markpkessinger
markpkessinger's JournalHad a frustrating conversation . . .
. . . with a friend who was also frustrated, as we all are, about the Supreme Court decisions. The conversation went something like this:
"Then tie up Joe Manchin and Kristen Sinema in a basement somewhere and beat the shit out of them until they agree to support what Democrats are doing!" Okay, that may be satisfying as rhetoric, but come on, now, it isn't a realistic option. And look, if you come down on them too hard, you'll only succeed in driving them to the Republicans, and in that case, Democrats lose the majority. And if you don't like what you see now, just you wait . . .
"But why is it that Republicans seem to be able to push through whatever they want, and Democrats are so weak?" The fact of the matter is that McConnell is a very savvy player, and knows when he can get away with pressing an advantage and when he cannot. And his caucus is, I'm sorry to say, more unified than the Democrats. There really isn't much Biden, or even the party as a whole, can do given a razor thin majority in just one chamber.
"But Democrats should at least hold the votes, even if they don't succeed." But really, what would that accomplish?
"Yeah, but Democrats need to be more ruthless, like the Republicans. Instead, they always 'take the high road.'" It really has nothing to do with "taking the high road." It's a numbers thing. Biden understands that he can't press an advantage he does not, in fact, have.
"Well, get rid of Clarence Thomas!" The current composition of the senate is 49 Republicans, 48 Democrats and 3 independents (who caucus with the Democrats, thereby giving them the majority). To remove Clarence Thomas would require an impeachment, which would first require a majority vote in the Republican-controlled House, and then a 2/3 majority to find him guilty at a Senate trial. That means we would have to find 15 Republican senators willing to vote to convict him. Again, the numbers simply aren't there.
"Term limits!" That would require a Constitutional Amendment, and a 2/3 majority in both houses, plus a majority of state legislatures. Again, the votes just aren't there to do it.
Look, you're frustrated. So am I. But the fact of the matter is that we're up against some very hard, and very unpleasant, political realities. And demanding that Democrats just start flailing about in all directions simply won't accomplish anything, and may, in fact, be politically self-defeating.
I don't like this reality any more than you, but not liking it doesn't change the fact that it is reality.
Mama Bears Documentary on PBS/Independent Lens
https://www.pbs.org/video/mama-bears-ebooux/
This is an absolutely beautifully done documentary that I would encourage everyone to watch. It is about a group of mothers, mostly in the South, who are doing battle to defend their LGBTQ+ kids from the anti-gay/anti-trans efforts of Republicans in their home states. I was particularly moved the mother and daughter shown in the image. This is an evangelical Christian mother, whose child, born a biological male, began insisting at around the age of 3 that she was really a girl. It was only after trying everything she could think of, from prayer to counseling and even punishment (including corporal punishment) to dissuade her child from expressing her identity. But none of it worked. She came around when her child done day made that statement that she wished she could just go an “be with Jesus” that she finally woke up. As the mother now movingly put it, “I had to decide whether I wanted to have a trans daughter or a dead son.”
There is an oft-heard sentiment – one that typically comes from people who consider themselves to be very tolerant – that goes something like this: “Look, I am all for adults living how ever they want, but we’re talking about children here who are too young to be able to make such an irreversible, life-altering decision about themselves.” First, a little clarity is in order: no minor child is receiving full sex-change surgery. A few adolescents may, with their parents’ permission, get “top surgery,” (typically, this is when a trans-male (born biologically female) has breasts removed or reduced. One can agree or disagree with that, but that surgery takes place only after a LOT of counseling from doctors and mental health professionals. It isn’t as if some kid, on a whim one day, can announce he or she is a different gender, and go out and schedule sex change surgery or even top surgery that very day! Support of trans-gendered kids may involve, in some cases, prescribing puberty blockers, which merely delay the onset of puberty, buying a child a little time before he or she has to make a more permanent decision.
I’ve stated before that, in addition to knowing several fully transitioned adults, I also have several friends and acquaintances, all of the straight, who are raising trans kids. One of these persons I know from high school, and several others from my college days, and a couple of instances from other contexts. To a person, these are bright, stable and loving parents, who simply want the best for their kids. I, myself, am a cis-gendered gay man (meaning I am sexually attracted to other men, but fully identify as a male myself). One thing that infuriates me is when I hear right-wingers making statements to the effect that those who support trans people are “groomers.” That angers me on two levels. First, it partakes of an age-old anti-gay slander, i.e., that gay people represent some kind of threat to children, and are out to “convert” them. Sorry to break it to you, haters, but the overwhelming majority of people who sexually abuse children identify as straight, even the ones who molest children of the same sex as themselves. The other level on which this makes me angry is that it portrays the parents of trans kids as themselves as, essentially, child molesters, and I know personally how far from the truth that allegation is.
Then there is a sentiment I hear sometimes from other gay men. This one goes like this: “Trans people have nothing to do with gay people – one is about gender identity, the other is about sexual orientation.” Often, these folks entertain a fantasy that if only the LGBTQ+ community got rid of the ‘T’, that their problems would disappear as if by magic. But here’s what I say to them: the right-wing in this country accepts only ONE model of gender-identify and sexual preference, and that is the so-called “traditional” model in which the ONLY sexual orientation that is ever permitted to exist and express itself is heterosexuality, engaged in my cis-gendered males and females. They are opposed to EVERYONE who falls outside of that model. Those whose bigotries lead them to oppose trans people oppose us also, as indeed they oppose anyone who fails to conform to what THEY deem to be acceptable. So do not, for one minute, think that the anti-trans movement isn’t coming for you also, sooner or later!
But to get back to the film, again, I would urge everyone to watch it, and most ESPECIALLY those who are opposed to children learning about respect for and tolerance of those who are different from themselves. Yes, it is true that children are fickle. But both gender identity and sexual orientation, while neither if fully understood, are deeply rooted in a person’s sense of who they are. The child from the film has insisted, and never wavered, about being a girl since the age of 3. I know I knew I was gay LONG before I necessarily understood what all that entailed and before I even had any sexual stirrings. I didn’t wake up one day and decide I was gay; I went through a long process of coming to terms with what I experienced within myself. I suspect this is the same for trans people. Learning about trans people does not make any child trans any more than learning about gay people makes a child gay (or a gay child learning about heterosexuality makes a gay child straight). Kids know, on a very profound level, what they identify as in terms of gender and sexual orientation.
Please, if you struggle to understand what trans people and the people who support them are all about, do watch this film. Set aside your politics, set aside the culture wars. Watch with an open heart. Ask yourself what you would do if you were these parents, what would you do if your three-year-old suddenly announced to you, and remain committed to the announcement, that he or she was really something other than the biological sex that defined them at birth? You can’t beat or punish it out of the child. You might succeed in raising a child that has thoroughly repressed his or her own sense of self, but in that case, you will at the least be raising an unhappy adult, and you may wind up creating pathologies within the child that you can scarcely imagine.
Compassion and empathy really aren’t difficult. They merely require a little humility about one’s own understanding of the world around oneself – recognizing that the ways in which you always have understood the world may be incomplete or not fully informed, and a willingness to HONESTLY place oneself in another’s shoes.
Justice Alito seems to be making the opposite argument from Clarence Thomas . . .
. . . Remember, Thomas's argument about the gifts/favors he received from Harlan Crow was, basically, "Hey, the guy's a dear friend, who gave me those things did so because of our friendship and for no other reason."
Now comes Alito, talking about the gifts/favors he has received from Paul Singer. Alito's argument, in effect, is "Paul Who? Look, I barely know the guy -- we've only spoken on a handful of occasions."
Interesting tack. But if anything, if Singer and Alito really are such casual acquaintances, then the gifts/favors become even more suspect. I mean, he's asking us to believe that some billionaire he barely knows is giving him private jet travel worth hundreds of thousands of dollars, and expects nothing in return!
Thomas's argument was at least slightly (but only slightly) more plausible than Alito's!
Remembering my Dad . . .
Given that yesterday was Father’s Day, i have been thinking a lot about my own father, and my relationship with him. We disagreed about some things,politics being chief among them. He was a staunch, conservative Republican (albeit of an older variety of conservative Republican that is largely extinct today), and I am an unabashed liberal/progressive. But he was ALWAYS willing to hear what I had to say, and to do so respectfully, and, on occasion, to acknowledge that I had a legitimate point to make. And it is that quality that I find utterly lacking in today’s Republicans, including, sad to say, some in my own family!
He died 23 years ago, and I still miss him!1
[William B. Kessinger, circa 1964, taken in Rome.]
Came across a wonderful New York story about Harry Belafonte . . .
. . . In 1958, when he was already an international start, Belafonte and his wife were looking for an apartment in Manhattan. He saw one that he really wanted -- a 21-room, 6-bedroom sprawler at 300 West End Avenue. At the time, though, many Manhattan landlords would refuse to rent to black tenants, even very prominent, wealthy ones like Belafonte. So Belafonte sent his white manager to fill out the application and paperwork as if for himself, and then, when it was approved, signed the lease in his own name.
When the landlord found out he had a black tenant, he promptly asked Belafonte to leave. Belafonte was so furious at the insult that he bought the entire building. And one of the first tenants he brought in was singer Lena Horne, who rented the penthouse. She and her white husband had been living for years out of hotels because of the same prejudice!
Belafonte eventually converted the building to a co-op, and he continued to reside there for nearly 50 years!
Cultural norms and the danger of parochial moral absolutism
If the kerfuffle over the Dalai Lama's interaction with a young boy demonstrates anything, it should be to drive home the danger and folly of viewing the customs of a foreign culture through a lens of moral absolutism grounded in the values of our own culture only, even, and especially, when we are a little too arrogantly sure that our society's values are oh-so-enlightened. Reading some of the comments on this board made me think that perhaps all of us are in need of a refresher in Anthropology 101!
The reality is that customs that look very weird and inappropriate in the context of our culture might be thoroughly appropriate in the context of another. (If you haven't yet watched the video posted by Richard D in which a young Tibetan man explains the context for kissing on the lips and sticking out tongues, I urge you to do so (see https://www.democraticunderground.com/1017820070 ).
The important thing to remember is that a gesture that seems, and indeed may be, wildly inappropriate in one cultural context can be utterly benign in another. And when we lose sight of that, even the most progressive among us can wind up looking like cultural boors!
Trump warns of 'death and destruction' if he's indicted in NY case
At what point does this become a terroristic threat?
From the NY Daily News Evening Edition:
Former President Donald Trump Friday warned of “death and destruction” if he is indicted for paying hush money to porn star Stormy Daniels.
Raising the rhetorical heat, Trump suggested that his supporters will respond with fury if he is criminally charged in the case as early as next week when a grand jury reconvenes to deliberate.
“Potential death & destruction in such a false charge could be catastrophic for our Country,” Trump wrote on his social media site.
Trump falsely claimed last weekend that he would be arrested in the case on Tuesday and urged his supporters to “protest, take our nation back.”
[ . . . .]
Sorry, but I do not trust Alvin Bragg
An article in yesterday's NY Times, titled "The Legal Intricacies That Could Make or Break the Case Against Trump" (see https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/21/nyregion/trump-indictment-legal-theory.html?searchResultPosition=10) does a nice job of laying out the legal complexities of Bragg's case against Trump. As the articles notes, DA Bragg "may have to pull off a difficult maneuver, connecting the hush-money cover-up — a potential violation of state law — to a federal election." The article goes on to explain:
[ . . . . ]
The case could hinge on the way Mr. Trump and his company, the Trump Organization, handled reimbursing Mr. Cohen for the payment of $130,000 to Ms. Daniels. Internal Trump Organization records falsely classified the reimbursements as legal expenses, which helped conceal the purpose of the payments, according to Mr. Cohen, who said Mr. Trump knew about the misleading records. (Mr. Trump’s lawyers deny that.)
In New York, falsifying business records can be a crime, and Mr. Bragg’s office is likely to build the case around that charge, according to people with knowledge of the matter and outside legal experts. The false business records charge is the bread and butter of the district attorney’s office white-collar practice — since Mr. Bragg took office in 2022, prosecutors have filed 117 felony counts of the charge, against 29 individuals and companies, according to data kept by the office.
But for falsifying business records to be a felony, not a misdemeanor, Mr. Bragg’s prosecutors must show that Mr. Trump’s “intent to defraud” included an intent to commit or conceal a second crime. That crime could be a violation of election law, under the theory that the payout served as a donation to Mr. Trump’s campaign, because it silenced Ms. Daniels and shut down a potential sex scandal in the final stretch of the campaign.
Although the district attorney’s office need not obtain a conviction on the election law violation, or even include it in the indictment, that second crime might be the aspect of the legal theory that is most vulnerable to attack.
So why do I distrust Bragg?
Here's the thing: just over a year ago, two highly experienced prosecutors, Mark Pomerantz and Carey Dunne, resigned in protest over Bragg's refusal to proceed with a racketeering case against Trump and the Trump Organization, which they believed was strong and which was ready to go. So how is it that Bragg went from refusing to prosecute a case involving a much more legally significant charge that two much more experienced prosecutors believed was solid and were ready to prosecute, to a year later being willing to try a case based on an untested legal theory, involving a much lesser charge? That really doesn't make much sense, and it makes me wonder what game Bragg might be playing.
NYC Mayor Adams dismisses separation of church and state principle, says he's 'servant of God'
Can we ditch this guy, already? Now, please!
From the New York Daily News:
Adams, who’s Christian, has over the course of his political career spoken extensively about how important faith is in civic life and said as recently as last February that “God” told him to become mayor.
But his comments Tuesday morning, delivered at an interfaith breakfast at the New York Public Library’s central branch in Manhattan, took it a step further.
The tone was set by Ingrid Lewis-Martin, Adams’ chief adviser in City Hall, who introduced him at the event by declaring that the mayor’s administration “does not believe” it must “separate church from state.” “Ingrid was so right,” Adams said once he took the stage. “Don’t tell me about no separation of church and state. State is the body, church is the heart. You take the heart out of the body, the body dies. I can’t separate my beliefs because I’m an elected official.”
Jesus Fucking Christ!
If House Republicans had even an ounce of sense . . .
. . . they would nominate Liz Cheney as Speaker. Sure, they would lose the hard core MAGA types, but enough Democrats might be persuaded to go along out of gratitude for the integrity she displayed on the 1/6 Committee!
Mind you, as a Democrat, that wouldn't make me particularly happy, because Liz Cheney, whatever her good traits, can also be a royal pain in the ass, and would be a tough adversary for Democrats to deal with! But Republicans are too caught up in their Trump-love to be able to see that!
Profile Information
Member since: Sat May 15, 2010, 04:48 PMNumber of posts: 8,395
