Speaking Of History Rhyming - Todd Blanche Trump's Lawyer And Hans Frank Hitler's Lawyer

 

Here's An Idea

HOW 'BOUT THE INCOMING CONGRESS zero out the Heimatland. . . sorry mind must still be in Der Untergang . . . the "Homeland Security" department and earmark some of that money to help disaffected MAGAs who are posting all of those whiney, furious videos move to Russia.   I think they'd be a lot happier there and even if they aren't,  I'd think that they're one of the bigger dangers we face domestically.  

Whiney white supremacists are the whinest people in the world.  

History Rhyming - WW2 Historian Reacts to ‘Downfall’ | Deep Dives

I RECENTLY WATCHED this historian of Hitler's last days in the bunker, comparing what her research shows as compared to the famous 2004 movie,  Der Untergang - the one where the series of "Hitler finds out about. . . " videos come from.    I watched it again this morning and the parallels between Hitler's downfall and what we are seeing in Trump and his gang of criminals are remarkable.   I thought, as I saw the image of Goebbels. gee, Stephen Miller had more hair back then.   I don't know if you'll catch it but the arch image in the scene with the model of Hitler's plans for Berlin looks remarkably like Trump's Nazi arch model does, only slightly less vulgar than Trump's.   You might like to see it and compare the Hitler Junger with the videos of the disbelieving Trumpzis appearing everywhere on Youtube.  I hope that it doesn't come to mass suicides but I expect there will be violence from them.  

Anyway, you might want to watch it. 

When You Take The Fact That Presidential Impeachment Is A Constitutional Myth And Add The Pardon Power And Put The Unitary Executive Into The Mix You Get Fascism

I WON'T GO INTO THE HISTORY of presidential pardons to compare many of those given by other presidents going back but will stick to fairly recent history because those, alone, prove that the brevity of the Constitutional granting of the power to do that by presidents is too dangerous to leave it unaddressed.  

Pretending that we're still living under the previous status quo is a delusional and dangerous and cowardly waste of time.  Everything changed with Trump v USA.  It is the Dred Scott decision of our time, one which we either destroy or it will destroy us. 

Trump's pardoning of his insurrectionists is of an entirely different character than the pardons issued by the first three presidents to insurrectionists AGAINST THEIR OWN ADMINISTRATIONS and not to keep them in power illegally and unconstitutionally.  I am unaware of anything like it in the history of the presidency,  except the blanket pardon issued to those who mounted the Confederacy and instigated the Civil War.  And even that one was arguably issued to those who fought against the administration of the president who issued it. 

Trump's pardons, the ones we have every reason to believe he was paid for - and which is remarkably little discussed in the press considering how much they made of Clinton's pardoning of only one, Marc Rich - and those who have committed crimes especially against minority groups, those who promote his own fascist rule, the ones I would bet he has or will soon issue to his own family members donors, campaign,  make the previously controversial and corrupt pardons issued under the Constitution's maddeningly stupid and dangerous blanket pardon powers by previous presidents look penny ante. 

Compared to those issued by Trump's fellow criminal president, Nixon, Nixon's look fairly normal.   The pardons of presidents after him have gone from controversial to blatantly corrupt and dangerous.  George H. W. Bush pardoning himself out of an investigation for his role in Iran Contra and other crimes he was up to his neck in should have forced the question of Constitutional amendments to prevent presidents from pardoning as part of a criminal conspiracy.  But typically, when it's a matter of protecting us from inadequate and dangerous passages in the Constitution, that was not done.  As mentioned before this morning, it is taboo.  The media and Republicans made much more about the alleged corruption of William Clinton's pardon of Marc Rich - after his wife gave a large contribution to his campaign - and the controversial though, I say, understandable and reluctant pardons issued by Joe Biden for his son and a myriad of others he knew would be subjected to the corrupt investigation and prosecution by Trump II's "justice" department and the Republican-fascists in Congress.   And I would certainly include at least extremely strict rules and the ability to challenge such pardons, certainly of those with a financial relationship with a president who issues a pardon.   

Though I agree with and approve of the pardoning of Hunter Biden by his father, of those members of the Justice Department and others who were certain to be the targets for persecution by the Trump II regime - they said they intended to imprison and destroy them - I think we need to revise the constitutional power of the pardon drastically as a matter of our own protection from the combination of corruption the Roberts Court cemented into place.   They have made it a tool of autocracy, of fascist rule as much as any rule in any country which fell to fascism in the past.  

How far it should go, I don't know.   As I said, I fully support Joe Biden granting a pardon to his son because of the use the Republican-fascists made of Hunter Biden.  I support him giving one to those who were the known targets of Republican-fascist intentions.   

But since the administrators of the law will overlook such distinctions in favor of putting unlike under the same category, the pardons Trump will give his crime family and his gang of criminals has to be prevented from becoming typical of America whenever a fascist AND I DO MEAN A REPUBLICAN is president and the Roberts unitary executive distortion of the Constitution remains in place.   

The corruption we have been brought to has been through the corruption of The People by lies in the media and appeals made to the worst in us by the same.   Though I would never overlook the character of The People at the time the Constitution was written and adopted, favoring or largely not opposed to the enslavement of Black People, the slaughter of Indians and stealing their land, the subjugation of Women,  various and sundry other bigotries and corruptions common enough to become the law in the various states,  I don't think they'd have tolerated the level of corruption that this just concluded election was a rebellion against.   And the worst of that was by design, from corrupt law faculties such as members of those at Harvard and the other Ivys,  that cooked up in stink tanks like The Heritage Foundation and corrupt lobbying efforts like The Federalist Society and Leonard Leo's other shell outfits.  Pretty much anything that billionaires and millionaires fund.   And the media, never, ever underestimate the role the free press has played in it.  And their appeal to the worst in us. 

We cannot avoid drastic Constitutional reform and the removal of the Supreme Court 's self-created power to nullify the reform to it.  Changing the pardon power is certainly one of the most obvious of the things that have to be changed largely on the basis of what corrupt presidents like Bush I and Trump have done with it.  It is as sure a means of corruption as the unitary executive and the fact that presidential impeachment and conviction of even the most blatantly criminal presidents will never happen. 

We can't go on like this.  We can't'.  No matter how nervous it makes some magazine scribblers when you talk about Constitutional change. 

The Idiocy Of Believing Lawyers Are The Only Ones Whose Opinions About The Law And, Especially The Constitution Count

 "ARE YOU A LAWYER?" is a question I get asked a lot, to which I say, obviously not because if I were the chances are enormously high that it would never even occur to me to ask the questions I do and find the answers about things like the Constitution and the law and the alleged form of our government.  Only I'd put it in terms of thank God I'm not one, for that and for other reasons. 

The pretense of a lot, though not all, scholars of such things as law and government is that the topics they study can rise above what their subject matter lends itself to being, lore.   And here I use the definition of "lore" as given by Merriam Webster

1 : a particular body of knowledge or tradition
the lore of baseball heroes [Most supreme Court reportage and theatrical representation fall into that category.]
2 : something that is learned:
a : traditional knowledge or belief
tribal lore [What an education in "the law" is. Only often not as helpful and far more dangerous. And never as honest.]
b: knowledge gained through study or experience
the lore of religious architecture

There is nothing about human made law which matches the laws of mathematics or physics or chemistry or the observable discoveries of biology.  

That is due to the vastly different character of what human laws and governments are.   Human laws, human governments are, 100%, human constructions, like the rules of a board game.  And they're not even like that other area of human scholarship, the history of humanity which studies what humans have done and made in the past,  the study of such subjects are far more like the study of human philosophies or ideologies.   As I said here the other day, among the subjects of history, many are things which can be established with a factuality that is as certain as anything that math or physics can establish.   There is nothing about the law that does that and, as the Supreme Court has shown with increasing frequency and dangerousness, there is nothing that inhibits judges with no authority above them to reign in their desired tendencies, to be honest about it.  The Supreme Court will trend to ever more dismiss evidence and facts to achieve their desired outcomes.   It is one of the idiocies of our law, that such arbitrary and frequently corrupt judges are called by exactly what they are not required to have anything to do with, "justice."   

If there is something that is clear after the likes of Roberts, Alito, Thomas, Goresuch, Kvanaugh, Coney Barret, Scalia, O'Connor, . . .  Taney, Story, Marshall, etc. going back to the first in that line of those in that office who produced outrageous injustice and assertions of constitutionality based in lies to achieve their desired results, we should abolish that lying title for the office they have held.  

There have been few lawyers to my knowledge who would make such observations or even look for the facts and conduct the analysis of those to support such a conclusion.  But observing the increasing disaster from the time of Nixon to the time of Trump II,  seeing the struggles from the Civil Rights struggles of my time, the great Civil Rights movement to overturn the work of the Waite, Fuller and later courts which abolished the Civil Rights and Voting Rights laws passed and sighed after the Civil War and established the neo-slavery that Black People, other People of Color, the unaddressed injustice sagainst Women, workers, LGBTQ+ etc. have struggled against,  and looking for the legal and governmental sources AND SUPPORTS FOR that oppression,  the source of those lies most directly and absolutely with the Supreme Court, those "justices" who have most consistently, almost entirely, in favor of the wealthy, the oligarchic, the anti-democratic, the racist, misoyinistic,  the successors of the slavers who the idolized Marshall twisted and bent the law and claims of justice to support over those they enslaved.

The Congess and presidents have a mighty checkered history but since it is the laws to give justice that some Congresses,  House AND, more rarely Senates and some Presidents have created which have been overturned by the Taney Court, by the Waite and Fuller Courts, actions which the Roberts Court has gone farther than even the Taney Court in overturning,  you cannot claim that in general the Congress and even the presidency has been as uniformly opposed to equal justice under law as the lawyers of the Supreme Court have been.   The foolish habit of the lawyers, especially that dubiously respected specialty of "civil liberties" lawyering, to expect the Supreme Court to uphold equal justice under law may be largely due to them being kept in naive ignorance of the real history of that body - you would expect that, by now, they would have cottoned on to the motives and practices of it after the Rehnquist and Roberts Courts but they're still acting as if that most atypical of Courts, the one staffed by presidents FDR, Truman and Eisenhower, are still sitting there and the outcomes they desired the ones that will be most often handed down by those put on it by Bush I, Bush II and Trump.  

You would have thought the most obviously and stunningly corrupt ruling by that Court before Roberts and Alito lied their ways on to it, Bush v Gore would have clued the lawyers in but even after the ruling that rivals the corruption of Rehnquist and those five who decided a presidential election by fiat, and surpasses it,  Trump v USA which made the American president a king with immunity from the law, what I've been pointing out is unspeakably controversial even though it's clear that is what the Supreme Court is - it was always so for Black People, Women and others such as those in the list I gave above.   The brotherhood of the lawyers, dominated by affluent white males appointed by other affluent white males, many of them lawyers,  and those who are willing to play by the rules and tell the same lies as those in the club may be a reason that lawyers are unwilling to make these criticisms.   You would think that the ones who are in Congress and don't ever plan on being practicing lawyers ever again would feel free to at least think such thoughts and maybe some of them do.   But if they do, they don't do anything about it. 

The idea that only lawyers have a say or a "right" to say anything about these topics is a basic contradiction of egalitarian democracy.   And that's according to the founding document of the American government, the Declaration of Independence and the theory of majoritiarian rule which are said by it and, oddly enough, the Constitution that the ultimate authority and means of establishing the legitimacy of any government or law resides in those who, by an enormously large majority, are not lawyers and whose idea of "the law" can be anything from entirely informed to pig ignorant.    I say that to be entirely informed about the law means that you have studied as complete a history of how the law actually impacts on People and how the laws are made and imposed on us.    Most of the academic lore of the law is dishonest about all of that,  it is most often cloyingly idolizing and romantically stupid as to the reality of it.   Like most of the Supreme Court reportage you get from establishment media.   Well, I don't do that.  Nor am I going to stop it as requested because there aren't many People telling the truth about these things.   It's no great achievement, it only took refusing to lie about these things and being more afraid of the consequences of not facing the terrible truth of this matter than the consequences of breaking the laws of polite, cowardly, college-credentialed blather about them.   Few if any lawyers will tell you that but I have been telling you that terrible truth for years, now.   I don't think politeness and gentility are called for when dealing with these thugs in black robes sitting in their fascist-marble palace and taking graft like the pettiest of corrupt municipal officials.   I'm not going to put it in smarmy legalese.

We Must Have A Constitutional Amendment Abolishing the Unitary Executive Fascist System The Roberts Court Imposed On us

But That Is Nowhere Near Enough Or Even Adequate

IN MY POSTS OVER THE PAST FEW MONTHS, in which I attacked the Supreme Court's self-created, entirely non-textual and so non-"originalist" Marbury power, in which it gets to abolish duly adopted federal laws I noted how, starting with the Dred Scott decision,  continuing in the Waite and Fuller Courts' abolition of the original anti-lynching law, the original post-Civil War Voting Rights and Civil Rights laws,  their imposition of Jim Crow, theirs and the Fuller and just about all subsequent Courts twisting, turning, clipping and padding of the Civil War Amendments, especially the 14th Amendment,  I noted how the Roberts Court is recapitulating the acts of those corrupt 19th and early 20th century Courts in gutting the second Voting Rights and Civil Rights laws and, in a series of some of the most corrupt rulings in that most corrupt of the three branches (look honestly at its history!) they have even overturned the most basic aspects of the Constitutional structure of the government. 

I don't favor Democrats merely appointing a court that will merely overturn the Trump v USA decision, or Dobbs or any of the other atrocities that the Courts have done BECAUSE ALONG WITH DULY ADOPTED FEDERAL LAWS AND FULLY ADOPTED AMENDMENTS TO THE CONSTITUTION, THE SUPREME COURT HAS NO PROBLEM OVERTURNING SUPPOSEDLY DEFINITIVE AND RELIABLE RULINGS MADE BY PREVIOUS COURTS.  Even some they assured the Senate they considered "settled law."   Dobbs overturning Roe and the gutting of the Voting Rights Act which previous courts repeatedly upheld AND CONGRESS REAUTHORIZED AFTER THE SUPREME COURT CONFIRMED ITS "CONSTITUTIONALITY" shows that relying on the Court to act with any integrity at all is entirely inadequate to protect us from its propensities to destroy any progress towards equality or democracy or even the most intimate of bodily autonomy whether a Woman's ownership and determination of her own body or, GIVEN THAT THE OVERTURNING OF THAT ORIGINAL ANTI-LYNCHING LAW IS PART OF THE COURT'S HISTORY, even the guarantee that, especially Black People and other People of Color have a right to not be murdered by a mob.   I wouldn't trust the Roberts Court to uphold the second anti-lynching law, the one that finally passed after 200 attempts in the Congress (the Senate being the impediment to that, but that's for another time) and finally signed into law by Joe Biden. 

You cannot depend on the Supreme Court to do anything like that because of its history of overturning laws, previous court rulings and even duly adopted parts of the Constitution, itself.    The final destruction of the Marbury power and other Supreme Court innovations and creations cannot depend on the most honest of theoretical Supreme Courts doing that IT WILL HAVE TO BE AN ACTION OF THE CONGRESS AND THE PRESIDENT DOING IT BECAUSE NOTHING ELSE WILL BE RELIABLE IN MAKING SURE THE COURT DOESN'T OVERTURN THAT.  

Since I posted the letter by Jefferson in which, in reaction to the Marbury decision he said his construction of the Constitution put the authority to interpret it in all three branches and not merely in the Supreme Court, which, I have to say, it is hard to predict how that would work.  One thing is clear after the Roberts Court, clearly, the history of the out of control Supreme Court shows that if we're going to have those "balanced powers" there has to be a real and effective stop to the Supreme Court having that sole power.  It might work imperfectly but it would have to work pretty badly to be worse than the status quo of letting Supreme Courts do what they've been doing.   

Most of the current corruption of our politics, the debasement of public office in all three branches have been a result of Supreme Court decisions, whether the grotesquely and obviously corrupt such as Citizens United and Buckley v Valeo or the less obviously but quite corrupt rulings such as Sullivan or the one that set off the epic corruption of the Trump II regime, Trump v USA.   The fact that all of that corruption flows from what were supposedly "civil liberties" rulings - rulings that obviously favored large, rich corporations in ever instance,  rulings I think were a distortion of even the irresponsibly vague and badly written "Bill of Rights."   But it flows from the Supreme Court usurping those powers. 

Pass all the laws you want, try to give it as blatantly explicit and clear a legislative record as possible, one designed to prevent what the Courts have done in lying about those to the fullest extent possible but the Roberts Court proves that without them being stripped of those powers which they have exercised their corruption under,  they'll just continue on as they have been since Roger Taney and his colleagues who wrote the Dred Scott decision, the first significant use of the Marbury power,* have done.   The only alternative to that would be to staff the Court only with those who have rejected the Marbury power and I would bet that there is no such species among the lawyers and judges who have been brought up in the corrupt lore of their profession.  

The fact that the Marbury power was the creation of a mere four members of the Supreme Court is surely significant in impeaching its validity.   If the Roberts Court can overturn literally all of the opinions of the "justices" who upheld the Voting Rights Act and the Roe decision and who knows how many others in other matters they have ruled on,  it's a little thing to overturn those four "justices" from 1803, especially when the nearly uniformly corrupt use of the power they gave themselves is taken as its true record under use. 

From Media Matters - This Is How Useful Hasan Piker Was To The Republican Campaign As Reflected In How Many Times FOX Lies Mentioned Him In Comparison To Republican Candidates

 

 

That wouldn't have happened if they didn't figure what came out of his fat mouth was useful for electing Republicans.   I wouldn't bet that in a better year for Republican-fascists than this one that it wouldn't have worked.  

Piker and his uncle Cenk should shut their traps.  

There's A Real Investigation That Needs To Be Done About Haley Stevens' Insane Self-Demolition

THERE IS SOMETHING really strange behind the strange behavior of Haley Stevens.   I was nearly entirely unfamiliar with her before her weekend-before-the election treason, her sudden endorsement AT A BLACK CHURCH! of the racist, fascist Mike Rogers who she had accurately and fulsomely condemned up till then.   Really weird was the phone call late the previous night which she had with Congresswoman Debbie Dingell in which she assured Congresswoman Dingle that she was going to support Abdul El-Sayed only to have her, a few hours later, support Rogers.  

Those who know her well are at as complete a loss to explain her behavior as she was when she had that train-wreck of an interview with Anderson Cooper,  some who saw her in the past asked if she was drugged when she was doing it because even as kind of strange as she might naturally be, she was reportedly never like that.   Here's what it says in an article in The New Republic, Haley Stevens’s Friends and Staffers Are Freaked Out by Her Fiancé. 

 

Former Michigan Governor Jim Blanchard told Gongwer News Service Sunday that Turkish had openly admonished Stevens ahead of her scheduled appearance at a Souls to the Polls event with El-Sayed and Representative Jim Clyburn—which she ultimately ditched to support Rogers.

“He was working her over. The way he was saying it was, ‘Everyone is disappointed in you, they did everything they could to help you and then immediately after you lose the primary, you endorsed him,’” Blanchard recounted from a dinner Thursday night. 

Blanchard said he’d defended Stevens for being a “team player.”

Turkish replied, “‘I know, but they’re really disappointed in her,’” the former governor recalled. 

Blanchard told GNS that Turkish was “all distraught” and “strung out” about El-Sayed. When the former governor raised his concerns to Stevens, she replied: “I’m fine.”

Blanchard described the sudden change in his longtime ally, saying several times, “This is not the Haley I know.”

“Something snapped in her. And it snapped in 24 hours,” he told GNS.

One of Stevens’s friends, Michigan University regent Jordan Acker, wrote on X Monday that he had become “deeply troubled” by Turkish’s behavior.

“I’ve heard serious concerns about his treatment of Haley’s staff, friends, and allies. My own experiences have only deepened those concerns,” he wrote. “It is painful to watch someone you care about go through something like this. It is even more painful to worry about the influence of those closest to her.”

It's entirely possible that Stevens is crazy in love with the guy,  something which is known to happen even to those who are generally grounded, in which case it's a matter of her mental state - at least on her part.   

In that case, it becomes about what makes Turkish tick.  I will admit that the first description of him I read as a "civil liberties" lawyer got my hackles up,  having been used to the cowardice and treachery of that lot. Then I read that he was more of a disabilities rights lawyer.  [I will say that a lot of the comments over the appearance of his eyes (he's legally blind) are a cheap shot.   Not to mention that as so many guys of his age that he's bald and dumpy.  And I don't find much of anything to like about the guy from what I've read.] 

“I’ve heard serious concerns about his treatment of Haley’s staff, friends, and allies. My own experiences have only deepened those concerns,” he wrote. “It is painful to watch someone you care about go through something like this. It is even more painful to worry about the influence of those closest to her.”

Acker wrote that he’d been unable to contact Stevens in the wake of her controversy. “Her fiancé took her phone away,” he wrote on X. (Turkish denied the accusation, saying Stevens had simply turned off her phone.)

Former Stevens spokesperson Caitlin Legacki blamed Turkish for Stevens’s primary campaign failing. She claimed the couple got engaged in secret, and that Turkish began wielding outsize influence over the campaign. She accused him of bullying junior staffers and pressuring Stevens to be more vocal in defending Israel.

Former Representative Susan Wild, who said she’d known Stevens from coming up on Capitol Hill, also voiced concerns about Turkish following her friend’s sudden flip-flop.

“So many people in the Democratic Party have shown so much support to Haley over the years, and she has betrayed them all. If this is because of her new relationship (about which many of us were so happy for her after she lost the primary), all I can say is that any woman who abandons her friends when a new guy comes along is no friend at all,” Wild wrote on X Monday.

Some have speculated that Turkish is not the only one involved with this, Mike Roger's campaign had two registered foreign agents of the Israeli government on its staff, Abigail Ronson and Jesse Stokes and speculate that they had come kind of compromat on Stevens which would possibly explain why she seemed so emotionally unbalanced and non-responsive in her non-explanation of why she did what she did.   It looked like she was doing hostage videos. 

The Rogers campaign would certainly know that Jason Turkish, a frequent donor to both pro-Israeli causes and political campaigns (though he mostly gave to Democrats, he also gave to Susan Collins' campaign) and he was the (suddenly) announced fiance of Haley Stevens had already said he intended to vote for him and not the Democratic nominee over El-Sayed's opposition to Israel getting the unlimited aid that Rogers advocated.  They would have certainly tried to flip her, even if her boyfriend wasn't directly involved in that, though I see no reason to suspect he wasn't.  

Some who knew her are wondering at what they say was a sudden engagement with someone that was not known to be that close to her until after she lost to Abdul El-Sayed. 

They announced their engagement in August, shortly after Ms. Stevens lost the primary election to Dr. El-Sayed.

And that she suddenly allowed him to nose around and mess around in her office. 

Especially bizarre in this is that she has said that an ad WHICH THE EL-SAYED CAMPAIGN HAD NOTHING TO DO WITH PRODUCING OR POSTING one which was recycled from the bizarre publicity presidential "campaign" of Cenk Uygur* with an endorsement of El-Sayed pinned to it was the basis of her treason.  

On Friday Mr. Turkish appeared on TMZ to explain his support for Mr. Rogers, pointing to a digital advertisement from supporters of Dr. El-Sayed that blames rising grocery prices in the United States on its support for Israel’s military campaign. He called on Dr. El-Sayed to disavow the ad and suggested that if he did not, Ms. Stevens would not support him. Dr. El-Sayed’s campaign sought to distance the candidate from the ad, saying that it was created by a left-wing political action committee, Rebellion PAC, and was “not affiliated in any way” with him or his candidacy.

Which looks like a cover story to me.  No one should ever be held accountable for that kind of thing.  

If Haley Stevens' self-destroying treason is just a matter of her being ga-ga over her boyfriend, she was never a stable enough person to trust with public office.  

Since she has objected to that theory as being sexist,  and her total inability to give a better explanation for her hair-pin turn forces the question of agents for a foreign government having some kind of compromat on her.   I have no idea if those speculations are accurate but I do think that there is good reason to believe that  A NUMBER OF FOREIGN GOVERNMENTS AND PRIVATE ENTITIES USE BLACKMAIL IN AMERICAN POLITICS AND IT SHOULD BE THE FOCUS OF CONGRESSIONAL INVESTIGATIONS.    I think that Epstein pedophile-blackmail operation collected lots of compromat on prominent People, in government, in finance, in academia and industry and I am certain that Donald Trump and others in his administration are probably either being actively blackmailed by those who bought that information from Epstein-Maxwell or who may have been given it.   And I think most of that comes from Putin's regime and various middle-eastern regimes, not just Israel.   

I think it's understandable that any such sudden and quite inexplicable and self-damaging actions among our politicians, especially those going against long term stands they have taken would raise that suspicion.   I have to wonder how much of the bizarre nature of Haley Stevens' sudden and very public, national image is a result of her being under that kind of pressure.   From what I read, she always came off as a little off but nothing as bizarre as her public appearances since last weekend.    I don't buy that it's just love sickness, though I've seen middle-aged People in love and they are fully as capable of being fools as any teenager.  Not with what those who have known her for years are saying about it. 

* The faster Cenk and his nephew Hasan Piker get the hell out of politics, the better, I say.   They are ballot box poison and both irresponsible assholes.  

I Hadn't Had Time To Check It Out

BUT SOMEONE SHOWED ME a picture of Jon Husted.  From what I can see, his ass ain't so great even for someone who is nearly in the geezer category as he is.  But, then, I'm not an ass man.  Trump clearly likes them big and dumpy.    

Speaking of asses.   Nicki Minaj's degradation to get pardons for her family members and to avoid the deportation that she apparently is eligible for got the non-citizen, non-voting, foul-mouthed asshole a trip to Derry NH to stump for Trump in a place that is just about as lily-white as Maine is.   It happens one of my first public performances as a member of a chamber group was in Derry, NH about fifty-five years ago - I don't even remember what we played.   Which has nothing to do with much but I always think of it when I think of that place. 

She didn't look happy and didn't say anything and it was obvious that after what Trump said about it, she wasn't showing her ass to anyone.   

I hope that if she's here illegally and is deportable she is sent back to Trinidad by the next Democratic administration.    Something tells me that Trump is not going to give her those pardons she's degrading herself to get, not now.  

Told You That The Far North Of Maine Is Our Deep South

THE WORST GOVERNOR IN MAINE HISTORY,  Paul LePage,   the putrid 38% governor who led to my state adopting rank-choice voting to try to prevent such a piece of shit being governor here, ever again, has won a narrow victory in the 2nd District here and will be going to Washington.   He has called him self Trump before Trump, he  is as flaming a racist and misogyinst and liar, he is like a combination of Gosar and Boebert with a little Steve King and you name the wacky neo-fascist crank of your choice  thrown in. 

The 2nd District is the one which Troy Jackson as well as Susan Collins come from,  and there are many progressive Democrats there - it's generally a narrow victory or loss for Democrats up there - but the Republicans and a lot of the independents are really awful.   The most racist Mainer I ever met in my life was from there, and it wasn't some knuckle scraping, deer jacking cigarette runner to Canada, it was a college graduate, a school teacher.   As always, it's a matter of percentages and concentrations and for some reason Maine can't seem to avoid the 2nd district having a margin of racist fascists in the majority.  At best, they elected Jared Golden who often may as well have been a Republican and who, even as he left politics, managed to be a total asshole.  

So LePage will join Paul Gosar in the loony tunes paleo-fascist wing of the fascist party in Congress,  North Carolina's 5th has,  as of this time done what Maine's 2nd has not, and I congratulate them if that holds.   And he'll keep Maine humble and be a reminder to our Democrats of what happens here if the party isn't on top of things.   There has been, up to now, a sort of Cumberland-Kennebec County dominant clique in the Maine Democratic establishment, one which has had an out sized role in choosing which of their members gets to run for Senate and other higher offices.   I think that might be loosening with it having been Troy Jackson who defeated Susan Collins when many of their preferred candidates couldn't do it.   I don't know how that will work its way out but I do know one thing, we need to do something to retire LePage and drive a stake through the heart of his political career.   That is if nature doesn't take care of him, given his Trumpian girth and age, 78.   If I had my preference, he'd have aged out of the job as Virginia Foxx should have.  But that's for the future, too. 

 MARBURY DELENDA EST

Schumer Is The One Who Confirmed The Dual Loyalty Trope, Not Me - Hate Mail

MAYBE, JUST MAYBE there is some role for what Schumer said was his role in supporting Israel and making sure it got as much of our money and support as he could get for it as a New York Senator.   If I were from New York I wouldn't think so but I'm not from New York.   That’s certainly a matter for his constituents to decide if they want that, too.   Though I would have my doubts about it.   If any Senator said it was their job to make sure any other country going on three quarters of a century had, effectively, a blank check from the American People,  no one would figure that was OK.   No, not even that focus of such dual loyalty under our idiotic law, the putative "Mother Country," Britain.   Don't get me started. 

But Schumer didn’t say that was his role as a Senator from his state,  he said it was his role as Democratic Leader in the Senate which makes it quite a different matter.  Democratic Senators from every state who support him in that position have, essentially, adopted his stance since he says that’s part of his job.   Including one of my Senators now, the Independent Angus King who caucuses with Democrats and two after Troy Jackson takes office.   Troy Jackson has already said he opposed Schumer as the Democratic Leader in the Senate,  I don’t know what Angus King has said about that.   Having him as the Democratic leader makes that position the position of the entire caucus. 

The Republican mouthpieces like The Hill claim that Schumer already has the leadership vote sewn up,  probably a tip from his office,  but that can change if everyone who wants someone new and likely more effective and less tied to an increasingly opposed ideology that will be guaranteed to become ballot box poison pressures our Senators into removing their support for him.   

If AOC or someone else could primary him AND KEEP THE SEAT DEMOCRATIC,  I would favor that route.  Schumer will be 77 when he’s up for reelection in two years and I favor a mandatory retirement age of 75 for Senators (much as I would miss several of my favorites), he would be the same age Mitch McConnell was when his senility became obvious by the end of that term.    We should have a reasonable expectation that someone we put in that God forsaken body for six years will live out their term.   

Like Jeffries, he has already said he’s opposed to real universal health care for Americans, something which we need, SOMETHING HE HAS HAD HIS ENTIRE ADULT LIFE AS A POLITICIAN, since he was 23.    Just that one stand makes him unqualified to do the job he wants to keep. 

Getting back to the topic of your accusation, bringing up "dual loyalty."    What else is it when someone in elective office takes the position he did in public?    I'll ask again, if someone said the same thing substituting the name of any other country in place of "Israel,"  how could that stand not constitute dual loyalty?    And given the suspicion that he and the DSCC which he controlled withheld and then gave totally inadequate support to a candidate whose nearly winning showed she could have won, and she wasn't the only one they withheld support from, likely her opposition to his stated ideology playing a role in that,  CHUCK SCHUMER AND ANYONE ELSE WHO TAKES THAT STAND WHILE HOLDING OFFICE MAKES THAT A LEGITIMATE ISSUE.   

It would have been the same with the nut-case Haley Stevens or any other politician who took that stand.  It has nothing to do with whether or not someone is Jewish.  It has to do with whether or not they are Zionists.  I would ask the same question about Joe Biden after he declared himself to be a Zionist.    And there are a number of Jewish members of Congress who oppose knee-jerk Zionism or, in fact, support for Israel and who aren't justifiably suspected of it.  

"Dual loyalty" is a lot like "conspiracy theory" as a blanket dismissal.   There are myriad and dangerous dual loyalties in American politics and the law.   Its certainly a problem with those who are even more dually loyal to billionaires and millionaires and white supremacy and other fascist ideologies.   Look at the members of the Roberts Court to see how dangerous that really and truly is.   Many Republican fascists and not a few on the so-called left have a dual loyalty to Putin's fascist government as, in fact, some did to Hitler's and Mussolini's.   But they don't tend to hold leadership positions in the House or Senate Democratic caucuses in 2026.  

The Members Of The House And Senate Won’t Do It So It Will Have To Be Done Through The State Legislative Route

THERE ARE TOO MANY members of Congress who want to stay in office well into their dotage and senility and to the final, last gasp of breath at the age of 110 for them to ever move the Constitutional Amendment that would correct the idiotic neglect of the late 18th century framers to put one at that end of life even as they put one at the other end of life.   There must be an upper age limit on holding office. 

 We need to make sure an RBG or a Mitch McConnell or Diane Feinstein doesn’t hold on to office at an age and level of disability that makes them a danger to American democracy.   

For every very aged member of the Court or Congress or president you can name,  whether a John Paul Stevens or a Bernie Sanders or Joe Biden, who were good in office, there are scores of others who should have been retired as soon as they hit sixty.   

No office holder has a right to hold office,  The People, all of us, have a right to EVERY MEMBER OF THE CONGRESS, THE PRESIDENT, THE SUPREME COURT, being fully competent and healthy enough to do the job.  Whether of our own state or of any other state - they can all screw us over.  It is absurd to think that the holders of those jobs are allowed to hold onto the job when they are obviously unfit to do it barely conscious or barely alive.   Like the absurdity of the Supreme Court being the only level of courts without any real ethical inhibitions to their corruption it is absurd that there is no safe guard over an unfit person holding any of those jobs.*

But there are lots of members of state legislatures and governors of the various states who would like to run for an empty seat.  They could start the process without the Congress having a say in it:

Article V

The Congress, whenever two thirds of both Houses shall deem it necessary, shall propose Amendments to this Constitution, or, on the Application of the Legislatures of two thirds of the several States, shall call a Convention for proposing Amendments, which, in either Case, shall be valid to all Intents and Purposes, as Part of this Constitution, when ratified by the Legislatures of three fourths of the several States, or by Conventions in three fourths thereof, as the one or the other Mode of Ratification may be proposed by the Congress; Provided that no Amendment which may be made prior to the Year One thousand eight hundred and eight shall in any Manner affect the first and fourth Clauses in the Ninth Section of the first Article; and that no State, without its Consent, shall be deprived of its equal Suffrage in the Senate.

I don’t have the fear of a Constitutional Convention that a lot of people do because I don’t think it’s going to be possible to avoid one if we are to abolish the Roberts Court’s fascist Trump v USA ruling.  And if we don't do that American democracy is already fucked. 

And when we address that we should address the out of control Supreme Court by abolishing the Marbury power grab explicitly in the Constitution.   That would not be necessary if a Democratic Congress and President, acting in concert, declared that the Marbury power was illegitimate from the start, as Jefferson, Lincoln and many others said it was and that from now on the Court declaring duly adopted federal law unconstitutional is illegitimate.   If you want to see how to deal with the results of that you could look at how literally every other modern democracy deals with that state of things because the U.S. Supreme Court is the only one that has suckered the elected branches into going along with that unconstitutional power-grab. 

Get rid of the Electoral College while you’re at it.  I fully support the adoption of the compact among the states effectively nullifying it but I have absolutely no confidence that that would survive the goddamned Supreme Court when the fascists bring up the case.   

No hard fought, dangerous, costly, decades long and even deadly struggle for justice in American history has been safe from the Supreme Court.   It has nullified voting rights and civil rights acts twice, in the 19th and 21st centuries and even anti-lynching laws.   We the People need to be protected FROM THE SUPREME COURT.  And we can’t eternally avoid doing that. 

* The claim that impeachment takes care of that is and has been a lie ever since the Senate failed to remove Samuel Chase from the Supreme Court in 1804.    Impeachment is one of the most absurd features of the Constitution which has totally failed every time it was tried for those above the inferior court level of government. 

It's Clear That Jeffries and Schumer Are Going To Waste The Chances The New Democratic Coalition Has Given Them

I AGREE WITH THOSE who have slammed Hakeem Jeffries statement that "The American people don't want us to get even. They want us to get things done on their behalf because life is way too expensive, "  as if getting even with those who have stolen everything isn't part of the redistribution of wealth that the Democrats will try to do or they will have wasted the opportunities that Obama wasted and which Clinton wasted to do that.   If either of them had pushed a really populist ECONOMIC LEVELING agenda instead of the typical "centrist Democratic" bullshit they did, we probably would never have had Bush II or Trump I and II.  

Either Democrats take back what was stolen and give it to the American People or the billionaires and millionaires will keep it.  It's as plain as that and the Democratic "leadership" will have, once again, given The People every reason to view them as cynically as the worst gen Zer bros do. 

Jeffries has proven to be too much a lawyer, too much of an old line "Democratic Leadership Council" kind of Democrat to be the leader we need at this time.   His cluelessness in this election, along with that of Chuck Shumer's in trying to push guaranteed losers AND REFUSING TO GIVE FUNDING OR EVEN MAKING APPEARANCES FOR MANY OF THE NEW STYLE OF DEMOCRATS EVEN AFTER THEY GOT THE NOMINATION disqualifies them for the Speakership or the leadership of the majority in the Senate.  Schumer, especially, will prove a disaster for getting done what needs to be done.   And I think Jeffries position as the leader of Democrats in the House is one of the very few miscalculations that Nancy Pelosi ever made.   He ain't no Nancy Pelosi, he isn't a Tip O'Neill among the most over-rated of Democratic Speakers,  Hakeem Jeffries is far more like the inept, ineffective, useless Tom Foley.  

His statement that he is opposed to Medicaid for All alone disqualifies him as a Democratic Speaker of the House.  PERIOD. 

Schumer's choice of candidates in a number of elections were the kind of Democrats who wouldn't have challenged him on anything, whether in the majority or minority,  his choice to back Haley Stevens in Michigan, a clear nutcase and a rather annoying one, at that, the elderly Janet Mills in Maine should decidedly impeach his political judgement and seal the case that he has no useful role to play as Democratic Leader in the Senate.   And that's hardly his worst crime against democracy.   As the IHIP podcast said last night,  Angie Nixon in Florida came so close to winning THAT CHUCK SCHUMER'S WITHOLDING OF SUPPORT FOR HER PROBABLY IS WHAT COST HER AND US THAT SEAT FOR SIX YEARS.     I don't know though I'm sure that her anti-zionism played into that as it did in his non-support for many of the progressive candidates who were the choice of their states.     

He, Chuck Schumer made that a legitimate issue to consider because he, himself, said that support for Israel was his job. “I have many jobs as leader … and one is to fight for aid to Israel, all the aid that Israel needs.”  Clearly, if he sees that as his job, he is never going to support candidates who oppose his kind of Israel right or wrong stand or even those who favor reducing the money the US gives to Israel.   HE HAS, BY HIS WORDS AND BY HIS ACTIONS AND INACTION, MADE THAT A LEGITIMATE ISSUE GOING FORWARD.   Zionism inevitably raises the issue of dual loyalty because it will always devolve into that kind of stand,  it provides Jew-haters with that issue and confirms the suspicion.  That is a point that anti-zionist Jews have made since the ideology started among Jews in the 19th century - after it was adopted from the pseudo-christian dispensationalist bullshit that plagues us so much today. 

And he is not the only one.   I have not researched what Jennifer and Josh Welch said about Senator Booker and Jeffries in this podcast but if that is accurate, none of them has anything positive to contribute in leadership of the Democratic Party.   

This is an issue we either face now or we will see the electoral gains pissed away by ineffective, unfocused leadership.   And, as I will not stop pointing out, most of that bad and ineffective leadership has been from lawyers.   I think one of the reasons Nancy Pelosi was so effective was that she, atypically of Democratic leadership, was not trained in the duplicitous, cowardly, self-serving, kissing up habits of the lawyers.   You know that I'll have more to say about that soon.  

Another Satisfaction I Get From Susan's Downfall

IN THE LAST WEEK OR TWO,  Susan Collins' campaign aired an ad with the long-time Channel 6 news reader, the newly retried Bill Green talking down Troy Jackson's job as a logger in favor of Susan Collins' career as a life-long Republican politician and rubber-stamp for oligarchic tyranny.  Her real career has, from the start, been glossed over by the 100% Republican owned or favoring media in Maine, including the very important Maine Public radio and TV network.  In the last gasp of her career, she showed her true colors which was only as green as the money and that media jerk.  If there's something I hate in a politician or a media figure, it's snobbery.   It's something that has been too common in Maine politics which has been especially bad for Maine Democrats - the media can be counted on to make even that OK for Republicans. 

A school teacher I know told me that when Green went to her school to give an (I gather paid) talk to the students, he was a totally arrogant jerk - something that didn't surprise me one bit.   He worked at the Republican-mouthpiece, Channel 6, after all, and like so many small time media celebrities, he has a hugely over-sized view of his status.   That he is a snob in regard to those who have blue collar jobs,  in a largely rural, blue collar or poorer state, doesn't surprise me either.  As one letter writer to the Portland Press Herald noted, instead of actually working for a living, all he's done is read scripts.   

I read he originally grew up in Bangor, the second largest city in Maine and that he said he had an inferiority complex about being from Maine - as so many of Maine's native born snobs do.  Elsewhere  I recently recommended the book "The Fire Balloon" by my favorite Maine author Ruth Moore for its depiction of a kid like that,  the son of a fisherman who sucked up to the rich summer people figuring they'd befriend him and he'd step up with them only to find out that to them he would always be white trash.   I don't know if that's how Green got on but he worked for the second worst* of the Maine TV stations in the pocket of Republicans for a half a century so, yeah, that figures. 

There is one thing about Troy Jackson's career that might tell you how he's likely to be as a Senator, he supported Bernie Sanders until Hillary Clinton clinched the nomination in 2016.    While he was a member of the Democratic National Committee, as I recall.   He's not likely to Fetterman out.  I'm told he's pretty shrewd, which is probably why he was made president of the Maine Senate, so he might surprise the snobs.   I'm hoping he does.    I'm hoping he's ready to face the snobs in the Senate, which he will face as well as the centrists of the Democratic establishment.   He should understand that, as in Maine, the media is not going to be his friend.   If I were him, I'd avoid the Sunday Lie Shows and the microphone and camera to put in hard work.   And to always, always make sure his staff never forgets who put him in office.   Susan Collins did that and even the huge benefit of Maine's lyin' curtain Republican media couldn't pull it off for her this time. 

* The Sinclair owned channel 13 is worse.  

There Is Something Enormously Satisfying To Me

in that it was deeply rural, fifth generation logger, graduate of the University of Maine at Fort Kent, Troy Jackson who finally finished the biggest phony in Maine history,  Susan "concerned" "can be depended on to do the right thing but only when it doesn't matter"  "100% Maine electronic media supported" Collins.   I loathed her fellow Queen of Maine, Olympia Snowe but Collins is far worse than she was. 

Yesterday as he was giving me a ride to the polls, my brother said, "Now Susan Collins can find out how much money she'll make as a lobbyist."   It's probably too much to ask for but I wish Democrats would destroy the lobbying industry,  requiring all petitioning of Congress to be by individual PEOPLE only without any kind of gratuities ever being accepted on pain of imprisonment AND INCLUDING THE CROOKED COURTS IN THAT, TOO. 

I wish Troy Jackson had the rhetorical skills of Graham Platner,* if he did he would be a star.   But maybe he has skills to become one without a microphone stuck in his face.    He does have some real legislative experience having been in both houses of the Maine legislature with a very interesting history of effectiveness in office and in opposing Maine's Trump before Trump, Paul LePage.   LePage, as I write this has a chance of going to the House - the Second district contains Maine's farthest North deep south in culture - that Troy Jackson won election and reelection from that same region shows he has some real political skills.   

If LePage does go to the House, he will more than make up for the insane Republican-fascists who lost yesterday.  I can't claim he's as stupid as Boebert but he is fully as willing to lie and say the stupidest things as she is.   Charles Piece will have fun, he's the one who called him a human bowling jacket.   I can tell you one thing, after the Maine chain store Mardens owners supported him when he first ran for governor,  I never set foot in one of their stores again and I have not gone back.

One of the best things about the election being over, I won't hear the flood of alternately lying and cloying Susan Collins ads nor those lying for yet another Sununu in New Hampshire.   I've waited out two generations of that putrid family in New Hampshire,  if this is the last one to run, I don't know, but I'm hoping it is.  Though if Congress did put through that ban on lobbyists,  a lot of them would be out of jobs. 

Hannah Pingree, the daughter of Chellie Pingree, the House Member from my district, actually has  built a more credible record of political results than her mother.   My former legislator who was there while she was the Speaker said she's one to watch out for in the future.   I am hoping that she will prove to be the best governor since the last really good one we had,  Ken Curtis a half a century ago.  Since then it's been some of the worst Republicans in the states history the Independent rather conservative Angus King and some rather timid centrist Democrats, one of whom the Democrats in the legislature used to bemoan the lack of a Democrat as governor. 

Speaking of centrist Democrats,  I hope and pray that their stranglehold on the party is breaking if not broken.   They aren't the ones who won this election, if their choices had won more of the nominations I'm willing to bet the Republicans would have pulled it off.   I know that Janet Mills would probably have had a chance against Susan Collins but, then, so did the other pretty good candidates who ran against her in the past.  You need more than centrist competence to win an election, you have to have candidates who the majority have a reason to believe will fight for them with all they've got.   Janet Mills was a good governor for my state in a time of Trump,  she was actually a rather bad governor, not least of which because she was too much of a lawyer.   I won't forgive her for vetoing the ban on data centers that passed the legislature, I hope that Governor Pingree will sign one into law at the earliest possible date. 

The 18th century habit of waiting months for those elected to replace the losers in the Federal Government is something we need to get rid of.   Even those from Alaska and Hawaii can get there faster than those from New Hampshire and Georgia by slow mule, fording rivers and crossing mountains.    Our 18th century Constitution is a greater danger to the American People than Iran or Iraq or even Saudi Arabia (the home of those who funded 9-11 and cheer led Trumps Iran war).   Along with the Marbury power usurping Supreme Court, it has killed and oppressed more Americans than any foreign nation.  It won't happen in my lifetime but if no one makes the criticism of it that is the only way that it's truly awful elements erected by it will be overturned.  Without that criticism being made,  that will never be done.   I will be continuing to break that taboo, one of the things that led to me adopting the name for this blog, along with my apostasy from the old, ineffective and dead new left and all of the ideological clap trap of my generation.  

As I braced myself for bad news in the election, what I always do because of how American elections have gone since 1968,  I reminded myself that no matter who occupies office in Washington that without change to the basic form of government, no real reform is going to be secured and stand in law, the Supreme Court will make sure of that.   For us to get an honest and good government will take drastic changes to the Constitution.   In that the Roberts Court Trump v USA decision installing their unconstitutional and putrid unitary executive wet dream into law,  they might have made that kind of drastic change impossible to avoid.   I hope it won't take a civil war bad enough for them to abolish the present form of the Supreme Court and nullify, once and for all, it's unique and self-invented Marbury power to nullify duly adopted laws of the ELECTED CONGRESS.   I will be going back to that topic soon. I can promise you that. 

* Just as I wish that Graham Platner had never gotten a tattoo or had a bad history with Women.   I don't know how he'd have done in the Senate,  I am quite sure he would not have been another Fetterman, as many feared, but he doesn't have the history in government that Troy Jackson has.   

I am glad I won't have to hear the Susan Collins ads calling Jackson a "creep" because his partner, the mother of their children is his second cousin.   As is legal in every state and which, if it were a disability to holding office, would probably have thinned out many a state's congressional delegation.    I've never heard of a history adultery for Jackson and his partner as we've discovered Susan "homewrecker" Collins has.  Susan was digging deep into the dirt this year, her ad campaign might be the dirtiest on record here. 

Went To Vote

 no idea what it means but I have never, ever in more than a half a century of voting, ever seen a busier voting day in an off-year election.   It might have been busier than any presidential election I recall.   

I was looking at those of us standing in line and I thought, you can't really tell how someone is voting by how they look, wondering if people saw me as an old, white-haired guy with glasses and figured me for a Republican-fascist. 

Then a young person walked up wearing an "Eat The Rich" shirt and I figured that was someone I was fairly confident in thinking wasn't a Republican voter.  

Maybe it was an omen.

How Much Do We Owe The White Supremacists, The Billionaires And Millionaires Who Want Us To Live Under Their Oppression?

I SAID YESTERDAY that even those too stupid or immoral to value egalitarian democracy have a right to live under it.  Enjoying, if even not realizing it, the benefits of the common good.  

That doesn't mean they have a right to vote us out of equality or the real democracy that is absolutely founded on equality or it will devolve into something far worse than real egalitarian democracy.   Their desires are not something they have a right to impose on the targets of their hatred, their oppression, their greed, though under our system, they were given that right by the framers under the slavery enabling and other anti-democratic features of it.    

They have a right to the benefits of egalitarian democracy but have no right to deprive those of us who want that of it.  Not if we are a minority as, indeed, has been the situation in many states and, I'd bet, in all states at some time.  Imposing bad government on us can't constitute a "right."  Not even if they can sucker a majority of morally corrupted idiots into voting against their own interests through the American "free press."  That last sentence is an apt description of how our deputed democracy works in most election cycles since 1965.  

It is a hard fact of representative democracy that not everyone who is governed by the government that results from even an honest vote in which voting by adults is universal and uninhibited is going to favor the resulting government.   

We all, to one extent or another, are governed by representatives and officials who do things we are not going to like.   We can't keep resegregating into locations in which only those of like mind will be governed by a government of their liking with every election cycle.   Though the American system of the electoral college takes that unfortunate and hard fact of representative government and makes it far, far worse.*   An evil exacerbated enormously by the increasing power put into the presidency - often against the explicit letter of the Constitution - and entirely more so by the Roberts Court imposition of the unitary executive form of fascist rule. 

I asked how we are going to realistically and effectively deal with the dangerously large minority of American voters who are either through disability or the media induced disability perennially stupid.   And, even worse, those who are selfish, racist, sexist, etc. who never will favor equality and, so legitimate democracy. 

And failing some way to keep the forces that make them stupid and encourage moral corruption from succeeding, the media, entertainment, the "right to lie" how do we get AND SECURE good government, legitimate government?  

I think just as there is no real right involved in the Court invented "right to lie" because you have no right to do what is wrong,  I don't think that even a popularly elected government that does evil can be a legitimate government.   

The South African apartheid government, the Israeli apartheid government, the white supremacist governments of many American states all have the imitation of democracy as what decides who governs.   The Israeli government is an especially interesting case because Palestinian Israelis have a vote, though they are, by law and Supreme Court decision, never to actually have the chance to really govern.  

The pose, the pantomime of democracy without equality is as old as the place that invented the idea of democracy,  Athens.  It was far more like those modern apartheid governments than anything anyone of good will would call a democracy now.  Slaves, non-native Athenian men, women, had no say in government.  And the instability that is guaranteed with a non-egalitarian "democracy" was characteristic of their "democracy."     

Though I doubt it will be done, it's extremely desirable for us to come up with a different word for the idea of egalitarian democracy if for nothing else than that the word is used to name everything from apartheid governments to governments such as that of North Korea and other anti-democratic, autocratic, hellholes. 

I can't pretend anymore that the mere pantomime of democracy in an age of idiocracy can produce legitimate government.  Even as I can't pretend that anything other than egalitarian democracy can produce a government with wide enough support to be honestly considered legitimate.   If I have doubts about democracy of that sort, I know any non-democratic government, one by any elite, even one purported to be of good will, will quickly devolve into at least as bad if not worse. 

Still, I don't see any reason to pretend to owe government which is a product of the worst in People any kind of right to rule over and abolish the common good. 

THE CONSEQUENCES OF GOVERNMENT, EVEN "DEMOCRATIC" GOVERNMENT IS WHAT, IN THE END, DETERMINES THE MORAL LEGITIMACY OF IT.  A "vote" doesn't change that. 

I don't have much of an idea of how to deal with the terrible reality we have gotten into under the libertarian notion of freedom - one of those products of modernism as discussed below - and the fact that we have a right to egalitarian democracy.    The "freedom of the press" as defined after the Sullivan Decision and a number of porn-permitting rulings has corrupted the very foundation of legitimate governance,  The People.   That is why so many of them were duped into believing the fascist "reality TV" fake CEO, Trump, would be a good president.   That is why an earlier though less bad Hollywood B actor, Reagan was president for eight years.   It was all through an appeal to racism, selfishness, hatred of the least among us, people elsewhere, all brought to us by the freedom given to lie and spread hate. 

We will either give up much if not all of that failed, disaster promoting notion that we are free to do and encourage what's wrong AND DEADLY TO EQUALITY AND DEMOCRACY, or we will live under the results of the freedom to lie and hate.   And we are under no moral obligation to do that. 

* The fascist, eye-lined, Thiel meat-puppet J. D. Vance squealed, in that college freshman way, that rank choice voting was, "too haaaarrrrrrd!"   Which is a lie.  Maine is a state with an inadequate educational system (which state isn't, these days) but we've caught on to it quite well and it works very well to keep the last choice of a majority of Maine voters from winning the election.   That was a result of probably the worst governor in Maine's history, Paul LePage being governor here for eight years even as the large majority of Mainers hated him.  That would get me into the folly of "third parties" which is also a part of what got us LePage. 

All elections should be structured to avoid the last choice of the majority winning an election, but, then, all elections should be done without the media injecting lies and the encouragement of selfishness, bigotry and ignorance as a feature of "democratic government."  

That question in the title is a real one.   It's one the "process liberals" the ACLU types, the lawyers, etc. would seem to say we owe them the right to destroy lives and democracy, itself.  To which I say they can go soak their fat heads. 

Feudalism Never Existed: A 19th‑Century Invention Projected Backwards — A Historian Explains

THIS CAME UP IN MY YOUTUBE FEED yesterday.   I almost didn't listen to it but the frost killed the rest of my garden last weekend so I have time I didn't have before. 

Robert Lynch has taught history at a number of legitimate British and Irish universities,  so he's not just some internet phony.  Looking at his other videos, he's someone who really digs deeper into the common received lore that plagues history, especially "history" aimed at the non-specialist.   

I especially liked how, if his demonstration that the entire notion of medieval "feudalism" is a fake construction which never existed is accurate,   the legitimacy of those systems which were invented with it as one of their foundations, modernism, Marxism, etc. are seriously if not fatally flawed.   I think that has been demonstrated by the histories of modernism, Marxism, etc. because we now have something their inventors didn't have to work with, a long enough history of their own under use to test those ideological framings of what purports to be reality. 

Marxism in practice has certainly failed the test of history, even the Communists don't want Marxism.  No more than our Republicans want a republic anymore.   I've noted the statement of Marilynne Robinson about modernism, that it is a failed project, as well.   

Lynch notes that the likes of Montesquieu and Voltaire invented the violent, irrational mythological view of that very long period called the "medieval period" and also invented 17th, 18th and 19th century anachronisms like "feudalism" to characterize and mischaracterize an extremely long and extremely complex number of years, decades and centuries - far too complex for such pseudo-sciency summation* - in order to promote the supposed rationality and, well, enlightenment that they wanted the world to adopt.  

We are living in days when it is a very possible outcome of the election today that Trump will, at Israel's insistence,  set off a nuclear weapon over Iran.   And if that happens, Putin will feel free to use them in Ukraine (after the West talked the Ukraine government into nuclear disarmament,  it wouldn't make that mistake a second time) and that is only emblematic of the lie that modernism, the "enlightenment" has brought us to a more rational and less violent and arbitrary world.   Modernism and all its various associated ideologies, which include all of the Marxisms, fascism, Nazism,  and what could prove to end in as bad a way, liberal democracy especially the American type of that, has been as if not more oppressive, murderous, violent and characterized by war as that 17-21st century cartoon of "feudalism" claimed it was.   If America drops a nuke for the third time, that has definitively discredited our system of government with a strong presidency.  I think the election of Trump already has and the world has woken up to that reality.  The presidential system is one of the most dangerous of the schemes of government under the ideology of modernism.  Violent, irrational, lawless, bigoted, ignorant, . . .  under the most moderny of modern times brought to us by the framers and the U.S. Supreme Court and "free speech-press" absolutism, a very moderny notion. 

Here, you can hear what he has to say about where this started. 

* You take any history of fifteen hundred years or so of a very large area of land and condense it in the inverted telescope of history that pretends to characterize something so vast and it's going to look about the same.  I'd say you can take the seven hundred years of modernism or the three hundred or so years of the "enlightenment" and condense it with the most exciting bits all that is presented and the "enlightenment" has been a horrific, destructive, violent, irrational bloodbath. 

Historians who pretend they are doing history are as pseudo-scientific as those in the so-called social sciences.   The modern person's notion of what I just said would be that I just reduced the practice of history to a minor role, beneath science, but that's not what I think.  History, honestly and carefully done, is as legitimate a way of knowing reality as the real sciences are.  In fact, I think it is one of the most helpful practices for the understanding of reality that is too big, too varied, too complex  and too reliant on things like human minds which are not honestly or adequately treatable by science.  Math, physics, chemistry are not going to teach us anything about how humans can avoid those catastrophes that recur in human history, history can give us some helpful information to do that. 

History can come up with more absolute knowledge about human culture, politics, law, etc. than just about any science.  There is no room for rational doubt about many of the documented facts of history.  But that becomes problematic when assertions are made that other "facts" which may not be facts at all are presented as if they are the same kind of thing.  

That is one of the worst practices of history as taught in schools and, far, far worse, the sources of most Peoples' idea of history today, show biz, popular novels, "historical novels."    I've noted how bizarre the idea of "science fiction" is but, since so many readers and watchers  are apt to mistake the fiction for history, "historical fiction" is as bizarre and perhaps as dangerous a concept.  It is especially dangerous when such pseudo-history is made for ideological motives, as, indeed, much purported history is.   I didn't say that history is a perfect lens with which to examine its subject matter.  Like all of human culture, human ideas, the product of human minds, it is a risky thing that can only honestly be undertaken if honesty and a determination to tell the truth override that.   But that will get me into the topic of what's wrong with academia and professional journals which is a bigger topic. 

Even Those Too Stupid And Self-Centered To Value It Have A Right To Egalitarian-Democratic-LEGITIMATE Government

And Even If They Didn't The Rest Of Us DO

WHEN HITLER REPEATED the insult that that previous murderous military despot, Napoleon made against the English, calling them a "nation of shop keepers" he minimized their willingness to overlook their own, immediate material comfort and financial sense of security for something larger.   His something larger was his psychotic biological-murderous Aryanism and his wars of conquest and supremacy.   

He figured the Brits were sitting ducks because of their decadent materialism, though his own was OK, he thought.   The irony was that Napoleon was likely influenced by what Adam Smith said about the English as a nation of shop keepers and their complete willingness to send soldiers and sailors (mostly of the underclass but with aristocratic officers) to do something like Hitler had plans of doing.*  Like what America's ruling class has done. 

But there are other larger things than that, far larger than Hitler could hold with.   The common welfare, is one of those.   Of course you know that I would hold that equality and democracy are high on that list, as well as the legitimate government that is a product of democracy based on equality.   

That was what I though of when I caught this passage in Reese Water's post yesterday

Yes, of all voters. Now, mind you, we have had conversations here where we've addressed farmers, we've addressed truckers, we've addressed soldiers, we've addressed a great number of constituencies, and their opposition to this administration specifically along economic grounds.   And the subtext of that being the rest of it was fine though. You know the the rest of it was fine.   They even had threats to democracy and corruption on the list.

I have no doubt that a very large percentage of Americans, certainly  those who vote Republican, who have no problem with the destruction of democracy and  its replacement with corruption as long as they have that material comfort and financial sense of security.   The kind who got suckered into voting for Trump using the price of eggs in 2024 as an excuse.   I would say that that is endemic in at least the percentage of the American voters who vote Republican or may vote Republican depending on which way their sense of financial security is.  

Reese Waters, of course, has made the obvious point for Republican voters that it's only when Republican-fascist violence, murder, oppression and terror touches theirs and in the hardest cases waiting till that touches THEM, that they have second thoughts about it.   Much of his and many others' content focuses on those who were downright enthusiastic cheerleaders for that being meted out to Black People, other People of Color, Latinos, Haitians, etc.  who have that FAFO only when it touches their lives.   But that often leaves out white people whose lives are never touched in that way but who whine like a rusty hinge when their money is put at risk by the billionaire-millionaire servicing party THEY VOTED TO PUT IN OFFICE.  

Yesterday I had a discussion with a member of my family about the very real and dangerous problem of our permanent stupid class - it started by my bringing up what John Cleese said about a Trumpzi woman who, when confronted with what Trump said to Billy Bush about grabbing women by their genitals said,  "Well, he'd never have said it if he knew he was being recorded," as if that made it better.  Cleese is the one who pointed out how truly stupid the core of Trump's voters are AND THAT IS TRUE FOR THE CORE OF THE REPUBLICAN VOTING AMERICAN PEOPLE.   

And make no mistake about it there are several huge problems for democracy, the perennially stupid (many of whom are stupid voluntarily),  Trumps' "low information voters,   those led to that by media.   To cast a beneficial vote, you have to know enough of reality to make the right choice.   

And then the real hard cases,  those who are selfish, mean, hateful and bigoted.  THOSE ARE THE REAL AND MORE DANGEROUS PROBLEM FOR AMERICAN DEMOCRACY.  

I don't think that is something that we will find American democracy can continue to leave unaddressed,  to find ways to prevent them from destroying the democracy the rest of those who are People of good will have a right to.    

I said that one way to address it would be to allow those libeled and slandered by lies and hate talk media to sue their slanderers and the platforms they are carried by UNTIL THE COST MAKES THEM STOP CORRUPTING THE VULNERABLE OR RUINS THEIR ABILITY TO KEEP ON DOING IT.   Overturning the large swaths of such corrupting "First Amendment" Supreme Court rulings that have so empowered lies and the corruption of the susceptible and vulnerable is not going to prove to be optional.    

I don't think on the basis of the history of electoral governance in the United States, especially the white supremacy strongholds, that that matter can be allowed to continue as it has.   Not unless you want to see the thing break up and/or civil wars, insurrections and terrorism all into the future. 

The libertarian notions of "free press" and free speech absolutism have definitively failed the test of time, that is unless oligarchic fascism is the goal of it.  Because such has been the result of that notion of "civil liberties."  And I do think that for a large number of the "civil libertarians" they're at least OK with oligarchic fascism because they are oligarchic snobs to their most central core. 

I don't favor an intelligence test to vote, a literacy test (I doubt most Americans much younger than 50 would pass a real one) or any kind of automatic restriction on voting - though if it proves impossible to protect egalitarian democracy any other way, I wouldn't automatically reject that idea, it's just that it's so prone to abuse by the fascists as they have used such tests in the past.   I do agree with Benjamin Franklin that a government of the wisest would be a very foolish thing because it's impossible to determine who is wisest and even more problematic for democracy is selfishness, snobbery, the existence of grotesque wealth inequality .  A lot of the best and brightest have proven to be idiots and thugs.   Especially the lawyers and media whores. 

I think its a certainty that the egalitarian democracy can be destroyed and thwarted by an appeal to the worst in human nature.  In fact I think that is, basically, what is destroying ours.  What do you think the monarchies, dictators, oligarchies, etc. that democracy rose in opposition to were founded on?   But our idiotic Constitution and, especially "Bill of Rights" does nothing to address those facts.  You could expect nothing more from the lawyers, slavers, merchants, bankers and shop keepers who framed it,  their fortunes, like all great fortunes, are founded on doing evil.   Those are founded on the inequality which is inimical to real democracy and legitimate governance.  

Our media, especially our entertainment, panders to the worst in us.  It does nothing to shame us out of the worst in us, it doesn't do anything to support the moral basis of democracy.  It is far more likely to take a cynical pose in opposition to that.   

It's not only the stupidest among us whose attitudes and ideas are molded by entertainment media, it was one of the greatest shocks of my first years online to find that many a real, science PhD's notions of history, biography, etc. were formed by movies and TV shows which they believed were true to life.   Hollywood and Broadway and popular lit are as much a problem for American democracy as being shopkeepers may have been for the English.   And those are a bigger problem for the English now, as well.   With movies, radio, TV and the internet, those have changed human culture so basically that any 18th century notions of how we can have democracy are not only useless but they are an inhibition to even noticing the problem.    

They've made us fatally stupid as a People.   And fixing that that isn't something you can just leave to lassiez-faire - the idea that laws of nature were going to ensure the right result is about the stupidest idea still current among us, one of the central superstitions of modernism and the "enlightenment."  

* I don't know if Napoleon was making a reference to Adam Smith who used the phrase, but my guess was he knew this passage: 

“To found a great empire for the sole purpose of raising up a people of customers, may at first sight, appear a project fit only for a nation of shopkeepers. It is, however, a project altogether unfit for a nation of shopkeepers, but extremely fit for a nation whose government is influenced by shopkeepers. ”

Being opposed to the founding of empires, period, I don't think Adam Smith's use of the term makes it any better than Hitler's repeating of it.   I would like to know the death toll that the British Empire took in comparison to that of Napoleon or Hitler or the US, for that matter.  

Here's Reese Waters complete post: