Death Wish

ANYONE ELSE GET THE FEELING that the Republican-fascists in Congress are hoping Trump is dead before they get back from the Republican-fascist called vacation they're all on?   I mean the latest one,  I've lost count how many of those there have been in this Congress. 

"What do you want to replace free speech with?" - A Response

"FREE SPEECH" IS ANOTHER PHRASE that has come to mean something it should never have meant.   As I pointed out it has come to mean a "right to lie."   It has also come to mean a right to swindle, a right to deceive, a right to con, a right to encourage the worst in us for political gain by the liars, the con men the swindlers, the haters and the greedy.  

Free speech in so far as it would be important enough to codify in a constitution should mean a right to tell the truth.   But that right also comes with responsibilities,  the first of those in a democracy which also applies to all rights,  you can only safely exercise that right to the extent you accept the right of others to tell the truth.   

Above all, it also comes with the serious responsibility to discern what is true, without that just meaning what you want to be true or what you will assert to be true without caring if it is really true.    It also does not mean what lawyers an judges and "justices" twist that into,  something between seeming plausibility to whatever someone they want to pretend to believe says.   That's why you can have the spectacle of the Roberts Court pretending to believe that John Sauer's lying  assertion of presidential immunity which includes a president having a right to commit murder - AS TRUMP WAS EFFECTIVELY GIVEN IN TRUMP V USA.  

I'll say that everything Trump II has done, from the worst such as  the murders of Latin American fishermen, the murders of Iranian school girls, and down to the merely sensibly and aesthetically appalling acts of demolishing the East Wing or painting the Reflecting Pool (which, by the way, should never have been installed, it was a really stupid idea because it wouldn't work in DC) or Trump's Nazi style arch to himself IS A DIRECT PRODUCT OF THE SIX REPUBLICAN-FASCISTS ON THE SUPREME COURT WHO ACHIEVED THEIR UNITARY EXECUTIVE.    If it hadn't been Trump doing it, it would have been the next Republican-fascist.   Imagine what Nixon,  Reagan, Bush I or Bush II would have done with such immunity from the law.   I dare say even a Biden or Obama would have probably given in to the temptation to use such power in ways that the Republican-fascists on the Court wouldn't like,  though, I'm absolutely certain,  that those thugs in black robes would have found some lawery-liarly way to make THAT different. 

Anyone who believes Trump isn't getting kickbacks from the contractors who are being hired to do everything from the demolition to turning the pool a putrid shade of aqua is too gullible to take seriously.   Though it's certain the courts will, in many cases, pretend to be that gullible.   Let's stipulate that watching the lawyers, judges and, worst of all, "justices" over the past twenty-five years has led to me truly and honestly hating that profession. 

When you magnify the "right to lie," the "right to spread hate,"  the "right to appeal to the worst in People"  the "right to con People,"  with the "right of the free press" (which is a legal myth giving "rights" to a corporate entity which cannot have rights, which adhere only to natural living beings) it makes everything under our idiot Constitution worse and the criminal regime of law, habit, norms and perverted scruples that have arisen out of that poisoned ground,  it does nothing but magnify the danger enormously. 

When you combine all of this in the line of rulings that flow from Sullivan v New York Times, the truly evil Buckley v Valeo (which made money = speech and so gave billionaires and millionaires millions and billions more of it than mere mortals have) and combine those with other such novelties such as in Citizens United,  the whole thing destroys equality and democracy.   

All of that is a creation of lawyers and judges and "justices" whose profession is based in lying for the maximum profit and benefit of whoever the lawyers, judges and, worst of all, "justices" want to profit and benefit.  And in a lot of cases, that means nothing more than those who are paying them.    And along the way,  they can get other pudding headed lawyers, judges and "justices" who mistake the norms and scruples of their dishonest profession as a substitute for morality, to pretend that they are wallowing in virtue.   AND THEY GET ON TALK SHOWS AND ON THE MEDIA THEY'VE FREED TO LIE AND PEDDLE THAT BULL SHIT TO THE STUPIDER MEMBERS OF THE LEFT who then are afraid to reign in the evils of lying, peddling hatred, conning people by appealing to the worst of them, etc.

There is no political or legal exposition of "rights" which is safely executed without there being overriding limits in morality and, in that first and foremost prerequisite for real democracy and legitimate government and law, equality.    The milieu of late 18th century "enlightenment" scientism and materialism (and atheism) - as was the real faith of most of the framers or they wouldn't have been slave holders and crooked financiers - was probably about the worst time in Western history to be framing such articles to be in a constitution.   The First Congress under the, by then, cynical slave-holder Madison did a really crap job of it.   They gave us minor and vague late 18th century poetry of the kind that harkened back to the minor poetry of earlier in the century.  It turns out to suck in reality. 

There, I said it. 

You Might Want To Watch This Ten Minute Documentary On The Fraud That TP Is Before Youtube Removes It

 Inside Turning Point's Ghost Chapters

It's An Irony of History

that the British Labour Party was started by the Christian socialist and lay preacher turned politician Keir Hardie and it's being destroyed under the government of the atheist and former "civil liberties" lawyer-liar Keir Starmer.    The common name is the irony,  I think the fact that it was someone who is a professional liar and atheist may, while not being a pattern is, at least, not all that surprising.  

If I had time I might go into the example of how, as Keir Hardie learned that the Liberal Party he had joined sought to use the working People to get their vote by betraying them collapsed and a new party of, by and for workers needed to replace them,  perhaps what is happening as the British Green Party seems to be, at least for now, rising as Starmer and his fellow crooks, thugs and traitors may have destroyed the Labour Party.    I think that original history of its formation has some important lessons for the Democratic Party here, especially what I see as the danger its lawyers pose for the kind of sweeping change we need.  And the current implosion of Labour in Britain is a practical example of something like that.  Lawyers, almost to a person, are trained to serve those with the most money,  I never knew anyone who went to law school who didn't have the goal of making a lot of money and those are the ones who they serve to get it.   That is so baked into the legal profession that its bias and corrupt intent form a kind of substitute for what we might consider "ethics,"  itself a concept I think is inferior to actual morality.   Most of those I've met who went to law school and decided to not practice law did so because they were disgusted with what the job consisted of in that regard.  

While I am entirely in favor of the government operating under egalitarian secularism,  mistaking secularism as any kind of an adequate substitute for revealed morality tends to lead to amorality and, in the fullness of time, immorality.    That's how the whited sepulchers in black robes sitting on the Supreme Court can do such evil under that kind of substitution, lying the entire time.   It's the kind of thing that they used to invent that moral atrocity as virtue "the right to lie."  It's how I first noticed the depravity of that concept hearing a far more moral lawyer using it as if it were not an apparent and perverted contradiction of morality. 

This is a response - I seem to be getting some new and especially angry hate mailers, not the usual ones.

Update:  You might want to listen to this interview with Paul Holden who has written an extensively documented revelation of the corruption of the billionaire-millionaire financed campaign to take over the Labour Party and turn it into the obscene atrocity it's become under Keir Starmer.   

This passage about how "antisemitism" under the kind of distortion that the IHRA got so many governments to turn int to law turned it into was used to target members of the Labour left MANY OF THEM JEWS, SOME OF THEM WHO LOST MANY FAMILY MEMBERS IN THE HOLOCAUST as being "antisemites"   Here's the second example that Paul Holden gives.  Here's my quick and dirty editing of the Youtube automated transcript:

I end the section on the HRC report because what I what I think is that is the way that antisemitism, the Labour Party was treated by all factions, but I think particularly by the Labor Party's rightwing was it produced all these incredibly toxic malignant outcomes. One of those toxic malignant outcomes was the number of Jewish people who are repeatedly almost systematically accused of anti-semitism in the Labour party which I think is outrageous. And the the the example that that I have in the book and it still sometimes it upsets me so much when I read this example is a woman by the name of Reva Joffy. Um and Reva Joffy lived in Keir Stamer's constituency, was part of the Labour party, knew Keir Starmer personally, uh went to branch meetings and CLP meetings and uh she's accused of anti-semitism in 2021 and she receives her accusation of antisemitism on her deathbed, literally on her deathbed. She's got a couple days left to live,  who's been suffering from like a a terminal illness and she was this you know very vivacious woman and she's basically talking about how she gets this letter accusing of antisemitism and the allegation against her accusing of anti-semitism is that she called Israel an apartheid  state.  but she has to answer on her deathbed the allegation she's antisemitic that's it.  But she has basically said that Israel is in apartheid state so it's one of the last things she does before she dies is that she writes this letter And she says, "What are you thinking? What are you thinking doing? What are you doing? Of course, I'm an anti-semite. This is a mad mad mad thing to send me." And this is one of the last things she has to do in her life. 

Now, I have the party files that show how that complaint was initiated. One of the complaintants in her case was a man by the name of David Goldstein. David Gorstein is not real.  David Gorstein is a madeup name. David Goldstein is the madeup name and identity of a man by the name of Ewan Phillips who's a spokesperson for labor against anti-semitism right now you  Ewan Phillips has been approached about this he's been asked and he said yes I've created this identity.  I never pretended to be Jewish while I was doing so,  although I think most people will see that name or a lot of people will read that name and say Goldstein sounds pretty Jewish so what you have is you have somebody who's made up the name David Goldstein to submit a complaint of anti-semitism against an elderly Jewish woman who said Israel is an apartheid state. That elderly Jewish woman on her deathbed is investigated of anti-semitism. One of the last things she ever writes is a letter to the Labor Party explaining why she's anti-semitic and then she dies.

And it gets even worse. It gets even worse because her son, who agreed to be interviewed for the book and and I I met him in person for the first time last night and was very emotional, was deeply deeply offended by the situation. And he he was so hurt by the fact that his mother was being accused of antisemitism and died under investigation for antisemitism that he wrote to the Labour Party and he said to the Labour Party repeatedly, "Please, she's dead. She's clearly not anti-semitic. Please close this case.  Please just tell me that at least internally you've resolved this. You've closed this. You've dealt with it somehow. I want to get some closure on this. And nobody has ever responded to him in the Labor Party. He wrote directly to Keir Starmer and Starmer didn't respond. Then he got friends in his constituency who knew Keir Starmer to write to Keir Starmer and Stamer diddn't respond. And those are the sort of malignant outcomes that come I think from the way in which antisemitism in the Labor Party was used and and abused. And I think and the reason I tell that story is because I think it speaks to the HRC example of them recklessly, you know, they they say this is very serious and then within half an hour they're undermining the seriousness of what they've said is serious by breaking all those rules and then this sort of thing happens.  I think it speaks

to like a like a an almost an inhumanity but also a just a total [lack?] of like ethical scruples about like a really fundamental key material issue that people do face antisemitism.  It undermines the fight against antisemitism so profoundly that I sometimes I'm just I'm just gobsmacked by it. I just I sometimes I don't know how to even interpret it and understand it.

You should listen to the entire thing, especially the other story of a Jewish member of the Labour left being similarly targeted and how the man behind the throne,  the putrid Morgan McSweeney used "antisemitism" largely manufacturing the "antisemitism" crisis in Labour during the leadership of Jeremey Corbyn,  then used the excuse of having to heal the wounds that McSweeney and Starmer and their moneybags created and publicized to support and cover up the crimes of the Israeli government and military.   It is certainly one of the most sordid and morally depraved political stories I know of under what is called "liberal democracy."    You can also listen to the journalist, Owen Jones, noting how his profession is as much a part of that corruption as could be possible. 

Pity That They Didn't Include This In The Protestant Canon Of The Bible It's So True And Apt

WATCHING THE DROOLING IDIOT who rules the United States and who our idiot Constitution keeps in office as he rushes us headlong into total disaster,  I thought of this passage from what I grew up with calling The Book of Wisdom, more widely known as Sirach, these days. 

5 Whoever loves gold won’t be declared just,
    and whoever pursues profits
    will be led astray by them.
6 Many have been ruined because of gold,
    and their destruction has met them head-on.
7 It’s a stumbling block for those
who are possessed by it,
    and it will take
    every senseless person captive.

 Sirach 31:5-7  Common English Bible

It's not a perfect work but it's got its moments.   This is one of those. 

The Fine Congressman Barney Frank Has Died

BARNEY FRANK IS SOMEONE I AGREED WITH on many of the most important issues of the day and I also, generally agreed with him on the strategy of doing what was possible, making progress when that was possible without getting too far out ahead of where the majority of voters seemed to be.   "Seemed" does a lot of work in that formulation because I know I'm not that good at knowing what is really possible on many issues and,  I dare say, as good as he was Barney Frank wasn't infallible in discerning that, either.   Despite my regret at the successful use of marriage equality for Lesbians and Gay men in 2004 by Repubilcan-fascists to thwart Democrats taking the House until 2006 and possibly toppling the criminal regime of Bush II,  I was rather stunned at how fast that issue moved forward despite everything.   I still think we'd be far, far ahead if Democrats had won the elections that year, we wouldn't have the fascist Supreme Court who are always willing to send us back to what should now be called John (as in "Roberts") Crow,  the state nationalizing Womens' bodies, turning a Republican-fascist criminal, insurrectionist and fascist into an immune monarch and the rest of it.   If marriage equality had waited two years and it had not led to the fascists winning that election, all of those groups, including LGBTQ+ People would be far better off. 

Frank was a capitalist, he made some statements in favor of inequality as a force that fuels economics, which I absolutely reject.   I am a radical egalitarian and a democrat and a Christian socialist, though I don't think the word is useful for similar reasons laid out in my morning post.   I had some serious disagreements with him over economic and financial policy.   Though many of the things he promoted and pushed and got adopted into law made things far more equal, far more democratic and were in line with many of the goals of Christian socialism.  

He'd recently relocated to Maine, living about ten miles from me.  I don't know how closely he followed Maine politics but his endorsement of Janet Mills strikes me as a mistake, though we will see in November.   I think the failure of her campaign, which was hardly a campaign, may well have made things a lot easier for Susan Collins.   I had occasion to look at the past races with a number of far better politicians, such as Tom Allen,  Chellie Pingree and Joe Brennan lost to her.    I will repeat, I've never seen anyone who has excited voters in Maine like Graham Platner has.   I think that he is an economic populist with a strong sense of egalitarian fairness has done what conventional politics isn't going to do.  Barney Frank, whatever else he was, was a master of conventional politics.  

He was also very funny, very fast and witty and,  not infrequently, wise.   A collection of his witticisms,  even those whose context put a time limit on the appreciation for them, would be worth assembling.   You'd have to know a lot of the history of the 1990s and the attempts of Republicans during the Gingrich era to bring down Bill Clinton to get many of the zingers he got off during the interminable hearings.   The exchange when he tied some scumbags that Clinton's administration were stupid enough to keep on when they could have fired them when they came to office, as, in fact, every Republican administration did, was epic.   Him finally asking the would be "good Republican" Jim Leach of Iowa, "What's a nice guy like you doing in a party like this," still makes me smile. 

I suspect that one thing he found out was that there is a heaven and,  I'd guess, to his surprise he was let in.   I liked him very much.   I already missed him in so many of the hearings that have happened in the past 14 years.   My condolenses to his husband and his sister the estimable Ann Lewis.  

Hate Mail - The Word That Has Really Changed In Definition Is The "Z" Word And That Was The Doing Of The Zionists Themselves.

TO BE A ZIONIST IN 2026 is to support genocide, apartheid, the use of torture and, as it is being more covered by mainstream media, sexual torture and rape.   I would like to see the percentage of Zionists who have condemned all of those - wait, I would like to see any evidence that any of that has happened under the guise of Zionism in 2026.   

The IHRA in its attempt to shield the Israeli government by distorting the word "antisemitism" to mean the condemnation of the crimes against humanity, the war crimes, the apartheid and Lebesraum policies and practices of the Israeli government has made the word mean absolutely nothing.

Now they're turning the term "blood libel" into the same thing,  a term that used to mean a specific thing being turned into a shield and weapon to prevent anyone discussing the documented crimes - OFTEN GLEEFULLY DOCUMENTED BY MEMBERS OF THE IDF, THEIR SUPPORTERS, "SETTLERS" AND MEMBERS OF THE ISRAELI GOVERNMENT - and accusations awaiting investigation made by sources whether of unknown credibility or of highest credibility.  

I'm not much bothered by being called names, to start with, I'm especially not much bothered by being called out with such words turned meaningless through such transparently dishonest motivations.   

What you are is a supporter of the genocide, apartheid, torture, sexual torture and rape committed by a government.   The kind of thing which was rightly condemned when the crimes of the Nazis were exposed, the crimes of the Stalinists, the crimes of the various fascist governments in Latin America, in Africa, Asia, etc.   I'm just treating Israel like I would any other state.   You see, unlike you,  I'm against all of that everywhere, every time, no matter what the country pretends it is.   

The Potentially Pandemic Effects Of Us Electing A Malicious Idiot Crook And Him Appointing A K Guzzling Billionaire Crook

 to slash government funds.   

Are Left Channels On Youtube Being Targeted To Drive Them Out Of Business?

 

Musk Lost

Musk v Altman,  an odd case where you're pleased no matter who loses and pissed no matter who wins.

We Should All Get Ready For Real Antisemitism To Flare Up

if Trump and Israel restart the Iran war and that actual, real, 1928 level if not worse world-wide depression results.   I said "if" but I really think it's more when than if.    

By "antisemitism"  I don't mean the recent innovation of those who, following the IHRA scheme to make that mean normal criticism of Israel's war crimes and crimes against humanity and ever increasing apartheid and program of Lebensraum (what in modern English is called by the appalling euphemism"ethnic cleansing").  The English language Zionists have expanded on that to try to make principled, non-bigoted anti-Zionism mean "antisemitism."  That campaign fueled by billionaire and millionaire money and numerous media liars has only made the coming resurgence of really dangerous antisemitism far more guaranteed by making the ignorant and susceptible blame all Jews for the consequential actions of Israel by claiming that all Jews are rightly identified with the Israeli state and the majority of Israelis who support those crimes and the coming world-wide economic disaster that the attack on Iran will prove to be.   

If the real antisemites, the ones who want to kill all Jews or at least oppress them, could have come up with a more sure fire scheme for targeting all Jews everywhere in line with the claims of such previous campaigns as the forgery of the Protocols of The Elders of Zion, they could not have come up with anything more dangerous than what the Israel right or wrong crowd in allegiance to the supporters of the Israeli state have mounted.   

The role that the Israeli government has had in that through its expansionist, genocidal campaigns against Palestinians and the neighboring countries,  its self-filmed, self-posted and proud genocide against the residents of Gaza and the West Bank and the direct role they had in fomenting the Iran war that the American and Israeli government started in March and the attacks on civil liberties of the opponents of Israel in every country where the IHRA distortion-"definition" of "antisemitism" was adopted as law is like that lie being made truth.   The spectacle of David and Larry Ellison's media acquisition and the resultant and lavish destruction of CBS handed to the idiot and liar Bari Weiss to turn it into an Israeli-Repubican-fascist propaganda outlet - certainly what is about to happen to CNN will do nothing to make any of that anything but worse.   

Seeing nominally Jewish billionaires, millionaires and their hired media whores doing exactly what antisemitic propaganda claimed they were doing does everything to only validate what used to be only paranoia.   Once the paranoia is made real, it's not paranoia anymore.   Though it can generate a layer of even worse paranoia over that.   They will have validated the suspicion, you see. 

An interesting sideline to this is the implosion of the putrid Daily Wire,  the annoying, febrile, former professional-virgin Ben Shapiro's once successful, billionaire financed - allegedly now self-supporting - little media empire.   I won't go into too many details about how that could serve as a microcosm of what Weiss and Ellison are doing at CBS and, soon, at CNN but you can get a lot of it from this video.

How Did The Daily Wire’s Podcast King Wind Up a MAGA Outsider? 

If Shapiro's operation is in this shape this soon due to Israel's genocide and other crimes, it's not only his annoying voice that makes me think of it as a tone-deaf canary in a coal mine. 

I will point out that though the video doesn't go into it, the initial funders of that little project were rather bizarre Texas white evangelicals,  Farris and Dan Wilks whose father,  Voy started his own church which is a neo-judaizing sorta Christian church,  "The Assembly of Yahweh."  You can get some idea of where all that is coming from through this article in the Forward. 

Voy.  Really.  Voy. 

Needless to say the Wilks are huge and obscenely wealthy "Christian" Zionists.   I distrust conservative "Christian evangelicals" and especially those who want all Jews in place to either be obliterated or converted in their cos-play Book of Revelation live action fantasies.  Especially when they've got tons of carbon pollution and cyber-bucks.  

All of this is extremely dangerous for everyone.   And if Trump and Netanyahu bring on a world wide or even a regional depression that affects the United States - if we're not already into that - it will be extremely dangerous, especially for Jews, those who support the genocidal, apartheid state of Israel and those who oppose Zionism and the genocidal, apartheid state of Israel.   

In the mean time anyone who calls this out and anyone who opposes the crimes of the Israeli state and the majority of Israelis who support those crimes and the American crimes that are worse because America is funding the crimes of Israel and committing crimes of its own are going to be smeared as antisemites.   I have now been warning for years that the IHRA con job of redefining "antisemitism" to make it a shield for Israel was going to backfire just as I warned twenty years ago that Americans in the second and third generations removed from the WWII generation were going to tire of America propping up Israel and getting involved with the mess that it was bound to become as it became ever more militarized, aggressive and violent.   

Trump is sounding like he's going to go for round two in his already disastrous war along with Israel.   That war has already finished the job that he started with his insane and stupid tariff wars of destroying America's standing in the world - it's clear that China's leadership has played both Russia's and America's stupidity and decadence very well, despite the problems that China has.    Of course China's leadership doesn't have the problem of America's indigenous fascist class, the white supremacists who have made racism the basis of so much of America's foreign and military policy as well as weakening our society and government internally.   

Even if we are lucky enough to get another Democrat who does as well as Biden did at restoring America to its old standing, no one in the world is going to trust our corrupt, crooked political system or our putrid lying, Republican-fascist media to support a competent American president, ever again.   Trump II and the Republican-fascists and the American media have permanently ended that dubious boon to the world,  "The American Century."   And America's fascists aren't going to take that well, at all.   The role that Israel played in finishing that off is already baked into that dangerous backlash that is coming. 

It is to the shame of other mostly white ethnic groups who were, at first, targeted by America's indigenous fascists when they first emigrated to the United States that, once they became "white" had large numbers, especially those who achieved affluence but many who just became middle-class, as well, join into the racism of the indigenous, mostly WASP indigenous fascism.   The spectacle of white-Catholics going so heavily for Trump is a shameful manifestation of that.   Jews have, so far, mostly avoided that, probably out of a mixture of residual morality as well as being smart enough to know that any rise in America's indigenous fascism was going to target them as well in ways that the Irish, Italians, etc. aren't likely to be.   That seems to be something that the right-wing among Jews and, especially, the ultra-Zionists are either too arrogant or stupid to understand.   The role that such have played in the resurgence of overt racism against People of Color -  ALWAYS THE FOREMOST TARGET OF AMERICA'S INDIGENOUS FASCIST CLASS - is noteworthy as, in fact, those who have absolutely refused to go along with that - many of them left-wing Jewish anti-Zionists who are that because they take morality and justice seriously.   There seems to be an unusually high correlation between Zionism and the willingness to support America's indigenous fascism.   That's not surprising to me.   Zionism is and was from the start a European style nationalist movement and nationalism of all kinds, INCLUDING "AMERICANISM" seem to inevitably turn fascist.  I won't go into the sordid history of the various nationalist manifestations and their cooperation with even foreign powers, from the original cooperation of the Vichys, Quislings,  Ustashes, etc with the Nazis,  Trump's and his fellow Republican-fascists achieving that old American Communist Party's wet dream of subservience to the Kremlin* and the Zionists' relationship with Israel, but I'm not aware of any nationalism of any kind anywhere that doesn't lead to violence and crime and,  eventually, a backlash as their schemes fall apart.  

All of us had better get ready because it's going to get a hell of a lot more dangerous and violent.   Nationalism is the curse of the world in all its forms, the real-life nightmares conjured from 19th century European romantic linguistics and other such pseudo-science.  

* Considering the Russian empire that Putin wants to reestablish  was the origin of the Protocols and his reported attraction to bizarre fascist-mystical-white Russian BS,  that, alone, should give us all pause. 

In Addition To Cutting Back The Absurd And Criminal Pardon Power, We Need A Constitutional Amendment

to set an age limit of 70 for someone to be sworn in as president and, while we're at it, overturning the Robert's Court's crowning of presidents as criminally immune monarchs.    

Presidents should not be allowed to pardon members of their family or their administration, they should not be able to pardon those who, like the insurrectionists, committed crimes on behalf of (never-mind at the request of) the president or members of their administration.    

I think we also need one that limits the age of those in Congress, though getting one of those through Congress will probably be a lot tougher.   Mitch McConnell,  Chuck Grassley,  Diane Feinstein, . . . it's absurd to have those who are unable due to their extreme senescence make laws that impact the entire country for decades after their deaths.   

Ideally, I'd favor dumping the dangerous system we have now in favor an honest, equality based, one-person-one-vote, no states with more representation than their population warrants system.   Getting rid of the presidential system with a set term for one in which a prime minister could be dumped as even the corrupt British system has is preferable to the one we have now which relies on the fictitious impeachment power or the equally absurd and likely as fictitious 25th Amendment is essential.   

Also, perhaps more doable, would be for the congress and a future president to nullify the Marbury power grab by the Supreme Court - nothing, not even vitally important Constitutional Amendments such as the 14th Amendment is safe from our out of control court.    I'd start by the next Democratic Congress zeroing out the Supreme Court budget except for the salaries of the corrupt "justices" which are, arguably fortunately, protected by the Constitution.   Zero out the budget for that apalling fascist marble palace that the corrupt Court sits in, give them use of a meeting room in the Capitol building or rent them an inexpensive one somewhere in DC.   Deprive them of clerks and other perks.   MAKE THEM SUBJECT TO CRIMINAL PENALTIES FOR ANYTHING THAT HAS THE SLIGHTEST AMOUNT OF CORRUPTION.   As I said last week, if ignorance of the law is no defense then knowledge of the law should compound the criminality of those who commit crimes.   Also term limits, also mandatory retirement at the age of 75.  RBG was entirely too convinced of her irreplaceable status and her entire legacy has been obliterated because of her being too conceited to retire when a Democrat might have replaced her.   THAT, the reality of what she left should be the final determinant of her legacy and legend in history.  

Just a few ideas for a Saturday morning in May. 

The Whole World Knows We've Got Baby Huey For President Except The American Media

 

Tolt Ya So

Sunday, September 10, 2006

Postscript

Democracy in the United States will never be safe again unless there is a constitutional amendment removing the ability of a president to pardon members of his administration or members of an administration he, himself was part of. We have had enough evidence of that kind of pardon to see that it is an enormous loophole through which criminal administrations can drive something the size of the Iraq invasion.

I was curious to see what else I posted at Echidne's that weekend, since the firestorm in the comments it got isn't available,  and saw I posted this.  

That's enough of a stroll down memory lane. 

The Pup Has Gone Home And I'm Recovering

I HAD TO TAKE CARE of my sister's young dog again, still a puppy in behavior, for the past two weeks.  I love dogs but I've only this year come to realize how much work a young one is.  I'm worn out.   So worn out I missed the 20th anniversary of my posting blog posts - so you can see how casual I am about anniversaries.   I'll have more to say in the future but for now I'll leave you with what I posted on that Saturday morning after hearing Scott Simon whining that some Democrat wasn't being a doormat for some Republican in violation of the Code of Liberal Ethics. 

Saturday, May 13, 2006

To start with, there are two things about the Code of Liberal Ethics that bother me. One, that we are supposed to be entirely fair to everyone and especially in instances when that would put us at a disadvantage, will be dealt with later. The one I will deal with first is the assumption that liberals must get it right every time, not only right but correct. That liberals and leftists, such as myself, must be purer than pure or relegated to the tip, is something I'd better address right now in this first post.

I have no intention of getting it right every time. I begin with no expectation of getting it entirely right a plurality of the time. No guarantee of such is given or offered. I will not allow considerations of the possibility of failure from keeping me from action. On occasion I'll plow straight ahead if conditions seem to warrant it. I, friends, am the thoroughly bad sort and claim as mine, as the sacred possession of every liberal and leftist, the absolute right enjoyed by the rest of humanity to get it wrong. And not only this but I claim as the birthright of leftists to present our side of things to the advantage of our side. I have absolutely no intention to be fair to fascists either, but that's for another day and I hope that Nat Hentoff doesn't die before I get to it.

The Code of Liberal Ethics is a standard operating setting required in every organ of the media. It is applied without consideration, without thought, as a matter of habit. It is a solid state component of the minds of far too many liberals. It is a weapon used exclusively against liberals and leftists and is applied to no other segment of the political spectrum. Everyone, from mushy moderate to rabid fascist is allowed their failings and their biases. But not liberals. Certainly not leftists.

No more. Here, today, I issue our own manumission, my fellow leftists. We have shaken off the chains of perfection, we are free of the lash of faultlessness. We claim our right to consider our own opinions superior and worthy of dominance. Never again will we present the arguments of conservatives as if they merit equal treatment. We will scorn their folly and expose their lies and their entertaining hypocrisies without apology. We will get off our knees and kick every fascist where it counts. In all seriousness, our lives, the lives of our loved ones, the life of the biosphere absolutely depend on it. We must crush out of ourselves and our kind the remains of these mind forged manacles and wipe their residue from every voice and their assumed existence from every ban. Friends, we have nothing to fear. We are free.

Disclaimer: I make no pretense of being a journalist. At best, if someone wanted to insult me, they might claim me as a columnist, an unskilled occupation of which I do not claim to be a part. I would never want anyone to assume that I pretend to be a real journalist, a reporter.

One of the things I can say that looking over those early blog posts at my first blog,  OLVLZL (which was a series of letters that came up on a random character generator, having no meaning) is that I've gone from the secular left to a far, far more radical left in the process of trying to figure out where the American left went so wrong from its high point in the mid-1960s when it had some actual political power.   

A left that witnessed the secular left not only getting stuck in the myriads of stupidity that wasted the opportunities and possibilities it once had but actively pissed away chance after chance on self-destructive pursuits based on the whims of the generally affluent, generally college-credentialed, libertarian left instead of making EQUALITY real, economic, legal and political EQUALITY the cornerstone of leftist politics.    

As I looked at one after another of the shibboleths of mid-20th century lefties, testing them and challenging them, seeing which ones stood up and which ones fell away, it was as shocking to me as it was to many of those who read what I had found how many of the very central ones were not only invalid or wrong but which were absolutely destructive of equality and, so, any valid democracy.   That led me to understand that liberal democracy, itself, was founded on inequality or, at best, what leads to indifference of the privileged and empowered to equality, and that it could not be any more of a legitimate government than the apartheid democracy that America was founded to be or the various anti-egalitarian "democracies" that stood in for the real thing around the world.  When people decry the retreat of democracy here and around the world, it is that anti-egalitarian, pseudo-civil libertarian, elite-favoring "democracy" that is sinking as the lawyers, judges and "justice" here and elsewhere find ways to use it to empower propagandists and the billionaires and millionaires who the majority of those lawyers and judges and "justices" serve.  

Of course there have been several major areas in which I've attacked those shibboleths of mid-20th century lefties, the ones found to be based on and continuing within lies, Darwinism and its inevitability of generating eugenics,  free speech absolutism (the major tool that the Republican-fascists have used to lie us into fascism), the cult of the Constitution and the putrid, lying founders fetish,  materialist-atheist-scientism, and a host of minor ones, many of those related to that default source of edgycation, the media and pop culture,  and many of the would-be heroes of such in my generation and those immediately before and since.   

I don't think the minor ones were really less important to attack because Americans are far, far, far more influenced by entertainment than they are by reality or truth or facts.   The very "press" which has been distorted by Supreme Court idiots starting with the Warren years to mean mass media, has been the central player in destroying America's too-brief experiment with equality under the Voting Rights and Civil Rights Acts and a few other laws in that area, and leading us to the total decadence we experience now.  Two of the major figures of that,  Reagan and Trump were products of entertainment media, its potential to cause harm, up to and including the deaths of hundreds of thousands and millions should never be underestimated because Madison and the other slave-holders and crooked fat-heads in the First Congress worded the First Amendment so vaguely and incompletely so as to create that most dangerous of all legal fictions, a "right to lie."  

My renewal of belief in God and the Gospel of Jesus turned out to be the thing that led me forward.   That is something I certainly could not have predicted when this started in 2006.  I will say that it was in confronting the determined ballot-box poisoning of the then faddish new atheism, fact checking them, pointing out their idiotic idea that they could win electoral power by insulting the large majority of voters, looking at their allegedly scientific claims supporting their ideology that very early on led me to realize that materialism, atheism, scientism, was worse than harmful to egalitarian democracy, it was deadly to it.  If there had been no "new atheism" fad in reaction to 9-11, I expect I'd have gotten there eventually,  maybe by the end of my life.  It was reacting to them that got me here and beyond much faster.   

Even before I started posting pieces on blogs, while I was still commenting I'd started using the arguments I got into to test my ideas, to see what those who wanted to refute them could mount in refutation of them.   I seem to recall that when I said that the esteemed early blogger and commentator, "Phila" said he did that as well.  I have found that it was a real motivation to looking up primary documentation - secondary sources can be everything from valuable to being total liars and idiots - to see if I could support my contentions and to avoid making claims I couldn't support with legitimate information.   If I'd had access to word processing, other clerical utilities and the internet I'd have had a far more extensive education.  Though I don't think that would have happened without the brawling.   I still enjoy some of that, though I wish I had better opponents.  Those two old blog brawls I linked to the other day still shock me in how bad you can be at that and still have a professorship at one of our major universities.  The decadence of English language universities and colleges and journals has been one of the major shocks of the experience of roughly the last twenty-eight years of me actively being online.  I think that's all an aspect of the decadence of America's so-called democracy and materialist-atheist-materialism.   You wanna go outside about that?  

I Knew That Like Everything Else The Trump Phone Was A Swindle But I Didn't Know How Much Of A Transparent Swindle It Was Stated In Legalese

 I want to know the names of the lawyers who wrote that contract for the "conditional opportunity" to send a hundred bucks for a phone that wouldn't be as advertised and which might not even be made.

As usual, Reese Waters gets right to the heart of it.

That a court, a judge sitting on a bench in a court wouldn't . . . no, make that the fact that there could be even one judge sitting on any bench in the US who wouldn't summarily find that the Trump crime gang had cheated those hundreds of thousands out of millions and order them to pay it all back and all costs and interest on it is all the proof anyone needs to know the legal system of the United States is the mother of all these con jobs. 
 

 

The Hantavirus Outbreak Probably Won't Restart Sarah Palin's Public Cult

even though the libertarian skank is clearly hoping it will serve that for her.   Isn't there a fly-by-night vinyl siding contractor who can put her on UHF-TV on weekend afternoons so she'll be rendered relatively harmless?   

But it's important to understand that the government under Trump is underselling the dangers of it spreading.

 

For now, the risk is probably low but not if serious measures aren't taken to contain and minimize that danger.  One of the things that I'd guess should be done but won't is more strenuous regulation of the cruise ship industry and large public buildings and their HVAC and air circulation systems.  And things like rodent control.  Libertarianism kills.  It can kill lots of us, given the right conditions and libertarians are always attracted to promoting deadly irresponsibility about things with that potential.  

Oh, and, yet again, by law no goddamned lawyers should ever be allowed to head Health and Human Services ever again,  the scummy anti-vaxx ambulance-chaser Little Bobby should be the last straw in that.  And that's only one of many federal departments and agencies that rule should be adopted for.   No one should be eligible to hold a position for which their life experience and professional experience gives them no expertise in.   

 

Why The Pardon Power Has To Be Radically Changed After Trump Has Made It A Criminal Enterprise In Itself

Former pardon lawyer Liz Oyer is very good at laying out cases very simply and clearly.   This one proves that the framers of the Constitution were either total idiots or extremely corrupt or that the lawyers, judges and, especially, "justices" have been both.

 

The Clemency, crime and corruption industry

 

 

 

The Roberts Court Republican-Fascists And Their Handing Your Social Security Information To Elon's Eejit Punks

I'VE HAD A TERRIBLY BUSY WEEK so I haven't been doing much thinking about writing.  I've wanted to write about the Roberts Court white-supremacists,  Alito, Roberts, Thomas, Barrett, Gorsuch and Kavanaugh reinstituting Jim Crow and, no doubt, will have plenty of time to write about how they all belong in the same category as Roger Taney and Henry Billings Brown and James Clark McReynolds,  I could go on.   The filthy history of the Supreme Court can't be wallpapered over with the traditional bull shit, lying Supreme Court reporting and secular genuflection to them because they have become increasingly dangerous after a short interrum when they were somewhat less noticeably corrupt, though they were often plenty foolish even during their best period.  Bush v Gore should have been the last straw,  we can't allow the lawyers among the Democrats in Congress and among Democratic Presidents put off drastic change in the Court and its rules any longer. 

Here is one of the things that they did that literally put every American citizen in danger,  letting Elon Musk and his gang of incel-boy punks get their hands on all of our Social Security information and why it has turned out to be even more dangerous than a lot of us expected it would be.    I'll leave you with what I've been telling everyone I know for at least the last thirty years,  the Supreme Court is the most corrupt branch of government, even more corrupt than the presidency, more corrupt than the Congress.   

Hearing Erika Kirk's Announcment About Stepping Back In All Its Pseudo-Religio Ickiness

With all the baggage that I got growing up an Irish Catholic there has been nothing like the sheer creepy, nauseating,  hypocritically sanctimonious hypocrisy of white evangelicals to make me appreciate how lucky I was in that regard.