The Republican right wing is beginning to discover that it just shot itself in the … no, not in the foot. It’s another part of the anatomy.

With the inevitable addition of Brett Kavanaugh, the U.S. Supreme Court is about to swing hard to the right, no matter what Democrats do. And in the long run, Roe vs. Wade is dead. The only question is whether Roe will die hard and fast, or suffer a slow death of a thousand cuts.

So the so-called conservatives are out there dancing in the streets, right? Wait a second, not so fast.

The Federalist, a right wing journal that would warm the cockles of Justice Antonin Scalia’s wicked heart (were he still among us to have his cockles warmed) just put its finger on a small, umm, problem. It’s a replacement parts shortage. Human replacement parts.

To keep the wealth engine of the One Percent growing, the  United States population also has to keep growing. Otherwise, the very rich would have to pay more and more in taxes as the population declines, while having fewer and fewer people to sell their goods to.

Moreover, the rich need worker bees. You know, people who do the real work, whether that relates to picking fruit, picking up the toddlers after school, or picking their noses in front of a computer screen. But guess what?

Here’s what, according to Melissa Langsam Braunstein, who writes the “parenting” column online for the Federalist: 

“It’s just not clear we all enjoy raising flesh and blood miniature humans anymore.”

Quick Jeeves, the smelling salts! Oh my blinking stars! Say what, Melissa? 

“…it seems clear that millennials will either have fewer children than they’d wanted or opt out of parenthood altogether .”

What a terrifying thought! Who will keep our economic engine’s gears oiled and its wheels turning, and its innovations hatching if we don’t have enough replacement babies? For that matter, who will keep the ranks of our enlisted military populated? 

We used to have immigrants for all of that. But no longer, what with Trump slamming the gates shut, and a Supreme Court about to solder our national rudder in place so that hereafter we can turn only in rightward circles. Trump and his merry band of idiot bullies have just shot themselves — and the United States of America — in the testicles.

No wonder that  social conservatives, in addition to trying to eliminate abortion are going after birth control. Damnit women, they need your babies, even if it means confiscating your birth control pills so you’ll be forced to become a baby machine. Who knows? If it's deemed necessary, armed cops may be able to haul you away to the hospital and pry out your IUD with a wire cutter and a pair of pliers. But only to save the lives of the unborn, of course. Already one conservative publication, The National Review, is shrieking that IUDs are “contraception that kills.” 

But throwing you in the slammer if you dare to sell or swallow a birth control pill (or perhaps for using an IUD, you child-killing thug-ette) is a slow way to grow the population. Can’t we get all those potential handmaidens popping out babies any faster? What do we have to do? Arrest women caught with implanted IUDs for murder? And perhaps execute a few?

Not to worry. Federalist columnist Melissa Langsam Braunstein, has a solution: encourage millennials to have babies more often by brazenly misleading and confusing them. In a recent column entitled “6 Reasons Millenials Should Stop And Embrace Parenthood,” Melissa tries to sell you on having more pregnancies with reasoning like this:

1. Focus on What You Can Control. Among millennials with fewer children than they’d wanted, 49 percent said they’re “worried about the economy,” 37 percent are “worried about global instability,” 36 percent are “worried about domestic politics,” 33 percent are “worried about climate change,” and 27 percent are “worried about population growth.” Whew, that’s a lot of big worries!I understand wanting to err on the side of caution, but the world has never been problem-free, and sometimes we need to act in spite of that. Further, the most meaningful things in life often require a leap of faith at the outset. Or, in the wise words of a mentor, “Leap and the net will appear.”

Right, Melissa. Don’t fix the economy so that people can afford to have babies. Just encourage everyone to close their eyes and jump. Tell you what, Melissa. Go jump out of a window, preferably the window of a very tall sky scraper. If a safety net appears, as you promise, to prevent you from becoming a sidewalk serving of scrambled brains, I’m sure a lot more millennials will be convinced. Personally I prefer the old maxim, “Look before you leap.”

2. Paid Family Leave Is On The Rise. Parents, 39 percent of you say you’re having fewer kids than your ideal because there’s “not enough paid family leave” and 38 percent said there’s none. According to Working Mother, however, “Since late 2017, an increasing number of private employers have expanded their paid maternity leave and paternity leave offerings, some doing so dramatically,” all to attract and retain employees like you. Employers hear you, and they’re responding.

There's a small problem with that one, Melissa. You’re asking people to have babies on spec — the speculations that their own employers will read Working Mother,” take the cue, and “dramatically” increase parental leave. Not very damn likely in a nation that more and more is being run by so-called conservatives. 

More likely, FMLA, the Family Medical Leave Act of 1993, will be repealed, either by Congress or by Supreme Court fiat. Employers who are freed from workplace discrimination enforcement will find your pregnancy a reason to not promote you, or even to fire you. Oh right, that’s already happening.

3. Child Care Is Tough But Not Impossible. Sixty-four percent of current parents and 31 percent of would-be parents cited the high cost of child care. I’m with you. It’s not only tough, but can also be expensive to find people you trust to care for your children.The good news is that it’s not forever. For most families, the first five years are the most costly in this category. Every family has different needs and preferences, but there are ways to control costs, whether it’s help from family members, parents adjusting work schedules to be home, or a trade between families who alternate watching one another’s children.

Right-O, Melissa. Parents can just go and tell the boss, “Now see here, I need to adjust my work schedule to take care of my child, so I won’t be able to come in Mondays and Thursdays. But I’m trading baby-watching schedules with my friends from the bowling alley, the Smiths. So Muffy or Chip Smith will be here to attend status meetings instead of me on Mondays.” 

Know what the boss is likely to say? Hint: It’s a favorite phrase of Donald Trump’s. It starts with the word “You’re...” and ends with an exclamation point. Your next persuasive point, Melissa?

4. Babies Don’t Need Houses. Now, among those without children, 24 percent of respondents remain so because they “can’t afford a house.” If you think you need to buy a house in a great school district, consider: You have five years and nine months (at least!) before your firstborn starts kindergarten. That’s several years to save and buy into your ideal district or devise an acceptable Plan B. Apartment living works just fine in the short-term.

Save how much, Melissa? How can you save a dime, especially in cities like, say, San Francisco where the median home value is now $1.61 million and rising fast. But you say, “apartment living works just fine in the short term.” In the short term, rents in the same city have risen 40 to 50 percent and the average rent for a two bedroom apartment in that town is now $4,382 a month. 

But do people have to go to San Francisco? Isn't life lots cheaper in Nowheresville? 

Yes, assuredly. The problem is, there are no jobs in Nowheresville. That’s why it’s so cheap. And that’s why everybody’s trying to squeeze into cities like San Francisco. So yeah, Melissa, saving up for a $1.6 million house in five years while paying $4,382 a month for rent and a wad of money for child care is no problem, no problem at all. Are you also selling bridges? How about the one in Brooklyn? People could buy it from you and live under it. Babies can live under bridges just like other homeless people, right Melissa?

Oh, and I'm not even going to think about what you mean by "a good school district." Well actually, I am. I think you mean, a district that doesn't have too many of "those people."

Next, Melissa suggests reducing student debt. I got all excited and upbeat about that one, until I read what she had to say about it.

5. Let’s Reduce Student Debt. Thirteen percent of respondents say they’re not sure about parenthood because they have “too much student debt.” Everyone’s situation is different, but this could be a good time for students, parents, and alumni to start pressuring the federal government to weigh practical solutions to the student loan crisis, including reducing the flow of federal dollars to universities (since that actually raises students’ costs).Here in Washington, DC, American University allows students to graduate in three years, saving families a whole year of tuition. Perhaps more schools should introduce such programs, and we should encourage students to talk to potential employers before choosing majors, so they know they’re employable post-graduation.

Right Melissa, by starving universities, you’ll force them to lower tuition. Could you show us how that works, please? No? The article you linked to certainly doesn't. It just makes what appears to be a baseless claim. 

And you’d also recommend turning college from a learning experience to a pressure cooker experience, blasting through four years of courses in three. The one thing you seem to have forgotten is Bernie Sanders’ proposal for student loan forgiveness, which would reduce student debt to zero instantly. While  we’re at it, tuition-free college supported by the government, working pretty much the way the GI Bill of Rights worked immediately after WWII, would prevent most student debt from ever happening. And that policy was part of an effort that unleashed a great wave of post-war prosperity. Oh sorry, I forgot who I was talking to.

Lastly, Melissa threatens us with self-inflicted death. 

6. Family Isn’t Your Jam. This is the group that most concerns me, amidst our crisis of loneliness, crisis of meaning, and the rise in suicides....

She goes on but I won’t, save to repeat that Trump and the Republicans have shot themselves and this nation in the testicles, aided and abetted by people like Melissa. We won’t be able to sustain the population internally. We won’t be able to replenish the population by letting in immigrants. Instead, we’re in danger of becoming a withering-away nation, our population aging, our ability to create prosperity falling, our future slowly going down the drain.

So the only solution the so-called Conservatives see is to force the majority of this nation’s women to effectively become unwilling handmaidens — baby machines serving the state. 

Very smart, conservatives. Very smart.

Political fashionistas, Nazis in the municipal building, botched executions, and a prayer to shove down the Supreme Court Justices’ throats. Or maybe up some other part of them.

Mr. Adolph Schickelgruber is
is one of several evil people
mentioned in this post. Read on.

I know, I know, I’ve been gone so long you were wondering if I was…hors du combat as the French say.

No such luck, dudes. After a long dry spell, a brief gush of income-producing work bashed down the door of my cranky office and demanded – demanded! – that I immediately stop whatever else I was doing, and instead do my thing for them.

Hey, as the U.S. Supreme Court perfectly well knows, money talks, and it talks one hell of a lot louder than words. Loud enough, in fact, to drown out any real speech.  So I temporarily abandoned my cranky blog. But now, while I wait for the people who hired me for thruppence ha'penny to pay up…and wait…and wait, I have a few moments to try to play catch up here in Blogistan.

And so, I went through the old and the new news this morning, and discovered more than a few items fighting for my attention.

Let’s deal with the frivolously weird stuff first. High fashion is is about to get highly political. First Cosmopolitan Magazine announces that it’s going to have a mink-coated person covering hard news and politics. Not even two weeks later, Marie Claire announces that it is going to have a political beat, too. Isn’t that a little ill-fittingly weird? You know, sort of like The Wall Street Journal having a rock and roll reporter, complete with his own Twitter feed, to keep its readers at bond law firms and hedge funds au courant? Oh, wait.

“Happy birthday dear Schickelgruber” Back during WWII, there was a campaign to hurt Adolph Hitler’s feelings while we fought a war to the death with him. “Call him by his real name, Adolph Schickelgruber,” said posters, and ads, and little squibs in magazines. In fact, Adolph’s father actually  had changed the family name from Schickelgruber to Hitler, but who cared? Well, now Schickelgruber’s ghost is stirring up the local nincompoops in the tiny French-Alsatian town of Oltingue, population something like 700. Or are the nincompoops local?

Seems a group of people went to the little town’s mayor and asked to rent out a room in town hall for a birthday party. You know, a little Alsatian wine, like a nice cold, crisp Gewirtztraminer perhaps, a tempting wedge of cake, some friendly folks wishing grandma well, that sort of thing? Hah!

Instead, somewhere between 150 and 200 neo-Nazis held a 125th (that’s one-hundred-and-twenty-fifth) birthday party for their beloved Schickelgruber, using his stage name, Adolph Hitler. Was there local outrage? For bien sur, and deservedly so. But now some people are wondering if the troublemakers didn’t actually come from Germany, which is right across the border from Alsace, a French province where they speak both French and German. 

Mein Gott and Mon Dieu, das ist une grande scandale!

Rat Poison Mary. Don't let her serve
you dinner in the Governor's mansion.

Rat Poison Mary investigates herself. You couldn’t possibly have missed this one: Oklahoma last week botched an execution, thanks in part to the Governor Mary (call her Rat Poison Mary) Fallin. She overruled  her own state’s Supreme Court –or perhaps defied is a better word – to speed up the execution of convicted murderer Clayton Lockett, refusing to say what chemicals he’d be injected with to kill him, where they came from, or why separation of powers, a principle upon which our nation was founded, doesn’t seem to hold any water in Oklahoma.

Well, you know the story. Lockett died a slow and agonizing death. So slow and agonizing that finally officials drew the curtain around the death chamber so that the press and other witnesses couldn’t observe what ghastly stuff was going on. They say Locket died of a heart attack after the execution was called off. Maybe. Or maybe they switched over to rat poison and kept pumping it into him until every last one of his blood vessels hemorrhaged. Or maybe somebody put a pillow over his face and smothered him. Or clubbed him to death with a ball peen hammer.

We may never know, because Rat Poison Mary arranged for a so-called “independent investigation,” to be conducted by a department that reports directly to herself, and to be led by a man who is a former Oklahoma Department of Corrections employee who was present at the execution. He was there because…uh…well. they’ll probably tell you it’s none of your business. Can you say "coverup?"

Until somebody incontrovertibly proves otherwise, using completely independent experts rather than political hacks, I’m going to stick with my rat poison theory. Moreover, I’m going to start calling the Oklahoma governor Rat Poison Mary every chance I get. I wish you would, too.

May God keep the five right wing members of the U.S. Supreme Court – preferably in a dark cell in Guantanamo.  Freedom of religion used to mean you also had freedom from religion. You wouldn’t want somebody walking into your home, uninvited by you, to tell you that Satan, or Zoroaster, or Zeus is the only true God. So why should anybody have to put up with it in a town meeting of the pathetic little backwater dump of a usually-freezing-cold burg called Greece, N.Y.?

Turns out, the town governing body had been starting out with a prayer to Jesus, which is fine if you believe that’s who God is and if you also believe in God, and if you’re religious enough to pray about it. But some folks were offended, one thing led to another, and the whole matter was before the other kind of supreme beings, the old dudes in black robes.

Chief Justice Kennedy: "What Constitution?"

Sure enough, justices Kennedy, Roberts, Scalia, Thomas and Alito did the expectable, and voted in favor of the establishment of an official religion, in direct violation of what the U.S. Constitution says “shall not” happen. 

Listen, I don’t want to knock religion. It brings many people comfort when nothing else can. And while I would argue that you can’t possible know if there is a God, I believe the same logic dictates that you can’t possibly know there isn’t, regardless of my own opinions on the subject.

So what should we do about imposed Christianity, just legalized by the five right wing  court totalitarians? Well, since the court’s position is that you can’t “censor” religious speech, let’s have more of it. I urge every appointed or self-appointed member of religious and quasi-religious sects to go up there to Greece and demand equal praying time.

How about a prayer that begins, “Oh beloved Satan, sworn enemy of  the false gods of the west…

The goddess of Lust. Put her
in your church and pray to it,
Mr. Justice Kennedy.

How about an invocation calling for the imposition of Sharia Law in the town of Greece?

How about prayers to Zoroaster, and Zeus, and Dionysus? Or to Tlazolteotl, the Aztec goddess of lust, carnality and sexual misdeeds? In concert with deeply held religious beliefs, the minister or shaman could name various body parts that might concern Tlazolteotl, and what should be done with them, and by whom, and for how long, and in whose bed.

Of course, the five Supreme Court justices would rule against that sort of prayer, using whatever excuse they could think up, once Greece bounces back to court with them. But at least, the justices would clearly put their own preferential religious politics on display.

However, I think we could work on the preferential bit, too. How about a national day of mass prayers, to the diety of your choice, calling for the Sacred One of your choice to either strike justices Kennedy, Roberts, Scalia, Thomas and Alito dead or, better yet. to afflict them with a stroke that robs them of their own speech, not to mention the ability to flee from church once the next round of prayers to Zoroaster and Tlazolteotl begin.

Hey, it's all just an exercise of your freedom of speech.Right Supreme Courtiers?

Poisoning our own tree: how ham-handed “interrogations” sanctioned by the Bush Administration could set the 9/11 plotters free

For someone who doesn’t believe in capital punishment, I can be pretty inconsistent when it comes to the people responsible for 9/11. Personally, I yearn to reproduce for them the last moments of some of their victims who, their clothing on fire, leaped from 90th story windows of the World Trade Center to their deaths to escape the inferno in their offices.

In my heart of hearts I would wouldn’t mind seeing the 9/11 plotters taken up in a helicopter to a height of 90 stories, doused with kerosene, dangled from a rope, set on fire, and then dropped to some rocks or concrete below. I know better than actually to advocate this, and I do not advocate that you advocate this. Nevertheless, in the darkest and angriest recesses of my thoughts, I yearn to see an eye for an eye, a flame for a flame and a fall for a fall.

That said, if the rule of law still works in this country, the 9/11 plotters currently in custody not only may escape the death penalty but walk free as well. Thanks to the Bush administration’s stubborn and stupid reliance on waterboarding and possibly other forms of torture, they may be sent home to attempt another 9/11 all over again.

This all has to do with torture and a long-standing principle of law that “fruit from the poisoned tree” may not be introduced as evidence. In other words, any evidence obtained illegally, or any evidence found in a search prompted by illegally-obtained information, may not be used as in a trial. To do so violates constitutional law.

It has been known at least since 2004 that Khalid Shaikh Mohammed (left), one of the key 9/11 plotters in custody, was waterboarded.

Now, with charges finally being prepared against Mohammed, reportedly the mastermind of the 9/11 plot, and with the death penalty clearly on the table, a legal fight seems to be brewing that eventually may go all the way up to the Roberts Supreme Court.

When that finally happens, probably some years from now, it will be interesting to see which way the court goes. As we’ve just noted, Federal rules of evidence exclude not only evidence obtained under torture, but also otherwise-legitimate evidence found thanks to information provided by someone who was tortured.

How will the court decide? Will it set the bastards free? Or will it trash the Constitution and the Bill of Rights to bring the accused plotters to their deaths? Justice? Or freedom? To my knowledge America has never had to choose between them before.

Now, thanks to the Bush Administration’s cavalier attitude toward both, the future of American freedom as well as the future of these accused killers is in doubt.

Hey there, George Bush! Guess what’s coming home to roost?

This was one of those mornings when, for a liberal-minded crank, checking the news was something like having my G-spot hit by a truckload of bathing beauties.

Alberto Gonzales, Carl Rove ,
you’re both in deep doo-doo!

First there was the little matter of the White House evil twins, Alberto Gonzales and Carl Rove. Says the news report:

Senate Democrats called for a perjury investigation against Attorney General Alberto Gonzales on Thursday and subpoenaed top presidential aide Karl Rove in a deepening political and legal clash with the Bush administration.

It has become apparent that the attorney general has provided at a minimum half-truths and misleading statements," four Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee wrote in a letter to Solicitor General Paul Clement.

This investigation has to do with perjury, folks.

Now, the White House is claiming “executive privilege” and many Republicans are tut-tutting that the White House can’t do its business if the public knows what business they’re really doing. These are the same dudes who were outraged when Bill Clinton resisted testifying before Congress about his sex life.

Cranky Prediction: This one could go all the way to the Supreme Court, where a 5-4 majority will decide that the public’s business is none of the public’s business and rule for the White House. But before you despair, scroll way down and read today’s final item.

Lying general gets his face smacked

The next piece of news that caught my attention was this:

Army Secretary Peter Geren is expected to recommend that a retired three-star general be demoted for his role in providing misleading information about the death of Army Ranger Pat Tillman, military officials say, in what would be a stinging and rare rebuke.

Lt. Gen. Philip Kensinger, who headed Army special operations, is one of six high-ranking Army officers expected to get official reprimands for making critical errors in reporting the circumstances of Tillman's friendly-fire shooting in Afghanistan in April 2004.

And for good reason. Some of those guys with stars and birds on their shoulders make it look like you can’t get ahead in today’s army unless you’ve got a spine made of jelly.

Hey, General! I thought they made a big deal about integrity up at West Point. How much lack of integrity does it take to lie to a fallen hero’s family and the nation about the circumstances of his death by “friendly fire” in combat?

These days, generals seem lacking the integrity to tell the commander in chief that when it comes to Iraq he’s living in a fantasy world worthy of the Tales of the Arabian Nights, and that the emperor isn’t wearing any clothes – to mix some metaphorical fairy tales.

Well, not completely. Some generals have told the truth – and have been removed from command as a consequence. They – the ones who told it like it is – deserve a Golden Spine award, if anyone ever invents one.

Cranky prediction: This’ll blow over pretty quickly, and a good many military careerists will go back to building their careers on hot air or worse. Reminds me of a tale that a Viet Nam vet once told me. His company found an abandoned Viet Cong tunnel containing a table, a chair, and an empty penicillin bottle. His captain dropped a grenade down the hole, then got on the radio and announced, “I have just captured and blown an underground enemy field hospital, including a fully equipped operating theater and drug dispensary.”

Don’t look now, George,
but the “strong” economy you
boasted about is collapsing

If you keep borrowing and borrowing and borrowing…and make hardly anything that’s exportable…and disguise the problem by keeping interest rates lower than they ought to be…sooner or later the whole thing comes crashing down around your ears.

An economy can’t survive on nothing but constantly rising house prices fueled by artificially cheap mortgages. Sooner or later, people won’t be able to afford housing prices at any interest rate. And then there’s the matter of our trying to live by taking in each others’ laundry. Where are we when farmers start to grow housing developments on their land because China’s growing (and poisoning) our food?

So first it was the dollar – which is rapidly turning into toilet paper against the Euro. And now this:

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Sales of new homes fell in June by the largest amount in five months as the housing industry continued to struggle with its worst downturn in 16 years. The median home price also fell.

The Commerce Department reported that sales of new single-family homes dropped by 6.6 percent last month to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 834,000 units. The decline was more than triple what had been expected and was the largest percentage drop since sales fell by 12.7 percent in January. Sales are now 22.3 percent below the level of a year ago.

Cranky Prediction: With a little arm-twisting, the White House will convince the Fed to drop interest rates. This will eventually result in rampant inflation, but by then Boy George will be out of the White House hotseat and it all will become some Democrat’s problem. Watch for Republicans to start blaming the next President for economic ills that were hatched under Bush.

At long last, a Presidential
candidate starts talking straight


This in today from the AP:

DES MOINES, Iowa - Democratic presidential hopeful John Edwards on Thursday unveiled a plan that would increase taxes for the wealthy and create tax breaks for the middle class.

"It's time for us to put America's economy back in line with our values. It's time for us to put an end to George Bush's war on work," he told a packed theater at Grand View College in Des Moines, Iowa. "It's time to restore fairness to a tax code that has been driven completely out of whack by the lobbyists in Washington, by the powerful interests in Washington and by those who value the few above the interests of many."

He added that, "It should not be in America that the middle class carries the tax burden, and that's exactly what's happening."

Edwards' plan would fix what he called a "rigged" system by ending tax breaks to Washington insiders with wealth and corporate power. Those are the same people, he said, who keep politicians in power.

"We have crony capitalism. We have lobbyists who are there every single day working to rig the system, and it is rigged," he said, referring to insurance, oil and drug companies.

Cranky Prediction: Unless Hillary and Barak managed to knock each other out of the running, Edwards, whom I personally prefer, will get nowhere as a presidential candidate. But Obama might adopt some of his ideas, if elected. Don’t count on Hillary for much of the same.

Will the next President
Pack the Supreme Court?
Stay tuned.

Our last item. The New York Times Op-Ed page this morning included a think piece by Jean Edward Smith suggesting that the next President could thwart the Roberts Righties by packing the court with liberals.

Smith suggests:

If the current five-man majority persists in thumbing its nose at popular values, the election of a Democratic president and Congress could provide a corrective. It requires only a majority vote in both houses to add a justice or two. Chief Justice John Roberts and his conservative colleagues might do well to bear in mind that the roll call of presidents who have used this option includes not just Roosevelt but also Adams, Jefferson, Jackson, Lincoln and Grant.

Of course, an attempt at impeaching justices Roberts and Alito might also work, and to greater effect. Both swore to Congress they’d respect the doctrine of stare decicis and then immediately began undoing centuries of settled Supreme Court decisions. Smells to me like the impeachable offense of perjury.

Cranky Prediction: The entire court will continue sitting, until rigor mortis sets in. But Roberts and Alito will be a little more cautious, given the backlash they’ve already begun generating after less than a year on the big bench.

URLS
Just cut and paste ‘em in your browser for more details:
The Perjury Story:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070726/ap_on_go_co/congress_gonzales

The smacked generals story:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/2

George Bush’s economy starts falling apart:
http://biz.yahoo.com/ap/070726/economy.html?.v=19

John Edward’s comes out swinging on taxes:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070726/ap_on_el_pr/edwards_taxes

Precedents for packing the court like sardines:
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/26/opinion/26smith.html