The High Court: Rulings and Rumors

The refusal of the Rethuglican-controlled Senate to even schedule a committee hearing on Judge Merrick Garland to fill the vacancy on the Supreme Court has resulted in a 4 to 4 split. Several important cases have yet to be decided before the Court takes its traditional 3-month long summer recess. including another assault on affirmative action, lower court rulings on immigration and yet another attack on women's reproductive rights. In the case of reproductive rights, the Court is expected to decide on Whole Women's Health v. Hellerstedt, which centers on Texas' state law that imposes new "ambulatory surgical care" architectural requirements on women's health facilities and unreasonable restrictions on the providers, even those that don't provide surgical care at all. The objective of the Texas law, cooked up by anti-choice zealots and spoon fed to sympathetic Texas legislators, is to reduce the number of clinics to as few as possible, preferably zero, through the added requirements to retrofit the clinics for "ambulatory surgical care." If the Court splits down the middle, the onerous law will remain in effect until a fifth Justice is seated presumably next year after the elections.

That brings us to the bit of gossip being fluffed by the Wingnut Wurlitzer that says that the Court's right-wing Justice Clarence "Long Dong Silver" Thomas is thinking of retiring after the elections, a move that could add to the liberal side assuming a Clinton win. Sorry, we're not buying it. There's every reason to believe that hardcore wingnuts in the media (outlets like Infowars, Washington Examiner,  The Blaze, etc.) are spreading this "information" from "unnamed sources" as a motivator to get their voters out to the polls in November.  It's even less credible since Thomas' teabagger wife Ginni has just shot down the rumor.  Thomas, at 67, is one of the "younger" justices and still wants to do more damage to the people and party that tried to block his nomination decades ago.

UPDATE:  The Court ruled today that the bans on military-style assault rifles in Connecticut and New York could remain in effect, dealing a blow to the gun manufacturers and their lobbyists.

Tweet, Counter Tweets

Wanker Emeritus Mark Halperin attempts a thought experiment, minus the thought:

What would happen if Trump picked a popular, qualified vp, started talking only abt need to change DC, middle class, Hillary=status quo?

— Mark Halperin (@MarkHalperin) June 19, 2016

What would happen if the Twitterverse rose up in collective mockery?

@MarkHalperin What would happen if you and I flew to Mars and opened a Bloomberg outpost?

— John Weaver (@JWGOP) June 19, 2016

@MarkHalperin What would happen if Le Cirque started serving bus station chili?

— Charles P. Pierce (@ESQPolitics) June 19, 2016

.@MarkHalperin would certainly make your job as White House press secretary easier

— Olivia Nuzzi (@Olivianuzzi) June 19, 2016

Everyone would totally forget about everything Trump has said or done in the past forty years. https://t.co/OBjRFe9Bay

— Matthew Yglesias (@mattyglesias) June 19, 2016

Sunday Reflection - Our Shared Place

“The beauty of the national park system is it belongs to everyone. It is a true expression of our democracy. The notion is that we all look after ourselves, our families, we work hard, and we make money ... but there’s something else we have in common. A place that we share. A place where we connect with each other, and connect to something bigger than ourselves.” -- President Obama, speaking at Sentinel Bridge near Yosemite Falls on Saturday.  The President and his family toured Carlsbad Caverns in New Mexico on Friday and Yosemite National Park on Saturday to mark the 100th anniversary of the founding of the National Park Service.  The President also used the occasion to warn of the danger of climate change and the need "to protect our parks and our planet for generations to come."

Father's Day 2016

For fathers young, old and in between, and for those no longer with us, thank you for your love, example, and support.  

Today's Cartoons - The Narcissist Demagogue

News item:  51% disapprove of Donald "Rump" Trump's response to the Orlando massacre.  Wonder why...

(click on images to enlarge)



(Mike Luckovich, Atlanta Journal-Constitution)



(Drew Sheneman, The Star-Ledger - Newark, NJ)

Saturday Reading - What We've Already Lost With Trump

Good read from Timothy Egan on remembering who stood up to neo- fascist demagogue Donald "Rump" Trump and who did not.  Here's a long excerpt:

They will remember, a century from now, who stood up to the tyrant Donald Trump and who found it expedient to throw out the most basic American values — the “Vichy Republicans,” as the historian Ken Burns called them in his Stanford commencement speech. [*] 

The shrug from Mitch McConnell, the twisted explanation of Paul Ryan, who said Trump is a racist and a xenophobe, but he’s ours — party before country. As well, the duck-and-hide Republicans, so quick to whip out their pocket copy of the Constitution, now nowhere to be seen when the foundation of that same document is under assault by the man carrying their banner. 

They will remember, in classrooms and seminars, those who wrote Trump off as entertainment, a freak show and ratings spike, before he tried to muzzle a free press, and came for you — using a page from another tyrant, Vladimir Putin, admired by the homegrown monster. 

As well, they will call out the enablers. In the run-up to the presidential primary season, few candidates received more favorable press coverage than Donald Trump, the Shorenstein Center at Harvard’s Kennedy School found. The watchdogs were in on the ride. Sure, he’s a know-nothing and fraud, incapable of processing information or getting through a day without a half-dozen lies — but it’s just a role. Get a load of Ted Cruz’s wife! Heidi Klum is no longer a 10! And when he talks like a fascist, when he uses the America First slogan adopted by Nazi sympathizers in this country in the 1930s, it’s all for play, you see. He is historically illiterate, so the rest of us must be as well.

Echoing that, Bob Garfield reminds us that, even though Rump may be headed for an epic defeat, we've already lost something as a nation:

Let’s start with the inconvenient fact that 13,300,472 Americans cast their primary votes for Donald Trump. Notwithstanding his recent popularity plunge, if polls are correct and the election were held today he’d still collect 40 percent of the vote. Which is in the neighborhood of 50 million.

Fifty million — pulling the lever for a pathological liar, peddler of vile racist, misogynist, xenophobic ravings and sneering trampler of our most fundamental American values. Not to mention the Constitution, with which he seems unfamiliar. Not to mention a personality I’d call infantile, if I weren’t afraid of insulting infants. And tiles. 

Fifty million Americans are for that. If you took those voters and laid them end to end around the circumference of Mars, you’d get no argument from me. Because to support Trump is to spit on the American flag and all it stands for.

*Speaking of Ken Burns, here's a longer excerpt from his June 12 commencement speech at Stanford University (the full text is here), wherein he lays into Rump as only a historian can:

As a student of history, I recognize this type. He emerges everywhere and in all eras. We see nurtured in his campaign an incipient proto-fascism, a nativist anti-immigrant Know Nothing-ism, a disrespect for the judiciary, the prospect of women losing authority over their own bodies, African Americans again asked to go to the back of the line, voter suppression gleefully promoted, jingoistic saber rattling, a total lack of historical awareness, a political paranoia that, predictably, points fingers, always making the other wrong. These are all virulent strains that have at times infected us in the past. But they now loom in front of us again – all happening at once. We know from our history books that these are the diseases of ancient and now fallen empires. The sense of commonwealth, of shared sacrifice, of trust, so much a part of American life, is eroding fast, spurred along and amplified by an amoral Internet that permits a lie to circle the globe three times before the truth can get started.

We no longer have the luxury of neutrality or “balance,” or even of bemused disdain. Many of our media institutions have largely failed to expose this charlatan, torn between a nagging responsibility to good journalism and the big ratings a media circus always delivers. In fact, they have given him the abundant airtime he so desperately craves, so much so that it has actually worn down our natural human revulsion to this kind of behavior. Hey, he’s rich; he must be doing something right. He is not. Edward R. Murrow would have exposed this naked emperor months ago. He is an insult to our history. Do not be deceived by his momentary “good behavior.” It is only a spoiled, misbehaving child hoping somehow to still have dessert.

Ah, yes, the media.

The rise of Rump is the inevitable culmination of years of Republican lies, obstruction, bigotry, know nothing-ism, and general pandering to the fears and worst instincts of people.  It's now been exposed for all whose eyes are wide open to see, and America is the poorer for it, regardless of the outcome of the election.

Rethug Voter Suppression: Holding Back The Tide

The November elections are less than five months away, and the Republican / New Confederate / Stupid / Shooter's Party is more worried than ever that their untethered, unelectable Presidential candidate will bring about an historic defeat. Dems need only pick up four seats in the Senate (while holding their incumbents) to gain the majority, and the Dems look to be making real inroads in the Rethug-controlled House races, if Dem turnout is heavy.

Going back several elections, though, the Rethugs have recognized shifting demographics that don't bode well for them in the future: a younger, more progressive population, and greater numbers of Hispanic and Asian Americans that the Rethugs have managed to alienate with reactionary policies and bigoted statements. After the 2012 elections, they actually did a ridiculous post mortem on their Party's toxic positions, which went nowhere. Instead of presenting reasonable policies, the Rethugs have been busily changing voting laws to suppress voting among those unfavorable demographic groups, or using the state legislatures that they control to gerrymander House districts to their political advantage. The 5-hour long lines for voting in primary states controlled by Rethugs was an outcome of their mischief: historically, the fewer people voting, the better for Rethuglicans. Same with limiting voting hours or requiring state-issued IDs, which put low income people without drivers licenses at a disadvantage and which take time and money to obtain.

The games being played will delay the inevitable only so long. The tide has turned in favor of the Dems, surely not in every state, but in the majority of states that decide elections and sway the political culture.

(photo: Getty Images)

Weekend War Zone Music

Carnage.  Less than a week ago, Orlando.  Nearly six months ago, Denver.  One year ago, Charleston. And the list goes on and on and on.  Just since Orlando, guns have killed 125 people in America.  As four- star General Stanley McChrystal writes in the New York Times in "Home Should Not Be A War Zone":

In 2014, 33,599 Americans died from a gunshot wound. From 2001 to 2010, 119,246 Americans were murdered with guns, 18 times all American combat deaths in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. 

That is a national crisis. And as a combat veteran and proud American, I believe we need a national response to the gun violence that threatens so many of our communities.

With the assassination of British MP Jo Cox two days ago, gun violence has reared up in an unlikely place, perpetrated by an unhinged right- winger.  It seems we're faced with constant, often brutal reminders of how fragile life is and why, as Gen. McChrystal says, "home should not be a war zone." We say "home" should mean not only America, but Europe, Syria, and every continent and country where human beings should have every right to live a full life free of this kind of mindless violence.

In America, where the problem of gun violence is most acute and our political system is best at offering "thoughts and prayers" in response, here are a few suggested resources for citizen action to help stop gun violence and the cancerous evil represented by the National Rifle Rampage Association and soulless people like this.

Resources: Coalition to Stop Gun Violence, Gen. McChrystal's Americans for Responsible Solutions, and the Brady Campaign to Stop Gun Violence.

For all those casualties-- those flowers cut before their time -- we offer this classic anti- war song performed by the Kingston Trio as our rather inadequate memorial.

Charleston, One Year Ago

A year to the day has passed since the murder of nine African-American church goers at Charleston, SC's Emanuel AME Church. On June 17, 2015, racist killer Dylann Roof walked into the church as some of its parishioners were gathered in Bible study, sat among them, and then calmly, methodically killed them. Pictures of Roof with the treasonous Confederate flag and assorted weapons quickly made the rounds on social media, after he was arrested fleeing from the scene.

The reaction to the church murders was public disbelief, revulsion, and anger that this 22 year old racist psychopath had taken the lives of those good people for no other reason than their race. It shamed South Carolina's right-wing state government into removing the Confederate flag from state capitol grounds, albeit in an obnoxious, unnecessarily formal ceremony. There were the familiar "thoughts and prayers" offered from those fighting against minimal gun safety laws / background checks, but nothing of substance from the legislative employees of the gun lobby.

One of the most moving things we witnessed last year was Nadine Collier standing in a courtroom not long after the murders and saying that she forgave Roof for the heinous act that took the life of her mother. The struggles of the victims' families a year after the massacre continue. Roof will have his day in court to face mass murder charges, starting in Federal court in November and in State court in January. He faces the death penalty in both court venues. What a shame they won't be able to execute him twice.

The, Uh, Reasoning Of A Trump Supporter

Can you follow the "reasoning" of neo- fascist Donald "Rump" Trump (a.k.a., Cheeto Jesus) supporter Amanda Feather, mother of six, from Greensboro, NC?  Neither can we:

“There are too many countries who demean their women that I think if we have a woman in office, it’s really going to hurt our country more than anything, because they have no respect for women,” Feather said as her two young daughters listened. “And then I think our attacks in our country and our issues in our country are going to become even greater, because those countries are not going to have that respect for us. And we’re already starting to lose it. And I don’t think we need a woman to make us lose it even more.”

Setting a great example for daughters everywhere!

If it were possible to clear her noggin of its feathers (heh), she might benefit from reading this.  Or not. Sic transit gloria, America.

(Cartoon:  Tom Stiglich via Hullabaloo)

Corporations Ducking Republican Convention (UPDATED)

Some fleas are fleeing the dog:

A growing number of prominent U.S. corporations are opting to drop or scale back their sponsorship of the Republican national convention next month in Cleveland, as the nomination of Donald Trump promises a level of controversy rarely seen in such gatherings. 

Among those to signal in recent days that they won't sponsor the convention this year are Wells Fargo & Co., United Parcel Service Inc., Motorola Solutions Inc., JPMorgan Chase & Co., Ford Motor Co., and Walgreens Boots Alliance Inc. All of those companies sponsored the previous Republican conclave, in Tampa, Florida, in 2012.

Let's not give them too much credit for public decency. Rather than suddenly discovering their souls, some of these corporations are doubtless responding to pressure from groups such as Color of Change PAC.  To be perfectly fair, it's a scandal in itself that both political parties are taking these in-kind donations from corporations in order to put on their political infomercials.

But it's not a wholesale abandonment of the Republican/ New Confederate/ Stupid/ Shooter's Party by corporate America!  Rest assured, there are still some who are willing to lend their corporate names to sponsor neo- fascist clown Donald "Rump" Trump's coronation in Cleveland:

Plenty of big companies and industry groups remain committed to the convention. The American Petroleum Institute, the chief trade group for the oil and gas industry and a top donor to the 2012 convention, told Bloomberg it “will be participating” this year, without elaborating on the form that would take. AT&T Inc., Cisco Systems Inc., Alphabet Inc.'s Google, Twitter Inc., and Facebook Inc. have previously disclosed plans to provide technical services to the convention at no cost.

"... at no cost."  If only there was a cost these soulless organizations would pay for their collusion with Rump's party.  Let's hope their corporate logos are splashed across t.v. screens as Rump and his enablers go on their bigoted tirades.

UPDATE:  You can now add Apple to the list of no- shows.

Tweets Of The Day - All Is Well All Is Well All Is Well...

Republican National Committee Chairweasel Reince "Prepuce" Priebus is trying to quell stories about a rift between the RNC and the campaign of neo- fascist nitwit Donald "Rump" Trump, with predictably hilarious results.  Sad! (h/t Raw Story):

@Reince blink twice to signal the authorities

— Bruce Arthur (@bruce_arthur) June 16, 2016

@Reince @realDonaldTrump pic.twitter.com/AltQW8brtC

— Chris Hagel (@MullingHagel) June 16, 2016

Finally, the inevitable reference to Baghdad Bob:

@Reince @realDonaldTrump pic.twitter.com/1h54gbr0EY

— Daily Trix (@DailyTrix) June 16, 2016

Unhinged Rant Of The Day (UPDATED)

In a just world, this ought to be reason enough to rid the Senate of this endangered, angry crank once and for all. Speaking of the Orlando massacre, Sen. John "Walnuts" McCain today echoed the lunacy of Republican presumptive nominee, neo- fascist crackpot Donald "Rump" Trump:

“Barack Obama is directly responsible for it, because when he pulled everybody out of Iraq, al Qaeda went to Syria, became ISIS, and ISIS is what it is today thanks to Barack Obama’s failures.”

A series of absurd non sequiturs does not a lucid critique make, Walnuts, and the Stormtrumpers will still not vote for you.  But then, we never expected much better =cough= Sarah Palin =cough= bomb bomb bomb Iran =cough.

Help retire Walnuts and take a step toward a Democratic Senate by donating, if you can, to Rep. Ann Kirkpatrick for Senate.

John Fugelsang adds:

"Obama is directly responsible" John McCain (directly responsible for Palin), who supported the Iraq War (directly responsible for ISIS).

— John Fugelsang (@JohnFugelsang) June 16, 2016

UPDATE: Now Walnuts says he "misspoke." We dunno -- sounded pretty straightforward to us. Let's retire him. Sad!

UPDATE II:  Steve Benen has a good takedown of Walnuts' bitter rant and the illogic behind it.

Gun Control Filibuster Ends With Emotional Appeal

After Senate Republicans reportedly agree to allow Democratic- sponsored gun control legislation to come up for a vote, Sen. Chris Murphy (D-CT) ends the 15- hour Senate Democratic filibuster with an emotional appeal.



Let's see what the National Rifle Rampage Association's flunkies in the Republican/ New Confederate/ Stupid/Shooter's Party do next (spoiler alert:  little to nothing).

Rump's Id Is Running Things

A problem with having an unhinged, bigoted egomaniac as your Party's presumed nominee is that he will ignore advice that he didn't hear from voices in his head. Such is the case, happily, with neo-fascist demagogue Donald "Rump" Trump. Rethuglican elected officials are seeing Rump's poll numbers in decline after several very bad weeks, where he dove in the sewer to attack a sitting Federal judge of Mexican ancestry handling he Trump "University" scam case, and made the mass killing at an Orlando gay nightclub a narcissistic, "I told you so" moment. The RNC and elected officials have been desperate for Rump to tone his demagoguery down. They're also noticing that Rump lacks any resemblance of a national campaign organization, capable of coordinating them them or State party organizations, so they're trying to rig one for him despite Rump's resistance to any control over him. The problem is that the RNC is not geared toward running a Presidential campaign, and never has been.

They've seen what we have: Rump prefers unscripted tirades to prepared speeches -- using a TelePrompter -- and attacking on Twitter rather than preparing any mature policy proposals (which he's clearly incapable of anyway).  He'll proceed with his "campaign" like he did during the primaries: feeding off of rallies with angry, violent supporters while making outrageous, false statements. He won't "pivot" to a "Presidential" tone for the general election, because he doesn't think he needs to change -- everyone around him does. Let's hope he continues to listen to those voices in his head all the way up to election day.

BONUS: He's toxic to an increasing number of Republican and conservative figures, not just the Bushes and Willard "Mittens" Romney. It's going to get worse for him, just watch.