StephenKMackSD's Blog

My original comment here:

https://stephenkmacksd.wordpress.com/2017/03/25/publius-asks-who-is-jon-ossoff/#comment-2271

Kathryn Busby’s comment on my post:

Ms. Busby,
Thank you for your comment. The ‘as if’ of your comment is that the Wikileaks leaking of the Podesta e mails didn’t demonstrate, with stunning clarity, the fact of the corruption of the New Democrats!
And their active subversion of the Bernie Sanders campaign: they used all their well entrenched political apparatus, and the actors at their disposal, Nancy Pelosi, Donna Brazil, Debbie Wassermann-Schultz and Mr. Podesta, who received a $7, 000 a month from a Clinton contributor, the particulars here:
http://www.politico.com/story/2016/11/john-podesta-donor-foundation-230571
The New Democrats engaged in a concerted campaign to smear and to subvert Sanders and the New Deal wing of a Party!
Those New Democrats are Neo-Reaganites, or just call them Neo-Liberals, who have long since made their pact, not with voters, but with an utterly Financialized Capitalism: the evidence is the Obama de facto pardoning of these Wall Street thieves, so as to ‘put it behind us’ or some such self-exculpatory locution!
I used the guise of  Publius, one of the nom de plumes used in The Federalist Papers, to sharpen my polemic. That is the ’emotion’ you detect in my comment.
The challenge that the entrenched New Democrats, and the Party as a whole, are loath to confront, which will lead, perhaps, to defeats in 2018 and even in 2020, who knows? The problem is that in order to emancipate the Party and the country from the destructive thrall of Neo-Liberalism, the Clintonites must give way to a reinvigorated New Deal wing of the Party, or die a protracted political death and take America down with it.
In looking at the future we needn’t be blinded by the mirage that the Democratic Party is our only option. That ‘as if’ ignores the potential that is becoming actual, in the political present, of the rise of the Greens, as a viable alternative to a demonstrably exhausted Two Party System. We are not stuck with either of these two Parties. And the mirage of ‘term limits’ offers nothing but more of the same, which sounds the notes of that bogus ‘Contract With America’ of  the political nihilist Republicanism of Newt Gingrich.
Finally on the vexed question of my being an ‘Obama hater’: never has their been a candidate, or a president, who promised ‘Hope and Change’ and delivered so little. Perry Anderson, in the New Left Review has some telling observations, in his essay called ‘Passing the Baton’ that seems an apposite reply to your accusation:

‘Admirers of Obama excuse the domestic failure of his Presidency to represent anything like an ‘audacity of hope’ on the grounds of Republican obstruction in Congress. Abroad, the executive is essentially untrammelled. Predictably enough, like most of his predecessors since 1945—Johnson and Reagan were the exceptions—Obama was more consequential as a guardian of empire overseas than as agent of change at home, though it would be difficult to guess this from the tenor of liberal and most left discussion of it in the United States. [11] There his record falls into two major departments—operations in the Muslim world, and dealings with Russia and China (with Europe and Japan as respective helpmeets).

In the Muslim world, Obama inherited two declared wars, in Iraq and Afghanistan, and two undeclared wars, in Pakistan and Somalia. By the end of his second mandate, he had added three more. Of those he inherited, in Iraq Bush had signed an agreement with Maliki for withdrawal of all us troops by the end of December 2011. Three years later, as the deadline neared, the Obama Administration sought to revise this for continued stationing of an American military force in the country, but was unable to secure the immunity for its soldiers from criminal prosecution in Iraq on which it insisted. So withdrawal had to go ahead, only to be reversed two years later when Obama removed Maliki, dispatching bombers, missiles and—in undisclosed numbers—ground troops for a second war, this time against the isis threat to his replacement in Baghdad. In Afghanistan, Obama had trebled the size of the American army of occupation by the end of his first term, and by the end of his second, installed a Made-in-usa government like its counterpart in Baghdad, to be protected indefinitely by a force of praetorians from the Pentagon. In Pakistan, Obama escalated military strikes with a steep increase in the use of drone missiles to wipe out targets deemed hostile, with predictable civilian loss of life, while whisking cia staff wanted for murder out of the country. In Somalia, where another customized government was set up, covert commando and drone strikes, assisted by a secret cia base in Mogadishu, are routine, while africom has extended American military implantation across the continent, to some 49 out of 55 African countries.

Expanding this arc of operations, Obama launched an all-out aerial attack in Libya to overthrow the Gaddafi regime, plunging the country into such chaos that, five years later, not even a standard play-set of marionettes could be assembled to run the show. In Syria, he armed, trained and funded insurgents, relying on Saudi Arabia and Qatar to furnish them with heavier weapons and more money, in a bid to bring down the Assad regime, in the process fanning a civil war that has left half a million dead and five million displaced, without succeeding in dislodging his target. In Yemen, he supplied the weapons, guidance and strategic cover for a Saudi-Emirati bombing campaign that has reduced the country and its people to ruins, with a callousness that caused even his habitual barkers at the New York Times to flinch.

Nowhere has what Roger Hodge called ‘the mendacity of hope’ been more brazen than in these actions, Obama promising that his Libyan blitz would be just humanitarian assistance, ‘not regime change’, and that he was ‘proud of his decision’ not to launch a similar blitz on Syria, from which he was stayed only by the opposition of the British parliament and Congress. Elsewhere, arms and money have flowed to an Egyptian regime little different from the Syrian, simply more pro-Western; while Israel has received the largest military aid package in its history. In the imperial repertoire, a preference for air war, proxies and special forces rather than ground troops is no novelty: it was Nixon who introduced the type of ‘Vietnamization’ under way in Kabul and elsewhere. None of Obama’s seven wars have been won, in the sense of achieving a peace, though also none have been lost (as yet: the upshots in Afghanistan and Syria remain to be seen). One major success was registered. Concerted cyberwarfare, covert assassination and economic strangulation forced the clerical rulers of Iran to submit to an American diktat safeguarding the Israeli nuclear monopoly in the Middle East, [12] even if this has not been followed—as hoped—by cooperation from Teheran in putting an end to Assad.’

https://newleftreview.org/II/103/perry-anderson-passing-the-baton

Regards,

StephenKMackSD

Mr. Jamil Anderlini’s description of the problem of ‘American Decline‘:

‘Even some US officials privately acknowledge that China has won the battle for the South China Sea without firing a shot. In the annals of American decline, this episode will surely loom large.’

The coven of Neo-Conservatives in the State Department i.e. Victoria Nuland, and her staunch ally R2P Zealot Samantha Power, were otherwise engaged in the workshop of Ukraine. Although there are other anonymous bad actors, in that Department, whose loyalty is to a state of permanent war, with the enemies of the Old Cold War Russia and China!

Diagnosis, or better yet placing the blame for that ‘American Decline‘:
‘Much of the fault lies with Barack Obama, the former US president, and Hillary Clinton, his secretary of state. President Donald Trump and his administration are in danger of accelerating the slide in American credibility.’

To go back a few steps in Mr. Anderlini’s argument, need the reader be reminded that in 1823 The Monroe Doctrine proclaimed that America’s sphere of influence was the whole of the Western Hemisphere?

Where was the ‘Permanent Court of Arbitration’ then, or even now, on the claims of the American Hegemon? Americans have been utterly ruthless in their innumerable murderous interventions on it’s neighbors. The record of American ‘interventions’ in the affairs of other nations across the globe is not just well known, but notorious: Mr. Anderlini’s self-serving ideological myopia is on full display.  His New Cold War propaganda  is the center of  fear mongering and lamentation of ‘American Decline’, expressed as crocodile tears?

Mr. Anderlini isn’t above the exercise of an historically garnished schoolyard taunt:

‘Mao Zedong, the peasant guerrilla fighter who ruled China for 27 years, once described the US as a “paper tiger”: fierce in appearance but ultimately harmless. The waterway debacle has lent credence to those in Beijing who adhere to this view today.’

The remainder of his essay is couched in the hyper-masculine vocabulary of American Foreign Policy chatter : ‘Resolve’,  ‘predominance’, ‘projection of power’,  and other apt descriptors,  conducted in language, that extemporizes on the themes, not to speak of the mentality that Norman Mailer expressed in his critique of Kate Millet’s ‘Sexual Politics’. Hysteria in the dominant emotional register adopted by the New Cold Warriors in homage to the Cold Warriors of another time. This buttressed by such pussyfooting as ‘doubting America’s capabilities and resolve’, ‘perceived capitulations’ presented as the thoughts ,the beliefs, the doubts of others, rather than the opinions held by the author, though carefully refracted through rhetorically convenient surrogates.

Even political nihilist Trump is scolded on his failure to stop the Chinese Menace :

‘His appointees, such as Rex Tillerson as secretary of state, have only exacerbated the recent legacy of US indecision by talking tough about curbing Chinese expansionism and then backtracking.’

The exhumation of the Cold War, and its twin The Yellow Peril, are rehabilitated in the pages of the Financial Times , by a member, in very good standing, of respectable Western Bourgeois Journalism.

Please read Mr. Anderlini’s very impressive CV here:

https://www.chinafile.com/contributors/jamil-anderlini

Please note, Mr. Anderlini’s enhanced status as Young Global Leader, chosen by the World Economic Forum for 2013:

I haven’t read anything in the American Press about the political unrest in Argentina. America’s  political narcissism is primary, and the outliers in South America hold no purchase on the crisis ridden Age of Trump.

Yet Macri’s exhumation of  Neo-Liberalism and his bribing of Vulture Capitalist Paul Singer, as entree back into the World Economic family, seems to be in actual political trouble. The best the Financial Times can do, in the realm of an Argentine political ‘experts’, are Fernando Iglesias and Maria Victoria Murillo, an Argentine political scientist at Columbia University. Neither one a Peronist! And the perfect choices to give credence to the Financial Times’ Anti-Populist Party Line. The question arises what was the actual legacy of the 12 years of Kirchner government, provided here by teleSUR :

‘For Argentines, just as the 1980s are referred to as the “lost decade,” the 12 years of Kirchner government (four by the late Nestor Kirchner and eight by Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner) is now often called the “won decade.”

The Kirchner governments found success in systematically improving the everyday lives of Argentines. Social policies, such as subsidies, pension raises and unemployment benefits, went hand in hand with the improved economy, as well as the necessary and popular overhaul of Argentina’s judicial system after the murky history of human rights abuses committed with impunity.

Nestor Kirchner was also a key figure in the regional integration of Latin America. He was the leader who managed to restructure 93 percent of the country’s massive debt, Fernandez took the baton and heroically battled the remaining 7 percent demanding repayment, known as the vulture funds.’

http://www.telesurtv.net/english/analysis/12-Years-of-Reform—Landmarks-of-Kirchnerismo-20151022-0027.html

Fernando Iglesias extemporizes on the theme of Peronist rabble rousing, indeed on the tradition of ‘coup-mongering’ in Argentina:

‘Even so, Fernando Iglesias, a writer and former congressman who supports the government, argues that this is Mr Macri’s “most difficult moment” so far.

“People still don’t have money in their pockets, and of course the Peronist opposition is taking advantage of this with strikes, demonstrations and roadblocks . . . There is a long history of coup-mongering in Argentina,” warns Mr Iglesias, pointing to the failure of all non-Peronist governments to complete their electoral mandates since the return of democracy in 1983.

…
“The Peronists know that if the country recovers they will never return to power. The stakes couldn’t be higher, so they are going all in,” adds Mr Iglesias. Indeed, many senior figures from the previous government face corruption charges, including Ms Fernández herself, who is due to stand trial soon for the first of various cases against her.’

What the reader gets near the end of this extended apologetic on behalf of the Neo-Liberalism  of Macri, is this collection of data, that should have mollified even the most ardent Populist? This notion is in the realm of the chatter of the technocrat.

‘Officials complain that the timing of the general strike makes no sense. Despite a 2.3 per cent decline in gross domestic product overall in 2016, in the third and fourth quarters the economy grew by 0.1 per cent and 0.5 per cent respectively compared to the previous quarters. Since October, around 25,000 jobs are being created each month, say officials.’

What is more than compelling in terms of argument is Maria Victoria Murillo’s comment that at first attempts to trivialize the strikes as:

‘…argues that the general strike is “not a big deal” and is “nothing new.” She explains that the leaders of Argentina’s fragmented trade unions need to flex their muscles from time to time to maintain support among the grass roots.’

And then she asserts that:

“It may have an impact on the margins, but ultimately the election will be decided by the economy,” says Ms Murillo. “Unless they can solve that, they are toast — the rest is decoration.”

Mr. Macri’s success is dependent on an electorate that is, to say the least, unhappy with his expression of Austerity, that is one of the central tenets of the Neo-Liberal Dispensation, dubbed ‘Reform’ by its acolytes.  It would have been the wiser course, to have offered to Argentina what Macron is offering to the French electorate: Neo-Liberalism with a Human Face, e.g.:

‘The candidate’s recently announced programme is thus a careful balancing act between progressive ideals of social solidarity and conservative aspirations to entrepreneurship and order: it includes a raft of liberal economic proposals, such as cutting public expenditure, reducing the number of civil servants, unifying the pension system, and introducing greater flexibility in the labour market. But it also contains socially progressive measures, such as increasing the number of teachers, offering additional resources to schools in disadvantaged areas, promoting greater equality between the sexes, protecting those on short-term employment contracts, abolishing the residence tax for 80 per cent of the population, and offering a “Culture Pass” of €500 to all eighteen-year-olds – a concrete affirmation of Macron’s republican belief that education and learning are “the apprenticeship of freedom”.

The metaphor is revealing, for at the heart of Macron’s vision lies the promise of an “enterprising and ambitious France”. His conception of the good life is that of an optimistic, cosmopolitan and socially conscious modernizer: committed to the transformation of the French economy, and releasing business from the burdens of high taxation and over-regulation, but also aware (not least as a child of the provinces) that the market alone cannot produce equal opportunities for all citizens, and that state intervention is often indispensable.’

http://www.the-tls.co.uk/articles/public/emmanuel-macron-revolution/

Old Socialist

https://www.ft.com/content/81e544a4-12fa-11e7-80f4-13e067d5072c

Is he Our Cicero or more likely Our Catiline that addresses the vexing question of the Left and its tribalism, in his usual eloquent, coruscating polemic? The Left, as Our Catiline views it, is ‘tribalist’ because it is by definition backward looking, as opposed to an Enlightened Neo-Liberal view, that The Market is the only viable form of ‘knowledge’ and a measure of all things that matter? This being is a sycophant to the faltering Pax Americana of NATO, and the EU as Neo-Liberalism avant la lettre, as it crumbles before our fixed gaze.

Our Catiline has a penchant for invective that serves him well, yet for the reader who looks for something more, like some telling insights to the various quandaries of the political present, like Populism and its American issue Trump, or the rise of Jeremy Corbyn the reader is shortchanged. On Corbyn the curious reader can consult the March 17, 2017 issue of the TLS in a review of three books on the Labour leader by Robert Potts, who offers some insight Our Catiline is incapable of imagining, much less formulating:

Does anyone know now what the Labour Party is for? Corbyn’s clarity on this in the leadership contests shone through, which is why he won. (He opposes inequality, which has risen in the UK since 1979 under both the Conservatives and New Labour, and seems to be the topic that, for whatever reason, Corbyn’s detractors will do anything not to talk about.) His opponents’ position is less clear; triangulation by platitude. There is strong recent evidence that people will not be fooled by that stance forever. If there is now any ideological difference between the Labour Right and the Liberal Democrats, it is far from obvious; talk of needing a new party between Corbyn and the Conservatives overlooks the fact we already have one.

Perhaps the only positive for the Left is that their arguments can now be made at all. A large number of voters, clearly committed and passionate, are hungry for a change. They cannot be simply taken for granted (as they were before Corbyn’s nomination – “where else do they have to go?” was the response from Andy Burnham’s camp), nor written off as a handful of naives and Trotskyites. They are unlikely to go away. James Goldsmith’s Referendum Party were merely the punchline to a joke in 1997, when they stood in every seat and lost every deposit; but only twenty years later, they have achieved their objective despite not even existing anymore. Given recent history, no one can confidently predict what Jeremy Corbyn’s legacy might eventually be.

http://www.the-tls.co.uk/articles/public/corbyn-labour-party/

Would that Our Catiline could offer up something comparable!

Classical Historian

https://www.ft.com/content/13a06188-0fc9-11e7-a88c-50ba212dce4d

Added Tuesday March 28,2017 2:12 PDT. I taking the liberty to add a long quotation from an earlier part of Mr. Robert Potts’ essay, that seems absolutely essential in coming to an understanding of the Labour Party and Corbyn’s place in it. And the myth of the primacy of Tony Blair in the Party’s history:

The story of how such an other-worldly figure became leader of the party simply by being himself is an oddly electrifying one, nicely told by Prince and better still by Nunns, and worth attending to if only to see how some widespread narratives suppress certain truths. The Blairite faction in the Parliamentary Party was never as large as people thought. Nonetheless, its members had disproportionate influence with the media, and it is largely their lines that are taken as gospel. So the decline of Labour’s fortunes is seen as a result of the departure of Tony Blair; had he not won three elections? And the 2015 general election result was because Ed Miliband was too left-wing. And the election of Jeremy Corbyn was because Miliband had introduced a new way of electing the leader. Following this narrative, all that is required for Labour to win again is the rectification of this error, by hook or by crook, and the subsequent leadership of a Blairite.

All three books, with different degrees of zest, show this narrative to be a fantasy. Blair (and Gordon Brown) managed to lose 5 million votes between 1997 and 2010, many of them from their working-class base; Scotland was lost because the Scottish chose a left-wing party over a Labour Party that had taken them for granted; and the electoral system that in March 2014 handed power to the party’s members, rather than a block vote by MPs, was hailed at the time by Tony Blair himself (“a long overdue reform . . . that [I] should have done myself”) and nearly all of his supporters – Nunns cheekily offers a standalone page of quotations to make that point. (It might be added that whenever Blair or his close ally Peter Mandelson pop up to offer helpful advice these days, the general public ungratefully ignore them. According to a recent YouGov poll, Blair is currently more unpopular across all demographics than Corbyn, which is quite an achievement.)

http://www.the-tls.co.uk/articles/public/corbyn-labour-party/

@BetaByNature @StephenKMackSD

(Note: I was only able to post the link to the ten point Crobyn program. March 28, 2017 6:55 AM PDT)

Thank you for your comment. ‘Hard Left’ is the Party Line of the Neo-Liberals/Thatcherites of the present, in their many iterations. The fact is that Corbyn is a Left wing Social Democrat: he only appears to be ‘Hard Left’ because he inhabits a political culture dominated by the ‘The Road to Serfdom’ political pathology,  and its political enactor Mrs. Thatcher, not to speak of her myriad epigones.

Here is Mr. Corbyn’s ten point program offered in 2016, where were you?

Corbyn’s 10 pledges

1. Full employment and an economy that works for all: based around a £500bn public investment via the planned national investment bank.
2. A secure homes guarantee: building 1m new homes in five years, at least half of them council homes. Also rent controls and secure tenancies.
3. Security at work: includes stronger employment rights, an end to zero hours contracts and mandatory collective bargaining for companies with 250 or more employees.
4. Secure our NHS and social care: end health service privatisation and bring services into a “secure, publicly-provided NHS”.
5. A national education service: includes universal public childcare, the “progressive restoration” of free education, and quality apprenticeships.
6. Action to secure our environment: includes keeping to Paris climate agreement, and moving to a “low-carbon economy” and green industries, in part via national investment bank.
7. Put the public back into our economy and services: includes renationalising railways and bringing private bus, leisure and sports facilities back into local government control.
8. Cut income and wealth inequality: make a progressive tax system so highest earners are “fairly taxed”, shrink the gap between the highest and lowest paid.
9. Action to secure an equal society: includes action to combat violence against women, as well as discrimination based on race, sexuality or disability, and defend the Human Rights Act.
10. Peace and justice at the heart of foreign policy: aims to put conflict resolution and human rights “at the heart of foreign policy”.

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2016/aug/04/jeremy-corbyn-10-point-vision-britain-labour-split

It took me all of a minute to find this on the internet! Should I take your comment as the chatter of a Neo-Liberal ideologue, or would that be considered a redundancy?

Regards,

StephenKMackSD

Its very interesting that the ‘reformers’ that are, or have been, featured in The Financial Times,  Gontareva and Argentine President Mauricio Macri were what? Clients of  Mossack Fonseca? Gontareva’s name ‘pops up’ in the Panama Papers, yet the link the Financial Times provides is of the general reporting done by the Financial Times. Where is the information regarding Gontareva?  In one of the many news items provided?  The purest kind of journalistic obfuscation, and or apologetics for the Coup government’s  Neo-Liberalization  of the Ukrainian economy, even though the IMF has lost its faith in that Neo-Liberalism?

http://fortune.com/2016/06/03/imf-neoliberalism-failing/

The starring role in this little political melodrama of Poroshenko crony Gontareva, defeating the ‘Oligarchs’, not to speak of her, by her own admission, “absolutely incredible, draconian, administrative measures”, like cutting the pensions of retirees in half?  Or does that not fit under the rubric of ‘draconian administrative measures’? The celebrated ‘Strong Medicine’ revised for another context?

Neil Buckley and Roman Olearchyk do a workman like job of producing Ukrainian Coup propaganda, with the slavering Oligarchs taking the role usually played by Putin.

Old Socialist

https://www.ft.com/content/48b1e1d4-07d2-11e7-97d1-5e720a26771b

Who is Jon Ossoff? This might just provide part of an answer:

‘Ossoff attended Georgetown University from 2005 to 2009, earning a bachelor’s degree in the School of Foreign Service. He studied under former secretary of state Madeleine Albright and former Israeli ambassador to the United States Michael Oren.[9][10]’

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jon_Ossoff

Mr. Ossoff is a well credential New Democrat, the latest offer from the very corrupt New Democratic organization, whose group think is that Trump is the problem, rather than a Party dominated by Corporatist Clinton hacks! Not to speak of the notorious Zionist neo-revanchist Oren and the ghoulish Albright!

The New Democrats and its surrogate ‘Left Action’ tout Ossoff as the answer, rather than  as the desperation of Clinton and her minions: Brazil, Podesta, Wasserman Schultz.The Democratic Party needs to reclaim its New Deal traditions, and roots, or become politically irrelevant: change of die!

Publius

Where has Courtney Weaver been? As reported in Time Magazine of March 22,2017: http://time.com/4709234/neil-gorsuch-confirmation-hearing-supreme-court-decision/ Judge Gorsuch’s decision in Thompson  R2-J School District v. Luke P. has been overturned unanimously by the Supreme Court! Even his fellow reactionaries on the Court rebuked him! Gorsuch’s reported response: That’s fine.

This ‘Confirmation Hearing’ is  awash in political kitsch and cynical posturing by a Neo-Confederate/Originalist candidate, who has simply evaded any substantive answers to questions by the Democrats: whose momentary re-discovery of their own backbones has been, or will be short lived. If Garland had reached the hearing stage, it would  have been the Democrats fawning over the ‘questioning’ of another unimpressive judicial careerist.

On the Committee Chairs: Grassley looks like what he is, a hick reading speeches written by one of his more politically sophisticated hirelings. Feinstein looks like what she has always been, a political opportunist, who entertains the notion that she has somehow broken that Senate glass-ceiling. Her own highfalutin self-conception is demonstrated by her careful,even punctilious, observance of the institutionalized courtesies of the Senate Gentleman’s Club.

On the  Nuclear Option: with the Ryan Plan badly faltering, and the Gorsuch nomination in trouble, will the Republicans, under the banner of Trump political nihilism, make that fateful move, freighted with so much melodrama, so  fraught with danger?

Political Cynic

https://www.ft.com/content/94485ed6-0feb-11e7-b030-768954394623

@Truth and Honour @StephenKMackSD

Thank you for your comment. One is struck by the fact of precedent, and the part it plays in American Law. Yet in the case of Brown v. Board, the reader is confronted with the declaration, by Earl Warren, that the psychic/psychological well being of black children had a primary importance for the American polity! The question that needs to be asked : did Brown follow any known precedent ?

Admittedly this is a very rough sketch, of another kind of court, in another time and historical place but is illustrative of what a judge might do, or how a judge might act creatively, to take ‘the redress of grievances’ as legitimate.function of the court. Judge Gorsuch’s record is very clear! He is a reactionary ideologue, he is Robert Bork with a cosmetic make over, so he doesn’t look like a character out of ‘Uncle Tom’s Cabin’! He and his Federalist Society allies will  return us this halcyon world of a re-imagined 1859.

This Brown opinion was dubbed ‘Sociology’ by the nascent legal branch of American jurisprudential philosophy called ‘Originalism’, or simply helped an already existing reactionary strain of American Political Romanticism, gain a foothold into respectable legal circles. Rehnquist‘s whole career was built on the foundation of his challenging black voters in Arizona. See the The Partisan: The Life of William Rehnquist’ by John A.Jenkins for the dismal particulars of his life and career. Gorsuch is his natural heir. 

What does this have to do with the question of de minimis in the case of Luke P.?Played out as proof of the Gorsuch judicial virtue, in the exchange you quote, in which Gorsuch adopts the role of victim of Durbin’s bulling. This whole process of Confirmation is awash in cheap melodrama and political kitsch, the perfect arena for ‘The Martyrdom of Gorsuch’!

Yet again their is further evidence in the case of Alphonse Maddin that Gorsuch was what? The particulars here:

https://www.democracynow.org/2017/3/22/a_driver_fled_his_truck_to

Should we look to Robert Fetter,attorney for Mr. Maddin, as to how Gorsuch behaved toward him in the courtroom setting?

ROBERT FETTER: Well, in January of 2016, I traveled from Detroit to Denver to oral—to oral argument before the 10th Circuit. When you appear, you appear all at one time with several cases, and you all get called when your turn comes up. We happened to be the last one of that morning session. And I was watching the judges, because it’s all the same three-judge panel, as to what their demeanor was. And I looked with particular interest with Judge Gorsuch, because I knew he was a very conservative judge. And I watched in most of these cases, which were uncontroversial, and he was seemingly either disinterested or pleasant to the attorneys. But it seemed like that was a stark change when our case was called. Judge Gorsuch was incredibly hostile. As attorneys on appellate panels, you have some judges that are hostile. And I’ve litigated many cases in appellate courts. And he—that stood out, because he may have been the most hostile judge I’ve ever appeared before. In fact, it came back to me, interestingly, when I watched Senator Franken’s questioning of Judge Gorsuch, which some described as hostile. But that’s a similar type of tone that Judge Gorsuch took with me when I was arguing Mr. Maddin’s case.

What about Sen Al Franken’s questioning of Gorsuch on this Maddin case:

SEN. AL FRANKEN: But the plain meaning rule has an exception. When using the plain meaning rule would create an absurd result, courts should depart from the plain meaning. It is absurd to say this company is in its rights to fire him because he made the choice of possibly dying from freezing to death or causing other people to die possibly by driving an unsafe vehicle. That’s absurd. Now, I had a career in identifying absurdity, and I know it when I see it. And it makes me—you know, it makes me question your judgment.

https://www.democracynow.org/2017/3/24/watch_sen_al_franken_grills_neil

StephenKMackSD

@Truth and Honour @Paul A. Myers

‘Talk about unsubstantiated and inflammatory.’ 

Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse seems to take quite seriously Gorsuch’s financial backer Mr. Anschutz! The senator took this as significant, because it is significant! Your attack on the integrity, not to speak of Mr. Myer’s veracity, is unsurprising given your other posts. Mr. Myers signs his name to his posts, one of the measures of his intellectual integrity! Will you follow his example! Probably not!   

‘AMY GOODMAN: Supreme Court nominee Neil Gorsuch is back on Capitol Hill for a second day of questioning before the Senate Judiciary Committee, Gorsuch tapped by President Trump to fill the seat left vacant by Antonin Scalia’s death over a year ago. President Obama nominated Merrick Garland to replace Scalia at nearly a year ago, but Republicans refused to even hold hearings, fearing Garland would tip the ideological balance. During Tuesday’s hearing, Neil Gorsuch faced questions about his views on the Supreme Court’s Citizens United ruling and the $10 million dark money campaign that is supporting his nomination. This is Democratic Senator Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island.

SEN. SHELDON WHITEHOUSE: How would you describe any differences that you may have in judicial philosophy with Chief Judge Garland?

JUDGE NEIL GORSUCH: I would leave that for others to characterize. I don’t like it when people characterize me, and I would not prefer to characterize him. He can characterize himself.

SEN. SHELDON WHITEHOUSE: What’s interesting is that this group sees a huge difference between you that I don’t understand. The dark money group that is spending money on your elections spent at least $7 million against him getting a hearing and a confirmation here, and indeed produced that result by spending that money. And then, now, we have $10 million going the other way. That’s a $17 million delta. And for the life of me, I’m trying to figure out what they see in you that makes that $17 million delta worth their spending. Do you have any answer to that?

JUDGE NEIL GORSUCH: You’d have to ask them.

SEN. SHELDON WHITEHOUSE: I can’t, because I don’t know who they are. It’s just a front group.

AMY GOODMAN: Senator Sheldon Whitehouse went on to ask about billionaire Philip Anschutz, who has close ties to Judge Gorsuch.

SEN. SHELDON WHITEHOUSE: If a question were to come up regarding recusal on the court, how would we know that the partiality question in a recusal matter had been adequately addressed if we did not know who was spending all of this money to get you confirmed? Hypothetically, it could be one individual. Hypothetically, it could be your friend, Mr. Anschutz. We don’t know, because it’s dark money. Is it any cause of concern to you that your nomination is the focus of a $10 million political spending effort and we don’t know who’s behind it?

JUDGE NEIL GORSUCH: Senator, there’s a lot about the confirmation process today that I regret.’

https://www.democracynow.org/2017/3/22/neil_gorsuch_backed_by_10_of

StephenKMackSD

@Truth and Honour

I deeply appreciate your thoughtful reply! If you are interested, see my comment here:

https://stephenkmacksd.wordpress.com/2016/11/12/francis-fukuyama-a-straussian-on-the-trump-victory-almost-marx-comments/

On Fukuyama’s ‘The Decay of American Political Institutions’ from November 2, 2016, in which I focus on Brown, and use the letters of Learned Hand to Felix Frankfurter:

‘Reason and Imagination: The Selected Correspondence of Learned Hand’ in the December 5, 2013 edition of The New Your Review of Books (Behind a pay wall):

In which Hand conducts a dialogue with Frankfurter on the vexed question of Brown and ‘legislative intent’ as having political/legal primacy.  I’m sorry but the ‘legislative intent’ argument is based in entrenched white privilege. The simple test might just be, had Hand ever experienced racism or seen it in action? Hand even called Earl Warren a dictator in one of his letters to Frankfurter. Lincoln Caplan, who wrote the review, argues that the reason Hand is so respected is that his position on Brown had ‘evolved’ into a negative opinion. And therefore was worthy of respect. Caplan even argues that Hand is revered for his’ judicial integrity’, that places ‘Legislative Intent’ in a primary legal/political position. I can’t agree with that!

Let me say that if Thurgood Marshall and the NAACP had waited for a change of mind and heart of America’s legislators, the demise of Jim Crow and its instrument of oppression the Segregated School, would have never happened. Yet the very history of Brown is the central animating reason for the birth of The Federalist Society. See John Dean’s ‘The Rehnquist Choice’ for the particulars on the Nixon appointment of Rehnquist to the Supreme Court.

Brown was chipped away by those Federalist, as the Neo-Confederate/Originalist appointed by a Republican Party, thoroughly infested by the Dixiecrat Migration from the Democratic to the Republican Party after the passage of the Civil Rights and Voting Right Acts of the Johnson Years.

Read ‘Minding The Law’ by Amsterdam and Bruner, published by Harvard University Press in 2000. This book critiques, as I recall, five Supreme Court decisions. It is the most important book published on Supreme Court decisions, and American Law in this young Century!

Best regards,

StephenKMackSD

Even with the hollow hand-wringing of Rich Lowry, the Heritage Foundation Healthcare, in all its iterations of a ‘Free Market’ answer to Single Payer, i.e. Medicare for all, is destined for failure? Mr. Lowry leads with a whimper, which makes this reader long for the capacity of Wm. F. Buckley Jr., for the production of  stinging invective, at will, even in defeat. The hallowed remembrance of a Burkean Pretender?

The political answer to the Ryan Plan for Healthcare ‘reform’, that Lowry predicts will end in failure, is utterly predictable. Trump will place the blame on Ryan, and utter his infamous tag line: Your Fired! The manufactured cheap melodrama of the small screen is the Trump Way. Trump has one mode when it comes to failure!

Political Reporter

http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/03/the-health-care-albatross-214942

Mr. Weiss doesn’t so much as build an accusation of the guilt of Putin, based on empirical evidence, because he does not have access to such, but this is just another instance of Putin, and his gangster allies in Russian civic life. The ‘evidence’ Mr.Weiss presents  is circumstantial , even tangential, but never mind, the point of this obtuse Le Carrian infused chatter, is about  Neo-Conservative propaganda. The point of which is to foment a hatred of Russia, that can then be exploited as pretext for war with the Great Villain Putin, and bring Fukuyama’s  bastardization of Hegel’s ‘end of history’ to fruition!   The reader confronts the dismal record of unsolved murders of key witnesses to the predations of a  Russia state, in the thrall the  Gangster-In-Chief  Putin. Not to speak of his various underlings and even sub-groups who are the bad actors who are looking after their own interests, or are hired by others to do  the dirty work of that Gangster State!

Although noting quite matches this quote from Mr. Weiss acting as apologist and hypocrite for the disastrous Ukrainian Coup!

Curiously, first on the scene to report this as an accident involving a renovation gone wrong was LifeNews, a Russian outlet closely connected to the Russian security services and famous for inventing false news stories about the war in Ukraine and the murder of opposition leader Boris Nemtsov.

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2017/03/23/was-a-magnitsky-lawyer-defenestrated-for-embarrassing-putin.html

Victor Serge

Mr. Luce, how many Neo-Liberal cliches can you freight your political/economic hysterics?

All bull markets die,heading for an early grave., The bill is an unloved mess that relies solely on Republican partisan loyalty to pass., What ever the fate of “Trumpcare”, markets are digesting that nothing big will happen soon., Mr Trump will be hard-pressed to forge the deals necessary to enact once-in-a-generation tax reform.,Washington, by design, is treacherous ground for ambitious reformers., That conceit is dissolving.,Presidential terms can go one of three ways. ,An early victory gives a young presidency momentum., The market has priced Mr Trump into the Reagan mould., He has also basked in the glow of a soaring stock market.,Short of an epiphany on tax reform, Mr Trump can kindle animal spirits with aggressive deregulation., But perception is king, It is a pity it is so discouraging for growth.

https://www.ft.com/content/e3405ca8-0d81-11e7-a88c-50ba212dce4d

Some of them are just plain Corporatist Propaganda e.g. Mr Trump will be hard-pressed to forge the deals necessary to enact once-in-a-generation tax reform. This the Luce version of  economic theology? or to vulgarize it, or just to give it its due, economic mumbo jumbo!  That ‘once-in-a-generation tax reform’ is the final de-evolution of the revelation of Neo-Liberalism into the gift of Corporatism?

Old Socialist