Saturday, September 19, 2020

RIP RBG ("She gave all she had" and then some.)


 

25 comments:

  1. the most effective tool for popular resistance lies in the Senate…

    Senate Democrats have a powerful tool at their disposal, if they choose to use it…. That tool lies in the simple but fitting act of withholding consent. An organized effort to do so on the Senate floor can bring the body to its knees and block or severely slow down the agenda…

    The procedure for withholding consent is straightforward, but deploying it is tricky. For the Senate to move in a timely fashion on any order of business, it must obtain unanimous support from its members. But if a single senator objects to a consent agreement, McConnell, now majority leader, will be forced to resort to time-consuming procedural steps through the cloture process, which takes four days to confirm nominees and seven days to advance any piece of legislation — and that’s without amendment votes, each of which can be subjected to a several-day cloture process as well…

    McConnell can ask for consent at any time, and if no objection is heard, the Senate assumes that consent is granted. So the 48 senators in the Democratic caucus must work together… to ensure that there is always a senator on the floor to withhold consent…

    Democrats can also withhold their consent from every piece of objectionable legislation McConnell tries to advance. With 48 senators in their caucus, they have the votes to block most bills. But even when Democrats don’t have the votes, they can force McConnell to spend time jumping through procedural hoops. This is the insight McConnell deployed against Reid to manufacture the appearance of gridlock, forcing him to use the cloture process more than 600 times…

    Of course, it would be unwise to deploy this strategy blindly. The kind of universal obstruction pioneered by McConnell during Obama’s presidency is not in Democrats’ nature: They believe in the smooth functioning of government…
    But Democrats’ concern with delivering results for their constituents is also part of who we are and something we should embrace. Even for innately cautious Democrats, some issues demand dramatic action. I

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    1. Thanks, Alan. One thing to note is that this is essentially a delay action. If Democrats can delay a vote until after the election and they flip the Senate, then any attempt by McConnell to push on would be so blatantly political he might will lose several Republican votes -- not just Murakowski's.

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    2. Oh, yes--it's a dilatory tactic beyond doubt. Under ordinary circumstances it would not be in order; but these are not ordinary circumstances. And turning McConnell's own tactics upon him would certainly be justice. If it works, there would be no need to try packing the court (should the Dems win control of the Senate).

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  2. “Shortly before the announcement that Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg had died Friday, Sen. Lisa Murkowski said in an interview that if she was presented with a vacancy on the court, she would not vote to confirm a nominee before the election,” Alaska Public Radio reports.

    “Murkowski said her reasoning is based on the same reasoning that held up the confirmation of former President Barack Obama’s final nominee to the Supreme Court.”

    Said Murkowski: “That was too close to an election, and that the people needed to decide. That the closer you get to an election, that argument becomes even more important.”

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  3. Listener--I was rather surprised to see that there are no published surveys for Vermont; I should think that would be a good college political science project. Or how about a newspaper or suchlike? California is not often polled, but looks about 60:30 in favor of Biden. I remember when a radio station in Clovis (next to Fresno) had an unusual type of poll. A lookout was stationed in the city water tank, and two questions were asked (at an interval of ten minutes as I recall): are you in favor of X, and are you opposed to X. Listeners participated by flushing their toilets; the winners were the ones who caused the greatest drop in water level in the water tank.

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  4. Barack Obama on RBG, posted last evening:


    Sixty years ago, Ruth Bader Ginsburg applied to be a Supreme Court clerk. She’d studied at two of our finest law schools and had ringing recommendations. But because she was a woman, she was rejected. Ten years later, she sent her first brief to the Supreme Court––which led it to strike down a state law based on gender discrimination for the first time. And then, for nearly three decades, as the second woman ever to sit on the highest court in the land, she was a warrior for gender equality––someone who believed that equal justice under law only had meaning if it applied to every single American.

    Over a long career on both sides of the bench––as a relentless litigator and an incisive jurist––Justice Ginsburg helped us see that discrimination on the basis of sex isn’t about an abstract ideal of equality; that it doesn’t only harm women; that it has real consequences for all of us. It’s about who we are––and who we can be.

    Justice Ginsburg inspired the generations who followed her, from the tiniest trick-or-treaters to law students burning the midnight oil to the most powerful leaders in the land. Michelle and I admired her greatly, we’re profoundly thankful for the legacy she left this country, and we offer our gratitude and our condolences to her children and grandchildren tonight.

    Ruth Bader Ginsburg fought to the end, through her cancer, with unwavering faith in our democracy and its ideals. That’s how we remember her. But she also left instructions for how she wanted her legacy to be honored.

    Four and a half years ago, when Republicans refused to hold a hearing or an up-or-down vote on Merrick Garland, they invented the principle that the Senate shouldn’t fill an open seat on the Supreme Court before a new president was sworn in.

    A basic principle of the law––and of everyday fairness––is that we apply rules with consistency, and not based on what’s convenient or advantageous in the moment. The rule of law, the legitimacy of our courts, the fundamental workings of our democracy all depend on that basic principle. As votes are already being cast in this election, Republican Senators are now called to apply that standard. The questions before the Court now and in the coming years––with decisions that will determine whether or not our economy is fair, our society is just, women are treated equally, our planet survives, and our democracy endures––are too consequential to future generations for courts to be filled through anything less than an unimpeachable process.

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  5. Air quality obviously good this morning (0720 hrs). Reported visibility 10 miles, AQI 35, both improvements over yesterday.

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  6. Kelly Could Be Sworn In Early
    September 18, 2020 By Taegan Goddard

    Mark Kelly (D), should he win the U.S. Senate seat in Arizona, could be sworn in as early as November 30, according to elections law experts who spoke to the Arizona Republic.

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    1. A Mark Kelly win in Ariz. Senate race could spoil McConnell's plans to replace Ginsburg [Click] “If he's victorious Nov. 3, the Democrat, former astronaut and husband of Gabby Giffords might take office in time for the vote.”

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  7. puddle is making a voodoo doll of McConnell. I took the cheater's way out and purchased a SET of voodoo dolls on Etsy. It has McConnell, trump and Barr. I may have to go out and buy extra pins!

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  8. From The Atlantic David Frum: Four Reasons to Doubt Mitch McConnell’s Power [Click] “For once, he may be on the wrong side of a power dynamic.”

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  9. OHIO: As of Saturday afternoon, there have been at least 143,547 confirmed or probable cases in the state, 4,612 deaths, and 14,750 hospitalizations, according to the Ohio Department of Health.

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  10. Lawrence Douglas: In the battle over the US supreme court, Democrats can still have the last laugh [Click] “If Biden wins, he could pack the courts. That would be a justified gesture of constitutional restoration, not usurpation.”

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  11. Enjoying the clean air in Fresno? Here’s why it may not last long [Click] [Unfortunately, the lead photo of downtown Fresno with the mountains behind is misleading—it never looks like that. It is taken with a telephoto lens and some sort of filter—either IR or polarized, I don’t remember which clarifies distant objects like that.]

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  12. Cooter came last night. Haven't heard the dog bark all day. A first, mebbe.

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  13. VT: 1710 (+4)
    58deaths (52days)
    111 active cases
    Recovered:1541(+5)
    In Hospital 2 (-1)
    Tests 154,800 (+701)

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