Supreme Court Nominee: Destroy Workers’ Rights, Rig the Election

Today, Dictator Donald Trump (DDT) put a radical right Christian cult member on the Supreme Court while Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg wasn’t even put to rest in her grave at Arlington Cemetery. The pick by Dictator Donald Trump (DDT), Amy Coney Barrett, has espoused:

• Roe v. Wade: an “erroneous decision.”
• Sexual assault against college students: Barrett’s appellate decision allowing students, mostly male, to ease challenges against university cases in accusations against them. 
• Legal career: a means to “building the kingdom of God.”  
• Catholic judges: obligated to “to adhere to their church’s teachings on moral matters.” 
• Affordable Care Act’s birth control benefit: an “assault on religious liberty.”
• Immigration: supports DDT’s rule blocking green cards if people may need future public assistance.
• LGBTQ rights: paid a speaking fee by Alliance Defending Freedom, a nonprofit defending forced sterilization for transgender people and been dubbed a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center. She would not answer a questions about whether she would overturn marriage equality.
• Brett Kavanaugh: good choice for the Supreme Court.
• Religious beliefs: member of People of Praise, calling female leaders “handmaids” until the publication of the dystopian novel The Handmaid’s Tale, and believing in supernatural occurrences such as prophecy, miraculous healing, and speaking in tongues. Group members swear to uphold so-called “covenants,” are held accountable to advisors, and believe dark forces abound in the world. (Comments from someone who escaped the cult.) 

While much has been said about Barrett taking reproductive, LGBTQ, and healthcare rights from people, DDT has an even darker reason for selecting Barrett—other than her youth. DDT and GOP senators care nothing about abortion and marriage equality, but they use those subjects to push their real agenda, bringing in donations from businesses for campaigning and, in DDT’s case, more money for his businesses. [Explanation for Sauron.]

Businesses can make more money by denying workers’ rights and regulations, and DDT’s judicial appointees will help them. One of his appointments in Pennsylvania used Lochner v. New York to open up all the businesses in the state, despite spreading COVID-19, with the position that the U.S. Constitution has no provision for controlling businesses. Using Lochner, other conservative justices, Barrett and other conservative justices, claiming to be “originalist” and “textualist” unless they prefer the other side, can destroy labor unions, environmental regulations, minorities’ voting rights, safety of food, education, and government health care while allowing the wealthy to purchase politicians with unlimited secret donations. In the future, DDT’s conservative judges can rule to eliminate minimum wages, equal pay, number of hours worked, union rights, etc.

Corporations can return to their golden days of the early 20^th century with sweatshops, enforced labor for children, etc. Businesses started plotting in the 1930s after Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s “New Deal” gave workers’ rights and help for the poor. Incomes improved by the 1950s and 1960s. After the 1964 Civil Rights Act women gained more employment rights: companies could no longer choose men over women for jobs just because gender.

In the 1970s, Bob Dole persuaded evangelical Christians to drop its policy of staying out of politics and put them together with corporations. The radical right Christians, enraged by the Supreme Court legalizing abortions, were used by corporations to elect conservatives. Corporations gave conservatives large campaign donations, and candidates used “moral” issues to get elected. By the 1990s, conservatives blasted the conservative Bill Clinton, who managed to bring the country back to a balanced budget for a short time, and in 2000 the Supreme Court chose George W. Bush to it in the Oval Office despite an examination of Florida’s “hanging chads” giving the majority to Gore.

To keep their voters happy, conservative politicians went farther and farther right, and Democrats had to follow along. The political philosophy of Democrats today is the same as that of Republicans in the 1950s, and the Republicans have dropped below the bottom of the charts for conservativism.

DDT, firmly entrenched with about 40 percent of the voters, has total control over GOP congressional members with his vicious habit of retaliation against anyone who disagrees with him. On Trump TV (Fox & Friends) he threatened retribution at the ballot box for anyone who didn’t vote for his choice. DDT doesn’t care about abortion or LGBTQ rights: his only concern is money, and he’ll do anything to make more of it. The same goes for almost all the Republicans in Congress. They can’t afford to give up donations from businesses, and they spout conservative values to keep getting the money for their coffers.

Poll numbers continue to be lower for DDT than those for Joe Biden, and DDT is terrified he will lose the election. The loss means courts can look into DDT’s finances, which are extremely suspicious, and he might even go to prison. At the least, DDT’s adoring public will discover the kind of shyster and con artist he is. For that reason, he is desperate to seat his next Supreme Court nominee before November 3. He will cause so much chaos at the ballot box that the high court may give him another four years.

It’s the GOP rule of thumb: take power at any cost. The GOP senators did that four years ago when they blocked President Obama’s nominee, Merrick Garland, almost eight months before the election and are working on perfecting it now when DDT made his appointment under six weeks before Election Day. David Axelrod called the appointment “a tyranny of the minority.” If DDT’s replacement succeeds, the majority of Supreme Court justices will have been appointed by presidents who lost the popular vote and confirmed by senators who represent under half the country.

A fact-checker about the lies Republicans use to excuse their hypocrisy:

Four years ago when several GOP senators looked for a “rationale” to refuse Merrick Garland as a Supreme Court nominee, they claimed Joe Biden had proclaimed no nominee should be considered in the last year of a president’s term. Biden actually said he might question making a nomination after the primaries began in the last year of a president’s term. DDT’s nomination today came over three weeks after people started voting in the general election. Contrary to the false claim of Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) about no justices being appointed in an election year, at least 14 Supreme Court justices were confirmed during an election year with three others nominated in the December lame duck session after the election. 

Four years ago, the Republican senators made a big deal of letting the people decide by voting for the president. Now will of the people makes no difference to Republicans, who discount people having a choice in the process if the Senate majority and the president belong to the same party. Once again, Republicans moved the goal posts to win.

GOP senators are saying they didn’t “block” Garland’s nomination, but most of them, including Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY), refused Garland even the courtesy of meeting with him.

GOP presidents have not always been completely partisan in their selection of justices. In the 1950s, Dwight Eisenhower worked for equal justice when he nominated five Supreme Court justices who opposed discrimination. School desegregation, unanimously determined in Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, came in 1953 when Earl Warren was chief justice. (One of DDT’s confirmed judicial appointments, Wendy Vitters, would not agree that Brown was correctly settled.) Other equality decisions included the requirement that state voting districts be roughly equal in population. At that time, Nevada had one district with 127,000 and another with 568 people. Under Warren’s court, the Miranda decision required police to give charged people their rights, Loving v. Virginia decriminalized interracial marriage, and Griswold v. Connecticut legalized birth control for married couples. (Single women couldn’t get birth control pills until seven years later.)

Although Richard Nixon had less interest in people’s rights, the 1973 Roe v. Wade was passed 7-2 with an all-male Supreme Court. Five of the GOP-appointed justices supported Roe.

Evangelical Christians voted for Ronald Reagan, and he frequently complained about “judicial activism,” a problem for conservatives who object to human rights. Right-wingers don’t describe decisions benefiting the radical right as “activism.” Reagan loaded the Supreme Court with appointments he claimed would strictly follow the Constitution with their “family values.” His confirmed nominees of 4 Supreme Court justices and 368 federal court judges is, at this time, an even higher number than DDT, but he had eight years in which to do it.

Republicans became angry when David Souter, appointed by George H.W. Bush, was moderate, but Clarence Thomas, the replacement for civil rights activist Thurgood Marshall, has been much more satisfactory to the anti-civil rights activist GOP. After 29 years, Thomas remains the most conservative justice on the high court.

At this point, it’s a miracle the United States has made any progress in a half century: a majority of justices for the last 50 years have been nominated by Republican presidents who become increasingly conservative. In addition losing individual rights, people will suffer huge losses to feather the nests of big business and the wealthy.

DDT’s ‘America’ on Anniversary of ‘I Have a Dream’ Speech

[Correction from August 27, 2020, post on Nel New Day: DDT [Dictator Donald Trump] did keep his promise to cut down on immigration across the southern border, but he did not mention the process would include abusing and molesting children, sexually assaulting women, separating families, and depriving immigrants of decent healthcare, food, and shelter.] Also, DDT wanted to “maim” and “shoot” immigrants seeking asylum on the southern border. 

Last Tuesday on the second RNC night, a 17-year-old from Antioch (IL) shot three protesters in Kenosha (WI), killing two of them. Two days earlier, police shot unarmed Jacob Blake in the back seven times in front of his three of his small children on the birthday of the oldest. Paralyzed from the waist down, Blake was handcuffed to his hospital bed until a public outcry. Former presidential candidate Andrew Yang, who spoke to Blake’s father, said:

“His first question after he woke up was, ‘Daddy, why did they shoot me so many times?’ He wept to his father. He has restraints on even though he can’t move his legs.”

Police claim, without witnesses or evidence, they shot Blake because he put them in a headlock and refused to drop a knife he was carrying. Police had no body cameras.

Classmates remember the teenage killer as being short-tempered and easily offended, focused on loving guns, cops, DDT, and “triggering the libs.” They joked about his being a future mass shooter, and one of them said, “I personally believe he went to Wisconsin with the intent to kill.” When the teen joined militia members in Kenosha, the city police thanked him for being there and gave him a bottle of water although he was breaking the 8:00 pm curfew. An hour later, he shot a protester in the head and tried to run away. After he tripped and fell, he opened fire on two protesters chasing him, killing one and injuring the other. Police drove by him as he tried to surrender. The police chief justified law enforcement action by claiming tunnel vision in “high-stress” situations. (A video trail of the police ignoring the teenager killing people.) 

A new report from the Brennan Center for Justice, “Hidden in Plain Sight,” shows how white supremacist groups or violent far-right militias  infiltrated law enforcement agencies in at least ten states, including my home state of Oregon. In Kenosha, the ACLU has called for the resignations of Police Chief Daniel Miskinis, who blamed protesters for being shot and killed and Kenosha Sheriff David Beth who said Black shoplifters are “a cancer to our society” and “have to be warehoused.” Read the Brennan report here. 

Twitter forced conservative pundit Ann Coulter to delete her tweet calling on the teenager to be her “president.” It followed another tweet recommending the teen be a “bodyguard.” Fox’s Tucker Carlson suggested the teen’s actions were noble. The killer’s first murder was of another White man carrying a skateboard.

A judge is permitting the white teenager, witnessed in killing two people and injuring a third, to stay in Illinois until a September 25 hearing. The purpose of the delay, according to the judge, is for the killer to put together a legal team. The personal lawyer for Fox network’s Sean Hannity, L. Lin Wood, announced he is raising money and coordinating legal representation for the vigilante murderer. A QAnon member, Wood also represented the case against the media by Kentucky teenager, Nick Sandmann, after he was accused to blocking an Indigenous activist at the Lincoln Memorial last year. Sandmann was a speaker for DDT at this week’s GOP convention.

A journalist for Mother Jones described the difference in treatment for Jacob Blake, a Black, and the teenager, a White:

“Jacob Blake was shot several times in the back while walking away from police officers. Kyle Rittenhouse made it all the way home before being arrested. Law and order is only for certain people.”

Conservatives complain about the violence of leftist activists, but radical right counterprotesters are causing violence in cities and towns across the U.S. At a Democratic rally for candidate Hank Gilbert in Tyler (TX) on July 26, Paul Benson tried to protect the speakers from DDT-supporters with military-style rifles who charged into the town of 100,000 population. The rally was intended to oppose deploying federal agents to U.S. cities and register new Democratic voters in conservative east Texas 100 miles southeast of Dallas. Hundreds the radical right pushed and shoved people. A man punched voter deputy registrar Nancy Nichols in the chest, three others held her husband against a war memorial, and Gilbert’s top aid was injured. The thugs blew air horns over the candidate’s speech, shouted and jeered, and pulled the plug on his sound system. Others surrounded the square in military-style defensive formation.

A Tyler councilman connected to Texas Freedom Fighters and Oath Keepers came with an AR-15 and a .45-caliber pistol. He had at least six more guns in his logging truck parked nearby and wants to keep the liberals from unfairly stealing the election from DDT. Police said they held back from the town square because they didn’t want to “escalate the situation.” Supposedly, they moved in after the radical right started the violence. They did file assault charges against three people, including a local businessman. Nichols said she plans to continue appearing at events to register people but said:

“If I see the presence of these goons, I will immediately call the police, the constables, the sheriff, the county judge and anyone else I can think of to make sure there is protection there for everyone.”

In a disturbance at Weatherford (TX) 160 miles west of Tyler, heavily armed counterprotesters, including far-right Texas-based group members, clashed over removing a Confederate statue from the Parker County Courthouse. Tony Crawford, a leader of the Parker County Progressives, talked to the police about having protection, but law enforcement never appeared, despite calls for help, when social media brought busloads from Dallas and Fort Worth, heavily armed, spitting on the rally, throwing water bottles at them, and chasing demonstrators back to their vehicles. The police chief of Weatherford, population 31,000, said city and county law enforcement agencies lacked the ability to police the event.

A week later, hundreds of motorists, many with DDT and Confederate flags, police were called to break up a gathering when hundreds of motorists, many flying Trump and Confederate flags, descended on an historical Black church in Dallas displaying a two-story Black Lives Matter sign.

People marching from Milwaukee to Washington, D.C. for the anniversary of the 1963 March on Washington were subjected to slurs, arrests, and gunfire.  On August 28, 57 years ago, Martin Luther King Jr delivered his famous “I Have a Dream” speech from the Lincoln Memorial. Last Monday night, the first night of the GOP convention, one of the marchers was shot in the face and side with bird shot in Schellsburg (PA) while the group rested near a salvage yard on U.S. 30, known as Lincoln Highway. The business owner said the marchers refused to leave the parking lot, but the leader said they “never even had a conversation” with him or the shooter. Two marchers were arrested in Indiana, accused of blocking traffic. 

Take America Back Texas, a new group surging to over 10,000 members in less than three months, orchestrates attacks on rallies such as those in Tyler and Weatherford. PR director Wendi Rees, a conservative, White suburban mother in Tyler, repeated the GOP mantra about losing “constitutional rights” although she mentioned only First and Second Amendments.

In the Tyler debacle, other radical right groups joined Take America Back Texas, including Rep. Louie Gohmert’s (R-TX) supporters, members of Texas militia groups, and the white-supremacist Aryan Brotherhood. People who attended compared the event to public lynchings in the square persisting into the 1900s. A Black retired Army nurse who served in Iraq said seeing the people with “lots and lots of weapons” was “devastating.”

White vigilantes and radical-right thugs have shown up to inject violence into Black Lives Matter protests at least 497 times in the three months since George Floyd was killed, according to data collected by Alexander Reid Ross, a doctoral fellow at the Center for Analysis of the Radical Right. Vigilante crimes include driving cars into demonstrators 38 times and firing guns at protesters nine times. Three people died from their wounds. In at least two events, law enforcement approved or supported the vigilantes. A sheriff’s deputy wore a “III Percenters” militia patch while policing a protest, and Portland (OR) police stood and watched the neo-fascist gang the Proud Boys attack peaceful protesters in the street. While the police arrested 22 protesters, they didn’t bother the Proud Boys leader who had an outstanding warrant for his arrest.  

Never mentioning the violence of the radical right, speakers at the GOP convention dwelt on a view of the dark, violent world under Joe Biden. DDT’s approval of the radical right is creating this dark violence during personal crime-ridden administration. 

Today, thousands of people gathered in Washington, D.C. at the Lincoln Memorial on the 57th anniversary of the March on Washington to protest the inequalities within the “justice” system. Unlike the RNC, the Black Lives Matter event required temperature checks, masks, and social distancing.

U.S. daily COVID-19 cases are rising—49,601 in the last 24 hours bringing the total to 6,096,235. Deaths remain above 1,000—1,105 with the total at 185,901. Iowa saw a record surge of almost 80 percent positivity rate with 2,579 positive cases from 3,247 tests. 

GOP House Candidates: Dumb, Dumber, Dumbest

DailyKos has proposed that Glenn Grothman, the Wisconsin state senator considered to be a shoe-in for the U.S. representative in the state’s sixth district in seven weeks, is the new “dumbest Congressman” for the 114^th Congress. Mother Jones offered up some of his credentials for this position:

• He proposed rolling back a state law requiring employers to give workers at least one day of rest a week, describing the current state law as “a little goofy” and claiming that his proposal is about “freedom.” At one time, people declared that being forced to work seven days a week wasn’t Christian; now preventing a seven-day work week is communism.
• He believes that homosexuality is a choice and wants to keep public school teachers from mentioning homosexuality in sex education. To him, Ugandan law to criminalize homosexuality is ideal.
• He thinks that Kwanzaa is a phony holiday promoted by “white left-wingers who try to shove this down black people’s throats in an effort to divide Americans.”
• He is opposed to equal-pay legislation because “money is more important for men.”
• He introduced a bill requiring Wisconsin to officially deem single parenthood to be a “contributor” to child abuse and neglect and in the laws of the state.

At least 26 GOP members of the House will be replaced because they have resigned or lost their primaries. Here is some competition for Glenn Grothman, other candidates likely to be elected:

Baptist pastor Mark Walker, running for the position of Rep. Howard Coble (R-NC), wrote on Facebook that he “had the privilege of spending an hour with an African-American male who grew up in the inner city,” but that “most of these Americans have no concept of the pride and joy when we, as parents, invest in our children.” Walker also wants to impeach the president and declare war on Mexico because of undocumented immigrants coming across the border.

Former Navy SEAL team member Ryan Zinke, running for the position of Rep. Steve Daines (R-MT), said the country is losing its focus on “the real enemy,” Hillary Clinton, whom he called the Antichrist.

Former candidate in both New Hampshire and Maryland Alex X. Mooney, running for the position of Rep. Shelley Moore Capito (R-WV), has 100 percent approval from Right to Life, Christian Coalition, and Family Values Alliance and never voted for a tax increase.

After defeating House Majority Leader Eric Cantor in a primary, David Brat has a chance at the Virginia seat. He wants to slash Social Security, Medicare, and education spending and says “rich” nations don’t have to fear climate change. Brat also wants to dissolve the IRS and absolves Big Finance and the banks of responsibility for the financial crisis that triggered the recession. (He’s an economist—and an educator?!) Another of Brat’s positions is getting rid of the United Nation and the Affordable Care Act while strictly controlling immigration.

Jody Hice, likely Georgia replacement for Rep. Paul Broun (evolution, a lie from “the pit of hell”), said of women in politics, “If the woman’s within the authority of her husband, I don’t see a problem.” Hice also compared the recent appearance of red “blood moons” to prophecies that preceded the expulsion of the Jews from Spain, Israeli statehood, and the Arab-Israeli War of 1967. He claims that Islam is not a religion but a political ideology and therefore does not deserve First Amendment protections. In a satirical book, he claimed he had found a homosexual agenda to “sodomize your sons” by seducing them “in your schools, in your dormitories, in your gymnasiums, in your locker rooms.”

Ken Buck, trying to take the job of Rep. Cory Gardner (R-CO) who’s aiming for the senate, opposes abortion even in cases of rape and incest and compares homosexuality to alcoholism. Rep. Cory Gardner (R-CO) is no prize: he co-sponsored a fetal personhood bill in the House to give protected status to fertilized eggs. In 2010, Gardner supported a defeated statewide “personhood” amendment but has now renounced it. His name is still on the federal bill although he has claimed that the bill doesn’t exist. He outshouted a Denver reporter who asked why the representative remains a cosponsor of the Life At Conception Act, and a spokesman later said that the bill that would block many forms of contraception was largely “symbolic.”

Colorado already has Rep. Doug Lamborn, running for re-election, who bragged about talking to generals to retire en masse because of President Obama’s ISIL strategy. The member of the House Armed Services Committee told his audience of “liberty voters” that “a lot of us are talking to the generals behind the scenes, saying, ‘Hey, if you disagree with the policy that the White House has given you, let’s have a resignation.’” Abandoning troops in the midst of war might be one definition of sedition. After criticism of George W. Bush in 2003, Eric Cantor, senior House Republican from Virginia, said, “Traditionally, both Republicans and Democrats leave politics at the water’s edge. A united front is essential for the U.S. to effectively deal with other nations and troubled regions.”

Facing national criticism, Lamborn tried to cover up his statements by saying that they were in the past, but his speech used present tense–a dead giveaway.

Other far-right representatives will most likely be replaced by farther-right candidates: John Ratcliffe is to the right of retiring Rep. Ralph Hall (R-TX); Gary Palmer is to the right of retiring Rep. Spencer Bachus (R-AL); Barbara Comstock  is to the right of retiring Rep. Frank Wolf (R-VA); and so on. Comstock wants to track immigrants like FedEx tracks packages.

Several of these candidates have promised to vote against current House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) for another term if they are elected. A new advertisement in Wisconsin states: “We have plenty of yes men in Congress, and look where it’s gotten us. Glen Grothman knows when it’s time to stand up and say no.” Boehner has struggled with his recalcitrant caucus for the entire 113th Congress. He may not even have the job in January.

Then there’s Monica Wehby who wants to take the U.S. senate position from Oregon’s Democrat Jeff Merkley. But that’s another story for another day.