Sit a spell, Take your shoes off.
1. What does this tell you, Elie? Come on, I know you can figure it out...Elie Mystal, the emotional lawyer turned social justice warrior who used to embarrass “Above the Law” with his unhinged rants (like the time he announced that no black juror should ever vote to convict a black defendant regardless of the evidence) finally ended up where he belonged all along, the far-left Communist-flirting The Nation. He just issued a post that raises a legitimate issue, despite a typical Nation headline ( “The Men Pushing to Open the Economy Clearly Don’t Need Child Care”).
Closing the schools does indeed make it impossible for many Americans to go to work; this was obvious (wasn’t it?) as soon as schools started closing due to the Wuhan virus. His most useful observation: how are we going to send people back to work without addressing the school problem, and doesn’t that have to be addressed in order to open up the economy? Ellie, who is being Daddy-child care in the division of duties in his family (good for him) writes in part,
As of this writing, 43 states have closed schools through the end of the academic year. …For most families, there is no child care without school. In America, school is pretty much the only free or subsidized child care our government provides. Without reliable, affordable, and Covid-free child care, going back to work is simply not an option for many parents. The school closings only deepen a reoccurring problem most parents face: the summer. In a society that has decided to outsource child care responsibilities to the school system, the fact that this system goes on an annual months-long holiday is already a nightmare for working parents.
After that, Ellie being Ellie and The Nation being The Nation, we get indictments of unfeeling male policy-makers (“I bet if we elected more women, the order of operations for reopening the economy wouldn’t be so ass-backwards”—Did you check how many states with female governors shut down the schools, Elie? I didn’t think so) and, of course, a call for more subsidized child care, because it takes a village to raise a child and because you never let a crisis go to waste.
I bet, if he thinks real hard, Elie can come up with another, less expensive, easier to implement plan that will address the problem, at least for now. Come on, man. Think.
2. Incompetent #MeToo Hypocrite Of The Year. I can’t believe I once advocated Michigan governor Gretchen Whitmer as the best female VP option for Joe Biden since he has announced that he will be choosing the most female individual rather than the most qualified one. In addition to being one of the elected officials the pandemic has exposed as an aspiring dictator, she’s the state house version of Kamala Harris: ask her a question requiring thought and a clear response, and you get obfuscation and double-talk. Here’s the exchange that won her title, from last Sunday’s ” State of the Union.with Jake Tapper:
TAPPER: “You have said that you believe Vice President Biden. I want to compare that to 2018, when you said you believed Dr. Christine Blasey Ford after she accused now Justice Brett Kavanaugh of assault. Kavanaugh also, like Biden, categorically denied that accusation. And Blasey Ford, to be honest, she did not have the contemporaneous accounts of her view of what happened that Tara Reade does. You have spoken movingly about how you’re a survivor — survivor of assault yourself. Why do you believe Biden, and not Kavanaugh? Are they not both entitled to the same presumption of innocence, regardless of their political views?”
WHITMER: “You know, Jake, as a survivor and as a feminist, I will say this. We need to give people an opportunity to tell their story. But then we have a duty to vet it. And just because you’re a survivor doesn’t mean that every claim is equal. It means we give them the ability to make their case, and the other side as well, and then to make a judgment that is informed. I have read a lot about this current allegation. I know Joe Biden, and I have watched his defense. And there’s not a pattern that goes into this. And I think that, for these reasons, I’m very comfortable that Joe Biden is who he says he is. He’s — and you know what? And that’s all I’m going to say about it. I really resent the fact that, every time a case comes up, all of us survivors have to weigh in. It is reopening wounds. And it is — take us at our word, ask us for our opinion, and let’s move on.”
Weasel, hypocrite, coward, dim wit.
To be blunt.
- She had to know she would be asked this question, and the best she could come up with was, essentially, “How dare you ask such a question–I’m a survivor!” and “move on”? Translation: “I have no answer for that question other than the obvious fact that Biden’s a Democrat and as a Democrat I apply different standard to him than I do to Republicans. And you, as a member of the mainstream media, our party’s ally in defeating the Bad Orange Man, are supposed to have our backs.”
- But Reade has not been given a chance to make her case. Blasey Ford got a national forum. How has Reade been vetted? Whitmer is just throwing up any excuse she can think of whether it makes sense or not.
- Oh, no! Pelosi’s “I know Joe Biden” defense? That’s the best she can do? Among other things, Whitmer doesn’t know Joe Biden especially well. There are spouses of serial killers who don’t know what their husbands are capable of, and she’s saying that the accused should be exonerated because their friends and relatives can’t imagine him doing what has been alleged?
3. And speaking of hypocritical politicians… Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI), who was once considered a viable VP possibility for his party until it was discovered that he has testicles, thus meaning that he isn’t qualified, told the New York Times,
“Mitch McConnell has been clear that his top priority is packing the courts with the judges his right-wing donors want, and that he’s actively pushing judges to retire. A judge would undermine the credibility of the bench by participating in that partisan gamesmanship.”
Outrageous! A judge timing a retirement to benefit the political agenda of a political party? How unethical! How unseemly! No respectable judge would do….uh…
Is there anyone alive that doesn’t know that Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg , 86 years young and battling cancer, is refusing to retire from the Supreme Court because she doesn’t want Donald Trump to be able to name her replacement? She’s admitted it, in various ways, to the approval and encouragement of her fellow progressives. Wouldn’t an ethical, objective, probing reporter—Carl Hulse wrote the piece—ask the senator as a matter of course to explain why a judge retiring to facilitate the naming of a successor by the President is “partisan gamesmanship” but delaying retirement to try to avoid allowing teh same President to name a successor isn’t?
I’d like to hear his answer.
I bet Gretchen Witmer would have an answer…
4. Today’s Republican idiot: GOP Ohio state Rep. Nino Vitale…who refuses to wear a facemask because “This is the greatest nation on earth founded on Judeo-Christian Principles. One of those principles is that we are all created in the image and likeness of God. That image is seen the most by our face. I will not wear a mask.” Oh.
These are the people we elect to make our laws and guide our policies.
5. At least he didn’t tweet it…The conservative New York Post asked President Trump his thoughts on Washington D.C. getting representation in Congress through statehood. The residents of the District, due to a long-standing anomaly, do not get representation, and legitimately complain that this constitutes “taxation without representation.” The President answered with brutal candor…
“They want to do that so they pick up two automatic Democrat — you know it’s a 100 percent Democrat, basically — so why would the Republicans ever do that? That’ll never happen unless we have some very, very stupid Republicans around that I don’t think you do. You understand that, right? Why don’t you just take two senators and put them in there? No, it’s not gonna happen. And it how many House seats is it? Like four, three or four? Whatever it is. You’d have three or four more congressmen and two more senators, every single day of every single year. And it would never change. No, the Republicans would never do that.”
Your poll of the day asks, “Was this an unethical response?” it is the ethical equivalent of the hypothetical response I contrived above, if Gov. Witmer had the guts to speak the truth to Jake Tapper—a completely straightforward description of political reality and unethical motivations. What Trump said is completely true. Completely. Should he get credit for being honest?
It also was uninformed, but, you know, Trump. D.C. would have just one representative, not “four or five.”
Ethics Alarms 
The president was telling the truth, but he was being blunt. We are not used to blunt answers, especially when they leave no room for hope and reflect a clear imbalance. Matt Walsh can be blunt. Michelle Malkin can be blunt. Ted Rall can be blunt. Dan Savage can be blunt and foul-mouthed. They trade specifically in blunt opinions and are paid to deliver the written equivalent of a clout to the head with a 2 x 4. They’re paid to “tell it like it is,” or at least as they see it. Elected officials are not supposed to be blunt, and in fact I was told once that “Steven, you’d never make it as a politician, because you tell it like it is, and people don’t want to hear like it is, they want to hear what they want.” Hearing a political leader, even a foreign one, say something both blunt and an exercise of raw power is jarring to us. Well, maybe it is. The same folks who are up in arms about this blunt statement by the President probably said “You tell ’em, Barack!” when Obama told McCain “I won. You lost.” The same folks probably thought Obama’s comment about Paul Ryan’s proposed budget being a “stinkburger” or a “meanwich” was the height of wit. The folks now cheering on Trump’s bluntness also cheered when Jan Brewer got mad at Obama when he touched down in Arizona and was photographed sticking her finger in his face in a way that would lead me to tell the then-governor “point that finger somewhere else or I’ll break it off for you!” (I think people would quit doing that stuff pretty quickly if it resulted in them getting hurt)
The fact of the matter is that we are all much more tolerant of bluntness, rudeness, even downright abuse, when it’s directed by those we agree with against those we don’t. Frankly, I think Trump’s comment was pretty mild measured against that. Why SHOULD the GOP just hand a victory to the Democrats? Despite what the libs think, the right thing doesn’t always mean doing as they say. Truth be told, I think a lot of this pushback against pro-freedom protesters here is geared toward conditioning everyone to think that anyone who dares disagree with the liberals needs to sit down, shut up, keep his opinions to himself, and do as he’s told.
Great comment.
But the treatment of DC residents violates the spirit, if not the letter, of the Constitution.
Md or VA should take DC, That’s the easiest solution.
Makes sense to me. No new Senators but a few Congressmen. They would probably all be Democrats. Ruth Bader Ginsberg should definitely retire though. Her age and illnesses have adversely her ability to serve on the Supreme Court.
RE #3: Justice Ginsberg was hospitalized with an infection today. Ethics Alarms wishes her the best.
The first comment in WaPo was “Hang on just a little longer.”
She doesn’t have 2 or 4 years, I don’t think. I know they think it’s just 9 months, but that is very unlikely.
Oh, she’s in the flashing red zone for sure. She could literally leave us any second of any day. She’s already way past the odds.
I’m also not convinced that DC should be a state. It’s Federal land for a good reason – the Fed needs land that it can operate out of free from the interference of local sponsor states. Historically speaking the states have routinely pressured Fed sites situated in their state. Granting statehood to DC would not only be politically untenable but, if history is any indicator, practically untenable too.
Is it taxation without representation? Yes. Is it the same kind that we rebelled against? Clearly not. If someone can’t see the difference in how the US represents DC and how the British Crown represented the colonies then they need a history teacher in a bad way.
But that’s not the issue. They are citizens and have a right to be represented in Congress. Simple as that. But a city-state is not practical or politically feasible. Give the District to Maryland.
Why not give most of the District containing mostly residential areas back to Maryland and keep just a small area around the Federal buildings in a much reduced District? This would give the vast majority of residents the right to vote.
Or of course they could do like that article in the Harvard Law Review suggested, and carve the District up into 127 new states
I’d say they are represented – by the Fed. I’d also add two other points: I’m not sure there is a right to local state representation, I don’t see that in the constitution and there are present and historical cases for this in the US (US territories before they became states and Puerto Rico). I’d also say there’s a strong element of personal choice. The people who choose to live in DC knowingly make that trade and if they find the lack of representation untenable they’re welcome to relocate to places where they can get it – DC doesn’t have a wall around it.
#2: Whitmer seems to have first claimed to be a “survivor” of 20+ years during a legislative debate on abortion in 2013 (“Bravely revealed”, per a Huffpo piece). It’s unclear whether she had ever mentioned this to anyone before, as she said afterwards that she had not previously told her father.
The question could be asked as to why she thinks we should believe her claim and not Reade’s…particularly when it appears to have first been made for political advantage?
!
Simple. She’s a brave survivor trying to advance the cause of women’s rights and guard wombs everywhere, Reade is an attention-seeking troublemaker lying to hurt a candidate and set back the cause of women’s rights and compromise wombs. Besides, why are you saying anything at all? No uterus, no right to talk about it.
My spleen self-identifies as a uterus, but I think that’s just a play to get more attention.
5: It was my understanding from my youth that the physical sandbox where the Federal government lives should not be part of any one state. Else New York and Philadelphia could have stayed the capital.
That mythical state would then have disproportionate influence on the Federal structure. Why bother listen to constituents in far off Buffalo or Waco or Phoenix when the state where you live is rioting? Federal and state powers are supposed to be separate, unless you think redrawing all borders to city-states is splendid.
DC voters would have easy access to all levels of the Federal govt in addition to this mythic state echo chamber. I don’t. We all have to depend and trust our reps because we can’t all sit them on our laps and pull strings.
The city isn’t that big and I’d argue that it’s too big now. It’s supposed to be apart from the states. a place of neutrality where congress works on big picture things, not state things like hunting season and regulating snow days. If not being represented, where so many people there are directly or indirectly Fed agents, vote with your feet. There’s plenty of nearby places to live and keep your Fed job AND your state vote.
How many celebs voted with their feet when Trump won?
I have no objection to a constitutional amendment giving citizens residing in D.C. one U.S. House representative.
I oppose making it a state. Making it a state would mean Congress would not have plenary police power over the district.
You don’t hear too much of Claudine Longets music any more.
#4, regarding refusal to wear a mask–I was told that gloves and a mask were all that was needed to go to the store. They were wrong–everybody else also had clothes on.
🙂 Yeah, I’m not making that mistake twice!
If Washington is returned to Maryland, but a remnant district were drawn around the White House, Capitol, an Supreme Court building, would that mean the president’s family gets 3 electoral votes all to themselves?
Regarding Nino Vitale, the first thing I thought of was that by that logic he should be naked, because to clothe the human body is to cover up what he considers the image and likeness of his deity, “seen the most by our face” notwithstanding.
Then I realized he’s probably uncomfortable because wearing face masks reminds him of Islam. Either way, this person seems dangerous. A person who believes they know what their deity wants–and uses it to justify petty things like not wearing a face mask for safety–can rationalize anything.