You probably did not think that a key reason why the current Supreme Court is so out of whack with much of America is because of gerrymandering. This is so because the makeup of every Court is determined by the two other gerrymandered branches of government, the executive and legislative.

Twelve of the last fifteen justices have been appointed by Republican presidents, and that is not an accident. With our Constitution, it is virtually impossible not to have partisan Supreme Courts when we choose our presidents and legislators in ways that are mired in a deep gerrymandering pie, or cesspool.

Here’s how it works:

The U.S. Senate is perhaps the most insidious form of gerrymandering that we have. A good working definition of gerrymandering from Merriam-Webster is “the practice of dividing or arranging a territorial unit into election districts in a way that gives one political party an unfair advantage in elections.” At the time that the American constitution was created, there were no political parties. But there were political interests. The most significant of these interests was what powers would individual states have as opposed to the federal government.

For example, who would be responsible for determining whether a road should be built, or whether it would be legal for a sixteen-year-old to drink whiskey? Who would be able to levy taxes, or even tariffs? At the time that the constitution was being written, there were two key interests within the states that created the groundwork for gerrymandering:

1. The smaller states such as Rhode Island or Delaware did not want to be overpowered at the federal level by larger ones such as New York or Virginia.
2. The states where slavery was legal and was commonly used wanted to have equal power to the states that did not have slavery.

Many of the founding fathers were leery of direct democracy, meaning direct votes by the people. In order to prevent runaway “popular democracy,” the founders created a Senate to go along with the House of Representatives in the Congress. The Senate was undemocratic in two ways, both of which impacted the Supreme Court.

1. Initially, Senators were chosen by state legislatures, not the people. This would be a way of better ensuring that the interests of the states, as opposed to the people, were represented in the Senate. This was clearly undemocratic, and in 1917, the 17^th Amendment was passed, allowing the people to vote for their Senators. But at that time, “the people” were essentially only white males.
2. Each state has two senators. That ensures that there is equal representation among all the states in the Senate. At the same time, it ensures that at least one house of Congress does not include equal representation of the people. For example, California has a population of nearly 40 million people while Wyoming has less than 600 thousand. For each person in Wyoming, there are over 60 in California. What that means in the Senate is that each person in Wyoming has as much power as 60 people in California. That is terribly unfair, and it means that states like Wyoming, the Dakotas, Montana, Nebraska, etc. have far more power in the Senate than states like California, Texas and New York. The same is true for southern states such as Mississippi, Alabama and South Carolina which are relatively small by population. Additionally, these states are no longer politically competitive. Conservative Republicans win virtually all state-wide elections including for the Senators.

Right now, the U.S. Senate is evenly divided between Democrats and Republicans. But Democratic Senators represent nearly 57% of the population, whereas Republican Senators represent around 43%. If the Senate was democratic, the Democrats would have a large majority. But in today’s real world the Democrats will probably lose seats in the 2022 mid-term election and once again be a minority.

We should also point out that the House of Representatives is gerrymandered in a different way. Take Missouri for example. It has eight Congressional seats. Recently, the state has voted between 50% – 60% Republican. Even at 60%, Republicans should get only five of the seats. However, they get six and some tried to get them seven. Why does it come out this way?

It is because in Missouri the districts are drawn by the state legislature. The Missouri General Assembly is currently veto-proof Republican. What the legislature has done is to draw two “minority majority” districts. This means districts in which some minority constitutes a majority of the voters. In Missouri, it is African-Americans. One district is in the eastern part of the state, St. Louis, and the other in the western part, Kansas City. None of the other districts is competitive.

Similar to the legislative branch, the executive (presidency) is deeply influenced by gerrymandering. The way in which the founding fathers took care of that was by creating the Electoral College. The E.C. is not really a college. It is a barely known organization that only exists every four years, when there is a presidential election. The number of representatives that each state has in the E.C. is somewhat based on population, but not entirely. What is important to know is that when the Electoral College works properly, the electors from each state vote for the candidate who won the popular vote in that state. In other words, the electors in Alabama vote for whomever carried the state and the electors in California vote for whomever won that state.

Where it gets undemocratic is let’s suppose that Candidate A carries Alabama by one million votes and loses California by a 400,000 votes. You might think that Candidate A would be ahead at that point, because she has 600,000 more votes than Candidate ‘B.’ But with the Electoral College, Candidate ‘B’ is ahead with 55 Electoral Votes from California as opposed to Candidate ‘B’ who has the 9 Electoral Votes from Alabama.

The fact that a candidate can lose the popular vote and still be elected president through the E.C. is not just hypothetical. It has happened five times in our history. The two most recent are the two most consequential. In 2000, Democrat Al Gore won the popular vote from George Bush by over a half million votes. However, Bush won the Electoral vote when the Supreme Court made a decision that gave Bush Florida’s electoral votes. That would not have mattered if the decision had been made by the popular vote.

In 2016, Hillary Clinton defeated Donald Trump by more than three million votes. However, Trump narrowly won “battleground states” such as Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin and that propelled him to an Electoral victory.

It’s possible that two of our worst presidents ever were elected by the Electoral College than the popular vote. These two presidents are also responsible for five of the current six conservatives on the Supreme Court. Bush nominated John Roberts and Samuel Alito; Trump nominated Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett.

This is how the Supreme Court became impacted by gerrymandering. Without a gerrymandered presidency and a gerrymandered Senate, the Supreme Court would have been more balanced and reflective of the values of the American people.

To make matters worse, the Supreme Court itself has recently refused to overturn the creation of gerrymandered districts by the states.

The political ramifications of the gerrymandering dynamics is that Republicans are helped in all three branches. Theoretically, the three branches of government are supposed to restrain one another through a system of checks and balances. But that does not work when all three branches are dominated by one party, and that particular party is intent on thoroughly dominating government and extending very few levers of power to minority parties.

How can this change? At the moment, it’s difficult to conceive. Trump Republicans have a number of plans to further a radical right agenda in America. For our government to become more balanced it will require challenging victories by non-Republicans in congressional and presidential races. Stay tuned to see if that happens.

The post The Gerrymandering Virus – It’s Everywhere! appeared first on Occasional Planet.

The history of the Republican Party over the past seventy years includes battles between the moderates within the party against the extremists to the right. During most of the second half of the 20^th Century and some of the 21^st Century, the moderates were able to seize the presidential nomination. But the far-right Donald Trump steamroller movement seems to have almost crushed the remaining elements of the moderates.

In 1952, the Republican Party was divided between the moderates favoring General Dwight Eisenhower and the deeply conservative (though barely extremist) element favoring Senator Robert Taft of Ohio. Eisenhower won the nomination in 1952 as well as the presidential election. The same thing happened four years later in 1956.

The GOP nomination in 1960 went to Eisenhower’s vice-president, Richard Nixon. At that time in his life, he was actually quite moderate, in part because he was constantly currying the favor of Eisenhower. It was not a certainty that Eisenhower would endorse Nixon until a day before the convention. Nixon was opposed by progressive New York Governor Nelson Rockefeller, but the former vice-president won the nomination, carrying all eleven states with primaries as well as every other state that did not have a “favorite son” running. Nixon’s ease with winning the nomination did not carry over to the election as he was edged by Democrat John F. Kennedy.

1964 was the first year in which a true right-wing extremist won the Republican nomination. The nominee was Senator Barry Goldwater of Arizona, as he defeated Rockefeller on the strength of his appeal to many voters who were angry about the progressive turns in the Kennedy-Johnson years. Goldwater became famous for uttering in his acceptance speech at the Republican convention, “Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice. And moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue.”

Goldwater wanted to undo much of Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society as well as Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal. But he carried very few moderate Republicans and was soundly defeated in November. That election, 1964, was the last time that Democrats won in a landslide.

1968 was one of the strangest and most disconcerting years in American history. Lyndon Johnson announced on March 31 that he would not seek renomination. Two other individual seemed to be likely candidates, Senator Eugene McCarthy of Minnesota and Senator Robert F. Kennedy of New York. Kennedy was assassinated right after the California primary in early June. Johnson’s vice-president Hubert Humphrey ran as the “proxy Johnson” candidate. He did not enter any primaries, but with the help of Johnson in garnering support from the “party regulars,” Humphrey was able to win the nomination at the disjointed convention in Chicago where on-going violence was taking place in downtown.

On the Republican side, Richard Nixon was able to make a comeback, in large part because of the support that he had given Republican candidates across the country over the previous six years. He was opposed by newly elected governor of California Ronald Reagan and New York’s long-time governor Nelson Rockefeller. Nixon won ten of the twelve primaries and 61 % of the delegate votes. His politics fell somewhere between the progressive Rockefeller and the conservative Reagan. He won the election against Humphrey and third-party candidate Governor George Wallace of Alabama. Nixon governed moderately for his first several years, but as his anger rose, he became more and more conservative.

Even though the Watergate break-in occurred in 1972, it did not impact Richard Nixon’s reelection that year. He carried every state other than Massachusetts and the District of Columbia. He had no opposition in the Republican primary that year, and his election race against Senator George McGovern of South Dakota was a breeze for him. But he was initially worried that he would have to run against popular Maine Senator Edmund Muskie. The fact that McGovern bested Muskie for the Democratic nomination was due in part to the Nixon “plumbers” who created false and misleading information about Muskie, and they eventually trapped him into appearing very unpresidential in a press conference.

Once Nixon won reelection, his primary focus was on the Watergate cover-up. This brought out a great deal of anger and meanness on his part. It also was consistent with his notion of an “enemies list” and crafting domestic policies to undermine Johnson’s Great Society. By the time that Nixon resigned in August of 1974, his governance was quite conservative.

In 1973, after disgraced Vice-President Spiro Agnew resigned, Rep. Gerald Ford of Michigan became vice-president. He assumed the presidency upon Nixon’s resignation. He was faced with problems of inflation, recession, and an extended energy crisis. He was considered a moderate, in large part because he did not fervently support the right-wing Republican social agenda on abortion, gay rights, etc. Leading to the 1976 election, Ford was seen as vulnerable. He was challenged by the aforementioned former Governor Ronald Reagan of California. The contest was extremely tight as Ford carried 26 states and Reagan 24. Ford won 1,121 delegates and Reagan 1,078. Ford won the nomination, as a moderate, but Reagan had established himself as a national leader and was poised for 1980.

In the 1976 general election, Ford carried a great deal of Nixon’s baggage, including the fact that Ford pardoned Nixon for “all crimes committed or might have been committed.” Ford lost to energetic Democrat, former Georgia Governor Jimmy Carter.

Carter had a somewhat sluggish presidency as he faced many of the economic and energy problems that Ford did and he was further burdened by the fact that 51 Americans had been taken hostage by Iran during a califate revolution. The 1980 Republican nomination was going to be a prime plumb and Reagan was poised to secure in on behalf of the conservative wing of the party. He carried 44 states to the six carried by moderate George H.W. Bush, who Reagan accepted as his vice-president. Reagan defeated Carter in a landslide. Four years later, Reagan faced nominal opposition for the nomination and then prevailed in another landslide election, this time against former vice-president Walter Mondale of Minnesota.

The race for the 1988 Republican nomination was largely between two party regulars who fell somewhere between moderation and extremism. Vice-President George H.W. Bush battled Kansas Senator Bob Dole. Extremists to the right were represented by Rev. Pat Robertson of Virginia, but he carried only four states. Dole became quite upset with some of the accusations by Bush, whose campaign was managed by one of the greatest masters of dirty tricks, Lee Atwater. The Bush campaign dispensed of Dole rather early in the primary sweepstakes and went on to carry 42 states.

The Democrats continued a habit of choosing weak presidential nominees, this time former Governor Michael Dukakis of Massachusetts. Atwater was incredibly skilled in embarrassing Dukakis, portraying Dukakis as being both soft on crime and weak as a military leader. Bush won in the third straight Republican landslide.

When Bush ran for reelection in 1992, he a tougher race. First, Atwater had died the year before from a virulent form of brain cancer, and his Democratic opponent was a strong one, former Arkansas governor Bill Clinton. Bush was also challenged from the right within his own party by former journalist and Nixon speech-writer Pat Buchanan. Bush carried all 50 states and the District of Columbia and easily dispensed of Buchanan to win the Republican nomination.

In 1988, Bush had campaigned on a very conservative plank, “read my lips, no new taxes.” He had been able to fulfill that promise until 1992, reelection year. The federal government was running short on money and new taxes were in order. He walked back his pledge, albeit with sound reasoning. But it hurt him politically. Clinton was a breath of fresh air, particularly in the debates where he came across as much more human and compassionate than Bush. Clinton won the election in a three-way race in which eccentric businessman Ross Perot ran as an independent.

While Clinton had a difficult time getting legislation through Congress, he was still popular among voters. Two veterans of previous presidential races were the top contenders for the GOP nomination in 1996, Kansas Senator Bob Dole and Virginia journalist Pat Buchanan. In this case, the moderate, Dole, achieved an overwhelming victory, carrying delegates from 46 states, this, despite losing New Hampshire to Buchanan early in the cycle. Dole was a legitimate moderate who knew as well as anyone how Congress operated, something that was tough for Clinton to do. But Clinton started his campaign well before Dole won the Republican nomination and he carried 31 states plus DC for a 379 – 159 electoral victory. Clinton won the popular vote by a margin of over eight million votes.

The fight for the 2000 Republican nomination featured moderate Senator John McCain against conservative former Texas Governor George W. Bush. While Bush seemed to many to be too naïve and inexperienced for the job, he had an extremely skilled campaign staff, and he was able to capitalize on the growing conservative movement in the country. In the primaries, he won nearly twice as many votes as McCain and carried 45 states.

In the November general election, Democrat Al Gore of Tennessee, the sitting vice-president won the popular vote by over 500,000 votes. The electoral victor depended on the vote from Florida where there was considerable confusion and malfeasance, particularly with the use of “butterfly ballots” in Palm Beach County. At first it appeared that Gore would carry Florida; then Bush, whereupon Gore conceded. But as the Florida vote tightened up again, Gore rescinded his concession. Virtually all components of the Florida race were thrown into the courts which resulted in numerous precinct recounts. Ultimately, the U.S. Supreme Court rendered a decision that resulted in Bush winning the election. It was a 5-4 decision, and Justice Sandra Day O’Connor later said that she thought that she made a mistake in her vote. But Bush won and what happened in the country was quite different from what would have happened with an Al Gore presidency.

Gore graciously accepted the Supreme Court’s decision, and Bush was inaugurated as president. It remains an open question as to what Bush and the Republicans would have done had the Court ruled in Gore’s favor.

It was on Bush’s watch that nine-eleven occurred. Many scholars believe that had Gore been president, he may well have paid more attention to the CIA’s warning about Al Qaeda during the first eight months of his administration and perhaps would have been able to prevent the attack from happening. Had nine eleven occurred on his watch, it is unlikely that he would have invaded Iraq for specious reasons as Bush did.

In 2004, Bush had the most nominal of opponents in the Republican primary. In the general election, he won the popular vote by over three million votes and the determinative electoral count, 285 – 251.

Most people remember the 2008 election because of Barack Obama’s nomination win over Hillary Clinton, and then his win of the presidency. But Republicans had a very competitive race for their nomination. Eventually Senator John McCain of Arizona won the contest, winning the races in thirty-seven states. But former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney won eleven contests and nearly five million popular votes to McClain’s ten million. Both McCain and Romney were seen as moderates.

Two other candidates in the race were former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee who was on the far-right of the evangelical wing of the Republican party, and Texas congressman Ron Paul who was more of a libertarian than a Republican. In 2008, the moderates in the GOP clearly carried the day.

2012 was another year in which the moderate wing of the Republican Party prevailed. Romney won going away with 42 states and over 52% of the popular vote. His nearest competitor was former Pennsylvania senator Rick Santorum who was an extreme right-wing religious candidate. Also on the race were Ron Paul again as well as former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich, who in many ways was the father of the modern right-wing Republican Party.

Romney won the nomination but lost the general election to Obama. Even though Obama won reelection, he was being stymied with his legislative agenda, particularly with the obstinance of Republican leader in the Senate, Mitch McConnell.

Charles Darwin would have liked the 2016 Republican race, as it was clearly an exercise of survival of the fittest. The fittest won the nomination and eventually the election, but as was clear to many when he first announced his candidacy in June of 2015, Donald Trump was not the fittest to govern.

He won the nomination against fifteen other candidates who took the stage on at least one of the televised Republican debates in the 2016 cycle. Most Republicans thought that Trump’s candidacy was a “joke,” but as more and more of the other candidates dropped out of the race, Trump became more of a concern, and then a favorite. The other candidates learned rather quickly that it was not wise for them to cross swords with Trump. He had ways of humiliating others while responding to attacks on him with more vicious rebuttals on his opponents. He dispatched in quick order with some of the previously favored candidates such as Jeb Bush, Marco Rubio, John Kasich, Carly Fiorina, Santorum, Paul and Huckabee. Even before the primaries began, well-known Republicans such as former New York governor George Pataki, South Carolina senator Lindsey Graham, former Texas governor Rick Perry, Wisconsin governor Scott Walker and Louisiana governor Bobby Jindal. Some of those who dropped out were moderate (Kasich and Bush) but most were extreme right-wingers. The last person standing before Trump clinched the nomination was extreme right-winger Senator Ted Cruz of Texas. Trump attacked Cruz by insinuating that his father had been part of a conspiracy to kill President John Kennedy, and that his wife was unattractive. When the Republican delegates assembled in Cleveland, Trump had nearly three times as many delegates as Cruz. Trump organized the convention to in many ways be a “hate-fest” as he and his supporters lambasted Republicans who did not agree with him as well as anyone with a ‘D’ (Democrat) after their name.

If the Trump – Clinton race has occurred in virtually any other democracy, Clinton would have won solidly, with nearly three million more popular votes than Trump. But this is the United States, and it has the anachronistic Electoral College. In that arena, Trump prevailed 306 – 225, and thus was declared the next president of the United States.

By 2020, Trump was so popular within the Republican Party that his only opposition was the not-well-known former governor of Massachusetts, William Weld, a genuine moderate. In the primaries. Weld won only 2.35 % of the vote while Trump essentially won the rest. Trump won the nomination and then went on to lose the general election to former vice-president and senator Joe Biden of Delaware by seven million popular votes, and in the Electoral College, 306-225, the same margin by which he had won four years previously. However, now, twenty months after the election, Trump still does not understand that he lost, nor do many of his supporters. That in itself exemplifies how far to the radical right the Republican Party currently sits.

The main difference in the 2022 Republican Party is that it’s virtually impossible to find a moderate Republican. Where are the Dwight Eisenhowers, Nelson Rockefellers, Gerald Fords, George H.W. Bushs, Bob Doles, John McCains and Mitt Romneys of the Republican Party? It seems that somewhere between the time that Donald Trump declared his candidacy for the 2016 Republican nomination in June of 2015 and the time that he won the nomination in July, 2016, it became virtually impossible to be a moderate in the GOP without getting verbally demolished by Trump.

Following the testimony of White House Chief-of-Staff aide Cassidy Hutchinson before the January 6 committee on June 28 of this year, it seems that Trump is not a shoo-in to win the 2024 GOP presidential nomination. But the mostly likely opponents are current “Trumpsters” such as Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, Gov. Greg Abbott of Texas, former vice-president Mike Pence of Indiana, Senator Ted Cruz of Texas, Senator Marco Rubio of Florida and former South Carolina governor Nikki Haley. If there is a well-known moderate in the party, it would be Wyoming congresswoman Liz Cheney. In reality, her views on most issues are strongly conservative. Where she differs from the others is in her integrity, as show so vividly in her role as vice-chair of the Jan. 6 committee.

As we see from the chart above, Republicans have won eleven of the eighteen races since 1952. Had the winner been based on the popular vote, the split would be nine each. The Republicans have won the popular vote only once in the last eight elections (W. Bush in 2004). Theoretically the Democrats should be on a roll.

But Republican extremists seem to have captured the party, though it was only ten years ago when the party nominated a moderate (Romney in 2012). Under fair and equal rules, the Democrats may have a bright future. However, the conservative Supreme Court is actively undermining democracy, and at the present time, all bets are off.

The post Are moderate Republicans dying with a whimper; or will there be a resurgence? appeared first on Occasional Planet.

Barack Obama was clearly one of the most cerebral and well-spoken presidents that the United States has ever had. But as odd as it may seem, two slips of his tongue may have led to the rise of the two worst dictators so far in the 21^st Century.

In 2011, Obama spoke at the White House Correspondents Dinner. One of the guests was Donald Trump. Obama showed little mercy when while looking at Trump, he said, “No one is happier, no one is prouder to put this birth certificate matter to rest than the Donald. And that’s because he can finally get back to focusing on the issues that matter, like: Did we fake the moon landing? What really happened in Roswell? And where are Biggie and Tupac?” Obama also included a fake video of his birth and an artist’s rendition of what the White House would look like if Trump was president, further embarrassing Trump.

You can see the five-minute video here:

As you might expect, Trump was not pleased by being the butt of the jokes. Former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie said Trump was “pissed off like I’d never seen him before.”

Trump had played around with the idea of running fore president before the 2011 Correspondents Dinner. But the events that evening truly crystallized his hate towards Obama as well as any Democrat who held him in low regard. In June of 2015, Trump announced that he was running for president in 2016. He decimated the rest of the Republican field of candidates and then lost to Hillary Clinton by nearly three million popular votes, but won the outdated and undemocratic Electoral College.

The second faux pas by Obama came in 2014. In March of that year, shortly after Vladimir Putin and Russia had invaded Crimea and parts of eastern Ukraine, Obama called Russia a “regional power.” Specifically, he said, “Russia is a regional power that is threatening some of its immediate neighbors, not out of strength but out of weakness.” Obama describes in in more detail in the following 50-second video:

Knowing what we know now about Putin, it is no surprise that he would be humiliated and outraged at the thought of Russia being called a regional power. After all, his dream as president of Russia was to re-establish the old Soviet Union, with all seventeen republics. He felt that Russia and the Soviet Union had a long and proud history of being a global power and he want to reassert what had been lost at the end of the twentieth century when Mikhail Gorbachev orchestrated to collapse of the Soviet Union in order to give more autonomy to each of the republics.

We cannot say that Obama’s demeaning remarks about Russia caused Putin to bully and ultimately further invade Ukraine in 2022, but it certainly did not help. Putin was also irritated by former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton who repeatedly criticized Putin and Russia for the lack of fair and democratic elections.

Generally, Barack Obama measures his words as well as anyone. You can see it, particularly in his press conferences, when he often pauses between phrases to make sure that the next thing that he says is precisely what he is thinking and not something that he will later regret.

Life is full of ironies, and the fact that Barack Obama may well have significantly contributed to the rise of dictators Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin can be considered unexpected and certainly unfortunate. It is further evidence that we all make mistakes, even when we try our best to avoid them.

The post How Loose Lips from Obama Hurt America and the World appeared first on Occasional Planet.

Oh boy, were we ready for a change.

Biden and Harris came in with stratospherically high expectations. Lady Gaga sang the national anthem at the inauguration, and a new day was about to begin. Our newly elected White House Democrats were going to replace night for day, chaos for reason, and restructure dystopia with a clear path leading us forward toward order. And they were going to do all of that within their first year in office, if possible (that’s what we dreamed, hoped, thought – okay, what I dreamed, hoped, imagined!) Oh, foolish me. Oh, foolish us. After DT, were we ever ready for change! We were on pins and needles, waiting for our new day to begin. Kamala was dispatched to the Mexican border, and Joe would take care of the rest.

Of course, we were still in the middle of a pandemic, and caught up in pandemic-related worldwide distribution issues that ultimately contributed to an inflation rate not seen in 40 years. Higher gas prices do not happy campers make! Biden didn’t create the pandemic or inflation. Biden didn’t set up Chinese dominance of production and its tumbling dice of ocean misuse to get us our iPhones when we want them. For that, we have to go back through years of policy making and bipartisan culpability in Washington. And yes, we might even have to reassess our love affair with Apple. Perish the thought! But yeah, we just might. Suffice it to say, there is enough inflation blame to go a long way round – and a long way back. Biden just happens to be the President in place right now, so he’s our fall guy.

Biden didn’t create gun violence either. Gun violence came with the job. Gun violence comes with the country that we are. We are consistently deaf to our nation-defining lessons on death by guns and automatic weapons. We are unwilling to leave the curse of our bloody need to kill one another behind us for once and for all. We are, seemingly, just incapable of doing that. We prefer the guns for everybody Don’t Worry Be Happy approach. As Bobby McFerrin once sang:

“In every life we have some trouble
But when you worry you make it double
Don’t worry, be happy.”

And incapable of bringing about real change, we need someone to blame for our morass. That’s why we elect a new President every four years, right?

This time round, we elected Joe Biden.

And surprise, surprise, in an ABC News-Ipsos poll released in December, even though a majority of Americans (53%) still approve of Biden (not a big majority by any means), Biden’s favorability has slipped far from the 72% support that he had just in March. Scapegoat, maybe? And guess what, in recent polls, gun violence, inflation and Covid-response are the major barometers in Biden’s declining poll numbers. Gun violence and inflation, as already mentioned, are beyond any President’s control.

Covid came out of the clear blue sky. Biden’s Covid response is like night and day compared to Trump’s. But a virus is a virus, not controlled by any president anywhere in the world. The delta variant morphed to an omicron variant whether we like it or not. And Biden, despite his power, has no say in that. But yeah, if we’re going to blame someone for the fast-increasing number of Covid infections across the country, let’s blame the guy in office right now. That would be Biden.

Can we fall back on Harris? Not really.

Harris, not often seen or reported on in our media, has percentages that line up pretty much 53% for, and 40% against, not dissimilar to Biden’s. She is not resonating broadly. She faux-pas’s big time recently by saying the delta and omicron variants had caught the current administration off-guard. Fauci, never failing, came to the rescue. Her comments were taken ‘out of context,’  he reassured us.

And so and just because, I thought we might look at how the previous power brokers in the kingdom are doing. They may yet come back to haunt us. A note to Microsoft’s Word’s spellcheck programming people; even now, Word doesn’t recognize Melania as a legitimate name. Come on Microsoft – you’re the most valuable internet-focused company on the planet, get it together and catch up! Melania was here and gone!

Is Melania’s step-daughter, Ivanka, doing so much better than the current occupants of the White House?

I am sad to report that no, she is not.

I found on YouGovAmerica that Ivanka is not doing well at all. The site tells us that Ivanka’s popularity is now at an all-time low of 34%. Welcome to the club, Ivanka! We’re here for you.

How about Melania herself?

It turns out that there is enough disconnect to go round. Melania – unrecognized by Microsoft – left office with the worst final popularity rating for a First Lady ever. But empathy begins from those abandoned en masse by society, so all is not lost. However, after she left the White House, nobody much seemed to care about how our former First Lady was doing. There are no recent poll statistics that I have been able to find on Melania at all.

Melania news was sparse until FoxBusiness recently reported that you can now own a digital watercolor painting of our former First Lady’s eyes in exchange for 1 Solana, a cryptocurrency token. This is not some nutcase hacker trying to make a buck off of Melania. I am not making this up. This is Melania herself selling an NFT. The SOL token involved is, as of this writing, valued at somewhere around $175. Well, you sell a thousand, that’s small change. You sell 50 thousand, you’re looking at almost 9 million dollars! Melania is cashing in. And apparently she is planning to dedicate more of her energy to her new business going forward. According to AlJazeera … Melania Trump will release NFTs “in regular intervals” on her website … with a portion of the proceeds going to foster children. It’s unclear what percentage of the proceeds will be donated, or whether the donations will be given to specific foster child-related charities.

Melania has moved on.

So, there you go!

Oops, not so fast.

Our 45th President, DT, the man himself, seems to think that Melania still has pending, how to put it, responsibilities, duties, (advantages for DT himself?) going forward. He believes that she, despite her current NFT endeavors (she just posted a new one today and is now called crypto queen by London’s Guardian) – , can win the rest of America over for another flyby at the presidency. Well, dreams have to start somewhere.

How is DT, the man himself, doing in the polls these days? As of Dec 15th, FiveThirtyEight tells us that, unfortunately for him and fortunately for us, not so great either. DT had a 52% disapproval rating as of mid-December. The scales seem to have tipped to his detriment. The man lives, still fuming like a discarded cigarette butt, in a luxurious club-like situation in Palm Beach, Florida. He is slow-burning his final years forward, in exile, like some once-upon-a-time Russian oligarch in erstwhile Paris.

So, who wants to be America most? Who loves us the most right now?

Honestly, I don’t know.

Somewhat facetiously, I thought of nominating Lana Del Rey.

Lana Del Rey is a self-made enthusiast for American symbolism and a lover of America’s past. Del Rey, sometimes, knows us better than we know ourselves. She knows our ins and outs, our cultural highs and lows, perhaps more than anybody. She knows our doubts, our inadequacies, our blemishes and our flaws. She knows out inherent attractions, and she understands why we are the country that we are.

Lana knows us like the back of our hand.

Alas, Lana Del Rey is not our answer. She is a singer who has no interest in politics.

So, hurtling on toward November 5, 2024, we are left with the same coterie of names as before, the Kennedys, the Bushes, the Obamas, the Reagans, the Clintons, the Trumps, and now the Bidens.

The Obamas were the breakthrough family on that list. But they have come and gone, just like Melania. The list is getting thinner by the day. There are no new Regans going forward, no new Bushes (that I know of), no Clintons, no new Kennedys and no new Obamas.

But are there still future Trumps out there, lesser or greater Trumps, in our future?

Hell yeah, there are many new future Trumps – sharing his surname or not – just waiting in line, ready to sabotage our democracy all over again. The grand lesson of DT for his acolytes worldwide is that you can lie, bluff, confuse and bluster … and you can get away with it. You can build a fake persona, just like you can build fake news. QED.

Lesson learned.

Get yourself a bullhorn, align yourself with our most base instincts that negate difference, diversity, multiculturalism, human decency and democracy. And then start to prattle, jabber and vent – the more outrageous and farfetched your positions the better.

Then – and just then – some segments of America may start to believe that you have legitimacy. And just then, some segments of America may begin to believe that you love them most.

Oops! Sorry.

That you love America most.

The post Who loves America most? appeared first on Occasional Planet.

President Joe Biden did something that his three predecessors failed to do during their nearly twenty years of presiding over America’s longest war. Biden leveled with the American people and told them that the war that they were fighting in Afghanistan was one which they were not going to win. That was Truth to Power, something that rarely comes from the mouth of someone in Power. He said that he was taking action to forthwith remove American troops, contractors and support personnel from Afghanistan.

It was time for a president to acknowledge to American and global citizens that if there had been a good time for the United States to extricate itself from Afghanistan, it would have been shortly after air strikes flattened key Al Qaeda positions in 2002-2003. Since then, any chance of “winning” the war had long since passed. No matter how many corners could be turned in the future, America and its allies were not going to win a war in Afghanistan.

Biden’s willingness to say that the United States was leaving Afghanistan; his courage to follow through on this pledge indicate how remarkable both he and his actions have been. This is particularly so in comparison to American presidents of the recent past.

Biden’s courage to take responsibility for a final resolution of this chapter of American conflict with Afghanistan is the headline. It should remain that way for weeks, months, even years to come. It is difficult to think of any action by any American president since the 1960s when Lyndon Johnson chose to fight for human and economic rights for minorities and poor white people in America that matched what Biden did.

However, as well received as Biden’s decision has been by most of the American people, there has not been a concurrent “trickle down” of support reaching many of the fine men and women in the American media.

No sooner had President Biden delivered his remarkable speech on August 16 than MSNBC cable journalists Nicolle Wallace and Brian Williams agreed that “95% of the American people will love the speech, and 95% of the press will hate it.” Kudos to them for being so spot on and brutally honest about their colleagues in the media.

The response of most of the media to the Biden speeches in many ways reflects the theater of the absurd. Prior to the speeches, if you could have gathered leading media commentators around in an informal gathering and asked them what they would suggest that the United States do about Afghanistan, it almost a sure bet that most would have said that the United States has to get out of Afghanistan. They might further add that the U.S. has to analyze the wars in which it has engaged since its last “victory” in 1945 in World War II and learn how to avoid going to wars which have “loser” written all over them. Finally, should the U.S. once again become involved in a war in which it has no way out other than formally or informally turning tail and leaving, it needs to rehearse Biden’s script on how to say “enough is enough.”

Members of the media seem to suffer from the same malady as other well-educated people who take their particular profession too seriously. Journalists lock themselves into the norms and standards of their profession and remove themselves from the grounding that comes from seeing oneself first as a human being and a reporter second.

No sooner had Biden delivered his seminal speech than they criticized the president with nit-picky questions and comments about the American extrication. There is legitimate grounding to many of their questions, particularly about the strategy and logistics of the final days in Kabul. However, the tone expressed by many of the journalists is snarky and absent of praise for the bold and thoughtful actions taken by Biden.

This is not to imply that no critical questions should be allowed in a press conference when journalists speak “Truth to Power” as clearly as Joe Biden did. Biden spoke the “Truth” about America’s presence in Afghanistan. He may have overlooked some of the smaller “truths” about the difficulties that American forces were facing in the final extrication.

For example, when he stated that there was no way for him and his advisors to know that the Taliban might be able to seize the capital city of Kabul and the area surrounding the Hamid Karzai Airport, that simply does not jibe with the on-the-ground reporting that we have seen and the video that accompanies it. When Biden was not straight about events that both the media and citizens could clearly see, then it undermined the credibility of his assertions about the wisdom of terminating the presence of American troops in Afghanistan immediately.

Media tends to consistently give itself a free pass. This is unfair for so many reasons. When vitriol is directed at Joe Biden as if he were Donald Trump, then the media’s checks and balances on Trump are undermined. The way for the media to enhance its credibility, and to gain more support from the American people, is for journalists to operate as human beings first and reporters second. We tend to admire politicians who speak to us as if they were across the table from us in our kitchen; the same holds true for journalists. The media is the lens through which we learn so much about what is going on in the world, our country, our regions and our localities. No need for grandstanding; just some low-drama honesty and truthfulness.

The post When a President Hits a Home Run, don’t criticize him for wearing the wrong color shoelaces. appeared first on Occasional Planet.

President Biden has nominated Neera Tanden, the President of the John Podesta-founded center-left think tank Center for American Progress (or CAP) to be his Director of the Office of Management and Budget. That nomination requires Senate confirmation and at the moment it appears that Tanden will be the first and perhaps only Biden nominee to be rejected by the US Senate. Her nomination is being opposed so far by Joe Manchin and every Republican willing to take a position. Why? They say it’s due to her toxic behavior online, claiming it’s a sign of larger character issues that would prevent her from working in a bipartisan way. Several Democratic politicians and voters are calling bullshit, but they’re wrong.

Neera Tanden’s nomination should be defeated and we can find a better nominee. Let me break down the arguments.

Senator Elizabeth Warren said, “The idea that the Republicans are going to complain over someone who has sharp elbows on Twitter is pretty outrageous”. She’s right on the merits there, Republicans not only ignored but often defended the unhinged tweeting of former President Donald Trump. Even though these tweets provoked international incidents as well as an insurrection this past January. Those tweets were clearly more prominent and harmful than anything Tanden could have tweeted because she was not President.

However, Warren’s criticism is probably the most blatantly hypocritical of any that we’ll discuss. Warren notably spent the final months of her imploding Presidential campaign complaining about critical tweets from alleged supporters of Sen. Bernie Sanders. Warren made the case on the debate stage, on the campaign trail, and famously on Rachel Maddow. Warren used “online bullying” being “a particular problem with Sanders supporters” as justification for winning an abysmal third place in her home state of Massachusetts. The tweets would be the reason why she didn’t endorse the only candidate who was remotely close to her ideological worldview in a two-candidate race. These were tweets from self-proclaimed supporters, not even Bernie Sanders himself. Yet Warren believed these tweets were sufficient to disqualify Bernie Sanders from the Presidency. Therefore, it would stand to reason that tweets actually sent by an individual would be more damaging and surely would disqualify them from the cabinet of a President.

There are some who would argue that the true barrier to Tanden’s confirmation is that she is a woman and of Asian descent, implying her roadblock is an issue of prejudice. This ignores that Janet Yellen, Jennifer Granholm, and Avril Haines were nominated and confirmed for Biden’s cabinet without issue despite being women. Linda Thomas-Greenfield, who is black and a woman, received a bipartisan super majority vote. It is not as if racial prejudice or misogyny are strangers to the Senate, but clearly they are not deciding factors in the nominations we’ve seen in this Congress so far. Tanden is failing not because of what she looks like, but because of who she is.

Some have questioned how Manchin could support Kavanaugh and Fmr. Attorney General Barr but not Tanden. In a world where Democrats are held accountable for bad votes, I’d be sensitive to this argument. However, where was the outrage when 90+ progressives in the House opposed funding Trump’s border camps, while Democrats like Sharice Davids and Emmanuel Cleaver voted for it, giving necessary votes for passage? Where was the outrage at any Democrat who approved Trump’s bloated defense budget? It was non-existent because we’ve become just as partisan as the Republicans and we’re more reticent than ever to hold our politicians accountable…unless they betray the home team.

I’d like for a moment to gather some of the twitter discourse that has made many, including myself uncomfortable. Tanden chooses to regularly associate herself with people who are on record saying racist, Islamophobic, antisemitic, and otherwise depraved things.

Tanden said “Happy Birthday my friend” to “Dane Weeks” who on twitter has said “Bernie Sanders is a fake fucking Jew” and “Bernie Sanders heart needs to stop right about now”.

Tanden very regularly interacts with “@electricbrotha” saying to him “I’m definitely thankful for your cold fury. And all you’ve done for the Resistance”. On Twitter this person has said, and I apologize for the vulgarities, “go fuck yourself with crusty the clown Senator from Vermont’s dick” as well as similar attacks targeted towards female journalists he viewed as sympathetic to Sanders.

Then there are of course Tanden’s own tweets, of which she has deleted over a thousand that range from 3am fights with 18 year olds to criticisms of left wing politics to implying the continued existence of Clinton’s “vast right wing conspiracy”. There’s also an assortment of personal insults for many politicians and journalists, admittedly some funny but most fairly immature.

Matt Bruenig formerly of the New York Times and Washington Post said it best, ironically enough on twitter.

Bruenig writes “When people say Republican senators are acting in bad faith about the tweets, what are they saying their real position on tweets is? Are liberals who were mad at Trump’s tweets but not Neera’s also doing bad faith? And what is their non-bad-faith position on tweets? Is Neera herself operating in bad faith by saying tweets should not disqualify her even though she has previously acted in a contrary way? Does she have any views on tweeting per se? Neera’s partisans sent tons of abuse to a WaPo reporter who asked Murkowski about a Neera tweet. Lots of people, including Biden himself, have argued that similar events somehow reflected on Bernie. Does it also reflect on Neera? Was it bad faith before or now? If every story should mention the Republican flip-flop on tweeting when it comes to Neera, shouldn’t it also mention these Neera and Biden flip-flops? Or maybe we just realize it’s all bullshit all the way down?”

What should matter most ultimately is Tanden’s policy record, however. She is a vocal opponent of single payer healthcare. She advocated for cutting “entitlements” like social security in the pursuit of austerity politics. She punched a journalist in the chest because he disagreed with her take on Libya. What was her take on Libya? Well it was that Libyans were indebted to us for massively destabilizing their country and they should repay us with their oil if we’re ever going to convince Americans to support another conflict, yes literally. When it came to sexual misconduct, Tanden outed an employee who had survived an incident during an all staff meeting. When it came to ethical relationships, Tanden chose Netanyahu in his dust up with President Obama and solicited donations from human rights abusers like the UAE.

Neera has been more wrong more often than perhaps anyone else in Democratic politics. We shouldn’t reward her for that. Although she will of course be rewarded, if not with OMB then with undue influence somewhere else. However, if we’re lucky and any cosmic justice exists, we will not have to bear the burden of having Tanden in public life after this fiasco.

The post Neera Tanden’s Behavior Actually is That Bad appeared first on Occasional Planet.

A reader asked me to analyze the statutory and constitutional tools that could and should be used to fight Trumpism now that Trumpism has been irrefutably revealed for what it is: Fascism. Having studied for decades the interactions between constitutional law and constitutional politics, I actually have some expertise on this topic. That experience does not mean any recommendations are “right answers,” particularly because there are so many competing ends and thus competing means. Hopefully, my training provides reasonably acute analysis. The following is predicated on publicly available facts; we may soon learn of more seditious acts that justify far more severe sanctions.

Before evaluating particular options, we need to determine the scope of the problem, rank desired outcomes, and sort them by time (short term, intermediate term, and long term).

First, how serious is this threat to the Republic? Over the past few years, I would occasionally come across polls indicating that a vast, growing number of Americans no longer believed in democracy. They want a “strong leader,” unencumbered by Congress, the media, or Courts. Alas, my response consisted of more denial than fear: Most of those people didn’t really mean it. Large anti-democratic factions are on both sides, so neither side is very dangerous. They won’t act, either out of fear or lack of conviction. Most Americans don’t like domestic violence. The polls are probably wrong. This is just macho Locker Room or Chapel talk. Those thoughts somewhat calmed an underlying dread that our Nation was in a downward spiral.

The World Values Survey published in 2017 a poll stating that 38 percent of Americans support an unchecked leader. This movement had grown from 24 percent in the mid-1990s to 29 percent in the early 2000s. The number may be greater now, but we can hope this tragedy has enabled some people to change their minds. I could not find a good poll indicating the different political ideologies of these anti-democrats, but my current guess is almost all are Fascists. Remember how bewildered many of us were at Trump’s ability to keep his approval ratings above 35 percent no matter what he did? Trump, who often said he wanted to be “President for Life,” either knew those numbers or instinctively sensed his opportunity. He really meant that he would not support a peaceful transfer of power. Trumpism is not just a temporary, freakish cult of personality; it is a potentially fatal political movement that long predates Trump’s rise to power.

The attempted coup on January 6 proved that neither Trump nor his most devout followers were play-acting. We can add Fascism to our exploding list of existential threats. Incidentally, while those poll numbers should not be admitted in a court of law, they confirm the odious intentions of Trump, his enablers, and many of his followers when they assaulted the Capitol. The only Legal Vote is a Republican Vote. The only Legal Party is the Republican Party. If you assume those principles, the election was stolen.

Fortunately, many Republicans disagree. Some Republican House and Senate members have indicated that they will vote for impeachment. Mitch McConnell strongly intimated that he wants the President impeached. State Republican officials did not succumb to Trump’s relentless public and private pressuring. I never thought I would write that Governor Kemp of Georgia acted heroically. Right now, we must build upon this burgeoning bipartisan response. Maybe this crisis provides us with the chance to make a few sorely needed legislative changes to improve our political economy, address some of our systemic social injustices, and better protect our environment.

The stakes could not be much higher, so we must think very clearly. We can’t let “hot emotions” like revenge and fierce partisanship cloud judgment. It is time to act like a lawyer or a Machiavellian politician, using cooler passions to cripple this political movement, which long predates Trump and is not going away soon. We must drive these cretins back into their holes, where they can grumble about their inability to impose their totalitarian, often religiously inspired visions on the rest of us.

SHORT TERM ENDS AND MEANS

Until Biden becomes President, Trump can start a nuclear war, plot against the Inauguration, start a conventional war with a country like Iran, attempt assassinations of foreign opponents, declare martial law, and/or foment another rebellion. Obviously, he should resign. But that will never happen. Once he leaves office, he plans to run for Dictator in 2024.

Given these horrifying stakes, it is easy to conclude that Pence and the Cabinet should use the Twenty-Fifth Amendment to remove this unstable idiot savant. But there is one crucial fact that we do not presently know: Have they already cut off Trump’s hands? Is Pence currently the real President of the United States? General Milley, the head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, might still politely answer Trump’s calls, treating him like a rich mental patient, but should only be taking orders from Pence. Trump can fondle his nuclear “football,” but the launching code has been turned off.

If Trump has been stripped of all meaningful power, then Pence’s unwillingness to invoke the Twenty-Fifth Amendment is not an outrageous dereliction of duty. Forcing Trump out of office will enrage the dangerous part of his dwindling base, increasing the likelihood of imminent violence. But if Trump retains any power over the use of force, Pence and other leading Republicans failed, risking all our lives.

For the moment, let’s give Pence the benefit of the doubt. Pence’s admirable performance on January 6 reveals that many Evangelicals believe in democracy. Not all Evangelicals are members of Vanilla ISIS (Super kudos to the person who coined that phrase). We must create a new, broad movement of Constitutional Americans, consisting of all Americans who still believe in democracy.

A military coup is the final short-term protection against Trump monstrosities. Fortunately, our military leadership firmly stated that Biden will be President in a few days. If Trump tries to do something outrageous, the military will probably stop him, install Pence, and withdraw after Biden becomes President. The Proud Boys and a few rogue cops won’t stand a chance against the United States Marines.

Everything else takes too long. Congress should have immediately conducted a Zoom Impeachment and conviction, but that moment has passed. Legislatures are generally incapable of reacting quickly, a trait is a strength and a weakness.

1. INTERMEDIATE TERM

We cannot let this conflict distract us from starting to address the underlying forces that caused it to arise. We must provide more hope and opportunities to average citizens, giving them reasons to be loyal. Aside from the incorrigible Fascists, there are millions of voters and nonvoters who think our system has become corrupt and unresponsive. Machiavelli wrote that a republic can be the strongest form of government, because it takes the best care of its citizens. He also warned that corruption was the greatest internal threat. Democrats need to act boldly, hoping some Republicans join them. Politics as Usual will guarantee more Unusual Politics in the future. Some Democrats would like to use this event as an excuse to do very little, thereby pleasing their wealthy patrons.

On the other hand, it is vital to act firmly against Trump, his enablers, and his most violent followers. This is not the time to simply “move on.” Strength is the only thing these Fascists admire and fear. In terms of legal sanctions, we must separate insurrection leaders and the most violent from their sympathizers. Economic and social sanctions are also appropriate. Private companies should never support leaders like Cruz and Hawley. Coup participants ought to be fired. Boycott companies that give money to men like Cruz or advertise on Fox Television unless it stops spewing its toxic nonsense. It may be years before one has Thanksgiving Dinner with crazed Uncle Ralphie.

Impeachment seems like the best tactic to immediately punish the President. Above all, it will be bipartisan. Several leading Congressional officials, including Liz Cheney, have already committed. McConnell probably will join Romney, Sasse, and others in the Senate. The incoming Senate may well convict him. Stripping Trump of his federal benefits and any opportunity to run for federal office will be provocative, but his fans already think he is a martyr. He remains a unique threat, because of his long history of celebrity, his Presidency, and his strange, telegenic charisma. There will be more Fascist aspirants to the Presidency, but few have his twisted skillset.

Of course, if it turns out that Trump and his minions actively planned the attempted coup and supported it by stripping Congress of police protection, then there are additional grounds for criminal charges and impeachment (Right now, Congress should also impeach him for failure to act once the coup began).

One advantage of this horrible tale is that we now know the names of many of our enemies (sadly, that is what they are). Anyone who continued to support Trump’s Big Lie after the coup is presumptively anti-democratic. Thus, the Gang of Six in the Senate and the Congressional rabble in the House have effectively become a dangerous, separate political party. McConnell and Cheney, two tough Republicans who are not afraid of a fight, have already begun the Republicans’ civil war.

While Democrats need Republican allies to combat Trumpism and to deal with pressing political problems, they also should use this opportunity to drive a wedge through the Party’s existing heart. Just as the chaos surrounding the 1968 Democratic Convention signified the beginning of the end of the New Deal Democratic coalition, it is time to fracture the Republican Party. Fortunately, McConnell, Pence, and Cheney are patriotic enough to finally put country above party. You can certainly argue they took too long, but better late than never.

The Republican Party must clean its stables. Supporting impeachment is just a start. At a minimum, Cruz and Hawley should be permanently kicked out of the Party. The other four Senators and the hundred-plus House members ought to be given a chance to apologize, admit they promoted a big lie, and vote for impeachment. Otherwise, they are also out.

Should Congress use the Fourteenth Amendment or the Expulsion Clause to purge their dangerous colleagues? Assuming there was no direct Congressional collaboration with the invaders, those moves would create a dangerous precedent, making it far easier for future Fascists to create a one party system of government. Better to leave the leaders’ fates to Republican colleagues, donors, and voters. Hawley and Cruz achieved their desire to be remembered in history, joining such luminaries as Benedict Arnold and Jefferson Davis.

Neither the Fourteenth Amendment nor Expulsion should be pursued unless we find that some Congressional members clearly and actively conspired with the invaders. Expulsion is slightly better than the Fourteenth Amendment, because it requires a two-thirds vote. Congress usually cannot expel members unless there is some bipartisan support. A bare majority cannot purge its opposition. But it is very likely that any expulsion vote based upon what was said in Congress would pretty much proceed on party lines, reaggravating partisanship at the very moment that we desperately need bipartisanship.

The Fourteenth Amendment seems applicable, because we witnessed something resembling an “insurrection,” the event that triggers the federal power to remove seditious federal office holders. Of course, The Civil War was a classic example. However, it is not clear that Congress can act unilaterally. The Supreme Court has already appropriately held that Congress violates separation of powers whenever it adjudicates individual cases (aside from impeachment). Arguably, Congress must pass appropriate legislation under Section Five of the Fourteenth Amendment to empower Article III Courts and juries to determine whether or not Congressional leaders like Cruz and Hawley committed “insurrection.” Even if the Supreme Court holds that Congress has the power to remove these scoundrels by a mere majority, a Congressional purge creates a dangerous precedent. Indeed, the Fourteenth Amendment is a worse path than Expulsion since it might only require a majority to reconstitute Congress.

Until the failed coup, I was inclined to conclude that Trump should not be sent to prison for the crimes we know he committed. Whatever else you want to say about Bill Barr, he did the country a great service last year when he did not indict Biden or Obama. “Lock her up” or “Lock him up” are disturbing, divisive chants. My wariness extended to state criminal charges. Imprisonment would be too divisive and set a terrible precedent. It would be hard to get a conviction, because at least one silent Trumpster would probably sit on any jury.

I am no longer so sure about such restraint. In addition, there may be other, even worse crimes that will be revealed after Trump leaves office. Perhaps this fraught decision should be made after our political life settles down a bit and his popularity hopefully drops quite a bit. For quite a long time, I am going to be as interested in anti-democracy polls as Republican-Democrat polls.

On the other hand, state and federal officials should aggressively pursue all possible civil and criminal fraud cases against Trump, his sleazy family, and grifter associates. If they are guilty, they should be fined to the maximum extent permitted by law. We also can wish success to all the private plaintiffs, ranging from Michael Cohen to violated women, who seek damages from this predator. Punitive damages seem particularly appropriate in all possible situations.

At a bare minimum, there needs to be a thorough, public review of his Presidency. Truth and Reconciliation for his followers, Truth and Non Reconciliation for Trump and his most dangerous enablers.

None of the Congressional authoritarians should be indicted unless they directly collaborated with the attackers. Representative Mikkie Sherrill claims to have seen Republican lawmakers giving “tours” to rioters one day before the attack. If they did conspire in advance to terrorize Congress and thus the People, those acts are not vague, political crimes. They should be locked up. The same applies if there was a conspiracy to not protect the Capitol.

While almost all the rabble who invaded the Capitol were guilty of numerous felonies and misdemeanors, we should focus on their leaders and the most egregious and flamboyant actors. The murderers of Officer Sicknick should face manslaughter charges, at a minimum.

LONGTERM GOALS

Two questions framed the first third of the Twenty-First Century: Would the human race learn to control its desires enough to preserve the planet for itself and other species? Would the United States gracefully accept the inevitable decline in its relative power?

The rise of Fascism in America, based in significant part upon denial of climate change, shows that we are off to a terrible start. Perhaps we can build a new political ideology out of the wreckage, a viewpoint that attracts an enduring supermajority. The Fascists and Left-Wing purists won’t be happy, but that would be a clear sign we are on the right path.

A few years ago, I was talking to a thoughtful checkout person at a Whole Foods. After the usual commiseration about the state of our society, he asked me what he should do next. I replied, “Read good books.” One of the main goals of this newsletter is to demonstrate the utility and pleasure of reading of good books.

[Editor’s note: This article was reprinted, with permission, from James Wilson’s newsletter: hopebutnoexpectations@substack.com ]

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In an interview with Madrid’s El País newspaper, published on January 10, Pulitzer-prize winning historian, Anne Applebaum didn’t hold back. “The Trump adventure is over,” she is quoted as saying. “He will spend the rest of his life in court.” Amen to Applebaum’s assessment.

And who is Applebaum? London’s Prospect magazine included her in its list of the world’s top 50 thinkers for the Covid-19 age:

Applebaum, long an authority on the abuses of Communist and post-Communist Eastern Europe, in her new book Twilight of Democracy is unsparing in exposing the moral bankruptcy of Trumpian Republicanism.

El País mentions that her vision and informed judgment have “made her one of the leading global political analysts of recent years.”

Applebaum was a columnist for the Washington Post, and at one time a member of its Editorial Board. Since January 2020, she has been a staff writer at the Atlantic. In a piece entitled What Trump and His Mob Taught the World About America published in the Atlantic on January 7, she wrote:

 …and yet by far the most important weapon that the United States of America has ever wielded—in defense of democracy, in defense of political liberty, in defense of universal rights, in defense of the rule of law—was the power of example. In the end, it wasn’t our words, our songs, our diplomacy, or even our money or our military power that mattered. It was rather the things we had achieved: the two and a half centuries of peaceful transitions of power, the slow but massive expansion of the franchise, and the long, seemingly solid traditions of civilized debate.

Applebaum distills us to our essence, the power of example.

We, the United States were for two and a half centuries, a beacon of light for so many others. And then came Trump. And with Trump the lights of democracy flickered not only for many of us here at home, but for America’s partners and admirers abroad. On January 6. Thump definitively showed the world his true colors. “We love you,” he said in a videotaped address to a mob that at that very moment was assaulting the Capitol. He didn’t have the wits about him to address the American public, just his demented followers. The royal we only undermined Trump’s slender connection to reality. The beacon of light, the power of example, came close to being extinguished.

In her El País interview, Applebaum notes that Trump “treated NATO like a mobster would.” And she adds that:

He scared the Europeans so much that they decided to come up with a plan b. They should adopt their own position and voice in security matters and also as sole defenders of democratic values.

In other words, Trump’s lasting legacy will be that he attempted to strip the United States of America of its democratic principles from the beginning of his shameful tenure to its calamitous end. Sadly, he tried to quit us of our democratic pillars of strength, aided and abetted by his family, cohorts within the Republican Party, and supported by millions of Americans.

In the El País piece, Applebaum makes a telling observation of Russia’s Putin, mentioning that he is:

Someone trained to be paranoid, to constantly detect conspiracies around him.That leads him to change the terms and to ensure that there is no opposition …, but a plot of other powers against him. That he must control all those who meet, argue and oppose. Therefore, there is nothing spontaneously articulated or a trace of    honesty, everyone lies, nobody trusts anyone and there is a mixture of deep cynicism     with paranoia. … And so he has largely transferred that to the rest of the country: a lot of cynicism, a lot of immorality and a tremendously conspiratorial environment.

She could just as well have been talking about Trump. Yes, we knew all along that Trump had a strong attachment to Putin, but now we can understand why Trump found his soul mate in the Russian autocrat. They are peas of a pod. And just like Putin before him in Russia, Trump has transferred his paranoia, his cynicism, his lack of morality and his conspiratorial mindset to many citizens of our country.

The man is feckless, depraved and now, if Applebaum’s assessment is correct, about to spend the rest of his days facing prosecution in the courts of our land.

The post Goodbye Washington. Hello Courtroom appeared first on Occasional Planet.

 A quick review of what the 1st Amendment does and doesn’t do:

The baker/gay couple/wedding cake analogy

Pretend you’re a bar owner

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January 20^th is just nine days from the writing of this post. That day and the inauguration of President Joe Biden and Vice-President Kamala Harris cannot come soon enough. A Democratically controlled Senate cannot come soon enough.

For now, however, take a deep breath. Try to stay calm and hope that the days between now and the inauguration won’t spew forth anything more shocking than what we’ve already experienced in the past four years. The list of shocks and insults to the American soul is long and shameful: The daily onslaught of self-serving lies that has cost America its reputation and Americans their lives and livelihoods. The lawlessness. The denials, institutional chaos, and irresponsibility in the face of a deadly pandemic. And, of course, the violent, tragically predictable result of the accumulation of all of those lies and deceptions on the never-to-be-forgotten storming on January 6 of the Capitol Building and the devastating loss of life on that day.

But the day before inauguration day, a less publicized, but equally important event, will take place. The January 19^th event is intended to begin a process to right the wrongs of the Trump administration’s depraved abdication of its solemn duty to recognize and remember those Americans who died of COVID-19 on their watch and to acknowledge the grief of their loved ones.

On January 19^th, at 5:30pm (ET), the Presidential Inaugural Committee will host a memorial for the 373,000 Americans who have lost their lives in the pandemic. In recognition of the need not just for a national memorial but also for individuals, families, and neighbors to remember together the lives lost closer to home in their own communities, the Inaugural Committee is inviting cities and towns and neighborhoods across the country to light up buildings and ring bells in “a moment of unity and remembrance.”

Here is how Presidential Inaugural Committee Communications Director Pili Tobar describes the event: “. . . in the midst of a pandemic – when so many Americans are grieving the loss of family, friends, and neighbors – it is important that we honor those who have died, reflect on what has been one of the more challenging periods in the nation’s history, and renew our commitment to coming together to end the pandemic and rebuild our nation.”

Presidential Inaugural Committee Announces Memorial and Nationwide Tribute to Remember and Honor the Lives Lost to COVID-19

01/05/2021

Today, the Presidential Inaugural Committee (PIC) announced that it will host a memorial to remember and honor the lives lost to COVID-19 in cities and towns across the country on January 19, 2021, at 5:30 p.m. ET. A Washington, D.C. ceremony will feature a lighting around the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool. It will be the first-ever lighting around the Reflecting Pool to memorialize American lives lost.

PIC is inviting cities and towns around the country to join Washington, D.C. in illuminating buildings and ringing church bells at 5:30 p.m. ET in a national moment of unity and remembrance.

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