Supreme Court Coup In Progress

The first question Judge Gorsuch is asked should be:

Do you think it is right to refuse to seat a judge you yourself admire, who has been properly and legally nominated by a legitimate president who won large majority election twice?

Second question:

Mr. Gorsuch, did you know that Republicans in this Senate stated they would refuse to seat any judge nominated to the Supreme Court by a Democratic president? Is that proper?

Third Question:

Does it say anywhere in the Constitution that seats that were appointed by one party belong to that party in perpetuity? Should the seat vacated by Mr. Scalia's death be a Whig seat that can only be filled by a Whig president?

Picture Men In White Hoods

The talk about the Alt Right is long overdue, but we shouldn’t flatter them with this hip new label. It makes them sound like a music trend from Seattle. They are white supremacists. They are bigots. They are anti-semites. They believe women should be subservient and silent. Their methods are hate and ridicule and intimidation. They are unAmerican. Millions who voted for this new team thought they were voting for the old team, the Republican team. It is no longer the Republican Party. It is the White Male Party. It is a clear and present danger to our democracy, our nation, and the world.

Story in the Guardian

The Southern Poverty Law Center calls out the outright racism in the Trump White House team

This Salon/Alternet article looks into the white minority anger that swept Trump into office

They are a group organized around anger and disruption led by a corrupt billionaire. They are not likely to govern honestly or competently. They will probably earn a profit.

The Vandals in the White House discussed by Josh Marshall at Talking Points Memo

(Marshall discusses White House corruption by invoking Grant and Truman. I am familiar with the corruption charges thrown at Truman. I believe some of the pettier ones but think most of them were part of the witch-hunting fervor of that time. Truman’s foibles were trivial compared to Trump’s long history of self-dealing. It was Truman, after all, who doggedly investigated the war profiteers of WW2. This was one big reason he had enemies after the war.)

We suddenly have a president elect who is completely unequal to the difficult tasks, and the people he is bringing in to guide him are partisan fighters and outright bigots. Steve Bannon once described himself as like Lenin, bent on destroying the system. He is in an excellent position to do that. Where are the people who’ve worked their whole lives building this system and trying to make it work? Too many have been displaced by lobbyists who seek to make the system work only for themselves and their clients.

From the New Republic, Obama's calm, measured words about this transition do not deny the serious risks we face.

An interview with Noam Chomsky about president-elect Trump

If we survive, if our democratic institutions survive, the next four years, the Supreme Court is where Trump can do more permanent damage.

Dahlia Lithwick discusses the dire SCOTUS implications. Sadly, complex longterm dangers like this were not enough to get millions on board to elect Hillary.

We need hope right now because misdirected and unfocused anger will do us no good at all. It may lose us the longer argument. We need to be angry, but focused and non-violent. Pull what hope you can from this:

Politico urges us to be hopeful. Whether it's rational, we won't win through without it. (Think Churchill in 1940.)

Our friends are worried about us. Our enemies are delighted. It’s surprising how many enemies there are among us. People who were willing to cheer the interference of an enemy power as long as it helped their team win the Big Game. As Andy Borowitz said “I’m nostalgic for when the FBI and the Russians were on opposite sides.” Amen to that. Will the words Fifth Column and Quisling be used more in coming months and years? Whose side are these new “Republicans” on?

From Der Spiegel. If Europe lived next door they would be on the phone with the police and social services right now.

More Observations On America's Nuttier Half

The only Republican presidential hopeful who isn’t a man has a strange opinion of working Americans. (Raw Story reports Carly Fiorina thinks working Americans watch porn all day.)

Conspiracy Theories shape the way the Right looks at the world. (Vox reports on the GOP rumor that Harry Reid got on the wrong side of the mob.)

(I wonder what Republicans would say if Scalia showed up with a black eye?)

Is this more or less bizarre than the rumor I told you about last week––that Obama tried to drop a nuclear bomb on Charleston? (Bloomberg reported on that GOP rumor.)

How’s the Supreme Court looking after a few decades of libertarian rule? (Salon's take on where SCOTUS is headed.)

Don’t worry. Scalia is so perfect he can just wing it. What does it matter if a few more innocent people are executed? Tony doesn’t know any of them. (Slate reports on Scalia's casual approach to death penalty appeals.)

Meanwhile, how’s our brilliant and always perfect private sector doing?

Private for-profit prisons find it’s more profitable to feed inmates garbage… actual garbage. Food that’s been thrown in the garbage. Brilliant. (Think Progress reports on the for-profit prison diet plan.)

Republicans believe every task that involves repairing society’s ills or dealing with pain and fear of death is a wonderful profit opportunity.

What happens when the task is less important than the profit? The Republican half of the U.S. doesn’t believe we have any obligation to treat other Americans with respect. Other Americans are just a profit opportunity. America’s problems are only a business model, nothing more.