A Republic, If You Can Keep It

Here's an interesting fact upon which to cogitate:


The following nine Republican United States Senators represent fewer people in the United States Senate than Ben Cardin and Chris Von Hollen represent from the single Democratic state of Maryland:
Nebraska: Ben Sasse, Deb Fischer
Idaho: Mike Crapo, James Risch
South Dakota: John Thune, Mike Round
Wyoming: John Barrasso, Mike Enzi
North Dakota: John Hoven--the other US Senator is a Democrat, Heidi Heitkemp.


Another way of thinking about it: Ben Cardin represents 6,016, 447 citizens while Mike Enzi represents 585,501 citizens.

And yet Enzi's vote on Supreme Court nominations, on whether or not Roe v Wade gets undone counts just as much as Cardin's.


Or, to put it another way, each Wyoming voter has a voice 10 times louder than each Maryland voter, on whether or not abortion will be kept safe and legal, whether or not a restaurant owner can refuse to serve Black customers in his place of business, open to the public, on the grounds his deeply held religious beliefs tell him Whites and Blacks should not mix in his restaurant, or in his hotel or in the public school his children attend, or whether we should have a national health care system or Medicare for all.


One might ask, why should a person living in a state which is mostly prairie run the lives of people in Baltimore?

Structural Problem with American Governance

Reading Kathryn Schulz's New Yorker article "Food Fight" (10/1/18) alongside Jill Lepore's "These Truths," one striking thing is the truth in Faulkner's observation, "The past is not dead. It's not even past."

Fact is, we have never solved the vexing problems we started with on this continent; we simply agreed to  workable compromises to ignore them, or set them aside, like a marriage in which the partners agree to simply live in separate rooms, have dinner with the kids, but in many other ways, lead separate lives. 
We get together around the Thanksgiving table, have Christmas, go to family reunions, but as time goes on, we really can't stand each other.  
We agree to not fight in the presence of the children or in front of our parents and friends, but underneath, there is more driving us apart than holding us together.

What Lepore clarifies is how much slavery was part of decisions which were made at the inception, and how it nearly destroyed the whole idea of a marriage between North and South, but, fact is, enough Northerners owned slaves, Benjamin Franklin notably, they agreed to dodge the slavery bullet every time it came up, and simply to ignore that problem. 

But eventually, it came back to nearly destroy the nation. 
The racism which under-girded slavery, however, never disappeared, smoldering deep inside the vital organs of the country.

Then there was the rural/urban divide, which has caused as many, if not more, problems than slavery. The solution seemed benign enough--have a Senate to be sure each geographic part of the country got equal say in federal rules, even if vast stretches of that geography contained few, if any, people. The founders and their progeny decided a country was not only its people, but its land, its acreage, and the rights to that land and its use.

And that, too has come back to bite US. 

And then there was the contempt the founding and the ongoing ruling elite have for the unwashed masses, the common man.  That got us the electoral college. In recent times at least, that meant minority Presidents, George W. Bush and Donald Trump, were handed power, when the humble masses chose Al Gore and Hillary Clinton.

The men with money, position and power were safe and could manipulate and control the masses.

Most recently abortion has been the driving force which has corrupted and distorted power.  Throughout the Bible belt that has meant only one thing really matters: Evangelicals, fundamentalist Christians decided they would vote for Lucifer himself, if it meant abortion would be outlawed. They could take care of Lucifer later, but for now they needed him to stuff the Court with anti abortionists. Nothing else mattered.

Red is for empty; Blue has people

Democrats failed to see this, and thought because the majority of citizens favored permitting abortion, this was an issue which would not hurt them. What they forgot is where that majority lies: concentrated in cities and the cities have been deprived of their power. 

There are more people in Los Angeles who want abortion to be safe and legal than in both the Dakotas, Wyoming, Montana and Idaho, but LA gets only 2 Senators and those empty states get 8. And the Senators control the Court whenever the President is a Republican. 

Trump won Red; Clinton Blue

It's a game, and the Republicans have manipulated the game.
They manipulate lots of games, because that's how rich men stay in power--they play games unseen. They get control of things and twist them to their own benefit.

All the conspiracy theories about Jews controlling this or that, about liberals conspiring to control the world with Black helicopters are 99% wrong. 
What is true is that people in 400 families control this country. 

And nobody yet has figured out how to stop them. 

Kanvanaugh, SCOTUS: The Reality

Does anyone really think this Brett Kavanaugh kerfuffle is really about Brett Kavanaugh being a Bill Cosby esque sexual predator?

Here is what really happened:
Mitch McConnell broke the agreement about Supreme Court nominations when Obama tried to put Merrick Garland on the bench. Everyone had played by the rule that a President can appoint pretty much who he wants if a vacancy occurs during his term in office, within the realities of who is centrist enough to get past the Senate when it is ruled by the opposing party. But McConnell saw he had the power to break the rules and he did it.

Now the Democrats are playing the one card left to them: They try to assassinate the character of a really radical reactionary Trump has put forward. They cannot deny him the spot for the real reason: He is to the right of Genghis Kahn and he will reverse Roe v Wade and will lead the court beyond Roger B. Taney ville, likely reversing equal voting rights, and possibly finding slavery permissible when the slavers claim they need to have slaves as a matter of personal religious belief.

So, they try to get Kavanaugh by any means available.

Their case is pretty pathetic: as the women in my office have said--what teen age male is not a sexual predator? They are too stupid to know any better. It's just a matter of degree. If they rape somebody, they should go to jail, but otherwise, girls ought to think about walking around a party in a bathing suit when boys are drinking.

Kavanaugh will be confirmed.
The # Metoo movement will smart and seethe.
But the #Metoo movement deserves a punch in the nose--they tried to make accusation into a sacrament.

Pack the Court, soon as the Dems get the White House and the Senate. 
That's the only way to undo the prospect of 30 more years of despotic rule from the United States Supreme Court, that Court which is the ceaseless tide carrying the ship of state relentlessly into the past.
MAGA!

David Leonhardt Breaks Through: Finally Some Reality

Mad Dog is happy to report that his relentless hectoring of his Twitter targets, his letters to the editor of the Times etc, have finally got the attention of at least one "opinion leader" namely David Leonhardt of the NY Times, who writes that the United States Supreme Court is now so fatally afflicted with partisanship, term limits for the justices should be imposed.

Of course, he wusses out by going for the 18 year limit scheme, and this would require a Constitutional amendment and getting that through 34 state legislatures stands a snowball's chance, but at least he is a mainstream media type who finally acknowledges sinking Brett Kavanaugh is an exercise in mass delusion, the red herring let loose to distract attention, when the great white shark is silently gliding behind.


The problem with the Supreme Court is not Brett Kavanaugh, nor even Alito, Gorsuch, Thomas or Roberts. The problem is the custom of running the court with only nine justices, each of whom serve for life.

Other countries have 27 or even 100 supreme court justices and they work just fine.


The problem with our court is as the nation changes with respect to its ideas about segregated schools, abortion, campaign contributions, gun control, labor unions, the Court remains somewhere to the right of Roger B. Taney and Genghis Kahn.


The problem is change is fine as long as change can be undone, modified as experiments fail and new ideas emerge.

But at least we are beginning to hear people talk openly about actions which are the natural outcome of Mitch McConnell's breaking the rules, because he had the power to do it: It was Obama's turn and McConnell refused to let him have his turn. Well now: you broke it;  we'll fix it.

Joys of the Shire: Autumn in New Hampshire

Finally, a crisp fall day. 

In "Lord of the Rings" the Hobbits love their shire and never want to stray from it, but some are called to rescue the world, and they have to leave. 
There is a scene in "Band of Brothers" in which the men of Easy Company are riding in an open truck, just after the German Army has surrendered, and the Germans are marching north down the divider strip, as the Americans are riding past them on the road, headed south.

Richard Winters, Easy Company's commander remarks admiringly, "Look how they  march in step, defeated, but still disciplined."

But David Webster, a private, stands up and screams at the Germans, "You servile scum! What were you thinking? Dragging us away, thousands of miles from our homes, just to defeat you!"

He has seen the concentration camps, the monstrous evil the Germans, whether they knew about it or not, were fighting for.

Sometimes, happy as you may have been in your own world, the larger world demands your attention.

Mr. Trump and his hideous minions may yet call forth such an effort, but today, this Hobbit was happy to simply breathe in the clean New Hampshire air, to bicycle along the roads past the Hurd farm, with its pigs and goats and cows and llamas and past the several horse farms, and past the apple orchards, watching men in their plaid shirts and suspenders work on their cedar shingled siding, or on their roofs, past women joggers in their Lycra leggings and their ear phones, over the covered bridge and over the Taylor river as it flows to the sea. 

It was one of those day you just give thanks you live in New Hampshire and you leave the fighting to come to another day.

Fire in the Belly vs The New Hampshire House Cats

A 70 year old United States Senator from Hawaii is finally giving us what we need: Some in your face resistance to the GOP goon in chief and all his little acolyte goons.
Senator Hirono from Hawaii has been sticking it to the Republicans over their handling of Professor Ford's accusations about Judge Kavanaugh.

The problem for Mad Dog is, this Kavanaugh thing is a specious, trivial fight to pick. 

But the response, the upwelling of exaltation from many Democratic quarters should tell us something.

Finally, someone who fights.

As Lincoln was said to have remarked when people brought tales of General Grant's drunkenness to him, "Tell me what brand of whiskey he drinks. I'll send a bottle to all the rest of my generals."

Here in New Hampshire we just got finished nominating a very tame, inoffensive, careful man to run for the open United States House of Representatives seat in the New Hampshire First.  His name is Chris Pappas and he says he wants to reach across the aisle and work constructively with Republicans.

Good luck with that.

He says he is not going to Washington to start a food fight. 

Good luck finding a foot fight. He will be bringing a feather to a knife fight.

He says he thinks his victory over more strident, more progressive Democrats is an endorsement of his rejection of simply being the loudest, the angriest man in the room.

The problem is, he hasn't won a real victory yet. He has to beat Eddie Edwards who is embracing Trump with both arms, a true believer in Trumpism.

Well, maybe New Hampshire is more polite and maybe New Hampshire voters are not angry but just looking for good government and clear minds.
We can always dream. 

The Incredible Shrinking Democrats: Trivialization of the Party

This morning, driving to work, 2 stories on NPR:
1/ North Korea has agreed to dismantle missile launching sites, nuclear facilities and move toward normalization of relations with South Korea, opening borders, co hosting Olympic games.


2/ Prolonged interview about the Roe killing Kavanaugh nomination, accusation of the man's drunken groping as a teenager.

Now, try to imagine which matters more to you, if you are John Q. Public.
How does this play?
Well, Trump & Company may be testosterone driven jerks, but he did manage to bully North Korea into cowering and behaving.  If you don't care that much about abortion availability, what matters more--whether a teenage girl has to go out of state for her abortion or whether your President can intimidate one of the three big Axis-of-Evil guys into submission?

Watching images of strongmen of past, Hitler smirking after his troops rolled across the border into Czechoslovakia unopposed, Mussolini strutting, chest out, around his balcony, and the frenzied reaction of women in particular in the crowds, I thought, Uh-oh, here we go again.


Mussolini in particular loved to tell tales of how he "took" various women under stairwells, in barns, wherever and, like Berlusconi, it seemed to enhance his appeal to his crowds.
Leaders with balls.

Democrats have clung to the wisps of feminine indignation about the nasty things a judge did when he was a randy, drunken youth, completely ignoring the actual significance of the naked power play executed by Mitch McConnell and his GOP co conspirators. 
This is what is going to happen. You heard it hear first.
Kavanaugh or someone equally reliably conservative will be confirmed. With Alito, Roberts, Thomas, Gorsuch + Trump's next "Justice" the 5 votes to reverse Roe v Wade will be in place and the federal guarantee of abortion will be rescinded and states will decide whether or not to allow abortions. Some will continue to allow it, but from Texas to Florida and up to the Dakotas, wide swaths of the country will be no abortion zones with all the consequence.

But that will be just the beginning. Conservative rulings will flow for 30 years, no matter what direction the country takes. Corporations will buy Congressional seats; Gerrymandering will guarantee minority rule across the nation, and not just in the South, but in Pennsylvania and the rust belt and maybe even New England.  Flag burning will be outlawed. Owners of private property like restaurants and bakeries will be allowed to refuse service to people who their religious beliefs tell them not to like--homosexuals, Blacks, immigrants. Public schools will become more and more segregated. Discrimination against various groups--Blacks, Jews, Hispanics--in gated communities, private clubs, schools, will be simply an expression of free speech and religious freedom.

In short, we will return to the America of 1950 and President Trump, having made good on his promise to Make America Great (i.e. 1950) Again, will be re elected, possibly more than once.


All this will happen as Chuck Schumer weeps, Adam Schiff quietly objects, Nancy Pelosi fumes, Steny Hoyer shrugs and the tired, pallid old guard which is the Democratic Party heads off to the assisted living communities they so richly deserve.


And the last not-so-best hope of this nation, the Democrats wilt under the glare of the strongman, these Dems fearful of offending, always seeking harmony and compromise will be shoved aside as Neville Chamberlain and history's victims and prey have been in the last century.


The past is coming back to get us, zombie like; it's a smoldering infection which just keeps recrudescing while the timid become the lunch of the bold.