great Again,” should have provided ample warning about what was to come.  As Mussolini hearkened back to the glory of the Roman Empire, all fascists (including the MAGA chumps) claim they will return their nation to the greatness it achieved during some mythical past. “All we have to do is follow the great leader,” they say.

The dire threat posed by the R-fascists is far greater than it would appear to be at first blush because the movement appeals to both the white nationalists and other people who feel economically oppressed and exploited. Unfortunately, billionaires and big corporations have been all too successful in selling the myth that Republicans are better at handling the economy.   And far too many of the people who believe this myth will choose prosperity over democracy if they think that is the choice. In doing so they will lose both their democracy and their prosperity, and so will we.

The Republicans scream about inflation but propose absolutely nothing to deal with it. What plan the Republicans have stated includes the usual screwing of the poor and the middle class while giving huge tax cuts the corporations and the filthy rich! According to the October 27 White House Briefing on the Republican's Five Part Plan:

1. The $3 trillion in tax cuts the Republicans want to give primarily to the wealthy would add to the deficit and make inflation worse!

2. Repealing the IRA prescription drug provisions would increase prescription drug prices by eliminating the requirement that drug companies pay rebates to Medicare when they raise prices faster than inflation, as they did for 1,200 drugs from 2021-2022...

3. Repealing the IRA improvements to ACA premium tax credits would raise health insurance premiums by an average of about $800 for 13 million people starting next year, with about 3 million people becoming uninsured.

4. The Congressional GOP plan will eliminate tax credits that will save Americans thousands of dollars starting next year if they buy an electric vehicle, weatherize their homes, install a super-efficient heating and cooling system like a heat pump, install rooftop solar, or make other investments that will also directly cut their energy bills. Independent experts expect these clean energy provisions will cut households’ electricity bills by hundreds of dollars per year.

5. Republican officials are suing to block the Biden administration’s student debt relief plan. If they succeed, that would mean higher debt payments for the over 40 million Americans who could benefit from up to $20,000 in student debt relief.

Congressional Republicans keep declaring they will hold the American economy hostage by putting the full faith and credit of the United States at risk in order to cut Medicare and Social Security. That's right we are looking at the debt ceiling again!

*The foregoing description of the republican plan is comprised of excerpts from the white house briefing. Use the link I have provided for the full text. It is well worth reading!

Tough Question Or Dumb Question

Rule number 1 of news casting – be dramatic enough to draw an audience. Rule number 1a -- create the drama by asking the tough questions. Thus we find even progressive reporters asking absurd questions that seem to be based on right wing talking points. Last week Chris Jansing was asking whether Joe Biden's democracy in peril speech was divisive. As is so often the case, this supposedly tough question is the wrong question. The most important question is whether Biden is right about Trump and the MAGA Rs posing such a grave threat to our democracy! And the answer to that question is a resounding YES!

So now we come down to a discussion of what we can do about the threat. That discussion often begins with statements about how we can get the reasonable, none MAGA Rs, to join us in defending our democracy from the threat posed by the authoritarian extremists. And here is where we run into problems because as desirable as it is to enlist Republicans in defense of our democracy such an effort assumes that there are still reasonable people in the Republican Party, and that is questionable at this point. Non MAGA “Conservative” Republicans, such as Susan Del Percio, are inadvertently admitting just how partisan and unreasonable Republicans are by telling us that no Democrat can reason with Republicans. She and other “conservatives” warn that any criticism of any Republicans by any Democrat will be offensive to all Republicans! So are we supposed to let the fascist threat go without sounding the alarm? Should the leader of this country and others who have taken the oath to defend the constitution from all threats foreign and domestic stand aside, silently hoping, maybe praying, that the good former Republicans who still believe in our form of government can pull reasonable Republicans out of Trump's cesspool and into the light! Sorry but standing by, hoping and praying, while the fascist Rs suppress the vote and even threaten to ignore the results of elections sounds like a gross dereliction of duty to me!

Like everyone else who actually knows what they are talking about, David Jolly indicates that there is no unifying with the MAGA Rs. It cannot be done! Joe Biden extended an olive branch and an invitation to all people who believe in our system of government when he said there are still good Republican who are not MAGA. But it appears as though Joe is too optimistic about there still being a significant number of reasonable, patriotic people who have not left the Republican Party. It is estimated that only 25 to 30% of Republicans do not identify themselves as MAGA, and as Biden noted the ones who do identify themselves as MAGA control the party. In all likelihood, a majority of the non-MAGA Republicans will continue to go along with the leaders of their party because that is what people are inclined to do. So is Biden being unrealistic? I am going to give him the benefit of the doubt and interpret his statement of inclusion as going beyond trying to appeal to mythical Republicans who have not sold their souls to the fascist movement. I think he was talking to a larger audience as he drew a contrast between the tribal warfare mentality of the R-fascists and a democratic society that respects diversity and protects the rights of its citizens to participate in its political and economic system. Although I am sure Biden is hoping that the shrinking number of rational Republicans will heed his warning, I think he is appealing to independents who lean Republican and perhaps to suburban Republican women who realize that the outrageous “anti-abortion laws” being passed by MAGA states in the wake of the Dobbs decision will take us back to time when women were second class citizens. I find it hard to believe that anyone (female or male) with an open, rational mind, and a functioning olfactory system can believe that taking away the rights of women will “Make America Great Again.”

The gravamen of Biden's speech is that Republican bull shit is preparing the soil in which Trump's MAGA brown shirts are planting sedition and tyranny. It does not take a genius to know that defending our democracy from a fascist movement is no more of a partisan issue than was our declaration of war after the bombing of pearl harbor. This is where the focus of the news media should be, on the effort and the need to defend and preserve our democracy! Now is the time for all good people to rally round the constitution in defense of our liberty and of the laws protecting our liberty from attacks by would be autocrats! If we lose our democracy freedom of speech and freedom of the press will go with it.

Moscow Mitch's Goat

Moscow Mitch McConnell thinks he is the greatest of all time. So you know that goat as used herein does not mean greatest of all time. No, Moscow Mitch's goat is a scapegoat!  Mitch does not dare to say it publicly, but he is trying to blame the R-MAGA fascists and (as obliquely as possible) Donald Trump for what he, McConnell, euphemistically calls the GOP's “candidate-quality problem!” 

The problem for Mitch is two fold: He cannot come out and say it's Donald Trump's fault that the Republican Party is nominating sanctimonious fascists, crack pots, and delusional election deniers as congressional and senatorial candidates without putting himself on the MAGA Mob's hit list. Furthermore, Moscow Mitch is culpable of empowering the lunatics who made Donald Trump the unquestioned leader of the Republican Party.

When Moscow Mitch and the party establishment decided not to convict Trump of his crimes during the impeachment trials, and they started treating Trump’s attempted coup as a minor detail they could brush aside, the consequences were foreseeable: their cowardly acquiescence ceded the argument over the 2020 election to Trump and allowed his power over the Republican Party to go unchallenged. Predictably, Trump used that power to endorse primary candidates such as election denier Kari Lake and Christian Nationalist – NAZI Sympathizer Doug Mastriano without so much as a whimper from any other leader of the party. That would be perfectly fine with Moscow Mitch if those horrible candidates could win, but it is now more than likely that Republicans are going to lose elections that could have been won by reasonable candidates – at least that is what Moscow Mitch wants his fellow Republicans to believe.

This is serious business.  Mitch McConnell is all about the power, his (Mitch's) power! In politics you have the power people think you have – no more, no less. You are in trouble as a political leader if people question your judgment or your power. Unfortunately for Mitch, the mid term election polls are hitting him in the face like a stiff breeze coming by way of the garbage dump! And the odor is setting off the panic alarm in his mind! ”Oh Shit! You don't think the Party will blame me for pissing off the broads by packing the supreme court with sanctimonious fascist justices who took away the protection of a woman's right to control her body and make her reproductive choices without the interference of any government, do you?” God no, Mitch! They can't do that, not when so many of them are advocating the sort of draconian prohibitions that were forbidden by Roe v. Wade.  That may sound like a typical Republican retort, but Moscow Mitch knows that the “et tu” argument does not wash away the blame; it just spreads it around a bit.  So Mitch has to deflect.  He cannot allow people to blame the likely Republican loses on a reaction to the Dobbs decision.  It has to be the result of someone, not Moscow Mitch, helping unelectable candidates get nominated to represent the party! “It's on you,” Moscow Mitch wants to shout, “you unmentionable whoever!”

Poor Mitch!  Life is so difficult when you are trying to hide your dirty laundry in plane sight and your scapegoat bites!

Fear And Loathing Of Logic And Facts

You of the enlightenment, you who practice the empirical method, you who observe that something cannot be true and not true at the same time cannot blindly adhere to any religious or political faith without suffering cognitive dissonance. This is the lesson learned when our ancestors finally sought to discover facts and determine what is real through observation and the use of reason rather than trying to control our environment by making pleas and sacrifices to some deity!

“Cognitive dissonance is a term for the state of discomfort felt when two or more modes of thought contradict each other.”

 An example of such an uncomfortable conflict is when one learns new information that challenges a deeply held belief. The response of the right wing to cognitive dissonance is to try to ignore not merely the source of the conflict but also the fact that there is a conflict, and any attempt to point out the contradictions or address the denial of such contradictions is seen by the right wing as a personal attack. That is, in large measure, why the right wing always sees itself as a victim!

One way to ignore contradictory modes of thought is to go primitive, to simply say that it is God's will, and that no one can understand God's mind or purpose. In one fell swoop, this deity explanation dispenses with the need to be consistent or logical. And in the case of the extreme right wing it fully justifies the poisoning of any and all wells outside of the retrograde universe of the primitive mind. In a very real sense the right wing is a victim of intrusive logic and facts that threaten to encroach on a belief system that is not flexible enough to adjust to reality. This constant attack from the real (read evil) world fosters a feeling of victim-hood that makes right wingers so susceptible to the most irrational conspiracy theories spun by fear mongering demagogues! How dare we accuse those demagogues of hypocrisy for claiming that Donald Trump has every right to take even the most sensitive government documents to Mar a lago when just a few short years ago they were chanting “lock her (Hillary Clinton) up” for the way she handled government records! How dare we point out the hypocrisy and dishonesty of the MAGA Republicans for saying that the FBI's search of Mar a lago was a political act and a witch hunt when those same MAGA R's said nothing or even encouraged the Justice department when it opened investigations of Hunter Biden, Hillary Clinton and just about every other government employee who displeased Donald, dumb ass, Trump.

The reason why fascist leaders and other autocrats always claim to be victims is because fear and loathing is their stock in trade, and feelings of aggrievement and victim-hood are the accelerants kindling the fear, the loathing, and the anger that justifies the unjustifiable in the minds of the right wing. The fact that there are so many hateful, irrational right wing activists controlling a major party makes this a very dangerous time. We must kill the damn fascist elephant before it kills us! The threat of violence posed by the R-fascists threatening civil war is not a reason to back down; instead that threat of violence is the reason we must oppose the fascists now with great resolve and using every legal means needed to defeat them!

All Fall Down

Did you hear it? It was a great big thud coming form Kansas on August 2. It was the sound of the misogynistic elephant tripping over his sanctimony. The drama casters danced with joy. This is the sort of drama that draws the rubes to the pitchmen. Screw the polls! It does not matter that the polls have been showing just how out of step the fascist court and the R-fascist party are about a woman's right to choose; this is Kansas, deep red Kansas! “And,” the drama casters scream, “it, dead red Kansas, just gave the R-fascists and Moscow Mitch's politicized abomination (aka SCOTUS) the finger!” The pundits, though a bit more restrained than the drama casters, repeated those excited utterances as they rushed to Kansas to examine the prints the elephant's prat fall must have left on the political landscape.

“Epic! Downright epic ass plant,” they Dare say. But what does it mean? For better than a decade the party of the Greedy Old Plutocrats has been waging a cruel war on women, and they have been getting away with it -- much to the frustration of we rational beings. Now the Republicans are in full fascist mode and are trampling on the rights of voters, veterans, women, LGTBQ people and everyone who loves liberty and democracy. Hopefully the Dobbs decision and all of the sanctimonious fascist Republicans trying to stamp out a woman's right to control her own body and make her own reproductive choices will be the last straw! While I cannot say the Kansas thud indicates that the Republicans' anti-choice position will lead to the election victories the Democrats are hoping for, I can say with certainty that the message Kansas sent is not a good one for the R-fascists.

Wake up America! Those fact denying MAGA fascists subverting our system of government and burning up our constitution are a plague* on our house, and all I can say to them is: “Ashes! Ashes! All fall down!" Never rise again!

*Since the R-fascists are so fond of a mythical history of our nation rather than actual history, I thought this play on "Ring around the rosie” was appropriate. 

Gun Rights

 Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution

“The Congress shall have power ...:

To provide for calling forth the militia to execute the laws of the union, suppress insurrections and repel invasions;

To provide for organizing, arming, and disciplining, the militia, and for governing such part of them as may be employed in the service of the United States, reserving to the states respectively, the appointment of the officers, and the authority of training the militia according to the discipline prescribed by Congress;”

Amendment II

“A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.”

There is no language in the Second Amendment that repeals any or all of Article I, Section 8 of the constitution. Furthermore, Article II Section 2 of  the Constitution states that the President is the Commander in Chief "of the militia of the several states."  What this means is that a “well regulated militia” is one that is under the regulation and control of congress and the President. Contrary to the lies of the NRA, a “well regulation militia” as provided for by the constitution is not Billy Bob and his beer drinking buddies playing with assault rifles and babbling about the imagined threats of government tyranny. Indeed, Article I Section 8 specifically says that “congress” has the power to provide for the use of the militia to “execute the laws of the union, suppress insurrections and repel invasions[!]”  

If I were to hazard a guess as to the reason behind the Second Amendment, I would say it was a sop to people on the frontier who joined the rebellion against Britain because Britain was trying to adhere to its treaties with indigenous people. In other words, it was a wink and nod indicating that settlers could form militias to fend off attacks from Indians who were trying to defend their lands from encroachments by the white settlers. This muddies the water a bit, but regardless of the reason for the Second Amendment, that amendment does not change the definition of a well regulated militia, nor does it reduce in any way the power of congress to form or regulate militias.

So Much Bad Stuff

There is much bad stuff going on right now. We have a failing and desperately aggressive kleptocracy in Russia trying to achieve legitimacy by using force against its own citizens and waging war against its neighbors. In this country an illegitimate, fascist supreme court is trying to repeal voters' rights and the twentieth century, while a Neo-fascist movement is trying overthrow 200 years of democracy. Anyone who doubts the threat to our political system just has to look at the congressional hearings now trying to uncover the truth about an attempted coup d'etat perpetrated by former President Donald Trump. In regard to fighting off the destructive efforts of the fascists I must say that although it is horribly frustrating and frightening to have to depend on voters, many of whom are woefully ignorant, to give those of us who still believe in the constitution and the republic the power to win the fight for democracy, our dependence on those voters is both the strength and the weakness of any democracy! As Jamie Raskin said: “It is our job to move public opinion and bring the political center to the moral center.” We must impress upon the uninformed the extreme danger posed to our fragile democracy and the need to act decisively in defense of the liberties we cherish.

Waging war against the fascists is much easier for we Democrats than it is for Republicans, most of whom have had a hand in turning control of their party over to the paranoid, and delusional people who now form the base of the MAGA (fascist) movement. As Robert Kennedy said:

“Few are willing to brave the disapproval of their fellows, the censure of their colleagues, the wrath of their society. Moral courage is a rarer commodity than bravery in battle or great intelligence. Yet it is the one essential, vital quality for those who seek to change a world that yields most painfully to change. And I believe that in this generation those with the courage to enter the moral conflict will find themselves with companions in every corner of the globe."

It would be disingenuous of me not to acknowledge the danger posed by the feckless and foolish decisions voters frequently make, but Bobby Kennedy's optimistic statement that “...those with the courage to enter the moral conflict will find themselves with companions” seems to be justified in this generation as well as his. Most of the Republicans who have displayed the moral courage to brave the disapproval of the base Republicans are no longer Republicans – some as a matter of choice and others as a result of purges. But this fact, this wrath of Trump and the MAGA base, gives Republicans opposing the dangerous drift toward fascism an authority and dramatic impact that instantly draws attention and respect. When Liz Cheney talks about moral courage she does so with a well earned moral authority, as does Adam Kinzinger.

Ms. Cheney notably praised the female witnesses appearing before the Jan 6 committee and she spoke glowingly about Cassidy Hutchinson,

 “...the 26-year-old aide to Trump’s former chief of staff, who has endured violent threats that forced her to go into hiding since she testified in June.

'She knew all along she would be attacked by President Trump, and by the 50-, 60- and 70-year-old men who hide themselves behind executive privilege,' Cheney said of Hutchinson Thursday night. 'but like our witnesses today, she has courage, and she did it anyway.'”

There was no need for Ms. Cheney to elaborate on the contrast. Everyone knows that those “50, 60, and 70-year-old men to whom Ms. Cheney referred are demonstrating a moral cowardice equivalent to the Josh Hawley fascist quickstep. I thank the committee for showing us the cowardice and the quick step. I wonder how many times Meadows muffin would have to take the fifth? I wonder if he would have to drink a fifth to gin up the courage to testify at all. Oh Garland where is thy sting? A pissed off nation wants to know!

Regardless of the fact that the Fox disinformation factory and other right wing flatulence dispensers are trying to ignore the Jan 6 hearings, there is a lot of evidence that those hearings plus the sanctimonious, misogynistic, undemocratic decisions by Moscow Mitch's politicized abomination (aka SCOTUS) are having a negative impact on the campaigns of the R-MAGA Party fascists. The latest polls are showing the Democrats gaining ground, and if they continue to do so they could negate what should be an off year advantage for the Republicans. There is still a long ways to November, but I do not see it getting any better for the R-MAGAS -- even with Joe Biden's low approval ratings.

The big question is whether the gains of the Democratic Party will be enough to allow us to save our democracy. Close is not a option. This is a scorched earth war at all levels of government. The fascists are burning books, trampling on our liberty, suppressing our right to vote, and even casting doubt on whether all or any votes will be counted! Now is the time. This is where we must make our stand. We must crush the fascists! Do not wait for a 2024 election that may become a totalitarian sham. Get involved now! Campaign like you have never campaigned before!

To You Who Vote To Defend Our Democracy

A Democratic Party Toast:

To Health

Yours and the Earth's

To Choice

Your body, Your Choice

To Democracy

Voters Rights and Majority Rule 

Dare I Say Anti-Trust?

 Below is an excerpt from Franklin Roosevelt's message  to Congress about curbing monopolies.

"April 29, 1938

To the Congress:

Unhappy events abroad have retaught us two simple truths about the liberty of a democratic people.

The first truth is that the liberty of a democracy is not safe if the people tolerate the growth of private power to a point where it becomes stronger than their democratic state itself. That, in its essence, is Fascism—ownership of Government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power.

The second truth is that the liberty of a democracy is not safe if its business system does not provide employment and produce and distribute goods in such a way as to sustain an acceptable standard of living.

Both lessons hit home.

Among us today a concentration of private power without equal in history is growing."

This concentration is seriously impairing the economic effectiveness of private enterprise as a way of providing employment for labor and capital and as a way of assuring a more equitable distribution of income and earnings among the people of the nation as a whole."

I am not going to say that history repeats itself, but FDR's message to congress is as relevant today as it was back in 1938. Today we have a major nuclear power, Russia, being ruled by a kleptocrat, Putin, who is invading a neighboring country in an effort to live out his fantasy about being Czar Peter the Great. Furthermore, the wealth, resources, industry, and political power in our own country are being concentrated into fewer and fewer hands. As the real income of the middle class declines, and the wealth of the few increases to unprecedented heights the anger of a restive citizenry continues to grow. This decline in real wages combined with the rise of minority ethic and racial groups make white men without college educations particularly susceptible to the fear and loathing demagoguery of the extreme right, including the fascists. The danger posed by that susceptibility and discontent can be seen in the election of America's kleptocrat and would be autocrat, Donald Trump, who went so far as to attempt a coup d'etat in an effort to avoid having to turn over the office of President of the United States to Joe Biden, who won the election to that office.

Many will say that America dodged a bullet by electing Joe Biden rather than Donald Trump in 2020, but the danger to our freedom is far from over. A very large percentage of our citizens do not understand what a president can or cannot do to improve the economy, nor do they understand that democracy and prosperity are so intertwined. If those ignorant and fearful people are presented with the false choice between democracy and prosperity they will choose prosperity, thereby losing both their freedom and prosperity! Unfortunately, soaring inflation caused by the rapid recovery of jobs lost during the pandemic and by a disruption in the supply of oil due to Russia's invasion of Ukraine are now fanning the flames of anger and discontent by lowering real wages at a time when increased employment opportunities seemed to indicate so many good things to come. Furthermore, there is strong evidence that the major oil companies are taking advantage of the disruption in supply by gouging the consumer. Since gouging the consumer has become much easier for the oil companies because of all the mergers that have taken place over the last forty years, I think we need more competition in the market place. J.P. Morgan damned all Roosevelts; I bless them. At the very least, I think we should seriously threaten some anti-trust action against those price gouging multi-national corporations! Doing so is a sound economic act, and a political act aimed at the undemocratic Republicans who place a higher value on increasing their power than they place on preserving our democracy and advancing the interests of our people!

The Damp Judicial Loincloth

The leaking of Injustice Alito's draft of the majority opinion in the case of Dobbs v. Women's Health Org. has Chief Injustice John [Taney] Roberts scrutinizing the halls of justice for damp spots that might reveal who wet the judicial loin cloth. While doing so he is also expressing what passes for righteous indignation by calling the leak a “singular and egregious breach” of trust. I do not mean to make light of this breach of confidentiality because making such drafts public could discourage the candid deliberations the court needs in order to reach well reasoned decisions. In this instance, however, the draft opinion, which would strike down Roe v. Wade, is incredibly oppressive, dangerous, and anything but well reasoned. Many women are quite correctly saying that Alito's opinion is misogyny wrapped up in the dogma of an outmoded religiosity that regards women as nothing more than the intellectually inferior helpmates of men.

If a majority of the court adopts Alito's draft they will be ignoring fifty years of judicial precedent, not to uphold or protect the rights of individuals but to destroy some of those precious rights. In light of that, I consider leaking the draft of Alito's opinion to be analogous to leaking the Pentagon Papers. It is not that we did not know the government was lying to us during the Vietnam war, and it is not that we did not know the (mistakenly called) conservative justices were lying to us during their confirmation hearings. In both instances, however, the proof of the dishonesty revealed by the leaked documents is shocking, and the consequences of those lies are far more extensive and damaging than we feared. If you read Alito's rationalizations (reasoning would be a misnomer) you will see that any right not stated as such in the constitution is not considered a right by Alito, and he believes the government can violate and/or take those unstated rights away from you as it deems fitting and proper! Do not call this judicial activism! Judicial activism is a pejorative term conservatives use to describe the overturning of well established but unjust precedents. It would also be wrong to call this draft opinion conservative. Conservative means to preserve or resist change, and the intent of the majority of this court is harmfully radical change!

Strangely enough Alito is wittingly or unwittingly fulfilling the wish list Moscow Mitch stated when he, Mitch, packed and politicized the Supreme Court. I say strangely because although Moscow Mitch (forever the Machiavellian fascist) wants to deprive women of the freedom to make their own health care decisions and reproductive choices, he knows that actually depriving people of such popular rights so close to an election where they can make their displeasure known in a meaningful and consequential way is probably not a wise thing to do. All I can say about that is let your displeasure be known in a meaningful and consequential way; vote the sanctimonious fascists out of office. “Kill The Damn Elephant Before He Kills You!”

I might add here that if Chief Injustice Roberts is really concerned about the reputation of the Court, he will do something about the egregious violations of ethics so frequently committed by Injustice Thomas! I presume that Injustice Roberts can look for the source of the dreaded puddles at the same time.

She's Back!

The Wasilly Hillbillies Do Washington? Sorry, I do not know the actual title or name. What I know is that there is a committee trying to create a political reality show starring Sarah Palin as the perpetually aggrieved and inadvertently droll congresswomen from Alaska. I understand that in the first episode kindly Sarah will try to cure Marjory Taylor Greene’s culinary ignorance by telling Marjory that Vichy France is French cold soup.

A few Appropriate Comments for April 1.

 Marjorie Taylor Green will never make the Gazpacho Police Nazi mistake again. She also knows that Vichy France is a French cold soup.

The invasion of Ukraine is going exactly as planned, and Vladimir Putin meant to skin his hands and knees when he tripped over the cuffs of the big boy pants he put on when he was having delusions of grandeur about his physical stature.

Supreme court justices should be able to violate the rules of judicial ethics. Justice Thomas' refusal to recuse himself from cases in which he has an apparent conflict of interest is a matter of freedom, and Republicans should always defend the freedom to be unethical no matter how harmful that may prove to be! Just ask Moscow Mitch.

A second grader who is told that one classmate has two mommies and another has two daddies is in danger of becoming a transgender and/or a homosexual living in the constant fear that someday he might have two mommies and two daddies trampling on his freedom by making him brush his teeth, comb his hair, clean his room, and do his homework.

Teaching kids real history that does not gloss over racism can give those kids nightmares about their ancestors dying for such a horrible cause during the civil war and that might make those kids feel bad.

Will burning books warm the body and soul while freezing the brain? Inquiring Republican fascists want to know.

Stench Indeed!

The stench arising from the supreme court is enough to gag anyone with a conscience and a triple digit IQ. Justice Sonia Sotomayor quite correctly complained about the stench of partisanship on our current supreme court, and I am going to expand on that because we have on our hands a problem that undermines the whole concept of the rule of law. As I wrote in a piece I posted on Mac's Back Porch in 2011:

“... the principles for the conduct of judges are set forth in the rules of ethics those judges must follow. If U.S. Supreme Court Justices can ignore those rules and refuse to recuse themselves from cases in which those justices might have a conflict of interest or a bias in favor of one party over another then the right to an impartial hearing and decisions based upon the merits of the case mean nothing. In which case, our entire judicial system is a sham. … T]he real question is not whether Supreme Court Justices must follow the rules of ethics but rather who, if anyone, has the authority to enforce those rules in regard to U.S. Supreme Court Justices. To conclude otherwise would be inconsistent with the most fundamental principles of our judicial system. The good reputation of the Supreme Court and its justices is essential if the people of this country are going to have any faith in the integrity of our courts. This was the argument Chief Justice Earl Warren made to Justice Abe Fortas when Mr. Fortas faced the threat of impeachment over the Wolfson scandal, and it was at least in part why Justice Fortas resigned from the court.

What Abe Fortas did to cause the threat of impeachment was not as egregious as the violations committed by Clarence Thomas. Justice Fortas at least had the good sense to recuse himself from hearing the cases involving Mr. Wofson. Clarence Thomas, on the other hand, heard the Citizens United Case and voted in favor of Citizens United even though Citizens United had contributed $100,000 to help Justice Thomas get confirmed. After receiving valuable gifts from American Enterprise Institute (AEI) Justice Thomas heard three cases involving AEI, and he either sided with AEI or took positions more extreme than AEI in all three of those cases. This is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to Justice Thomas. He has demonstrated an unmistakable pattern of ethical violations that cannot be ignored. The evidence against him is mounting both in regard to the activities of his wife and in regard to his relationship with Harlan Crow, both of which should have caused Justice Thomas to recuse himself from cases he has helped to decide.* Clarence Thomas is the perfect example of why judges must follow the rules of ethics and why Supreme Court Justices cannot be exempt from those rules.”

Amazingly, the pundits are acting like the newest scandal, the seditious and despicable actions of Thomas' wife, are somehow new and oh so surprising, as are the questions the scandal raises about injustice Thomas' ethics and impartiality. Where the hell have those pundits been? Why are they ignoring the history of injustice Thomas' unethical and, most likely, corrupt behavior? The one thing the pundits have right is that injustice Thomas will not be impeached and removed from office. The reason for that is self evident. It is because we now have one party, the Republican Party, that is so morally and intellectually bankrupt that it considers staying in power and imposing its extreme right wing agenda on the rest of us to be more important than the constitution or the rule of law! Moscow Mitch's politicizing and packing the court combined with the brazenly unethical behavior of Clarence Thomas makes it absolutely vital for us to reform this stinking court! We must gain enough seats in congress and the senate to expand the supreme court and make it adopt the very sound rules of ethics that all other judges must follow!

*Thomas' Ethical Entanglements  

Putin And His Deranged Sycophants

 Treasonous Tucker cannot wait to change his name to Quisling Carlson. What do Tucker Carlson's ignorant devotees and/or Fox viewers not understand about deranged demagogues who see nothing wrong with Putin, the KGB thug, saying that the worst day in history was when the Soviet Union collapsed. My opinion is that the worst days in history were when Hitler decided to kill Jews and when Putin's hero, Stalin, decided to kill the ten million people Stalin actually bragged about killing.* I know it is not wise to compare anyone to Hitler, or Stalin for that matter, but we do not need to catch Putin committing a genocide to know that the death and destruction he is causing is evil.

Vladimir Putin is telling and showing us who and what he is, and we damn well better heed the warning. It does not take a psychologist to know that Putin is projecting when he calls Volodymyr Zelenski a Nazi. It is Putin who's lust for power makes him invade other countries and devalue the lives of other people. Putin said that all he wants is Kazakhstan. Then he said all he really he wants is Kazakhstan and Georgia.  Ah, but he had to expand on that just a bit by saying all he wants is Kazakhstan, Georgia, and Crimea. Now Putin believes that if you have Crimea you must also protect Russian speaking people in Donbass Ukraine, and there is no sense in stopping there. Putin is hoping we have amnesia. He is hoping that we think all he wants is Kazakhstan, Georgia, Crimea, Donbass, and the entire Ukraine. I bet that would sound far too familiar and ominous to Mr. Neville Chamberlain and Mr. Winston Churchill if they were still alive to hear it.

I realize the right wing does not know history and that most of them are not bright enough to think that that matters, but one would think that even those dullards would ask whether there is any limit to Putin's greed and lust for power. Furthermore, Putin's claim that there is a limit to his lust for power is not reassuring to any rational person, not even to those who are gullible enough to believe him. Putin denies that he wants to conquer the world or put the Soviet Union back together. He says he just wants to put the old Russian empire back together. Any country conquered and subjugated by Russia, like Ukraine was, has no right to exist as an independent or autonomous nation according to Putin. Putin claims that Ukrainians are not even a real people. “Not even a real People!” Rather scary, don't you think? What else does the right wing of this country need to know about Putin? What religious text or moral code must they consult before they know they have to oppose the evil Putin represents?

Damn, now I am all worked up! I have to calm my anger over the utter stupidity of the right wing fact deniers. Repeat after me: “right wing stupidity is a mental disorder; they cannot help it!” The problem is that I do not have the training or the temperament to treat it. I am at a total loss when facts and reason fail, and that is frustrating. It is particularly frustrating when the stupidity places this nation and the world in so much danger. Reality has a strong tendency to get your attention by kicking your ass if you are lucky and killing you if you are not lucky.

* Many of the people Stalin starved and killed were Ukrainians.

Manchin And Sinema Love Voting Rights

 It is not true that Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema hate voting rights. They love voting rights!  Kyrsten Sinema would be delighted to vote for the voting rights legislation, but she is going to be far too busy defending the none speaking filibuster and washing all concerns about voter suppression out of her hair. If you think that statement is sexist consider this: Joe Manchin would be delighted to vote for voter rights legislation, but he is going to be far too busy slicking his hair down with coal oil while reading the cue cards so generously supplied to him by Charles Koch!

Are the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments to the Constitution less important than a senate rule that allows a minority to thwart the will of the majority? With friends like Manchin and Sinema democracy does not need any enemies. Let me put this in terms that even GOP evangelicals might understand.  Any democracy that wants to remain a democracy considers voter suppression evil. And “[r]emaining silent in the face of evil is evil.” – Dietrich Bonhoeffer  Furthermore, not to act is to act in furtherance of the evil you should actively oppose!

So Sorry!

While I cannot claim to speak for the Democratic Party, as a Democrat I feel compelled to apologize to the American people. I am sorry as all hell that we Democrats are unable to find a Marvel superhero to insert the stick of dynamite needed to blow Kyrsten Sinema's head out of her special interest owned ass, and/or to insert the stick of dynamite needed to blow Joe Manchin's head out of his Koch bros owned ass. News flash for voters: it is not Joe Biden or the Democratic Party that is failing to protect voting rights from the attacks of the American Fascist Party (AKA the Republican Party). There are two Senators registered as Democrats (Sinema and Manchin) who have joined Republican senators in refusing to protect voter rights. All of the senators refusing to pass the voter rights acts are indicative of a systemic problem, i.e. the influence money and special interests have on politicians of both parties.

Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema are either lying when they say they support the voter rights bills or they are both idiots! If you believe in the right to vote (the most fundamental right in any democracy) you will do what is necessary to protect that right; it is that simple! But both Manchin and Synema say that traditional senate rules, in this case the filibuster, are more important than protecting the right to vote. I think the absurdity of saying that the filibuster is more important than the right to vote is self evident. Without the right to vote we no longer have a democracy! Furthermore, the filibuster rule in its present form has only been around since 1975. So the rule was changed fairly recently, and not for the better. One only has to look at how Moscow Mitch used to filibuster to clog up the system like a malignant bowel obstruction during the Obama administration to realize how destructive the filibuster is in its present form!

Wake up America! Big pharma wants the filibuster to prevent the passage of any act that would allow Medicare to negotiate drug prices, and other special interests want to keep the filibuster in order to thwart laws and acts designed to protect consumers and/or make big companies pay their fair share of taxes. Manchin, Synema and the Republicans are choosing the rule of money over democracy and the rule of the people. The only way you are going to protect the right to vote and take back your country is to work like hell to defeat the Republicans and the few Democrats who choose money over country! Needless to say I do not feel sorry for the voters punishing Blanch Lincoln because of her opposition to public option, and what she did was not nearly as bad as what Manchin and Synema are doing. The big tent is a fine thing. We should tolerate differences when it comes to policies and legislation, but there can be no compromise or tolerance for any undermining our democracy! Anyone who will not protect the right to vote has no business being in our government.