Billionaire Ivanka's Morocco Get Away Just Cost You More Than $100,000

 

Remember this the next time you can't afford your groceries or gas.  

It's Been Too Long

since I posted a link to Mad Kane's political limerick blog.  

A fast-talking, motormouth shill
For Trump has been picked on the Hill . . . 

follow the link to read the rest. 

I'll be out till this evening, EST 

I'm Asked What I Think I Think Of This Map Published By NBC

I think a number of things

First, how much I detest the term "herd" being applied to human populations.   I don't even like the word being applied to wild populations of animals and barely like it for farm animals.  You might be able to tell why from the definitions of it from my favorite dictionary, Merriam Websters:

1 a : a typically large group of animals of one kind kept together under human control

a herd of cattle
b : a congregation of gregarious wild animals
herds of antelopes
2 a (1) : a group of people usually having a common bond
a herd of tourists
(2) : a large assemblage of like things
herds of cars
b : the undistinguished masses : CROWD
… isolate the individual prophets from the herd …
—Norman Cousins
refused to follow the herd [=do what other people do]

I am opposed to considering People in the same terms as  farmers and ranchers, agronomists, etc.  consider the animals they keep to exploit and kill for profit.   I'll go far into that and the rest of the negative implications of considering People in terms of economic utility and as objects for exploitation and use and disposal if you want me to.

I don't think that's unrelated from the appalling information put so badly by the headline, the vast areas of the United States in which our putridly for-profit and "drop dead if you can't afford it" medical system has left so many Americans in terms of protecting them from preventable illness, disability and death.  I think it's all part of the same attitude that sees human beings in terms of economic utility to the rich and so powerful and the college-credentialed and so enculturated into the same moral depravity - not to mention the part the theory of natural selection plays in that, though just for now since I've got a busy day ahead of me. 

You can't separate that from the Nazi genocides, other active genocides and the equally homicidal cullings of the human population through thinking of us in those terms such as the economists specializing in "economic Darwinism"  who  informed Trump's Covid-19 policy that led to, some estimate, a million Americans dying unnecessary through the putrid concept of "herd immunity."  The same thing that, when Little Bobby Kennedy called for using the same idea to deal with bird flu, which experts in that area said would lead to disaster, though you can see why it would appeal to an affluent white boy lawyer from a rich family who was a complete asshole.   It wouldn't cost him and his buddies anything to just let "nature" take its course.   And I'm sure the legal scholars would be OK with it, in so far as "the law" went.   They generally rig things to ensure "the law" not having to take responsibility for its consequences. 

I'm kind of shocked how much of New England falls behind, though I'm not surprised by many of the other areas.  Most shocking to me is Western Massachusetts where health insurance for all is mandated and Vermont where they had universal coverage for children.   Maybe letting the for-profit medical system work its will is a proven danger to us even under such insurance coverage.   I can't tell from the map but I think the yellow colored part of Maine are in the sparsely populated Somerset, Piscataquis and part of Aroostook counties.  Which doesn't surprise me.  To be frank,  I'm surprised it isn't bigger.   

I think the large areas of yellow are a result of having medical care being so hard to access over such huge parts of the country, something that Trump and Little Bobby and the rest of their criminal gang are exacerbating by policies that lead to thing like rural hospitals closing, along with the fascists in Congress, many of whom "serve" those areas.   Our politics and law are a disaster FOR US.   That's a more helpful idea than snarking over how stupid people who live in those places are.  I'll bet a majority of them would like for them and theirs and their neighbors to have full coverage, and some of them are smart enough to realize that them not being protected is dangerous to themselves, as well. 

That answer your question?  

As Satisfying As Thomas Massie's Impeachment Filing Is

there is no prospect of one succeeding in this remaining Congress and one which has a chance will have to wait for he incoming Congress and, even then, unless enough Republicans vote for it, it will have no lasting effect.    The outrage at Democrats for not carrying it off or making the futile gesture in that direction is misplaced.  Look at the history of impeachment and successful removal of the many, many criminal and otherwise impeachable members of a presidential cabinet.  0-2.

Blaming Democrats for the absurdly high bar to conviction set by the amateurs in the original Constitutional convention is ridiculous and ineffective.   Blaming them for the immunities given to such criminal members of the executive from the Supreme and other courts and the so-called Department of "jusice" is equally absurd. 

It's for the new congress to do in January, which they should do as soon as possible but with hearings that expose the crimes, lies, cover-ups and corruptions and they shouldn't abide by the rules of the so-called Department of "justice,"  and perhaps not even those imposed on the Congress by the Supreme Court if that inhibits their Constitutionally mandated oversight of the executive.   Letting Trump set the rules is to enable a criminal conspiracy, one which the majority on the Roberts Court is a party to. 

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Really.  The Republicans in the House really want another mid-western wrestling coach with ties to a sex scandal and cover up of it as their party's leader in the House.   I don't think Democrats in Congress or out of it should let the opportunity pass, not for a minute, to remind People of the sex abuse cover up that Jim Jordan has been named in and which has been covered up on his and others' behalf just as the Epstein scandal has been covered up. 

The media should not be allowed to help in continuing to cover that up on behalf of him or his party, the party of the media's owners.   They will cover it up, just as they have covered up for so many for so long.  

---------------------------

I don't know if it's possible to get the Democratic leadership of the Senate and House changed from the ineffective, bordering on clueless Schumer and Jeffries.   Some are saying that it might be possible in the Senate but not the House.    If that's true, I'd take what we can get in ditching Schumer and put Jeffries on notice to cut the bullshit and maybe stop speaking in public about things that will only make things worse.   His ineffectiveness in communicating opposition to the Trump regime and the Republican-fascism is is supported by is one of his biggest problems.   As is him being beholden to the corrupt money system that the Court has kept us from ending.   I've said enough about the down-side of having cowardly lawyers as leadership, though there are lawyers who are not as cowardly or who figure that there's nothing that can be done. 

It's a mistake having New York City guys in those positions because they don't seem to get how the country works.  Look at Schumer's withholding funding for candidates who had a real chance to take seats in Florida because Angie Nixon opposed the blank check to Israel Schumer said was his job to get as Democratic leader, and, I've read he also let a chance at getting a Democratic Senator from Louisiana.    I have to ask how likely it is that New York City guys don't get having a real 50 state strategy.  New Yorkers have such a tendency to be pretty clueless outside of the most over-rated urban area in North America.  They tend to see the rest of the country as terra incognita.  I want to have Democratic leaders from other places, not just big cities.  

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One of the things that I'd love to see is a revival of the anti-corruption LAWS that were passed after Watergate with an addition that those laws will not be nullified as the Court did in Buckley v Valeo but will be the law of the land because the experience of our ever more corrupt and dangerous politics since them prove that the Court was both wrong and stupid in declaring that billionaires and millionaires corrupting money equaled "speech" and was protected by the stupidly written First Amendment.   But I can't see a cowardly lawyer ever being bold enough to do that.  Make the Supreme Court reauthorize corruption in our politics and don't be polite about calling that out and pointing out how they are trying to give the billionaires and millionaires and the fascist party that they support control over our politics.   Which has been the effect of that and its subsequent "free speech" Supreme Court rulings as supported by the fucking lawyers of the ACLU and the media that profits mightily from that corruption in ad money and otherwise.  

We take back and clean up our politics or we will allow another Trump, another Bush II, . . . another Nixon which is one of the things the original clean elections laws were put in place to prevent.  Only a true idiot would do the things that Nixon and his campaign were allowed to do and expect a better outcome than we had and our lawyers and judges and "justices" are just such idiots OR THEY LIKE THE CORRUPTION WE GOT FROM THAT LAWYERLY CONCEPTION OF "FREE SPEECH."

The only reason "freedom of speech" had any status more elevated than childish notions of libertarianism was that it was supposed to be essential to have good government.   And the lawyers and courts were too stupid to figure that out.   I think that's related to the status that lies get in that profession and the ideology of it.  Also that they make their money in the most profitable parts of that profession from getting rich people what they want.   Some lawyers got past that, briefly, to pass that clean election legislation, but they were all in the Congress,  some of them were Republicans back then, but, then, they remembered WWII and the fascists who brought it on. 

I've Been Trying To Remember When I First Knew Of And Disliked Susan Collins

 and it was years before she first got elected office.  I think it was back in the early 80s when she was working for the second worst Maine governor of my lifetime, Jock (Mr Olympia Snowe, now) McKernan so I've disliked and then detested Susan Collins for somewhat more than half my lifetime.  

During that time, in which the Maine media has lied and lied and lied and covered up and fluffed and  . . .  well, you get the idea, for her and a very large, a majority of Maine voters bought the lies and bullshit, I've been telling Mainers, including many Democrats that she was a total phony and as bad as the Republicans they hated, telling them that over and over again for decades.   I watched candidate after candidate lose to the liar and phony over and over again and heard the same lies and only gradually saw those I'd tried to convince of what she really was come to realize that.   

One of the most aggravating things I saw in that time was seeing Barack Obama pissing away the best hand a Democratic President had been given since LBJ in 1964, giving his excuse that he wanted anything he signed to be "bi-partisan," meaning he wanted Susan Collins and Olympia Snowe to vote for it in the Senate only to see him never seem to catch on that they weren't going to do that IF IT WAS SOMETHING THAT WOULD PASS AND BE ENORMOUSLY POPULAR WITH LARGE NUMBERS OF VOTERS.   

One of the reasons that the emergency bail out after Bush II's 2008 financial crash was far less of a success than it was came from that Harvard Law, mainstream media pipe dream of being called a "bi-partisan" president by the NYT and the cabloid and billinoaire owned media.   That wouldn't have happened anymore than Chuck and Hakeem are going to get Republicans to cooperate with anything Democrats have a chance of pleasing their voters with - both of those idiots have not learned the lesson of Obama pissing it away and the consequences of that.   

Worst of all, he and his putrid Chief of Staff, the odious Rahm Emmanuel,  and the somewhat feckless Harry Reid didn't fight for the strongest ACA possible FOR THE SAME REASON, that and the quisling Democratic Leadership Council types (a number of them recruited by Rahm) WHO OBAMA WOULDN'T SPEND POLITICAL CAPITAL ON TO PRESSURE IN EXACTLY THE WAY THAT LBJ HAD USED HIS MAJORITY TO GET STUFF DONE,  weakened the ACA to the extent that I wasn't particularly enthusiastic about it even though I knew it would be better than the status quo.   And not a little of that wasted opportunity was due to the lie that what I called The Queens of Maine, Oliympia and Susan, might join on to whatever passed.   

As it was, if Nancy Pelosi hadn't insisted that something get done, nothing would have.   The guys didn't have the stomach for the fight to get it. 

Anyway, I wanted to get that off my chest while I say that every single time I think of Susan Collins losing to Troy Jackson,  I'm even happier than you might imagine I am    Now, I want her investigated for that pay to play scandal that has been covered up,  I'd like to see her in prison if that or some other crime was committed by her, which wouldn't surprise me one bit. 

I'm surprised my face doesn't hurt from smiling. 

States Now Controlled By Democrats Should Adopt Rank Choice Voting

or at least that's my firm belief.    Looking at the unsettled Mississippi Senate race in which something I thought was impossible has happened, A BLACK MAN WHO IS A DEMOCRAT LEADING AT THIS STAGE OF THE COUNTING,  I have a feeling that if they hadn't done what 14 currently Republican-fascist controlled states have done and banned instead of adopted rank-choice voting,  the Republican-fascist may have won with the 2nd choice of voters.  Maybe or maybe not.   Ty Pickins says he ran as an independent in hopes of drawing votes from the Republican-fascist Cindy Hyde-Smith (a direct descendant of Mr Hyde).  I have no idea if that's true, I assume he knows his state far better than I do. 

Till this morning I had no idea how many states have adopted rank choice voting for federal and state elections, apparently three, Hawaii, Maine and Alaska.   They seem to be having a bit of a problem with Alaska's this year though Maine's went very smoothly (it takes a cycle or two to work the bugs out of how it's administered, perhaps) but I've heard nothing about problems in Hawaii's. 

I have no idea how the situation in the individual states would play out in rank-choice voting - except maybe they should all adopt voting by mail with a last day to post ballots a week or more ahead of the Constitutional voting day so they wouldn't have all the late arriving ballots, the real hang up in many these situations, whether or not they also have rank-choice voting.    Seeing how it worked in Washington State, I am a huge fan of voting by mail.  Though, given how Republicans have ratfucked the US Postal Service,* maybe screwing with voting mail should carry a lifetime prison sentence.   We should take the vote as if it was truly sacred instead of an annoyance. 

But I do know from experience that it's a far better way to avoid having the LAST CHOICE OF MOST VOTERS winning the election.  Republican-fascists don't like it for that reason.  It tends to mitigate, to an extent, the folly of allowing so-called and entirely make believe 3rd party and planned spoiler nominees distorting the election in favor of the fascists. 

States in which Democrats control the legislature and governorship should move to adopt better AND MORE DEMOCRATIC voting laws.   And then they should make sure that everyone has access to information about how elections work and that everyone in the state has voting ID in case the fascists take control again.   Considering that We The People are the rightful, first and last measure of the legitimacy of any government we spend next to nothing to secure the vote for everyone who can legitimately cast a vote   Which tells you something about how really and truly screwed up about our politics, our law, and ultimately, the Constitution of the United States which isn't explicit about the right to cast a vote and have that vote count towards determining who represents We The People.   

I want Democratically controlled states to also do something which would have a similar effect and adopt the compact among states to nullify the effects of that disgusting, blatantly anti-democratic feature of the Constitution the goddamned Electoral College.   Though as I said the other day, I expect that when the fascists bring the court case to nullify it the goddamned Supreme Court will nullify it because they figure it might mean there isn't another fascist like Donald Trump in the presidency and they won't get to install another one like the Rehnquist Court did in 2000 and that no other elections like the one in which Rutherford Hayes stabbed Black People and democracy in the back to make a corrupt deal with our indigenous fascists,  the white supremacists, to become president setting equality back by maybe two centuries by the the ripples of that and the goddamned Supreme Court enabling of that fades out. 

As I said and will keep repeating until I can't say it anymore, unless we abolish the Marbury power of the Supreme Court it will always be able to do what it has done since it was founded, abolish and nullify every means that the elected branches come up with to establish equality and democracy.   In addition to it being the most corrupt of the branches due to that, it is also the most anti-equality and anti-democracy.   To those who want to quibble with that,  Earl Warren has been dead a long time.  He has been for fifty-two years, and a lot of the stuff that he supported on the Court has been proven to be disastrously counter-productive if equality and democracy is the goal.   They're also not the wisest branch of the government despite what show-biz and PR claim about that.  

*  Re-federalizing and putting iron clad protections on the U.S. Postal Service should be a high priority when we get both a Democratic Congress and president, they should have drawn up the legislation to do that right now and if they haven't they should even if trying to pass it into law right now is not possible.  It shouldn't be that hard.  Why Biden didn't do more of that, I'll never know.  Obama did a lot to aid in the DeJoy ratfucking that Trump did through his appointment of his fellow Harvard grad,  Ron Bloom, who supported DeJoy for reasons that no one seems to have figured out.  It wasn't DeJoy's competence or honesty because those are also not in evidence.  Obama, a city guy, probably never gave much thought to how vitally important something as common as the postal service is to most Americans.  

It's time to end Nixon's almost six decade disaster of semi-privatization of the Constitutionally mandated postal service and for it to have a higher status than it does.  Reducing postal costs would be a very popular move to make.  Put a tax on the parcel services and billionaires to do it.  

I Want The Incoming Senate

 to reimpose a mandatory dress code requiring pants, a tie and coat for males so that Fetterman won't be able to look like a bridge troll on the Senate floor and maybe he'll quit and Pennsylvania will be able to get a full congressional delegation again.  

That jerk should have been required to retire along with McConnell, Grassley and others who can't or won't do the job. 

If They Don't Impeach And Convict Hegseth Impeachment Is A Totally Useless Constitutional Fraud

If you don't have time to listen to the entire video, go to the very last five or so minutes to see the section on Hegseth murdering the Iranian school girls and what the mother and one of the surviving children say and what John Oliver adds to that.   That alone shows that since the Republican-fascists in the Senate will never allow him to be convicted under the absurdly high bars for a completed impeachment,  impeachment as a protection from the worst criminals in office in our history is a total and complete fraud. 

A Brief Break From Politics Before Going Back To Them

I HAVE NO IDEA why Google and Youtube are flooding my feeds with videos and other things about teaching reading.   I can't think of anything I've searched for or written or posted that would lead to it.   But it is something I've thought about quite a bit over my lifetime.  

I've always been a good reader from the time I was a little kid starting school.   Which is kind of odd because I've always been a "poor" to indifferent speller and my handwriting has been illegible my entire life.  

That last one was the easiest to solve and the thing I think all children should be taught, ALWAYS HAND PRINT THINGS IN BLOCK CAPITAL LETTERS IF YOU CANNOT MAKE CURSIVE LEGIBLE.   Children in school who have trouble making cursive or even printing in a mix of upper and lower case legibly should be allowed to do that.  The very large number of us who have never been able to do that should have always been allowed to write things in block capitals and if they taught writing for comprehension instead of, well, I guess I have to call it "calligraphy" that would have always been the rule. 

In my lifetime I've had several jobs that required me to read the handwriting of a lot of People of many different levels of intelligence and wisdom and some of the most brilliant and wise People I've known had handwriting that was far worse than even mine.   It has nothing to do with intelligence or diligence.  My brilliant sister-in-law, who is a very respected scientist with a number of graduate degrees has about the worst handwriting I've ever seen in my experience.  

And some of the most modestly intellectually accomplished People of my experience have had beautiful cursive writing, though none of them reaching the legendary copper-plate level as once was typical of those taught by nuns in the past.  I have an example of that which is a thing of beauty, or would be if the corner of it wasn't rodent nibbled,  what appears to be a chain letter written in the late 19th century, in Canadian French recommending a novena to Saint Joseph, "which has never failed."  

Along with that, allowing students to do their math on lined paper instead of the unlined paper they always gave us, teaching students to set things up in an orderly way would probably be about as big a help in teaching arithmetic.  I don't hold with letting kids use calculators when there are old fashioned ways to do adding and long division and multiplication that are fast and work better than the ways they taught us in school (I would recommend the book How To Calculate Quickly by Henry Sticker).   You don't get any sense of how numbers work using a calculator. 

I've always thought the way they taught reading was bizarre, by using stories that had no information in them that contributed to an education, and which were generally rather boring.    They should have taught children to read using short non-fiction passages that contained information that was part of their other subject matter.   How much time to waste on make believe did they figure they had in school?    And they could have them write about the short things they read as a way of teaching writing.    If they taught them to read something with substantial content they would give them the skills to read stories and novels and make believe stuff if they wanted to.   

I wish more of my teachers had concentrated on the grammar and mechanics of writing instead of discussing the plots of stories and novels and the literary devices that I have never had the slightest use for in my life.    And neither do those with college-credentials for whom the explicit plot is as much of such stuff as they ever take in.  If you want to promote an idea or theme, using fiction to do that is about as stupid a way of doing that as exists.  And as hap-hazard a way of getting one across.  About the only worse ways to do that are through movies or operas. 

I've said before that one of the greatest contributions to my education was that we had two different pretty good encyclopedias in our house as well as a number of dictionaries and other reference books.  One of my siblings and I read the entire World Book encyclopedia when were were in grade school.  We weren't allowed to turn on the TV during the day.   I've been thinking of asking the local libraries around here if they have a set they're getting rid of to make a bid for one,  recapitulating in my senile years a useful thing I did in my juvenile years.  

Anyway, if you want my advice on such a thing.  Liberate kids from the tyranny of the penmanship fetish which has probably been more of a discouragement for kids than just about anything,  convincing them that they're stupid before they can discover otherwise.  That is along with standardized English spelling.   Which, by the way, is nothing like phonetic and never has been since the advent of printing when they imported Dutch printers who didn't know English to do the type setting in England.  Many of the worst absurdities in standard English spelling were put there by Dutch printers who didn't know the language.   That is those that didn't change when pronunciation did.  And a few put there by 18th century idiots of influence.   Ask me about that if you haven't read my rants about it. 

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