A Good Read on Pompeo’s Corruption
As we all could see during the last 4 years, Mike Pompeo is a Jackass with a capital J. But his behavior as Secretary of State revealed his abject corruption and narcissism. Good read.
Flyin’ Ted Now Worried by “Court Packing”
File under: He Didn’t Really Say That, did He?
Yesterday, Flyin’ Ted decided it was time to demonstrate his total lack of self-awareness by holding a press conference in front of the Supreme Court alongside Lindsey Graham to complain about…wait for it…court packing. During his diatribe, Cruz even said, “You didn’t see Republicans when we had control of the Senate try to rig the game. You didn’t see us try to pack the Court,” which is precisely what we saw in 2016 and again in 2020 when Moscow Mitch brazenly blocked Obama’s nominee, Merrick Garland, replacing him with Trump’s nominee, Neil Gorsuch, then Frat Boy Brett Kavanaugh, and then ramming through Trump’s nomination of Amy Coney Barrett to take RBG’s seat only days before Trump’s defeat at the polls. As a measure of the backlash of Cruz’s declaration, Merrick Garland immediately began trending on Twitter as Cruz was mocked for his idiotic declaration.
The Republicans have been packing federal courts for years, especially after McConnell triggered the nuclear option on Trump’s nominees for federal courts. The GOP voters are so focused on court packing that they tolerate deplorables like Trump, Jordan, Gaetz, Gohmert and a plethora of other politicians simply because of their efforts to maintain an iron grip on the courts to cement in their power through gerrymandering and voter suppression. The only way to stop it is to increase the seats on the Supreme Court and implement term limits. Until then, partisans on the federal bench will be disrespected by half of Americans. When a legal layman like me can predict with virtual certainty how the Supreme Court will rule on controversial cases you know that the court has been most certainly politicized, and that’s not healthy for any society, especially ours. It’s time for that to stop, if for no other reason than to shut Flyin’ Ted’s mouth.
Let’s Choose our Voters
“Oh can’t you see, you belong to me.” — Gordon Sumner
Most of you know Sumner by a different name. There are those that consider this song one of the more romantic songs in history. I worry about them. I worry if they believe in the same type of ownership that the subject of this song does. More than anything, I wonder if Democrats and Republicans think of their voters the same way.
Check that, I really don’t wonder about Republicans. As vile as many of them are, at least they don’t try to hide it anymore. Yesterday, the House of Representatives passed a bill to make Washington D.C. a state. The GOP response was equal kinds predictable and indicative of where they are as a party.
To be perfectly fair, the Democrats know how to read numbers just as easily. Over 90 percent of residents voted for Joe Biden in the last election. The district has been Democratic for years. So, one could forgive the Democratically controlled House for having a sense of urgency here.
Then again, we must remember not to count our chickens before they hatch. Just because someone votes Democratic now doesn’t mean they will always vote Democratic. The South used to be in the bag for Democrats up until the Civil Rights Act of 1964. When you move past regional patterns you will find all kinds of demographic groups where the battle still wages.
Yet, that’s the mindset of the modern Republican party. They don’t believe in competing for votes. They don’t believe in competing in the marketplace of ideas. Their voters belong to them and not the other way around. Republican representatives accused Democrats of a partisan grab as if that has any bearing on whether the district deserves to be its own state.
Even if the barbs are true, that’s not the point. The point is you have a group of people (Puerto Rico as well) that do not have adequate representation. They have more people in DC than several states already admitted to the union. If we are going to fly down the “why should they be a state” rabbit hole we would immediately ask ourselves why we need two Dakotas, Wyoming, and Idaho.
It’s really a simple proposition. The answer is two-fold. First, our system has always been skewed towards land. In the beginning, you could only vote if you owned land. From there, we attempted to balance the needs and desires of small states with bigger states. They did this by giving Wyoming the same number of senators as California. Seems perfectly fair and reasonable when you think about it.
The second proposition is that those states have the right voters. That’s why a 50/50 split Senate sees Democrats represent 41 million more people. Instead of battling in the marketplace of ideas we are trying to kidnap our own voters and keep everyone else on the outside looking in. So, voices on the floor complained about a socialist agenda and a sinister plot to get it through. Let’s ignore that if there was such a thing, that thing is highly popular amongst those surveyed.
The movement in state legislatures is proof that they aren’t trying to convince people that their ideas are better. They are trying to limit the number of people that could possibly choose that agenda. That’s not sufficient enough reason to deny the people of DC statehood. The same goes for Puerto Rico as well.
Trump Slow Walked Puerto Rico Hurricane Relief, then Blocked Investigations
Jon Stewart was right a few years ago when he described Trump’s behavior as, “Gleeful Cruelty and Dickishness”. At the time, Stewart was talking about Trump’s “Zero Tolerance” immigration plan that separated thousands of children from their parents at the border, and then purposely lost track of them, but his characterization most certainly applied to his intentional slow walking of funding relief to Puerto Rico after hurricane Maria devastated the island in 2017. There was absolutely no reason to do so except to make American citizens’ lives more miserable as if that was even possible. As evidence that his cruelty was intentional. He then obstructed investigations into his cruelty just because. Trump is an asshole, just to be an asshole. He relished wielding the power of the presidency to not serve Americans, but too harass those he didn’t like, and I don’t have to describe who it is who he didn’t like.
Disappointingly, but not surprising, the obstruction of oversight was led by Ben Carson, the comatose Secretary of Housing and Urban development. His staff aided in the corruption, even as Carson feigned concern about delays in approvals by OMB of funding while refusing to cooperate with the IG trying to get to the bottom of the delays. It was classic Trump…assuaging his own need for adoration while urinating on people who desperately needed help.
It boggles the mind that a human being can be such a shitbag, but we are talking about Trump, so that’s no surprise.
To Every Season
Sorry for being a little quiet, lately, y’all. I’m trying to help Ms. JJ while she’s out but I have been in one of those short-lived (I hope) periods of emotional overwhelm. Call it what you like, depression, grief – it’s that rock on my chest that refuses to move when I try to get out of bed. I walk around with a smile on my face, doing my daily business with a smile, all the while with knees shaking and my head repeating “just go back to bed. just go lay down. Just go close your eyes.”
My photos will show me smiling and at that moment, I’m genuine! But the happiness flitters away, the smile recedes, and the boulder settles itself back on my chest.
It’s been a tough year. So many of the comforts of a passing year that give us hope for renewal were just missing for a year. For me, baseball season is and has always been the ultimate symbol of everything being right in the world. My daddy always said there are three things you can always look forward to: Death, Taxes, and Opening Day. I used to get a phone call the first day pitchers and catchers reported to spring training. “Pitchers and Catchers Report!” he’d yell. I’d make an inane comment about how fast time flies and we’d trade texts and calls for the next few months about all things baseball. This has left a huge hole in my life every baseball season and each year it becomes harder to fill. Then came the pandemic.
My heart was almost mended enough from the sign-stealing scandal to give my Astros a new shot last year, but of course, Opening Day never came. The one person I wanted to share that with, my daddy, was no longer with me. He’d have thought the people cutouts were stupid but he would have probably bought one for me.
Opening Day came and went in 2021. Things are starting to get back to normal. My husband and I are fully vaccinated and can venture, masked, out into the world. But my husband’s mama and my daddy aren’t here, and I miss them. It’s funny how grief seems to sit dormant until all of a sudden it rears its head again. Because I believe in the baseball Gods, I’ve purchased some cheap seats to visit my team this weekend. I’ll be in the nosebleeds – with the real fans – and I hope my dad will be sitting in one of the seats that have been kept open to social distance, telling me which calls were shit and which rookies to watch out for. Hopefully the Astros get the COVID outbreak under control, soon.
I’ll feed my soul with some peanuts and popcorn, a hot dog, a giant ice-cold Dr. Pepper and a big foam sombrero. Maybe next week, the sun will shine a little brighter for me.
If you’re feeling depressed and would like someone to talk to, people are waiting at (877) 870-4673. Or just get going in the comments below, we’re good people here and would love to chat. If you are having thoughts of suicide, Please call 1-800-273-8255.
Oh, and one more thing. Just since it’s a politics blog I need to keep the theme. Ted Cruz Sucks.
The Rorschach Test
The Ma’Khia Bryant case seems to be the perfect Rorschach test for policing and race relations as they currently stand. The 16 year old teen was shot and killed by police on the same day the Derek Chauvin verdict came down. The dark irony was not lost on the African American community. Many peacefully protested immediately following the event.
Each side of the political spectrum seem to throw out their own snark . What we know is that she was shot while threatening others with a kitchen knife. So, the right threw out memes about all of knife fights they had growing up. Their tongues were firmly planted in their cheeks. It’s a laugh a minute with them.
The left pointed out that she was a honor student. For instance, I usually love John Pavlovitz’s work, but his recent post on this missed out on a lot of nuance. I talked about the perception problem that came with showing pictures of Daunte Wright with a gun. The mention of her as a honor student presents the same problem. While it might be relevant to her overall character, it is not particularly helpful in sorting through the facts of this particular case.
When the officers approached they could have no idea who Bryant was. They couldn’t have known whether she was an “A” student or a potential dropout. They saw a potentially dangerous teenager that was threatening the lives of everyone on the scene. They saw the dangerous weapon. Contrary to what some would have us believe. This is not a normal scene for most of us. That would be the genesis of those jokes told in right wing memes.
However, what is equally misleading is the false dichotomy that the right forces us into in these situations. The reflexive reaction seems to be to force police to stand back and allow whatever bad is going to happen happen and then investigate after the fact. In other words, certainly don’t intervene because then you will be blamed for whatever you do.
The response demonstrates the binary thinking that usually comes from the right. You can do nothing or you can shoot to kill. They fail to see that while much of the criticism lacks nuance, it comes from a place where we want better outcomes. How do we get those better outcomes? That’s a fair question.
Community policing is just one answer. I mentioned that none of the responding officers knew Bryant. Why not? If those that patrolled the neighborhood frequently also responded to the call it’s more likely they would have known Bryant. Maybe they would have known she was an honor student and could have used that relationship and knowledge to talk her down before shots needed to be fired.
However, the more pressing question is why we always have to shoot to kill. Couldn’t they have disabled her instead? It’s a knife. All that needs to happen is to allow those in her path to get out of the way and away from danger. Maybe Bryant has a future after that. Maybe she could make good on the promise she was showing as a student. Maybe she could learn from her mistakes and become a productive member of society.
Racism is usually never overt. It is usually subtle and this is where both sides often get it wrong. Those officers didn’t necessarily shoot Bryant because she was black. They would have responded to a call of a white girl with a knife. They would have taken the situation just as seriously. Would they have done the same thing? That’s a much more complicated question.
All we need to do is consider the cases of Dylan Roof and the Santa Fe shooter. They survived their ordeals. This isn’t to say that they shouldn’t have. Maybe I wouldn’t have taken Roof to McDonald’s afterwards, but we don’t have to shoot to kill either. There is something going on here that has to be addressed. We need to ask ourselves why these situations often turn out this way.
The officers involved in the Bryant case didn’t do anything illegal necessarily. It was a dangerous situation. Lives potentially hung in the balance. They acted and that was that. What we can’t quite put our finger on is that there is a slice of humanity white officers seem to see when they see white suspects. Maybe they see themselves. Maybe they see the potential. Maybe they feel something they just don’t feel when they encounter suspects that are people of color.
Community policing would help. If police get to know the members in their community then it is easier to see them as people when bad things go down. Psychological testing of potential officers would certainly help. New training would also help. There are a number of options to try between doing nothing and shooting to kill. All of those are good things and things that would make the situation better. It won’t eliminate every situation. Perfect is the enemy of good. There will never be a perfect, but we need to do better and we can’t afford to wait any longer.