Tag Archives: Mitch McConnell

Political Rants

Old faithful.

You know what’s really hilarious about American politics? It’s when news people, commentators, and even politicians themselves expect someone like Mitt Romney to act like someone who totally isn’t Mitt Romney – that is, someone who has an ounce of integrity or any impulse beyond self-enrichment and self-aggrandizement. That was the spectacle this week, in the wake of Justice Ginsburg’s not-wholly-unanticipated passing. Almost immediately the speculation started bubbling up through cable television and the internet …. what will Romney do? Will he stand up to Trump and McConnell? Will he insist on fairness and a single standard that applies to both major political parties? I mean, it’s a regular laugh riot. Sure … Mitt Romney is going to stand between the GOP and the fulfillment of one of its most cherished goals: a radical transformation of the judiciary from top to bottom. Really, people?

As someone who has spent a good deal of time online doing bad imitations of Romney, I have to say that he has done his best to conform with my distorted caricature of him as a cluelessly greedy maladroit who spouts almost as much nonsense as his president. Today Romney described America as a “center-right” country. I suppose from his perspective it is, as the tiny number of people who own and run America probably fit that description, and those are the only people he interacts with. A little harder to grasp was his claim that his liberal “friends” had grown used to the idea of having a liberal Supreme Court, but that that is “not in the stars.” Not sure what he’s getting at – the Court has been majority conservative for almost fifty years, since the Nixon era. No one on the left who’s under the age of seventy has ever had the opportunity to get used to the idea of a liberal SC. I’m starting to wonder if maybe Mitt doesn’t allow himself a little pull off of a snifter once in a long while.

A couple of days later, Romney put himself back into relatively good graces with the never-Trump squad by tweeting his disapproval of Trump’s comments about not committing to a peaceful transfer of power. Pretty low hanging fruit, that – Hey, everybody! Romney’s nominally against a coup d’etat, at least on Twitter! Give him a freaking medal!

Okay, well … now that I’ve ripped him a new asshole (no charge, Mitt – now you can shit over your help twice as much ), I should get to the larger point that I wanted to make. Simply, don’t watch Republicans for signs of integrity or commitment to institutional norms, etc. Let me see if I can put this simply for the credulous media that incessantly speculate about these things: Republicans only care about winning. That’s it. The country can go straight to hell – and right now, it most certainly is. They don’t give a flying fuck. If the price of continuing a Republican presidency is democracy itself, then apparently that’s fine with them. They are a death cult, yes, but just as bad, they are comfortable with the notion of authoritarianism and an end to any pretense of electoral accountability. Just the fact that the Trump campaign has spoken with GOP state legislators about subverting the will of the voters should be enough to convince anyone of that.

Make your plans, people. This could be the fight of our lives.

luv u,

jp

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Political Rants

In the white room.

Three big Supreme Court decisions this week, all stemming from one big electoral decision we all made two years ago. If one were to make the point that elections have consequences, one could hardly do it more effectively than by offering these disastrous judicial outcomes as evidence. For the life of me, I will never understand why Americans on the left side of the political spectrum do not consider the makeup of the Supreme Court (and the federal judiciary more broadly) as a voting issue of primary importance. I may be thinking about a lot of things when I mark that ballot, but no single item more than that of who will be deciding these cases for the next 30 years.

Trump's new BFF.This fact is about to be brought home to us all in a far more profound way: Justice Kennedy has announced that he will retire at the end of next month, and I have no doubt that Trump and McConnell will ram a nominee through the confirmation process faster than anyone can imagine. That will lock in a 5-4 reactionary majority on the Court that will be with us for a generation, reversing Roe v. Wade, detonating the remnants of the Voting Rights Act, and generally demonstrating that the Court cannot be relied upon to serve as a bulwark against aggressive extremism. I was never a big fan of Kennedy. Sure, he was the fifth vote on some crucial cases affecting LGBTQ rights and so on, but he is a stingy old stick who apparently isn’t even giving a second thought to allowing this unstable president to choose his successor.

It’s revenge of the white people. With the demographic tide turning against Republicans, the only way they can continue to win elections is through gerrymandering, voter fraud accusations, and an attack on the franchise wherever and whenever brown people dare to exercise it. They’ve made their way into power, and now they are bending every effort to close and lock the door behind them. They are able to keep us in their little white room because, since 2009, we have been either unable or unwilling to stop them from building and consolidating their control of government at every level.

So, what we have now is the same problem we had two, four, eight, and ten years ago. We just need to be willing to fight back in as many ways as are available to us. One is voting. Another is protest. But first and foremost, contact your senators and tell them to dig in, pull out the stops, and do whatever they can to keep Trump from appointing another Gorsuch.

luv u,

jp

Political Rants

Short takes (July edition).

Another one of those weeks spent drinking from the political firehose. I’m going to try to run through a few of the items that have been top-of-mind for me over the last few days. Let me know if my list looks anything like yours.

Saudi-US cooperation at workYemen Horror. The WHO reported that cholera is spreading like wildfire in war-ravaged Yemen, infecting more than 400,000 people with almost 1,900 deaths attributed to the outbreak. This is in addition to the many thousands killed by the Saudi-led and U.S.-supported terror bombing of this unfortunate country. Since Congress is all about sanctions this week, one would hope they would consider slapping a few on the freaks running this horror show from Riyadh. Fat fucking chance. This is a bipartisan atrocity and it will only stop when we insist upon it.

Cracker abuse. Trump is unloading on his pal Jeff Beauregard Sessions, talking as though the AG’s job consists entirely of running interference against any investigative probes that come too near the President. Can’t say as I feel sorry for that racist old cracker – at his age, he should know better how to pick his friends. Better start ironing that bedsheet, Jeff-boy.

Trumpcare Fail. Okay, this started out to be a rant about John McCain and how he was dragging himself back to Washington right after surgery to deny millions of other Americans the ability to, well, have surgery when it’s needed. I was going to say that you can never count on him to do the right thing, but then he shocked me by doing the right thing, so credit where credit is due – he helped to kill the Obamacare repeal. I say Obamacare repeal because that’s what it has always been. The GOP has been waging political war against this thing called Obamacare for seven years, except that Obamacare doesn’t really exist. That’s why they seem to be having so much trouble agreeing on how to get rid of it – they keep stepping on  popular provisions of the ACA that are lying around like rakes, waiting to hit them in the face. Mitch McConnell blames the Democrats, of course, but it’s really just about him and his party. This is a big fail, fucker. Suck on that.

Drop the T. Trump announced by Tweet that transgender people will no longer be allowed to serve in the United States military. This has thrown the service into a state of uncertainty and caused tremendous consternation among those who recognize our transgender comrades as human beings worthy of our love and respect. In other words, mission accomplished, Donald! Your alt-right supporters in the little mustache brigade are probably over the moon right now. They’ve probably already forgotten what you’ve said about Sessions. (Of course, they’re probably ADD.)

Manatee in a Suit. Gingrich was interviewed on NPR Morning Edition this week (7/26) and proceeded to throw the entire Justice Department under the bus in an attempt to make his new BFF Trump look a little better. Aside from hawking a book by Sidney Powell, the most hated man in America called the Justice Department “a extraordinarily left-wing institution” citing campaign contributions and decrying the Mueller probe as a “fishing expedition.” Wow, what a crackpot. The left wing conspiracy keeps expanding – last week it was Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski being tagged “leftists” by Limbaugh and others; this week it’s our entire federal law enforcement establishment.

luv u,

jp