Apparently there is a new belief sweeping Trump supporters that goes by “Q” or “Qanon.” It appears to be the belief that there is a “Deep State” operative behind the scenes who is pulling the strings of a great many politicians and other public figures. And the motivation behind the string pulling is … pedophilia.
Again, the malfunctioning brain cells of Trump supporters have missed their mark. This time they seem to be confusing the Deep State with the Catholic Church.
The concept of religious freedom is being used as a smokescreen for something else. Just as the act after the events of 9/11 was called the Patriot Act when it had nothing to do with patriots, the religious freedom movement of today has actually nothing to do with religion per se nor freedom, other than freedom from anti-discrimination laws.
Most famously we had a county court clerk in Kentucky who refused to grant marriage licenses to gay couples. Her job was to make sure that all applicable state and county laws were abided by in the issuance in the license. Since the local polity had authorized licenses to be issued to gay couples, she had no recourse but to do her job and issue those licenses. There was no part of her job description that allowed her to insert her personal feelings into the process. There were no exceptions for issuing licenses to ugly people, or short people, or gay people. She just decided that there was to be one more step in the process of getting a marriage license, the approval of the county clerk, aka her.
The same can be said for the baker in Colorado who refused to bake a wedding cake for a gay couple, on artistic grounds as well as religious. What was being purchased was a wedding cake, something this baker did often. On top was to be a groom, something the baker did often, and a second groom. Whoa, Nelly, that’s offensive to his religion! Not the customer’s religion, but the baker’s religion! WTF? There is a religious test for doing business? “I will only serve Muslims” or “I will only serve Christians” is okay?
The baker was being asked to do something that was ordinary and not a stretch of his “artistic” skills. In fact, he could have taken a wedding cake that was not picked up and plucked the bride off of the top and added a second groom and ta da! Nothing extraordinary was being asked here. But his religious sensibilities were inserted into his business when they were not required. His claim was that by making the cake, he would be endorsing the wedding. WTF? Do the florists know this? The people who rent halls for receptions? The people who sell wedding gowns? (Buy a gown and we will personally endorse your marriage! Come with this cool certificate!)
The Trump administration is gearing up to use a “religious freedom” excuse to discriminate against anyone of whom they do not approve. The term religious freedom sounds like preserving the freedom to practice one’s religion. That is not being infringed upon anywhere I know of. What they are talking about is practicing their religion on people not of their religion, in other words, in my religion I can’t do this, so you can’t do this either. What we really need is a “Freedom from Religion” for the secular sphere.
People who do not want to sell cakes to gay couples should probably find another line of work. People who do not want to do their job as county clerk, should be fired, as Kim Davies should have been for refusing to do her job.
Even if you open a Christian bookstore, you cannot refuse service to atheists. I have been in a few of these stores and even made purchases and they had no idea who they were serving. (Bwah hah ha hah!) There needs to be a simple statement that if you open a business, that you cannot deny service to a law abiding customer. This is not currently the case, but it should be. Our federal administration is working in a direction opposite to this right now. If they get their SCOTUS nominee placed, expect a landslide of such religious freedom cases. Soon it will be acceptable for stores to not serve Muslins or Catholics or Scientologists and we will soon be immersed in religion wars that the Founding Fathers tried like crazy to avoid, to which end they created a secular state that protects religion but does not participate … until now in any case.
Republicans and even a few Democrats are fond of characterizing the National Debt as if it were akin to your household debt and claiming that the size of that debt is a big, big problem.
And I respond with: how do you know when a politician is lying about the National Debt? Answer: when his lips are moving.
Most of the “debt” incurred by the federal government is in the form of Treasury bonds. If one thinks of this as a piece of paper (rather than the electrons they are made of now) printed by the government, it is in effect a promise to pay. If the nominal value of the Treasury bond is $1000, the promise to pay is that $1000 and a smaller amount more. Easy peasy. This is, in effect, the government printing money. What would be the difference between this procedure and the government printing that $1000+ in the form of currency? Answer: there is no difference.
But, but the government has to pay off that debt, doesn’t it? Sure, it issues a new series of bonds and pays off the old bonds with the sale proceeds from the new ones.
But, but … that’s something we cannot do as individuals. Yep, that is why what we have is called a sovereign currency. As a sovereign country we can make as much or little of it as we want.
Consider this, in 1964, the year I graduated high school, the national debt was $312 billion, which constituted 46% of GDP. What do you think people would have said then that in 2018 it would be $21.5 trillion and 108% of GDP? I am sure some would have set their hair on fire and run about, claiming this was disastrous, that the American economy would be in a “failing third world country” state with rapid inflation and that we would be in a severe decline economically. Have you noticed any of this? No? (There are a great many things I do not like about our current economy; that is not my point, my point is that we are not now a banana republic because of our yuge national debt.)
Oh, by way of creating a little perspective, the National Debt in 1946, my birth year, just 18 years earlier, the debt was $216 billion, which was a whopping 119% of GDP.
As another point to ponder, realize that the U.S. Federal Reserve, aka “the Fed,” created $2 trillion out of thin air to fund its purchases of stock and creation of bank “reserves” and whatnot to “save the economy” during the recent Great Recession. Did you notice all of the inflation created by the injection of that much “new money” into the economy? No? Neither did I. Inflation was virtually nonexistent. In fact, many were worried about deflation. So much for the claim that printing money causes inflation. Printing money can cause inflation, but it doesn’t have to.
The country’s budget is not like a household budget, not even close. The country’s debt is not like a household’s debt, not even close. If the National Debt really bothers you, the government could print $21 trillion in currency (now done with electrons, not paper) and pay it off entirely. This is not desirable for many reasons; I won’t go into them now. (Whew, I had you worried, didn’t I? But just a teaser … would you make war on someone who owed you a lot of money?)
In an era of “fake news” the claim of there being a “big, big problem with the national debt” is among the fakiest of bits of news. Of course, there is no such thing as fake news, we have had lies in the news since the beginning of the country; those lies are still news. Think of the news as a court transcript; people lie in court all of the time and the transcripts can be used to convict them of that; they are not automatically true, just a record of who said what, just like “the news.” This is why lawyers tell their clients to shut up and not talk about their cases, something President Trump would be wise to do.
This claim of a “big, big problem with the National Debt” is pure propaganda, playing on the general public’s ignorance of national economics to push political agendas that have no good basis otherwise. For example, if you look back in history, if you had a large problem with debt, the last thing you would do is … cut taxes. Think of a corporation which is struggling with a large amount of debt, the last thing they would want is a reduction in income such as you would get if you cut prices. Cutting taxes creates a large reduction in income for the government. If spending stays near the same, a larger amount of debt is created. Have you known of any administration, Republican or Democrat, which has reduced spending? No? Neither have I. This is why Republicans can cut taxes dramatically and not worry. No matter what happens, it will not affect what they want to do. Reagan, Bush 1 and Bush 2, and Trump spent/spend more money than they took/take in, which was fine by them as long as their wealthy sponsors got wealthier, their prime objective. After all, these are the people that claim that they want to “get the government off of the people’s backs” and then create legislation pushing the government into our private lives ever deeper. Pay no attention to what they say, watch what they do.
A commentary at The Guardian blared “Democrats can be ‘party of white and black working class’, says Elizabeth Warren”
A good place to start is to explain why it is that the Democratic Party used to be that party but is no longer.
Apparently a number of companies are eschewing the use of plastic drinking straws (Walt Disney and Starbucks, I think) and a number of principalities are considering legal bans. Seattle was the first city to ban them with San Francisco, New York City, Malibu, Miami Beach, and San Luis Obispo on the left and right coasts following suit. The effort is to reduce the amount of non-biodegradable plastic waste that is piling up, well, everywhere.
But, some snowflake conservatives are decrying the loss as tragic. (Possibly these are the same people as were mourning the loss of inefficient incandescent light bulbs.) The reaction seems to be couched as if it were a ban on straws of any kind and not just plastic straws. Could this be a knee-jerk reaction be coming from people who tend to suck … naturally?
In any case, there is a readily available solution in a piece of old tech. If you are old enough, you will remember there were drinking straws before the plastic ones (New! Improved!) were made available. These straws were generally made out of paper that was waxed to make it temporarily waterproof. Both the paper and the wax are (or can be made to be) biodegradable. These straws were occasionally miserable at their function if left exposed to a beverage for too long (they became limp and soggy and collapsed) but they are still a viable option for a disposable drinking straw that won’t hurt the environment. (I am also old enough to remember that hospitals used glass drinking straws, which were sterilizable permanent drinking straws.)
The pushing out of the plastic straw from its economic niche will also stir innovation and I assume a straw made from cornstarch or its ilk will soon be available.
Unfortunately, knee jerk reactions is what today’s “news” consists of, all becoming part of the two pronged approach of the Republican Party’s agenda: the rich get richer and the rest of us get distracted.
A question came up on Quora recently that is indicative of a great many similar questions and discussions. Here it is:
So, the points being made here are … uh, umm … well that soldiers fight for the flag? WTF! That’s not true. Most combat soldiers fight for one of two reasons: to protect their buddies in arms or they fight for “their country.” I have never heard of any soldier who fought for the flag, either literally or figuratively.
Kneeling, what the players were doing, is disrespect? Is this true in church? If so, the Catholics, for one, are going to be in deep doo doo. Imagine disrespecting god … in a church! As a research project, I would like to know who was the first person to rule that civilians needed to stand and take their hats off during the playing of the national anthem. Soldiers I can see, civilians … I wonder.
And the football players are not kneeling for the flag. The flag is flying before they kneel and after. They are kneeling during the anthem and the anthem is a song.
And, whoaaaaa, an American football game is not the place or the time to discuss or address racism. Really? Hmmm, 70% of the players are Black or Hispanic, 100% of the owners are wealthy and White. Seems like the perfect place to discuss racism.
Look, I can resolve this whole issue simply.
Before the playing of the national anthem, post the following message on the message board and have it read over the loudspeakers. Ahem … “The NFL, <team owner’s name>, and the <team name> bring you to your attention that Black Americans face police brutality and prejudice and racism almost every day. We urge you to work in your community to ensure that all citizens are treated fairly and without prejudice by their community’s police.”
Then play the anthem. Not a single player will kneel.
Ta da!
Note That was all the players were trying to do with their “protest.” What they received from it was a face full more of racism and authority deliberate mischaracterization of their motives and not a single ounce f understanding and acknowledgement. Can anyone tell me what disrespecting “the flag” or “the troops” means or would be motivated by? The mischaracterization is easily seen as being motivated by racism and politics and little else.
No this is not about baseball. It is about our two main political parties and their “bases.”
The Republicans have sold their souls to the Religious Right, neoliberals, and reactionaries of the fringe of the right wing of American politics to get and stay elected, no matter the damage done. They haven’t dumped the rich as a core base element for who else would they serve? The Democrats have dumped their historic base of labor (working class people), minorities, and the less wealthy for the professional class, only to find out there aren’t enough of those to win them elections.
When I was young (I first showed an interest in politics when Eisenhower was president.) Republicans were stabilizers. They supported the institutions that kept out society stable (in their HO, of course). They supported the schools, the police, the military, the government (Right or Wrong!), the church, law and the courts, and so on. The complained when political or judicial opinions went the other way, but they didn’t threaten to take their ball and go home.
When I was young, the Democrats stood for fairness, helping the poor, balanced taxation, labor unions, and they were far from anti-war (both Kennedy and Johnson expanded the Vietnam War tremendously on specious grounds at best).
Neither party was worth a damn when it came to international relations. There was a small fringe who complained loudly about foreign aid, which has always been a spit in the bucket financially. (Somewhere along the line instead of giving technical aid and money to other countries, we now give them discounts on buy the weapons of war. Apparently as far as the U.S. goes peace and freedom don’t go together.)
Politically there was as much corruption then as is the standard now, but the stakes were smaller as were the amounts grafted by our politicians. But each party had some principled actors who kept the others in line. Often the “line” was racist or sexist, but there were lines and you could, as ordinary citizens, see them and attack them or try to move them.
Now, what I see is cowardice and incompetence (to he left of me, to the right of me, …) in our political bodies. Leadership? Not to be found? Intelligence? So little that the political class cannot evaluate whether their intelligence experts are to be trusted. Political astuteness? I can’t even find a politician who can define it. Deft policy drafters? Give me a break.
If we were to have a parliamentary system as has been suggested, these two parties would dwindle away to nothing and newer, more robust, more coherent parties would take their places. But as I have posted before, our political system is rigged. As much as the Founders feared political parties, they created a system that allowed two of those parties to hijack the system. (Our winner take all elections doom us to having just two dominant parties.) And, it is clear that the Founders feared true democracy, so they structured the Constitution against that.
I am absolutely gob smacked that the “press” still posts articles addressing the public will. They tell us, for example, that the Roe v. Wade SCOTUS decision has never been so popular. So? Since when has public opinion been a determining factor in anything governmental? Large majorities of citizens want background checks for all firearms sales; does that matter? A large majority of people want corporations to pay more in taxes; does that matter? If you are poor or middle class you have zero chance of affecting legislation. If you are rich and a campaign donor, then you have some chance. If you are a rich corporate lobbyist and have donated large sums, then you have not only a chance to affect the outcome, you may be invited in to help write (or write completely) the text of the bill.
If the Republican Party of my youth or the Democratic Party of my youth were still in existence, I could vote for the kinds of candidates either party proffered. As they are now, I cannot vote for either party as they both are embarrassments and anti-democratic and need to go.
Contraception has still been around for a very long time, and yet we are still debating the topic and are passing laws regulating it. Of course the reason for this is religion.
In the Muslim world, they are still in a phase in which, as a religion, they are trying to out populate the other religions it competes with. This was a phase for Christianity, too, a phase we haven’t entirely left.
Now, realize that if the radical religionists get their way, they will use state power to regulate contraception, as well as other sex-related topics and, I suspect there are reasons to believe you will not like it. As just an example of what to expect, should the most recent Antonin Scalia clone gets hoisted to the US Supreme Court, Louisiana has already passed a law that takes effect when Roe v. Wade is overturned in the SCOTUS. That law makes abortion a crime, sending everyone involved to jail with large fines attached, e.g. if a daughter is raped and her mother or father helps her get an abortion, the parent, the child, and the doctor are all heading for the slammer.
You may have noticed that states like Louisiana have coerced abortion clinics out of existence in their states, making the operation almost unavailable if you are poor and can’t travel out of state already. (As an aside, I wonder if the promoters of these laws have compared the birth rates of their state’s populations. The “white” birth rate is the lowest, hence they are speeding along the path to becoming a “white-minority” state.
Okay, back to the original topic. where did these anti-contraception ideas come from? The answer, of course, is Christianity (in the U.S.). So where did the Christians get their ideas? well, it wasn’t from scripture. Their scripture states that a baby becomes a “person” when they inhale the breath of life just after they are born. This hasn’t stopped the Christians from trying to pass a bogus law declaring the baby is a person at conception. (Once the pregnancy test shows blue, register the child for a Social Security number and claim then as a dependent on your tax returns. With the savings, go to another state for an abortion and you will have a “State funded abortion” whether they want it or not. Just sayin’.)
I have been paying more attention to church history of late and that history clearly shows the evolution of the churches stance toward sex and contraception. These ideas, not to be found in scripture, were created by Church Fathers like Paul and Augustine and, well, the usual crowd. Most of these people make clear that they believed that the most desirable state for Christians was celibacy. Augustine’s battles over his sexual nature make an interesting study of self-inflicted psychological wounds.
These people were, of course, unmarried for which fact they made self-serving excuses. Imagine these “holy men,” not at all likely to be much fun. They are overly serious, overly religious, and obsessed … not exactly marriage material. If they ever did have sex, each occurrence was probably the equivalent of a teenaged boy’s first sexual experience, that is to say explosive and overwhelming. They never got to the stage where sex with a committed partner becomes a gentle, affirmation of their relationship. So, they equated sex with lust, a cardinal sin. So, they started making rules about a subject they knew almost nothing about and which they mischaracterized from the beginning. At least the Quakers had the grace to die out, but the early Christians were playing the political dominance game, where the church with the most followers “wins,” just as Muslims are doing now.
The rather stern Protestant inheritors of these positions have accepted them, even though they are based in Catholic theology, and run with the ball. This is hardly surprising as the conservative Protestants are responsible for the Catholic majority on the Supreme Court. (Shush, don’t tell anyone, you’ll let the cat out of the bag.)
How we continue to let celibate clergymen dictate to us is beyond me. But then the church is hardly democratic. The only appeals they make to democracy is asking to be let to vote upon whether the U.S. should be declared a Christian nation.
This ridiculous demand can be quashed by a simple ballot. The first question is: “Should the U.S. be declared a Christian Nation (yes or no)? The second question is “Which denomination (Mormon, Scientologist, Catholic, Baptist, Southern Baptist, Charismatic, Quaker, Episcopalian, Seventh Day Adventist, and 10,000 more)? (check one).
The whole idea of the separation of church and state is to keep items of religion off of the ballot! The evangelical churches around the time of the adoption of the Constitution knew this as they were in a small minority at the time and would have been voted into obscurity. Better a level playing field for all than to give the currently popular churches the state power to collect tithes, etc. Now that they are ascendant in conservative political circles, now they want to vote.
Stupid, stupid, stupid.
If you want to see how states with endorsed religions behave, just look at history. It isn’t pretty. Why would they want this? I guess it is because they are still following tradition … traditions that were invented by lustful celibates thousands of years ago.
And, as I have been saying over and over: a religion will not continue to exist unless it coerces the labor of the masses to the benefit of the secular and religious elites. In the realm of sex, those being coerced are women. Rules made by men who did not and do not understand women or sex are still being used to control women. Women are to be “used” as vessels for men’s seed, and as caregivers to children, and then as a support system for their girl children’s children. That’s it. Oh, and clean the house and cook dinner and don’t forget to pick up my dry cleaning.
Disgusting.
Oh, and they are winning right now. If they break down the wall between church and state, get ready for religious wars.
This is not yet another post about who should be selected or how, but some background on how the SCOTUS fits into our system of government.
In a quite brilliant post [Time to Stop Playing “Simon Says” with James Madison and Alexander Hamilton by Paul Street (July 13, 2018)] at www.counterpunch.org the author points out quite clearly that the Constitutional Authors were more than fearful of popular democracy, that they felt the “natural” leaders were people like themselves, wealthy landowners who had the time and education and sensibilities (Sniff!) to lead well.
Here are a few telling quotes:
At the Constitutional Convention, Madison backed an upper U.S. legislative assembly (the Senate) of elite property holders meant to check a coming “increase of population” certain to “increase the proportion of those who will labour under all the hardships of life, and secretly sigh for a more equal distribution of its blessings” [emphasis added]. “These may in time outnumber those who are placed above the feelings of indigence. According to the equal laws of suffrage, the power will slide into the hands of the former.”
In Federalist No. 35, the future first U.S. secretary of the treasury, Alexander Hamilton, argued that the common people found their proper political representatives among the small class of wealthy merchant capitalists. “The idea of an actual representation of all classes of people by persons of each class,” Hamilton wrote, “is altogether visionary.” The “weight and superior acquirements of the merchants render them more equal” than the “other classes,” Hamilton proclaimed.
Mr. Street goes on to say this:
Checkmating Popular Sovereignty
The New England clergyman Jeremy Belknap captured the fundamental idea behind the U.S. Founders’ curious notion of what they liked to call “popular government.” “Let it stand as a principle,” Belknap wrote to an associate in the late 1780s, “that government originates from the people, but let the people be taught…that they are unable to govern themselves.”
It wasn’t just about teaching “the people” that they were incapable of self-rule, however. The Constitution was designed to make sure the popularity majority couldn’t govern itself even if it thought it could. The rich white fathers crafted a form of “popular government” (their deceptive term) that was a monument to popular incapacitation.
The U.S. Constitution divided the federal government into three parts, with just one-half of one of those three parts (the House of Representatives) elected directly by “the people”—a category that excluded blacks, women, Native Americans and property-less white males (that is, most people in the early republic). It set up elaborate checks and balances to prevent the possibility of the laboring multitude influencing policy. It introduced a system of intermittent, curiously time-staggered elections (two years for the House, six years for the Senate, and four years for the presidency) precisely to discourage sweeping popular electoral rebellions It created a Supreme Court appointed for life (by the president with confirmation power restricted to the Senate) with veto power over legislation or executive actions that might too strongly bear the imprint of the “secretly sigh[ing]” multitude.
It sanctified the epic “un-freedom” and “anti-democracy” of black slavery, permitting slave states to count their disenfranchised chattel toward their congressional apportionment in the House of Representatives.
The Constitution’s curious Electoral College provision guaranteed that the popular majority would not directly select the U.S. president—even on the limited basis of one vote for each propertied white male. It is still in effect.
U.S. Americans did not directly vote for U.S. senators for the first 125 years of the federal government. The Constitution said that senators were to be elected by state legislatures, something that was changed only by the Seventeen Amendment in 1913.
It is true that the Constitution’s Article V provided a mechanism technically permitting “We the People” to alter the nation’s charter. But the process for seriously amending the U.S. Constitution was and remains exceedingly difficult, short of revolution and/or civil war.
I know this is a lot to absorb, so I recommend you read the entire article. I will add a couple of comments.
Regarding the quotation from New England clergyman Jeremy Belknap “‘Let it stand as a principle,’ Belknap wrote to an associate in the late 1780s, ‘that government originates from the people, but let the people be taught…that they are unable to govern themselves (my emphasis).’” I’m shocked, shocked I tell you, that a clergyman would oppose people thinking and acting for themselves! Realize that in the New Testament, the only descriptions of how Christians practiced their religion were very democratic. There were no clergy per se, unless you think wandering guides such as “Paul,” qualified. Congregations of Christians met in homes and “shared” with one another with no middlemen involved. But if there are no middlemen, there is no power structure and the early days of Christianity (first three-four centuries) was all about creating a power structure … by those wanting the power.
So, to hear that some clergy, although I suspect close to all clergy, believed that people could not rule themselves is hardly a revelation. In their religion, the people could not govern themselves, they needed “guidance,” otherwise they might believe the wrong things (“wrong” as determined by those in power).
Regarding “The Constitution was designed to make sure the popularity majority couldn’t govern itself even if it thought it could.” This is a stunning revelation to me. I knew quite a bit of this background and the attitudes of the “Founding Fathers,” but I had not had this point made so clearly and forcibly before.
Regarding “The Constitution’s curious Electoral College provision guaranteed that the popular majority would not directly select the U.S. President.” Isn’t it curious that the Electoral College was the instrument that got a populist President elected in 2016. The “best laid plans of mice and men,” indeed!
Oh, and on which side of this argument do you think Judge Kavanaugh is on?
Quite a while ago, my partner and I became foster parents of a girl who was born with seven illegal drugs in her body. It is not nice to be born, which has to be traumatic, as none of us can remember it, and then to immediately go through detox. In any case, the young lady in question had neither sympathy or empathy for any other person as a psychological byproduct of her deplorable treatment by her parents. They just weren’t there in her psyche to be called upon. (She is all grown now and on her own and doing spectacularly well, a testament to a vast army of people who stepped up the plate for her … and her own determination to make a life for herself.)
One night over a quiet dinner, she blurted out “Hey, I’m not getting enough attention.” This is something someone who is very self-absorbed might say (I’d never heard it uttered before or since).
I believe this is the situation for Donald Trump, the FPOTUS. It seems that he isn’t bright enough to have his own ideas or even to significantly process the ideas of other people. Some say he used to be bright but has slipped significantly as he aged. That remains to be seen, but right now, he is as bright as a bag of rocks.
He also seems to be quite narcissistic and he seems to be governed personally by a drive to get attention to he, himself, and him. So, he goes into a NATO meeting (NATO, not Nato) and instead of playing along with the show for the rubes as everyone else does, he throws a rock while in a glass house. From this, he gets a great deal of attention.
And for people craving attention, there is no such thing as “bad attention.” Ordinary people do not aspire to becoming the “baddest dude in town.”
The same can be said for his meeting with Putin in Finland (which our FPOTUS mistook for a NATO ally). He pokes the bear (US politicians, the FBI, our intelligence “communities,” and public opinion) and doesn’t poke the bear (Russia) and gets a huge amount of attention.
And, what does this all mean?
Well, this is the frightening thing. As far as I can tell, to Mr. Trump it doesn’t mean anything. He made some personal appearances. He got “yuge crowds” in Great Britain and his picture on the front page of every newspaper in Europe and most of the rest of the world. The Russian press is asking about how the new U.S-Russia agreement will work (WTF?) and we are all pulling our hair out. And, for Mr. Trump, it was “did a few things, got a lot of attention, all in all a good week.”
The amazing thing is how many Republicans line up to suck the FPOTUS’s dick. Apparently Trump is giving them enough cover so they do all of their dastardly deeds almost unnoticed, like passing a bill in the House that withholds federal funds for adoptions in states where gay couples are allowed to adopt, you know, important work like that. Oh, and stacking the federal judiciary with knuckle dragging reactionaries and neoliberals and there are so many positions to fill since they blocked so many of them while Obama was President, then they changed the rules so the Dems couldn’t block their nominees. (Fair play is for suckers, don’t you know.)
