Enough Of Enough

Apparently, enough was not enough when on June 2

Declaring "Enough, enough!" U.S. President Joe Biden on Thursday called on Congress to ban assault weapons, expand background checks and implement other gun control measures to address a string of mass shootings that have struck the United States.

Speaking from the White House, in a speech broadcast live in primetime, Biden asked a country stunned by the recent shootings at a school in Texas, a grocery store in New York and a medical building in Oklahoma, how many more lives it would take to change gun laws in America.

"For God's sake, how much more carnage are we willing to accept?" Biden asked.

Quite a bit. After the massacre of six people (plus many more injured) in Highland Park, Illinois at an Independence Day parade, President Biden has declared "Jill and I are shocked by the senseless gun violence that has yet again brought grief to an American community on this Independence Day."

Of course, the President was shocked. He already had declared "enough, enough!" And to be fair, after negotiations between Democratic senators and Republican senators, an agreement recently was reached on a (tepid) gun safety proposal, thereafter approved by the Senate and House and signed by the President. About that, the former Chief of Staff for Harry Reid, Adam Jentleson, had it right:

I think it’s important to be honest that on the scale of national policy, the bill is an admission of defeat, a marker of decline, a sign that our system is no longer capable of passing policy solutions that are on the same scale as the challenges they seek to address.

— Adam Jentleson 🎈 (@AJentleson) July 5, 2022

Jentleson tweeted promptly after the carnage in Highland Park, but his observation was (or should have been) obvious once Senators Murphy and Cornyn had struck a deal. However, as best as can be determined, it had not spurred anyone else generally on the left to be as realistically cynical about the resultant legislation. And still, expectations are being lifted to an unrealistic level. Promoting the need for an assault weapons ban with Biden-like rhetoric:

More kids’ bicycles strewn in a sidewalk, grandparents lost, blood in the streets.

Enough. I have long advocated for the assault weapons ban. These weapons belong in the hands of trained military, not madmen.

— Amy Klobuchar (@amyklobuchar) July 5, 2022

Wrong, Senator. Sufficiency already had been established, however mass shootings are calculated. . We reached the enough stage a long time ago. And because of firearms manufacturers, the firearms lobby, and Republican officials, "we" are willing to accept a lot more of the unfortunate exercise in Second Amendment freedoms 

Senator Klobuchar and President Biden can ineffectually mimic the commercial marketing of the "enough" campaign, which will only raise expectations of ending gun violence swiftly. The slaughter, in instances of mass shooting or more common street violence, will continue. It will not end soon, and that's not for God's sake.

 

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Owners Win, Again

Let's give credit where credit is due. While most of us were watching reproductive rights demolished and gun rights sanctified.....

I don’t want to harsh anyone’s mellow but next up on the chopping block is the ability of the executive departments to regulate, well, anything, and that’s the one the Court’s owners really want.

— Charles P. Pierce (@CharlesPPierce) June 25, 2022

Six days later, as reported by the Texas Tribune the US Supreme Court ruled

that the Environmental Protection Agency does not have broad authority to require states to decarbonize their electricity sectors, a decision that is expected to dramatically slow the United States’ ability to reduce greenhouse gases and mitigate the effects of climate change.

The court’s 6-3 ruling on a case sparked by Texas and 16 other states — which addressed an Obama-era regulation aimed at coal-fired power plants, one of the biggest sources of greenhouse gas emissions in the nation — was a blow to President Joe Biden’s plan to reduce U.S. emissions and meet the country’s goals under international agreements.

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton was among 17 Republican state attorneys general who sued the EPA over an Obama-era regulation known as the Clean Power Plan, which never went into effect. It was repealed and replaced by what was called the Affordable Clean Energy rule under the Trump administration....

The decision, which limits EPA’s authority to implement regulations that cause shifts in fuel sources for electricity generation, will make it difficult for the U.S. to do its part to meet a 1.5-degree Celsius target that scientists have said is key to preventing extreme effects of climate change, experts said.

“We have to act rapidly to cut emissions in order to avoid the worst impacts of global warming,” said Luke Metzger, executive director of Environment Texas. “And it’s unlikely that the natural or economic environment of these coal plants will happen fast enough to meet those emission goals.”

As a prediction, Pierce's tweet was accurate but arguably underwhelming because announcement of the ruling in West Virginia v. EPA was obviously upcoming, and expected to be decided in favor of the plaintiff. However, Pierce understood the wide-ranging implications at stake, including the "ability of the executive departments to regulate, well, anything, and that’s the one the Court’s owners really want." The Texas Tribune explains

The ruling could also open the door for more aggressive challenges to federal regulations at any agency, administrative and environmental lawyers said.

“I do think you’re going to see other federal agencies sit back [as a result of the case],” said Anne Austin, an environmental lawyer who was an assistant administrator for the EPA’s Office of Air and Radiation during the Trump administration. The ruling may cause federal agencies beyond the EPA to narrow regulations to avoid what could now be “shaky legal ground.”

“Federal agencies are more likely to be challenged [in court],” added Austin, a former EPA Region 6 administrator. States that want to prevent certain federal regulations are likely to take a broad view of the majority’s opinion, she said.

Once upon a time- three, four years ago- there was a major push for a Green New Deal. Those days are way gone, and much more may be headed for the chopping block.

                                            HAPPY INDEPENDENCE DAY

 

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My About-Face, Midstream

Noting that President Biden stated that he would support ending the filibuster to codify abortion rights, NBC's Kelly O'Donnell asked him

... many Americans are grappling with this. What is your sense today about the integrity and the impartiality of the Supreme Court? Should Americans have confidence in the Court as an institution? and your views on abortion have evolved in your public life. Are you the best messenger to carry this forward when Democrats, many of them, many progressives want you to do more?

So the President responded

Yeah, I am the President of the United States. That makes me the best messenger and I really think it's a serious problem that the Court has thrust upon the United States- not just in terms of the right to choose but in terms of the right to who you can marry, a whole range of issues relating to privacy and....

CNN's Jake Tapper played O'Donnell's second question and Biden's answer, "Yeah, I am. I am the President of the United States. That makes me the best messenger. I'm the only President they got.". David Axelrod responded

It was not the best answer, I'll give you that. But also, you know, you know, I feel his pain because I know what it's like to be sitting in these situations and being pummeled by elements of your own community.

We know from the comments made by Tapper that Axelrod's "elements of your own community"  was somewhat of a cheap shot against the progressive left.  And those unnamed "elements" have indeed been criticizing President Biden. Nonetheless, I had intended to defend President Biden from this criticism by Axelrod, who did not specifically state his problem with the response.  As a campaign strategist for Barack Obama during his two presidential campaigns, then becoming a Special Advisor to the President (whatever that is).  Axelrod has never served a President who has been criticized by members of his own Party with so few individuals coming to his defense.

"I'm the only President they got" seemed to me to be an approximate throwback to President Truman's "the buck stops here."

Well, Scranton Joe fooled me. Slate's Mark Joseph Stern reports

President Joe Biden struck a deal with Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell to nominate Chad Meredith, a Republican anti-abortion advocate, to a federal judgeship on the Eastern District of Kentucky, Slate has confirmed. Under the arrangement, Meredith would take the seat currently occupied by Judge Karen Kaye Caldwell, a George W. Bush nominee. Caldwell submitted her move to senior status on June 22, which, once complete, will allow Meredith to take the seat. A lawyer with connections to the Kentucky governor’s office who is familiar with the agreement told Slate that Caldwell conditioned her move upon the confirmation a successor—specifically, the conservative Meredith. In exchange, McConnell will allow Biden to nominate and confirm two U.S. Attorneys to Kentucky.

The deal has prompted fury from Democrats since it was first reported by the Louisville Courier Journal’s Andrew Wolfson and Joe Sonka on Wednesday....

Although it's possible that Biden won't go through with this terrible deal, one of those Kentucky Democrats, US Representative John

Yarmuth told Slate that, according to his White House contact, the president “is aware of my concern and the governor’s concern,” but has not yet responded. The congressman added, of Meredith: “This is a bad appointment for Kentucky. It’s a bad appointment for the federal courts. This guy is aligned with a Federalist Society. He represents everything that is anathema to Democrats.”

And so it goes. Whatever Axelrod's concern with Biden's response to O'Donnell's question(s), it likely wasn't this sort of thing. And whatever Democrats thought they got from the nomination for President, and election to the presidency, of Joseph R. Biden, it wasn't this.  Two consecutive weak Democratic presidents isn't the way to prevent election of a Republican as a President, nor the way to brink us back from the brink of complete disaster after his four years of destruction.

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Obama And Biden, Minus Biden

If you go on a rant, it might as well be a righteous one. Early in the video below, TYT's Cenk Uygur and Ana Kasparian note that Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has defended President Obama's decision not to urge legislative action to enshrine reproductive rights.  Uygur recognizes that unlike many Democrats (most, he believes), Ocasio-Cortez "doesn't take corporate cash- she's not influenced by that and I don't think she's at all corrupt." 

However, Uygur's focus is not on the New York congresswoman because

All of the progressives in Congress including Bernie Sanders is hat they get brainwashed by Washington. The minute you step into Washington, they tell you the most important thing to do is to kiss Democratic ass and if you're not kissing Democratic ass 24/7, you will be tarred and feathered and that part is true. You will be tarred and feathered, the mainstream media will  viciously attack you and say that every problem that the Democrats have is your fault.

Although Ocasio-Cortez has "fought more than all of them,"

There's good progressives that fight on some issues but they are still under the spell of Washington. They live in that toxic culture and they believe in a deference to authority on Biden and Obama.

He continues

You think A.O.C. would call Obama a liar. Not one progressive in Congress would ever call Obama a liar. They would call that the rudest, most offensive thing ever. Women's rights being flushed down the toilet a little less offensive in Washington? No, I'm not exaggerating or joking. If you called Obama a liar in Washington, that would be considered a thousand times more offensive than Roe v. Wade being overturned; a thousand times more offensive.

In fact, here I'll make a prediction. For you at some point, some Democratic operative and everyone in mainstream media will even use this exact clip to attack me and any ally of mine and say "can you believe that he dared to call the beloved and angelic Barack Obama and Joe Biden liars? How do you?"

My own prediction, a safe one, is that Cenk Uygur will not be returning to MSNBC any time soon. Democrats don't defer to authority only as pertains to (Democratic) presidents.  We Democrats defer to legal authorities, such as the former federal prosecutors on cable news networks who the past few years have been implying doom for Donald Trump. Or the lawyers appalled at racial bias in policing and unquestioning of the black lives movement who defend every jury decision, for the defendant or the state, and never question America's terrible jury decision.

I digress, but only barely because a naive deference to authority is the common thread in much of Democratic politics. Uygur argues this instinct is applied to "the beloved angelic Barack Obama and Joe Biden." But in so doing, he gives Joe Biden too little, or too much, credit.

Among both Democratic professionals and the Democratic street, Joe Biden is not in the same category as is Barack Obama.  President 44 is in a class of his own.  Despite the damage it can do to Democratic electoral prospects later this year- and the absence of a clear and credible successor- party people have been leaking to the media their lack of confidence in Biden being the party's standard-bearer in 2024.  Under no circumstances would this ever have been done to Barack Obama. Never.

On a positive note, there is no divide between those professionals and rank-and-file Democrats on the issue of Barack Obama. He is not to be criticized. witness the defense of his presidency by, of all people, the leader of The Squad, who pleads "The Democratic Party/voters simply did not have thee votes or solidity on this issue that they do now and swing voters weren't willing to support reliably pro-choice policies until very recently." 

Ocasio-Cortez's defense is legitimate but glosses over the reality of eight years of a Democratic President who chose to do less than he could have. From  his perspective, however, there was no real reason to govern otherwise. He was- and still is- Barack Obama, and to the powers and the voters in the Democratic Party, little else has been necessary.

 

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Forced-Birth Cowardice Strikes Again

On Sunday's This Week with George Stephanopoulos, host Martha Raddatz received the tried-and-false response to an important question posed to GOP governor Kristi Noem of South Dakota. Raddatz asked "What should the punishment for women who receive abortions or doctors and anyone who assist them?"

Republicans know they will be asked that question because it is almost as obvious as it is significant. They know what (fallacious) point to make and to pivot promptly to a different issue because their explanation is illegitimate- and they will not face a follow-up question. And so Noem responded

“I don’t believe there should be any punishment for women ever that are in a crisis situation or have an unplanned pregnancy,” Gov. Kristi Noem tells @MarthaRaddatz after South Dakota trigger law bans nearly all abortions. https://t.co/pDPFangaCI pic.twitter.com/zEi5gLBOxH

— This Week (@ThisWeekABC) June 26, 2022

South Dakota has been "strong" on that argument because no state has decided to hold women as responsible as the doctors. Moreover, there is nothing Donald Trump likes to hear a candidate say more than the word "strong."

Trump likes "law and order" also, but even anti-choice Republicans are not so hypocritical as to trumpet law and order upon excusing the behavior of someone committing murder. And once it is prohibited as the (alleged) ending of life, it would constitute murder.

Instead, Noem and other forced-birth advocates maintain there should be no punishment for the woman bearing, then choosing to end, what they insist is a human life.  Obviously, there is a measure of political calculation because they realize that punishing a woman for a miscarriage or a surgical abortion would provoke a devastating political backlash. (Pharmaceutical abortion presents a different opportunity.)

That's something Donald Trump learned the hard way. One evening in March, 2016 he told Chris Matthews "there has to be some sort of punishment" (for the woman). Before the evening was out, his campaign would backtrack, rationalizing "the woman is a victim in this case as is the life in her womb."

So Kristi Noem and virtually everyone in the pro-life movement, claiming they believe human life begins at conception, will publicly deny that the individual who initiates, and pays, for that termination should be held accountable.  The cowardice of the political party which believes life starts at conception and ends at birth continues.

 

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Tweet of the Day- Abortion And Divine Control

I don't know whether this tweet refers to spontaneous or medical/surgical abortions, in the USA or worldwide. However, if you're going to praise any tweet, it should be one posted by God:

I commit 70 thousand abortions a day and no one tells ME it's a sin.

— God (@TheTweetOfGod) June 24, 2022

No, they don't, in part because the forced-birth crowd never acknowledges miscarriages as abortions and pro-choice advocates afford them the latitude. According to the United States National Library of Medicine

A miscarriage is the spontaneous loss of a fetus before the 20th week of pregnancy. Pregnancy losses after the 20th week are called stillbirths. Miscarriage is a naturally occurring event, unlike medical or surgical abortions.

A miscarriage may also be called a "spontaneous abortion."

There are medical or surgical abortions and there are spontaneous abortions, wherein "spontaneous" is an adjective and all of these events are abortions. Miscarriages are abortions, permitted by a god whom most religious Christians- largely opposed to abortion rights- believe is in control. 

They are free to support forced birth or even to maintain that abortions are contrary to God's will. However, if God is in control, the Christian right should have to answer for all those events they seemingly are convinced end a human life.

 

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Uncharacteristic Honesty

All hail Clarence Thomas!

That is not sarcasm, but mere exaggeration.  Roe v. Wade was decided on the basis that a fundamental right to privacy was inherent in the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. In his concurring opinion in Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization, Associate Justice Clarence Thomas wrote

For that reason, in future cases, we should reconsider all of this Court’s substantive due process precedents, including Griswold, Lawrence, and Obergefell. Because any substantive due process decision is “demonstrably erroneous,” … we have a duty to “correct the error” established in those precedents …. After overruling these demonstrably erroneous decisions, the question would remain whether other constitutional provisions guarantee the myriad rights that our substantive due process cases have generated.

By contrast, in the majority opinion, signed onto by three other Justices, Samuel Alito argued

And to ensure that our decision is not misunderstood or mischaracterized, we emphasize that our decision concerns the constitutional right to abortion and no other right. Nothing in this opinion should be understood to cast doubt on precedents that do not concern abortion.

In the New York Times' annotated transcript of this forced-birth ruling, Charlie Savage and Sheryle Gay Stolberg explain

The claim by Justice Alito that this ruling does not jeopardize other modern-era rights that derived from the same legal reasoning — like sex between consenting adults of the same sex and the right of same-sex couples to marry —has been widely criticized as unpersuasive since the time it appeared in the leaked draft. After all, matters like rights for same-sex couples have no deep historical basis and, in some people’s minds, also raise critical moral questions.

Justice Thomas, in his concurring opinion, took aim at three other landmark cases that relied on that same legal reasoning: Griswold v. Connecticut, a 1965 decision that declared married couples had a right to contraception; Lawrence v. Texas, a 2003 case invalidating sodomy laws and making same-sex sexual activity legal across the country; and Obergefell v. Hodges, the 2015 case establishing the right of gay couples to marry.

The Alito gang's feeble effort at assurance should be read in light of the statements  they made about Roe v. Wade at their confirmation hearings.  As Robert Reich points out in the video below. Gorsuch said "it is a precedent;" Kavanaugh, "it has been reaffirmed many times;" Barrett pled "I don't have any agenda to try to overrule Casey" (the 1992 decision that weakened Roe). And of course, there is Alito: "The courts in general should follow this past precedence" and "it's important because it limits the power of the judiciary."

Alito et al. also never actually denied that they would vote to upend the rights established in Griswold, Lawrence, or Obergefell. The majority opinion could have been worded "Nothing in this opinion accurately understood would cast doubt on precedents that do not concern abortion." Instead, it was phrased as "nothing in this opinion should be understood to cast doubt on precedents that do not concern abortion."

Of course, in their opinion, it should not because that would be make it clearer to liberals and moderates that other constitutional rights are up for grabs. The Alito Four realize that would exacerbate the outrage over Dobbs and jeopardize the opportunity of the GOP this November o retake Congress and increase its dominance in state legislatures (also, manifested differently, a factor with Chief Justice Roberts). 

No doubt Clarence Thomas has a similar concern. However, he expresses more honestly his priorities. For him, well, the right-wing agenda takes precedence.

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