The Commentariat -- April 18, 2016
Afternoon Update:
Adam Liptak & Michael Shear of the New York Times: "The Supreme Court on Monday seemed sharply divided during an extended argument over a challenge to President Obama's plan that would shield millions of undocumented immigrants from deportation and allow them to work in the country legally." -- CW ...
... Robert Barnes of the Washington Post: "Instead, the court's conservatives and liberals seemed split, and a 4-to-4 tie would leave in place a lower court's decision that the president exceeded his powers in issuing the directive. It could affect about 4 million undocumented immigrants who have been in the country since 2010 and have family ties to U.S. citizens and others lawfully in the country." -- CW ...
Former Sen. Richard Lugar (R-Ind.), in a New York Times op-ed: "... whether or not you like President Obama's actions, he has operated under longstanding provisions of law that give the executive branch discretion in enforcement. This presidential prerogative has been recognized explicitly by the Supreme Court. Moreover, the nature of immigration enforcement and the resources (or lack thereof) appropriated by Congress necessitate exactly the type of choices that the president has made.... President Obama's directives to focus enforcement efforts on those who have committed crimes in the United States and recent border crossers are a rational executive prioritization, given the resources and the realities." -- CW
Ed O'Keefe of the Washington Post: "Nine more states put the final touches on their delegations to the July convention and once again, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) schooled [Donald] Trump, installing his supporters in positions to ensure that he could win the nomination if the contest stretches into later rounds. In most cases, the delegates will be required to vote for Trump on a first ballot at the convention but could switch to Cruz if subsequent ballots are necessary." -- CW
*****
David Savage of the Los Angeles Times: "The Supreme Court's last great case of the Obama era comes before the justices Monday when the administration's lawyers defend his plan to offer work permits to as many as 4 million immigrants who have been living here illegally for years." -- CW ...
... Whatever will Chief Justice Roberts do? Adam Liptak of the New York Times, with help of court observers, reads the tea leaves. -- CW
Dahlia Lithwick of Slate: "... if Antonin Scalia had lived until July the docket was full of poisoned pills and silent time bombs that would have exploded in President Obama's face this summer. Until and unless we reckon with what might have been at the high court this term, it's impossible to understand why there will be no hearings for Judge [Merrick] Garland. GOP senators ... are angry because the court as the weapon of choice to screw the president has been taken from them, and they want it back." -- CW
Lolita Baldor of the AP: "Defense Secretary Ash Carter arrived in Baghdad Monday to talk to Iraqi leaders about beefing up Iraqi forces working to retake the northern city of Mosul, a critical goal in the effort to defeat the Islamic State group. A senior U.S. official said that as the U.S. moves to help the Iraqis, it will also likely mean that at least a 'small number' of additional American forces will go to the warzone." -- CW
Richard Lardner of the AP: "The Pentagon misled Congress with inaccurate and vague information about sexual assault cases that portrayed civilian law enforcement officials as less willing than military commanders to punish sex offenders, an Associated Press investigation found.... But in a number of cases, the steps taken by civilian authorities were described incorrectly or omitted. Other case descriptions were too imprecise to be verified. There also is nothing in the records that supports the primary reason the Pentagon told Congress about the cases in the first place: To show top military brass as hard-nosed crime fighters who insisted on taking the cases to trial." -- CW
Abandon All Hope. Michael Lind, in a New York Times op-ed, writes a prognosis for the future of both major parties, but his analysis of where the Democrats are going is extremely depressing. -- CW ...
... Jamelle Bouie takes stock of the Sanders campaign & finds it pretty much like previous (failed) insurgent campaigns. If liberals want to change the Democratic party, Bouie writes, they're going to have to do the hard, boring groundwork of building their coalition at local & state levels. -- CW ...
... Jelani Cobb of the New Yorker: "The current language of 'income inequality' is a low-carb version of the Old Left's 'class exploitation.' The new phrase lacks rhetorical zing; it's hard to envision workers on a picket line singing rousing anthems about 'income inequality.' The term lacks a verb, too, so it's possible to think of the condition under discussion as a random social outcome, rather than as the product of deliberate actions taken by specific people." -- CW
Presidential Race
E.J. Dionne: Bernie Sanders & Hillary Clinton should do more to "acknowledge that the differences between them are minor compared with the philosophical chasm that separates them from any of their potential Republican foes." -- CW
John Wagner of the Washington Post: "... Bernie Sanders's campaign said his rally on Sunday in Brooklyn's Prospect Park drew more than 28,000 people, which would make it the largest such event for a candidate who routinely generates large, boisterous crowds." -- CW
John Wagner: "Bernie Sanders on Sunday brought his presidential campaign to a run-down public housing complex in Brooklyn, usually an overlooked destination on the road to the White House, in a bid to underscore what he characterized as the nation's misguided spending priorities." -- CW
Yamiche Alcindor of the New York Times: "On Sunday, Bernie Sanders "visited First Corinthian Baptist Church in Harlem to speak with the Rev. Michael A. Walrond Jr. about his past civil rights work, the need to reform the criminal justice system and his experience growing up in a family fraught with financial stress. And while he was visiting the church, the Sanders campaign also began a new fundraising pitch using comments from the actor George Clooney, who raised hundreds of thousands of dollars for Hillary Clinton over the weekend, that the amount of money in politics is 'obscene.'... Mr. Clooney said, 'Yes. I think it's an obscene amount of money,' Mr. Clooney said. 'The Sanders campaign, when they talk about it is absolutely right. It's ridiculous that we should have this kind of money in politics. I agree completely.'" -- CW ...
... Colin Wilhelm of Politico: "One of Hillary Clinton's most famous supporters, actor George Clooney, says he hopes Bernie Sanders 'stays in for the entire election.... I think what he's saying in this election is important if you're a Democrat,' Clooney said, adding he'd do 'whatever I can' to help Sanders if he wins the nomination." -- CW ...
... Driftglass watches the Sunday showz & likes George Clooney. Confederate talking heads? Not so much. -- CW
Mary Ann Georgantopoulos of BuzzFeed: "An online merchant has accused the Bernie Sanders campaign of 'trademark bullying' after a Bernie 2016, Inc. attorney sent him a cease and desist letter regarding T-shirts, mugs, and sweatshirts depicting the candidate with historic communist leaders.... The products show Sanders next Karl Marx, Joseph Stalin, and others with the tagline, 'Bernie is my comrade.'" -- CW
Liz Kruetz of ABC News: "If Donald Trump was hoping to get a quick rise out of Hillary Clinton with a new nickname - 'Crooked Hillary' - it didn't work. 'He can say whatever he wants to say about me, I really could care less,' Clinton said on ABC's 'This Week With George Stephanopoulos,' 'I don't respond to Donald Trump and his string of insults about me.' Trump unveiled his new nickname for Clinton at a Saturday rally in Watertown, New York." CW: She means, "I couldn't care less," but I guess she's conforming to a vernacular idiom common in New York City.
Maggie Haberman of the New York Times: "Donald J. Trump said on Sunday that he hoped the Republican convention in July 'doesn't involve violence' as he pressed his case that the system is rigged against him." -- CW ...
... Bethania Markus of the Raw Story: "... Donald Trump said during a speech in Syracuse, New York on Saturday that the Republican party will have a 'rough time' at the party convention in Cleveland in July if his voters aren't heard, according to KCCI. Trump is angry over the likelihood of a brokered convention, which means that he could be denied the nomination even if he wins the majority of votes.... About 300 people protested the Trump rally, according to Syracuse.com. About 10 of them managed to sneak inside the rally, and were led out by security." -- CW ...
...or maybe his supporters are all sound and no fury. Colorado Pols: "Trumpmageddon" Protest Fizzles. -- LT
... "Trump Massacred in delegate Fights." Jonathan Easley & Katie Glueck of Politico: "The weekend was another delegate bloodbath for Donald Trump. In Georgia. In Wyoming. In South Carolina. In Kansas. In Florida. Ted Cruz put on a clinic, mobilizing his GOP activist base to capture at least 50 delegates on Saturday while Trump came away with about a dozen in another bruising defeat that undermines his chances to become the Republican presidential nominee." CW: Do we really need to use words like "massacre" and "bloodbath" to describe a relatively civil process? Yeah, I know; it's Politico. But still. Let's wait till Trump's predicted "riots" & "rough time" really come to Cleveland. ...
... Tom LoBianco of CNN: "... Florida proves a reminder that it's going to be a tough fight to wrest the Republican presidential nomination from front-runner Donald Trump. GOP leaders in Florida selected 15 of their 99 delegates, all of whom were pledged to vote for Trump through three ballots at the Republican National Convention in July. But former rival Marco Rubio ... did well here in the battle over so-called 'double agents' -- delegates committed to voting for one candidate but who actually support another -- that has had Trump crying foul for weeks. These delegates are free to vote against Trump on convention rules, possibly elevating [Ted] Cruz, John Kasich or even a nominee not in the race right now." -- CW ...
... Jonathan Easley of the Hill: "The balance of power in the Republican Party has suddenly shifted to delegates, many of whom are entering the national spotlight for the first time. Delegates say their lives have been turned upside-down by the possibility of a contested convention in July, where their votes could decide whether Donald Trump, or another candidate, is the party's presidential nominee." -- CW
Jonathan Blitzer of the New Yorker: Donald Trump brings his hate speech to a fundraiser in "Patchogue. [, Long Island,] New York..., the site of a horrific hate crime. Seven high-school students, who had set out to attack an immigrant, killed a thirty-seven-year-old Ecuadorian named Marcelo Lucero." -- CW
"Wacko Bird." Matt Flegenheimer of the New York Times: "... a close reading of [Ted] Cruz's policy prescriptions, influences and writings over two decades, combined with interviews with conservative intellectual leaders and Cruz allies, suggest two powerful truths about the man.... He would be the most conservative presidential nominee in at least a half-century, perhaps to the right of Barry Goldwater.... And he has, more effectively than almost any politician of his generation, anticipated the rightward tilt of the Republican Party of today, grasping its conservatism even as colleagues dismissed him as a fringe figure." -- CW
Laura Bult of the New York Daily News: "More than 200 outraged New York voters have joined a lawsuit claiming the party affiliation on their voter registration changed without their consent. The voters say they are unfairly being shut out of Tuesday's primary. The suit, to be filed Monday in Brooklyn, calls for New York to be an open primary state, allowing anyone to vote in primaries regardless of party affiliation." -- CW ...
... No, Most "American Independents" in California Don't Pine for George Wallace. John Myers, et al., of the Los Angeles Times: "With nearly half a million registered members, the American Independent Party is bigger than all of California's other minor parties combined. The ultraconservative party's platform opposes abortion rights and same sex marriage, and calls for building a fence along the entire United States border.... But a Times investigation has found that a majority of its members have registered with the party in error. Nearly three in four people did not realize they had joined the party, a survey of registered AIP voters conducted for The Times found. That mistake could prevent people from casting votes in the June 7 presidential primary, California's most competitive in decades." -- CW
Beyond the Beltway
The Boston Marathon is today. boston.com has several stories about it. -- CW ...
... Cindy Boren of the Washington Post: "For the first time, two runners who lost parts of their legs in the bombings will attempt to run the race. It won’t be difficult to spot Patrick Downes and Adrianne Haslet-Davis, each of whom will be running on a prosthetic blade." -- CW
AP: "Pennsylvania has become the 24th state to legalize a comprehensive medical marijuana program. Democratic Gov. Tom Wolf signed the bill into law Sunday afternoon surrounded by a jubilant crowd of supporters at the Capitol building in Harrisburg. 'Marijuana is medicine and it's coming to Pennsylvania,' said Democratic Sen. Daylin Leach, the bill's co-sponsor." -- CW
Bob Cesca in Salon: "... Missouri Republicans are confirming Donald Trump's notion of punishing women for having abortions.... Officials with clinics across Missouri are facing contempt charges if they don't turn over the medical records [of women who have had legal abortions] -- which, by the way, would violate the federal Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA).... Just last month, the Missouri House passed a bill requiring that underage girls receive parental consent from both parents before having an abortion. (Current law demands only one parent.) Furthermore, despite the state's attorney general finding no evidence of illegal fetus tissue harvesting, the Missouri House voted last week to ban fetal tissue donation." -- CW
Today in Responsible Gun Ownership. Travis Gettys of the Raw Story: "A Texas man brings real gun to water gun fight -- and shoots 15-year-old girl." .. CW
Way Beyond
Stanley Reed & Andrew Kramer of the New York Times: "Officials from 18 oil-producing nations failed on Sunday to reach a deal to freeze oil production at current levels. The officials, who represented most of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries as well as Russia, seemed to head into the meeting full of confidence that a deal to stabilize the oil markets could be reached. Instead, the talks dragged into the evening before Qatar's energy minister, Mohammed bin Saleh al-Sada, told a news conference that the group had been unable to reach agreement." -- CW
Andrew Jacobs of the New York Times: "With their nation transfixed, Brazilian legislators began casting votes on Sunday on whether to approve impeachment proceedings against President Dilma Rousseff, the leader of South America's largest nation, whose tenure has been buffeted by a colossal corruption scandal and the worst financial crisis in decades." -- CW ...
... New Lede: "Brazilian legislators voted on Sunday night to approve impeachment of Dilma Rousseff, the nation's first female president, whose tenure has been buffeted by a dizzying corruption scandal, a shrinking economy and spreading disillusionment. After three days of impassioned debate, the lower house of Congress, the Chamber of Deputies, voted to send the case against Ms. Rousseff to the Senate. Its 81 members will vote by a simple majority on whether to hold a trial...."
The Virgin Islands Consortium: "A [GOP] Territorial Committee meeting held at party Chairman John Canegata's shooting range in St. Croix (Virgin Islands) on Saturday, 'abruptly ended with an elected delegate and senior citizen woman being slammed against the wall and thrown to the floor because she objected to the gestapo-like tactics of the VI Chairman John Canegata.' [according to] committee Vice Chairman Herbert Schoenbohm.... 'The majority of us caucused in a quiet location on both islands after being threatened to leave Canegata's private property.... Especially being held in his shooting gallery where he struts around like a petty tyrant with a firearm on his belt, while banging the table with large ammunition cartridge being used as a gavel. People are not used to a Republican meeting being in a combat zone and will avoid future meetings if something isn't done about his lack of control," Via The Daily Beast --safari
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Reader Comments (14)
"Donald J. Trump said on Sunday that he hoped the Republican convention in July 'doesn’t involve violence'
Nice little convention you have here. Ashamed if something should happen to it.
Donnie ‘‘little hands” Trump
Marie, the expression "I could care less" was common when I grew up in Boston as well. It is uttered dripping with sarcasm to denote that it means exactly the opposite, similar to Southerners saying "Bless you heart,"
Jamelle Bouie, whose column is linked above, is mostly right. I'm not sure he has any idea how difficult/impossible his prescription is, although he does not make light of it.
I served as a Democratic county committee member in New Jersey & -- briefly -- in Florida. The New Jersey committee was fairly kumbaya-democratic, perhaps because committee members were elected by the public, not "approved" by party officials. Entrenched Neanderthals dominated the Florida committee & they did everything they could to oust "liberals" from the committee. They were really good at it, & not surprisingly, terrible at getting Democrats elected. Ever. But they don't care, because they think their ineffectual little fiefdom is all that matters.
Before I quit a hopeless cause, I got kicked out of the committeee on some totally bogus charge. The state committee knew what a joke the local committee was & reinstated me, but I gave up shortly thereafter. As long as local party committees are ruled by a cadre of pinheads, liberals will have to organize themselves in some other way. It can be done, but it would have to be done outside many local Democratic party structures, because they are resolutely against progressivism.
Marie
P.S. If you've had a similar experience, please share.
The Michael Lind article is depressing. As one commenter (at NYT) said (paraphrasing) about the article, 'the author needs to get some younger friends'. His group has prominent support from Pete Peterson, Lehman bros., & Eric Schmidt of Google. I thought the author had as much insight into Main street America as my left pinky toe has about Wall Street. Michael Lind's mindset is exactly why going to college and spending your day with earnest young people is a good idea for an perspective update to self important older men. Lind lives in a bubble and that shows in the article.
@citizen625: You're right about Lind. I should have added some hint of where Lind is coming from, but, frankly, I find him hard to pigeonhole.
What's depressing about Lind's piece, as well as Bouie's, & to some extent Cobb's, is the premise that there is no there there in the Democratic party. Like the Republican party, it is merely a conglomeration of special interests rather than a party that holds to broad ethical principles. So if it behooves the party poobahs to "care" about injustice to minorities, they're all in; if it's more advantageous to "get tough on crime," they're all for that. When unions were strong, Democratic leaders were pro-union. Now, not so much. If their special interests are concerned about income inequality, the poobahs will open their mouths & sympathetic words will come out. (But not necessarily effective policy prescriptions.) And so forth.
Marie
On the Pentagon misleading lawmakers on military sexual assault cases: Not one whit surprised. I've been waiting to hear about this issue for a long time. The picture (video) accompanying the article is quite amusing in that we have a nice looking military bloke speaking (lying) to Congress and slightly above him lovely legs are crossed. But we do have to remember it is not only sexual assault on women but assault on men. So will Kristin rally up her 50 legislators (Cruz, by the way is one of them) and try again?
On Michael Lind's prognosis for the two parties: If manufacturing comes back to this country in full force and unions once more flourish the Democratic party will expand. Many who worked for those now abandoned companies were strong democrats; once they were left in the lurch the party no longer spoke for them. And I wondered why foreign policy issues were not part of Lind's piece.
Like M.D. I, too, have always heard, "I could care less"––maybe it's an East coast thing. I always found it odd––why not just say, "I don't care or I don't give a damn. (Guess it is the sarcasm). Phrases like, "It's too funny" is bandied about and I never could figure out what that meant. How could something be "too funny"? When I first heard someone say, "That cake is to die for," I thought, really? One could die for cake? Now I find people will die for a whole mess of things including a boxed set of Bob Dylan's greatest hits.
Words matter except when they don't.
@ Marie: I, too, was a member of the Democratic town committee whose meetings were captured by the male members (the majority) and at the time we had a democratic mayor, a pinhead, who would come to the meetings and regale us with boring speeches that signified nothing. We few women, except for one who never uttered two words but sat silently by, were at the time concerned about the health care package offered to the civic workers along with the pension plans. They were both over the top and we felt they needed to be looked at again and revised. They never were; the Town eventually went almost bankrupt because of them.
A funny thing that I remember is the firm rule that all meetings begin at EXACTLY seven o'clock. After getting at those meetings at EXACTLY seven many times and finding we never actually started until 7.45 or later I raised the question of WHY? this rule. Everyone laughed. I left after two years.
Spotted Marie's sharp response to Krugman's go at redemption today " Robber Baron Recessions " —Nice going CW, with most readers agreeing with you!
And, Krugman gives a key reason for failed competition: "The obvious next question is why competition has declined. The answer can be summed up in two words: Ronald Reagan.
For Reagan didn’t just cut taxes and deregulate banks; his administration also turned sharply away from the longstanding U.S. tradition of reining in companies that become too dominant in their industries."
OK, P.K., let's see you get back on that bank business yourself!
How to Do It.
Jamelle Bouie's meditation on political efficacy and the possibility for a more progressive future for the Democratic Party provides a useful background to the Sanders candidacy and a future direction for the party's more liberal contingent.
Marie's point regarding the difficulty of achieving the goals Bouie puts forward is well taken and his suggestion that those who wish to change the party, take up the mantle worn by "insurgent" Democrats such as Sanders and work from the inside out sounds like a worthwhile plan but I think there may be another way to go about this.
Over the weekend I had a chance to catch some of the second part of the Jackie Robinson documentary as well as an installment of Henry Hampton's monumental "Eyes on the Prize" series. Several things jumped out at me. First, were the obvious connections--vital and essential--between racism, hatred, and fear and the success of the Confederate Party.
The "Eyes on the Prize" episode covered the events triggered by the Freedom Summer movement in Mississippi in 1964. Footage shot at the time shows a car moving down a highway, tracing the possible direction of that driven by James Chaney, Michael Schwerner, and Andrew Goodman, freshly murdered by Klan members and supporters. The camera goes right by a sign for Philadelphia, Mississippi, where almost 16 years to the day (August 4, 1964) after their bodies were found, Ronald Reagan, still the Confederate Party's primo assoluto, kicked off his post convention presidential campaign (August 3, 1980). The mother of all dog whistles. He might as well have set up his podium over the spot where they dug up the bodies, the podium from which he basically told his audience "You were right then and you're right now".
Another clip from the 1964 presidential race offered a look at the mindset of Confederate voters of the time. A white election official intoned his belief that blacks and their supporters were out to destroy "his way of life" and should not under any circumstances be given the right to vote because he was not going to live his life under laws and rules voted for by nee-groes. Oh, wait. Did I say that statement demonstrated the mindset of Confederates back then? Sorry. They still think this way. This mentality is, in essence, the backbone of the Obama Hatred, election rigging, and voter suppression that prevail in today's Confederacy.
But here's the rub. Despite the Bull Connors and Ronald Reagans and Barry Goldwaters, despite the murderous Klansmen who shot civil rights workers and the bigots who blew up little girls in their Sunday clothes as they sat in church, both the Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts were passed.
But it didn't happen because insurgents infiltrated the party. Those outside insurgents forced the issue. They made it a moral point. The moral force of their argument prompted (or forced) members of the political machinery to go along. Certainly there were powerful politicians working on the inside (even if most of them worked for civil rights by not actively working against it) but had it not been for a well organized and steadfast outside movement that eventually meshed its goals with political insiders nothing would have happened.
This is still a viable option. The Civil Rights movement was aided and abetted by vicious public violence and high visibility murders, actions it became untenable to support. The violence done to Americans by today's Confederate policies is not quite so evident but it is just as savage. Successful action will still take enormous amounts of grassroots work. The effort might not be as focused as the Civil Rights movement's goals, but that's something else we need to contend with. It's a difficult argument to make but not impossible. Confederates' dispute starts and ends with fear and hatred, theirs is basically an argument of greed and unenlightened self-interest. It's the sort of "Fuck you, Charlie, I've got mine" axiom made popular by Reagan.
Plato, talking about social and political justice, contends that greed (unenlightened self-interest) leads to internal contradictions and strife whereas a balanced existence which recognizes competing interests, that is, a well developed sense of justice, leads to harmony. This sounds a bit too Kumbaya-ish for Sunday morning talk shows, and Hume agrees. But here's how he puts it. We all recognize the need for society. Humans are social creatures. He argues that equality is valuable not just as a goal in and of itself but as a way of ensuring justice for all. Being able to live and work without fear is not just beneficial but necessary, thereby making justice a goal that is in everyone's (enlightened) self-interest.
Okay, this still sounds a tad like something you'd hear with a Pete Seeger song in the background, but hey, it worked for the Civil Rights Movement.
We have to start somewhere. Working both inside and out of the party machinery is probably necessary. Sanders' insurgent appeal is not making party officials jump (and ask Socrates about the fate of gadflies), but creating the circumstances from which might grow a movement able to craft a larger message of justice as the true road to freedom could (and probably will) be a necessity.
The other side argues that it's important to hold on to hate, to hate and hate and beat people up if they give you trouble. That's their idea of the road to freedom: less freedom. Another talking head in one of those documentaries mentioned that if Democrats voted for the Civil Rights Act (in 1964), they might as well forget about ever winning the south ever again. He was right. But those people are dying off. It's up to the next generation of Democrats to make an argument that we're all in it together. We won't, as Bouie suggests, get everything we want. Who does? (Plato is wagging his finger at you...).
Hume declared justice to be the single greatest virtue in political and social life.
He may be right. It's an argument worth making.
RE "More than 200 outraged New York voters have joined a lawsuit claiming the party affiliation on their voter registration changed without their consent."
Thank you, Marie, for posting this piece!
As an add-on - also to be filed under "!?WTF?!"- I wish to offer the following:
I tuned into WNYC/NPR this AM, as I'd known that today's guests would be providing - and explaining - details pertaining to my state's Primary ballot. I will be voting tomorrow.
As a life-long registered Democrat (I vote in NYC) - unless I'm to learn that I've magically become non-party (or Repub) affiliated - I cannot recall, to date, such complexity or confusion, as it was presented by these speakers, regarding the Dem's Primary ballot . . . specifically, referencing the right-hand column that lists "Delegates". (The Repub ballot does not include a list of Delegates, although Doc Narcolepsy's name endures.)
I listened as the speakers addressed the importance of voting for Delegates. Yet I also listened to their contradictory recommendations: #1) to vote - or maybe *not* to vote - for the maximum # of Delegates allowed, or even for any of them, since #2) casting votes for a (or several) Delegate(s) could, in fact, prove disadvantageous to my chosen candidate.
While, in all honesty, I'm not one who wholly comprehends the tallying & designating of Delegate votes, I was - nevertheless - further unsettled when one of the guests (voter advisor?/ballot expert?) gave a verbal (if reluctant) head nod to the suggestion that the Democrats' Primary ballot appeared to be less than "democratic".
And . . .
Excellent response, Marie, to Moron Dowd.
Cheers -
It'll be interesting to see how Little Johnny rules after today's hearing on Obama v Bigots (aka US v Texas), especially considering the issue of whether or not Texas has standing to even bring a suit. Roberts has been pretty strict about the concept of standing in the past and, from what I've read of it, the question of Texas' standing is a big problem.
Of course this doesn't worry the wingnuts. They're used to the Supremes twisting in their direction. At least during the Age of Scalia. This morning, a piece appearing in the WaPo (aka Home for Retired Decider Speechwriters and Mooching Confederate Hangers-on), Confederate legal weasel Jonathan Adler, well known Obama hater and instigator of other bogus legal challenges to Obama administration programs for helping Americans other than rich, white Republicans, instructed Roberts to not worry about standing because, in his opinion, Texas' standing is self-evident and largely inviolable.
Remember, this is the same guy who has cheered the suggestion that, should Ted (Loser) Cruz infest the White House, he should put his only pal, extreme wingnut Arizona Confederate Mike Lee on the court.
Roberts, as he's done in the past, could opt for a long game and eviscerate any plans to help immigrants at some time in the future (there's always plenty of time to fuck the poor and the powerless). He might decide not to decide and leave things the way they are for now the way he did before eventually gutting the Voting Rights Act.
If he sides with Adler and Texas, well, I'd say he'd have some 'splainin' to do, but Confederates don't give a shit about 'splainin' nothin' to no one.
All three branches of government are at play in the immigration case, but the truth is that it's the Congress -- and specifically John Boehner's House -- that put the Supremes in the hot seat. By refusing to bring an immigration bill to the floor -- after the Senate had passed one -- Boehner abdicated his responsibility to some 11 million people. It's unconscionable.
I don't blame the President one bit for doing what he could to help many of those people get at least some clarity on their status after Boehner's abdication. An argument that the President overstepped his authority isn't crazy; what's crazy is that the House practically dared him to do it; then they sued him over it, as did a bunch of GOP-led states (it's the states' case that's before the Supremes).
So if the Supremes deadlock, as the tea-leaf readers predict, the blame goes to the House more than to the confederate Supremes, IMO.
Don't know if Boehner is down at his Marco Island condo right now, but if so, I hope his A/C goes out & the many immigrants who work in the HVAC-repair business down here refuse to fix it. He couldn't take the heat in the House; let's see how that chicken-shit takes the heat of a summer's day on Marco Island.
Marie
Marie,
Re: do-nothing, chicken-shit Boehner, sans AC.
He wouldn't even notice. He's probably been crawling around inside a bottle since he left D.C. He's writing his memoirs: "How Everyone Fucked Me".
And your point is a good one. It's easy to forget about the congress because it's such a moribund, DOA clusterfuck, the House especially, which hasn't done anything of value in so many years that one forgets the role Confederate congressional creeps have played, through dereliction of their sworn duty, in sinking the country into depression and ideological paralysis.
Out of the three branches, at least the judicial and executive branches are still doing their jobs (at least the parts of the judicial branch the Confederates allow to function).
I grew up with the "could/couldn't care less" line and I'm surprised no one has brought up the tag from the Viet Nam era military of "sorry 'bout that" which was always said in a way to make it clear you weren't one bit sorry about that.