stoutfellow: Joker (Joker)
In case my "ON WISCONSIN" post was too obscure:

Last week, Wisconsin held an election. It included the Democratic presidential primary, but also a number of judicial elections. There were efforts to extend the window for mail-in ballots, but these were (mostly) quashed by the Wisconsin and federal Supreme Courts. Because of the ongoing pandemic, the (mostly Democratic) cities were unable to staff enough polling places; Milwaukee, which normally has about 180 polling places, could only open five.

Despite these handicaps - despite the health hazards of congregating to vote - voters in Milwaukee and elsewhere swarmed to the polls, standing in lines (expanded by social distancing) for hours to get their chance.

The ballots were, by court order, not counted until yesterday. The voters had their say: two conservative lower-court judges were defeated for re-election. A liberal appeals-court judge, who had narrowly been elected last time, was re-elected. And a conservative Supreme Court justice, bidding for a ten-year term, was decisively upset (55-45) by his liberal opponent.

November Is Coming.
stoutfellow: Joker (Joker)
ON WISCONSIN!

Infamy

Mar. 18th, 2020 03:48 pm
stoutfellow: (Winter)
The following senators voted against the Stage 2 coronavirus bill:

Marsha Blackburn (R-TN)
James Inhofe (R-OK)
James Lankford (R-OK)
Mike Lee (R-UT)
Rand Paul (R-KY)
Ben Sasse (R-NE)
Tim Scott (R-SC)
Ron Johnson (R-WI)

I had thought better of Sasse and Scott. I am saddened to be mistaken.

PSA

Mar. 11th, 2020 07:22 am
stoutfellow: (Winter)
The H1N1, or "swine flu", pandemic erupted early in 2009. On April 26, 2009, President Obama declared a Public Health Emergency; at that point, there had been 20 cases of H1N1 detected in the US, and no fatalities. The declaration, among other things, permitted the Federal distribution of twelve million doses of Tamiflu. In October of that year, with the pandemic worsening, Obama upgraded the declaration to a National Emergency.

The accusations of negligence being leveled at the Obama administration by Rudy Giuliani and his ilk are flat out lies.
stoutfellow: (Winter)
Today the occupant of the Oval Office issued a number of pardons and/or commutations.

Edward De Bartolo, involved in a bribery scheme with Edwin Edwards and convicted of participating in an extortion scheme.

Rod Blagojevich, who was caught on tape offering an appointment to the Senate to the highest bidder.

Bernie Kerik, who took a quarter-million-dollar bribe and wound up pleading guilty to eight felony counts, including perjury and tax fraud.

And Michael Milken, who pleaded guilty to half a dozen counts of securities fraud.

Tell me again how determined the Orange One is to stamp out corruption.
stoutfellow: Joker (Joker)
So, The Donald declined to shake Speaker Pelosi's hand at the SOTU.

Two words: Claytie Williams.
stoutfellow: (Winter)
The following is an excerpt from an article in Atlantic by Jill Lepore; I copied it from Ezra Levin's Twitter feed.

*****
In 1937, The New Republic, arguing that "at no time since the rise of political democracy have its tenets been so seriously challenged as they are today," ran a series on "The Future of Democracy," featuring pieces by the likes of Bertrand Russell and John Dewey. "Do you think that political democracy is now on the wane?" the editors asked each writer. The series' lead contributor, the Italian philosopher Benedetto Croce, took issue with the question, as philosophers, thankfully, do. "I call this kind of question 'meteorological,'" he grumbled. "It is like asking, 'Do you think that it is going to rain today? Had I better take my umbrella?'" The trouble, Croce explained, is that political problems are not external forces beyond our control; they are forces within our control. "We need solely to make up our own minds and to act."

Don't ask whether you need an umbrella. Go outside and stop the rain.
*****

Twenty-Six

Jan. 6th, 2020 12:42 pm
stoutfellow: Joker (Joker)
With the swearing-in of Kelly Loeffler as the junior senator from Georgia, there are now twenty-six women in the Senate - a record. The number has held steady or increased in every election from 1998 on.

This election cycle may break the string; there are a number of incumbent women who are vulnerable this time around - Loeffler herself, Collins of Maine, Ernst of Iowa, McSally of Arizona. Smith of Minnesota, possibly Baldwin of Wisconsin and Shaheen of New Hampshire - and at least some of their likely opponents are men. I don't see any likely flips the other way. (I would *love* to see Amy McGrath upset Mitch McConnell - I'd love to see an asthmatic Shih Tzu upset McConnell - but neither is likely.)
stoutfellow: Joker (Joker)
I'm currently on an archive trawl of "A Girl and Her Fed". In the light of some of Orangemandias' recent comments, Hope's last line in this strip struck me as apropos.
stoutfellow: (Winter)
William Ruckelshaus has died.

In 1973, Archibald Cox was treading too near the truth of Watergate for President Nixon's comfort. Nixon asked Attorney General Elliot Richardson to fire Cox. Richardson refused, and resigned immediately. Nixon then made the same demand of Deputy AG Ruckelshaus, who followed Richardson's lead. Next up was the Solicitor General, Robert Bork, who obeyed Nixon's instructions.

The next morning, political writer Theodore White, in Paris, was awakened by a maid who burst in, shouting "Il y avait un coup, un coup d'etat aux Etats-Unis!" He spent quite a bit of time trying to figure out what she was talking about. It wasn't a coup; it was the Saturday Night Massacre, and Nixon's plunge towards disgrace and resignation suddenly accelerated.

We could use some people like Richardson and Ruckelshaus these days - although the (now ex-) Navy Secretary, Richard Spencer, is cut from similar cloth.
stoutfellow: (Winter)
Yesterday, the occupant of the Oval Office signed the Women's Suffrage Centennial Commemorative Coin Act. After the signing, he remarked:

“I am curious why wasn’t it done a long time ago and also, well, I guess the answer to that is because now I am president and we get things done. We get a lot of things done that nobody else got done.”

He actually wondered why no one proposed the WSCCCA until the WSC actually happened.

Ladies and gentlemen, the President of the United States.

Echoes

Nov. 17th, 2019 12:34 pm
stoutfellow: (Winter)
When I was a kid, my family watched the Huntley-Brinkley News Hour every evening. The two newscasters became my model for the profession. (It didn't hurt that their theme music was taken from the second movement of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony.) Chet Huntley died while I was still a teenager, but David Brinkley remained a fixture on various news programs.

During the 2000 presidential election, Brinkley criticized Al Gore as being "boring". He said it with a little smirk on his face, and that was the moment I shifted from respecting him to despising him.

The presidency is not a role in an entertainment. *Government* is not an entertainment. Treating it as such has led to the catastrophic presidencies of George W. Bush and Donald Trump.

To criticize the impeachment hearings as lacking "pizazz" is a disservice to the American people. If you actually pay attention to the content, the story is riveting - and appalling. NBC and the networks that follow its lead should be ashamed of themselves.

Echoes

Oct. 27th, 2019 05:09 pm
stoutfellow: Joker (Joker)
Back in 2012, Donald J. Trump tweeted the following:

"Stop congratulating Obama for killing Bin Laden. The Navy Seals killed Bin Laden. #debate"

I will make no further comment.
stoutfellow: My summer look (Summer)
According to a finding by the Office of Legal Counsel, a sitting President cannot be indicted.

According to a filing by the White House in a New York case, a sitting President cannot be investigated, even by the states.

According to a letter just sent to Congress by the White House, the President cannot be impeached - at least, not by the process currently in motion. Subsequent statements make it clear that no impeachment process would be legitimate, in the eyes of the current administration.

So. What other way, acceptable to the current occupant of the White House, is there to bring an errant President to heel?

95

Oct. 1st, 2019 08:17 am
stoutfellow: My summer look (Summer)
Jimmy Carter, our greatest ex-president, turns 95 today.

Happy birthday, Mr. President, and may your future days be as fruitful as your past!

History

Aug. 22nd, 2019 06:23 pm
stoutfellow: (Murphy)
The recent foofaraw about the phrase "King of Israel" summons up a vague memory, of Prime Minister Menachem Begin being referred to by that title - hyperbolically, I assume, by fringe elements of his faction. This would have been, um, somewhere between 1978 and 1990. Does anyone else remember this?

Both Ways

Jul. 5th, 2019 01:15 pm
stoutfellow: Joker (Joker)
Apparently yesterday's "Revolutionary War airports" episode is now being blamed on the teleprompter.

I recall people denigrating President Obama's oratorical skills by saying that all he was doing was reading off the teleprompter.

I sense a certain dissonance here...

Standing

Feb. 2nd, 2019 04:58 am
stoutfellow: (Winter)
The party of Steve King, Corey Stewart, and Donald Trump has no standing whatever to complain about Ralph Northam's 1984 yearbook photo.

That said, Northam should resign.
stoutfellow: (Winter)
Gov. Ducey of Arizona has announced that he will appoint Martha McSally to the Senate seat that will be opened by the resignation, at the end of this year, of Jon Kyl. (McSally ran for the other seat this year, but lost to Kyrsten Sinema.) That means that one fourth of the next Senate will be women.

We're getting there.

Blatancy

Dec. 5th, 2018 11:50 am
stoutfellow: (Winter)
The new CIA Director, Gina Haspel, yesterday gave a closed-door briefing on the Khashoggi affair to (I think) the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. They had previously been briefed by Secretary of State Pompeo and Defense Secretary Mattis, who downplayed the involvement of the Saudi crown prince in the murder. Haspel's testimony was, shall we say, rather different. Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC) said that one would have to be "willfully blind" not to see the connection.

I'm rather more interested in what Graham said after that: "If they were in a Democratic administration, I'd be all over them for being in the pocket of Saudi Arabia."

Politicians are usually a *bit* more subtle in their preference for party loyalty over loyalty to the country.

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