"The Global Consciousness Project, also known as the EGG Project, is an international multidisciplinary collaboration of scientists, engineers, artists and others continuously collecting data from a global network of physical random number generators located in 65 host sites worldwide. The archive contains over 10 years of random data in parallel sequences of synchronized 200-bit trials every second."
Posted by Warm Southern Breeze on Monday, September 26, 2022
Pulitzer prize winning, nationally syndicated columnist Leonard Pitts, who also happens to be a Black man, wrote recently about the moron who the Georgia GOP trotted out to represent their interests — the former footballer, wife beater, philanderer, mentally unstable liar, Herschel Walker.
Pitts’ observations are spot-on.
But moreover, what this matter speaks to, is the wretchedly miserable condition of the Georgia GOP.
The GOP only trotted out that moron because he’s Black.
Now, you tell me…
Is that not pandering to racism, and race-based politics — fielding a candidate EXCLUSIVELY because of skin color?
It’s the very height of arrogant cynicism, and an exemplary model of political “tone deafness,” to obliquely assert, and hold as true, that the only reason Black folks vote, is to vote for Black folks.
U.S. Senator, Reverend Raphael Warnock, GA-D (wearing tie); Herschel Walker, GOP candidate for Georgia U.S. Senate
—excerpted—
“When people show you who they are, believe them the first time.”
— Maya Angelou
Maya Angelou, meet Herschel Walker, Republican candidate for the U.S. Senate.
Here he is on the Inflation Reduction Act: “A lot of money, it’s going to trees. . . . We’ve got enough trees. Don’t we have enough trees around here?”
Posted by Warm Southern Breeze on Sunday, September 4, 2022
History repeats itself, we’re told.
… but only if we ignore it, wrote George Santayana.
George Santayana in Rome, 1944.
“Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”
– George Santayana (1863-1952), Spanish philosopher writing in his 5-part book “The Life of Reason” Volume 1 “Reason in Common Sense,” (published 1905-1906)
One only need look at Georgia to see that GOPers are doing it again.
What are they doing again?
“It” is using the same old failed plays to win.
This time they’re using Hershel Walker like a subway token, just like they did Herman Cain.
They’re parading an utterly unqualified, out-of-touch-with-reality, ultra-wealthy individual as a candidate for high-level elected public office at the Federal level.
Hershel Walker, love him, loathe him — or ambivalent — has never held any elected office, much less held an office of public trust… just like another recent failure who retired to a palatial Florida estate which doubles as a high-priced “Members Only” club. So, why would ANYONE in their right mind imagine that Hershel Walker — in any way, shape, or form — would somehow be “qualified” to be a United States Senator from Georgia?
“No Person shall be a Senator who shall not have attained to the Age of thirty Years, and been nine Years a Citizen of the United States, and who shall not, when elected, be an Inhabitant of that State for which he shall be chosen.”
[U.S. Constitution, Article I, section 3, clause 3]
That bar is low enough that anyone — literally, anyone — could be a U.S. Senator. And according to that low standard, even a convicted felon still imprisoned could be a U.S. Senator. How preposterously absurd is that?!? Hershel Walker, as most anyone who’s been paying attention for the past several years, ought to know that Read the rest of this entry »
Posted by Warm Southern Breeze on Thursday, August 25, 2022
Contrary to what some political pundits, prognosticators, soothsayers, and talking heads say, Pennsylvania’s U.S. Senate race has not “turned ugly.”
It has always been ugly.
Keystone State residents are faced with what has, once again, become a sad reality across this nation:
An extremely wealthy GOPer faces off against the Common Man.
And in that process, the GOPer merely shows their true colors. But unlike the true colors in Cindi Lauper’s song by that same title, they’re not beautiful. They’re grotesquely hideous, and a maliciously macabre mockery.
The nation saw it in Georgia with Kelly Loeffler, the unarguably wealthiest individual ever to warm a seat in the U.S. Congress — House, or Senate — whose financial net worth, with her husband Jeffrey Sprecher, owner and CEO of the New York Stock Exchage, was then valued at upwards of $800 million.
In fact, under Trump’s tax law changes, the entire purchase price of a new or used aircraft bought by a company can be a 100% tax deductible write-off against its earnings.
What the multi-millionairess did, was to create an “ownership trust,” which is a company that owns the plane, rather than herself personally. By so doing, it offers some degree of anonymity by giving it the appearance of being isolated from the individual(s) whom actually control it. Essentially, it’s a type of “shell company” set up exclusively for the purpose of ownership, and nothing else.
Tripp is an alum of the University of Massachusetts Amherst, and one would expect more from a university-educated woman like her, and certainly much, much, more from the one who hired her — Oz, a very wealthy (as in multimillionaire wealthy) retired cardiologist. Of course, Oz has his own baggage, but the difference is, he doesn’t carry his own luggage — he has a porter to carry it for him.
But Tripp’s remark not only shows ignorance, it shows Oz’s true colors… his yellow belly, and forked tongue.
And frankly, while there’s evidence both ways, there is at least ONE thing we are absolutely certain of, which is that education cures and eliminates ignorance. So, score one for the “Nurture” column.
And, if you’ll recall, there were at least two (and, perhaps more) hit comedy motion pictures which played upon that theme: One in 1983 called “Trading Places,” starring the inimitable clown-men Eddie Murphy, and Dan Akroyd, supported by Don Ameche, Ralph Bellamy, and the ever-lovely and talented Jamie Lee Curtis; then in 1985 a motion picture with an obliquely similar theme entitled “Brewster’s Millions,” starring late funnyman Richard Pyor, and John Candy, supported by Hume Cronyn, Jerry Orbach, and Yakov Smirnoff; and yet another, although somewhat-lesser-known — though certainly with no less star power — in the 2014 title “Breaking the Bank,” staring Kelsey Grammer, supported by Susan Fordham, Richard Cordery, and Pearce Quigley.
In all three motion pictures, the protagonist is placed in an unexpected predicament by either the sudden presence, or lack of, abundant wealth. What they do with their lives in those stories, is comedic – though no less authentic examples of – nurture, combined with a healthy dose of nature.
And we can certainly see real-life examples of such stories in those who win phenomenal sums in lottery. Late West Virginia businessman Andrew “Jack” Whittaker, Jr. (1947-2020) is perhaps the most notable real-life example of a tragic, everything-goes-wrong-after-winning-the-lottery life story. A self-made construction business millionaire worth at least $17 million, on Christmas night 2002, then-aged 55, he purchased a winning Powerball lottery ticket which at the time was the single-largest lump-sum payout in U.S. lottery history — $315 million, which after taxes was valued at $113.4 million. In later years, he was very public about his sorrow at winning, and in a 2007 interview, stated that he wished that he’d torn up the ticket, saying,
“I’m only going to be remembered as the lunatic who won the lottery. I’m not proud of that. I wanted to be remembered as someone who helped a lot of people. I’ve had to work for everything in my life. This is the first thing that’s ever been given to me. Since I won the lottery, I think there is no control for greed. I think if you have something, there’s always someone else that wants it. I wish I’d torn that ticket up.”
But more to the point — the point being, stupidity on very public display.
In an emailed communique recently, Tennessee Banana Republican Senator Marsha Blackburn wrote the following, and shared YouTube video of her ignorant remarks which she made from the U.S. Senate floor about the House, no less.
From an email communique from Republican Marsha Blackburn, U.S. Senator for Tennessee:
MASK MANDATES ARE ABOUT POWER
Washington elitists are willing to do whatever it takes to keep the American people under their control. The new guidance from the CDC doesn’t follow the science and puts the wellbeing of children in K-12 schools at risk. There is no valid reason to require a vaccinated person to wear a mask. Mask mandates and lockdowns are all about power.
What she DELIBERATELY does is couch “freedom” as being able to do any damned old thing that you want, WITHOUT regard for anyone else.
That is NOT “freedom.”
That is selfishness and stupidity.
Musician/singer/song-writer Eric Johnson, in his song “Sad Legacy” from his 2005 album entitled “Bloom,” wrote in part that,
“There’s no such thing as freedom Without some responsibility. All this shock and surprise… But we’ve been throwing out a mean boomerang, And now it’s coming back at us.”
As has oft been stated, “your right to swing your fist ends where my nose begins.”
Furthermore, in her remarks, she deliberately DENIES the scientific facts.
Posted by Warm Southern Breeze on Saturday, June 12, 2021
Joe orders a Black Russian, Kyrsten orders a White Russian, and John C. Calhoun orders a filibuster.
Nobody got any drinks.
West Virginia U.S. Senator Joe Manchin, a Democrat in his 2nd term has an illustrious history as a public servant which began with election to the state’s House of Delegates, then to the State Senate, and from there to statewide office as WV Secretary of State, and then as Governor.
Among other things, the bill would unify election law throughout the 50 United States by establishing uniform standards for federal elections, establish non-partisan independent state redistricting commissions in all 50 states, establish a Federal Judicial Code of Conduct, outlaw any action that would “corruptly hinder, interfere with, or prevent another person from registering to vote” or assisting another to register to vote, mandate “motor voter” registration when applying for a driver license, prohibit partisan voting registration “dirty tricks” to cull voters without their knowledge, require voter-verified permanent paper ballots, mandate early voting, as well as numerous other significantly beneficial improvements to national security and election law.
Relatedly, Arizona Senator Krysten Sinema, a Democrat two years into her first term, has announced her opposition to eliminating the filibuster – a procedural tool most often used by the minority to thwart legislation, by requiring at least 60 votes to proceed, thereby preventing it from even being discussed, in order to effectively kill the prospective measure.
The Senate’s 2 Independents – Bernie Sanders of Vermont, and Angus King of Maine – caucus with the Democrats, and in the case of now-rare tie votes, the Vice President Kamala Harris would cast any tie-breaking vote… if it weren’t for the filibuster – which has now degenerated into a mere threat, with no real “action” required to “activate” it, per se. It has become the quintessential model, and most public example of, pathological passive-aggressive behavior – doing nothing (the passive behavior) to control, or manipulate others (the aggressive behavior).
Back To The Future
At one time, or another, Republicans and Democrats have separately expressed desire to eliminate the obstructionist tactic of the filibuster, which was not supported by the Founders, but rather, was a response to Vice President Aaron Burr’s criticism (shortly after his indictment for the murder of Alexander Hamilton) that the Senate’s rules were a mess, with numerous rules that duplicated each other, and in particular, singled out the “previous question” motion. So, when the Senate met the next year in 1806, they eliminated the “previous question” motion of parliamentary procedure, which functionally ceased debate using a simple majority vote… because Aaron Burr told them to.
Deleting that rule did not immediately cause filibusters to break out all over, but merely made it possible for them to happen — because there was no longer a Senate rule that could have enabled a simple majority to cut off debate. It was only several decades later in 1837 that the minority exploited the insufficient limits on rules of debate, and had the first filibuster.
There were three essential reasons why the filibuster was so rare, and infrequently used before the Civil War, because:
1.) The Senate operated by majority rule, and Senators expected that matters would be brought to a vote;
2.) The Senate had little work to do in that era, and there was plenty of time to wait out any opposition, and;
3.) Voting coalitions in the Senate were not as polarized as they later became.
Catch-22
As our nation grew, and added states, so did the Senate add more members. With growth, came increased work. And by 1880, every Congress had at least one episode of filibustered obstructionism, most of which were unconcerned with important matters of the day, and instead were focused upon trivial, inconsequential matters.
So, when filibusters did occur, Senate leaders tried to ban them. Throughout the 19th and early 20th centuries Senate leaders tried to reinstate the “previous question” motion – but they failed repeatedly – and ever since, have long sought a procedure to end debate on any given matter.
More often than not, senators gave up any hope for reform when they became aware that opponents to the elimination of the filibuster would kill any such effort at changing the rules to eliminate the filibuster — ironically, by filibustering — thereby putting the majority’s other priorities at risk. Because they were unable to reform the Senate’s rules, leaders developed other innovations such as unanimous consent agreements, which measures were an option of second resort for managing a chamber which by then, was prone to filibusters.
In response, the Senate changed… but not by much.
“Unanimous Consent” agreements emerged like mushrooms after a springtime rain shower. And then, cloture was created in 1917 during the waning days of World War I. Not “simple majority” cloture, but “supermajority” cloture. The Senate filibustered for 23 days following President Woodrow Wilson’s proposal to arm merchant marine ships during WWI. It also ground to a halt all other work in the Senate. The President criticized the Senate by saying it was
“the only legislative body in the world which cannot act when its majority is ready for action. A little group of willful men, representing no opinion but their own, have rendered the great government of the United States helpless and contemptible.”
In response to President Wilson’s withering criticism, a bipartisan Senate committee was formed to negotiate the form of the rule. Five of the six Democrats supported a simple majority rule; one Republican supported a supermajority rule; and one Republican preferred no rule. Negotiators then struck a compromise:
1.) Cloture would require two-thirds of senators voting;
2.) Opponents promised not to block or weaken the proposal, and;
3.) Supporters promised to drop their own proposal for simple majority cloture — a proposal which was supported by at least 40 senators.
Rule 22 – the cloture rule, to cease filibuster by a two-thirds majority vote – was adopted 76-3, on March 8, 1917.
Just Say No
Without Senators Manchin and Sinema’s support on vital bills forwarded from the narrow Democratic majority House, it’s practically assured that Republicans – who control 50 Senate seats – will once again, control movements of all legislation, despite the fact that when they were in control as the majority, they “circled their wagons” and got things done, even with Democratic opposition.
And, at a recent press event in his home state on May 5, 2021, Senate Minority Leader Kentucky Republican “Moscow” Mitch McConnell said,
“One hundred percent of our focus is on stopping this new administration.”
So, it very much looks like the Senate’s legislative “Grim Reaper” is back to his old manipulative tricks, despite being in the minority – just because he can.
Prophecy Fulfilled
As many political scientists, politicians, and analysts have observed, increasingly, the formerly Grand Old Party is losing grassroots support on a broad basis. But, it’s not as if such problems weren’t predictable. On February 1, 1993 Washington Post Reporter Michael Weisskopf wrote that:
“The gospel lobby evolved with the explosion of satellite and cable television, hitting its national political peak in the presidential election of Ronald Reagan in 1980.
“Unlike other powerful interests, it does not lavish campaign funds on candidates for Congress nor does it entertain them. The strength of fundamentalist leaders lies in their flocks. Corporations pay public relations firms millions of dollars to contrive the kind of grass-roots response that Falwell or Pat Robertson can galvanize in a televised sermon. Their followers are largely poor, uneducated and easy to command.
““The thing that makes them powerful, is they’re mobilizable. You can activate them to vote, and that’s particularly important in congressional primaries where the turnout is usually low. Some studies put the number of evangelical Americans as high as 40 million, with the vast majority considered politically conservative,” said Seymour Martin Lipset (d.2006), professor of public policy at George Mason University.”
It’s always easier to ask forgiveness, than permission.
But, what Weisskopf wrote about the predominately Rural, Republican-voting, White Protestant Evangelicals – that “Their followers are largely poor, uneducated and easy to command” – was true then, and it’s even more true now.
Folks don’t get mad because of falsehoods, or scurrilous accusations.
They get mad because of truth.
While campaigning for the Republican party’s nomination, after winning Nevada’s Republican caucuses on February 23, 2016, the later-45th President exclaimed, “I love the poorly-educated!”
Of course he does — because they’re too stupid to know when they’re being played for a fool. And he played them like a fiddle – like Nero, while Rome burned.
The once-Grand Old Party has demonstrably become the Party of Poorly-Educated, Low-Skilled, Poorly-Paid and Often-Impoverished, Rural Working Class Whites who watch and believe Fox News like religion – especially men – who twice voted for Trump, still believe his Big Lie, earn well under $50K annually, and increasingly vote Republican – against their own best self-interest.
They support candidates whose exclusive guiding political philosophy is to refuse endorsing higher wages, healthcare, education, and other matters of direct concern to them and their families, and magically believe that a privatized, laissez-faire free market everything will solve all problems. They are becoming, or have become, a minority voting bloc whose interests are not represented by the political party for which they increasingly vote.
They are, in essence, deluded.
We’re Going Down
In the few days before the January 6 insurrectionist attack upon Congress at the Capitol, led by far right-wing extremist Kentucky Republican Representative Read the rest of this entry »
Posted by Warm Southern Breeze on Sunday, May 30, 2021
Who doesn’t like their iPhone?
The world’s most popular smartphone is ubiquitous.
And we Westerners must genuinely appreciate the slave labor used to manufacture the parts that go into the handheld electronic communication device.
And without access to cheap slave labor from our Oriental brothers and sisters in Vietnam, China, and other Southeast Asian nations, we couldn’t enjoy using the electronic devices that so captivate our attention, anesthetizing us to their, and others’ suffering.
The liberal ideal of so-called “free trade” has been perverted.
Rather than being used by our nation as a tool to sow seeds of freedom, and cultivate the fruits of liberty, it’s being abused to enslave others far from our shores in the guise of “profitability” and “progress.”
Aided and abetted by their Wall Street corporate masters and pecuniary overlords, American slavery has been exported as a material good to enrich the few at the expense of the many.
And Republicans scoff at Massachusetts Democratic Senator Elizabeth Warren’s chastizement of JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon and other banksters who enriched themselves, and their corporate coffers, by TENS OF BILLIONS OF DOLLARS by simply continuing to charge overdraft fees to their customers who’d lost their livelihoods, jobs, and income during the the coronavirus pandemic – even though the Federal Reserve not only cut them significant fiscal slack, but also encouraged them to pass such beneficence along to their customers by forgiving such fees.
They did no such thing.
And what will democratic, freedom-loving American beneficence and largesse do in this instance?
My bet is on “Nothing.”
Gotta’ make no’ munny fuh massa’.
Vietnam Detects New Highly Transmissible Coronavirus Variant : Coronavirus Updates
Vietnam has detected a new coronavirus variant that is highly transmissible and has features of two other strains.
“Vietnam has uncovered a new COVID-19 variant combining characteristics of the two existing variants first found in India and the U.K.,” Health Minister Nguyen Thanh Long said, according to Reuters. “That the new one is Read the rest of this entry »
Too bad he didn’t hit his head and die. The world would have been much better off without “Moscow” Mitch McConnell, seen here as then-Kentucky Republican Senate Majority Leader proudly displaying the Nike brand athletic shoes which he blames for his fall which ironically, injured his LEFT shoulder.
The Senate’s self-proclaimed “Grim Reaper” has returned.
Senate GOP Leader Mitch McConnell of KY is keeping his Republican conference largely unified, and it’s creating major obstacles to President Biden’s legislative agenda.
McConnell has maintained the loyalty of his fellow GOP senators despite repeated attacks by former President Trump, who has called on Senate Republicans to oust him as their leader.
And it was McConnell’s opposition to a House-passed bill establishing a bipartisan January 6 commission that snuffed out the legislation in the Senate on Friday.
One GOP senator said the measure would have garnered enough votes to pass the chamber and eventually land on POTUS Biden’s desk had McConnell not gotten involved.
“The vote on the commission would have had 60 votes in the absence of McConnell’s position,” said the Republican lawmaker who ended up voting against the bill.
The senator said the vote outcome was a good example of just how influential McConnell is in the conference.
Posted by Warm Southern Breeze on Monday, February 22, 2021
(L-R ) Congresswomen Sheila Jackson Lee, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Sylvia Garcia help distribute food at the Houston Food Bank on February 20, 2021 in Houston, Texas. – Texans are in need of aid after an unprecedented and deadly “polar plunge” burst pipes and left millions in the US state shivering without power or clean water for days. (Photo by Elizabeth Conley / POOL / AFP)
You KNOW things’re bad when a renown New York City Progressive Democrat has more chutzpah, and gets more things done for Texans than does their ne’er do well, out-of-touch privileged U.S. Senator Ted “Cancun” Cruz.
Analysis by Chris Cillizza, CNN Editor-at-large
Updated 3:51 PM ET, Monday February 22, 2021
(CNN) – Last Thursday, New York Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D) announced her plan to raise money to help victims of the extreme weather — and power grid failure — in Texas.
Obviously, the most important thing here is that millions more dollars will go to Texans still struggling to find potable water and deal with the damage from last week’s deep freeze. (Ocasio-Cortez also traveled to the state over the weekend to see the situation firsthand.)
Republican Senator Richard Burr of North Carolina joined Republican Senators Mitt Romney of Utah, Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, Susan Collins of Maine, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, Ben Sasse of Nebraska, and Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania, and all 50 Democrats in voting GUILTY to convict. But, 57 votes was 10 shy of the 2/3 required by the Constitution in order to convict.
The Senate Minority Leader Moscow Mitch McConnell had the temerity, audacity and unmitigated gall to actually give a brief speech on the Senate floor following his “NOT GUILTY” vote for Donald J. “Loser” Trump, which follows at the conclusion of this entry.
Senate Minority Leader “Moscow Mitch” McConnell who wrote email to his Senate minions saying,
“Colleagues, as I have said for some time, today’s vote is a vote of conscience and I know we will all treat it as such. I have been asked directly by a number of you how I intend to vote, so thought it right to make that known prior to the final vote. While a close call, I am persuaded that impeachments are a tool primarily of removal and we therefore lack jurisdiction. The Constitution makes perfectly clear that Presidential criminal misconduct while in office can be prosecuted after the President has left office, which in my view alleviates the otherwise troubling ‘January exception’ argument raised by the House.
“Given these conclusions, I will vote to acquit.
“Mitch”
Yeah… that Kentucky heathen not only voted to acquit the POS45, aka Liar in Chief, leader of the Cult of Trump, but passed the buck.
Not guilty, not guilty 2x, guilty. Alcee Hastings was impeached and found guilty of on charges of perjury and conspiring to solicit a bribe, and was removed from office as a Federal judge in 1989. He’s been a United States Representative for Florida’s 20th Congressional District since 1993.
Here’s the thing, though: For a man who claims to have an interest in historicity for the purpose of the Senate, he is DEAD WRONG about his opinion that, as he writes, “I am persuaded that impeachments are a tool primarily of removal…”
As a matter of history, there has been of late at least a moderate amount of discussion and news made about an historical matter involving circumstances very similar to this one (in which the impeached individual is no longer in office), insofar as the two individuals impeached had ALREADY been resigned from, or otherwise out of office when their impeachment occurred.
Posted by Warm Southern Breeze on Friday, February 12, 2021
“Trump told us to do it.”
Trump’s MAGA supporters rioter-insurrectionists who were assembled at the White House Ellipse Park January 6, 2021 quickly became violent exclusively because they believed that Trump was asking them to do so – that they were doing his bidding.
“He said, ‘Be there.’ So I went and I answered the call of my president.”
House Impeachment Managers cited social media posts, recorded video, and court documents which reflected as much.
“I Answered the Call of My President.”
Impeachment Managers also extensively documented that several months BEFORE the election, Trump was laying the groundwork for convincing his cult of followers that the November presidential election was fixed, and that his victory was stolen because of Read the rest of this entry »
Posted by Warm Southern Breeze on Friday, February 12, 2021
The third-rate lawyers trying to defend Trumpanzee, aka “POS45” and formerly as the “Liar in Chief” from charges of Inciting Insurrection, were given 16 hours to make their case.
They quit after 4.
Remember: Charles Manson did NOT kill anyone, yet he was convicted of murder.
The Senate’s RINOs will likely NOT vote to convict their hero.
Donald Trump (sipping Diet Coke soda pop through a straw, like a goddamn 4-year-old child) during the Alfred E. Smith Memorial Foundation Dinner at Waldorf Astoria October 20, 2016 in New York, New York.
Posted by Warm Southern Breeze on Thursday, February 11, 2021
Suddenly, a Juror becomes a Witness!
Senator from Utah, Mike Lee suddenly stood up and said…
“Statements were attributed to me moments ago by the House Impeachment Managers. Statements relating to the content of conversations between a phone call involving President Trump and Senator Tuberville were not made by me. They’re not accurate, and they’re contrary to fact. I move pursuant to Rule 16 that they be stricken from the record.”
There is NO court of jurisdiction EVER which has allowed a juror to become a witness also.
Lead Impeachment Manager Representative Jamie Raskin, Maryland-8, Democrat
In the trial’s final hour of arguments on Day 2, Wednesday, February 11, 2021, Representative David Cicilline, an Impeachment Manager, and Democrat of Rhode Island-1, spoke of then-President Trump who, during the very midst of the insurrection and breach of the Capitol building, had mistakenly called Republican Senator Mike Lee of Utah, in an effort to reach newly-elected first-time politician Republican Senator Tommy Tuberville of Alabama, a former football coach for Auburn University. In describing the call, which was detailed in numerous news reports, Representative Cicilline asserted that Senator Lee had stood by as Trump asked Senator Tuberville to make additional objections to the certification of President Biden’s electoral votes.
“With a mob of election protesters laying siege to the U.S. Capitol, Sen. Mike Lee had just ended a prayer with some of his colleagues in the Senate chamber when his cellphone rang.
Caller ID showed the call originated from the White House. Lee thought it might be national security adviser Robert O’Brien, with whom he’d been playing phone tag on an unrelated issue. It wasn’t O’Brien. It was President Donald Trump.
“How’s it going, Tommy?” the president asked.
Taken a little aback, Lee said this isn’t Tommy.
“Well, who is this? Trump asked. “It’s Mike Lee,” the senator replied. “Oh, hi Mike. I called Tommy.”
Lee told the Deseret News he realized Trump was trying to call Sen. Tommy Tuberville, the newly elected Republican from Alabama and former Auburn University football coach. Lee walked his phone over to Tuberville who was talking to some colleagues.
“Hey, Tommy, I hate to interrupt but the president wants to speak with you,” Lee said.
Tuberville and Trump talked for about five to 10 minutes, Lee said, adding that he stood nearby because he didn’t want to lose his cellphone in the commotion. The two were still talking when panicked police ordered the Capitol to be evacuated because people had breached security.
As police were getting anxious for senators to leave, Lee walked over to retrieve his phone.
“I don’t want to interrupt your call with the president, but we’re being evacuated and I need my phone,” he said.
Tuberville said, “OK, Mr. President. I gotta go.”
Lee said when he later asked Tuberville about the conversation, he got the impression that Trump didn’t know about the chaos going on in the Senate chamber.
Impeachment Manager David Ciciline, a Democrat representing Rhode Island-1 said,
“Senator Lee described it. He had just ended a prayer with his colleagues here in the Senate chamber, and the phone rang. It was Donald Trump. Senator Lee explains that the phone call goes something like this. ‘Hey, Tommy,’ Trump asks. Sen. Lee says, ‘This isn’t Tommy.’ He hands the phone to Senator Tuberville.
“Senator Lee then confirmed that he stood by as Senator Tuberville and President Trump spoke on the phone. And on that call, Donald Trump reportedly asked Senator Tuberville to make additional objections to the certification process.”
Senator Lee NEVER objected to the news report which he himself had told to Deseret News on January 7, 2021. Nor did he note that any corrections should be made to it, and there is no errata or corrections cited on the story.
As Impeachment Manager Representative Ciciline was speaking, Senator Lee became apparently agitated and wrote in large letters upon a sheet of paper from a legal pad at his desk “This is not what happened.” and then handed the paper to David Schoen, one of Trump’s lawyers.
As Lead Impeachment Manager Representative Jamie Raskin, a Democrat representing Maryland’s 8th Congressional District, was at the speaker’s podium and was attempting to close the day’s session, Senator Lee then stood up, and Read the rest of this entry »
Posted by Warm Southern Breeze on Monday, February 8, 2021
Banana Republicans in the United States Senate do NOT, and will NOT need, “smoking gun evidence” to convict Donald Trump of Insurrection, because in their warped imaginations, he did nothing wrong.
Those feckless individuals have not merely bowed the knee to Trump, or fallen prostate at his feet to lick his boots and the ground he walks upon, but by so doing, they have unambiguously signaled that they are not merely corrupted, but are traitorously and treasonously aligned, as well.
Allan Lichtman
Their fealty, their loyalty, their oath, though it may have appeared so, is NOT to the Constitution, but to some other nation, some other government, one that is NOT the United States of America – The Cult of Trump.
The benighted Moscow Mitch McConnell and his equally benighted Kooky Kentucky Klown pal Rand Paul are still up to no good.
Here Is The Smoking Gun Evidence To Back Impeachment Of Donald Trump
By Dr. Allan Lichtman, PhD, opinion contributor
02/08/21 10:00 AM EST
While the House impeachment managers have focused on events leading up to the Capitol breach, it was the real time response from Donald Trump to the rioters which yields smoking gun evidence of his intent to incite the insurrection. Trump failed to promptly call off his followers or to summon timely assistance for the police, despite pleas from his fellow Republicans caught up in the mayhem. His final words that day connect his incendiary statements about a “stolen election” to the storming of the Capitol.
As he watched the insurrection unfold on television, with some delight according to witnesses, Trump made no immediate demand that the rioters leave the Capitol. He failed to heed the pleas of Republicans in Congress, who desperately tried to call him with no response. “We are begging essentially, and he was nowhere to be found,” Representative Anthony Gonzalez of Ohio said. We know Trump did call Senator Tommy Tuberville of Alabama after mistakenly dialing Senator Mike Lee of Utah. Trump called Tuberville not to ask about his safety or to offer assistance, but to discuss a strategy for objecting to the count of electoral votes.
When rioters breached the Capitol in full view of cameras, Trump did not appear on television to denounce them or tell his followers to cease and desist. Instead, he stoked the incitement with a tweet to attack his vice president and double down on claims about a stolen election. He wrote, “Mike Pence did not have the courage to do what should have been done to protect our country and our Constitution, giving states a chance to certify a corrected set of facts, not the fraudulent or inaccurate ones.”
Trump later sent a tweet in the passive voice, “Stay peaceful!” He sent a similar message more than half an hour later. He still had not appeared in person on any medium at this point. Trump eventually released a video that told his supporters, Read the rest of this entry »
Posted by Warm Southern Breeze on Friday, January 22, 2021
Following are excerpted portions of the in-depth interview, which may be read in its entirety, or heard, via the link at the end this entry.
Book ‘Kill Switch’ Examines The Racist History Of The Senate Filibuster
TERRY GROSS, HOST: Congress is trying to return to normal after the insurrection. But what is normal? There are more threats of violence surrounding the inauguration. The norm-breaking that became the norm during the Trump presidency is about to change with the Biden administration. Another change will be the new Democratic majority in the Senate. After newly elected Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock are sworn in, the Senate will be evenly divided, 50 Republicans and 50 Democrats. But Vice President Kamala Harris will have the tie-breaking vote.
But how much power does that actually give Democrats in the Senate? A majority is not enough to pass legislation anymore and hasn’t been for a long time because of the modern use of the filibuster. It takes three-fifths of the Senate to override a filibuster, which means the minority only needs 41 votes to prevent any bill from even coming to a vote. My guest Adam Jentleson says the modern use of the filibuster has crippled American democracy, enabling the minority to systematically block bills favored by the majority. He’s the author of the new book, “Kill Switch,” about the rise of the modern Senate. He knows the ins and outs of Senate rules because he worked as Harry Reid’s deputy chief of staff when Reid was the Democratic leader. Jentleson joined Reid’s staff in 2010 and stayed until 2017.
“Kill Switch” is a history of how the filibuster started as a tool of Southern senators upholding slavery, and then later was used as a tool to block civil rights legislation. The book concludes with Senator Mitch McConnell’s advances in the use of filibuster as an obstructionist tool. Jentleson is now public affairs director at Democracy Forward, which was founded in 2017 to fight corruption in the executive branch.
ADAM JENTLESON: Slowly, over the course of time, but primarily to serve the interests of slave states and try to preserve slavery against the march of progress and a growing majority of both states and Americans who wanted to abolish slavery. The filibuster did not exist in name or practice until about the middle of the 19th century. So this was well after all of the Founding Fathers had passed away. James Madison was one of the longest lived and an ardent opponent of the filibuster to the extent that it sort of was coming into existence in the 1830s. And he passed away in the early 1830s.
John C. Calhoun (1782-1850), United States Representative of South Carolina-CD6, 10th Secretary of War, 16th Secretary of State, Senator of South Carolina, and 7th Vice President (1825-1832), ardent slavery proponent, and slave owner.
So the progenitor of the filibuster, its main innovator, was John C. Calhoun, the great nullifier, the leader, father of the Confederacy. And Calhoun innovated the filibuster for the specific purpose of empowering the planter class. He was a senator from South Carolina. His main patrons were the powerful planters. And he was seeking to create a regional constituency to empower himself against the march of progress and against – what was becoming clear was a superior economic model in the North. So Calhoun started to innovate forms of obstruction that came to be known as the filibuster.
GROSS: So you describe John Calhoun as, like, basically, the father of the filibuster. Let’s be clear who he was. I mean, he not only wanted to protect slave owners, he argued that slavery created racial harmony and improved the lives of slaves. You quote him in the book. He said, never before has the Black race of Central Africa, from the dawn of history to the present day, attained a condition so civilized and improved, not only physically, but morally and intellectually. Amazing that he could justify that slavery was improving the lives of enslaved people.
JENTLESON: That’s right. And it’s important to note at this time, you know – not to give people of that era too much credit for being enlightened. But, you know, there was a shift in public opinion going on regarding slavery in the United States. The abolitionist movement was beginning to gain traction. And, you know, while folks weren’t exactly at the enlightened state of believing in full equality, they recognized that slavery had – was, at best, a necessary evil, emphasis on the evil.
And so Calhoun took it upon himself to argue that there was nothing evil about it. In that same speech that you quoted, he went on to explain that slavery was not a necessary evil, but, quote, “a positive good.” He was such an ardent defender and such a vehement racist that he couldn’t even accept the sort of antebellum acknowledgement that there were parts of the institution that were evil. So it was very clear what his motivations were. He wanted to preserve slavery. And the filibuster was what he deployed to achieve that goal.
GROSS: So we’ve established that needing a supermajority to pass legislation was not what the founders wanted. They wanted simple majorities. You’ve talked about how the filibuster was initiated in the mid-19th century and the ways it was used to enable slave owners and to keep the institution of slavery. But you write that the only time the filibuster was used during Jim Crow with any consistency was to block any form of civil rights legislation and that this happened through the 1960s.
So give us an example of that – like, of the systematic use of the filibuster to block civil rights legislation.
JENTLESON: So what Southern senators faced starting in the 1920s was majority support for civil rights bills. These were rudimentary civil rights bills. These were anti-lynching bills and anti-poll tax bills, but they were civil rights bills nonetheless. These bills started passing the House with big majorities. They had presidents of both parties in the White House ready to sign them, and they actually had enormous public support. Gallup polled the public on anti-lynching bills in 1937 and found 70% of Americans supporting federal anti-lynching laws. And they polled anti-poll tax laws in the 1940s and found 60% support. So Southern senators started to block these bills in the name of minority rights Read the rest of this entry »
For the ignorant – and, that’s most people – it’s a SCOTUS ruling handed down June 17, 2019 that ruled that, “The Free Speech Clause of the First Amendment prohibits only governmental, not private, abridgment of speech.”
In other words, Censorship laws DO NOT apply to the Private Sector.
Thank the so-called “conservative” Supremes who handed down that ruling. They are: KAVANAUGH, J., delivered the opinion of the Court, in which ROBERTS, C. J., and THOMAS, ALITO, and GORSUCH, JJ., joined.
So, Mr. Dorsey, and every other private company does NOT have to abide by anti-censorship laws.
Furthermore, what in the hell is Ted Cruz doing meddling, trying to tell Twitter how to run their business? That jacked-up twat probably doesn’t even own one share of Twitter.
What fucking hypocrite that son-of-a-bitch is!
I’d have loved to have seen Mr. Dorsey ask Cruz that question – “Are you telling me how to run my business?” – and follow it up with this one:
“Exactly what laws are you accusing me, and/or my company, of breaking?”
Of course, the obvious answer is ‘none.’
And remember: This is Political Theater for Banana Republican Ted Cruz, who feigns not-so-righteous indignation on behalf of those who would vote for him in future elections, Presidential, or not. And chances are, we’ll see that Texas turd make a Presidential run for the border in 2024.
Posted by Warm Southern Breeze on Thursday, January 7, 2021
The two Democrats challenging Georgia’s incumbent Republican Senators, David Perdue, and the appointed Kelly Loeffler, have won.
A full 100% of Georgia’s 2652 precincts have reported, and their votes tallied.
Georgia’s Republican Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger has certified the results.
The Reverend Doctor Raphael Warnock, pastor of Atlanta’s famed Ebenezer Baptist Church, the spiritual home of the late Reverend Doctor Martin Luther King, Jr., has been declared the winner in his race against Kelly Loeffler, with 50.84%, or 2,259,769 votes, to 49.16%, or 2,185,063 votes, for Kelly Loeffler. Loeffler was temporarily appointed by Georgia’s Republican Governor Brian Kemp to fill the unexpired term of Republican Johnny Isakson, who announced his retirement effective 31 December 2019 to care for his health following a diagnosis of Parkinson’s Disease. The Reverend Doctor Warnock has made history by being only the 11th Black person to have been elected to the United States Senate.
In the other Senate race, Jon Ossoff has been declared victorious over incumbent David Perdue with 50.41%, or 2,240,822 votes, to 49.59%, or 2,203,958 votes for Perdue. Aged 33 years, Mr. Offoff will become the youngest United States Senator ever elected.
Jon Ossoff LEFT and Rev. Dr. Raphael Warnock RIGHT in a joint campaign event.
Posted by Warm Southern Breeze on Wednesday, December 30, 2020
Blessed are those who have, for they shall be given more.
That’s not a genuine Bible verse, by the way. And if you’re any kind of decently well-read individual, with more than a perfunctory, or minimal knowledge of the Judeo-Christian collection of holy writings collectively known as the Bible, you would know that already.
And by that same token, of being any kind of decently well-read individual, you would also know that there is an eerie parallel to a saying that Jesus of Nazareth made about a related matter – the Parable of the Talents – as recorded in the Gospels of Matthew and Luke. A parable, of course, is a moralizing tale, a story meant to illustrate some matter, and to point out a wrong doing, or type of injustice in an unobtrusive, easy-to-understand manner.
We’re going to get to Georgia’s appointed Republican Senator whose net worth of $500M is BY FAR the wealthiest member of Congress in just a moment, but first you need some background for understanding.
Woodcut from Historiae Celebriores Veteris Testamenti Iconibus Representatae — dated to 1712 — depicts the Parable of the Talents as told by Jesus of Nazareth, in Matthew 25:14–30. Two men bring the money that was entrusted to them back to their master, while a third man searches for his money outside.
The story states that, in preparation for a journey of some duration, an owner/master entrusted and distributed his money to his 3 servants. The unspoken hope, or expectation those days, is that, upon his return, they would have increased the portion with which they were entrusted and charged.
To one, he gave he gave 5 talents (a monetary measurement), to another he gave 2, and to the third, he gave 1 talent. Upon his return, the first two who received 5, and 2, respectively, reported that they’d doubled the money. The third did not, and rather, reported that he buried the money in the ground, and had not gained anything. Upon hearing that news, the owner became enraged, called that servant lazy and wicked, fired him, then ordered that single talent to be taken from him and given to the one with 10.
That’s an important point, which you’ll see later, why.
Jesus of Nazareth, who was telling the story, made a moral assessment, and drew a conclusion based upon the actions of that one who did not return a profit, and reportedly said, “For whoever has will be given more, and they will have an abundance. Whoever does not have, even what they have will be taken from them.”
While the story is simply told, the meaning behind it is uncertain, though there have been many sermons preached about the tale. And yet, the audience hearing that parable then, in the era in which is was told, would have interpreted it quite differently from today’s audience, according to Dr. Richard L. Rohrbaugh, STD, Professor Emeritus of New Testament and Religious Studies at Lewis and Clark College, whose primary scholarly pursuit was establishing proper historical and cultural contexts for Biblical texts.
Dr. Rohrbaugh said that, in the era in which the story was first told, the audience would have understood that the “profit” was made through the exploitative abuse of others, and that the third servant was the one which would have been considered honorable by the standard of the day. Thus, that interpretation of the parable, would mean that the first two servants were shameful, instead of the third. When asked about the matter, Dr. Rohrbaugh said in part that,
“[G]iven the “limited good” outlook of ancient Mediterranean cultures, seeking “more” was considered morally wrong. Because the pie was “limited” and already all distributed, anyone getting “more” meant someone else got less. Thus, honorable people did not try to get more, and those who did were automatically considered thieves: To have gained, to have accumulated more than one started with, is to have taken the share of someone else.”
As he explained in the Biblical Archaeology Society, “In the ancient world, greedy people who did not want to get accused of profiting at someone else’s expense – which was considered shameful – would delegate their business to slaves, who were held to a different standard.” Dr. Rohrbaugh explained that the reasoning was that, “Shameful, even greedy, behavior could be condoned in slaves because slaves had no honor nor any expectation of it.”
Posted by Warm Southern Breeze on Tuesday, December 15, 2020
If you want to know what a person will do, simply look at their past.
That’s a generally good rule to observe, and that principle is found in practically every activity of human life – even in politics.
So, let’s examine Georgia’s Banana Republican Senator David Perdue, who was formerly Dollar General CEO from 2003 to 2007 of the Goodlettsville, TN-based business.
David Perdue has been selling out Americans for a long time. As long as it made a fast buck for him, or whoever hired him, he was okay with that.
Posted by Warm Southern Breeze on Monday, December 7, 2020
The Atlanta Press Club’s Loudermilk-Young Debate Series featuring U.S. Senate candidates Jon Ossoff (D), Rev. Dr. Raphael Warnock (D), and Kelly Loeffler (R) is now over.
The Atlanta Press Club’s Loudermilk-Young Debate Series hosted debates between the candidates for both of Georgia’s U.S. Senate seats.
While Jon Ossoff and Senator David Perdue were also invited to participate, David Perdue declined participation.
Poor Jon… he had the stage all to himself. Thus, the Democratic candidate Jon Ossoff having the floor all to himself, proceeded to pummel his opponent in absentia and “debated” an empty podium, because the cowardly incumbent Banana Republican Senator David Perdue skipped out. An yet, it’s an entirely apropos picture of the coronavirus-stock-trading fraudulent Senator.
Not smart, David. Not smart at all. In fact, it’s pretty damn stupid. You lost by not showing up. In sports terms, that’s called a “forfeit,” or if you prefer pecuniary terms, a “loss given default.” Which is also probably how it’ll all go down for you, anyway. But for Jon, it’s a Credit Default Swap, and he’s the one profiting from your loss/forfeit/default.
After Ossoff’s solo performance, or soliloquy (take your pick), which was broadcast live on Georgia Public Broadcasting, and available online, on Sunday, December 6 from 7 – 8PM EST, the appointed (not anointed) Banana Republican Senator Kelly Loeffler and Reverend Raphael Warnock also participated in a debate in the same venue.
Billionairess Banana Republican Kelly Loeffler stood at the podium with her standard smirky pseudo-smile and stared straight ahead throughout the event, rarely ever making eye contact with anyone present – either the moderator, her opponent Rev. Dr. Raphael Warnock, or the two panelists.
But in all fairness, she did turn her head a few times – but very few.
Reverend Dr. Raphael Warnock, pastor of Atlanta’s Ebeneezer Baptist Church, formerly pastored by the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and where in significant part America’s Civil Rights Movement was cultivated, was calm, cool, collected, and willingly corrected for the record the deliberate misrepresentations, twists, and outright lies that Kelly Loeffler spouted. He was certainly more animated, though not exaggerated. Loeffler, however, was more robotic, automaton-like.
Warnock pointed out that, aside from campaigning, Loeffler had not visited any of Georgia’s rural areas, or small towns during the brief 10-month period of her appointment to office by Georgia Governor Brian Kemp. He contrasted himself with her lackadaisical and purposeful ignorance of her constituency by Read the rest of this entry »
Posted by Warm Southern Breeze on Wednesday, November 18, 2020
Today, Wednesday, 18 November 2020, Georgia’s Appointed Senator, multimillionairess Kelly Loeffler flagrantly violated Federal Campaign Finance laws, and Senate ethics rules by requesting/seeking/soliciting campaign contributions/donations for herself while on Senate property.
Senate Rules PROHIBIT any kind of political or candidate fundraising on U.S. Government/Congress property.
“Well, look… we know that hundreds of millions of dark, liberal money is pouring into our state. That’s why it’s so important that everyone across the country get involved. They can visit Kelly for Senate dot com, to chip in five, or ten bucks, and get involved, volunteer…”
– Appointed Georgia Senator Kelly Loeffler on Fox News program “America’s Newsroom,” Wednesday, 18 October 2020
Senate resources may only be used for official purposes.
No official resources may be used to conduct campaign activities.
In addition to this general prohibition, there are several criminal statutes that impose additional restrictions on campaign activities by Senate Members and staff:
No Campaign Activity in a Federal Building
Senate Members and staff may not receive or solicit campaign contributions in any federal building.
Posted by Warm Southern Breeze on Wednesday, October 28, 2020
Seems ol’ Teddy Boy got hot under the collar at Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey during a Senatorial hearing today, Wednesday, 28 October 2020, which was conducted remotely because of the coronavirus pandemic.
Frustrated at the responses, Ted Cruz screamed out at Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey,
“Who the hell elected you? Why do you persist in behaving as a Democratic super PAC, silencing views to the contrary of your political beliefs?”
Ol’ Ted should remember that “Freedom of Speech and of the Press” (First Amendment Rights) do NOT apply to businesses.
Only to the government.
The Press – and for all practical purposes, Twitter is considered part of the Press – is free to publish, or not, what they want. They are free to censor as much as they like, or not.
Posted by Warm Southern Breeze on Wednesday, October 28, 2020
Merrick Garland was nominated to the Supreme Court by President Barack Obama in March 2016. The Senate never voted on his nomination.
Led by Republican Senate Majority Leader “Moscow Mitch” McConnell, the Senate took no action on POTUS Barack Obama’s nominee Merrick B. Garland on March 16, 2016.
The last time the Senate had NOT considered a SCOTUS nominee was 61 years 4 months 8 days prior with Harlan Johnson, who was nominated by Dwight D. Eisenhower on November 9, 1954.
Posted by Warm Southern Breeze on Wednesday, October 21, 2020
This is what the soft hatred of bigotry cloaked in religious garb looks like.
This revelation should come as no surprise, that a radicalized right-wing religious zealot should serve at a high level on the Board of Directors for three schools in three separate states under a common umbrella would discriminate.
Below her image are three more images of the same type thing.
This person must NOT be confirmed to the nation’s highest court!
And toward that end, perhaps it may alarm you to know that a Ku Klux Klansman has been seated on the nation’s highest court.
You can read Matt Reimann’s excellently succinct August 15, 2017 article via the link above. Of note, Mr. Justice Black was also a “textualist” on matters of interpretation of the Constitution – the same thing late Justice Scalia said he was, and which Judge Barrett says she is.
“CHICAGO (WBBM NEWSRADIO) — Mayor Lori Lightfoot said she is preparing for when Amy Coney Barrett takes her seat on the U.S. Supreme Court. She was asked to share her thoughts Tuesday on the judge and minced no words.
“Mayor Lightfoot was first asked if she views the U.S. Constitution as Judge Barrett does, as an “originalist.”
“Originalists firmly believe all statements in the U.S. Constitution must be strictly interpreted based on the original understanding at the time the Constitution was adopted. They do not believe in the concept of a “Living Constitution” that can be interpreted in the context of current times.
““You ask a gay, black woman if she is an originalist? No, ma’am, I am not,” Lightfoot laughed.
““That the Constitution didn’t consider me a person in any way, shape or form because I’m a woman, because I’m black, because I’m gay? I am not an originalist. I believe in the Constitution. I believe that it is a document that the founders intended to evolve and what they did was set the framework for how our country was going to be different from any other.
““But originalists say that, ‘Let’s go back to 1776 and whatever was there in the original language, that’s it.’ That language excluded, now, over 50 percent of the country. So, no I’m not an originalist.”
“Mayor Lightfoot said she’s deeply worried about some of Judge Barrett’s stated views, for instance, being against gay marriage.
““I deeply worry about this woman’s stated views. She’s on the record on a number of different things, not the least of which is thinking that gay marriage is something that shouldn’t be countenanced. And she’s got soulmates in Justice Thomas and others, who think that the decision by the Supreme Court…should somehow be rolled back,” Lightfoot said.
““What should I tell my daughter — that somehow now my wife and I are no longer married? That we’re no longer legitimately recognized in the eyes of the law? That is dangerous, dangerous territory. And what about a woman’s right to choose? We’re gonna keep re-litigating this issue, and we’re gonna make abortion illegal, as Amy Coney Barrett thinks it should be?”
“The Mayor also called Republicans “hypocrites” for pushing the Barrett nomination when they put off taking up the Merrick Garland nomination by President Obama.
“”The hypocrisy is something that is a bitter pill for me to swallow,” Lightfoot said.”
The September 13, 1937 front page of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette printed an image of Black’s KKK resignation letter.
“Hugo Black had been associate justice of the Supreme Court for less than a month when the news broke. In September of 1937, an exposé by the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette found proof of Black’s membership in the Ku Klux Klan. He had joined in September of 1923, and resigned in July, 1925, as one of his first moves before running for one of Alabama’s U.S. Senate seat. Ironically, the smoking gun was Black’s resignation letter, written in legible longhand on Klan stationery, which appeared on the paper’s front page.
“Franklin Roosevelt, who nominated Hugo Black, was implicated in the scandal, which threatened to have far-reaching consequences for the president’s New Deal image. What was once seen as shrewd politics — the New Deal-friendly textualist was confirmed with a 63–16 vote — had become a disgrace. “Millions of Americans,” wrote one Indiana newspaper, “will not forget this sole tangible accomplishment of President Roosevelt’s attempted ‘liberalization’ of the Supreme Court.”
“When asked by the press to remark on the scandal, Roosevelt brushed questions aside, saying, “I only know what I have read in the newspapers. I know that the stories are appearing serially and their publication is not complete. Mr. Justice Black is in Europe where, undoubtedly, he cannot get the full text of these articles. Until such time as he returns, there is no further comment to be made.”“
apnews.com
Barrett Was Trustee At Private School With Anti-Gay Policies
By Michelle R. Smith and Michael Biesecker
October 21, 2020 at 10:51:08 AM CDT
Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett served for nearly three years on the board of private Christian schools that effectively barred admission to children of same-sex parents and made it plain that openly gay and lesbian teachers weren’t welcome in the classroom.
The policies that discriminated against LGBTQ people and their children were in place for years at Trinity Schools Inc., both before Barrett joined the board in 2015 and during the time she served.
The three schools, in Indiana, Minnesota and Virginia, are affiliated with People of Praise, an insular community rooted in its own interpretation of the Bible, of which Barrett and her husband have been longtime members. At least three of the couple’s seven children have attended the Trinity School at Greenlawn, in South Bend, Indiana.
The AP spoke with more than two dozen people who attended or worked at Trinity Schools, or former members of People of Praise. They said the community’s teachings have been consistent for decades: Homosexuality is an abomination against God, sex should occur only within marriage, and marriage should only be between a man and a woman.
Interviewees told the AP that Trinity’s leadership communicated anti-LGBTQ policies and positions in meetings, one-on-one conversations, enrollment agreements, employment agreements, handbooks and written policies — including those in place when Barrett was an active member of the board.
“Trinity Schools does not unlawfully discriminate with respect to race, color, gender, national origin, age, disability, or other legally protected classifications under applicable law, with respect to the administration of its programs,” said Jon Balsbaugh, president of Trinity Schools Inc., which runs the three campuses, in an email.
The actions are probably legal, experts said. Scholars said the school’s and organization’s teachings on homosexuality and treatment of LGBTQ people are harsher than those of the mainstream Catholic church. In a documentary released Wednesday, Pope Francis endorsed civil unions for the first time as pope, and said in an interview for the film that, “Homosexual people have the right to be in a family. They are children of God.”
Barrett’s views on whether LGBTQ people should have the same constitutional rights as other Americans became a focus last week in her Senate confirmation hearing. But her longtime membership in People of Praise and her leadership position at Trinity Schools were not discussed, even though most of the people the AP spoke with said her deep and decades-long involvement in the community signals she would be hostile to gay rights if confirmed.
Suzanne B. Goldberg, a professor at Columbia Law School who studies sexuality and gender law, said private schools have wide legal latitude to set admissions criteria. And, she said, Trinity probably isn’t covered by recent Supreme Court rulings outlawing employment discrimination against LGBTQ people because of its affiliation with a religious community. But, she added, cases addressing those questions are likely to come before the high court in the near future, and Barrett’s past oversight of Trinity’s discriminatory policies raises concerns.
“When any member of the judiciary affiliates themselves with an institution that is committed to discrimination on any ground, it is important to look more closely at how that affects the individual’s ability to give all cases a fair hearing,” Goldberg said.
The AP sent detailed questions for Barrett to the White House press office. Rather than providing direct answers, White House spokesman Judd Deere instead accused AP of attacking the nominee.
“Because Democrats and the media are unable to attack Judge Barrett’s sterling qualifications, they have instead turned to pathetic personal attacks on her children’s Christian school, even though the Supreme Court has repeatedly reaffirmed that religious schools are protected by the First Amendment,” Deere said in an email.
Nearly all the people interviewed for this story are gay or said they have gay family members. They used words such as “terrified,” “petrified” and “frightening” to describe the prospect of Barrett on the high court. Some of them know Barrett, have mutual friends with her or even have been in her home dozens of times. They describe her as “nice” or “a kind person,” but told the AP they feared others would suffer if Barrett tries to implement People of Praise’s views on homosexuality on the Supreme Court.
About half of the people asked not to be identified for fear of retaliation against themselves or their families from other members of People of Praise, or because they had not come out to everyone in their lives. Among those interviewed were people who attended all three of its schools and who had been active in several of its 22 branches. Their experiences stretched back as far as the 1970s, and as recently as 2020.
NOT WELCOME
Tom Henry was a senior at Trinity School in Eagan, Minnesota, serving as a student ambassador, providing tours to prospective families, when Barrett was an active member of the board.
In early 2017, a lesbian parent asked him whether Trinity was open to gay people and expressed concern about how her child would be treated.
Henry, who is gay, said he didn’t know what to say. He had been instructed not to answer questions about People of Praise or Trinity’s “politics.”
The next day, Henry recalled, he asked the school’s then-headmaster, Jon Balsbaugh, how he should have answered. Henry said Balsbaugh pulled a document out of his desk drawer that condemned gay marriage, and explained it was a new policy from People of Praise that was going into the handbook.
“He looked me right in the eye and said, the next time that happens, you tell them they would not be welcome here,” Henry recounted. “And he said to me that trans families, gay families, gay students, trans students would not feel welcome at Trinity Schools. And then he said, ‘Do we understand each other?’ And I said, yes. And I left. And then I quit the student ambassadors that day.”
Balsbaugh, who has since been promoted to president of Trinity Schools Inc., says his recollection of the conversation “differs considerably,” but declined Read the rest of this entry »
Posted by Warm Southern Breeze on Thursday, October 15, 2020
Judge Amy Coney Barrett, the President’s nominee to be a Supreme Court Justice, has dodged the question of recusal on any potential case which might come before her which would be brought by the President on any matter pertaining to the 2020 General Election. She dodged because she replied that she would follow the law of recusal.
She said in part that, “I commit to you to fully and faithfully applying the law of recusal. … I will apply the factors that other justices have before me in determining whether the circumstances require my recusal or not. But I can’t offer a legal conclusion right now about the outcome of the decision I would reach.”
When asked about the law of recusal, she said in part that, “I can’t offer an opinion on recusal without short-circuiting the entire process.”
When specifically asked about election cases, she stated to the effect that it wasn’t a question she could answer “in the abstract.”
Obviously, she is aware of the law’s requirements, but what is concerning is if she will obey (follow) the law.
There could be an argument made that she has no interest in the case, per se, at least insofar as she was not a member of the President’s administration, nor had she done any work for him.
There are several disconcerting aspects of this matter, none of which concern her judicial temperament, nor her judicial philosophy, nor her rulings. First is that she has allowed herself to be used by the GOP and the President to force her, as their nominee, through the confirmation process in the midst of an ongoing election. Already, millions of people have voted.
Secondarily is Republican Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s actions, in conjunction with the President’s efforts, to rush the nominee through the process. Rushed things are rarely done with high quality, or long-term thoughtfulness. Further, that “Moscow” Mitch McConnell has deliberately stalled, or “killed” well over 400 bills from the House of Representatives is prima facie evidence of his contempt for the Constitution, and legislative process. And that he has similarly refused to act upon any bill which would first, and foremost, deal with the matter of the coronavirus, aka COVID-19, and the needs of the people for their health, their needs for economic sustenance, and more, is again, hard-core evidence not merely of a lack of caring, but is an abandonment of his responsibilities to the American people, not merely to the citizens of Kentucky whose interests he is supposed to represent.
To the extent that Amy Coney Barrett participates in that wretched process, she is complicit in it all. She has, in effect, become a political tool, and is doing so knowingly.
Were she to have requested a delay of her hearings until after the election – a delay of a few mere weeks – she would likely have not garnered such opposition. For she is, in my considered estimation, more than a well-qualified jurist, and would be a good addition to the United States Supreme Court. Even 88 University of Notre Dame faculty members wrote an open letter to her, stating that it was “vital” that she “issue a public statement calling for a halt to your nomination process until after the November presidential election.”
In the letter, those faculty members also wrote in part that, “The rushed nature of your nomination process, which you certainly recognize as an exercise in raw power politics, may effectively deprive the American people of a voice in selecting the next Supreme Court justice,” and stated that “you can refuse to be party to such maneuvers. We ask that you honor the democratic process and insist the hearings be put on hold until after the voters have made their choice.”
And goodness knows, we need more legal diversity on the nation’s highest court, and I don’t mean to refer to sex, ethnicity, or any physical factor – I mean to refer to the schools of law which the nominees have attended. And as she herself has noted,
“I would be the first mother of school-age children to serve on the Court. I would be the first Justice to join the Court from the Seventh Circuit in 45 years. And I would be the only sitting Justice who didn’t attend law school at Harvard or Yale. I am confident that Notre Dame will hold its own, and maybe I could even teach them a thing or two about football.”
Would she be my pick?
Perhaps not, but again, it is the rushed nature of this event which is most exceedingly distasteful. Hypocrisy has neither a pleasing aroma, nor taste.
Finally, there are other matters concerning the Supreme Court which desperately need to be addressed, which undoubtedly will not have an opportunity to be discussed simply because of the Senate Majority Leader’s deliberately destructive tactics to “kill” legislation.
Hearings to examine the nomination of Amy Coney Barrett, of Indiana, to be an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States. 116th Congress (2019-2020)
And so, for your benefit, here is the law of recusal to which she referred. You can, and should, read it for yourself. It’s not difficult to understand, and is straightforward, without mumbo jumbo jargon.
§455. Disqualification of justice, judge, or magistrate judge
(a) Any justice, judge, or magistrate judge of the United States shall disqualify himself in any proceeding in which his impartiality might reasonably be questioned.
(b) He shall also disqualify himself in the following circumstances:
(1) Where he has a personal bias or prejudice concerning a party, or personal knowledge of disputed evidentiary facts concerning the proceeding;
(2) Where in private practice he served as lawyer in the matter in controversy, or a lawyer with whom he previously practiced law served during such association as a lawyer concerning the matter, or the judge or such lawyer has been a material witness concerning it;
(3) Where he has served in governmental employment and in such capacity participated as Read the rest of this entry »
Posted by Warm Southern Breeze on Sunday, September 20, 2020
“I want you to use my words against me:
If there’s a Republican president in 2016,
and a vacancy occurs in the last year of the first term,
you can say ‘Lindsey Graham said,
‘Let’s let the next President,
whoever it might be,
make that nomination,”
and you could use my words against me,
and you’d be absolutely right.”
– South Carolina Republican Senator Lindsey Graham, to the Senate Judiciary Committee March, 10, 2016
BACKGROUND: Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia had earlier died unexpectedly during his sleep while on a hunting trip in Texas on February 3, 2016, thus creating an opening on the nation’s highest court. Within an hour of the national notice of Justice Scalia’s death, Senate Republican Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (KY) had issued a statement to the effect that he would not grant any consideration (floor vote) to any nominee from President Barack Obama.
In that speech, Biden argued that then-President George H.W. Bush should wait until after the November General Election to put forth any nominee to any potential Supreme Court vacancy which might arise during the summer, or if not, should establish a precedent, and nominate a moderate whom would be acceptable to the then-Democrat-controlled Senate.
Republicans later began to refer to that concept as the “Biden rule,” though Biden reiterated that he had always thought that the President and Congress should “work together to overcome partisan differences” when considering judicial nominees.
South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham, (R)
Linked above from C-SPAN are South Carolina Republican Senator Lindsey Graham’s full remarks (approximately 6 minutes) to the Senate Judiciary Committee on March 10, 2016 on the matter of consideration of SCOTUS nominees in an election year.
In his remarks, he noted that he had voted FOR Elena Kagan, and Sonia Sotomayor NOT because he agreed with them ideologically, but because he thought they were qualified.
In those same remarks, he also warned also of an increasing tendency of the Senate toward rancor, like in the House of Representatives, and of ideological partisanship accompanying judicial nominees, some of which COULD in the FUTURE be significantly detrimental to the nation because of a nominee’s unfitness for the bench, and an ideological unwillingness of the controlling party to compromise, or for an unwillingness of dissenting members in the controlling party to vote against an unqualified candidate put forth by the controlling party.
C-SPAN VIDEO DESCRIPTION: The Senate Judiciary Committee held a business meeting on whether to hold a hearing on a Supreme Court justice nomination to replace Justice Antonin Scalia. Committee Chair Chuck Grassley (R-IA) said Read the rest of this entry »
SIOUX FALLS, SD – The U.S. Department of Labor’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) has cited Smithfield Packaged Meats Corp. in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, for failing to protect employees from exposure to the coronavirus. OSHA proposed a penalty of $13,494, the maximum allowed by law.
Agency: Occupational Safety & Health Administration Date: September 10, 2020 Release Number: 20-1684-NAT
With a paltry, even laughable, mere $13,494 on the line, it’s not even a good slap on the wrist. They make that in a fraction of a second of business operations.
Remember: Smithfield Foods has NOT BEEN an American company since selling out to the Chinese in 2013. Good old fashioned Corporate American Wall $treet greed sold out America and Smithfield to China.
Wan Long, RIGHT, Chairman and CEO of WH Group, formerly called Shuanghui International, shakes hands with Charles Larry Pope, President and CEO of Smithfield Foods, at a press conference of WH Group in Hong Kong, China, 14 April 2014. Two subsidiaries of Henan Shuanghui Investment and Development Co have gained access to the Russian market, after its parent company — WH Group Ltd, the world’s largest pork producer— acquired US pork producer Smithfield Foods Inc and bought a stake in Campofrio Food Group SA of Spain, the largest pan-European packaged meat products company, last year. The two Heilongjiang-based companies — Wangkui Shuanghui Beidahuang Food Co and Heilongjiang Baoquanling Shuanghui Food Industry Co — got the official nod after their production facilities and products were examined and assessed by officials from Russia’s meat products watchdog, the Federal Service for Veterinary and Phytosanitary Surveillance, in August, Shuanghui Development said on its website. To widen its import market for meat, the Russian government agreed to import meat products from five Chinese suppliers by the end of August, indicating the nation has taken a flexible strategy to balance the supply and demand relationship, while the US and its European allies are trying to squeeze the country’s trade space in the world market.
And the corporate masters are STILL selling out the people. Just read their laughable response later down. They’re actually protesting the poor token of a penalty.
Seriously. They are!
Even the right-tilting tabloid New York Daily News owned by Rupert Murdoch, has written about the fractional pittance which has been assessed upon the corporation by the OSHA.
By Joseph Wilkinson, New York Daily News, September 12, 2020 at 10:12 PM
And Congress has the power to act. However, with Moscow Mitch misleading the Senate, there’ll nothing be done about anything the House sends to that traitorous rich bastard.
WH Group, formerly known as Shuanghui International, bought the venerable American company known for their hams since its 1936 inception in Smithfield, Virginia, for $4.7 billion in 2013. In fact, it was the region’s Native Americans who taught the Paleface settlers to the area the unique curing process they’d created well over 500 years ago, and which increased in popularity as time went on.
More than anything, it looks like the Loser in Chief is in cahoots with the Chinese.
I mean, after all, if he’s as big and bad on them as he claims to be, this fine would be 100x time amount to start with.
Yes, that’d be USD$1,349,400.
It’s HIGH TIME for a 75/25 rule of law!
Simply put, it goes like this:
75% of any businesses’ ownership MUST be American to enjoy a 25% corporate tax rate.
Presently, the Federal Corporate Tax Tate is set at 21%. Before the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017 (the so-called “Trump tax cuts” which, true to course, benefited only the wealthy), the tax rate was 35%. I have little doubt that the law will be repealed, thus increasing the corporate tax rate.
There MUST be a punishment exacted, and penalty paid for corporations which despitefully exploit their domestic American existence!
What’s more, Congress could, and should, also enact a 60/40 rule of law, which, again, simply stated, is that for companies which are employee-owned, they must be at least 60% owned by employees – either direct, indirect (trust), or hybrid – in order to enjoy certain additional tax benefits not available to other corporate-owned businesses. By so doing, it would encourage employee ownership of businesses.
Corporate alienation and isolation from the day-to-day lives of their employees and the Average American is highly problematic, and such a rule would go a long way toward readjusting in a positive manner the lopsided and skewed income and wealth gap in the United States.
“Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.), one of the most conservative members of Congress, and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), one of the most liberal, have both introduced sweeping proposals to broaden employee ownership in the U.S. That surprising fact testifies to just how practical—and urgent—this idea is.”
Mr. Rosen also pointed to 2019 research by Rutgers University which found in part, that “employee stock ownership plans (ESOPs) enable families to significantly increase their assets, shrinking—though not eliminating—gender and racial wealth gaps,” and wrote that “ESOP companies helped employees gain a better understanding not just of corporate financial issues—most ESOPs have some form of open book management—but also personal financial planning. Many companies offered employees an increased voice in how their work was organized, providing a level of personal agency lacking in most jobs.”
OSHA fines Smithfield Foods $13,494 for not protecting South Dakota workers from COVID-19, faces backlash from company and workers – Agweek
Written By: Jeremy Fugleberg
Sep 10th 2020 – 1pm.
SIOUX FALLS, S.D. — The U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration has fined Smithfield Foods $13,494 for failing to protect employees at its Sioux Falls meatpacking plant from exposure to COVID-19, OSHA announced Thursday, Sept. 10, and both the company and the union that represents plant works are objecting to the decision.
The workplace safety agency said the Smithfield fine was the maximum allowed by law for the single violation it found at the plant, which for a time was one of the largest COVID-19 hotspots in the nation. OSHA cited the company for one violation of failing to provide a workplace free from recognized hazards that can cause death or serious harm.
A COVID-19 outbreak at the plant in March and April sickened 1,294 employees and killed four, OSHA said. It also sickened hundreds of family members and other close contacts to workers.
“Employers must quickly implement appropriate measures to protect their workers’ safety and health,” OSHA Sioux Falls Area Director Sheila Stanley said in a news release. “Employers must meet their obligations and take the necessary actions to prevent the spread of coronavirus at their worksite.”
The OSHA fine is “wholly without merit” and Smithfield Foods will contest it, said Keira Lombardo, the Virginia-based company’s executive vice president of corporate affairs and compliance. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted by Warm Southern Breeze on Thursday, July 2, 2020
John C. Calhoun…
The very name brings chills to those who hear it mentioned.
And it should.
Calhoun was not merely a segregationist, but an open and unashamed advocate of slavery.
On Monday, February 6, 1837, on the floor of the United States Senate, John C. Calhoun of South Carolina delivered a speech in which he characterized slavery as “a positive good.”
However, Senator Calhoun’s speech before the Senate is largely absent from the official record, even though there are some extant authenticating sources.
That is, the official record of the proceedings in that era was called “Congressional Globe” and as the predecessor to the modern “Congressional Record” (a verbatim document which succeeded the Globe) it is substantially different, insofar as the Globe’s contents are NOT a verbatim source (like the Record is today), and instead, are the characterizations of a recorder(s), and read much like the minutes of a meeting.
Today, in the Congressional Record, one can read the exact words spoken by any person from the floor of either chamber – House, or Senate.
Though she mentioned a couple of her senatorial colleagues by name, she didn’t mention if the idea was exclusive or joint to the Senate, and/or the House.
Kelly Loeffler was appointed by narrow-margin-of-victory Georgia Republican Governor Brian Kemp to fill the unexpired term of three-term Georgia Republican US Senator Johnny Isakson who resigned from office at the end of 2019 due to Parkinson’s disease.
The gubernatorially-appointed temporary fill-in “Republican Sen. Kelly Loeffler told Politico she is not dropping out of the Georgia Senate special election despite facing scrutiny over $20 million in stock sales she made following a closed-door Senate briefing in January about the coronavirus.
““Not only am I not dropping out, but I’m gonna win,” Loeffler told the news outlet Thursday.
“Loeffler, who is married to New York Stock Exchange CEO Jeff Sprecher, has said she does not control her own stock portfolio and that she was unaware of the exchanges. She has submitted documents to the Justice Department and the Securities and Exchange Commission, both of which are investigating trading action among senators around the coronavirus pandemic.”
Loeffloer’s net worth is reportedly well over $500,000,000, and is being investigted by the FBI and the Senate for suspicious stock sales timing in response to insider knowledge of the coronavirus obtained in the Senate.
Posted by Warm Southern Breeze on Monday, April 20, 2020
Appointed Georgia Senator Kelly Loeffler, R
The United States Senate is controlled by a corrupt cabal of Republicans, none of whom are racial/ethnic minority. It’s LITERALLY (at least on the GOP side) an all-White enclave – with one extraordinary exception: Tim Scott of South Carolina – the Senate’s only Black Republican.
Yesterday at his incessant bully pulpit coronavirus harping press conference, the Liar in Chief claimed to not have known about her insider trades. That, strangely coming from a man who prides himself in, and publicly boasts about having all sorts of knowledge, and whom is known to be well-attuned to media (especially television, and Twitter) of all kinds.
Here’s the pertinent excerpt from the “Remarks by President Trump, Vice President Pence, and Members of the Coronavirus Task Force in Press Briefing” (linked above) held in the James S. Brady Press Briefing Room, April 19, 2020, 6:28 P.M. EDT:
Q: Mr. President, why on that task force did you include Senator Kelly Loeffler? There’s some questions about whether she may have —
THE PRESIDENT: Well, because she’s the senator from a great state, a state that I love: Georgia.
Q: But there’s some insider trading issues with her.
THE PRESIDENT: Well, I — that, I don’t know. I really don’t know about that. But she’s a senator from Georgia, and she was included in the list, absolutely.
Go ahead. A couple of more. Go ahead, please. Yeah.
Most folks want to talk about Richard Burr, the first known case of Insider Trading on coronavirus information in the Senate..
But, let’s take a look at who’s shafting the American public by NOT playing fair and square and abusing their insider knowledge:
• Richard Burr, Republican North Carolina Senator – Net Worth $3M+
• Kelly Loeffler, Republican Georgia Senator – Net Worth $500M+
• James M. Inhofe, Republican Oklahoma Senator – Net Worth $9M+
• Ron Johnson, Republican Wisconsin Senator – Net Worth $30M+
Senator Richard Burr, R-NC
• Diane Feinstein, Democrat, California Senator – Net Worth $90M+
Nope, no trend or common denominators at all. Totally random. /sarcasm
All Senators,
80% Republican,
60% Male,
97% White,
100% Multi-Millionaires
• When he retires from the Senate in 2022, Burr will have been in Congress (House & Senate) a TOTAL of 27 years
• Loeffler is married to the CEO of the company that owns the New York Stock Exchange, and numerous other fims, is a political “newbie” appointed by Georgia Republican Governor Brian Kemp to temporarily fill the unexpired 2016 term of Johnny Isakson who resigned 31 December 2019 to care for his Parkinson’s disease. Loeffler intends to campaign for the office during a Special Election.
• Inhofe has been in Congress 33 years, and 17 years in Oklahoma State & Local politics TOTAL POLITICAL TIME=50 years
• Johnson is a political newcomer, and was first elected in 2010 to the US Senate
TOTAL POLITICAL TIME=10 years
• Feinstein was first elected to the Senate in 1992, before that she was 18 years in California Local politics
TOTAL POLITICAL TIME=46 years
Here’s a very simple solution:
Require all such financial assets (stocks, bonds, securities, including real estate, etc.) to be placed into a Blind Trust for the duration of their term of office.
Insider trading by Congress? It’s time to fix the law
By Patrick Augustin, Francis Cong and Marti G. Subrahmanyam, Opinion Contributors — 04/19/20 01:30 PM EDT
Is trading by Congress illegal? Should members of Congress be allowed to trade financial securities that are sensitive to private information? The “coronavirus trades” made by Sen.Richard Burr(R-N.C.) and his wife just prior to the March ’20 market crash raise these questions and signal the need for changes to the law. Some proposals go as far as banning stocktrading by members of congressoutright. The other extreme is to allow full discretion. The right solution is in between: Only allowing public officials to trade securities based on broad market indices.
Posted by Warm Southern Breeze on Saturday, March 21, 2020
Lawmakers’ Stock Trades and Other Virus Outrages
Some lawmakers have a lot of explaining to do. Plus, punishing poor people and shaping up the cruise-ship industry.
By Joe Nocera 3/20/2020, 10:47:09 AM
Joe Nocera is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering business. He has written business columns for Esquire, GQ and the New York Times, and is the former editorial director of Fortune. His latest project is the Bloomberg-Wondery podcast “The Shrink Next Door.”
————
Of the many things taking place in Washington that make your blood boil, the — how should I put this? — timely stock trades by senators during the coronavirus outbreak has to go right to the top of the list. Two of them have tried to explain them away, but the details are just so… suspicious.
At least three Republicans and one Democrat 1 sold stock before the country got serious about Covid-19, but let’s focus on one: Kelly Loeffler.
A Republican from Georgia, Loeffler has been in the Senate for less than three months; she was appointed to fill the seat of Senator Johnny Isakson, who retired early for health reasons. She has a Wall Street background — she was in investor relations at the New York Stock Exchange, where she married the boss, Jeffrey Sprecher, the Chief Executive Cfficer of Intercontinental Exchange Inc., which owns NYSE
On Jan. 24, Loeffler attended a Senate briefing on the coronavirus, which she tweeted about. That same day, she and her husband began selling stock. By the time they were finished, they had dumped 27 companies, including Exxon Mobil and AutoZone, saving millions of dollars when the market later tanked. (Senate financial disclosure forms don’t give exact numbers.)
But Collins has publicly rejected that idea, and said to Maria Bartiromo on Fox Business Network on Friday, 21 February 2020 that, “this is not a job that interests me; at this time it’s not one that I would accept because Read the rest of this entry »
Posted by Warm Southern Breeze on Saturday, February 8, 2020
1872 Currier & Ives print, First Colored Senator & Representatives
Here is an 1872 Currier and Ives print depiction of the first African American GOP U.S. Senator and Representatives:
[LEFT to RIGHT] Sen. Hiram Revels (R-MS), Rep. Benjamin S. Turner (R-AL, 1), Robert DeLarge (R-SC, 2), Josiah Walls (R-FL, at large & 2), Jefferson Long (R-GA, 4), Joseph Rainey (R-SC, 1) and Robert B. Elliott (R-SC, 3).
Note that they’re ALL from the Deep South (MS, AL, FL, GA, SC).
Today, Blacks in the GOP are as scarce as hen’s teeth – particularly, and especially in the South.
It begs the question:
What happened politically since that time so that there were essentially NO Blacks after them in the U.S. House, or Senate (Congress), and today are especially absent from the GOP?
At the GOP’s 2000 Philadelphia convention, only 4.1% of the 2,066 delegates gathered in the City of Brotherly Love – 85 conventioneers – were African American.
And, according to a June 1 email from Telly Lovelace addressed to undisclosed recipients, the National Director for African American Initiatives and Urban Media for the Republican National Committee wrote that only 18 of the 2,472 delegates at the GOP’s 2016 Cleveland convention would be Black – 0.7281553398058253%.
Not even 1%.
And, in our nation’s 244-year history – since its 1776 founding to 2020 – there have ONLY been 10 African American Senators – 10.
Just ten.
The United States Senate website states this about African American Senators:
“To date, 10 African Americans have served in the United States Senate. In 1870 Hiram Revels of Mississippi became the first African American senator. Five years later, Blanche K. Bruce of Mississippi took the oath of office. It would be nearly another century, 1967, before Edward Brooke of Massachusetts followed in their historic footsteps. Carol Moseley Braun broke new ground in 1993, becoming the first African American woman to serve as U.S. senator. In 2005 Barack Obama of Illinois became the fifth African American to serve and third to be popularly elected. Upon Obama’s resignation to become the nation’s first African American president, Roland Burris was appointed to fill the vacancy, becoming the sixth African American senator and the third to occupy the same Illinois Senate seat. Tim Scott of South Carolina was appointed to fill a vacancy in 2013, becoming the first African American since Reconstruction to represent a southern state in the Senate. He won a special election in 2014 to complete the term and was elected to a full term in 2016. The appointment of Massachusetts senator William “Mo” Cowan on February 1, 2013, marked the first time that two African Americans have served simultaneously in the United States Senate. Cory Booker of New Jersey became the ninth African American senator when he won a special election to replace Senator Frank Lautenberg on October 31, 2013. Booker won election to a full term in 2014. Kamala Harris became California’s first African American senator on January 3, 2017, bringing the number of African Americans serving simultaneously to three and the total number of African American senators to 10.”
Hiram Revels was a Republican.
Mr. Blanche K. Bruce was a Republican.
Edward Brooke was a Republican.
Carol Moseley Braun is a Democrat.
Brack Obama is a Democrat.
Roland Burris is a Democrat.
Tim Scott is a Republican.
William “Mo” Cowan is a Democrat.
Cory Booker is a Democrat.
Kamala Harris is a Democrat.
What has happened to cause the GOP to become the party of xenophobia, racists, and bigots?
It didn’t help things that the now-infamous Three-Fifths Compromise in the 1787 Constitutional Convention – Article 1, Section 2, Clause 3 – ensconced into law that all non-White people were legally sub-human.
“Representatives and direct Taxes shall be apportioned among the several States which may be included within this Union, according to their respective Numbers, which shall be determined by adding to the whole Number of free Persons, including those bound to Service for a Term of Years, and excluding Indians not taxed, three fifths of all other Persons.”
Posted by Warm Southern Breeze on Monday, February 3, 2020
United States Senator from Tennessee, Lamar Alexander
Tennessee’s United States Senator, Lamar Alexander (b.1940), a 3-term Republican who is retiring this year, recently said of his decision to vote to acquit the President in the Impeachment Trial of Donald J. Trump, that, “I’m going to vote to acquit. I’m very concerned about any action that we could take that would establish a perpetual impeachment in the House of Representatives whenever the House was a different party than the president. That would immobilize the Senate.”
“It was inappropriate for the president to ask a foreign leader to investigate his political opponent and to withhold United States aid to encourage that investigation. When elected officials inappropriately interfere with such investigations, it undermines the principle of equal justice under the law. But Read the rest of this entry »
Posted by Warm Southern Breeze on Thursday, January 30, 2020
While the news reporting outlets (aka “media”) do their best to report on the goings-on of the Senate Trial of the Impeachment of Donald John Trump, President of the United States, they are hampered significantly because Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) has disallowed electronic devices in the chambers – even for Senators – and the press is squirreled away in a little cubby corner of the viewing gallery on the 2nd floor.
The only cameras are 2 television cameras owned/operated by the Senate. Even C-SPAN (the Cable-Satellite Public Affairs Network) must carry the Senate’s broadcast version of the public proceedings.
Majority Leader McConnell did that specifically to limit exposure of the event to the press, which in turn reports to the public. He claimed that it would prevent “grandstanding” and “preening” by the Senators to the press, some of whom have a well-known-and-deserved reputation for being attention hogs.
West Virginia Senator Robert C. Byrd’s body lies in repose in the United States Senate Chamber. Pool photograph by Stephen Crowley/The New York Times
As an aside, the Senate is, as groups go, a very stodgy group of curmudgeonly old White men (primarily). Unlike the more vigorous (some say rancorous) House of Representatives, they are very “straight-laced,” and sticklers for the rules – which Majority Leader McConnell enforces with an iron fist. Aside from the C-SPAN cameras during Senate proceedings, they do not allow (and have not allowed) photography. During the funeral for Senator Robert C. Bryd (D-WV), the longest-serving Senator, a rarity of a still camera was allowed to make a few limited photographs of the event.
Read the related story here: https://lens.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/07/01/behind-46/
“The very Senate that has defied still photographers and an independent television camera asked both Sotomayor and Kagan in their confirmation hearings if they would support camera coverage of Supreme Court proceedings,” Mr. Crowley said.
As it is now, he said, “every image you see out of the House and Senate, except the State of the Union, is controlled by the government.”
“They would say, ‘Senator Byrd doesn’t want any technology in there.’ They used him as an excuse.”
“With respect to Senator Byrd,” Mr. Crowley said, “I hope the leadership of both chambers will revisit the issue.”
Often, try as they might, the media doesn’t get it 100% error-free, though to their credit, they often acknowledge that their transcriptions are rushed, and for that reason, may contain errors. Thus, the only spot-on word-for-word transcript of the days proceedings are to be found in the Congressional Record of the Senate, which is published daily.
The following is excerpted from the CRS. The “S663” refers to the page number in the journal from which it is taken, and refers specifically to the Senate’s proceedings. The “116” in the url refers to the 116th Congress, while “CREC” in the url refers to “Congressional RECord.”
Congressional Record – Senate S663 January 29, 2020
Ms. COLLINS. I send a question to the desk on behalf of myself and Senator MURKOWSKI.
The CHIEF JUSTICE. Thank you. The question is to counsel for the President: Witnesses testified before the House that President Trump consistently expressed the view that Ukraine was a corrupt country. Before Vice President Biden formally entered the 2020 presidential race in April 2019, did President Trump ever mention Joe or Hunter Biden in connection with corruption in Ukraine to former Ukrainian President Poroshenko or other Ukrainian officials, President Trump’s cabinet members or top aides, or others? If so, what did the President say to whom and when?
Mr. Counsel PHILBIN. Mr. Chief Justice, Senators, thank you for that question. Of course, I think it is important at the outset to frame the answer by bearing in mind I am limited to what is in the record, and Read the rest of this entry »
Article 1 – Abuse of Power: 23 Ayes, 17 Noes
Article 2 – Obstruction of Congress: 23 Ayes, 17 Noes
As expected, based upon the evidence, the Democrats have voted to impeach POS45, and the GOP denies anything ever happened.
To be reported to the House.
Committee is adjourned.
The House, with 235 Democratic members, has the majority over Republicans’ 199. Presumably, all Democrats will vote to approve the Articles of Impeachment.
From there (the House), if approved by the House, the Articles of Impeachment would go to the Senate for a Trial, which would be presided over by SCOTUS Chief Justice John Roberts.
Senate votes to watch:
1.) Mitt Romney-UT, R
2.) Cory Gardner-CO, R, Class 2, up for re-election
3.) Tim Scott-SC, R,
4.) Susan Collins-ME, R, Class 2, up for re-election
5.) Angus King-ME, I
6.) Rand Paul-KY, R
7.) John Kennedy-LA, R
8.) Lisa Murkowski-AK, R, Class 2, up for re-election
9.) Martha McSally-AZ, R, up for Special Election in 2020, appointed to fulfill John McCain’s (Class 3) term, following John Kyl’s resignation. General Election will be in 2022.
10.) Lamar Alexander-TN, R, Class 2, retiring
Senator Alexander issued a written statement about impeachment October 8, 2019 as follows:
“It’s inappropriate for the president to be talking with foreign governments about investigating his political opponents, but impeachment would be a mistake. An election, which is just around the corner, is the right way to decide who should be president. Impeachment has never removed a president. It will only divide the country further.
“If the House impeaches the president, the Senate would be the jury. There would be many twists and turns between now and a Senate trial. Therefore, as a potential juror, I will have nothing more to say about impeachment until all the evidence is presented and all the arguments are made.”
All are GOPers, save Angus King, who defected from the Democrats to become independent in 1993, though like Bernie Sanders, he caucuses with them.
There are 53 GOP Senators, and to convict, and thereby remove from office, requires a Constitutionally-mandated ⅔ vote of members present (Article I, section 3). The VP CANNOT participate.
I sincerely doubt the Senate will vote to convict
– even on Obstruction of Congress charges –
despite overwhelming open evidence that he did,
and his own public admissions that he did.
The Constitution requires a 2/3 vote of all Senators present to convict. If all 100 are present, that’s 67 votes.
There are 53 GOPers in the Senate (and 2 Independents, who caucus with the 45 Democrats), which would mean that, in order to obtain the 67 necessary votes, 20 GOPers would have to vote with the Democrats and Independents (who presumably will vote to convict). And, there are 4 GOP Senators retiring in 2020 – which is important, because they could vote their conscience to convict, and not be concerned about re-election.
Even if all 10 votes to watch (as mentioned above) voted with the Democrats, there’d still be 10 more GOP votes needed to convict, and that most likely ain’t gonna’ happen.
This is STRICTLY a power play, and the ONLY reason the GOP tolerates Trump is because of a line in the Bob Seger song “Night Moves”:
“I used her, she used me; neither one cared.”
However, come November, there’ll be several Senators up for re-election, and five announced retirements, and in at least one Read the rest of this entry »
Posted by Warm Southern Breeze on Wednesday, September 11, 2019
Despite his increasingly bizarre and contemptuous behavior, and bull-in-the-china-shop approach to almost everything, I could support perhaps a few of the President’s efforts and positions, and, I could even overlook some of his behaviors as merely eccentric, quirky, or even slightly off-kilter –– much like his well-known penchant for ketchup on steak.
That’s beside his unilaterally-imposed Trade War with China, Mexico, and Canada which continues damaging American families, farmers and industry, and diversion of monies meant for the Military, Coast Guard, TSA, and FEMA to Read the rest of this entry »
Posted by Warm Southern Breeze on Wednesday, August 7, 2019
Within a period of 7 days, 35 people were killed, and 64 were injured in 3 mass shootings in our nation.
July 28, 2019 – 5:48 PM PDT Garlic Festival – Gilroy, CA – 3 Killed, 13 Injured
August 3, 2019 – 10:39 AM CDT Wal-Mart – El Paso, TX – 22 Killed, 24 Injured
August 4, 2019 – 1:05 AM EDT – Historic Oregon District, Downtown Dayton, OH – 10 Killed, 27 Injured
Authorities have identified the assailants and weapons used. In each case, the weapons used were military-grade assault style rifles designed for military use, modeled after the Russian AK-47, and the American AR-15. The exclusive purpose of such firearms as weapons of mass destruction is to kill human beings with great ease, and efficiency – to inflict as much carnage and damage upon as many people as possible, in a short period of time. They are ONLY weapons of war, and nothing else. They were NOT designed for any other purpose than to kill human beings with great ease, and efficiency.
The assailants were:
• Connor Stephen Betts, 24, of Bellbrook, OH (Dayton) – deceased;
• Santino William Legan, 19, of Gilroy, CA and Walker Lake, NV (Gilroy) – deceased, and;
• Patrick Wood Crusius, 21, of Allen, TX (El Paso) – captured.
In none of those cases neither “a good guy with a gun,” nor a border wall was effective to either deter, prevent, or stop the deaths and injuries of 127 people.
But those three tragedies were not the only ones.
Ohio’s Republican Governor Mike Dewine addresses Ohioans about the Dayton mass shooting.
Just today – August 5, 2019 – in Brooklyn, the most populous borough in NYC, there was a mass shooting at 216 Buffalo Avenue where 4 people were injured, with no deaths in which “Police confirm a man was shot in the chest, and two women have also been found with gunshots wounds.”
-and-
A shooting with 4 injuries occurred at 5691 Suitland Road, in Suitland, MD.
Yesterday, there were FOUR mass shootings at:
1800 S Kildare Ave in Chicago, one killed, and 7 wounded;
443 E Shelby Dr in Memphis, one killed, 3 wounded;
2900 block of W Roosevelt Rd in Chicago, 7 wounded;
419 E 5th St in Dayton, OH, 10 killed, 26 wounded.
On July 28, the date of the Gilroy, CA Garlic Festival shooting, there were a total of SIX mass shootings throughout the nation.
According to data from the Gun Violence Archive website, this year to date, there have been 255 mass shootings, resulting in 275 deaths, and 1069 injuries.
No one is happy about this.
No one.
Kentucky Republican Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell proudly displaying the Made-in-China Nike brand athletic shoes which he blames for his fall which ironically, injured his LEFT shoulder. As a child born in Alabama, McConnell also had polio.
The paralytic gridlocked Congress is in summer recess, as GOP Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R) is Read the rest of this entry »
Posted by Warm Southern Breeze on Thursday, May 2, 2019
Editor’s Note: This article was originally written 11 May 2015, though unpublished. The TPP (Trans-Pacific Partnership), is/was a “free-trade” pact among the nations of Australia, Brunei, Canada, Chile, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore, Vietnam, and United States signed on 4 February 2016, though it was NOT ratified, and thus, did NOT take effect. All 12 members nations signed the TPP 4 February 2016.
However, because it was NOT ratified by all signatories before 4 February 2018, it will become effective ONLY after ratification when at least 6 nations with a combined GDP of more than 85% of the GDP of all signatories have signed.
Further, because the United States withdrew from the TPP, it also significantly and adversely affected it. The TPP agreement will become active only after all signatories have ratified it within two years of signing.
—//—
President Obama recently criticized Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren (D) for her clarion call warning of the potential damage the Trans-Pacific Partnership could do to United States’ economy.
Sen. Warren has said that “This is hardly a hypothetical possibility: We are already deep into negotiations with the European Union on a trade agreement and big banks on both sides of the Atlantic are gearing up to use that agreement to water down financial regulations.”
The President countered saying, “This is pure speculation. She and I both taught law school, and you know, one of the things you do as a law professor is you spin out hypotheticals. And this is all hypothetical, speculative.”
President Obama further dismissed her criticisms out of hand saying, “she’s absolutely wrong,” about the concerns she and others have raised, and appeared to throw down the gauntlet for open, frank discussion of the still-secret trade pact which would include Australia, Brunei, Canada, Chile, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore, the United States, and Vietnam.
The President gives the USTR broad power to keep secret information about the trade policies it advances and negotiates.
United States Senator Ron Wyden (D-OR) said, “More than two months after receiving the proper security credentials, my staff is still barred from viewing the details of the proposals that USTR is advancing.”
A Senate bill – S. 3225 – which would require the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative (USTR) to disclose all its TPP (Trans-Pacific Partnership) documents to every member of Congress was introduced May 23, 2012 by Sen. Wyden, who is Chairman of the Senate Finance Committee’s Subcommittee on International Trade, Customs, and Global Competitiveness. In that capacity, his office is responsible for conducting oversight over the USTR and trade negotiations.
Speaking from the Senate floor, Sen. Wyden said the purpose of the bill was “to ensure that the laws and policies that govern the American people take into account the interests of all the American people, not just a privileged few. Congress passed legislation in 2002 to form the Congressional Oversight Group, or COG, to foster more USTR consultation with Congress. I was a senator in 2002. I voted for that law and I can tell you the intention of that law was to ensure that USTR consulted with more Members of Congress, not less.”Read the rest of this entry »
Posted by Warm Southern Breeze on Sunday, December 30, 2018
… and other lies.
Just like it’s the Democrats’ fault that Trump screwed around on his wives.
Wednesday, October 17, 2018, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said in part that, “Shutting down the government is something that’s widely disliked by virtually every American and I don’t think we’re going to do it.”
But on Saturday, November 17, 2018 Trump said in part that, “If I was ever going to do a shutdown over border security — when you look at the caravan, when you look at the mess, when you look at the people coming in. This would be a very good time to do a shutdown.”
Then, on December 11, 2018 in the White House Oval Office, in front of teevee cameras, and worldwide press, speaking to Democratic leaders Rep. Nancy Pelosi (CA-12) and Sen. Chuck Schumer (NY) in the Oval Office, Trump said: Read the rest of this entry »
Posted by Warm Southern Breeze on Tuesday, November 13, 2018
Arizona Representative Kyrsten Sinema D-CD9, has won the Senate race against opponent AZ Representative Martha McSally, R-CD2.
Arizona Representative Kyrsten Sinema, a Democrat who represented Congressional District 9, has won election over Representative Martha McSally, a Republican who represented the state’s Congressional District 2.
Her election is historical for at least two different reasons, the first being that she is the state’s first female US Senator, and second, she will be the first openly bisexual Member of Congress. She is also the first Democrat Arizonans have sent to the Senate since 1995 after Democrat Dennis DeConcini’s loss to Republican John Kyl.
Following the death of Republican Senator John McCain, who since 1987 was the state’s longest-serving senator, Republican Arizona Governor Doug Ducey temporarily appointed Kyl in September 2018 to fill the remainder of the term of that vacated seat. In a press conference following Governor Ducey’s announcement, Mr. Kyl said he would not seek re-election for the remainder of the term in the 2020 Special Election to fill the seat.
Posted by Warm Southern Breeze on Friday, October 5, 2018
“In the 12 years you’ve been on the D.C. Circuit, of all the matters that you, and Chief Judge Garland have voted on together,
that you voted together 93% of the time.
Not only that, of the 28 published opinions that you’ve authored
– where Chief Judge Garland was on the panel –
Chief Judge Garland joined 27 out of the 28 opinions you issued when you were on the panel together.
In other words,
he joined 96% of the panel opinions that you’ve written,
when he was on the panel with you.
And the same’s true in the reverse.
Of the 30 published opinions that Chief Judge Garland has written on a panel,
you’ve joined 28 out of 30 of them
– over 93% of those opinions.“
– TX US Senator Ted Cruz (R), as Senate Judiciary Committee member to Supreme Court Nominee Brett Kavanaugh, a Judge on the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, where Merrick Garland is Chief Judge
U.S. Senator Ted Cruz (b.1970), Official portrait
Like many, it disgusts me to see the shenanigans that is now passing as a nomination process for Justice to the United States Supreme Court. And just to be clear, I am not now, nor have I ever been a member of any political party.
So, how did we get into this disgusting fray in which a Supreme Court nominee is alleged to have committed felony acts as an older teen?
How did a Constitutionally Mandated process, such as a Supreme Court nomination, become a national disgrace, a veritable circus of hyperbole, scandal, disgrace, outpouring of debauchery, immorality, and even international embarrassment?
In order to answer those questions and more, we must first examine the irony of hypocrisy in an historical context.
• On February 13, 2016, Supreme Court Associate Justice Antonin Scalia, aged 79, was found dead, apparently having died in his sleep while on a quail hunting trip at Cibolo Creek Ranch near Shafter, one of many Texas ghost towns. Of note, he was unanimously confirmed by the Senate in 1986 after nomination by then-POTUS Ronald Reagan.
President Barack Obama (b.1961), Official portrait, Oval Office, Dec. 6, 2012. (Official White House Photo by Pete Souza)
Posted by Warm Southern Breeze on Saturday, September 22, 2018
Should we, as reasonable people, expect the size of our Congress – specifically, the House of Representatives – to be permanently fixed at 435 members, and never increase representation according to an increase in population? And with regard to the the Supreme Court, should only 5 people decide the fate of a nation, why not a few more, like 13 or 17?
What if I told you Congress needed about 1000 MORE Members of the House of Representatives? And, what if I told you the United States Supreme Court needs to have AT LEAST 13 Justices, and that THEY should choose from AMONG THEMSELVES the Chief Justice?
You don’t wear the same size clothing you did when you were aged 10, 15, or even 25. The People’s representation in our nation’s governance needs also needs to be properly fitted.
Having MORE Representatives would NOT cause “more logjam politics,” nor would it cause corruption, but instead, would significantly increase efficiency -and- the ease with which laws would get passed, and bad or old laws get eliminated or changed. Criminality is most often done in secret by a few. Rarely is criminal activity, even in organized crime, ever on a large scale like an army invasion. It’s always a little thing, like guerilla warfare. There were only 7 co-conspirators with President Richard M. Nixon in the criminal Watergate break-in, burglary, wiretapping, attempted cover-up, and resulting scandal. The pace at which our government moves is not merely unresponsively sluggish, it is deliberately and negligently slothful. It is being reasonably asked to do things we tell it to do, and in the process, being denied the resources – money, personnel, and time – necessary to perform those tasks. Government can, and should move much more quickly. And historically, it has.
Think of it this way:
You have three dogs, and one chicken bone. Throw it down and watch them fight.
You get two more chicken bones, and each dog has one. Problem solved.
Some would raise the matter of Constitutional interpretation in opposition to the idea, and think we should hold to a strict Constitutional interpretation – whatever “strict” is, or means – and it typically means that the modern thinkers imagine they can, and therefore attempt to conjure up a mind-reading session to interpret what the framers of the Constitution intended or hoped… even though they’ve been long dead. Sure, they gave us the Constitution, along with a means and method of updating it, which itself means that it’s not static, and can be changed. And it has been changed many times since its inception. It is a living document, not a dead one into which we attempt to blow the breath of life. It lives still.
Some think we can interpret the Constitution according to our unique needs, which the original framers could not have begun to fathom. And the fact is, that’s what we’ve always done. At least until the last 50 years, or so, until the time which gradually, the specious notion that smaller is better crept in under cover of negligence, and “downsizing” became part of the popular corporate and political vernacular. In effect, such talk is discussion is only about inefficiency, and how they have not effectively used the resources they have, nor planned appropriately.
There is no doubt that the framers of our Constitution could never have imagined that man would walk on the moon, that geosynchronous orbiting and interplanetary traveling satellites would tell us about our precise location on Earth, and our solar system, and that more than twice the computing power of history’s largest space rocket (Apollo V) could fit in your shirt pocket, or that our union would have well over 330,000,000 residents.
Button Gwinnett (1735–1777 was the first signer of the Constitution, and was later, briefly the Governor of Georgia.
And it goes without saying that Button Gwinnett, Samuel Adams, John Hancock, James Madison, George Washington, and others in their era, had no idea about antibiotics; they had no inkling that magnetic fields could peer deeply inside the human body to detect disorder; that dental implants and multi-organ transplants would exist; or that we would send a telescope to orbit our planet and peer deeply into the cosmos to see star systems hundreds of billions of light-years away -and- then replace it with an even better, significantly improved, more perfect one to see into the edges of the time -and- send a satellite hurtling toward the sun to learn more about the blazing fiery hydrogen fusion orb which is the center of our universe.
Artist’s 2009 rendering of the James Webb Space Telescope, which will replace the Hubble Space Telescope.
None of those things and more which we daily take for granted – such as GPS on smartphones – could have ever been imagined by our Founding Fathers… or their mothers, or children, and never were.
We are as different, and our needs are as immensely diverse from our nation’s founders as night is from day, and there is no reason why we should not “update” our government according to the manner for which it is prescribed.
In 2019, we have more patents, more copyrights, more inventions, more discoveries, more science, more creative works of myriad kind, and – of course – many, many, many, more people. Many!
If it was anything, it was but a pipe dream that one day, unmanned remote control aircraft could be silently flown around the world, eavesdrop on conversations, take pictures in the dark to deploy guided missiles, drop bombs, and kill people… and that we, on the opposite side of the globe, could watch it unfold live, as it happened, as if it were macabre modern gladiatorial entertainment.
Portrait of Robert Boyle (1627-1691), by German painter John Kerseboom (d.1708), which is publicly displayed at Gawthorpe Hall, in England.
In the age and era of the founding of our nation, the concept of microscopy and the cell theory was relatively new. Robert Hooke, considered the “father of microscopy” had just discovered cells in 1665, and Robert Boyle (Boyle’s Law) were contemporaries in 1662, while Sir Isaac Newton died in 1727 – a mere 60 years before our Constitution was written.
Benjamin Franklin didn’t publish his most famous experiment which used lightning and a kite to prove that lightning was electricity until 1750; Orville and Wilbur Wright didn’t get off the ground at Kitty Hawk until 1903; Alexander Fleming discovered the first antibiotic – penicillin – in 1928; and the planet Pluto wasn’t discovered until 1930!
We’re talking about 242 years ago, “when giants and dinosaurs roamed the Earth.”
In a way, our nation’s founders were giants, and yet, in another way, they were dinosaurs who could fathom no idea – not even a minuscule hint – and because of it, were literally clueless about the greatness that America would become.
To give them their due, however, their curiosity and liberality served them well then, and it serves us well now. Our form of government is, in the history of humanity, among the shortest-lived, but the most remarkable, and successful.
Congressional Coffee Hour (Senate). 2 May 1961, Blue Room, White House, Washington, D.C.; L-R: Senator Quentin Northrup Burdick-D, North Dakota (1908-1992); Senator Wayne Lyman Morse-D, Oregon (1900-1974); President John Fitzgerald Kennedy-D (1917-1963); Senator Thomas Henry Kuchel-R, California (1910-1994); Senator Hubert Horatio Humphrey-D, Minnesota (1911-1978); Senator Roman Lee Hruska-R, Nebraska (1904-1999); From the JFK Library; Photographer: Robert LeRoy Knudsen, (1929-1989)
In a sense, though while Greeks and Romans were inspirations, Americans perfected the three-branch bicameral democratic republic form of government. And we’re still perfecting it today. It’s part and parcel of that “in order to form a more perfect union” thing.
So, now it comes time to mention the obvious: While some loudly say government is too large, others say it is way too small to be either efficient or effective. I am among those in the latter camp, and will show and explain why as follows.
First, it’s preposterously absurd to imagine that a foundling nation with a total population which was then less than half the size that New York City is now, would, could, or should have a smaller government as it grew and matured. In the same way, no one wears the clothes they did as a 10-year-old child, and as adults, they purchase and/or make larger garments to suit their needs and wants. Similarly, no one should expect government to decrease in size.
More than anything, these matters speak directly to efficiency and effectiveness of government, which our nation’s founders also understood very well, which is also why Read the rest of this entry »
Posted by Warm Southern Breeze on Sunday, April 15, 2018
Ending gun violence neither requires repealing the 2nd Amendment, writing entirely new legislation, nor doing nothing – as is being now done, no matter how seemingly well intentioned. With minor modifications to existing law as language additions, almost all interested parties are satisfied – not all, but many, if not most – concerns are addressed in a rational, reasonable, lawful, Constitutional, and commonsensical legislative process that also minimizes taxpayer burden.
Opinions run the gamut, from one extreme, including repeal of the Second Amendment – by former SCOTUS Justice John Paul Stevens, a Republican and Ford appointee – to the other, from arming teachers, to wholesale abandonment of all existing firearm law.
But rarely, if ever, is there any commonsensical solution ever made on settling on any problem with rational, reasonable, logical compromise that achieves most all goals, within reason, and with very slight compromise to all interested parties.
My conservative friends think me liberal, while my liberal friends think me conservative, and both are wrong.
Posted by Warm Southern Breeze on Thursday, December 21, 2017
Members of Congress as virtual royalty,
have raised their pay 9 times over 9 years,
but raised Minimum Wage only 3 times in 18 years.
While Congress now pays themselves almost
3x the Median Household Income,
since 2000,
Inflation has totaled 37.4%.
And with 72% subsidies, Employer Contributions,
and other
luxurious perks unavailable to the Average Citizen,
including full Retirement Vestment after 5 years,
and 72% subsidy for Healthcare Insurance in Retirement,
their Healthcare is practically free.
And you’re paying for it.
But yours is not.
And you’re paying for it, too!
Members first received $6 a day in 1789, today they get $174,000 annually, in addition to phenomenal perks, health insurance, and retirement… all at taxpayer expense.
Posted by Warm Southern Breeze on Sunday, December 17, 2017
According to a news item published by the Associated Press, Friday, December 15, 2017 and subsequently reported by Business Insider on December 16, 2017, 12:43 PM ET, “Alabama Republican Roy Moore on Friday told supporters that the “battle is not over” in Alabama’s Senate race even though President Donald Trump and others have called on him to concede. Moore sent a fundraising email to supporters asking for contributions to his “election integrity fund’ so he could investigate reports of voter fraud. “I also wanted to let you know that this battle is NOT OVER!” he wrote.”
-and-
“Roy Moore still refuses to concede — and he asked supporters to donate to an ‘election integrity fund’ to find voter fraud.”
The outcome of an election does NOT depend upon whether a candidate concedes, or not.
Thus, Roy Moore can “refuse” to concede to his perverted little heart’s delight… and it STILL WILL NOT HAVE ANY BEARING ON THE ELECTION’S OUTCOME.
So now, the great game is to sit back and watch what that damn-fool idiot does. And, if the story (including Moore’s previous actions) is any guide, he will likely rely upon what he describes as “numerous reported cases of voter fraud” which he and his campaign will send to Alabama Secretary of State John Merrill.
Posted by Warm Southern Breeze on Tuesday, December 12, 2017
“Roy Moore is no prize, but Alabama doesn’t need an opportunistic weasel like Doug Jones representing it. For one thing, he’ll drive a wedge within Alabama’s congressional delegation. He will quickly show he doesn’t share the values of most Alabamians because he will be a puppet of ilk like Schumer and Pelosi. The Senate will likely not seat Moore and Alabama’s governor can appoint a better qualified individual to the seat. This is much more desirable than “Sen. Jones.””
—//—
My thoughts in response to the preceding post:
Obviously, we do not know each other, however, I would appreciate the opportunity to rebut some of your commentary.
You wrote in part that renown former Federal Prosecutor, now Democratic candidate for U.S. Senate from Alabama Doug Jones for Senate is, “an opportunistic weasel,” and yet you provided no evidence to support your assertion. Strike one. (Supposing that by “weasel” you meant to refer to someone whose story constantly changes, you surely mean to refer to Roy Moore, whose story has so changed after facing increased scrutiny.)
Posted by Warm Southern Breeze on Thursday, December 7, 2017
Someone says
“I kissed your wife/husband,”
versus
“I raped your wife/husband.”
Which is more severe, and therefore, significantly more worthy of investigation?
It ~OUGHT~ be plainly evident to any rationally-minded individual.
Minnesota U.S. Senator Al Franken (D), official portrait
There ~are~ degrees of wrongness… which is precisely why there are degrees of severity of crime – including misdemeanor, and felony – including First Degree, Second Degree, Third Degree, etc.
By NO means am I defending Sen. Franken against any allegations of impropriety, nor am I negating the claims of his female accusers, who, that as he said in his resignation speech from the Senate floor, “all women deserve to be heard, and their experiences taken seriously.”
It is to acknowledge, that, again as he said, “This decision is not about me – it’s about the people of Minnesota. It’s become clear that I can’t both pursue the Ethics Committee process, and at the same time, remain an effective Senator for them.”
I concur with his decision.
He may be down now, but by NO MEANS is he out. And, he said as much in that same brief speech.
Franken will not be absent long from the political process. Some have supposed that Franken may shortly run for the US House, and or MN Governorship.
And when he returns, to whatever office, or in whatever capacity, it will be with an increased fervor, reinvigorated vision, and significantly greater intensity.
His brief speech from the U.S. Senate floor, Thursday, 7 December 2017.
Posted by Warm Southern Breeze on Tuesday, December 5, 2017
I have asked many Roy Moore supporters why they support him.
As far as I can tell, their single unifying thread is that they seem to believe in, and surreptitiously advocate for some type of “theocratic” type government. And as far I can discern, or have observed, many Moore supporters, lack higher education, can neither think logically nor critically, and attempt to Read the rest of this entry »
Posted by Warm Southern Breeze on Thursday, November 16, 2017
Has anyone noticed? Roy Moore supporters have gone from “he didn’t do it” to “so what if he did” to “what about so-and-so”. In other words, their moving target defenses of him and their support of him have changed from mere denial, to justification, to the well-known juvenile tactic that “all my friends do it.”
At this point, there are so MANY voices, that it CAN’T be a “conspiracy” by anyone, either the Doug Jones campaign, the Democrat party, the national GOP, or George Soros, so his blind-leading-the-blind supporters simply hold onto that sinking ship, despite anything they hear.
Why?
They WANT to believe.
That is, they believe DESPITE significant contradictions, and increasing evidence to the contrary. And it all means but one thing: They are in denial.
Warm Southern Breeze 