Pragmatic politics focused on the public interest for those uncomfortable with America's two-party system and its way of doing politics. Considering the interface of politics with psychology, cognitive biology, social behavior, morality and history.
Etiquette
DP Etiquette
First rule: Don't be a jackass. Most people are good.
Other rules: Do not attack or insult people you disagree with. Engage with facts, logic and beliefs. Out of respect for others, please provide some sources for the facts and truths you rely on if you are asked for that. If emotion is getting out of hand, get it back in hand. To limit dehumanizing people, don't call people or whole groups of people disrespectful names, e.g., stupid, dumb or liar. Insulting people is counterproductive to rational discussion. Insult makes people angry and defensive. All points of view are welcome, right, center, left and elsewhere. Just disagree, but don't be belligerent or reject inconvenient facts, truths or defensible reasoning.
Arizona Sen. Kyrsten Sinema has announced that she will leave the Democratic Party and officially register as an independent.
“I’ve registered as an Arizona independent. I know some people might be a little bit surprised by this, but actually, I think it makes a lot of sense,” Sinema said in an interview Thursday with CNN’s Jake Tapper in her Senate office.
“I’ve never fit neatly into any party box. I’ve never really tried. I don’t want to,” she added. “Removing myself from the partisan structure — not only is it true to who I am and how I operate, I also think it’ll provide a place of belonging for many folks across the state and the country, who also are tired of the partisanship.”
The announcement from Sinema comes just days after Democrats solidified a 51-49 majority in the upper chamber with Sen. Raphael Warnock’s win in Georgia.
Sinema declined to say that she will caucus with Democrats like independent Sens. Bernie Sanders (Vt.) and Angus King (Maine), but the Arizona senator said she plans to continue in her committee assignments.
“When I come to work each day, it’ll be the same,” Sinema said. “I’m going to still come to work and hopefully serve on the same committees I’ve been serving on and continue to work well with my colleagues at both political parties.”
How should the Dems handle this? Be upset, and alienate her? Or treat her respectfully so she will be more inclined to vote on their agenda? Is she being true to herself or being a traitor?
It is clear that radical right Christian nationalists want to discriminate against people and groups they hate and want to oppress. But here is the flip side of how powerful radical right Christian nationalists see it when discrimination goes against their chosen people and ideologies, even when it is false.
The context here is this: Sen Tom Cotton, a potential radical right Republican Christian nationalist criticizes Kroger for firing two Christian employees for refusing to wear rainbow gay pride flag logos. In essence Cotton tells Kroger to go pound sand because Republican s will not help Kroger with a massive merger that Democrats oppose.
Think about it. This is how the discrimination wars are going to play out. If powerful Republican politicians and elites see discrimination they dislike, they are going to punish people and interests the believe are responsible and deserving of regulations by Democrats. Whether the merger is in the public interest or not is beside the point for congressional Republicans. The only thing that counts is if a company toes the rigidly ideological and extremist Republican Party line.
For context, Kroger denies that the logo had nothing to do with gay rights or support for gays. It was just a bit of advertising it wanted employees to wear to help boost good will and sales. There was nothing religious or pro-gay about it. Marketing research suggested the heart logo, which was not a rainbow. Only Sky writes:
Kroger to pay $180K for firing Christians who wouldn’t wear heart symbol
The two Christian employees falsely claimed the heart symbol promoted the LGBTQ community. (It didn’t.)
It was just a multi-colored heart symbolizing their corporate values.
The facts don’t matter, though, because the Christians in question, Trudy Rickerd and Brenda Lawson, claim (wrongly) that they were being told to support LGBTQ rights (which they were not).
This is not the gay pride logo
This is Kroger's marketing ploy
This is the usual gay pride logo
See the difference?
Sometimes this is a variant gay pride logo
See the difference?
This is how irrational and enraged congressional Republican are. They believe lies and then punish the innocent for their false beliefs. The question here is not what Kroger did to two employees, it is whether its proposed merger would be anti-competitive and illegal under anti-trust law. The two things are different, but that makes zero difference to foaming at the mouth, radical right Christian nationalist Republicans with power. They want power and wealth. They will not hesitate one second to kill democracy, inconvenient truth and anything else that gets in their delusional enraged way.
One question that pops right up is why did Kroger pay $180K? Probably because public relations and profit trump inconvenient facts, true truth and sound reasoning. That's probably why.
Again for the hundredth or thousandth time here, the business of business is profit, not what is right or wrong, good or bad, moral or immoral, or democratic or tyrannical. And the business of radical right Republican Christian nationalists is accumulating power and wealth, not governing in the public interest or in defense of democracy, truth, the rule of law, the environment, or civil liberties.
A NASA gay pride logo
See the difference?
The Satanic Temple's gay pride logo
See the difference?
A slew of gay pride logos
See the difference in every single one?
None are Kroger's marketing ploy
I've said it before dozens of times and say it again, inconvenient facts, truth and sound reasoning are irrelevant to radical right, Christian nationalist and/or brass knuckles Republican elites. Their eyes are on the prize. The Prize? More power and wealth for themselves. Much more. And, at our expense.
Multiple sources are commenting in yesterday’s Supreme Court oral arguments in the Moore v. Harper case that will decide about the independent state legislature doctrine (ISLD). The ISLD holds that state courts cannot interfere much or at all with rules state legislatures make to control elections. Deciding in favor of a robust vision of the ISLD would leave legislatures free to subvert elections and suppress voters.
A robust vision of ISLD would give red states the power they want to destroy democracy in America. This would roughly parallel how Viktor Orban destroyed democracy in Hungary after being elected into power in 2010. After 2010, national elections in Hungary were rigged and Orban could not lose.
Observers of the oral arguments in Moore suggest there is significant disagreement among the six radical right Republicans. The three Democrats are hostile to ISLD. Three of the radical Republicans are sympathetic to it (Alito, Thomas, Gorsuch), but three are apparently conflicted about it (Roberts, Kavanaugh and Barrett). The conflicted ones apparently do not want to appear to be what they actually are, i.e., partisan Republican Party politicians wearing black robes.
This is a real surprise to me. I did not imagine that Kavanaugh or Barrett would have any qualms about an appearance of being radical right Republican politicians. Those two are Republican Party fire breathers. I figured they just didn't care about the appearance or actuality of partisanship.
Those three justices will likely serve as the deciding factor in any decision. The court’s three liberals were extremely hostile to the theory during oral arguments, while the three other conservatives have signaled sympathy for a muscular version of the theory, both in previous writings and during arguments in front of the court on Wednesday.
Questioning from Roberts to David Thompson, who was representing the Republican legislators, showed hostility to the independent state legislature theory.
“Vesting the power to veto the actions of the legislature significantly undermines the argument that it can do whatever it wants,” Roberts said, citing a 1930s Supreme Court case that found that the U.S. Constitution didn’t prohibit governors from vetoing a congressional map passed by legislatures.
But later, Roberts’ questioning to Neal Katyal, who represented the groups that challenged the initial legislatively drawn maps, showed how some of the court’s swing conservative justices could still potentially rule in favor of the GOP lawmakers without embracing the most robust interpretation of the independent state legislature theory. Roberts seemed to be potentially probing for a way to constrain state courts in some way, particularly on what could be decisions based on broad constitutional provisions.
“Do you think the phrase ‘fair and free elections’ is providing standards and guidelines?” he asked Katyal, who responded affirmatively.
That suggests that the three conflicted ones will look for some version of ISLD that looks and maybe is less extreme than what they actually want but are hesitant to impose for the sake of political optics. A brilliant analysis by Above the Law points to the conflict between optics and the underlying Republican radicalism that are pushing in opposite directions, for and against the ISLD:
As the argument unfolded, three distinct camps emerged, with Jackson, Kagan, and Sotomayor opposed to the whole goofy theory; Alito, Gorsuch, and Thomas thrilling at the prospect of authoritarian rule; and the Chief, Barrett, and Kavanaugh wishing there was some way to let Republicans gerrymander at will without turning North Carolina elections into North Korean elections.
Neal Katyal went right at the conservatives with receipts — straight up calling his shot, announcing that he’d been “waiting for this case” so he could unload his can of originalism on Justice Thomas — quoting back their own opinions from every time the shoe was on the other foot, prompting a series of blubbering exchanges from the frustrated justices. His exchange with Gorsuch set the tone. The justice asked Katyal for “one example” of the Court employing Katyal’s theory. He cited a 19th century example. “*grumble* Put that aside!” He cited another. Gorsuch rants and raves trying to figure out why he hadn’t researched this point.**
** He didn’t research the point because of (i) his rigid authoritarian ideologue radicalism, (ii) his blinding loyalty to the Republican Party, and (iii) normal human confirmation bias and motivated reasoning. All of that allows him to be comfortably and arrogantly self-deluded. All of this is obvious human cognitive biology and social behavior stuff.
Alito concocted a hypothetical about a rogue state supreme court that needed to be brought to heel. Yes… Samuel Alito raised the fear that a court might ignore law and precedent for political gain. You really can’t make this stuff up! Alito is having himself an all-timer week for unintentional comedy.
Don Verrilli and Elizabeth Prelogar also took turns at battering the GOP theory, with the conservative justices growing quieter if no less strident as the event wore on.
But amid all the twists and turns from Justice Kagan’s incisive questioning (not-too-far-off translation by Professor Leah Litman: “So this theory could end our democracy. Response?”) to Justice Gorsuch arguing that the independent legislature theory is how pre-Civil War Virginia was a bulwark against the 3/5ths clause (or some nonsense), Justice Jackson delivered the most devastating body blow (no transcript… so this may be inexact):
I guess I don’t understand how you can cut the state constitution out of the equation when it is giving the state legislature authority to exercise the legislative power.
Yes. She actually asked this question in different phrasings a few times, but it’s really the only question anyone needs to answer. If state constitutions create state legislatures then how can state legislatures violate state constitutions. It ceases to be a constitutionally ordained legislature at that point!
It’s a chicken and egg problem — except it’s more like which came first the chicken or my dinner tonight — with a single obvious answer. If the state constitution sets guardrails of voting rights and the proper deference required to courts and the executive, then the legislature can only work within that.
At the top of Katyal’s argument he cited the two centuries of election law and declared that it would be “a whole lot of wrong” if “Legislature” meant what the GOP asked for as opposed to how Justice Jackson posed her question.
Occam’s Razor remains undefeated.
Make no mistake, Chief Justice Roberts is on record buying into a watered down version of this theory and will, after today’s battering, probably cobble something together that shields Republican legislatures without straining the outer bounds of basic notions of constitutional governance. But whatever compromise the conservatives try to mold will remain haunted by Jackson’s straightforward question.
Which came first, the state constitution or the state legislature? It’s the constitution. It’s always going to be the constitution.
So, it looks like we will probably get a less than absolute version of the ISLD and American democracy will take a serious but not quite lethal body blow. Less likely, but still possible, is the full blown version of ISLD that Thomas, Gorsuch, and Alito want for the final fix to what ails democracy as they see it.
As I’ve argued here before, we do not know how the court decides cases because the court shields its decision-making process from public scrutiny “for obvious reasons.” The obvious reasons have never been publicly stated and they probably never will be.
That unjustifiable secrecy provides the time and opacity needed for the three hyper-radicals, Thomas, Gorsuch, and Alito, to convince at least two of the three conflicted ones to join them in finally killing off American democracy by imposing full-blown ISLD on all of us. A 1973 paper, Secrecy and the Supreme Court: On the Need for Piercing the Red Velour Curtain, criticized the Supreme Court’s opaque decision-making like this:
Our thesis may be simply stated: basic democratic theory requires that there be knowledge not only of who governs but of how policy decisions are made. .... We maintain that the secrecy which pervades Congress, the executive branch and courts is itself the enemy. .... For all we know, the justices engage in some sort of latter-day intellectual haruspication, followed by the assignment of someone to write an opinion to explain, justify or rationalize the decision so reached. .... That the opinion(s) cannot be fully persuasive, or at times even partially so, is a matter of common knowledge among those who make their living following Court proclamations.
It feels like there will probably be some nasty haruspication** in American democracy’s future.
** Haruspication: divining truth from a pile of fresh animal guts
A core dogma in American radical right White Christian nationalism is the right for wealthy heterosexual White Christian males to discriminate against whoever they choose to hate or oppress, mostly the LGBQT community, non-white immigrants (legal or not), non-white citizens, women, and filthy atheists and other forms of non-Christian heathens. That is rock solid core sacred belief. It's not negotiable or open to debate. An article at Lawyers, Guns & Money poses an interesting hypothesis:
BY ALITO’S LOGIC, CAN WE DENY CHRISTIANS SERVICE?
A restaurant in Richmond last week canceled a reservation for a private event being held by a conservative Christian organization, citing the group’s opposition to same-sex marriage and abortion rights.
“We have always refused service to anyone for making our staff uncomfortable or unsafe and this was the driving force behind our decision,” read an Instagram post from Metzger Bar and Butchery, a German-influenced restaurant in the Union Hill neighborhood whose kitchen is helmed by co-owner Brittanny Anderson, a veteran of TV cooking shows including “Top Chef” and “Chopped.” “Many of our staff are women and/or members of the LGBTQ+ community. All of our staff are people with rights who deserve dignity and a safe work environment. We respect our staff’s established rights as humans and strive to create a work environment where they can do their jobs with dignity, comfort and safety.”
The group, the Family Foundation, was set to host a dessert reception for supporters on Nov. 30, the group’s president, Victoria Cobb, wrote in a blog post describing the incident. About an hour and a half before it was slated to start, one of the restaurant’s owners called to cancel it, she wrote. “As our VP of Operations explained that guests were arriving at their restaurant shortly, she asked for an explanation,” Cobb wrote. “Sure enough, an employee looked up our organization, and their wait staff refused to serve us.”
I mean, if it’s all about personal values and freedom and such, why can’t we just refuse to serve Christians if we find them outrageous to our value system? I do however await the legal “logic” by which the Supreme Court finds this illegal but refusing to serve gays totally legal.
Interesting, right? Sure, we should be able to deny them whatever they deny us.
Sadly, that's is what America is degenerating to under radical right Republican Party Christian nationalism and Republican Party brass knuckles, government-hating capitalism. The radical right is forcing people how are attacked and persecuted to defend moral values that radical right Christian nationalists hate and vehemently reject, e.g., tolerance, pluralism, civility, non-heterosexuality, etc.
The theocratic, radical right Republican Party started this war decades ago. It and its supporters are the attackers, oppressors and liars. We have to either defend ourselves or let them screw, abuse and oppress us.
Q: Is that assessment unreasonably hyperbolic, lies or otherwise not credible?
Acknowledgement: Thanks to Freeze Preach for bringing this fun article to my attention.
