Happy Ape Giving Day
October 15 is Giving Day for Apes. Time is running quickly out for donations to the Tacugama Chimp Sanctuary in Sierra Leone. https://givingdayforapes.mightycause.com/organization/Tacugama-Chimpanzee-Sanctuary.
The Tacugama Sanctuary continues to receive orphaned chimps at an alarming rate – 16 babies in the last 12 months, some arriving wounded by hunters. The sanctuary has operated during times of Ebola, times of civil war, and the brave volunteers and the orphaned chimps can surely use your help. Please have a heart and send some money their way.
And no one shall make them afraid
Everyone shall sit under their own vine and fig tree, and no one shall make them afraid, they’ll be safe in this nation we made.
Lin-Manuel Miranda, Teach Them How to Say Good-Bye
I began this blog by saying that silence was not an option and yet I’ve allowed myself, again, to fall silent. When I post, I feel I am just repeating myself – I wake every morning amazed that, finding ourselves governed by a madman who is also a criminal, there is apparently no way to remove him. I have no doubt that the Democratic Party will win again in 2020, but will they win by enough to overcome all the structural disadvantages the Republicans have managed to erect in their pursuit of un-democracy? That keeps me up at night.
A week ago, I told my husband there were two particular things I thought people should be talking more about – the Russian hacking into the actual electoral rolls in Florida and Illinois and the puzzling behavior of Rosenstein as he stood behind Barr in that execrable press conference. No sooner wanted than provided! Thank you (for nothing) Marco Rubio for confirming at last what, during the midterms, you refused to confirm. Thank you New York Times for adding so much value to the Rod Rosenstein story. Why are so many people willing to take out the trash for this despicable monster? It’s a mystery to me.
When I was a youngster, the Vietnam war had a daily scorecard. We saw it on our tvs – all the people killed on one side, all the people killed on the other. It was, I think, intended to persuade us that we were winning. Instead, it made the war a daily reality. I wish the news shows now would do something similar with family separation – how many days past the court’s deadline for reunification are we? How many children are back with their parents and how many are not? Where are these children? Too many stories simply drop out of memory – this one is important enough to justify a daily reminder.
In other news – I keep reading the concern and complaint that, much like Breaking Bad, the end of Game of Thrones seems intent on giving everyone everything they wanted – all the villains of yesteryear on the quick road to redemption, all the fanfic couplings made real – all to the detriment of George RR Martin’s more difficult and much more interesting story. So, moments before tonight’s blood-letting begins, I want to be clear to the showrunners that I am not getting what I want.
What I want: more direwolves. They seemed so full of portent and possibility, but ended up so underused. Specifically I want to see Nymeria and Arya, together again, fighting crime and solving mysteries. And Ghost. Let’s see lots more of Ghost in the short time we have left together.
Secondly, I waited all through the long seasons for the reunion of the surviving Stark children. It hurts me that, when they are finally all in the same place at the same time, on the day before the day they all expect to die, they have no interest in spending those final hours together. They all love to tell us how much family matters to them. But at the end of the world, they all have someone else they’d rather be with. It’s disappointing.
Thirdly, I’m looking, in my twilight years, for more shows that don’t end with a big battle. If that’s the hero’s journey, I’m sick of it. Less people with swords. More people with sandwiches.
Book the Vote.
If you haven’t voted yet, today is the day to take care of that. Our nation turns its lonely eyes to you. Save us! Save yourself!
Darkness falls on the republic.
Everybody knows the fight was fixed
The poor stay poor, the rich get rich
That’s how it goes
Everybody knows
-Leonard Cohen
So very many reasons to vote no today. Chief among them the chance to save the Supreme Court. So many people chose not to do so. You don’t get that many chances in a life to be a hero. Don’t squander the one that comes your way. Don’t be a Ben Sasse, a Jeff Flake, a Susan Collins. For god’s sake, don’t grow up to be Lindsey Graham.
A Handy, Dandy Supreme Court Cheat Sheet
My brother and I (credit mostly to him) wrote an op-ed when Justice Kennedy retired. That was before the commencement of the ongoing Brett Kavanaugh horror show and doesn’t address many of the issues currently on my own and everyone else’s minds — issues of sexual assault, perjury, temperament, and entitlement. The preposterous notion that some vast leftwing conspiracy (conspicuously ineffective) is behaving the way the Trumpist Republicans behave (because Trump has never accused anyone of any outrage he himself hasn’t beat them to, and the party follows like a shadow at his heels.) The insanity of Lindsey Graham — to anyone old enough to remember how he comported himself during the Clinton impeachment, his current performance of outrage has been particularly nauseating.
But to the issue of the politicization of the court, it remains relevant and I’m going to post it here, along with two introductory additions.
The first is this crucial speech made early in the Kavanaugh hearings by Senator Whitehouse. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_XxHjM3lMDs Please watch.
The second is these infuriating recent remarks by Justice Kennedy to a group students in Sacramento: “Perhaps we didn’t do too good a job teaching the importance of preserving democracy by an enlightened civic discourse,” he said. “In the first part of this century we’re seeing the death and decline of democracy.” This from the man who, with absolute and resolute civility, has done more than most to destroy the democratic system. More about that below.
A Handy, Dandy Supreme Court Cheat Sheet
by Karen Fowler and Michael Burke
For court watchers, the arrival of June used to be significant. After months of reading the tea leaves of who asked what questions and what points of law seemed to apply, the verdicts came in. There was, from time to time, genuine jurisprudence, interesting and unexpected arguments. There was suspense. Justice Kennedy has sometimes been the source of uncertainty; he could surprise us. But, more often, he went with the conservative majority.
That majority has offered some very strange rulings over the last twenty years. Among these are:
Citizens United (2010): the most consequential case about campaign expenditures in decades. In his majority opinion, Justice Kennedy wrote:
We now conclude that independent expenditures, including those made by corporations, do not give rise to corruption or the appearance of corruption. …The fact that speakers [i.e., donors] may have influence over or access to elected officials does not mean that these officials are corrupt. … The appearance of influence or access, furthermore, will not cause the electorate to lose faith in our democracy.
Obviously Justice Kennedy wished to allow unlimited campaign expenditures, but this is nonsense. Everyone understands that if donors influence elected officials through their donations, it is corruption.
Shelby v Holder: the 2013 decision that eviscerated the 1965 Voting Rights Act (VRA). The VRA identified states with a troubled history in the area of voting rights. It subjected those states to “preclearance”, a procedure under which any change in voting rights laws must first be approved by the Justice Department. Chief Justice Roberts, writing for the majority, noted (correctly) that current data showed that discrimination in the area of voting rights was less prevalent than in the 1960’s when the VRA was passed. He does not appear to comprehend that this happy fact is largely a consequence of the preclearance provisions. Instead, he concludes, absurdly, that preclearance is no longer needed. As a matter of logic, the Notorious RBG, in her dissent, demolished the Roberts opinion with an umbrella:
Throwing out preclearance when it has worked and is continuing to work to stop discriminatory changes is like throwing away your umbrella in a rainstorm because you are not getting wet.
Immediately upon publication of the Supreme Court’s decision, Texas and North Carolina approved new voter suppression laws. Additional states have since followed suit. The fairness celebrated by Chief Justice Roberts is slipping away as fast as states can legislate.
Here are two puzzlers from the just concluded term: the Masterpiece Cakeshop decision in Colorado and Trump v. Hawaii (the Muslim ban). The essence of the issue in the Masterpiece case is the question of whether a person can break the law for reasons of religious conviction. Colorado law prohibits discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation, so, make no mistake, in refusing to bake a wedding cake because the couple was gay, the baker broke the law. The central charge for courts is to enforce the law. So how did the conservative majority manage to countenance an illegal act?
Justice Kennedy, writing for the majority, constructed the most bizarre legal argument imaginable. He detected “religious animus” on the part of a couple of members of the Colorado Civil Rights Commission, which had previously ruled against the Masterpiece baker. [His religious animus meter must be more finely tuned than ours]. The mere presence of this animus provided sufficient reason for Justice Kennedy to overrule the lower courts. This reasoning is stunning. Even if such animus exists, how does it impact the central question of the case: can an individual break the law for reasons of religious conviction? Religious animus expressed by someone other than the baker is irrelevant to that question.
Moving on to the Muslim ban. Everyone knows this is a Muslim Ban. President Trump knows it’s a Muslim ban. His ardent supporters know it’s a Muslim ban; that’s why they support it. His opponents know it’s a Muslim ban; that’s why their opposition has been so vigorous. Muslims, in the United States, in the Middle East, in Europe, know it’s a Muslim ban. This is Trump’s third attempt, in essence the same as his first two tries, which were both found wanting by multiple courts. So here’s the court’s conundrum. They want to support Trump’s Muslim ban, but they know a Muslim ban is unconstitutional. The solution is simplicity itself. Chief Justice Roberts, writing for the majority, simply declares that the Muslim ban is not a Muslim ban because, quoting from his opinion, “the text says nothing about religion.” This assertion is at odds with common sense. It also runs afoul of the well known Duck Rule: if it looks like a duck and swims like a duck and quacks like a duck, it’s a duck. But the assertion allows Chief Justice Roberts to reach his desired conclusion.
Now consider these two cases together. In the Masterpiece case, barely detectable (if there at all) religious animus drives the conclusion in favor of the baker. In the Muslim ban, Trump’s repeated and shouted religious animus toward Muslims is dismissed. These two decisions, offered by the same justices only a couple of weeks apart, cannot be squared with each other. What reading of the Constitution reconciles these two? Perhaps the court is reaching its rulings by some means other than the consideration of the law and the Constitution.
With this in mind, we offer, for the post-Justice Kennedy world:
The Handy, Dandy Supreme Court Cheat Sheet
Given a Supreme Court case, identify the litigants. Then apply this Cheat Sheet.
Basic Principles
• if the case is between the Federal government and a state government, the
state government wins
• if the case is between an individual and the government, the government
wins
• if the case is between an individual and a business or a corporation, the
business/corporation wins
• if the case is between the government and a business or corporation,
the business/corporation wins
[Note: these principles can be summarized as follows: people always lose, businesses and corporations always win, and governments fall in the middle]
In certain cases, though, these basic principles will be reversed by overriding factors.
Overriding Factors
• if the case involves members of a minority group (racial minorities, minorities identified by sexual orientation, immigrants, women**), the minority group loses*
• if the case involves the environment, the environment loses
• if the case involves a close race for the presidency, the vote count stops and the Democrat loses.
• if the case involves a Christian, the Christian wins
• if the case involves a fetus, the fetus wins
* In addition to the obvious cases, this rule also applies to cases involving gerrymandering and voter suppression laws
** Technically, women are not in the minority, but they are treated as such by the male political establishment
This Cheat Sheet resolves the contradictions between the Masterpiece Cakeshop and Muslim ban decisions. The Muslim ban involves a minority (Muslims), so they had to lose. The gay couple in the Masterpiece case faced a double whammy. As a gay couple, they were members of a minority group, so they had to lose. And the other litigant was a Christian – so he had to win. There was no way for this case to be decided otherwise. With the Cheat Sheet, these decisions are now consistent with each other.
In his confirmation hearings, Chief Justice Roberts likened himself to a baseball umpire, neutral about the outcome of the game, and simply calling balls and strikes. Chief Justice Roberts pledged to “call ‘em as I see ‘em”. The above Cheat Sheet clarifies his strike zone. It explains what many of us feel are very strange balls and strikes.
Look at the legal principles the conservative majority has given us, now enshrined in the law as precedent:
• obvious corruption is not corruption (Citizens United, McDonnell v. United States)
• rich people get more free speech than poor people (Citizens United)
• corporations are people (Citizens United)
• everyone must follow the law, except Christians (Hobby Lobby, Masterpiece Cakeshop)
• a Muslim ban is not a Muslim ban (Trump v. Hawaii)
Over the last twenty years, the Cheat Sheet accounts for the positions of the four conservatives in nearly all important cases. As the most-of-the-time conservative majority morphs into the all-of-the-time conservative majority, we can expect that this Cheat Sheet will be an increasingly reliable predictor. No need to wait for June! No need to learn about the law, no need to consider the arguments, no need to understand the Constitution, no need to think about the actual real-world implications of any possible decision. In fact, no need to argue the cases at all. As soon as we identify the litigants, we can know the outcome.
Book the Vote
I’m registered to vote. Are you? You can find out how to do it at https://vote.gov/. But the window to register in many states closes soon, so do it now. Nothing could be more important. Do it now!
More than 200 writers are participating in this action. If you want to join in, go to www.bookthevote.org, or by retweeting or sharing, etc.#BookTheVote
My Father’s Day post
Little darling of mine, I can’t for the life of me
Remember a sadder day, I know they say to let it be
But it just don’t work out that way
—Paul Simon, Mother and Child Reunion
These days I am often too dispirited to post. Currently I have a set of personal calamities to deal with and others are more eloquent on the endless cavalcade of cruelty and corruption than I can be. The realization that soon the courts will be in the hands of Trump appointed judges and that no justice will be found there for the rest of my lifetime; the license the police have been given to kill at will, the estimated death tolls of Pruitt’s EPA policies – the present is not good and the future looks worse. When Trump expounded on the dystopian horrors of the American landscape at his inauguration, I should have understood these remarks to be aspirational. Trump has never accused anyone of anything he hasn’t done himself.
But I wouldn’t want to look back and see that I didn’t at least try to raise my voice against this current set of horrors. A little more than a decade ago, the mismanagement and resulting deaths in New Orleans generated wide and sustained outrage against then president Bush. How we have changed in such a short time! Even on my regular leftwing internet stops, Daily Kos, Talking Points Memo, etc. I look long and hard before I find mention of the updated death tolls in Puerto Rico. Why isn’t this Trump’s Katrina?
If we ever hoped that there would be, at long last, some line the Republican Party wouldn’t cross, we’ve been disabused. Not one Republican Senator has signed on to Feinstein’s bill to keep families seeking asylum together. Susan Collins, widely considered a moderate for reasons that escape me, is sending out the most cowardly possible letter explaining why children must be torn from their parents and imprisoned in compounds. I’m haunted in particular by Jeff Session’s little laugh as he told us God has ordained this. A cartoon villain but the villainy is real.
The LA Times has a story about three Brazilian siblings who believed their parents were dead and weren’t allowed to hug and comfort each other. Consoling these children is apparently forbidden; also forbidden is allowing them to console themselves. Their terror and grief is just a bargaining chip to Trump. Perhaps Susan Collins would like to go to these compounds and see for herself. Though probably she doesn’t want to waste her beautiful mind on it.
I’ve found the party of Trump to be evil many times, even before Trump arrived to steer it. But now we are so far past evil, I can’t even see it in the distance. If the American people don’t stop this and soon, then there is really nothing left worth saving in this country.
This place don’t make sense to me no more
Let’s overturn these tables
Disconnect these cables
This place don’t make sense to me no more
Can you tell me what we’re waiting for, señor?
Bob Dylan, Señor
The Occupation of the White House continues, despite the constant suggestions that the whole criminal enterprise is about to run aground on the rocks of madness or the rule of law or that we will finally just all wake up and realize the whole thing was just a bad dream.
Often I intend to write about it, only to decide I have nothing new to offer and other writers have responded more brilliantly than I can. The morning’s outrage is eclipsed by the afternoon’s before I can construct the sentences I need.
Tomorrow I have a Noam Chompsky quote to post. Today I’m going to write about a couple of things made me happy this morning and this week. The first is that there was a tide so low, I got to walk on parts of the beach where I’ve never walked before. There were starfish, egrets, and an underwater cave, suddenly high and dry that Lily and I could explore all the way to the back of. It was like being in a children’s book, finding a new world in the back of the wardrobe.
Secondly, friend of the blog, Andrew Sean Greer, won the Pulitzer prize for his fabulous novel LESS. If you haven’t read this book, apparently I am not the only person who thinks you should. Joy awaits you there.
Noamic wisdom
There’s been nothing like this in history. It’s kind of an outrageous statement, but it happens to be true, that the Republican Party is the most dangerous organization in human history. Nobody, not even the Nazis, was dedicated to destroying the possibility of organized human life. It’s just missing from the media. In fact, if you read, say, the sensible business press, the Financial Times, BusinessWeek, any of them, when they talk about fossil fuel production, the articles are all just about the prospect for profit. Is the U.S. is moving to number one and what are the gains? Not that it’s going to wipe out organized human life. Maybe that’s a footnote somewhere. It’s pretty astonishing.
—Noam Chompsky
More Earth Day
Among the things I’m doing today is trying to understand why David Buckel’s self-immolation last week went largely unnoticed, barely reported and rarely discussed. I understand the difficulties a suicide raises for the media. But a man gave his life for a discussion we largely refuse to have. Maybe if he’d been a porn star…
Morning comes whether you set the alarm or not.
No darkness lasts forever. And even there, there are stars.
—Ursula K Le Guin.
For the great Ursula Le Guin’s 80th birthday, Debbie Notkin and I put together a festshrift as a gift to her. My own contribution was a poem. Missing her today, I pulled it out and I see that it needs much work. But also that I won’t be working on it. It was a birthday present, not a work of art. And it’s time is over. I’ve spent the last month writing tributes to her and I think I’m worded out. But I wanted something on my personal blog that acknowledges her passing and how lucky we were to have her when we did. So here is the poem I wrote eight years ago:
Ursula’s Eightieth
A Sonnet Upon it
Sunrise at the edge of the world. We dance,
the dog and I (the dog deadweight.) We hear
the cri de coeur of seals, the “ur, ur, ur”
of Ursula. The morning sun advances.
Dazzled sea and rock below. Above
me, lines of pelicans, a cloud of gulls
unlock the air with joyful aerials.
We celebrate! It is the birthday of
the worlds of Omelas, Urras, Gethen,
O, of Rocannon and the Ansarac,
and more. All are very far away from
anywhere, yet each one holds this lesson:
that, wander where you will, (or even walk
away) and still you’re always coming home.
My thoughts and prayers
I think that every politician who has taken money from the NRA should be voted out of office and I pray this starts in the very next election.
You’ve got to sing loud
I have squandered my existence
On a pocket full of mumbles such are promises
—Paul Simon, The Boxer
Another bleak day in Democrat land. Who was Lucy and who was Charlie Brown in today’s deal to end the government shutdown? Mitch McConnell taunting Chuck Schumer? Or Chuck Schumer taunting us? How many times have we watched this play out, hoping to see the Democrats match their actions to their words, only to see them cave? The Republican Party has moved beyond truth, beyond shame, beyond the last remnants of their morality. We need something more from our Democratic Representatives than that they manage only to be better than that.
On Saturday we marched. On Monday we mourn.
our new year
Where the river bends, is a place I’ve been
The water’s not as blue, and the grass, well it ain’t so green
The current gets strong, it can pull you down
You gotta swim hard, if you want to turn around.
—Michael Barber, Where the River Bends
The morning began with the sounds of battle. Skunk in the yard! Lily ran around the corner of the house and I heard the excitement of engagement, all too brief, and then one startled bark signifying defeat. She came racing back, frantically scraping her body and face against the pavement and the ground. Her color changed completely from white to mud. I dumped her into the bath, but neither of us was satisfied with the result. She ran through the house, wiping herself off on all the rugs, furniture, and bedding. We are turning her over to the professionals at Petsmart and I am spending the day in the great wash-up. I know it’s pointless. The stink always wins.
Speaking of politics.
I feel as if I spent a whole year in the constant hope of imminent rescue. Headlines continually assuring me that Trump was losing it; he was melting down; Mueller was closing in; this or that bit of news was a game-changer. Today marked the beginning of the end for Trump (Daily Beast, August 15, 2017.) Keith Olberman, retiring, predicts the end of Trump. (Washington Times, November 28, 2017) Michael Wolff Says That Washington Will Bury Trump (New Yorker, yesterday.) Meanwhile the support of the Republican Party for all things Trump deepens and broadens. Lindsey Graham is not a real boy, but a puppet, and along with Chuck Grassley (less surprising) is all in for obstruction of justice. Trump seems to me no less insane today than he did at his inauguration, i.e. he’s always been the raving bafflegab we see before us. We have lived a year now caught at the event horizon of venal stupidity. It’s exhausting. Ask Tantalus.
So I attach two soothing pictures – art at the beach and the dawning of a new day.
