#because the Democratic system didn’t need to be burned down

[politicalstuffandantifascism]

I think it’s important to remember it’s like this because a few multi-billionaires/trillionaires would rather hold onto an amount of wealth they couldn’t spend in a lifetime rather than create a more equitable society for everybody.

We already know that a shorter workweek and working from home increases productivity, corporations just know that giving more free time and better quality would result ultimately to people working together to change society to make things better for everybody.

Which is why even though it’s pretty obvious that taking away the looming threat of starvation and homelessness would make for more productive workers (every study can prove that less chronic stress will lead to a healthier mental state and lead to greater productivity) corporations and the politicians that represent them (Republicans) will fight against changing that every step of the way.

But progress is being made.

Companies are experimenting with shorter work weeks and working from home (because greater productivity is good for corporations) and politicians are at least starting to talk about UBI.

And change is possible.

The government has shown time and time again that if the right people are elected: workers rights will be enshrined, companies will be regulated, monopolies will be busted, social programs will be passed, and working hours can be reduced (we used to work weekends)

I think the most important part is an informed society, because as January 6th proved, despite all of the corruption we still do have an actual functional democracy. And if our votes do matter, then we can change the system.

[hanzi83]

Random Fandom Rant

Maybe it is my inexperience in writing. I clearly don’t have the official smarts that most would have when writing but for some reason I insist on doing it. Since I am monitored, I like writing because the ones who hate monitor and stalk my privacy like to know what I write before I put it out so they can probably get ahead and start “gaslighting”, I didn’t even want to use the word but everyone is gonna over use it in the next several months where it won’t mean shit, it is probably because we get online and every day we are gaslighting people to cause chaos online when the world is already burning but we need more culture wars and organized chaos so people get off on their 90’s fetishism that they want to exude every single day. I didn’t feel as satisfied with the last blog. It becomes kind of difficult for me to kind maintain focus when I choose to write at late hours in the night, but I have been sitting on this for a while and time to time I will let a little out but most of the time, it isn’t fleshed out and I still publish it but then come back and probably will repeat some of the same points since everyone is repeating everything over and over. But I did want to talk about more about the fandom and how compromised a lot of it is, and we will never get to the bottom of it and solve the issues if all the cards are not on the table, and that will be impossible, because most social climbers online start off as these rebellious truth tellers, but they are most likely climbing up to the same exploitative system they claim to hate and when they get their gigs and get their access, they can hang around with other mentally ill cogs, who will use their mental illness to give incentive to other mentally ill muses, who use their new elitist status to then start shitting on other mentally ill people in the fandom who are trying to make their name because that is where people start off, it is online. It has always been that way it seems, a lot of people have marketed themselves as the internet king so we think it is more genuine and no way manufactured, hence industry plants like your favorite celebs. Then we find out they are scumbags on some level, their cult will act like they are being canceled, so it then gives them carte blanche to move and pivot to the right wing. Hence why we are going to be discussing David Choe and Jonathan Majors, and we will simplify the discourse by the culture wars and present it as simple of “problematic men” and I am not denying it, but there is a reason why other sports entertainers online who are building a brand never expose the system and ask the same questions of “How can Netflix still allow this to go down” like they really give a fuck, who really has suffered real consequences, even the ones who have suffered have built up a lot of social equity online since the online currency is probably more value than the paper money you have in your wallet. Do we not see any fucking pattern in what is going on, are we really going to keep dumbing shit down? Now I don’t know if David Choe was confessing shit in 2014 or was he being shocking, when I used to try and be shocking it was under the guise of thinking the most horrid was the edgiest shit because society embraced that, all the alt entertainment would encourage it, but this shit has been known and people keep track, so people in the industry let him exist after he confessed that and now since the world is going more right wing, especially entertainment, this was a way to expose something that was known so now they have a reason to move more to the right since they are gonna be running showbiz, they actually always have even if the right tried to paint Hollywood as liberal, because some people say they are democrats. They even made sure to make this one racial too, so not only do we have the angle of problematic and abusive man, so we can reduce it to gender wars, but then specifying that he did this to a black woman, when there is already so much hostility between different general communities while members of the delegations in the system have their beefs seep out where it becomes a bigger problem. But even the gimmick of him trying to get it scrubbed from the internet is also a heel tactic to add more to it, if he really scrubbed it we would not be talking about it, but on the internet now, which is gimmicked platform, if we say “Hey look of this official record of something being censored” then we think because we read it online that is more genuine. I am not saying he didn’t but the fact we know he did try, means it is another heel tactic in sports entertainment that backfired. The system doesn’t care about the abuse done until they can exploit it even if they do it from a place of concern, because if you did give a shit, then a lot of you wouldn’t be trying to socially climb into a system that will okay a lot of the physical and mental abuse, and you can’t count on the people in the media to really cover it because they cover it in the most limited way and it doesn’t help that a lot of the news outlets all want to be comedians and sports entertainers, they all want to be in showbiz, that is what our world is, more fucking theater. I have made this point before and I have been known to hammer home shit down until it means nothing, you have to excuse me, that is all of my years of watching WWE for most of my life, but if I compare slurs and horrible behavior  to finishing moves that would be used in a wrestling match, it used to have more power to finish someone off in a match, but now the shit is used for conjured up controversy and scandal that it barely finishes anyone out, Ali Alexander is literally being exposed a pedophile, you think that will put him down for the count of 3. It won’t even get a 1 count, it would be used as a fucking transitional move, that Brian Last and Jim Cornette would bitch about it not being like the old days of when a DDT would finish you off. And when I thought people were being exposed and called out, I figured a few years ago, it would lead to the examination of the bigger picture but it just serves for different factions to cancel someone and expose them while they advocate for someone who will probably be exposed for the same shit. The fucking Dali Lama is literally fucking fresh kissing some kid as a fucking viral video, these mother fuckers don’t give a fuck. I feel it is because we are moving in a new era where people are promoting their filth, knowing we won’t play by the same rules and they won’t face real accountability. At this point, who isn’t problematic in the fucking public eye. This is why I never wanted to sell my soul, because if you are someone who didn’t make it because you didn’t partake in initiations, they normally give you the initiation that matches the theme of whatever problematic shit you said in the past and I figured that out, so people used to give me shit for not doing shocking and edge lord shit, but if you put that energy out there, they eventually manifest that shit. I know this is just a pesky theory that no one will take seriously and that is fine, but what is the fucking solution? Keep the cycle going in of more culture wars, talking in circles, more sports entertainment while people are being abused mentally and physically and they are not allowed to speak out on it until the system is ready to turn the perpetrator into a fucking heel? I will never fucking get how the cycle keeps continuing. But we are so entrenched into the entertainment fandom, that we will never escape this, people are more sad that they can’t enjoy the show Beef anymore because of this than the actual victim. The more we double down with this entertainment shit, and being in cultic behavior, we are not gonna get better. People who have the access and then act like everyone else take the entertainment too seriously. Let’s put this to a test, let’s see how long it would take for you shit heads to unravel if they took away your access and the protection for your creep behavior. You get online trying to do worked shoots to create this feeling of the 90’s because you didn’t get to be the characters you are portraying back in the 90’s so you need to go to all this trouble to help the system create chaos, and when you get what you think you want, you will realize you will be a cog in the system, and all that access, the spoils, they weren’t just for the pleasantries. The funny thing as soon as people get their gigs and access, they will then cause a shit storm for several months and sabotage the talent, and make people feel like shit for enjoying the art presented for what  it is, but now that your favorites are making their return to whatever artform, you will then shut down anyone complaining, the talent owe the fans an apology for causing a shit storm and having more mentally ill people act unhinged, but now that people are getting their way, they will then now advocate for people not to complain at all because it makes them feel uncomfortable even though they have literally aligned with white supremacists to instill fear into me because they couldn’t handle my opinions, and the reason you can’t admit you are triggered by what I say or write, it would mean you would have to admit you are so sociopathic and fucked in the head, that you will monitor the tweets of what is said and get other cult members to be in people’s mentions. 

I don’t read enough smart books to know if this would be a more appropriate time to start a new paragraph. I know roll your eyes, I am being to self aware about my process, sorry maybe I should reboot a 90’s trope and act like the internet is underground shit that we still use 56k modem for. What really gets to me is these people who are the biggest sociopaths and that are dictating the narratives and the discourse and constantly bring this up will talk about how people have parasocial relationships with talent, when they literally only cosign talent they can eat off of and get access to, or industry sex workers they can fuck. The same type of fucked up people who will have nothing on their timeline but anti trans and other bigoted shit telling other people they are mentally ill, these are the people who literally were advocating for bullying people, because all they have is physical intimidation which is only permitted by their handlers and higher ups and punching someone out is the ultimate keep it real move, even though they have been trying to shake people down and mentally fuck with them and when they fight back, then it is them going too far. They literally use other accounts to pose as liberals to cancel people so that the people they cancel will be on the right wing side, hence why a bunch of shit heads sports entertainers gassed up Charly Arnolt who they knew was a bigoted piece of shit, she is good looking but another person with a boring personality with boring politics, there are better grifters doing a better job than what you are doing but the same people who won’t mind that, would be furious and trying to get other minorities piled on, people who claimed to never watch WWE and be anti WWE had a problem with a woman writer who made a mistake by admitting she didn’t know much about it, and they exiled her. There is more people who will go out of their way to defend a shity head bigot like Jim Cornette because he is on CM Punk’s side, and the fandom exiled Swole and ACH from opening their mouths about the systemic issues in the company and now I am supposed to give a shit about a fucking stupid worked shoot that paints CM Punk as this ultimate victim? That is severely mentally ill, these same types of shills will try to shut down people by saying “YOU KNOW PEOPLE IN THE INDUSTRY THINK YOU ARE ALL LOSERS” because then people won’t speak up and give their opinion, but me? I don’t give a shit if I hang with anyone in the industry. I know most of their politics. I am not impressed, especially if people in the industry who don’t need to worry about what people online say, but they will insist on being obsessed about what online fans are doing, and some of you help give incentive to your cult members to cause more shit online. You feed this shit, the billionaires help fund this shit, but we can’t call it out because we have to dumb down the villains. “DID YOU KNOW WWE DIDN’T PLAN FOR THIS TO HAPPEN” We’re still on that dumbed down narrative, it is probably why they don’t see how there seems to be this right wing pivot from people who used to work there but then leave and become worse. To me it is like a mafia system where you still kick up to Vince, but on the surface you support them because they seemingly left the company, which why it is hilarious when people promote other promotions who have been allowed to exist because of WWE since they are supposed to be the watered down system but they are making the most money they have ever made. We have to correlate past corruption with current manufactured ones even though the game is way more advanced. All of this is just my opinion. But people will call out Charly and then not learn their lesson and start Stanning for other figures, how about you don’t Stan for anyone because you will keep being disappointed. There is a common trend going on but you think WWE doesn’t cosign any of this despite being tight with a bunch of right wingers. Wrestling fans will never currently be in the right with a lot of stuff. They can look back at past ignorance and racism etc, and think because it is not in the actual program anymore, that it isn’t being promoted online because that is where the storylines are going now.  Just look at the Marty Jannetty shit where he is just admitting to random shit the last few years, and now guess what, he is gonna be a topic on Darkside of the ring, he probably has a writing team since something will go viral and give him social currency. If we could have an honest look at the inconsistencies from the sports entertainment accounts then maybe this shit online would be more tolerable, but people who are the most disturbed are the ones calling other people mentally ill. 

If I am supposed to believe all this Brawl Out shit is real right, then people who advocate for safer working conditions will do the bare minimum to bring it up but then at the same time, they don’t give a shit about the mental health people will face from turning some real life shit into an angle, which is what we looked back in the past and said “We shouldn’t exploit these issues” but when it currently happens, then people want the worst shit to happen, maybe just admit this shit is a work and it is gonna pay off. I am not even against anyone returning, what I am against is another company had to become a shitty discourse company because a bunch of people who only consumed attitude era shit are now dictating when we are supposed to like shit and when we are supposed to hate it, even though no company has ever been perfect even in its stronger years. All of this to cater to one man’s ego because he never main evented Wrestlemania, and they can’t even give you the work, now since they didn't’ get their reboot of WCW vs WWE, they want to do Raw vs Smackdown, because now we will have a brand split between AEW with this new Saturday show, yeah water shit down even more, you have 50 million shows and it will be easier not to keep up with all of this shit, and I know the future discourse will be for people who politicked for gigs to help write for the new show and they will shit on Dynamite because CM Punk is on that show, so this industry has to create more culture wars, and there needs to be this insistence that wrestling has to be dysfunctional because they don’t want you to know most people probably get along. None of the internet drama has made me like any of these people on my screens better, I used to enjoy watching FTR and now I can’t stand to see them anymore since they have become online characters, and they will act like fans are out of line for getting mad at them supporting Cornette, because they claim to care about the women’s wrestlers and women wrestling yet they never ever call out their misogynistic and bigoted hero, because he managed the Midnight Express in the 80’s. They always address the positives, but I don’t even blame FTR for that solely because I feel both companies have Cornette just be a shock jock to shit on talent and gear up more fucking hatred for them. If you have a problem with Cornette, talk to Vince, Tony Khan etc, oh yeah I forgot people online think Cornette is against all these companies because he uses explicit language and dumbs down Vince’s villainous ways too. All of this for a CM Punk Jericho feud, you already trained me not to give a shit about Jericho’s feud, why would I want to see him vs CM Punk? I hope I can move away from this fandom, because you know what the shills are right, people take this so seriously. Anytime I try to leave this behind, then some industry insider or whoever else will dangle something across my face to ensure I stay and it is like if I am so “important” to being a committed fan, then maybe you shouldn’t act like I didn’t exist and try to limit my access but you know what, I am glad it went down the way it did, because as time as went on, I am glad I was not super close with people in the entertainment business, I couldn’t even stand Artie Lange after a fucking while, the “OH MY GOD I USED TO WATCH HIM ON MAD TV” phase died pretty quickly when he acted like a bonafide piece of shit, and don’t ever question my credibility because of my aesthetic, a lot of you would never have the balls to go toe to toe with an industry leader who is probably a mafia person, like I did, and guess what I ate a lot of shit, a lot of people acted like I am lesser than and have suppressed me, I get brought out to be a guinea pig. Don’t question my credibility or question who I fucked or how much money I fucking have, because all those good things people have and they are still fucked up in the head. 

I keep figuring writing this shit, maybe I can just finally feel like I don’t need to consume this shit because every day my mental illness reacts to all of this shit and none of the people who are constantly stirring shit don’t want to admit the role they play in all of this and we all pretend we are just fans, just trust me if most of the sports entertainers were just fans and they weren’t getting their protected treatment, then they would bitch nonstop about it and constantly have pussy pow wows. I have been put through the ringer and this system has no way of improving despite people claiming there will be change, we can’t even get on the same page about world issues, because it all breaks down into a meaningless culture war issue. It gets tiring and exhausting and this has been going on for different eras of fandom. Now politics have turned into the same shit, because now we need the entertainment of “comedy” to levitate the situation, what does any of it mean when everything has to fucking be funny. I am not saying comedy is bad but don’t you think that this destructive artform has helped lower our guards about the hard truths of shit that is to come, because everyone has to do a shitty Trump impression. Even if you guys wanted to be funny, doesn’t it clue into you that everyone has an impression, wouldn’t you want to try something new, or is whatever the echo chambers agree with that makes it funny. You will shit on “liberal agendas” all fucking day and complain about wokeness but then try to help diversify the white supremacist ideology under the guise of cool lingo and shock jock entertainment and you don’t care if people who are like minded are mediocre with their opinions as long as they agree with you. You want to prop up the status quo, which is why whenever I act creative in any regard, and I am not the best person with “creativity” but me attempting creativity is frowned upon, it isn’t good enough that I am already suppressed but me attempting to do shit in my own little bubble is frowned upon because people with power might be into what I am saying or some shit, and then the other cogs will then try to amplify their shit because they worry that one day I might catch traction again. They figured I would bend over backwards to go back on the Stern Show because I couldn’t deal with being irrelevant, listen being mentally ill and wanting fame and getting a high off people knowing who you are has been hard to deal with, especially when people with power have made it clear no one can interact with you, but guess what, it made me stronger mentally. Sure I have my rants and irrational moments, but I know once I get put back into the “fame game” my mental illness will be triggered by bad faith vultures who want me to self destruct because they haven’t dealt with their mental illness and the more they cross over, the more they will use it for evil. When I see people go down that same path that I could’ve gone down, sure on the surface I could say I am happier because I go to weddings, gatherings, expensive trips, but over the last decade, seeing what people I know have hid from me and how elitist some of them have become and the state of the world, more sophisticated propaganda to ease us into the future of fascism, why would I want to be here? So I can get feet pictures of my favorite women celebrities? I don’t fucking know. I know people will think I am this super purist, I am not. I don’t think I am better than anyone, a lot of my frustration comes from a place of care on some level because I don’t want people to get worse, but it is hard when people double down and keep chaotic shit going and they won’t mind if they ruin people’s lives. I do have empathy for people in the system to an extent because these cogs will never be free and be committed to this fucking life even if they look like it aesthetically. Why would I root for more people to get power and money if they are going to use it for the most evil and become cookie cutter, I get it everyone needs to get paid but not everyone has to be super happy for that shit, sure there will be people who are jealous, and I would’ve been one of those people at some point, but some people might not just like how people end up becoming a lot worse as they get into the thick of things. I am the asshole who doesn’t want to get dirty. Thing is I write these blogs so I don’t have to be lured into the right wing because manipulators have tried to get on that mindframe, and I felt like no one would’ve stepped in if I didn’t figure out I was falling for a scam or a scheme, I don’t have resources to do background checks, so I don’t know if anyone trying to associate with me is someone who is problematic. Anyways. I know technically no one will “officially” read this because I am irrelevant but I like to try and put shit in writing even if it backfires on me. It becomes scary to see how comfortable people are getting with showing how awful they want to be and how fundamentalist all of this shit is and I kind of hate myself for being so into entertainment, but even if I was not from a young age, everything has become fodder for entertainment. I am not against worked shoot shit, and maybe all of this shit will work out but now that it has exposed how hypocritical and irrational everyone gets, it makes me question all of this and don’t give me shit about “OH MY GOD YOU ARE TAKING IT TOO SERIOUSLY” when a lot of you take this shit seriously, and the really important things that exist within this shit is not taken seriously enough. But don’t worry I am the one who ends up looking stupid, because I will write all of this, I will express all of this and guess what, I always end up giving back in. It has a hold on me. How can I escape this when the stuff I need to pay attention to has also become a parody and a laughing stock. There are 2 fascist shit heads egging to be presidents with pretentious in fighting and we are falling for all the gimmicked shit “OH MAN. MEATBALL RON…WHAT A NICKNAME” “OH LOOK AT THIS PUDDING FINGERS COMMERCIAL”. I can’t escape any of this. I don’t look forward to the direction, I focused more on the wrestling angle, but wrestling defines everything in our world whether you like it or not.

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

October 6, 2021

Heather Cox Richardson

Today, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) backed down from his obstructionism, agreeing to let the Democrats raise the debt ceiling by a simple majority rather than by the 60 votes they needed when the Republicans kept filibustering their bills.

A quick recap: the issue at stake was whether the United States would default on its debts, which it has never done before. The threat to default was purely a political ploy on the part of the Republicans to try to force the Democrats to abandon their very popular infrastructure measure.

Here’s the backstory: Congress actually originally intended the debt ceiling to enable the government to be flexible in its borrowing. In the era of World War I, when it needed to raise a lot of money fast, Congress stopped passing specific revenue measures and instead set a cap on how much money the government could borrow through all of the different instruments it used.

Now, though, the debt ceiling has become a political cudgel because if it is not raised when Congress spends more than it has the ability to repay, the country will default on its debts. The cap has been raised repeatedly since it was first imposed; indeed, the Republicans raised it three times under former president Donald Trump. Once again, it is too low, and by October 18, the Treasury will be unable to pay our debts.

To meet the nation’s obligations, Congress needs either to raise taxes, which Republicans passionately oppose, or to raise the debt ceiling so the Treasury can borrow more money. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, who has voted to raise or suspend the debt ceiling 32 times in his career, including the three times under Trump, refused to allow Republicans to vote to raise the debt ceiling.

Although the ceiling needed to be lifted because Trump added $7.8 trillion to the debt (which now stands at about $28 trillion), in part with the huge 2017 tax cuts that went overwhelmingly to the wealthy, McConnell tried to tie the need for more money to the Democrats’ infrastructure plan. This was false: the debt ceiling is not an appropriation; it simply permits the government to borrow money it needs to pay debts already incurred.

But McConnell and the Republicans want to dismantle an active government, not to build it. They hope to convince Americans that Democrats are racking up huge debts—even though it is the Republicans on the hook for today’s crisis—and that they should not be permitted to pass a bill that supports children and working parents and addresses climate change.

The Democrats insisted that the Republicans should join them in raising the ceiling, since they had been instrumental in making it necessary, but McConnell and his caucus refused. Finally, with Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen warning that defaulting would crash the economy and with financial services firm Moody’s Analytics warning that a default would cost up to 6 million jobs, create an unemployment rate of nearly 9%, and wipe out $15 trillion in household wealth, the Democrats tried to pass a measure themselves.

Republicans wouldn’t let them. They filibustered it, trying to force the Democrats to save the country by raising the debt ceiling through a bill that can’t be filibustered, a process called reconciliation, which would make it harder for them to use reconciliation for their own infrastructure bill since Congress can pass only one of that type of reconciliation bill per year.

It was a remarkably cynical ploy, risking the financial health of the country and our standing in the world to make sure that a Republican minority could continue to hamstring what the Democratic majority considers a priority. Republicans have played chicken with government shutdowns since the 1980s, refusing to pass measures to fund the daily operations of the government and thereby stopping paychecks and government operations.

But defaulting on our obligations was a whole new game of brinksmanship. The greatest international asset the U.S. has right now is its financial system. To bring that to its knees to score political points would be interpreted, correctly, as a sign our country is so unstable it must be sidelined.

Midday today, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin highlighted this international doubt when he took the unusual step of weighing in on politics. He warned that a default would “undermine the economic strength on which our national security rests.” Paychecks for 1.4 million active duty military personnel and veterans’ benefits for 2.4 million veterans, as well as payments on military contracts, would stop. Equally dangerous, defaulting on loans would devastate the nation’s international reputation "as a reliable and trustworthy economic and national security partner."

Democrats said they could not guarantee the country would not default, and they were clearly starting to consider getting rid of the filibuster, at least for this particular issue, to enable them to pass a debt ceiling bill by a simple majority rather than by 60 votes.

Then McConnell blinked (although he didn’t cave). In a scorching statement that laid all the blame for the crisis on the Democrats, he offered to “allow” Democrats to use normal procedures—that is, the Republicans won’t filibuster them!—to extend the ceiling into December. Democrats indicate they will take that deal.

There is one major takeaway from this manufactured crisis: McConnell was willing to come right to the verge of burning the nation down to get his way. In the end, he stopped just before the sparks became an inferno, but it was much too close for comfort.

Still, he stopped. Trump and his supporters did not. The former president has been pushing Republicans to use the threat of default to get what they want, and he was not happy that McConnell had backed down. He issued a statement blaming McConnell for “folding” and added “He’s got all of the cards with the debt ceiling, it’s time to play the hand.”

Trump’s willingness to burn down the country is ramping up as the January 6 investigation gets closer to him. Tomorrow is the deadline for four of his aides to respond to subpoenas for documents and testimony from the House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the U.S. Capitol: former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows, deputy chief of staff Dan Scavino, adviser Steve Bannon, and Defense Department aide Kash Patel. Meadows worked to overturn the 2020 election results and was in the thick of things on January 6, Scavino had met with Trump to plot to get congresspeople not to count the certified votes on January 6, Bannon strategized with other officials on January 5 to stop the count, and Patel was part of discussions about the strength of the Capitol Police.

The four are expected to defy the subpoenas at Trump’s insistence, a defiance that suggests they think he and his people are going to regain power. According to Glenn Kirschner, a former U.S. Army prosecutor, contempt of Congress earns a year of prison time; obstruction of Congress, five years; and obstruction of justice, 20 years.

The rest of the former president’s statements today were unhinged attacks on the committee.

A final note for October 6: U.S. District Judge Robert L. Pitman has temporarily blocked enforcement of Texas’s S.B. 8, the so-called “heartbeat” bill prohibiting abortions after six weeks, when most women don’t know they’re pregnant. The Justice Department had sued to stop enforcement of the law. Pitman stopped it on the grounds that it deprived “citizens of a significant and well-established constitutional right.”

—

Notes:

https://www.usnews.com/news/national-news/articles/2021-10-06/pentagon-warns-of-national-security-fallout-from-debt-ceiling-crisis

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/oct/06/trump-aides-capitol-attack-house-select-committee

Glenn Kirschner @glennkirschner2Contempt of Congress - 1 year. If prosecutors bring obstruction of Congress charges - 5 years. Or obstruction of justice charges - 20 years. https://t.co/1UXtetgiMa@glennkirschner2 Glenn, how much jail time can they get for not answering supoenas?

Deeheart4 @Deeheart99

2,055 Retweets5,855 Likes

October 6th 2021

https://talkingpointsmemo.com/live-blog/gop-sens-ready-to-blow-up-debt-crisis-in-nakedly-political-gambit

https://www.justsecurity.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/show_temp.pdf

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/courts_law/texas-abortion-lawsuit-decision/2021/10/06/ae70d946-22e7-11ec-9309-b743b79abc59_story.html

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

[szalacsi]

history

“I’m from Malaysia. 

China has traded with Malaysia for 2000 years. In those years, they had been the world’s biggest powers many times. Never once they sent troops to take our land. 

Admiral Zhenghe came to Malacca five times, in gigantic fleets, and a flagship eight times the size of Christopher Columbus’ flagship, Santa Maria. He could have seized Malacca easily, but he did not. 

In 1511, the Portuguese came. 

In 1642, the Dutch came. 

In the 18th century the British came. 

We were colonised by each, one after another. 

When China wanted spices from India, they traded with the Indians. When they wanted gems, they traded with the Persian. They didn’t take lands. The only time China expanded beyond their current borders was in Yuan Dynasty, when Genghis and his descendants Ogedei Khan, Guyuk Khan & Kublai Khan concurred China, Mid Asia and Eastern Europe. Yuan Dynasty, although being based in China, was a part of the Mongolian Empire. 

Then came the Century of Humiliation. Britain smuggled opium into China to dope the population, a strategy to turn the trade deficit around, after the British could not find enough silver to pay the Qing Dynasty in their tea and porcelain trades. 

After the opium warehouses were burned down and ports were closed by the Chinese in ordered to curb opium, the British started the Opium War I, which China lost. Hong Kong was forced to be surrendered to the British in a peace talk (Nanjing Treaty). 

The British owned 90% of the opium market in China, during that time, Queen Victoria was the world’s biggest drug baron. The remaining 10% was owned by American merchants from Boston. Many of Boston’s institutions were built with profit from opium. 

After 12 years of Nanjing Treaty, the West started getting really really greedy. The British wanted the Qing government: 

 1. To open the borders of China to allow goods coming in and out freely, and tax free. 

 2. Make opium legal in China. Insane requests, Qing government said no. 

The British and French (with supports from the US), started Opium War II with China, which again, China lost. 

The Anglo-French military raided the Summer Palace, and threatened to burn down the Imperial Palace, the Qing government was forced to pay with ports, free business zones, 300,000 kilograms of silver and Kowloon was taken. 

Since then, China’s resources flew out freely through these business zones and ports. In the subsequent amendment to the treaties, Chinese people were sold overseas to serve as labor. 

In 1900, China suffered attacks by the 8-National Alliance (Empire of Japan, Russian Empire, British Empire (including India), France, USA, Germany, Italy, Austria-Hungary). 

Innocent Chinese civilians in Peking (Beijing now) were murdered, buildings were destroyed & women were raped. The Imperial Palace was raided, and treasures ended up in museums like the British Museum in London and the Louvre in Paris. 

In late 1930s China was occupied by the Japanese in WWII. Millions of Chinese died during the occupancy. 300,000 Chinese died in Nanjing Massacre alone. Mao brought China together again from the shambles. There were peace and unity for some time. But Mao’s later reign saw sufferings and deaths from famine and power struggles. 

Then came Deng Xiao Ping and his infamous 'black-cat and white-cat' story. His preference in pragmatism than ideologies has transformed China. This thinking allowed China to evolve all the time to adapt to the actual needs in the country, instead of rigidly bounded to ideologies. It also signified the death of Communism in actually practice in China. 

The current Socialism+Meritocracy+Market Economy model fits the Chinese like gloves, and it propels the uprise of China. Singapore has a similar model, and has been arguably more successful than Hong Kong, because Hong Kong being gateway to China, was riding on the economic boom in China, while Singapore had no one to gain from. 

In just 30 years, the CPC have moved 800 millions of people out from poverty. The rate of growth is unprecedented in human history. They have built the biggest mobile network, by far the biggest high speed rail network in the world, and they have become a behemoth in infrastructure. They made a fishing village called Shenzhen into the world’s second largest technological centre after the Silicon Valley. 

They are growing into a technological power house. It has the most elaborate e-commerce and cashless payment system in the world. They have launched exploration to Mars. The Chinese are living a good life and China has become one of the safest countries in the world. 

The level of patriotism in the country has reached an unprecedented height. For all of the achievements, the West has nothing good to say about it. China suffers from intense anti-China propagandas from the West. Western Media used the keyword “Communist” to instil fear and hatred towards China.

Everything China does is negatively reported. They claimed China used slave labor in making iPhones. The truth was, Apple was the most profitable company in the world, it took most of the profit, leave some to Foxconn (a Taiwanese company) and little to the labor. 

They claimed China was inhuman with one-child policy. At the same time, they accused China of polluting the earth with its huge population. The fact is the Chinese consume just 30% of energy per capita compared to the US. 

They claimed China underwent ethnic cleansing in Xinjiang. The fact is China has a policy which priorities ethnic minorities. For a long time, the ethnic minorities were allowed to have two children and the majority Han only allowed one. The minorities are allowed a lower score for university intakes. There are 39,000 mosque in China, and 2100 in the US. 

China has about 3 times more mosque per muslim than the US. When terrorist attacks happened in Xinjiang, China had two choices: 

1. Re-educate the Uighur (CENSUDED by Youtube) before they turned (CENSUDED by Youtube). (**Here I could not copy the exact word, since today it is censored by YouTube if I write it next to the indicated ethnicity. It is the one used to identify those crazy people who are killing people thinking that by doing this they will be able to go to paradise**). 

2. Let them be, after they launch attacks and killed innocent people, bomb their homes. China chose 1 to solve problem from the root and not to do killing. 

How the US solve terrorism? Fire missiles from battleships, drop bombs from the sky. 

During the pandemic, When China took extreme measures to lockdown the people, they were accused of being inhuman. 

When China recovered swiftly because of the extreme measures, they were accused of lying about the actual numbers. 

When China’s cases became so low that they could provide medical support to other countries, they were accused of politically motivated. Western Media always have reasons to bash China. Just like any country, there are irresponsible individuals from China which do bad things, but the China government overall has done very well. 

But I hear this comment over and over by people from the West: I like Chinese people, but the CPC is evil. What they really want is the Chinese to change the government, because the current one is too good. 

Fortunately China is not a multi-party democratic country, otherwise the opposition party in China will be supported by notorious NGOs (Non-Government Organization) of the USA, like the NED (National Endowment for Democracy), to topple the ruling party. 

The US and the British couldn’t crack Mainland China, so they work on Hong Kong. Of all the ex-British colonial countries, only the Hong Kongers were offered BNOs by the British. Because the UK would like the Hong Kongers to think they are British citizens, not Chinese. 

A divide-and-conquer strategy, which they often used in Color Revolutions around the world. They resort to low dirty tricks like detaining Huawei’s CFO & banning Huawei. They raised a silly trade war which benefits no one. Trade deficit always exist between a developing and a developed country. 

USA is like a luxury car seller who ask a farmer: why am I always buying your vegetables and you haven’t bought any of my cars? When the Chinese were making socks for the world 30 years ago, the world let it be. 

But when Chinese started to make high technology products, like Huawei and DJI, it caused red-alert. Because when Western and Japanese products are equal to Chinese in technologies, they could never match the Chinese in prices. 

First world countries want China to continue in making socks. Instead of stepping up themselves, they want to pull China down. The recent movement by the US against China has a very important background. 

When Libya, Iran, and China decided to ditch the US dollar in oil trades, Gaddafi’s was killed by the US, Iran was being sanctioned by the US, and now it’s China’s turn. The US has been printing money out of nothing. The only reason why the US Dollar is still widely accepted, is because it’s the only currency which oil is allowed to be traded with. 

The US has an agreement with Saudi that oil must be traded in US dollar ONLY. Without the petrol-dollar status, the US dollars will sink, and America will fall. 

Therefore anyone trying to disobey this order will be eliminated. China will soon use a gold-backed crypto-currency, the alarms in the White House go off like mad. 

 China’s achievement has been by hard work. Not by looting the world. I have deep sympathy for China for all the suffering, but now I feel happy for them. China is not rising, they are going back to where they belong. Good luck China.”

[admelioraii]

Al Andalus II: One of the world's greatest civilizations; Times of glory, Part 1.

Previous parts:

Al Andalus I: The dawn of one of the world’s greatest civilizations.

Al Andalus II: One of the world’s greatest civilizations; Times of Glory, Part 1.

Al Andalus II: One of the world’s greatest civilizations; Times of Glory, Part 2.

Al Andalus III: One of the world’s greatest civilizations; The Downfall and end, Part 1.

Al Andalus III: One of the world’s greatest civilizations; The Downfall and end, Part 2.

Patio de la Lindaraja, courtyard in the Alhambra.

I . Abd al Rahman (the enterer,” the one entering al Andalus”)

In Damascus the situation had become unstable and dangerous. The Umayyad caliphate had weakened and faced a direct threat from the Abbasids in Baghdad.

In the year 749-750 A.C. The situation had escalated rapidly and the Abbasids started a wave of assassinations of the Umayyads, all eligible men and boys were gradually assassinated. Two of the few survivors of these massacres were Abd al Rahman Moawia 19 years old, and Walid Moawia 13 years old.As they knew the Abbasids wanted their head they secretly went into hiding, in a place by the Euphrates river.

Euphrates river

Escaping death by the Euphrates river:

One night the two Umayyad princes found themselves surrounded by an Abbasid army. They started running for their lives, but with no direct places to hide, their only way out was the “Euphrates river”. The two brothers, realising this, went into the waters and started to swim. When they had swam half way through they were tired.

They heard the calls of Abbasids shouting “come back, we mean you no harm, we just have some questions”. Exhausted and desperate, Walid, the youngest of the two, started swimming back. Abd al Rahman told him to come back but in vain, the younger brother chose to believe the Abbasids. Abd al Rahman watched on from the waters, when the Abbasids killed his brother. Shocked and devastated, he swam to the shore and continued his escape by foot.

Afraid and lonely, he walked for months until finally reaching Karouan city, Tunisia. This was his mother’s home land! She was a descendant of a prestigious Berber tribe in Karouan, here, he was finally safe, at least for now…

Kairouan Great Mosque

The uproar:

Because of the Abbasids' elimination of the Umayyad bloodline, the whole of North Africa was in unrest. Everywhere were protesters and manifestations. Many of the countries refused to be under Abbasid rule after what had happened. The Abbasids made Abd al Rahman fear for his life, but they were not his only enemies.

Fractions of Berber tribes in Morocco were displeased with what they saw as an unfair distribution of position and wealth in al Andalus. They saw that they had gotten the short end of the straw, and that the Umayyads and Arabs had benefited the most in al Andalus.

As a result, some Berber tribes in Morocco were hostile towards Abd al Rahman for being an Umayyad. On the other hand,they were dissatisfied with the current ruler of al Andalus Yusef ibn Abd al Rahman al Fahri, the governor at the time. Abd al Rahman soon realised that he was not safe in North Africa either.

Palace in Alhambra

The plan:

Amidst the situation in al Andalus, he understood that the wisest move was to try to gain support from inside al Andalus. Al Andalus was won with the help of the Umayyans, so there was significant support for Abd al Rahman inside the country. The situation inside al Andalus was filled with conflict and the different groups were politically separated. The Yemeni Arabs agreed to support him out of dislike for Yusef al Fahri.

Nevertheless, they were not completely convinced that he was trustworthy, for to prove to them that he wasn’t going to run away if they lost, he switched horses with one of them. The truth was that his horse was extremely fast, when they got the insurance they were convinced.

Abd al Rahman’s troops won the fight and he became Abd al Rahman I, the first Emir of al Andalus. Finally safe, Abd al Rahman was satisfied, now the sea separated him from his enemies.

The rule of Abd al Rahman I (the enterer) (756-788 A.C)

Up until now al Andalus had been ruled by frequently changing governors. It was unusual that a governor stayed in power longer than 2-3 years. This constant changing of rulers destabilised the country. With Abd al Rahman I in power this changed. The country now became stable and prosperous.when Abd al Rahman I took the throne he was only 25 years old but he had been through a lot. 

To get a better picture of him as a person, here is what Omar ibn Hayan il Andalusí wrote about him. “He is peaceful and diplomatic, and despite his young age he is a raw model for the people. He is wise, well educated and broad minded. Quick, hard working and forgiving, he likes mixing with the people and prays alongside the masses but he never brings guards or bodyguards. Not to forget his eagerness to help people. Moreover he is humble and democratic, he never takes a decision on his own but always discusses with others.” 

Gran Mezquita de Isfahán

Accomplishments.

Abd al Rahman I came to the conclusion that the country needed unification, economical reform as well as expansion of the army and educational reform. One of his big concerns was , understandably, the army. He expanded the army and at the end of his reign the ground forces counted 100,000 men; this was only the leg soldiers. He ordered the building of ships and created a large and strong fleet. 

His idea of including all tribes and different groups in the army, to get it balanced and avoid discrimination showed to bee very effective. As well as in the rest of the Muslim world here too non Muslims didn’t join the army but paid “gisia” *(see explanation in the end of this article). To improve the infrastructure he built harbours, roads, bridges, locks not to forget cities and castles. The naval's construction was situated in the cities of Almería, Zaragoza, Seville and Tortosa. The arms production was concentrated in Toledo (small remains of this can still be found today) and

From all these magnificent achievements some of the real great ones are without  doubt the construction of the great mosque in Córdoba, the costs exceeded 100,000 dinar in that time.Not to forget rasafa gardens, with an enormous amount of foreign plants and flowers imported from all over the world.

With all other reforms in place he couldn’t oversee the juridical system, it was entirely reformed. Every person was equal in front of the law, as was the case in  all other aspects of the society, as well.Sanitary conditions were profoundly improved and the expansion of running water systems on a large scale.

Lastly but not least was the “Beit il mal” , a kind of social security system, was set up to improve the living conditions of the poor.** (See end of this article) Emir  Abd al Rahman ruled al Andalus for 34 years, broadly loved by his people he built a strong and organised country!

In the end of his life he had to choose a successor , he was choosing between Soliman, the oldest son or Hisham the youngest. In the end he decided that it should be Hisham who should take over the throne.

--------------------------

Hisham I.                                                                                (788- 796 A.C )

He had inherited many similarities with his father. He was a well educated man who surrounded himself with scholars, one of his achievements was to make Arabic the main language in al Andalus

Al Hakam I.                                                                             ( 796-822 A.C)

He was very different both from his father as well as from his grandfather. Al Hakam I was a hard, strict and difficult person and he was specifically harsh on anyone opposing his orders, as a result he burned down the houses of protesters and exiled them.Moreover he raised the taxes and forced additional taxes on the population. Al Andalus lost Aragón (Barcelona) during his time as a ruler. Anyways, he changed towards the end of his rule and repented. As a sign of apology he put his kindest and wisest son as a successor.

*Gisia: This was money a non Muslim payed as costs for the army, for protection. A non Muslim did not join the army. The gisia was paid exclusively by men. This meant that exempt from paying gisia was; women, children, old, sick, priests and poor people. The gisia in that time was 1 Dinar per year. Much less than any taxes paid before or after. Muslims however paid 2.5% of their yearly income.

**Beit il mal: (House of social security): Working Muslims paid a kind of obligatory payment (2.5 %) that was used to improve living standards of the poor citizens in the country.

[theritualofourexistence]

Clarity in the Cancellation Crusade

After posting multi-paragraph comments on a couple different things that have popped up in my feed recently, it seemed like I should probably just sit down and write this out.

“Cancel culture.” Crazy shit, right?

The recent onslaught of cancellations includes Mr. Potato Head, Pepe Le Pew, a handful of Disney movies (Peter Pan, Dumbo, The Aristocats), and *audible gasp* Dr. Seuss. The Muppets also got a newfangled Disney+ content warning, though I’ve seen significantly fewer headlines about that.

The thing that inevitably happens when the news media decides to publish a headline about a children’s toy or book being “canceled” is a veritable parade of social media complaints about how sensitive people have become. I saw this particular post over 10 times in the period of a couple hours one day last week…

The question I’ve been asking recently when I see posts like that is this: “Who do you think cancel culture is?”

Because “cancel culture” isn’t real. In the majority of the cases currently making headlines, the choice to remove a character from a movie or stop publishing a book has been made by the company responsible for that character or book… and that is very much a normal thing companies can choose to do.

No one I’ve posed the above question to has overtly mentioned “Libtards,” but it’s certainly implied. People who haven’t read a Dr. Seuss book in 20 years are now suddenly all up in arms (literally?) because “the Liberals” are coming for “And to Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street.”

The Liberals are not coming for Dr. Seuss. They do not care about a potato toy. Also, nothing is happening to the Cat in the Hat. I repeat: NOTHING is happening to the Cat in the Hat.

The choices to stop publishing that book and to market a vegetable toy in a less gendered way were made by the companies responsible for producing those products… not the Liberal “cancel culture” ghoul. In fact, it’s really, really hard to find public outcry about any of the things that have been recently “canceled.” There was a single NYT article that recently discussed the problematic nature of the Pepe Le Pew cartoons… that said, Warner Bros hasn’t aired that show in decades and it is not clear whether that article had anything to do with the skunk’s scene being removed from the new Space Jam movie.

Even growing up I remember things like political correctness needlessly becoming a partisan issue. When we fall into that media trap, all we’re doing is watering the plant of an already poisonous and ineffective two-party system. Be bigger than that temptation. Push back against media intended to further divide Americans. If something stinks, it’s probably rotten. Sure, there are certain topics that fall under the umbrella of political correctness that sound alarm bells for censorship issues… but didn’t everyone’s mom tell them that if they didn’t have anything nice to say, they shouldn’t say anything at all?

Again, though, the most important thing to remember about this recent wave of “canceling” is that censorship concerns are moot. A person who owns a thing is legally allowed to do all the censoring they want. It’s not the government that has decided to stop publishing 6 books written by Dr. Seuss… if it were, we could have the censorship conversation. These changes aren’t happening because there is a Democrat in the White House. They’re happening because the company who makes these products, has for whatever reason, decided to take a different approach.

In the case of the Dr. Seuss books, Dr. Seuss Enterprises re-evaluated their choice to publish 6 books based on racist themes and images. I have only heard of two of those six. The image below is, in my opinion, objectively problematic:

The fact that a major company behind such a well-known name has seen that something is problematic and has decided to stop publishing the books containing overt racist images is awesome. It sets a great example that we can all learn from. Humans have an amazing capacity to learn… that’s one of the only reasons we are in charge here on Earth. If we fall on ice once, we are often more careful on ice the next time. When we see that something is racially problematic, it’s a good thing if we can take action to get that thing out of rotation. More on that later.

Fundamentally, what is happening right now in Media Land is gross sensationalism.

“Cancel culture” isn’t real. Should people face consequences if they say or do racist things? Yes. We should all agree on that. Should we stop publishing books that perpetuate racist stereotypes? Yes. There are plenty of non-racist books that provide an education about racial differences without the added (exceedingly inappropriate) zing of Asian characters being painted yellow and African characters being given monkey features.

If you’re not convinced that some of Dr. Seuss’s material is racially problematic, I encourage you to pop on over to Google to check out the series of ads he did for FLIT in the 1930s. Yes, it was the 1930s. In the last 90 years, we’ve learned that images like that are not okay… let’s use that knowledge to let old racist graphics die.

Still can’t accept that “cancel culture” isn’t real? Still feeling like there’s something in the air now that is different and worse than before?

Okay, then, let’s consider it further.

Things have been “canceled” by people for millennia… this isn’t new. Being all for cancel culture when Colin Kaepernick kneels for the anthem (a perfectly legal form of peaceful protest considered respectful by many veterans) but opposing cancel culture when it’s threatening to eliminate an obviously racist thing is not exactly a moral stance. Burning your Nikes in the street but then turning around and spending $400 on a copy of “If I Ran the Zoo” on eBay after Dr. Seuss’s own family has pulled it from publication due to racist imagery is… silly.

The same people who seem to be so vocal about “cancel culture” now are part of the same communities who tried to cancel plenty of things in my lifetime. Things like trick-or-treating, Harry Potter, school dances, books and movies with LGBT+ characters and themes…

History absolutely bubbles over with things that have been canceled… often for good reason! Some examples that come to mind: 

DDT

the Catholic Church (see the 16th century Protestant Reformation)

doing our everyday poopin’ in outdoor holes

polio

hoop skirts

phrenology (new science cancels old science like every damn day)

Ford Pintos (not to mention cars without seatbelts)

telegrams and rotary phones (replaced by easier and better ways to communicate)

lead paint

asbestos

Four Loco

Y’all remember when we all did the ice bucket challenge to cancel Alzheimer’s?

Learning that something is problematic and moving past it is LEARNING… not cancel culture.  Learning and growth are good things. We all benefit from them.

Another thing worth commenting on from that Cat in the Hat post that circulated in my Facebook feed: why do we consistently demonize sensitivity? Racism feels like something we should all be sensitive about. If being sensitive about something results in meaningful change and a less hateful country, isn’t that… good? Why do so many Americans seem to place so much value on their “freedom” to hurt others?

And don’t get me started on comparing this stuff to Cardi B. It boggles my mind that that’s happening at all. Why is there suddenly so much outcry about one song that features female genitals in a literal ocean of songs that feature male genitals. I grew up knowing every word to songs about sex well before I even knew what sex was. Your kids are only desperate to listen to WAP because they know it makes you squeamish. And take a second to think about why it makes you squeamish. Genitals are human and scientific and we literally all have them. If you have more of a problem with WAP than with any of the other 10,000 songs about dicks and sex, you need to spend some time examining why that is.

Here’s another post I’ve seen bouncing around the social media feeds:

Something about this is just plain hilarious to me. Like what are racism and rape culture if not THE REALEST issues? This country’s problem with systemic racism runs so, so deep and is reflected very plainly in centuries of cold, hard numbers. It’s not that I *think* systemic racism is a problem. The data very clearly shows that regardless of what white people think about race in this country, systemic racism absolutely IS a problem. Racism and rape culture, arguably at the root of the most recent canceling spree, are not just real issues, they’re real American issues. They’re cultural issues. And solving cultural issues is not easy. We know that these issues have been passed down through the generations so maybe changing children’s toys and books and shows isn’t such a bad thing to try. There is SO much work to do to address racism and rape culture in the United States, but small steps are still progress.

If choosing to stop airing a show that blatantly perpetuates rape culture means one less young person is stalked or assaulted or raped, that’s worth it, no? What if that one young person who doesn’t become a victim is your daughter?

If choosing to stop publishing a book with racist themes and images leads to even one kid understanding more about the nuance of race in America and the breath-taking extent of white privilege, that’s worth it too.

Would I rather the media spend time and money to bring American attention to bigger issues associated with this nation’s racism and rape culture? 100%. There are ENORMOUS fish to fry. Dr. Seuss is not an enormous fish. Potato head toys are not enormous fish. Pepe Le Pew is not an enormous fish. They’re not even big fish. They’re small. They’re tiny fish. They’re anchovies. But frying some fish is better than frying no fish.

Canceling Pepe Le Pew is not hurting anyone. Warner Brothers owns Pepe Le Pew. Warner Brothers owns nearly everything; they are not hurting for money. And canceling Pepe certainly isn’t hurting American kids. There are plenty of other kids’ shows to watch that are significantly less problematic. Just because you watched Pepe Le Pew and went on to be a properly respectful adult doesn’t mean there aren’t other kids out there who did internalize a harmful disrespect for consent. No, Pepe Le Pew probably isn’t single-handedly responsible for anyone’s decision to stalk or rape anyone else. But could a show reinforce the groundwork that ultimately leads a kid down a path where he is unable or unwilling to respect the boundaries of others? I mean, it’s not the craziest thing I’ve heard this week.

Canceling six total Dr. Seuss books that are already pretty obscure is not hurting anyone.

Changing the name of an already genderless potato toy to reflect that genderless-ness is not hurting anyone.

A brief recap: racism and rape culture are very real, very American issues.

If the decision to stop doing a thing doesn’t hurt anyone and may even save someone some hurt, why does that decision bother you?

Also, in all your frantic Facebook posting, make sure you are differentiating between “cancel culture” and consequences. When the media tosses around the phrase “cancel culture” it has this tone of finality that is, plainly, not realistic. Fads and trends move so quickly in the internet age that the idea that a group of people could “cancel” something permanently is just not possible. People who do or say racist things, though, should face consequences. People who do or say transphobic or homophobic things should face consequences. Consequences are one of the only ways we learn to do better. And again, that’s not my opinion, it’s science.

One of the consequences that can have the most impact is, you guessed it, losing money! In this capitalist hellscape, money talks. Boycotting and choosing how we spend our money are some of the most engaging ways to combat racist and homophobic garbage. When you have your temper tantrum because the company who owns a book with overtly racist imagery decides to stop publishing that book, that speaks volumes about your priorities. If you respond to that company’s decision by buying the book in question on eBay for $400, that speaks even louder volumes. What are you doing? WHY are you doing it? I’m guessing you don’t even know, and you should probably spend some time thinking about it before you flush away a chunk of your stimmy on a freaking RACIST KIDS’ BOOK.

All actions have consequences. All of our choices never affect just us. How we vote affects other people. How we spend our money affects other people. Spending our money on things that are problematic perpetuates the problem… whether it be racism, rape culture, homophobia, or transphobia… or so many other things this country desperately needs to address.

It’s human to not like change. Change is going to happen, though, regardless of whether or not we’re comfortable with it. In the information age, we have a remarkable opportunity to steer that change. Leaving behind racist relics is change, so it may be inherently uncomfortable. But change that moves our country away from racism and rape culture is GOOD change.

I am begging you. Use critical thinking… if you’re seeing a headline about something being canceled, look up WHY. Some of these headlines are absolute bunk… they’re shared just to get people all riled up and create American division. However, just like we *should* cancel lead paint, a children’s book with overtly racist images shouldn’t be published anymore and it’s weird if you disagree with that. Disagreeing with that decision, as silly as it may seem, perpetuates racism. I know how triggered y’all can get when someone suggests you might be perpetuating racism, but it is what it is. Do your research. Don’t spend your money on racist garbage. Be better.

I feel like this post is me just barking the exact same thing in different ways, but I also feel like there is so much more I could say.

I’ll leave you with this:

What will it take for Americans to weigh the threats of racism and homophobia the same way we weight the threat of lead paint? If it’s a matter of costing lives, well, the numbers speak for themselves.

[theculturedmarxist]

The Blurst of Times

The era of Trump didn’t begin with Trump, but with Barack Obama. Eight years of the Bush administration, its curtailing of civil liberties and rights, deregulation of business, and military adventurism produced the 2000 election. In a stunning refutation of the previous eight years, voters handed the Democrats a resounding, incontestable victory. Obama beat McCain 351-173. Democrats had solid majorities in the House and Senate. Obama ran on a platform of undoing the Bush years and all which that entails. If you want a demonstration of the antipathy among Americans for the status quo, it is there.

Imagine, then, the surprise when everything immediately returned to the status quo.

Trump is not unique as far as American presidents go. He is neither more nor less benevolent, neither more nor less malevolent. His uniqueness lies in Trump the Candidate. He was not a senator, and not a representative. He didn’t govern a state, or even a city. Instead of making his way up the cursus honorum toadying and grovelling to rich donors and accruing political patronage, he simply skipped all of that. He had significant help from Democrats and their political allies to do it, but this alone doesn’t explain his success. Political outsiders making bids for the presidency are not unprecedented. Ross Perot in the 90s serves as an example, and his platform even overlaps in Trump’s in places, like the opposition to NAFTA.

Perot didn’t win any electoral votes, but he won more than 20 million popular votes. The status quo for most people was working. Things seemed to be improving. The Cold War was over. Radical change perhaps did not seem so necessary, or perhaps very urgent, quite unlike now.

This recent election is as much a farce as any other, but from it we may draw some conclusions. The status quo and its establishment parties are threatened from within and without. There is Trump of course, who came from outside the Republican party and swept up all the marbles with ease. The Democrats faced insurgency in the form of Bernie Sanders, whose platform and message proved to be incredibly popular, and in a proper democracy would have carried him into the presidency with ease. Hillary Clinton ran on nothing except the promise of more of the same, and that she wasn’t Trump. Biden ran on the fact that he wasn’t Trump, and “the return to normal,” the same normal which produced the conditions that lead to Trump. It’s telling that in effect, many people voted against Trump, rather than for Biden.

Biden the candidate, and the confederation of interests that allied across institutional and party lines to ensure his victory, make clear the bourgeois opposition to further political innovations, and to shut the door as firmly as possible on reversing their desired course. The military and espionage agencies want the wars to continue. The financial sector wants further deregulation. The political class wants to ensure that their own power structures stay in place which preclude competition from ideologies beyond the pale. In short, the election of Joe Biden represents a purely reactionary motive which seeks to undo all current change and prevent any further change. For the bourgeoisie, the Biden administration is an olive branch to the bourgeois interests represented by Trump and to the working class that elected him: “settle down, and everything will go back to normal.”

This is what will doom the political program represented by the Biden administration. There is no “back to normal,” for one thing because we never left it. What you’re witnessing now is the result of “normal.” The commitment to “normality” is effectively a refusal to accept reality. The reality of millions of people, of their suffering, deprivation, and hardship at the hands of the system that they are committed to preserving is at best an abstraction to the bourgeoisie, secluded as they are by their wealth, and political and social institutions. Is there any better illustration than their refusal to act in the face of the pandemic crisis? One stimulus check from Trump, and no more. Huge payouts to big business and scraps for small business. Protection from liability for the people responsible and for the corporations that stand to make hundreds of billions, if not trillions of dollars from their copyrighted vaccines, but no protections for the tens of millions of people facing eviction. That’s back to normal.

Two outcomes will result from this. The first is that we’re bound to face increasingly harsh repression and growing severity of reprisals from the bourgeoisie. If the circumstances that have produced this unrest, the rioting in the cities and broad social discontent, even conspiracies threatening outright rebellion, are to continue, then we’re entered into a deadly spiral of escalation. It won’t just be looted stores and police precincts burned to the ground, and popular discontent will bring them ever closer to actually threatening the bourgeoisie and the basis of their economic and political power. Millions of people are about to unceremoniously ejected from society, and without employment or property will face not only the ravages of the epidemic, but the naked brutality of this society. It is pure delusion to believe that they will not cheer its destruction, if not actively participate in it. Peaceful protest has been repeatedly ignored and systematically crushed. The bourgeois has chosen violence, and it will be horrible.

The second is that we will see Trump without Trump. If the bourgeoisie manage to keep political power, and with the weight of the police and military on their side I believe this is certain for the immediate future, then there will be other challengers advanced by the real public need for change and the disdain for established politics and politicians. The indifference of the political system is likely to drive down participation in that political system. Trump’s success is in part due to the disenfranchisement of the voter. As circumstances worsen, it will become even easier for outsiders to circumvent the political process and parties due to popular desire as well as the undoubtable accumulation of resources that is bound to continue. At some point, a billionaire or billionaires will decide to see their interests catered to directly—decide that it is better to own rather than rent—and with their vast resources take on their opposition in order to seize political power.

The Liberal euphoria surrounding the election of Biden demonstrates their class character and the substance of their political thought. It is hardly even a victory since the Biden administration has already declared their unwillingness to prosecute Trump, making this what might be at best a momentary defeat for him. Of course, since the threat of his election has been the single plank of the Democrat platform over the past two races they’re unwilling to throw him away. Without the bogeyman to frighten voters Democrats can offer no better reason to vote for them.

Joe Biden reveals the reactionary mindset which the bourgeoisie have entered into. They will neither countenance nor offer qualitative change, and their only recourse will be increasingly severe violence on the part of the state or its agents in the private sector. The only prognosis for the next four years is one of increasing danger for the working class, and the immediate necessity of its arming and organization in order to weather the intensification of the war on the working class.

[sexhaver]

Look I know you wont give a shit what an Anon has to say but please stop making it seem like voting 3rd party/write-in in November is the right thing to do. Is Biden a corporate shill? Yes. Is he 2 seconds away from having a stroke that leaves him braindead? Yes. But theres no way he would be as bad as incompetent, malicious, sociopathic Trump. And unfortunately with the electoral college, those are our 2 options. Should we tear down the system? Yes. But until then we need to do damage control

1. i vote in massachusetts so my vote literally does not matter, just like how it didnt matter in 2016 when i was registered to vote in texas (good thing too because i didn't actually get to vote that year because they """accidentally""" sent me the wrong mail in ballot form 2 days before the deadline). this is true for everyone living in a non-swing state.

2. quite frankly i am fucking sick and tired of democrats being one Planck unit further to the left than republicans and acting like that makes them the saviors of american politics and everyone who doesn't vote for them is personally dismantling democracy, while also pouring all of their resources into sabotaging any movement within the party that could conceivably move them any further to the left. the DNC has made it abundantly clear that they would rather have 4 more years of trump than 4 more years of bernie and theyre going to get their wish

3. we have this fucking discussion every single election and nothing ever changes. "just vote for the lesser of two evils this time and we can fix the system later :)" when a system consistently presents you with two evils to choose the lesser of, perhaps that system deserves to crash and burn

4. im gonna keep it real with you chief: i am not voting for a rapist

[narrowtriangle33-blog]

What do you think Martin Luther King, Jr. would think about BLM? Originally Answered: What do you think Martin Luther King would think about BLM? Well, they didn’t have BLM back in the 1960s of course. But they did have the Black Muslim movement, best known for their charismatic leader, Malcolm X.

“We are nonviolent with people who are nonviolent with us.”

“We didn’t land on Plymouth Rock, Plymouth Rock landed on us.”

“Concerning nonviolence, it is criminal to teach a man not to defend himself when he is the constant victim of brutal attacks.”

“If you’re not ready to die for it, put the word ‘freedom’ out of your vocabulary.”

“I believe that there will ultimately be a clash between the oppressed and those that do the oppressing. I believe that there will be a clash between those who want freedom, justice and equality for everyone and those who want to continue the systems of exploitation.”

“It is a time for martyrs now, and if I am to be one, it will be for the cause of brotherhood. That’s the only thing that can save this country.”

“When a person places the proper value on freedom, there is nothing under the sun that he will not do to acquire that freedom. Whenever you hear a man saying he wants freedom, but in the next breath he is going to tell you what he won’t do to get it, or what he doesn’t believe in doing in order to get it, he doesn’t believe in freedom. A man who believes in freedom will do anything under the sun to acquire . . . or preserve his freedom.”

“Dr. King wants the same thing I want. Freedom.”

“I want Dr. King to know that I didn’t come to Selma to make his job difficult. I really did come thinking I could make it easier. If the white people realize what the alternative is, perhaps they will be more willing to hear Dr. King.”

"So how did the two get along?"

"Remarkably well.Frankly, as Malcolm made clear, if white people had just done what Dr. King had asked, there would not have been a need for Malcolm. Malcolm deeply believed that white people would never relinquish the power they held unless they were forced to do so. That being said, although Malcolm talked about violence a lot, he never actually used it and he, like King, was murdered.And because people didn’t listen to either Malcolm or Martin, we got this instead."

"The Black Panthers actually started out as a peaceful movement to organize a political party because both the Democrats and Republicans in many states didn’t allow black people to join the party. It eventually turned into a militant arm of the largely peaceful organizations that had existed to that point. If you wonder why we have a “right to carry” movement, that’s the Black Panthers insisting they had the right to carry guns for their own defense against police, a right that quickly led Ronald Reagan to champion a California law to ban open carry that had the full support of the NRA."

"But let’s get things straight. Malcolm X’s father was a leader of black rights movement who was almost certainly murdered as well, except the Detroit police wrote it off as a street car accident. His mother had to be institutionalized with schizophrenia. He was raised in foster homes and despite the fact he was the smartest kid in class his teachers discouraged his ambitions of becoming a lawyer saying he should seek out a profession more appropriate for a black man, like carpentry. Instead, Malcolm became a hustler and thief and only straightened out when he found Islam during his time in prison."

"Remember that BLM is really only asking for police accountability. The talk about defunding and disbanding is based on the fact that the police are largely more harmful to the black community than they are helpful."

I would agree with a lot of this, the Police do seem to more harmful to Black Americans than they are helpful in a general sense, I could be wrong, another thing too is the writer basically exposed the NRA for it's racist hypocrisy. Black Americans are not allowed to defend themselves in their eyes.

While people will talk about how certain BLM members or people who choose to associate with them have burned down buildings and rioted. BLM still has a point when it comes to police brutality. Many Police officers not only abuse their power against many Black people or Other Black people, but they also do the same with many people of other "races" too. I do believe that they are quite a few cops that have a racial bias for sure. Those cops should NOT be on the police force, plus power abusive cops should not be on the Police force also. When I mean many I do NOT mean most Police officers, I just mean that there a lot, meaning too many who do abuse their power.

[trumantomlinson]

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I remember at that time going to my home in the country with humane intentions, and was, of course, bored to extinction. Slashing bikes btt usadas her face, cutting off an ear … the Imp’s grubby little fingers are all over this.”. "They fight for this country. Perhaps they may be paralleled by cases brought to light in the criminal jurisprudence of other countries. White said non league games will allow the chance to improve in game situations the ones that really, really matter. The neuropathy can be so dense that a patient does not even feel a nail piercing through the shoe into the sole of his or her foot. In 1985 Nike designed Jordan's first shoe the Air Jordan 1. Afterward the king had retreated to his watchtower. House Blackwood kept the old gods, and worshiped as the First Men had in the days before the Andals came to Westeros. 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[qqueenofhades]

so i’ve been following the presidential race closely, and i’ve been a fan of bernie since the start. however, my mom says that he wouldn’t make any big changes, as he’s hard to work with, can’t make the necessary compromises. the example she used was that throughout his senate term, he’s only passed 3 bills, 2 of which were insignificant. i didn’t think of this, as this is my first time closely following an election. what are your thoughts? would a sanders presidency make any real changes?

Oh dear. You really want to get me into trouble this morning, don’t you. Which is 100% not your fault, you are smart to be thinking about all this and asking questions, and by no means do I want you to stop doing that. So I’ll try to explain this as clearly and straightforwardly as I can, and if I get hate for it, alas.

The thing about Bernie is, which certain subsets of his supporters don’t seem to quite appreciate, is that he’s a great candidate, he’s been useful in pushing the public dialogue and political climate of the Democrats further to the left, he obviously inspires a devoted following, and I agree completely with all of his policies. But there’s still a gulf – a very wide gulf – between all that, and actually putting good ideas into political practice in the (very) flawed American system of government as it currently exists. Yes, the system sucks, we know that, and it can feel outrageously frustrating when moderate candidates are offering milquetoast proposals that don’t really get at the underlying structural causes of massive, entrenched inequality, oppression, racism, sexism, etc that these bright young people have rightly identified in the world. That’s why Bernie is appealing as a candidate, and while my primary already happened on Super Tuesday, I would vote for him over Biden if that was my choice right now. But the seeming expectation that we could pick Bernie, he’d win, he’d instantly remake the entire American political system and implement all his changes, and everything would be fine again – and that if we can’t have that option, just not voting is somehow better – is, to say the least, deeply problematic.

I supported Elizabeth Warren for a number of reasons, but one of them was that while she had many progressive policies similar to or almost identical to Bernie’s, she had tangible evidence of being able to get them done (see: the CFPB), to network and form functional relationships with the Democratic establishment, to work within the existing framework of party politics, and to actually do everything she had written her plans for. To certain Bernie supporters, this made her a corporate shill, a heartless witch who wanted to personally kill poor children, an establishment hack, so on and so forth. They attacked her for running in the first place, they attacked her for challenging Bernie in debates, they attacked her for not dropping out before Super Tuesday, they attacked her for dropping out and then not immediately endorsing Sanders, they attacked her supporters, so on and so forth. I’d still vote for Sanders in a heartbeat over Biden, and I will be happy to vote for him if he gets the nomination. But when you’re treating people that way who fundamentally agree with you on all your policies, there’s something wrong. 

And no, it’s not a touchy-feely “we need to hold hands and be nice and listen to each other!” respectabillity politics issue, which also gets used as a straw man. Warren was committed to Medicare for All, but she also recognized there needed to be a transition period and that a public option was a good first step (something which Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the other progressive superstar, has also said). Because she accepted any limitations, because she wanted to work in the system, because she didn’t say she’d burn down global capitalism on day 1, this made her a Very Bad Candidate, and people who otherwise agreed with her didn’t think she’d win, so they didn’t vote for her and turned it into a self-fulfilling prophecy. I’m not saying Warren didn’t have flaws. She did. She’s a politician. There were other reasons people might not have been personally drawn to her. But the flack she got for daring to run as a progressive, while also acknowledging the power of the system and that you cannot uproot these structures immediately (she also planned to use executive power to implement some of her proposals on her first day in office), while challenging Bernie… wow.

Because the thing is, Bernie isn’t going to deliver absolutely everything he promises, and that’s not necessarily his fault. No politician in the history of time ever has. If Bernie somehow does get elected, with a Democratic-controlled House and Senate: great! Then yes, he does have a decent chance of passing some planks of his legislative policy. But there are several things you have to keep in mind here, and this is not “Bernie bashing”:

1. Bernie is not, strictly speaking, a Democrat. He’s an independent, he caucuses and votes often with the Democratic party, and he’s obviously running for their presidential nomination. But he’s not part of the party apparatus, he’s proud of that fact, and this is also a selling point for his supporters: look, he’s not part of the Corrupt Establishment! The DNC obviously has deep and systematic problems and is more committed to the bureaucratic status quo than uprooting inequality in America. That’s not up for debate. But as a candidate and as a nominee for the Democratic Party, Bernie would still need to have the backing of that system. If he doesn’t have it, that makes it harder.

2. “What does that matter?” a certain kind of Bernie supporter might cry. “They’re corrupt and rigging the election for Biden! Voter suppression!”

3. Pause for a deep sigh. Yes. There were long lines in many precincts on Super Tuesday. But voters for all candidates had to stand in them anyway. We’ve already discussed how some Sanders supporters treated Warren and her supporters, the ideologically closest candidate to them in the race. If your entire political ethos involves yelling at people and calling them names on the internet, that’s… not really sustainable as an outreach program and getting them into the hard work of day-to-day coalition building. I say this because I WANT to see progressive politics succeed and actually get put into practice, not just narrowly refined tighter and tighter into a certain tiny subset of Pure Beliefs that never amount to a hill of beans in anyone’s lives. You can have the greatest policies possible, but if you never acknowledge or accept any way to DO SOMETHING about them… really, is that a political ethos based on action and compassion or not? I’m voting for Sanders if he gets the nomination, and I’d vote for him if my primary was still upcoming and my first choice (Warren) was out. But I’m pretty fed up at how some camps on that side have been acting, and I am already a progressive. This… isn’t going to help build support beyond people who are already all in for Bernie. People who you will need to win an election.

4. The usual response here is often to blow off moderates and undecided voters and other people who are apparently just too dumb to see what’s going on. Yes! It is frustrating that half of America still wants to vote for Donald Goddamn Trump! But you’re still not winning an election and getting rid of him that way!

5. Bernie does, in fact, have a thin legislative track record, which may or may not matter if he actually becomes president. America has forgotten that the president is not SUPPOSED to make policy like a king, even though the function of the executive branch has been wildly expanded and bloated since W’s (and honestly, Reagan’s) day. The LEGISLATIVE branch, i.e. the House and Senate, is supposed to make policies, and the president EXECUTES them. That is his/her (ha, if only) JOB. But Bernie doesn’t have the kind of connections in the House/Senate that would help him efficiently mobilize policies, at least on his own initiative. Bills and amendments are slow, boring work. They require committee meetings, drafts, multiple readings, changes, deletions, hearings, final passage, etc. Ironically, the person Bernie could probably most count on in the Senate would be… Elizabeth Warren. And she’d obviously help him out, no matter what the rabid Bernie bros think, but it shows that party establishment politics, no matter how distasteful, are part of getting anything done.

6. Bernie’s plans to pay for some of his big policy proposals, such as student loan debt relief (which I am obviously very into) and Medicare for All, involve, according to him, levying a big new tax on Wall Street and the one percent. Passing a major new tax platform that RAISES taxes is always like pulling teeth. That would require passage in the House and Senate. Cool, let’s say the Democrats control both. Are all of them, especially the moderate ones or senators from red-leaning states, going to vote for it? Probably. But it’s not guaranteed. If you’re funding public policy by raising taxes (the one thing the American public has notably hated since 1773) it’s going to be HARD WORK. Let’s say that takes a year to pass. Let’s also guess that a President Sanders would lose either the House or the Senate in the 2022 midterm elections, because sitting presidents almost invariably do. Obama had two years to enact some of his policy proposals. Then came 2010 and the Tea Party, and it was, as a deliberate and ongoing GOP choice, gridlock central.

7. You think the Republicans obstructed OBAMA? Centrist corporate Democrat Obama, whose policies were solidly in line with the American establishment, but who happened to have brown skin and a funny name? You ain’t seen NOTHING compared to what they would do to a President Sanders. And as we said, even if the Democrats take Congressional control in 2020, they would invariably lose at least one branch in 2022. We are already figuring in at least a year for Bernie to somehow get his tax plan through. The billionaires are mad. They pour money like crazy into GOP candidates. Welp.

8. So this leaves us… maybe 12-16 months for Bernie to try to enact all his policy reforms, while being deliberately outside of the Democratic party establishment, while having to work with the House and Senate in a way he hasn’t really done before, and accepting limitations on his policies and his political ability, also not something he has really shown an aptitude for. 

9. So what? Bernie supporters demand. Are you saying don’t vote for Bernie, it’s hopeless! CORPORATE SHILL!

10. No. Not what I am saying at all. Obviously a Sanders presidency would be light years, LIGHT FUCKING YEARS, better than what we’ve got in there right now. But Sanders (and also Biden) are in their late 70s and have underlying health problems. The likelihood that either of them would serve two full terms is… slim. Obama is two decades younger and we saw how much the presidency aged him. I feel like they’re both flawed candidates in different ways, and my deepest fear is that neither of them can beat Trump, that the Democrats by trying to go for Biden, an Establishment Centrist Old White Man, think they’re playing to a “middle” that doesn’t really exist, and that either progressives or moderates will feel left out in the cold if Biden or Sanders win the nomination. The candidate will have to do the post-convention “pivot,” i.e. trying to appeal to those of their party’s voters who didn’t choose them in the primary, but is Sanders going to do that? His whole platform and the reason his supporters love him is that he doesn’t compromise. Which again, great for ideology, but runs into problems with consistent and actual implementation.

At the end of all this, the takeaway is this: yes, vote for Bernie if you believe in him! But also have a realistic idea of what he will be up against! There is simply no way that he’s going to sweep into office, even if he does get elected, and magically whisk away all the parts of America that we hate. He would have maybe two years to ram through most of his policies, it requires a legislative skill set he hasn’t honed, it rests on passing a major tax package that would be deeply unpopular and cause him to get pummelled in the 2022 midterms, and he has made a career out of operating as the lone wolf. Once again, it’s not a question of whether the current system sucks. We know that it does. But it still exists, and one candidate, no matter how much we agree with him, is not going to change that. He would hopefully manage to pass some of his major policy initiatives. But pretending that there would be no opposition, that it would all be magically fine, and that everyone who DOES raise a note of caution is a cowardly defeatist, a secret capitalist pig, a fake progressive, a secret Trumper (and we’re not the ones threatening to vote for Trump or not at all if our fave doesn’t get the nomination) or whatever else is… not helpful.

Ultimately, if we do get stuck with Biden, we have to hold our noses and vote for him anyway. If we can hold the House and flip the Senate, they can make progressive legislation and Biden is very likely to sign it anyway. The presidential system is not SUPPOSED to rest purely on the personal beliefs of the president, like an absolutist monarch – there was a pretty famous war about it back in the eighteenth century. Biden has displayed no initiative to act like Trump and be a megalomaniacal fascist overlord. We need to take a step AWAY from the insanity that is the current administration, we need to get back to NORMAL, before we can keep going left. Which is what we want! But it happens in stages, if it happens at all, and pretending that it doesn’t, that the only options are the Whole Revolution Now or Nothing, is never, NEVER going to work. And yes, Biden’s positions are generally pretty eye-rolling and I’ll be annoyed if I have to vote for him. But I’ll still do it, because he is NOT equivalent to Trump. Biden got the Violence Against Women Act (which the GOP-controlled Senate notably just failed to reauthorize) funded and passed. Trump has been accused of sexual assault by… what, 22 women? RBG isn’t likely to last another four years. The circuit courts have already been stacked with young, wildly unqualified, hard-right John Birch Society-type judges who will hold their posts for at least 40 years, and this has a direct impact on the kind of cases that are reviewed, confirmed, or struck down even before they get to the Supreme Court. Climate change, the end. There is too much at stake to fuck this up for the sake of Not Getting Everything Now.

As a final note, the Russian propaganda/troll machine has made it clear that they’re posing as Bernie supporters who insist that if Bernie doesn’t win, you shouldn’t vote. They know Bernie supporters are already voicing and disseminating that argument themselves, and they’re going to inflame it as much as possible. So that’s something to keep in mind.

[somethingusefulfromflorida]

Now begins the lame duck pardon party.

Every outgoing president issues tons of pardons in their final weeks in office to tie up any loose threads and appease their supporters.  I for one think the president shouldn’t have the power to unilaterally overrule a duly adjudicated criminal conviction, as it spits in the face of the rule of law.  Especially under an administration as corrupt as this one, the pardon is a blank check for the president’s allies to commit any federal crime they want for any reason with no fear of prosecution.

Trump pardoned Flynn who admitted he lied to the FBI, he already pardoned Roger Stone, he’s probably going to pardon Paul Manafort, possibly Michael Cohen (Cohen jumped off the Trump Train and became a registered Democrat, but he’s a bloodsucking lawyer first and foremost, so he’ll jump right back on it if the gettin’s good enough).  There have been too many names, big and small, that have been charged for breaking the law to protect Trump, and like good little mobsters the ones who didn’t squeal will be hailed as heroes by conservatives everywhere.  “Congratulations, you got away with it scot free!”

The most telling thing will be when Trump begins pardoning people who haven’ yet been convicted of anything.  When Richard Nixon resigned, Ford pardoned him before he could face justice; his pardon was purposefully broad, covering any and all crimes that Nixon may or may not have committed or witnessed throughout his entire tenure in office.  It was a pre-emptive pardon, meant to stop the judicial process before it even started, and Trump will almost certainly reward his biggest cronies with these sweeping pardons; he might do it now, or he might wait until January 19th so they can go carte blanche for two months.  He is printing literal “Get Out of Jail Free” cards.  How far back will the pardons go?  Nixon’s covered just his presidency from January 20, 1969 to August 9, 1974, so will Trump’s pardons range from January 2017?  A lot of crimes were committed by his campaign, so 2016?  2015?  He and his goons have been grifting for decades, and the only limit to his pardon power is that he can’t undo impeachment, but considering he was acquitted it is irrelevant anyway.  I expect some of his closest advisors, attorneys, and cabinet members will be pardoned for crimes going back well into the 1970s an 80s, crimes the media doesn’t even know about, many crimes for which the statue of limitations had already expired, but Trump will want to cover his bases anyway.

And the big question is whether or not Trump will try to pardon himself.  The constitution doesn’t say he can’t, but it’s never been tested before.  I have no idea what the Supreme Court would have to say about a self-pardon; it is an open secret in politics that the president is effectively above the law, but it’s not on any books so everyone can still pretend like laws matter and crimes will be punished.  But if Trump pardons himself, and it is allowed, it will establish this as lasting legal precedent, meaning that every future President will be handed a blank check to commit any crimes he wants with ZERO repercussion.  Their popularity would probably tank if they did something egregious, or it might fuel their base and make them more popular than ever, but however the public responds, they will be sitting pretty knowing that they’re untouchable.  They can lie and cheat and steal and do things much worse than Trump already has, free in the knowledge that no prosecution can ever be laid against them.  If there was ever even a question of the legality of a president’s actions, they could pardon themselves and make it disappear.  They could assassinate political opponents, they could throw dissidents in prison without trial, they could cancel elections and throw away the constitution entirely because they can pardon themselves faster than the House could impeach and the Senate could convict.

Trump absolutely will try to pardon himself, though I don’t think he expects it to be successful.  No, I think his endgame is just to drag out the process so long that the statue of limitations will expire while his self pardon is still being appealed.  Say he committed a crime in 2016 and it has a 5 year statute; if he pardons himself and fights in the courts until 2022, the statue will expire and the pardon will be irrelevant, whether the court upholds it or not.  He just wants to obstruct, to slow things down, cause as much gridlock as humanly possible so that he can coast to freedom on a raft of bloated bureaucracy.  He expects the self pardon to fail, but he expects it to take so long to decide that it won’t matter.

The only saving grace is that he will still be culpable for state crimes.  Of course, any red state governors will pardon him at his request, but he made the mistake of doing all his business in Deep Blue New York.  Cuomo is gonna fry his ass.  Trump and McConnell have been pushing through literal hundreds of Trump-friendly judges to stack the courts in his favor, so the Biden administration will have its work cut out for them, but there are enough prosecutors in enough independent jurisdictions without conflicted judges to see the entire Trump Crime Family face decades of jail time.  Now, I don’t expect them to serve any considerable length, maybe a few months in minimum security before being released to house arrest and then paroled for “good behavior,” and I know that no matter what happens Trump will claim victory (he’ll either be found not guilty, or he’ll cry foul and appeal to a higher court he helped staff to get himself off), but Thank God for the 10th Amendment.  States ave considerable power over the feds, a right which conservatives have been fighting for for centuries, and now it’ll come back to bite them in the ass when the other side decides to start using it.  “Wait, we thought only we were allowed to do whatever we wanted...  You can’t do that yourself, that’s not fair to us!”

Trump may try to call Double Jeopardy; pardon himself for federal crimes then claim that he can no longer be charged for state crimes, but I don’t think it will hold up in New York.  SCOTUS is another matter; with 6-3, I’m sure they’ll find a way to protect their Golden Goose.

The entire system needs to be burned to the ground.  The constitution is broken, we need a frame-off restoration, a whole new document from the ground up.  It’ll never happen, but a Constitutional Convention would do wonders for this country; other countries rewrite their constitutions all the time, but America’s amendment process is completely nonfunctional by design.  We need big change, and that’s gonna require some very reluctant old Liberals to shift further left and actually balance the out of control right.

[newstfionline]

Tuesday, May 18, 2021

Fire Season Comes Early To California (CNN) Fire weather is coming early to California this year. For the first time since 2014, parts of Northern California are seeing a May “red flag” fire warning due to dry and windy conditions. The warning coverage area extends from Redding in the north to Modesto in the south, and includes portions of the Central Valley and the state capital of Sacramento. The warning also extends to the eastern edges of the Bay Area. A brush fire that started Friday in Pacific Palisades flared up Saturday due to gusty winds, burning more than 1,300 acres and threatening homes in Topanga Canyon. Topanga State Park in the Santa Monica Mountains is about 20 miles west of downtown Los Angeles. The Palisades fire caused about 1,000 people to be evacuated from their homes early Sunday, with other residents on standby to leave.

Pandemic Refugees at the Border (NYT) The Biden administration continues to grapple with swelling numbers of migrants along the southwestern border. Most of them are from Central America, fleeing gang violence and natural disasters. But the past few months have also brought a much different wave of migration that the Biden administration was not prepared to address: pandemic refugees. They are people arriving in ever greater numbers from far-flung countries where the coronavirus has caused unimaginable levels of illness and death and decimated economies and livelihoods. If eking out an existence was challenging in such countries before, in many of them it has now become almost impossible. According to official data released this week, 30 percent of all families encountered along the border in April hailed from countries other than Mexico and the Central American countries of Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador, compared to just 7.5 percent in April 2019, during the last border surge. The coronavirus pandemic has had far-reaching consequences for the global economy, erasing hundreds of millions of jobs. And it has disproportionately affected developing countries, where it could set back decades of progress, according to economists. About 13,000 migrants have landed in Italy, the gateway to Europe, so far this year, three times as many as in the same period last year. At the U.S.-Mexico border in recent months, agents have stopped people from more than 160 countries, and the geography coincides with the path of the virus’s worst devastation.

The U.S. conversation on Israel is changing, no matter Biden’s stance (Washington Post) In Washington, support for the Palestinian plight is getting louder in Congress. On Friday, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) wrote a widely circulated New York Times op-ed pulling the spotlight away from Hamas’s provocations to the deeper reality of life for millions of Palestinians living under blockade and occupation. He pointed to the havoc unleashed in recent weeks by rampaging mobs of Jewish extremists in Jerusalem, as well as the questionable Israeli legal attempts to forcibly evict the Palestinian residents of a neighborhood in the contested holy city. “None of this excuses the attacks by Hamas, which were an attempt to exploit the unrest in Jerusalem, or the failures of the corrupt and ineffective Palestinian Authority, which recently postponed long-overdue elections,” Sanders wrote. “But the fact of the matter is that Israel remains the one sovereign authority in the land of Israel and Palestine, and rather than preparing for peace and justice, it has been entrenching its unequal and undemocratic control.”      In another era, Sanders would have cut a lonely figure among his colleagues. But he is not alone. A number of Democratic lawmakers, including solidly pro-Israel politicians, issued statements indicating their displeasure with the casualties caused by Israel’s attacks in Gaza. Others were more vocal, accusing Israel of “apartheid.” Alexandria Ocasio Cortez (D-NY) tweeted: “This is happening with the support of the United States....the US vetoed the UN call for a ceasefire. If the Biden admin can’t stand up to an ally, who can it stand up to? How can they credibly claim to stand for human rights?” Jeremy Ben-Ami, president of J Street, a center-left pro-Israel advocacy organization that increasingly reflects the mainstream position of American liberals, said in a briefing with reporters last week that the “diplomatic blank check to the state of Israel” given out by successive U.S. administrations has meant that “Israel has no incentive to end occupation and find a solution to the conflict.”

Mexico City is sinking (Wired) When Darío Solano‐Rojas moved from his hometown of Cuernavaca to Mexico City to study at the National Autonomous University of Mexico, the layout of the metropolis confused him. “What surprised me was that everything was kind of twisted and tilted,” says Solano‐Rojas. “At that time, I didn't know what it was about. I just thought, ‘Oh, well, the city is so much different than my hometown.’” Different, it turned out, in a bad way. Picking up the study of geology at the university, Solano‐Rojas met geophysicist Enrique Cabral-Cano, who was actually researching the surprising reason for that infrastructural chaos: The city was sinking—big time. It’s the result of a geological phenomenon called subsidence, which usually happens when too much water is drawn from underground, and the land above begins to compact. According to new modeling by the two researchers and their colleagues, parts of the city are sinking as much as 20 inches a year. In the next century and a half, they calculate, areas could drop by as much as 65 feet. Spots just outside Mexico City proper could sink 100 feet. That twisting and tilting Solano‐Rojas noticed was just the start of a slow-motion crisis for 9.2 million people in the fastest-sinking city on Earth. And because some parts are slumping dramatically and others aren’t, the infrastructure that spans the two zones is sinking in some areas but staying at the same elevation in others. And that threatens to break roads, metro networks, and sewer systems. “Subsistence by itself may not be a terrible issue,” says Cabral-Cano. “But it's the difference in this subsistence velocity that really puts all civil structures under different stresses.”

Today’s the day: British holidaymakers return to Portugal as travel ban ends (Reuters) Sun-hungry British visitors descended on Portuguese beaches once again on Monday as a four-month long ban on travel between the two countries due to the COVID-19 pandemic ended, in a much-needed boost for the struggling tourism sector. Twenty-two flights from Britain are due to land in Portugal on Monday, with most heading to the southern Algarve region, famous for its beaches and golf courses but nearly deserted as the pandemic kept tourists away. Visitors from Britain must present evidence of a negative coronavirus test taken 72 hours before boarding their flights to Portugal and there is no need to quarantine for COVID-19 when returning home. Back at home, most British people will be free once again to hug, albeit cautiously, drink a pint in their pub, sit down to an indoor meal or visit the cinema after the ending of a series of lockdowns that imposed the strictest ever restrictions in peacetime.

Afghans who helped the US now fear being left behind (AP) He served as an interpreter alongside U.S. soldiers on hundreds of patrols and dozens of firefights in eastern Afghanistan, earning a glowing letter of recommendation from an American platoon commander and a medal of commendation. Still, Ayazudin Hilal was turned down when he applied for one of the scarce special visas that would allow him to relocate to the U.S. with his family. Now, as American and NATO forces prepare to leave the country, he and thousands of others who aided the war effort fear they will be left stranded, facing the prospect of Taliban reprisals. “We are not safe,” the 41-year-old father of six said of Afghan civilians who worked for the U.S. or NATO. “The Taliban is calling us and telling us, ‘Your stepbrother is leaving the country soon, and we will kill all of you guys.’” At least 300 interpreters have been killed in Afghanistan since 2016, and the Taliban have made it clear they will continue to be targeted, said Matt Zeller, a co-founder of No One Left Behind, an organization that advocates on their behalf. He also served in the country as an Army officer. “The Taliban considers them to be literally enemies of Islam,” said Zeller, now a fellow at the Truman National Security Project. “There’s no mercy for them.”

A Desperate India Falls Prey to Covid Scammers (NYT) Within the world’s worst coronavirus outbreak, few treasures are more coveted than an empty oxygen canister. India’s hospitals desperately need the metal cylinders to store and transport the lifesaving gas as patients across the country gasp for breath. So a local charity reacted with outrage when one supplier more than doubled the price, to nearly $200 each. The charity called the police, who discovered what could be one of the most brazen, dangerous scams in a country awash with coronavirus-related fraud and black-market profiteering. The police say the supplier—a business called Varsha Engineering, essentially a scrapyard—had been repainting fire extinguishers and selling them as oxygen canisters. The consequences could be deadly: The less-sturdy fire extinguishers might explode if filled with high-pressure oxygen. A coronavirus second wave has devastated India’s medical system. Hospitals are full. Drugs, vaccines, oxygen and other supplies are running out. Pandemic profiteers are filling the gap. In many cases, the sellers prey on the desperation and grief of families.

Full-blown boycott pushed for Beijing Olympics (AP) Groups alleging human-rights abuses against minorities in China are calling for a full-blown boycott of the 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing, a move likely to ratchet up pressure on the International Olympic Committee, athletes, sponsors and sports federations. A coalition representing Uyghurs, Tibetans, residents of Hong Kong and others issued a statement Monday calling for the boycott, eschewing lesser measures that had been floated like “diplomatic boycotts” and further negotiations with the IOC or China. “The time for talking with the IOC is over,” Lhadon Tethong of the Tibet Action Institute said in an exclusive interview with The Associated Press. “This cannot be games as usual or business as usual; not for the IOC and not for the international community.” The push for a boycott comes a day before a joint hearing in the U.S. Congress focusing on the Beijing Olympics and China’s human-rights record, and just days after the United States Olympic and Paralympic Committee said boycotts are ineffective and only hurt athletes.

Grief Mounts as Efforts to Ease Israel-Hamas Fight Falter (NYT) Diplomats and international leaders were unable Sunday to mediate a cease-fire in the latest conflict between Israel and Hamas, as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel vowed to continue the fight and the United Nations Security Council failed to agree on a joint response to the worsening bloodshed. The diplomatic wrangling occurred after the fighting, the most intense seen in Gaza and Israel for seven years, entered its deadliest phase yet. At least 42 Palestinians were killed early Sunday morning in an airstrike on several apartments in Gaza City, Palestinian officials said, the conflict’s most lethal episode so far. The number of people in killed in Gaza rose to 197 over the seven days of the conflict, according to Palestinian officials, while the number of Israeli residents killed by Palestinian militants climbed to 11, including one soldier, the Israeli government said.

Israel, Hamas trade fire in Gaza as war rages on (AP) Israel carried out a wave of airstrikes on what it said were militant targets in Gaza, leveling a six-story building, and militants fired dozens of rockets into Israel on Tuesday. Palestinians across the region observed a general strike as the war, now in its second week, showed no signs of abating. The strikes toppled a building that housed libraries and educational centers belonging to the Islamic University. Residents sifted through the rubble, searching for their belongings.

Israel’s aftermath (Foreign Policy) In Israel, the aftermath of days of violence in mixed Arab-Israeli towns has led to a one-sided reaction from state prosecutors: Of the 116 indictments served so far against those arrested last week, all have been against Arab-Israeli citizens, Haaretz reports. Meanwhile, Yair Lapid, whose centrist Yesh Atid party’s chances of forming a coalition government has crumbled since the violence broke out, placed the blame on Netanyahu. If he was in charge, Lapid said on Sunday, no one would have to question “why the fire always breaks out precisely when it’s most convenient for the prime minister.”

Long working hours can be a killer, WHO study shows (Reuters) Working long hours is killing hundreds of thousands of people a year in a worsening trend that may accelerate further due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the World Health Organization said on Monday. In the first global study of the loss of life associated with longer working hours, the paper in the journal Environment International showed that 745,000 people died from stroke and heart disease associated with long working hours in 2016. That was an increase of nearly 30% from 2000. “Working 55 hours or more per week is a serious health hazard,” said Maria Neira, director of the WHO’s Department of Environment, Climate Change and Health. The joint study, produced by the WHO and the International Labour Organization, showed that most victims (72%) were men and were middle-aged or older. Often, the deaths occurred much later in life, sometimes decades later, than the shifts worked. It also showed that people living in Southeast Asia and the Western Pacific region were the most affected.

[popwasabi]

“The Matrix Reloaded” deserves a re-watch in 2020

Here’s a burning hot take for, y’all; “The Matrix Reloaded” is not bad actually!

In fact, it’s more than not bad, it’s actually pretty good and perhaps a bit misunderstood by the fans.

Now, I’m not here to tell you it’s the best Matrix film. That honor will remain always and forever with the first movie, as it remains not just one of the best action films of all-time but one of the best science fiction films ever, period. It’s a classic and simply one of my all-time favorite films.

(Not to mention turned me into a Rage Against The Machine fan.)

But somehow, over the course of my lifetime, you know what movie I have watched exponentially more than “The Matrix?” The fucking “Matrix Reloaded!”

I used to think maybe it was an ironic infatuation. To a certain extent, I think it still is, as its overly indulgent action, bad lines at times, cringey new characters, and over the top moments can make it about as comical as many so bad it’s good movies. But growing up time can change perceptions, sometimes for the better, and can help you see things in new ways that you didn’t before and “The Matrix Reloaded,” especially this year, was one of them for me.

(My plans vs 2020)

I could defend the much controversial sequel by going in on its ambitious action film-making (the car chase is still my all-time favorite in any movie), pulse-pounding score, or its eye-popping cinematography that, honestly, holds up even to today’s standards but I think these are all things that even the film’s detractors generally agree on. 

No, I’m going to defend this film by talking about its most controversial scene: The Architect room.

I can hear the groans already and I don’t blame you. I found this scene preposterous and mightily confusing when I first saw it.

“The One is actually a part of the Machines’ system?? WTF!?”

(I remember having a similar feeling after playing Mass Effect 3...)

To be fair, its set up is a bit muddled, given the clunky script and pacing issues of the movie but when you start thinking about the message more deeply, given current events, and its relation to the real world it hits about as hard and fits as neatly as the first film’s more positive message.

The first Matrix film has a pretty dark setup, obviously. Neo finds out that he’s a part of gigantic computer program meant to create the illusion of free will for humanity while they are quite literally eaten for power by the Machines like cattle. Of course, Neo discovers he’s more than just another human connected to The Matrix but a prophesized messiah who has the ability to combat the system beyond its considerable control. By the end of the film he fulfills his destiny by becoming The One and beginning a new revolution against the Machines that control the human race.

(And looking fucking cool and totally 90s while doing it!)

It’s a pretty positive and uplifting story when you really break it down. It shows the viewer the lengths at which power tries to maintain its control and the Machines are a worthy avatar for this metaphor, but it also shows that power can be fought against when someone begins to empower themselves. When Neo says he will “show you a world where anything is possible” at the end its an earned moment of catharsis for not just him but the audience as well. We begin to start to believe in hope and beating the system too.

“The Matrix Reloaded” however goes several steps further showing that power can maintain its control in far more nefarious ways. Throughout the film Neo is told about the illusion of control and choice by characters like The Oracle and the, admittedly cringey, Merovingian. It feels strange at first because Neo is supposedly someone who is above the system but you can tell there is sense of jadedness, with some optimism of course, when The Oracle explains his role in saving Zion, like someone who has seen someone try to do this before, and The Merovingian simply mocks him for being another in a long line of “predecessors” who is completely “out of control.”

But then Neo finally does get to the Architect after being led there by The Key Maker and it’s here he learns his true nature; that he is the sixth in a long line of previous “Ones” in the Matrix and a part of The Machine’s control. He is less a prophet and more just another cog in the machine meant to lead humanity in one direction over and over again in order to create an illusion of free will for the resistance, the same way The Matrix does its human cattle.

Neo was a part of their plan and had been from the start.

(In case y’all need a refresher...)

There were tons of fans, including myself at one point, who couldn’t square with this strange narrative turn. Like Morpheus at the end of the film, there was refusal to believe it. It seemingly rewrote how one could view the first film and Neo’s role in it.

It changed the way a lot of people could see the positivity of the first film and understandably that could, and did, make a lot of people upset. Neo wasn’t sent to save humanity; he was there to keep them in line. It was like saying “actually Emperor Palpatine always wanted Luke Skywalker to blow up the Death Star.”

(I mean he does say this a lot though...)

But “The Matrix” was always about the lengths at which power works to maintain its control over the masses and “Reloaded” asks how can a corrupt and evil system be a part of the solution? How can it be reformed?

It can’t.

Way back in 2008, I cast my first vote as an eligible American for Barack Obama for president. Like many millennials at the time I found his mantra of “hope and change” sincere and uplifting and I truly felt the country was going to take a turn for the better the night he was inaugurated. For a moment it really did feel like things would be different after eight years of Bush.

Fast forward to 2011 however, and things changed dramatically for myself when I found out about the drones.

I’m aware of the fact that in leadership positions hard choices are made but after spending the previous decade vociferously calling out the Bush Administration for what they did in the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars this was a truly rude awakening for me. Combine this with finding out about him continuing Bush era tax cuts, re-upping the Patriot Act, the mass deportations, the major corporate donors, his mishandling of Flint, and The Standing Rock Crisis it became clear Obama was just as much a part of the machine as Bush was.

(Also, no matter how much you hate Trump, DO NOT participate in the the gas-lighting of this man’s record...) 

Now, I can already hear the pitchforks picking up and I’m not here to tell you that the Obama presidency didn’t have its moments or that it was worse than what we have now BUT this does not excuse what would be considered awful behavior by liberals under any conservative president.

Each Democratic presidency or nomination I’ve seen in my lifetime, from Clinton to Obama, has always touted themselves as a chance to “fix America” and bring “hope and change” to a largely corrupt system. But neither of these presidencies really changed much of what the previous conservative administrations did, in fact in some ways they got worse. Minimum wage hasn’t risen in over a decade, we still have the world’s largest prison population by far, the wealth gap has only INCREASED regardless of who held the White House, and need I remind some of you Black Lives Matter started under the Obama administration.

At some point the problem goes beyond just conservative stonewalling and political impasse. You can’t blame everything on Mitch McConnell (though a lot of it can too, admittedly). The system is behaving exactly as its supposed to because corrupt people hold power.

(They’re not laughing with you, they are laughing AT you...)

The extremely cynical Biden-Harris ticket we got going right now is being pitched, more or less, the same way as a "fight to fix everything terrible” that Trump has done. Look, I’m not going to tell you Trump hasn’t been terrible because that should be obvious to EVERYONE at this point, but when you have Wall Street goons actively cheering the announcement of the Democratic party nomination, a DNC that is running more conservative speakers in its first day than Latinx across the entire event, you have to wonder to yourself if they are really “The One.”

(A reminder that “Never Trump” Republicans are not your friends either...)

Again, I’m not saying things can’t be “better” right now under a Democratic White House or that some communities would benefit greatly from a change in leadership BUT the bar is FUCKING LOW and the truth of the matter is people WILL be hurt under the next administration regardless of who it is and framing it as “privileged” to think otherwise is actually quite privileged itself.

There are people who can’t wait for medicare for all. There are people who can’t wait for sentencing and prison reform. There are people who cannot survive another wave of US imperialism overseas.

We are being guided to the same predetermined destination that The Architect gives Neo and its what makes all this so aggravating for many.

“The Matrix Reloaded” shows Neo that he is simply another system of control for the afflicted masses but what makes the final moments of the film important is that he chooses to stop playing its game. When The Architect gives him the choice of the door that guarantees the “salvation” of the human race but in bonded servitude to the Machines and the door to make the supposed “selfish” decision to save Trinity from death but doom humanity to extinction, he does this fully expecting Neo to make the same choice every other One did before him did.

But Neo doesn’t, he goes through the door to save Trinity and for a chance to destroy the system in another way. Neo decides to break the cycle even if it might have catastrophic consequences. He challenges The Architect on whether he would be willing to allow Neo any chance at any other outcome and calls his bluff. It’s what makes him a hero and in a strange way gives “Reloaded” a positive ending as well.

(And again, just looking cool as hell while doing it.)

Now, with the way the next movie ends you could make the argument that the cycle continues and this theme gets contradicted but I would argue it’s a bit more ambiguous than that and with the fourth film supposedly on its way in the coming years there is a chance for a more conclusive and satisfying ending. This write-up is strictly arguing the message of the second film anyways.

What a viewer should get on further review of “The Matrix Reloaded” is that corrupt systems have more insidious ways of maintaining control than we may be able to accept. Wall Street goons wouldn’t allow a consistent formidable opposition party to run against them every year, it’s why they are deep in both red AND blue pockets. It’s why campaign financing is out of control. It’s why ultimately both wings of our government are pro-surveillance, pro-big money donors, pro-US exceptionalism/imperialism and the only real difference comes down to mostly minor minutia between the two to maintain their illusion of choice.

In the end to a certain extent, I still believe in the system, given that I donate money and support various leftist causes, progressive primary challenges, and reelections around the country in hopes they run a real left wing someday. However, each year, and frankly each month at the rate we’re going, I’ve grown more cynical about it. At best it is incremental change and at worst its ultimately empty power against the larger juggernaut of corrupt politics throughout our government.

(Me desperately trying to avoid the relentless bullshit of this year.)

“Reloaded” deposits that in order to break the cycle you have to make a choice not accounted for by the system. That in order to truly change anything, as silly and as obvious as it sounds, you have to do something different. Voting for people who better represent your beliefs much more fully and refusing to vote for ones who don’t is one way but as I stated in my “Black Sails” write-up the more active third option should never be off the table.

Changing the world shouldn’t come down to a false binary choice like the ones the Machines gave Neo at the end of “Reloaded.” And while, for the record, I’m not necessarily against people making the lesser of two evils choice again, people need to stop ignoring the ways in which corruption keeps its power and start having honest looks at those who call themselves “The One” who will make things right.

If this entire year hasn’t convinced you of that yet, I don’t know what will and the sooner we understand this the sooner we can start a real “revolution” in this country’s cynical politics.

Until then The Machines will continue to win...

*Me getting away from the liberal bullshit that will likely be tossed at me over this*

[anexplanationofunfortunateevents]

the biggest, most impeachable offenses ever. believe me, folks.

It’s hard to wrap our minds around just how bad Trump is. So, the usual reminders:

What we know is worse than anything the United States government has ever seen. It justifies any legal consequence available, including impeachment and prison, AND

what we know is the tip of the iceberg. There is so much we don’t know about yet which also justifies any legal consequence available, including impeachment and prison.

So, okay. As we knew, Trump tried to hook Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky into a protection racket: you help me out by manufacturing bullshit evidence that Joe Biden’s family is on the take, or that lets Russia off the hook for its attack on the 2016 election, and maybe I’ll let you get the military aid you need. Nice territorial integrity you got there! Shame if something were to happen to it.*

You’re going to see a lot of Republicans pretending it’s a lot more complicated than it is, and too many reporters humoring their arguments. Ignore them. It’s a lot worse than it looks.

Remember what they tried to pull with the Mueller report? Attorney General Barr got the report and seriously thought he could cherry-pick a few quotes to spin the least terrible story possible. Barr got burned personally with that stunt – he used to have (unjustified) cover as a respected establishment guy, and now everyone knows he’s a hack – so they didn’t go that far this time. But the basic MO applies. The White House released people’s notes of the call between Trump and Zelensky and called it a “transcript” in hopes of fooling the press into saying they’d been transparent. Unlike with the Mueller report, this didn’t even slow things down. You can read the declassified parts of the whistleblower’s complaint now, or even listen to the free audiobook.

And that gets at the two big revelations that have everyone’s hair on fire:

It’s not just Trump. Everyone around him is implicated in this, and there are witnesses and evidence trails. A lot of these guys are just fucked.

A major reason we haven’t heard about this kind of stuff before is that the White House has been abusing the classification system to hide politically embarrassing or legally questionable conversations with foreign leaders. You can skip getting into the weeds about that; just know that it’s really fucking bad.

Fortunately, they were dumb enough to set Rudy Giuliani up as their patsy. Giuliani is a) savvy enough about mafia tactics to realize what’s happening and b) having a full-blown meltdown trying to take someone down with him.

Things have been moving fast. On Sunday 9/22, 135 members of Congress supported an impeachment inquiry. On Tuesday afternoon, Speaker Pelosi announced that the House would be starting a formal impeachment inquiry. By the end of the day that Wednesday, it was up to 218, which is a majority of the House.

There’s probably a lot of reasons this is a tipping point. One reason that’s really helpful to keep in mind is that, as bizarre as this is, it’s unfolding in a kind of conventional “Washington scandal” pattern. Trump has largely gotten away with his crimes so far by committing so many of them out in the open, which flummoxes conventional reporters and other investigators. In this story, people did a bad thing, tried to hide the bad thing, and someone snitched. The revelation led to more cover-ups, which led to more snitching, which led to more revelations … you get the idea.

Or, put another way: with all the bad shit they do in public, even they thought this was bad enough to hide.

Everyone knows President Nixon left office over “the Watergate scandal.” That’s our shorthand for the criminal enterprise which was run out of the Oval Office from 1969-74. Nixon pressured federal agencies to harass his critics. His re-election committee was basically a slush fund. He manipulated the 1972 Democratic primary to choose the opponent he thought would be easiest to beat. He considered having DC office buildings bombed and plotted to murder a journalist. Decades later, we’re STILL learning about crimes Nixon did and who helped him commit them.

Still, it’s not wrong to say that Nixon left office because of the ���third-rate burglary” at the Watergate Hotel. Nobody slapped cuffs on him. He wasn’t struck down by a lightning bolt from a just and vengeful god. Public opinion drove him out of office. And for public opinion to turn like that, there needs to be a story that people know about and understand. People understand breaking and entering – and people understand extortion.

So make sure people know about this story. Push it everywhere. Call your representative. Keep an eye out for demonstrations in your area. This moment is an opportunity.

*One point that might get swamped: There are real people in Ukraine being bombed and terrorized by one of the largest armed forces in the world because the Kremlin feels like occupying their home. We have the money to help them defend themselves, and Congress decided overwhelmingly that we would do so. Trump flouted that small-d democratic mandate because he thought hanging those people out to dry would help him personally. That would be fucked up even if it had nothing to do with the 2020 election. Just a reminder that the Trump-brand crime spree has a lot of real victims and most of them don’t have representation in Congress.

[miss-nerdstiles]

THE WEST WING #105 [5-17] The Supremes Full transcript Written by Deborah Cahn Directed by Jessica Yu.  I do not own this in any way, nor do I get anything from the sharing of it.

(MONDAY)

(CROWD OUTSIDE)

DONNA: (on phone) Tommy at Justice.  Covitz at Justice.  Citizens For a Strong America. Archbishop Gaudio, Archbishop Rummel…

JOSH: What?!  

DONNA: Rummel! Of New York. Man of God.

JOSH: I can't hear a damn...  Excuse me please.  Thank You.  How are these people up so early?  

DONNA: It's a Supreme Court seat.  They had sign-painting parties the second Justice Brady dropped dead.  Council sent a new list, said burn the old list.

JOSH:  Listen to this.  “They cavalierly sacrificed the unborn innocents and beckon, arms akimbo, the reaper, the horseman and the apocalyptic end.  Akimbo is a word you wish got used more.  There’s someone out there selling  “Who Would Jesus Nominate” t-shirts.  

DONNA: They’re in Leo’s. They just started.  

(OUTSIDE LEO’S OFFICE)

JOSH: You want this?  

DONNA: You don't like it?  

JOSH: Not really. Sorry I'm late.

LEO: Dem Leadership is in with the President.  

JOSH: They giving us more names?

LEO: I'm sure they are.  

TOBY: I need the short list by the end of the week.  

LEO: Your schedule.  Your schedule.  Mine.  Keep 'em quick.  You got 3 judges an hour.  

C.J.: Who has Austin Girelli from Connecticut?  

TOBY: Me.  

C.J.: ACLU called about him.  I don't think it'll be a problem, but ask him about that migrant workers thing he wrote.  

JOSH: Why isn't Haskins on here?

LEO: Having an affair with his clerk.  

MARGARET: Toby - Dubar on line two.  

C.J.: Here’s Bernstein. And this is…

TOBY: [on phone] Senator? Yes, Senator.  No we're not having a party over the death of a Supreme Court Justice.  Well, not a big party.  

JOSH: Evelyn Baker Lang?  

LEO: Fourth circuit.  

JOSH: Isn't she kind of a lefty?

LEO: Yeah  

C.J.: Decoy duck.  And don’t do it in your office.  Do it someplace where the press can see her.  

LEO: We want the left flank sufficiently mollified and the right flank sufficiently panicked so as to inspire a little conciliation on all flanks.  

JOSH: Lang should do the trick.

TOBY: Put Fred Canterbury down on some list of people we’ll never consider.  

C.J.: Baker Lang's just with Josh?

LEO: You want Toby too?  

C.J.: It'll look more like we're taking her seriously.  

LEO: Toby, Evelyn Baker Lang will be your 8:45 with Josh.  Let's go, people. First one to find me a Supreme Court Justice gets a free corned beef sandwich.  

(ROOSEVELT ROOM)

JOSH: Obviously we're impressed with your record.  

TOBY: Your work on the 14th Amendment in particular is the stuff dreams are made of.  

JOSH: But before anything else, we want to gauge your interest level.  This will certainly be a lifestyle...  

LANG: We can just chat  

JOSH: I'm sorry?  

LANG: I hear you really went to bat for Eric Hayden.  

JOSH: I wish we could have gotten him confirmed.  

TOBY: Judge Lang, if the President were to...  

LANG: Is he still teaching?

JOSH: Eric?  Yeah.  Umm...again, if we...  

LANG: A conservative anchor of the court has just died.  A young brilliant thinker who brought the right out of the closet and championed a whole conservative revival.  You cannot replace Owen Brady with a woman who overturned a parental consent law.  You'd be shish-ka-bob'd and set aflame on the south lawn.  Two reporters have... three reporters have walked by since we started.  I'm window dressing. That's fine. I'm happy to help.  But let's just chat about the weather.

(OUT IN THE HALL)

TOBY: Not bad.

JOSH: That's what we're talking about.  Maybe we should put her on the short list.  

TOBY: Yeah

JOSH: Okay, who's next?  (Donna gives them folders)

TOBY: That’s his.

DONNA: This is…

JOSH: That’s a “no”.

ACT ONE  

(DONNA’S DESK)

DONNA: Sign, please.  

JOSH: You want to move it so I can see?  

DONNA: Not really  

JOSH: Why are we apologizing to Ashland?  

DONNA: We sent him flowers. Condolence flowers.  

JOSH: Condolences?  

DONNA: For his death.  

JOSH: He's alive.  

DONNA: That's what he said.  

JOSH: We sent flowers to the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court on the occasion of his death?  

DONNA: They were supposed to go to Justice Brady's family.  

JOSH: Get protocol on the phone.

DONNA: They didn't actually....

JOSH: We did this?!  

DONNA: It was an honest mistake. Ashland's 80, he's knock knock knocking on ....  

JOSH: Who put the order in?

RYAN: Hey guys!  

JOSH: You sent a funeral bouquet to the family of the living breathing Chief Justice of the Supreme Court?

RYAN: No I sent them to the guy who died , Brady.  

JOSH: No, actually you didn't.

RYAN: This is terrible.  Umm... I really apologize.  You know I am a nightmare with details.  It's embarrassing.  This stuff just leaks out of my head. We should leave the detail work to Donna.  She's got the head for it.  I'm more of a big picture kind of guy.  

JOSH: She's here because she's invaluable.  You're here because your uncle's so powerful I can't fire you.  Big Picture.  

LISA: Hi.  Bad time?  

JOSH: I'm on my way out.  

LISA: Two minutes.  

RYAN: Lisa, right?  You work for the Judiciary Committee.  

LISA: Staff Director.  

RYAN: Ryan Pierce, we met at my office.  

JOSH: Excuse us.  

LISA: Is he the one who flipped the car in Nice?  

JOSH: Yeah.  

LISA: When do I see names for Brady's seat?  

JOSH: Do you want to let the body cool?  

LISA: You’re meeting with Barwald, Girelli, Evelyn Baker Lang.

JOSH: Here we go.

LISA: Whose acid trip is that?

JOSH: Just take a breath.  

LISA: The committee’s not going to let the balance of the court hurl wildly to the left.  You fill Brady's seat with...  

JOSH: It's not Brady's seat.

LISA: It's not your Senate.

JOSH: We're just looking at the field.  

LISA: Girelli has a fondness for Vicodin and Evelyn Lang is not an option.  Save us all some time.  

JOSH: We're some democrats over here.  We're not going to nominate a born again elk hunter with a tattoo of the confederate flag on his ass.  

LISA: Look at Arthur Lopez or Brad Shelton or Mayra Height.  You go with Barwald or Lang and the Senate is going to make the next year of your life a living hell.  I tell you this as a person who would be your friend if I was a person who looked for different things in friends.  

JOSH: We should do this in more often.  

LISA: As often as it takes.

(LEO’S OFFICE)

LEO: [on phone] We don't' hate Asians.  No we don't.  Justice Wong is more valuable to us where he is. Certainly. Thank you sir. [hangs up] Do a drive-by with Sebastian Cho, Massachusetts Supreme.  

TOBY: Yeah.  You were looking for me?  

LEO: You hear about a congressional delegation to the Middle East?  

TOBY: Next month.  

LEO: It was Jordan and Egypt. Now they want to add Israel and do a day in the territories and meet with this shadow negotiation crew.  State's iffy.

TOBY: As they should be.  The Prime Minister is going to go through the roof.  

LEO: Not to mention the Palestinian authority.  

TOBY: I'll look into it.  

LEO: Andy's leading the delegation.  Is that going to be a...  

TOBY: No.  I'm on it.  

JOSH: President's on his way.  What's up?  

TOBY: We hate Asians.  

JOSH: Okay.  

(OUTSIDE OVAL OFFICE)

DEBBIE: Ah Rina, how goes it?

RINA: These are today's. And Mr. Ziegler says that the President would want this before their 1:00.  

DEBBIE: Oh here, you can put it in his hot little hands yourself.

RINA: Ah, this is for you, sir.

BARTLET: Thank you Lana.  

RINA: Uh, thank you sir.  (to Debbie) It…

DEBBIE: I hate to do this, but it's Rina, sir.  

BARTLET: What?  

DEBBIE: The girl in the dress with the flowers.  

BARTLET: Just now?  

DEBBIE: Yes.  

BARTLET: What'd I call her?

DEBBIE: Lana.  

BARTLET: Who's Lana?  

DEBBIE: I'm guessing an exotic dancer from your spotty youth.  

BARTLET: I should apologize.  Get her back.  

DEBBIE: You asked me yesterday how the schedule gets off the rails.  

BARTLET: Yeah.  

DEBBIE: This is how.  

LEO: Good afternoon, Mr. President.  

BARTLET: Hey, we make any friends?

JOSH: Maybe Zimmerly, Shelton.

TOBY: Mehldau.  

JOSH: Lang was pretty impressive.

BARTLET: The gal from the 4th?  Didn't she strike down some stuff?

JOSH: Parental consent for abortion.  

BARTLET: Yeah, that's not going to happen.  

LEO: She was a red flag to the bull.  

JOSH: Well, it's working.  Lisa Wolfe from the judiciary committee showed up today spewing all kinds of threats and admonitions.  

LEO: About what?  

TOBY: Three dems on the committee called, elated we were considering bold choices.  

LEO: If the strategy's working, let's get her in again.  

BARTLET: You like Shelton?  

JOSH: Yeah.  Moderate, insightful, gets it.  

BARTLET: Let's meet him.  Who else?  

JOSH: Helen Waller.  Beresford Bannett DC Circuit.  Ellis Yaffe.  Martha Zell. Uh.. Howard Kagen out of New York.

(TUESDAY)

(C.J.’S OFFICE)

TOBY: What are you doing?  

C.J.: Nothing.  

TOBY: What?  

CAROL: She has a date.  

C.J.: And she's getting fired.

TOBY: Evelyn Lang’s coming back in for another red herring performance, 3:00.  You don't find that annoying?  

C.J.: I'll have Carol march the Times by Lang at three.  

TOBY: Brad Shelton's in with the President.  

C.J.: We like him.  

TOBY: Yeah,  we do.  

(OVAL OFFICE)

BARTLET: E. Bradford Shelton.  What's the E for?  

SHELTON: Elijah.  

BARTLET: That's a burden.  

SHELTON: Hence the E.  

BARTLET: I hear good things about you from my staff.  What did they miss?  

SHELTON: My son burned you in effigy.  

BARTLET: Did you watch?  

SHELTON: I didn't. It was a campus demonstration against American presence in Saudi Arabia.  There's a photo in his yearbook.  Someone'll dig it up.  I thought it would sound better in person than on paper.  

BARTLET: I'm not sure it did.  Did he burn anybody else?  

SHELTON: No, just you.  

(HALLWAY)

LANG: Well, I’ve missed you both.

JOSH: We appreciate this.  

LANG: I keep running into Brad Shelton in the parking lot.  Some say coincidence. I'm not so sure.  

JOSH: You have been very patient.

LANG: Well I don't mind.  But people wonder why the appellate system is so backed up.  We shouldn't let them know this is how I spend my time.  

TOBY: Well, if you were less appealing.  

LANG: Same to you sir.

(OVAL OFFICE)

BARTLET: Affirmative action is going to be back in the next few years.  Let's start there.  

SHELTON: What do I know about it?

BARTLET: What do you think about it?

SHELTON: I don't know.  Not the answer you were looking for?  

BARTLET: Not really.  

SHELTON: Unnerving isn't it?

BARTLET: Is there another topic you'd be more comfortable with?  

SHELTON: Nothing comes to mind.

BARTLET: Perhaps you should make something up.  

SHELTON: I'm not trying to be cagey, but I don't position myself on issues and I don't know what I think about a case until I hear it.  There are moderates who are called that because they are not activists.  And there are moderates who are called that because sometimes they wind up on the left and sometimes on the right.  

BARTLET: You think I want someone who’s gonna vote with Ashland?  

SHELTON: I think you are looking for somebody who will vote with him now and replace him later.  

BARTLET: And that's not you?

SHELTON: Wish it were.  He's a giant.  But my allegiance to the eccentricities of a case will reliably outweigh my allegiance to any position you might wish I held.  

(ROOSEVELT ROOM)

JOSH: Let's talk a little bit about what the judiciary committee's concerns would be.  We can safely say reproductive rights are gonna come up.  

TOBY: They're going to say judicial activism, particularly in drori.  How would you address that?  

LANG: And you're who?  

TOBY: I'm sorry?  

LANG: Who are you?  We're playing committee.  

JOSH: This will be coming from one of the 11 Republicans on there.  Mitchell -  

LANG: You can only be one.  

JOSH: We don't need to -  

LANG: If you're Webster, the question is 'Where do you stand on Roe v Wade?'.  And the answer is 'Judicial ruling shouldn't be based on personal ideology, mine or anyone else's'.  If you're Davies, the question is 'How would you approach a D&X case?' because he's the drum banger on partial birth.  And the answer is 'I don't comment on hypotheticals'.  If you're Malkin, you're from Virginia, so you ask about my decision in drori.  I take you point by point from the doctor to the father to Casey to undue burden to equal protection back to Roe at which point you can't remember the question and I drink my water for a minute while you regroup.  

JOSH: Will you excuse us for a second?

(OUT IN THE HALL)

JOSH: I love her.  I love her mind.  I love her shoes.  

TOBY: We march her to five senator's offices and they'll be so scared they'll beg us to put Shelton on the court.  

(ROOSEVELT ROOM)

JOSH: Sorry. You were vetted by the FBI when you hit the Federal bench, but if we re-opened an investigation....

LANG: I'm a shill, right?  Why would you bother with a background check?  

JOSH: Humor us.  

TOBY: If there's anything that they didn't find...  

LANG: Let's see, umm... in high school I snuck a copy of Lady Chatterley’s Lover out of the public library and never returned it.  In college I got a marijuana plant from my roommate as a birthday present.  And in year two of law school I had an abortion.  Can I get some water while you regroup?

ACT TWO  

JOSH: Okay.  Okay.  

LANG: I tell you this so you'd be prepared. It might not come up, but if it did, I wouldn't comment.  

JOSH: But if they know, it'll be hard.  

LANG: Roe v Wade affords me the right to terminate a pregnancy and to do so, free from all restraint or interference of others.  

JOSH: A hearing room....  

LANG: I'm told I have a right to privacy.  I think this would be the sort of thing it's referring to.  I also bet like a drunken sailor during my bi-monthly games of Hearts.  Do you wanna talk about that?

(C.J.’S OFFICE)

C.J.: An abortion?  

TOBY: Of all the gin joints in all the world....  

JOSH: Maybe they won't find it.

TOBY: Oh, they'll find it.  

JOSH: Yeah, but who's going to bring it up?  The committee, they'd look like monsters.  

C.J.: They don't have to.  Someone leaks it to the tabloid press, it's a feeding frenzy in 12 hours.  

JOSH: She says she can handle it.

C.J.: Oh, okay.  

TOBY: Well, we need her.  She's the cautionary tale.  Without her, we may not get Shelton.

C.J.: You been outside today?  We don't hand someone to the madding crowd so they can take the heat off some guy from Indiana.  

JOSH: The woman is - you should hear her.  

C.J.: What? So she IS a serious candidate?  

JOSH: She should be.  

C.J.: She's going to be on posters under a headline that says 'Wanted for the murder of 15 million American children'.  

JOSH: Let's think about this.

C.J.: Let it go.  

JOSH: No.  Really, nominees live or die by Roe v Wade.  We're playing along with the ridiculous notion that the Supreme Court is a single issue body in a way it hasn't been since, I don't know what...  

TOBY: Slavery.  

JOSH: Exactly.  So she had an abortion. Who the hell are we?  

C.J.: You think I like this? You keep this up, somone's going to take this to the press and this bright woman's going to be a checkout counter spectacle. Get her out of the building.

(WEDNESDAY)  

(OVAL OFFICE)

BARTLET: Brad Shelton could work for us.  I like him.

LEO: So talk to him this afternoon.  He's going to start getting calls.  

BARTLET: Who else?  

TOBY: Wisnewski’s a good maybe.  The majority leader’s really pushing him.  And Barkham from the 5th, though he has a question.  

JOSH: It's a tax thing.  We're looking into it.  

BARTLET: You still having a love affair with Evelyn Lang?  

JOSH: No. Uh, Robert Brant.

BARTLET: How come?  

JOSH: She won't make through vetting.  

BARTLET: Why not?  

TOBY: She had an abortion.  

JOSH: Robert Brandt’s on the 9th circuit state.  Stan Yancy's worked with him and says he's always kept his cards -  

BARTLET: When did she have an abortion?  

JOSH: Law school.  

BARTLET: Before or -  

C.J.: After '73, it was legal.

BARTLET: We discarding anybody else for legal activities?  

TOBY: Not yet.  

BARTLET: Tonsillectomy? We down on surfing this year?  

C.J.: She'd be publicly eviscerated.  

BARTLET: 27 million women voted for me.  I think they might had in mind that I was going to protect this particular right.

JOSH: We have plenty –

BARTLET: “I like that guy from Florida with the good hairdo, but I want to retain my right to choose, so I'm voting for what's-his-name, married to Abbey Bartlet.”  

TOBY: Sir.  They're going to make this about her objectivity.  

BARTLET: We promised the committee a short list by Friday.  I want her name on it.  

LEO: Okay.  

STAFF: Thank you, Mr. President.  (EXEUNT)

BARTLET: That pisses me off.

LEO: Apparently.  

BARTLET: We marched her around here all week.  The honor of a place on the short list is the least we could do.  

LEO: We’re still going with Brad Shelton?  BARTLET: (nods)

(DONNA’S CUBICLE)

RYAN: Filling a seat on the Supremes…heady stuff.  

DONNA: Don't call them that.

RYAN: My uncle calls them that.  So does the minority leader.  So does Henry Clark.  You know him? He's on the court.  

DONNA: You drop one more name and I'm going to staple your mouth shut.  

RYAN: (chuckles)

JOSH: There’ll be hell to pay at Agincourt.  I've offended the dauphin.  

DONNA: Lisa Wolfe called twice.  Senator Webster called regarding E. Lang.  “What can you possibly be thinking?”  Senator Milbank, regarding Lang.  “NO NO NO NO NO.” Bertha McNull, “Not a snow ball's chance in...” oh, that's not about Lang.  That's about the highways bill.  

JOSH: I need a drink.  

DONNA: Sun’s not over the yardarm.

JOSH: C.J.'s right.  

DONNA: Usually. You want a Black Eyed Susan?  

JOSH: Is that a drink?  

DONNA: It's a cookie.  My mom sent them.  

JOSH: No -- Yes.  

DONNA: Peanut butter with a chocolate kiss.  

JOSH: They’re cat people?  [holding up cookie tin]

DONNA: No they're not.  

JOSH: These theirs?  

DONNA: Shadrach and Meschach.

JOSH: Two cats, they’re cat people.  

DONNA: For years they only had one, but he died over Christmas.  

JOSH: This is a dry cookie.

DONNA: After what was deemed an appropriate mourning period, they went to get a new one. And my mother liked the abyssinian and my father liked the gray.  And they claim that after 39 years of marriage, they’ve outgrown compromise, so they got both.  It doesn't make them cat people.  The house doesn't smell. Do I have crumbs?  

(TOBY’S OFFICE)

JOSH: They pick one.  They pick one! That's how we get Evie Lang. And not as a decoy.  We put her on the court.  

TOBY: Hi.  

JOSH: The Chief Justice says he wouldn't step down because the President wouldn't be able to fill his seat with another liberal lion.  She's the liberal lion. Ashland resigns, she takes his seat, okay?  And we offer the Republican Senate Judiciary Committee the opportunity to hand-pick a conservative for Brady's seat.  We put 'em both up.  

TOBY: I’m ordering mu-shu. You want some?  

JOSH: Listen to me.  

TOBY: No.  

JOSH: I'm serious.  

TOBY: And then we got what, after we hand the Republicans a seat on the Supreme Court with a red bow on top?

JOSH: We have a balanced court.  They can't let Brady's seat go to a liberal.  So let them keep it.  Meanwhile, we name the first female Chief Justice of the Supreme Court in the nation's history.  I'm taking it to the President.  

TOBY: No you're not.  Do not go in there.  

(HALLWAY)

JOSH: Trip him.  

TOBY: Ashland is 82.  We may have an opportunity to put two people on this bench. That's two seats we fill with Democrats.  

JOSH: Moderates.  

TOBY: What do you care how moderate they are?  Two is twice as many as one.

(OUTSIDE OVAL OFFICE)

JOSH: Can I get in there?  

DEBBIE: No, just a minute.  

TOBY: We don't need him.  

JOSH: Not moderate, mediocre.

TOBY: What, Shelton’s not bright enough for you?  

JOSH: I want more than bright.  If we had a bench full of moderates in ’54, 'Separate but Equal' would still be on the books, and this place would still have two sets of drinking fountains.  

TOBY: Moderate means temperate.  It means responsible.  It means thoughtful.  

JOSH: It means cautious.  It means unimaginative.  

TOBY: It means being more concerned about making decisions than making history.  

DEBBIE: Indoor voices please.

JOSH: Is that really the biggest tragedy in the world?  That we nominated somebody who made an impression instead of some second rate crowd pleaser?

TOBY: The ability to see tow sides of an argument is not the hallmark of an inferior intellect.  

DEBBIE: Toby!

JOSH: What about the vast arenas of debate a moderate won't even address? A mind like Lang's?

DEBBIE: Josh!  

JOSH: Let them pick a conservative with a mind like like Justice Brady had.  

DEBBIE: Josh!  

JOSH: You can hate his positions, but he was a visionary.  He blew the whole thing open.  He changed the whole argument.

DEBBIE: (sprays water in Josh’s face) The President will see you now.  

BARTLET: And you?  

TOBY: I think they're going to pick a young, spry, conservative ideologue who's going to camp out in that seat for 45 years.  

JOSH: Fine.  Two voices are articulating the debate at either end of the spectrum.  

BARTLET: Filling another seat on the court may be the only lasting thing I do in this office. Shelton's a great choice. He'll make us proud. And if Ashland resigns in a year, we’ve got a stack of great options. We can't give it away.  

JOSH: Mr. President, the first woman in that chair.  

TOBY: We go out on some limb here and alienate the Senate, they'll tread water for three years, and we get nobody. The next guy gets to fill Brady's seat.  

BARTLET: Take it to Ashland.  See what he says.

TOBY: How’d you come up with it?

JOSH: What?  

TOBY: The swap-a-dee-doo.  

JOSH: There was.... Donna's mom... I thought it up in the shower.

(JUSTICE ASHLAND’S OFFICE)

ASHLAND: Who let them in?  

TOBY: Sorry to disturb you, sir.

ASHLAND: Carrier pigeons. Oh -- your flowers.  Yeah, we like them.  

JOSH: I'm dreadfully sorry about that, sir.  

ASHLAND: Oh for God's sake, let us sit upon the ground and tell sad stories of the death of kings.  Brady was your age.  Eat your greens.  

TOBY: He was a great man.  

ASHLAND: He was a selfish bastard.

JOSH: You told the President you hope to be replaced by a liberal with the same level conviction that you brought to the chair.  

ASHLAND: That sounds like something I'd say.  

TOBY: Sir, are you familiar with Evelyn Baker Lang?  

ASHLAND: Miss Lang. You've met with her?  

JOSH: Yes sir.  

ASHLAND: How are you going to get her past the pit bulls?  They're not going to like the notion of Miss Lang in Owen Brady's seat.  

JOSH: For your seat, if - if - you were to resign, she'd be Chief.  

ASHLAND: My seat? What about Brady's?  

TOBY: We'd allow the Judiciary Committee to choose someone.  A conservative.  

JOSH: Would you consider stepping down under those circumstances?  

ASHLAND: Sure.  

JOSH: We think it might be a viable option.  

ASHLAND: Go ahead, see who they pick of their favorite sons.  See what segregationist, anti-miscegenationist,  Isaiah-quoting, gay-bashing bastard they come up with. Jed Bartlet from New Hampshire had an idea.  Uh-oh.

ACT THREE

(THURSDAY, LISA WOLFE’S OFFICE)  

LISA: No, I cut this because what he's implying is illegal.  Take it back out. [to Josh] Three times in one week.  In some cultures we'd be married.  

JOSH: Chilling.  

LISA: Is it Shelton?  

JOSH: He's the front runner.

LISA: Good, are we done?  

JOSH: Mind if I shut the door?

LISA: No.  

JOSH: How are you doing?  

LISA: Ah, super!  

JOSH: Feeling good?  

LISA: I got a meeting in 4 minutes.  

JOSH: I'm going to float an idea here that even I can't believe I'm mentioning and my colleagues definitely can't believe I'm mentioning, and the President would probably prefer I drop completely and if I find it in the Washington Post tomorrow morning, I'll march straight out to the Press Room and tell them the idea came from you.  It'll embarrass the crap out of your boss and you'll be on Hotjobs by nightfall.

[THE WHITE HOUSE. TOBY’S OFFICE]  

TOBY: There's someone in my office.  

RINA: I thought it was your ex-wife.  

TOBY: You didn’t want to warn me about that?  

RINA: You asked her to come in.

ANDREA: She's cute.  

TOBY: Late some night, our eyes’ll meet over the maritime commission report. We'll be at the Justice of the Peace before dawn.  You want to talk about this dog and pony show you're attending in Gaza?  

ANDREA: Not really. Bradford Shelton.  

TOBY: He's on the list. You're not going to Gaza.  

ANDREA: I still don't want to talk about it.  

TOBY: You're not attending peace talks with a bunch of Israelis and Palestinians who don't work for the Israeli or Palestinian governments.  

ANDREA: They may generate some useful ideas.  

TOBY: The ideas already exist. The problem is getting the recognized parties to stick to the plan.  

ANDREA: So we sit with our hands folded?  

TOBY: We asked them for democracy. We should maintain some scrap of respect for the guys who are democratically elected.  

ANDREA: If you're really interested in peace, you negotiate with anyone.  You negotiate with the mailman.  

TOBY: Thanks for tee-ing that up. The mailman can't deliver.  

ANDREA: We'll see.  

TOBY: No, we won't see. You're jeopardizing this country's relationship with the Likud party and with the Palestinian authority, and it is not an option.  

ANDREA: Is that all you've got? There’s no “and what about the kids?”  

TOBY: Did something happen?

ANDREA: I'm going away for two weeks.  

TOBY: Will they be...?  

ANDREA: At my mothers...  

TOBY: Good.  

ANDREA: Would you have asked?

TOBY: I figured your mother’s, which is apparently....  

ANDREA: You say you want to be involved. It doesn't come with an embossed invitation. You involve yourself or you don't.  

TOBY: The President would like to remind you that this is a fact-finding mission. Please make it clear to any parties that you meet with that you are not empowered to negotiate for the United States.  

[OUTSIDE C.J.’S OFFICE]  

JOSH: Is she in there?  

CAROL: Hang on. She's getting off....  [C.J. laughs loudly through the door]  the phone.... [into speaker phone] you want Josh?  

C.J.: Lord knows I do! Josh Lyman as I live and breathe!  You want a cookie?  They're from Donna's mother.  

JOSH: I spoke to Lisa Wolfe.

C.J.: What did she say?  

JOSH: I don't want to talk about it. I'm hiding from Toby.  

C.J.: [giggles] Nothing. You're hiding. It's funny.  

JOSH: It's not funny.  

TOBY: Hey  

C.J.: [laughs] see?  It is.

JOSH: I gotta go.  

TOBY: What's going on?  

JOSH: C.J. has the giggles.

C.J.: It's your deal.  I find it elating.  

TOBY: She stoned?  

C.J.: I'm fine. I just didn't get enough sleep.  

JOSH: You were with Ranger Rick weren't you?  

C.J.: Josh spoke to Lisa Wolfe.

TOBY: She give you a name?  

JOSH: You are a faithless wench.

TOBY: What's the name?  

JOSH: Christopher Mulready.  Wait for it....  

TOBY: Christopher MULREADY????!!!!

JOSH: There it is.  

C.J.: He’s not the....  

TOBY: American's Democrats - The triumphant of Socialism.  

JOSH: He doesn't like the name.

TOBY: The man wrote a book that flushes the entire doctrine of un-enumerated rights down the -

C.J.: Toilet.  

TOBY: …garbage disposal. No right to use a condom. No right to get an abortion, certainly. No protection from electronic searches. No substantive due process.  

C.J.: He's what, 48?  

JOSH: I know.  

C.J.: The left's going to blow a gasket!  

TOBY: No separation of church and state.  

JOSH: We got problems on the right too.  Kogan, Howard, Tondello.  They can't vote for a Mulready.  Their constituencies are too moderate.  

TOBY: Get another name.  

JOSH: That is the name.  

TOBY: There are other....  

JOSH: This is the deal. He's what Evelyn Lang is to them. We nominate the patron saint of a woman's right to choose for Chief Justice. We ask them to ignore an incredibly rich piece of her personal history. We take the name they give us.  

TOBY: This isn't going to work.

JOSH: Yeah.  

TOBY: It isn't.  

[JOSH'S OFFICE]  

TOBY: If --- if we were going to try this, what would be the plan?  

JOSH: We give the President and Leo the name. We bring Christopher Mulready in. We bring Lang back in, hopefully the two of them woo the pants off the President. And he agrees to the deal without noticing he's standing in the gaze of history, pantless.  

TOBY: I'll talk to him.  

JOSH: You don't have to talk to him.  

TOBY: You have been on about this. It sounds more plausible coming from me. What are you gonna do about the committee?  

JOSH: Lisa Wolfe’s gonna take it to the Chairman.

TOBY: I mean the Democrats. I need to get Senator Pierce on board or you get nobody.  What are you going to do about Pierce?  

RYAN: (singing)'Won't you stay... just a little big longer... '  

DONNA: Stop.  

TOBY: I thought you were firing him?  

JOSH: If wishing made it so. Donna! Send in Elvis.

RYAN: What's up?  

JOSH: Come on in, take a load off.  I was a little, ah, brusque with you before. I'm sorry about that.  

RYAN: Okay.  

JOSH Your feelings a little hurt?

RYAN: Not at all  

JOSH: Really? Why not?  

RYAN: Would this be easier if they were?  

JOSH: I said I was going to fire you if it wasn't for....  

RYAN: Are you?  Firing me?  

JOSH: No.  

RYAN: Then there's a “sticks and stones” thing that comes to mind.  

[OUTSIDE OVAL OFFICE]

TOBY: Finishing a call. I spoke to Andy.  

LEO: Anything?  

TOBY: No. The National Security Caucus is sponsoring the delegation. We could talk to them.  

LEO: We'll deal with it next week. Don't worry about it.  

TOBY: We got a name for Brady's seat.  

LEO: Somebody workable?  

DEBBIE: You can go in now.  

LEO: Thank you.

(OVAL OFFICE)

BARTLET: MULREADY!  

TOBY: That's the name.  

BARTLET: No! Are you out of your bloody mind?  

TOBY: Let's sit down and talk about this.  

BARTLET: The last time I heard Christopher Mulready's name it was in conjunction with a treatise over the rights of incorporation, and some sort of baloney about the stranglehold the EPA has placed on the endangered species list…

ACT FOUR  

(THURSDAY)

[DONNA’S CUBICLE]

JOSH: Ryan in here yet?  

DONNA: Not yet.  

CHARLIE: Chris Mulready?  

JOSH: Yeah  

CHARLIE: Dissented on minority set asides. Struck down hate crime legislation. Went after miranda rights. Feeling pretty good about that?  

JOSH: It's not a perfect plan.  I'm the first to admit.  

CHARLIE: The President wants to reiterate, he’s not spending more than five minutes with this clown.

C.J.: The press room is clear. Carol is going to babysit the filing shop.  But keep an eye out for roving reporters.  

CHARLIE: You're in on this too?

JOSH: We got Lang coming in to meet the President at 7.  Christopher Mulready is at 8.  The press can't see him. We need a clear shot from the Roosevelt room to the Oval.  

DONNA: He's on the short list?

JOSH: He is if she is. We may get both.  

DONNA: Oh my god. You're putting my mother's cats on the Supreme Court.  

C.J.: You're what?  

JOSH: It's just an experiment. She’s on sentry.  We’re good.

TOBY: Hi.  

JOSH: Don't ever tell anyone that story.  

TOBY: We all settled?  

C.J.: Lefty’s got the goods.  Rocko got the call.  Stinky's on lookout.  

DONNA Hey!  

RYAN: Shall we?  

JOSH: Your uncle’s here?

C.J.: Knock 'em dead. Pierce’ll never buy it, will he?  

TOBY: Nope.

RYAN: Remember, he's all bark.  Just let him holler and wear himself out.  He's got the strength. You've got the endurance.  Here.  [hands over bottle of scotch]. Use it wisely and for God's sake, don't try to keep up.  You're way out of your league.  

JOSH: Not necessary.  Thank you.

(MURAL ROOM)

SENATOR PIERCE: Good to see you, Josh.  

JOSH: Senator Pierce, thank you so much for stopping in.  

RYAN: Josh was pretty impressed with your floor speech on Tuesday.  

PIERCE: Josh can kiss up all on his own.  Get back to work.  

RYAN: Yell if you need anything.

PIERCE: My nephew behaving?

JOSH: He's a… treat.

PIERCE: Well, he better be.  Bugged me for two years to get him a job in this place.  

JOSH: Really?

PIERCE: Watch yourself, he's a lean and hungry type.  Have someone taste your food.  

JOSH: Ryan?

PIERCE: So!  Craziest rumor you ever heard running around the committee.

JOSH: Oh, yeah?

PIERCE: Charlie Felson says you want to put Chris Mulready on the Supreme Court. I said anybody who tries is going to find himself in a closed session with myself, the minority leader, and the business end of a two-by-four.  

JOSH: You know, we got a 21year old Glenlivet knocking around here. Can I get you a drink?  

[DEBBIE'S OFFICE]  

C.J.: Lang still in there?  

DEBBIE: Oh, she's a big hit.

C.J.: She has to leave. Her evil twin Skippy is on his way.  

DEBBIE: I did our secret wrap-it-up sign, which is, I knock and say 'The deputy NSA needs to talk about Japan' and he said 'you talk to him, you've been there' which is true. But it makes me think he's forgotten it's a secret sign.  

C.J.: How about "Excuse me Mr. President we need to move on"?  

DEBBIE: If you want the job, you're going to have to work on your typing.  

[ROOSEVELT ROOM]  

TOBY: Apologies.  He's running behind schedule.  

MULREADY: I imagine that happens.  You want to tell me what I'm doing here?

TOBY: Oh, just a hello.  

MULREADY:  I'm not being impeached?  

TOBY: No.  

MULREADY:  This isn’t a not-particularly-subtle form of intimidation about the gays in the workplace case?  

TOBY: That would be illegal.

MULREADY:  My point exactly.  

TOBY: The President will explain....any minute now.  

MULREADY: Hm.

TOBY: But since you mention it, I read your article on Bellington, and I may be out on the fringe here, but I - I don't see how a family values conservative justifies denying committed couples access to the benefits of state sanctioned monogamy.  

MULREADY:  Homosexual couples.  

TOBY: Couples. A couple is a couple.  

[C.J.'S OFFICE]  

JOSH: Hi.  

C.J.: How was Ryan's uncle?

JOSH: He's a blast. Come meet him.

C.J.: He's still here? Oh my God!  You're drunk!  

JOSH: I think I just promised him a pork barrel roads project on an omnibus bill that doesn't exist. Don't try and keep up.  He's got a wooden – a hollow leg. He drinks a lot.  

[ROOSEVELT ROOM]  

TOBY: It's an equal protection violation.  

MULREADY:  Homosexuals are not a suspect class.  

TOBY: D.O.M.A. denies access.

MULREADY:  No.  

TOBY: To over 1,000 federal protections.  

MULREADY:  To what?  

TOBY: Survivor benefits under Social Security.  

MULREADY:  $255.00? I'll write you a check.  

TOBY: Hospital decision making.

MULREADY:  So talk about power of attorney, not marriage. Besides, the fact that D.O.M.A. doesn't restrict access to marriage.  

TOBY: Of course it restricts access. It restricts full faith and credit.  

MULREADY:  So, Vermont gets to steer nationwide marriage legislation? Vermont?

LANG: Well, this is a sight to see! One of the more unlikely meetings in the history of the Bartlet White House.  

MULREADY:  It's good to see you, Evie.  

LANG: You too, Chris.  I came to say goodbye. I wish I had a camera.

MULREADY:  Mr. Ziegler was trying to convince me that the Defense of Marriage Act is unconstitutional.  

LANG: Oh, D.O.M.A.?  He was trying to convince you?

TOBY: What?  

LANG: He doesn't need convincing.

TOBY: I wasn't doing it because...

LANG: He was yanking your chain. He would never uphold D.O.M.A.  He may not love the idea of gay marriage, but he hates congressional overreaching, and Congress doesn't have the power to legislate marriage.  The issue isn't privacy.  

MULREADY: Or equal protection.

LANG: It's enumerated powers. He'll have an easier time knocking down D.O.M.A. than I will.  

MULREADY:  Lack of imagination on your part, if I may be so bold.

TOBY: You were yanking my chain?

MULREADY:  You called me in for a meeting with a Democratic president in the middle of the night.  Are you really going to give me crap about yanking your chain?

LANG: Josh Lyman is gesticulating wildly.  

TOBY: Excuse me.  

[HALLWAY]  

TOBY: Where's the Senator?  

JOSH: He's in with C.J.. He got me a little drunk.  

TOBY: Is he leaving?  

JOSH: I think he's getting C.J. a little drunk. How's it going?  

TOBY: He's striking down gay marriage bans and she's defending him and they're as thick as thieves and he's a fan of chain yanking.  

JOSH: She's defending him?  

TOBY: Down is down, down is up.

LANG: I am not... no I am not rewriting Article 1. What I am saying is that a gun free school zone...

MULREADY:  Is not a federal issue. In Lopez…  

LANG: Lopez overturned 50 years of precedent.  

MULREADY:  Too bad, they ruled a plain text reading of the commerce clause, does not afford Congress...  

LANG: A plain text reading of the Constitution values a “negro” at three-fifths of a man.  

MULREADY:  Hence the 13th, 14th and 15th Amendments.  

LANG: Oh, generous. Thank you.

MULREADY: The relationship between guns and schools and interstate commerce is... is...  

LANG: You don't think that the quality of education has a direct affect on the economic...  

[DEBBIE'S OFFICE]  

TOBY: Is he?  

DEBBIE: Waiting to meet a man you're holding hostage in the Roosevelt room.

(MURAL ROOM)

C.J. AND PIERCE: Oh and while the king was looking down, the jester stole his thorny crown, the courtroom was adjourned, no verdict was returned…

JOSH: Ok... ok.... Everyone needs to put down their glasses and pay attention.  

[OVAL OFFICE]  

BARTLET: You like him.  

TOBY: I hate him. I hate him, but he's brilliant. And the two of the them together, they’re fighting like cats and dogs, but it works.  

[MURAL ROOM]

PIERCE: You couldn't find a single warm-blooded centrist to put on the court?  

JOSH: We've got centrists. We've got six of them plus two staunch conservatives plus Justice Ashland. The one clarion voice articulating a liberal vision. He's going to go and then what?

[OVAL OFFICE]

BARTLET: Well, send him in....

TOBY: Sir…  

BARTLET: I said I'll listen to him, Toby. That's going to have to do it.  

[HALLWAY]

DONNA: Toby.  

TOBY: What?  

DONNA: Nothing's happening.

TOBY: Hang on.

DONNA: That's him?  

TOBY: Yeah.  

DONNA: No tail.  No cloven hooves.  

[OVAL OFFICE]  

DEBBIE: Judge Mulready.  

BARTLET: Thanks for coming in.

MULREADY:  It's an honor sir.  

BARTLET: Please.  I understand that you and Judge Lang had a bit of a knock-down-drag-out.  

MULREADY:  She wants to federalize law enforcement.  

BARTLET: Yeah.  

MULREADY:  I thought it was hasty.  

BARTLET: Not your brand of judge?

MULREADY:  Quite the opposite.  I haven't had that much fun in months.  

BARTLET: Really?  

MULREADY:  Use her, if you can. I'm not sure what all this is about.  I suppose a number of people are placated by a glimpse of someone like her or someone like me in these halls. I'm most certainly here for that.  But if there’s anyway that you can use her…  

BARTLET: It's unlikely.  

MULREADY:  Who's at the top of the list?   ... If I leaked it, would they believe me?  

BARTLET: Brad Shelton.  

MULREADY:  Really?  

BARTLET: You don't like him?

MULREADY:  He's a fine jurist. And in the event that Carmine, Lafayette, Hoyt, Clarke and Brannaghan all drop dead, the center will still be well tended.  

BARTLET: You want another Brady?

MULREADY:  Sure, just like you'd like another Ashland - who wouldn't?  The court was at its best when Brady was fighting Ashland.  

BARTLET: Plenty of good law written by the voices of moderation.  

MULREADY:  Who writes the extraordinary dissent? The one man minority opinion whose time hasn't come, but 20 years later some circuit court clerk digs it up at three in the morning.  Brennan railing against censorship.  Harlan's Jeremiad on Jim Crowe.  

BARTLET: Maybe you, some day?

MULREADY:  They can't put me on the court, just like you can't put Evelyn Lang on the court.  It's Sheltons from here on in.  

BARTLET: There are 4,000 protestors outside this building worried about who's going to land in that seat.  We can't afford to alienate all of them.  MULREADY:  We all have our roles to play sir. Yours is to nominate someone who doesn't alienate people.  

(FRIDAY)

(PRESS ROOM)

JOSH: Where's Toby?  

C.J.: Can you see this? [pointing to spot on her blouse]  

JOSH: Yeah.  

C.J.: It's water, it'll dry.

JOSH: Okay.  

TOBY: Ready?  

[on the TV in background...]  

REPORTER ... have gathered around..... Ashland having served 32 years on the United States Supreme Court, 12 of them as Chief will officially announce his retirement in just a moment.

ASHLAND: (at podium, on TV) Henry Staub retired, and I received a phone call, you were probably learning to walk. It's been an honor to pause in Henry Staub's chair, a joy to spend...  

C.J.: (to Bartlet) He’ll take three questions at the most, and then we’re off  .  

LANG:[to Lang] you ready?  [Lang is engrossed in Ashland's announcement] [To C.J.] That's a yes.

MULREADY: So, why a racial preference and not an economic one?  

CHARLIE: Because affirmative action’s about a legacy of racial oppression.  

MULREADY:  It’s about compromising admissions standards.  

CHARLIE: That's bull….excuse me. It's about leveling the playing field after 300 years of…

MULREADY:  See, this is where the liberal argument goes off the rails.  You get stuck in the past. Now you wanna comeback at me with grading is based on past performance, but admission should be based on potential on how a candidate may thrive with this sort of opportunity. And studies show that affirmative action admits have a higher predisposition to contribute to society.  

CHARLIE: Hang on, I gotta write this down.  

BARTLET: Ah-ah-ah.  Hand it over. [to Evelyn] Toby has a daughter, Molly, 10 months old. She's a looker and very bright. And someday he'd like to give her this copy of the 14th Amendment signed by the first woman to ever hold this job.  

LANG: Have you got a...  

TOBY: Oh... [hands her a pen] Would you mind adding that title?  

LANG: That's a bit premature, isn't it?  

BARTLET: No.

TOBY: Thank you.

C.J.: Mr. President.  

BARTLET: Shall we? [at the podium]

C.J.: Ladies and gentlemen, the President of the United States.  

BARTLET: The honorable Christopher Mulready, nominee for Associate Justice - United States Supreme Court. The honorable Evelyn Baker Lang, nominee for Chief Justice - United States Supreme Court. I look forward to taking your questions.

THE END