"That seemed to be the argument made by at least five of the conservative Republicans on the court."
Can we please stop referring to these extremist radicals -- on the Court and in Congress -- as "conservatives." They wish to destroy our Constitution, not conserve it. They wish to destroy our rights, our democracy, our health, and our pla…
"That seemed to be the argument made by at least five of the conservative Republicans on the court."
Can we please stop referring to these extremist radicals -- on the Court and in Congress -- as "conservatives." They wish to destroy our Constitution, not conserve it. They wish to destroy our rights, our democracy, our health, and our planet, not conserve them. To call them conservative plays into their hands, making them seem anodyne. The Democrats are the conservatives in this country, as they try to save it from destruction by the Republicans.
In memory of Lincoln, Teddy Roosevelt, William Howard Taft, Wendell Willkie, Dwight Eisenhower, and all others you want to name, could we please stop calling them Repubicans? Trumpublicans, okay. MAGAnarchists, okay. But to give them the same name as the party whose leader prayed that "government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth"?
The "crap" has been aging a bit longer. Nixon's first run for office was 1946, but in 1934 the GOP used fake newsreels produced by MGM wunderkind Irving Thalberg and other media tricks to slime Upton Sinclair, running fo governor of California as a Democrat. Greg Mitchell's book, "The Campaign of the Century," about that 1934 campaign, strongly recommended. Read how the White Protestant party of rectitude (Prohibition! The Comstock Law!) turned from Doctor Jekyll into Edward Hyde. Oh! to be able to insert here an IMDB photo of Frederic March as Hyde, grinning and holding a flagon of his chemical transformation liquid, alongside one of Deranged, Depraved Defendant, holding a wine glass filled with Diet Coke.
You’re right of course. I’d heard of the smear machine turned on Upton Sinclair— there is no mercy - or ethics in pursuit of power. I wonder if there can ever be.
Upton Beall Sinclair Jr. (September 20, 1878 – November 25, 1968) was an American writer, muckraker, political activist and the 1934 Democratic Party nominee for governor of California. He wrote nearly 100 books and other works in several genres. Sinclair's work was well known and popular in the first half of the 20th century, and he won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1943.
In 1906, Sinclair acquired particular fame for his classic muck-raking novel, The Jungle, which exposed labor and sanitary conditions in the U.S. meatpacking industry, causing a public uproar that contributed in part to the passage a few months later of the 1906 Pure Food and Drug Act and the Meat Inspection Act.[1] In 1919, he published The Brass Check, a muck-raking exposé of American journalism that publicized the issue of yellow journalism and the limitations of the "free press" in the United States. Four years after publication of The Brass Check, the first code of ethics for journalists was created.[2] Time magazine called him "a man with every gift except humor and silence".[3] He is also well remembered for the quote: "It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it."[4] He used this line in speeches and the book about his campaign for governor as a way to explain why the editors and publishers of the major newspapers in California would not treat seriously his proposals for old age pensions and other progressive reforms.[4] Many of his novels can be read as historical works. Writing during the Progressive Era, Sinclair describes the world of the industrialized United States from both the working man's and the industrialist's points of view. Novels such as King Coal (1917), The Coal War (published posthumously), Oil! (1927), and The Flivver King (1937) describe the working conditions of the coal, oil, and auto industries at the time.
The Flivver King describes the rise of Henry Ford, his "wage reform" and his company's Sociological Department, to his decline into antisemitism as publisher of The Dearborn Independent. King Coal confronts John D. Rockefeller Jr., and his role in the 1914 Ludlow Massacre in the coal fields of Colorado.
Sinclair was an outspoken socialist and ran unsuccessfully for Congress as a nominee from the Socialist Party. He was also the Democratic Party candidate for governor of California during the Great Depression, running under the banner of the End Poverty in California campaign, but was defeated in the 1934 election.
Early life and education
Sinclair was born in Baltimore, Maryland, to Upton Beall Sinclair Sr. and Priscilla Harden Sinclair. His father was a liquor salesman whose alcoholism shadowed his son's childhood. Priscilla Harden Sinclair was a strict Episcopalian who disliked alcohol, tea, and coffee. Both of Upton Sinclair's parents were of British ancestry. His paternal grandparents were Scottish, and all of his ancestors emigrated to America from Great Britain during the late 1600s and early 1700s.[5][failed verification] As a child, Sinclair slept either on sofas or cross-ways on his parents' bed. When his father was out for the night, he would sleep in the bed with his mother.[6] His mother's family was very affluent: her parents were very prosperous in Baltimore, and her sister married a millionaire. Sinclair had wealthy maternal grandparents with whom he often stayed. This gave him insight into how both the rich and the poor lived during the late 19th century. Living in two social settings affected him and greatly influenced his books. Upton Beall Sinclair Sr. was from a highly respected family in the South, but the family was financially ruined by the Civil War, the end of slavery causing disruptions of the labor system during the Reconstruction era, and an extended agricultural depression.
As he was growing up, Upton's family moved frequently, as his father was not successful in his career. He developed a love for reading when he was five years old. He read every book his mother owned for a deeper understanding of the world. He did not start school until he was 10 years old. He was deficient in math and worked hard to catch up quickly because of his embarrassment.[6] In 1888, the Sinclair family moved to Queens, New York City, New York, where his father sold shoes. Upton entered the City College of New York five days before his 14th birthday,[7] on September 15, 1892.[6] He wrote jokes, dime novels, and magazine articles in boys' weekly and pulp magazines to pay for his tuition.[8] With that income, he was able to move his parents to an apartment when he was seventeen years old.[6]
He graduated from City College in June 1897. He subsequently studied law at Columbia University,[9] but he was more interested in writing. He learned several languages, including Spanish, German, and French. He paid the one-time enrollment fee to be able to learn a variety of subjects. He would sign up for a class and then later drop it.[10] *******
Paul Metsa performs "Slow Justice" live at the Farm Aid concert in Irving, Texas on March 14, 1992. Farm Aid was started by Willie Nelson, Neil Young and John Mellencamp in 1985 to keep family farmers on the land and has worked since then to make sure everyone has access to good food from family farmers. Dave Matthews joined Farm Aid's board of directors in 2001.
The Republican Party has been "the party of Lincoln" in name only for many, many decades. If I had to draw a line across the calendar, I'd go for the mid-1960s, when white Southern Democrats started to swarm into the Republican Party in opposition to the Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts.
And why should we stop calling them Republicans? That's the name of the party they belong to, and -- despite the evolution of its principles and priorities -- a clear line of descent can be traced to the foundation of the Republican Party in the 1850s. Erasing or prettifying history is a surefire way to make sure we don't learn from it.
At the risk of going all historical, I suggest that the line drawn should be in March, 1877, when the party founded in opposition to slavery traded a promise to end federal troop-enforced Reconstruction for a few electoral votes in the South needed to put Hayes in the White House, not Tilden, winner of the popular vote.
And with all due respect, suggesting that the MAGAmob don't deserve the name "Republican" as originally conceived and (sporadically) practiced is not "erasing" or "prettifying" history. Quite the opposite. Think of the shame as disgraced military officers used to be publicly stripped of the uniform symbols of their rank.
Of course, in MAGAlandia, there is no shame at being what the right wing always accused liberals of: un-American.
You can draw a line there if you want, but then you've got to account for, e.g., the economic liberals in the Republican Party in the late 19th and early 20th centuries and the ways in which the New Deal placated those entrenched white Democrats from the one-party South. And Joe McCarthy -- let's not forget him.
Institutions change over time, and that includes political parties. I'm currently a registered Democrat -- does that make me part of the "party of Jackson"? I don't think so. I grew up in New England surrounded by Republicans, nearly all of whom were good people -- and many of whom, if they were alive today, would have changed their registration to "unenrolled" and be voting for Democrats. I'm old enough, and have been politically sentient long enough, to have seen the change happen on the ground in real time.
For that matter, I can *say* I'm not the same person I was at 13 or 33 or 53 or going on 73 but in reality I *am* the same person, even if the cells in my body (maybe comparable to the individuals in a political party?) aren't the same as they were a decade or two or seven ago.
whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security."
The Judicial Procedures Reform Bill of 1937,[1] frequently called the "court-packing plan",[2] was a legislative initiative proposed by U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt to add more justices to the U.S. Supreme Court in order to obtain favorable rulings regarding New Deal legislation that the Court had ruled unconstitutional.[3] The central provision of the bill would have granted the president power to appoint an additional justice to the U.S. Supreme Court, up to a maximum of six, for every member of the court over the age of 70 years. *******
WASHINGTON — Congressional Democrats will introduce legislation Thursday to expand the Supreme Court from nine to 13 justices, joining progressive activists pushing to transform the court.
The move intensifies a high-stakes ideological fight over the future of the court after President Donald Trump and Republicans appointed three conservative justices in four years, including one who was confirmed days before the 2020 election.
The Democratic bill is led by Sen. Ed Markey of Massachusetts and Rep. Jerry Nadler of New York, the chair of the House Judiciary Committee. It is co-sponsored by Reps. Hank Johnson of Georgia and Mondaire Jones of New York.
The Supreme Court can be expanded by an act of Congress, but the legislation is highly unlikely to become law in the near future given Democrats' slim majorities, which include scores of lawmakers who are not on board with the idea. President Joe Biden has said he is "not a fan" of packing the court.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., told reporters on Thursday she has "no plans to bring it to the floor."
"I don't know that that's a good idea or bad idea. I think it's an idea that should be considered," she said of the court expansion plan. "And I think the president's taking the right approach to have a commission to study such a thing. It's a big step."
The push represents an undercurrent of progressive fury at Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., for denying a vote in 2016 to President Barack Obama's pick to fill a vacancy, citing the approaching election, before confirming Trump nominee Amy Coney Barrett the week before the election last year. *******
"That seemed to be the argument made by at least five of the conservative Republicans on the court."
Can we please stop referring to these extremist radicals -- on the Court and in Congress -- as "conservatives." They wish to destroy our Constitution, not conserve it. They wish to destroy our rights, our democracy, our health, and our planet, not conserve them. To call them conservative plays into their hands, making them seem anodyne. The Democrats are the conservatives in this country, as they try to save it from destruction by the Republicans.
In memory of Lincoln, Teddy Roosevelt, William Howard Taft, Wendell Willkie, Dwight Eisenhower, and all others you want to name, could we please stop calling them Repubicans? Trumpublicans, okay. MAGAnarchists, okay. But to give them the same name as the party whose leader prayed that "government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth"?
Sorry but it’s been a slide into this crap since Nixon. Reagan heaped more on the mess and it galloped into this insanity of degeneracy.
The "crap" has been aging a bit longer. Nixon's first run for office was 1946, but in 1934 the GOP used fake newsreels produced by MGM wunderkind Irving Thalberg and other media tricks to slime Upton Sinclair, running fo governor of California as a Democrat. Greg Mitchell's book, "The Campaign of the Century," about that 1934 campaign, strongly recommended. Read how the White Protestant party of rectitude (Prohibition! The Comstock Law!) turned from Doctor Jekyll into Edward Hyde. Oh! to be able to insert here an IMDB photo of Frederic March as Hyde, grinning and holding a flagon of his chemical transformation liquid, alongside one of Deranged, Depraved Defendant, holding a wine glass filled with Diet Coke.
You’re right of course. I’d heard of the smear machine turned on Upton Sinclair— there is no mercy - or ethics in pursuit of power. I wonder if there can ever be.
Here's why! [Wikipedia, opening excerpt}
Upton Beall Sinclair Jr. (September 20, 1878 – November 25, 1968) was an American writer, muckraker, political activist and the 1934 Democratic Party nominee for governor of California. He wrote nearly 100 books and other works in several genres. Sinclair's work was well known and popular in the first half of the 20th century, and he won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1943.
In 1906, Sinclair acquired particular fame for his classic muck-raking novel, The Jungle, which exposed labor and sanitary conditions in the U.S. meatpacking industry, causing a public uproar that contributed in part to the passage a few months later of the 1906 Pure Food and Drug Act and the Meat Inspection Act.[1] In 1919, he published The Brass Check, a muck-raking exposé of American journalism that publicized the issue of yellow journalism and the limitations of the "free press" in the United States. Four years after publication of The Brass Check, the first code of ethics for journalists was created.[2] Time magazine called him "a man with every gift except humor and silence".[3] He is also well remembered for the quote: "It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it."[4] He used this line in speeches and the book about his campaign for governor as a way to explain why the editors and publishers of the major newspapers in California would not treat seriously his proposals for old age pensions and other progressive reforms.[4] Many of his novels can be read as historical works. Writing during the Progressive Era, Sinclair describes the world of the industrialized United States from both the working man's and the industrialist's points of view. Novels such as King Coal (1917), The Coal War (published posthumously), Oil! (1927), and The Flivver King (1937) describe the working conditions of the coal, oil, and auto industries at the time.
The Flivver King describes the rise of Henry Ford, his "wage reform" and his company's Sociological Department, to his decline into antisemitism as publisher of The Dearborn Independent. King Coal confronts John D. Rockefeller Jr., and his role in the 1914 Ludlow Massacre in the coal fields of Colorado.
Sinclair was an outspoken socialist and ran unsuccessfully for Congress as a nominee from the Socialist Party. He was also the Democratic Party candidate for governor of California during the Great Depression, running under the banner of the End Poverty in California campaign, but was defeated in the 1934 election.
Early life and education
Sinclair was born in Baltimore, Maryland, to Upton Beall Sinclair Sr. and Priscilla Harden Sinclair. His father was a liquor salesman whose alcoholism shadowed his son's childhood. Priscilla Harden Sinclair was a strict Episcopalian who disliked alcohol, tea, and coffee. Both of Upton Sinclair's parents were of British ancestry. His paternal grandparents were Scottish, and all of his ancestors emigrated to America from Great Britain during the late 1600s and early 1700s.[5][failed verification] As a child, Sinclair slept either on sofas or cross-ways on his parents' bed. When his father was out for the night, he would sleep in the bed with his mother.[6] His mother's family was very affluent: her parents were very prosperous in Baltimore, and her sister married a millionaire. Sinclair had wealthy maternal grandparents with whom he often stayed. This gave him insight into how both the rich and the poor lived during the late 19th century. Living in two social settings affected him and greatly influenced his books. Upton Beall Sinclair Sr. was from a highly respected family in the South, but the family was financially ruined by the Civil War, the end of slavery causing disruptions of the labor system during the Reconstruction era, and an extended agricultural depression.
As he was growing up, Upton's family moved frequently, as his father was not successful in his career. He developed a love for reading when he was five years old. He read every book his mother owned for a deeper understanding of the world. He did not start school until he was 10 years old. He was deficient in math and worked hard to catch up quickly because of his embarrassment.[6] In 1888, the Sinclair family moved to Queens, New York City, New York, where his father sold shoes. Upton entered the City College of New York five days before his 14th birthday,[7] on September 15, 1892.[6] He wrote jokes, dime novels, and magazine articles in boys' weekly and pulp magazines to pay for his tuition.[8] With that income, he was able to move his parents to an apartment when he was seventeen years old.[6]
He graduated from City College in June 1897. He subsequently studied law at Columbia University,[9] but he was more interested in writing. He learned several languages, including Spanish, German, and French. He paid the one-time enrollment fee to be able to learn a variety of subjects. He would sign up for a class and then later drop it.[10] *******
People will vote for the least educated candidate- unless a better looking one is running. We’re hopeless (like the rest of humanity).
It's dire and why does justice come so slow???
https://www.youtube.com/watch?app=desktop&v=GWAs6PmomEc
/ 4:15
Slow Justice // Paul Metsa
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q9qFHeXox7I
Paul Metsa - Slow Justice (Live at Farm Aid 1992)
Farm Aid 640K subscribers
954 views Jan 16, 2013
Paul Metsa performs "Slow Justice" live at the Farm Aid concert in Irving, Texas on March 14, 1992. Farm Aid was started by Willie Nelson, Neil Young and John Mellencamp in 1985 to keep family farmers on the land and has worked since then to make sure everyone has access to good food from family farmers. Dave Matthews joined Farm Aid's board of directors in 2001.
The Republican Party has been "the party of Lincoln" in name only for many, many decades. If I had to draw a line across the calendar, I'd go for the mid-1960s, when white Southern Democrats started to swarm into the Republican Party in opposition to the Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts.
And why should we stop calling them Republicans? That's the name of the party they belong to, and -- despite the evolution of its principles and priorities -- a clear line of descent can be traced to the foundation of the Republican Party in the 1850s. Erasing or prettifying history is a surefire way to make sure we don't learn from it.
At the risk of going all historical, I suggest that the line drawn should be in March, 1877, when the party founded in opposition to slavery traded a promise to end federal troop-enforced Reconstruction for a few electoral votes in the South needed to put Hayes in the White House, not Tilden, winner of the popular vote.
And with all due respect, suggesting that the MAGAmob don't deserve the name "Republican" as originally conceived and (sporadically) practiced is not "erasing" or "prettifying" history. Quite the opposite. Think of the shame as disgraced military officers used to be publicly stripped of the uniform symbols of their rank.
Of course, in MAGAlandia, there is no shame at being what the right wing always accused liberals of: un-American.
You can draw a line there if you want, but then you've got to account for, e.g., the economic liberals in the Republican Party in the late 19th and early 20th centuries and the ways in which the New Deal placated those entrenched white Democrats from the one-party South. And Joe McCarthy -- let's not forget him.
Institutions change over time, and that includes political parties. I'm currently a registered Democrat -- does that make me part of the "party of Jackson"? I don't think so. I grew up in New England surrounded by Republicans, nearly all of whom were good people -- and many of whom, if they were alive today, would have changed their registration to "unenrolled" and be voting for Democrats. I'm old enough, and have been politically sentient long enough, to have seen the change happen on the ground in real time.
For that matter, I can *say* I'm not the same person I was at 13 or 33 or 53 or going on 73 but in reality I *am* the same person, even if the cells in my body (maybe comparable to the individuals in a political party?) aren't the same as they were a decade or two or seven ago.
Yes
Amen,brother.
well said
Barry Goldwater is laughing 🤣 his dry old ass bones off ! “guess I wasn’t quite the ultimate conservative after all “
well said
whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security."
In this case arguably the "alteration and abolition" is this, revised, amended and extended:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judicial_Procedures_Reform_Bill_of_1937
The Judicial Procedures Reform Bill of 1937,[1] frequently called the "court-packing plan",[2] was a legislative initiative proposed by U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt to add more justices to the U.S. Supreme Court in order to obtain favorable rulings regarding New Deal legislation that the Court had ruled unconstitutional.[3] The central provision of the bill would have granted the president power to appoint an additional justice to the U.S. Supreme Court, up to a maximum of six, for every member of the court over the age of 70 years. *******
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/supreme-court/democrats-introduce-bill-expand-supreme-court-9-13-justices-n1264132
April 14, 2021, 8:00 PM CDT
By Sahil Kapur
WASHINGTON — Congressional Democrats will introduce legislation Thursday to expand the Supreme Court from nine to 13 justices, joining progressive activists pushing to transform the court.
The move intensifies a high-stakes ideological fight over the future of the court after President Donald Trump and Republicans appointed three conservative justices in four years, including one who was confirmed days before the 2020 election.
The Democratic bill is led by Sen. Ed Markey of Massachusetts and Rep. Jerry Nadler of New York, the chair of the House Judiciary Committee. It is co-sponsored by Reps. Hank Johnson of Georgia and Mondaire Jones of New York.
The Supreme Court can be expanded by an act of Congress, but the legislation is highly unlikely to become law in the near future given Democrats' slim majorities, which include scores of lawmakers who are not on board with the idea. President Joe Biden has said he is "not a fan" of packing the court.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., told reporters on Thursday she has "no plans to bring it to the floor."
"I don't know that that's a good idea or bad idea. I think it's an idea that should be considered," she said of the court expansion plan. "And I think the president's taking the right approach to have a commission to study such a thing. It's a big step."
The push represents an undercurrent of progressive fury at Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., for denying a vote in 2016 to President Barack Obama's pick to fill a vacancy, citing the approaching election, before confirming Trump nominee Amy Coney Barrett the week before the election last year. *******
I call them misfits or Injustice 6.