Is US Devoted To The Constitution?

The recent rulings by the corrupt Supreme Court got me to thinking about the Constitution…..is the US truly devoted to the document?

Let me tackle the question….I think the people of this nation is all caring about the Constitution and the people we elect could care less about the document.

The people warp themselves in the Constitution as some sort of misguided patriotism but once you get pass amendment 1 and 2 they know nothing.

In reality….it shows up often in political discourse as some sort of symbol of freedom and then quickly disappears until it is needed in some sort of explanation for a particular political action.

In a new book it is surmised that the worship of the Constitution has warped our politics……

Which version of the Constitution will shape America’s future? Emboldened coalitions on the right purport to tether the country’s tomorrows to the original meanings of an eighteenth-century Constitution—or to so-called natural law principles that are even older. Anxious liberals, by contrast, hold out frayed hopes that a living Constitution will be able to translate the nation’s constitutional history into a new century. An increasingly vocal cadre on the left proposes something altogether different—to scrap the whole arrangement, to make a clean break from a tarnished constitutional tradition by marginalizing the Supreme Court and doing away with the project of the Constitution entirely

In his new book, The Constitutional Bind, lawyer and political theorist Aziz Rana adds his voice to this swelling chorus, urging that a truly emancipatory politics requires breaking free from the U.S. constitutional project. Rana takes aim at what he calls the worship of the Constitution. U.S. politics today, he contends, idealizes the Constitution to its own detriment. Our political formations—especially those on the left—trim their sails in advance of doing battle by accepting the charter’s historical compromises. But such compromises, Rana says, come at a galling democratic cost. They grant unelected justices on the Supreme Court unwarranted authority over the basic terms of our social life. And they sustain voting inequities in the Electoral College and the Senate, which confer unwarranted representation on rural states with disproportionately white and conservative populations.

As late as the first decades of the twentieth century, Rana proposes, Americans took part in a more robust debate over the Constitution, one that nurtured a wild profusion of alternative political visions. The most promising of those visions, in Rana’s eyes, chafed at and often even rejected the Constitution as a parochial and limiting framework. In the middle third of the twentieth century, however, U.S. politics marginalized the political formations that were most critical of the Constitution’s basic terms. And since the middle of the twentieth century, Rana argues, constitutional politics has shape-shifted into a kind of idolatry. Constitutional devotion has sustained American global empire, supported white ethno-nationalism, justified security panics, and cabined real democracy. Constitutional fetishism, according to Rana, sustains “a fundamentally undemocratic order” by granting the Constitution undue “immunity from challenge”; it produces an anti-democratic “cultural genuflection” before a Supreme Court that supports the interests of elites over the liberation of the masses. We are, Rana tells us, bound “by a narrow constitutional narrative” that constrains our collective life and imposes severe limits on our aspirations for true freedom and equality.

https://newrepublic.com/article/182334/united-states-devoted-constitution

My question now is….given all the stuff happening is this the society that the Founders envisioned with the Constitution?

Now what do you think about the question?

I know there are some great thoughts out there….voice them here and now.

I Reads, I Write, You Know

“cognito ergo me agitare”

What The Hell Is “Militainment”?

Now there is a word you do not see everyday….basically because the media and entertainment industries do not want the public equating stuff to war.

Hollywood has weaponized entertainment to promote war….some say as many as 2500 films and show are in that category.

“The easiest way to inject a propaganda idea into most people’s minds is to let it go through the medium of an entertainment picture when they do not realize that they are being propagandized,” explained Elmer Davis, a renowned CBS broadcaster, who had just been named director of the Office of War Information (OWI), a Pentagon program created on June 13, 1942, six months after Pearl Harbor.

Later in 1953, as the Cold War was in full swing, President Dwight D. Eisenhower commented on the burgeoning partnership between Hollywood and the Pentagon by stating that, “the hand of government must be carefully concealed and […] wholly eliminated,” adding that the engagement should “be done through arrangements with all sorts of privately operated enterprises in the field of entertainment, dramatics, music and so on.”

Thus, the president who coined the term “military industrial complex,” was, in fact, one of the first major proponents of what would later be called the military entertainment complex or the militainment industry.

Today, this militainment industry is thriving. From Top Gun to the Marvel franchise and even shows like Extreme Makeover, the Pentagon has been able to shape the narratives of more than 2,500 movies and TV shows. No one knows this better than Roger Stahl, the University of Georgia’s Communications Studies Department Head, and author of Militainment Inc. With University of Bath lecturer and Workers Party Candidate Matthew Alford, investigative journalist Tom Secker, and others, Stahl created “Theaters of War,” a concise 87-minute documentary in which he methodically dissects our modern militainment industry, showing the behemoth it has become.

Responsible Statecraft talked to Stahl, Alford, and Secker about the ways our TV screens are weaponized through the Military Entertainment Complex’s oversight over and control of Hollywood scripts and production agreements.

https://responsiblestatecraft.org/theaters-of-war/

Do not get me started on the Pentagon and the patriotism of pro sports teams…..I know you have seen the ‘Patriot’s Day” or the Vets appreciation Day, or a salute to the armed forces….all that is not out of the desire to show their appreciation but rather a paid event by the Pentagon.

In the past few years, the Pentagon spent $6.8 million to pay for patriotic displays during the games of professional sports teams.

That’s according to a joint oversight report released by Arizona Republican Sens. John Flake and John McCain on Wednesday.

The senators found that since 2012, the Pentagon has signed 72 contracts with teams in the National Football League, Major League Baseball, the National Hockey League, and Major League Soccer that amounted to “paid patriotism.”

For example, taxpayers paid $49,000 to the Milwaukee Brewers to allow the Wisconsin Army National Guard to sponsor the Sunday singing of “God Bless America.” In another contract, the New York Jets were paid $20,000 to “recognize one to two New Jersey Army National Guard soldiers as hometown heroes.”

USA Today reports that NFL teams received the biggest slice of the pie — $6 million, according to the report. The newspaper adds:

“The Atlanta Falcons received $879,000; the New England Patriots, $700,000; and the Buffalo Bills, $650,000. The Atlanta Braves received $450,000, the most of any Major League Baseball franchise, while the Minnesota Wild were paid $570,000, the most of any National Hockey League team.

“The Atlanta contracts included a 2013 event during which a roaring crowd cheered as the Falcons welcomed 80 guard members who unfurled an American flag across the Georgia Dome’s turf.”

https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2015/11/05/454834662/pentagon-paid-sports-teams-millions-for-paid-patriotism-events

Keep in mind that cash is your money, taxpayer cash…..it is bad enough that we must fund every goddamn war on the planet but we also have to pay overpriced athletes to be patriotic?

Did you know patriotism has a price?

Go Team!

I Read, I Write, You Know

“cognito ergo me agitare”

Christian Bullshit At Its Best

The nation is confronted with the rise of what some called ‘Christian Nationalism’….a forceful attempt to make all American conform to their warped sense of country.

And yes I wrote about it (go figure)….

Does Theocracy Approach?

It began many years ago when the Right started with their opposition to the freedom of choice (abortion) and when Roe v Wade was overturned by SCOTUS it opened a door that had been closed for about 200 years.

Now states are flexing their misguided religious muscle…..fist with Louisiana….

Under a bill signed into law by Republican Gov. Jeff Landry, Louisiana has become the first state to require that the Ten Commandments be displayed in every public school classroom. The GOP-drafted legislation mandates that a poster-sized display of the Ten Commandments in “large, easily readable font” be required in all public classrooms, from kindergarten to state-funded universities, the AP reports.

The displays, which will be paired with a four-paragraph “context statement” describing how the Ten Commandments “were a prominent part of American public education for almost three centuries,” must be in place in classrooms by the start of 2025.

The posters would be paid for through donations. State funds will not be used to implement the mandate, based on language in the legislation. The law also “authorizes”—but does not require—the display of the Mayflower Compact, the Declaration of Independence, and the Northwest Ordinance in K-12 public schools.

Opponents question the law’s constitutionality, warning that lawsuits are likely to follow. Proponents say the purpose of the measure is not solely religious, but that it has historical significance. In the law’s language, the Ten Commandments are described as “foundational documents of our state and national government.”

The Tennessean reports that Landry boasted about the bill at a Republican fundraiser in Nashville on Saturday. “I’m going home to sign a bill that places the Ten Commandments in public classrooms,” he said. “And I can’t wait to be sued.”

This is a bad idea and should not be allowed to stand.

After Louisiana’s assault the great state of Oklahoma had to inject its brand of ignorance…..

Coming to classrooms in Oklahoma: the Bible. The state’s superintendent has ordered the religious text be taught in Oklahoma’s public schools, reports the New York Times, which calls it “an extraordinary move that blurs the lines between religious instruction and public education.” “Every teacher, every classroom in the state will have a Bible in the classroom, and will be teaching from the Bible in the classroom,” Ryan Walters said on Thursday, though the AP notes that the directive from Walters, a 39-year-old conservative Christian and ex-AP history instructor, applies to classrooms from fifth grade through 12th.

“Immediate and strict compliance is expected,” the order reads. It comes about a week after Louisiana ordered the Ten Commandments to be displayed in public schools, a move that has already been hit with legal challenges. This, too, will likely face pushback in the courts. “Public schools are not Sunday schools,” Rachel Laser, head of Americans United for Separation of Church and State, tells the Times, adding to the Wall Street Journal that the decision is a “transparent, unconstitutional effort to indoctrinate and religiously coerce public school students.”

Her group is also challenging the Louisiana Ten Commandments mandate. Some aren’t even sure that Walters has the authority to make such a sweeping order, as state law leaves such authority on instruction and curriculum to individual school districts. The superintendent, however, is adamant that the Bible be a required study topic in his state. It’s “a necessary historical document to teach our kids about the history of this country, to have a complete understanding of Western civilization, to have an understanding of the basis of our legal system,” Walters says, per the Times.

Both these will make it to the Supreme Court and I have NO faith that the judges will even take the Constitution into consideration before the make their ruling. After all only the First Amendment is at stake….no big deal.

I am truly sick of these lying assholes about the history of this nation.

The sooner we can pull the plug on this mindless twats the better.

I personally do not want to0 live in the theocracy….do you?

I Read, I Write, You Know

“cognito ergo me agitare”

The Political Cancer

We are well aware of what a cancer is…..our country is infected with a political cancer….a practice or phenomenon perceived to be evil or destructive and hard to contain or eradicate.

That cancer has a name….greed.

Because of greed the Democrats have lost the very foundation of this once proud party….the working class.

Much of today’s Republican Party is treacherous and treasonous. So why are Democrats facing midterm elections that, according to most political observers, they’re likely to lose? Having been a loyal Democrat for some seventy years (my father liked Ike but my mother and I were for Adlai), including a stint as a cabinet secretary, it pains me to say this, but the Democratic Party has lost its way.

How? Some commentators think Democrats have moved too far to the left — too far from the so-called “center.” This is utter rubbish. Where’s the center between democracy and authoritarianism and why would Democrats want to be there? Others think Biden hasn’t been sufficiently angry or outraged. Please. What good would that do? And after four years of Trump, why would anyone want more anger and outrage?

The biggest failure of the Democratic Party — a disease that threatens the very life of the party — has been its loss of the American working class. As Democratic pollster Stanley Greenberg concluded after the 2016 election, “Democrats don’t have a ‘white working-class’ problem. They have a ‘working class problem’ which progressives have been reluctant to address honestly or boldly. The fact is that Democrats have lost support with all working-class voters across the electorate.”

The working class used to be the bedrock of the Democratic Party. What happened?

https://www.alternet.org/the-democrats-disease/

To illustrate what I mean by my accusation….I give you the ‘Indicted Congressman’s Club….

Well-deserved indictments keep hitting Congress. The latest indicted legislator is Texas Democrat Henry Cuellar, the politician backed by former House speaker Nancy Pelosi in his last election, against a more progressive opponent, of course. On May 3, the justice department charged Cuellar with accepting roughly $600,000 from Azerbaijan’s state-owned oil company and a Mexican bank. These payoffs were for “official acts as a member of Congress.” Sound familiar? It should, because it resembles the case against New Jersey Democratic senator Bob “Gold Bar” Menendez, charged some months back with selling his office for gold ingots, a fancy car and other gifts. And then, back on October 10, New York GOP congressman George Santos was charged with conspiracy for, among other things, stealing people’s identities and making charges on his own donors’ credit cards without their authorization. What a buncha guys!

Since the indictment, Menendez has taken to the airwaves to insist he’ll fight to the finish. How is he even still in Congress, you ask? A massive case of narcissistic entitlement, that’s how; Cuellar – same problem. Instead of doing the correct and decorous thing, namely resigning, they cling to their congressional seats. The GOP-controlled House had the decency to expel Santos, but don’t expect such propriety from the Dems. They reserve their threats of expulsion for great senators, like Al Franken, guilty of making an off-color joke that riled the Me-Too fanatics. But when it comes to two congressional bigwigs like Menendez and Cuellar? The Dems may squabble about one or both resigning, but they put no muscle into it. Not like they did for the incorruptible Franken, on whom they ganged up and swarmed like a mess of angry hornets, and with about that much, insect-level, brain-power. Looking at you, Kirsten Gillibrand.

https://www.counterpunch.org/2024/05/24/the-indicted-congressmans-club/

These are just the most recent indictments….the sickness of greed goes well back in this country’s history.

One of the carriers of this cancer are the “Lobbyists”…..

The relationship between foreign governments and members of Congress is generating headlines and drawing scrutiny. First, on May 3, the Department of Justice charged Texas Representative Henry Cuellar with bribery, money laundering, and doing work on behalf of a foreign government. Then on May 15, the trial began for New Jersey Senator Robert Menendez, who stands charged with using his office to facilitate favorable deals and agreements involving select businesspeople and the Egyptian and Qatari governments. The Menendez case has produced sensational and salacious details — ranging from stacks of cash to gold bars found in the Senator’s residence — attracting a massive media spotlight. Cuellar has said he is innocent and Menendez has pleaded not guilty.

Yet, while the two cases are grabbing headlines, they are far from the first time foreign governments may have courted members of Congress. Such efforts — often illegal — have long been a way to shape American policy so that it benefits other countries. Foreign governments frequently pursue a dual track strategy in which they court policymakers through lobbying and other means, while also working to shape American public opinion to limit the options for members of Congress and the President. These strategies have paid great dividends in the past, even as they have also at times resulted in scandal.

https://time.com/6981957/foreign-interference-lobbying-history/

This cancer can be mostly cured by removing lobbyists and cash from our political organism.

These reports illustrate just how deadly cash is to the health of our beloved system….we need a surgically remove the malignant parts so the system can survive.

The problem is that this sickness is entering into Stage 4 and may be too late to save the entity we say we love.

Any thoughts?

‘cognito ergo me agitare’

Is The Economy In Danger?

So you want an easy answer….then yes, Irene, it is! It is in danger of having the same result as that of the Japanese in the 90’s. Apparently, that is what you dicks are looking for…..the Repubs are hoping for it…for it will return them to power. That is why they ALL want Obama to FAIL. They may try to make it sound more noble than that, but the bottom line is they want him to fall on his face and the economy to collapse completely.

So yes Irene, you bet your scrawny ass the economy is in danger!

Joseph Stiglitz recently wrote on wsws.org:

The banking system has just been tested to see if it is adequately capitalized – a “stress” test that involved no stress – and some couldn’t pass muster. But, rather than welcoming the opportunity to recapitalize, perhaps with government help, the banks seem to prefer a Japanese-style response: we will muddle through.

“Zombie” banks – dead but still walking among the living – are, in Ed Kane’s immortal words, “gambling on resurrection.” Repeating the Savings & Loan debacle of the 1980’s. the banks are using bad accounting (they were allowed, for example, to keep impaired assets on their books without writing them down, on the fiction that they might be held to maturity and somehow turn healthy). Worse still, they are being allowed to borrow cheaply from the United States Federal Reserve, on the basis of poor collateral, and simultaneously to take risky positions.

Every downturn comes to an end. The question is how long and deep this downturn will be. In spite of some spring sprouts, we should prepare for another dark winter: it’s time for Plan B in bank restructuring and another dose of Keynesian medicine.

as usual the help is always for Wall Street….Main Street is struggling and dying….no one seems to care, especially Wall Street and Washington…their survival is all that matters.

To Smoke Or Not To Smoke

OKay, Irene….where do these people plan to stop this whole thingy?

Oregon smokers have been elbowed out of bars, shooed away from entrances, and now they could get a ticket for lighting up in their own car.

The Oregon House voted Wednesday to fine anyone caught smoking with a child in a vehicle, windows rolled up or not. Minors are defined as children younger than 17 and tobacco as cigarettes, cigars or the loose stuff in pipes.

If approved, House Bill 2385 would make such smoking a primary offense, punishable by a maximum $90 fine for a first-time offender.

I can see where they are going with this and I can see where it would be a more healthy thing…but I also see where it is involving the government into the lives of a family…..child abuse? Then why not say because the government is not moving fast enough on emissions that they are also practicing a form of child abuse? We can play this lame ass game for ever.

I Am Protected!

U.S. District Judge David S. Cercone ruled David Hackbart exercised his constitution right to free speech in 2006 when he angrily displayed his middle finger to another driver during a parking dispute in Squirrel Hill and when he displayed the same gesture to Officer Brian Elledge, who told Hackbart to stop.

“The United States Supreme Court has long recognized that non-verbal gestures and symbols may be entitled to First Amendment protection,” Cercone wrote in his 19-page opinion and order filed Monday. “Moreover, several courts, including federal and state courts in Pennsylvania, have found that the expressive use of the middle finger is protected speech under the First Amendment.”

Now there is a precedent for the use of the middle finger as free speech…….my only problem is that few display it properly. Just raising you middle finger does convey the thought but it is not proper “English”. As part of the generation that made the finger a symbol of the times, I cringe when I see people just throw the finger out there, instead of taking the time to learn to display it properly and more effectively.

What Is That Sucking Sound?

Dunno? It is coming out of Washington. Want some help? It is the GOP!

Susan Estrich of http://www.creators.com wrote:

The Republicans in Congress are irrelevant — either because, in the smallest number, they go along with the Democrats, or because they just say no and lose. Either way, they’re part of the problem and not a place to find an answer. Lately, most of the Republican talking heads I see are so busy trying to figure out whether Rush Limbaugh is or is not their leader that they lose any claim to being leaders themselves.

Not one of the Repubs have anything to offer as an alternative to the Dem agenda. All I have seen and heard are from memos sent out with their daily talking points and they all stick to them like good little puppies. My fav is their new talking point that the recession be renamed the “Pelosi Recession”.

The conservative Dems are doing a better job at opposing the prez than the GOP. But beyond that, where were the concerns with spending when GW was throwing money away like a drunken sailor in Sinapore? They are just , as usual, playing politics. They have NOTHING to offer the people as an alternative to the economic situation the country is facing. The best they can do is to just say NO to everything Democratic.

If Washington is a circus, then GOP the Clown is the main attraction, for now.

Trillion Dollar Bank Plan

WTF?

President Obama said today that his economic team is “very confident” that the administration’s newest effort to stabilize banks — a mix of public and private funds that could total $1 trillion — will help to free up credit.

The plan aims to remove so-called toxic assets — many of them bad mortgage investments — from the banks’ balance sheets through a private-public partnership. The program will rely heavily on private investors, such as hedge funds and private-equity firms, to buy up $500 billion to $1 trillion of assets with the government providing incentives such as low interest loans and sharing in both the risk and possible profits. The plan announcement jolted stocks on Wall Street, with the Dow Jones industrial average rallying nearly 500 points, or 6.8 percent, to 7785.86 — the fifth biggest point gain in history.

The new program will use between $75 billion-$100 billion of Treasury funds from the Troubled Asset Relief Program and leverage $500 billion with the potential to expand to $1 trillion of private purchasing power with financing from the Federal Reserve System and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp.

Using the Fed and the FDIC, the government will leverage private capital by co-investing with the private sector. If the private sector has financing provided by the government, buying these assets becomes a more attractive option.

Second, the administration wants the market, not the government, to set the price for these assets.

Third, the private sector will invest alongside the taxpayer on an equal basis, so both parties share the downside risk and upside potential.

To accomplish this, the treasury will partner with the FDIC in a program where banks can bring assets they want to sell to the FDIC. The FDIC will provide leverage, then the assets will be sold in the market, where private market participants will bid on them, thereby setting the price. Then the government can co-invest with the private sector to buy pools of toxic assets and clean up the banks’ balance sheets.

Okay, I really hate to be a downer right now, but this sounds very similar to the program that Paulson came up with and was called the TARP. Few though that it would work then, and some do not see this working now……wait see.

What A Difference A TALF Makes

What the hell is a TALF?

TALF is Term Asset-Backed Securities Loan Facility (TALF). It is Bailout #2, which consequently will not be tapped from our pockets rather from printing of more money, is known by some as the consumer bailout, and also a refocused plan to more-so help financial markets dealing with consumer asset-backed securities like auto loans, credit-card debt, and student loans. The new consumer program will allocate $200 billion by the Federal Reserve to security holders of consumer backed debt, essentially doing this will insure the debt if a borrower defaults. And backing the backers, the Treasury department will provide $20 billion from the $700 billion from bailout #1 funds to safeguard losses the Federal Reserve will incur.

Basically, a pool of cash to be used to assist car loans, home loans, etc. This is a lame attempt to try and create demand. The problem with this plan is what good is a pool of cash when so many are unemplyed? These people will will not qualify for a home loan or a car loan….so what is the TALF for?

Just another attempt to save Wall Street. The people are suffering and the answer to that is more cash to help the business biggies survive.