Last Call For Supreme Obstruction

If you think either President Obama or a future President Hillary Clinton will be able to make any Supreme Court nominations with a GOP-controlled Senate in charge, well the "moderate" John McCain would like to put an end to that notion.

Almost immediately after news of Justice Antonin Scalia’s death broke, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) proclaimed that “this vacancy should not be filled until we have a new President.” And, with rare exception, this has been the Senate GOP’s message since Scalia’s seat became vacant — let the election happen first, and whoever wins that election gets to pick the next justice. 

Nevertheless, in a Monday interview with a Philadelphia radio host, Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) admitted that Republicans will continue to block anyone the next president nominates to the Supreme Court — at least if that president is Hillary Clinton. 

“I promise you that we will be united against any Supreme Court nominee that Hillary Clinton, if she were president, would put up.” 

“The strongest argument I can make” for why Pennsylvania voters should reelect Republican Sen. Pat Toomey, is that a Republican Senate can “ensure that there is not three places on the United States Supreme Court that will change this country for decades.”

Scalia's seat on the court has been vacant now for seven full months.  There's no reason to believe that a lame duck session will approve his nomination unless voters give control of the Senate to the Democrats again.

We can do something about that in a few weeks, guys.

Trump Cards, Con't

An increasingly erratic and desperate Donald Trump continues to accuse Democrats and the entire US government of "rigging the election" at his rallies, Trump and his surrogates are specifically accusing the Obama administration of allowing massive voter fraud at poling places.

Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump and his surrogates amplified their rhetoric on the racially charged issue of voting fraud, accusing Democrats of systematic cheating that could throw the election to Hillary Clinton.

Trump said in a Twitter message Sunday that the Nov. 8 election is “absolutely being rigged” at polling places and through media coverage. Former New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani said election fraud was a sin committed almost entirely by Democrats in America’s inner cities, where populations tend to be heavily minorities.

“They leave dead people on the rolls, and then they pay people to vote those dead people four, five, six, seven, eight, nine times,” said Giuliani, one of Trump’s most prominent supporters, on CNN’s “State of the Union.” He added, “dead people generally vote for Democrats.”

Cheating by Republicans is rare, Giuliani said. “They don’t control inner cities the way Democrats do,” he said.

These are pretty awful accusations, not to mention the blatantly racist assumption that it's the "inner city", code word for us awful black people of course, that Giuliani is accusing of mass voter fraud.  This is a former mayor of NYC for crying out loud, and yet here we are.

So yes, Trump and his campaign surrogates are openly accusing the Democrats of voter fraud and election rigging weeks before the election has even happened because "everybody knows" Democrats cheat.

To say such rhetoric is dangerous and irresponsible is a massive understatement.  Trump is trying to take the American election process with him in his collapse, and if the events in NC this weekend are any indication, he's well on his way to doing so.  No wonder then that a majority of Trump supporters now agree that the American election system is rigged.

I expect it to be far higher after they lose.  And that will be a disaster for the country.

Our Little Domestic Terror Problem, Con't

Whoever is behind acts like this needs to stop it immediately, because hey, this too is domestic terrorism guys.

The weekend firebombing of a North Carolina Republican headquarters drew national attention Sunday, with one state GOP official calling it an act of “political terrorism.”

Hillsborough police say the incident at the Orange County GOP headquarters occurred when a bottle of flammable liquid was thrown through the front window of the office that housed the local GOP headquarters.

The words, “Nazi Republicans get out of town or else” and a swastika were spray painted on the side of an adjacent building. Officials said the bomb ignited inside the office. No damage estimates were available.

“This highly disturbing act goes far beyond vandalizing property; it willfully threatens our community’s safety … and its hateful message undermines decency, respect and integrity in civic participation,” Mayor Tom Stevens said in a statement. “Acts like this have no place in our community.”

Hillsborough police and the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives were continuing to investigate. The incident took place in Orange County, home of the University of North Carolina in nearby Chapel Hill.

The county is overwhelmingly Democratic. Democrats and independents outnumber Republicans 5-1.

Democrats condemned the bombing. “The attack on the Orange County HQ @NCGOP office is horrific and unacceptable, Hillary Clinton’s campaign tweeted. “Very grateful that everyone is safe.”

N.C. Democratic Party Chair Patsy Keever called the bombing “outrageous.”

“The North Carolina Democratic Party strongly condemns this attack,” she said. “Violence has no place in our political system … Our deepest sympathies are with everyone at the North Carolina Republican Party.”

Dallas Woodhouse, executive director of the state GOP, called the bombing “political terrorism.”

“The office itself is a total loss,” he said. “The only thing important to us is that nobody was killed, and they very well could have been.”

Later, Woodhouse said, “Whether you are Republican, Democrat or Independent, all Americans should be outraged by this hate-filled and violent attack against our democracy. … Everyone in this country should be free to express their political viewpoints without fear for their own safety.”

Read more here: http://www.charlotteobserver.com/news/politics-government/article108627627.html#storylink=cpy

For those of you unfamiliar with NC, Orange County is home to UNC-Chapel Hill and is just west of Durham.  It's very liberal, part of the Research Triangle Park and has a lot of suburban areas, in fact it's about the most liberal county in the state (maybe Buncombe County and Asheville) and for this kind of thing to happen here, well.

Here's the thing though, we've seen Democrats raising money to help the NC GOP rebuild the office. That's a nice sentiment, but it's misguided for two reasons, one, because the NC GOP is most certainly fundraising on this out of anger and not sorrow, and two the Republicans are taking this as a tacit admission of guilt and will blame "violent Democratic rhetoric" for this, as if somehow it's not Donald Trump saying we need Second Amendment solutions to America's problems.

Believe me when I say being raised as a liberal Catholic from a New York family that I intimately understand the concept of guilt and it motivating our actions to take action to be the better world we want to see, but this isn't the way to do it.

Nor do we need to be attacking the folks that did give.  Again, I understand the impulse.  It will not be received in the spirit in which it is being offered, believe me.  Sometimes doing nothing is better in the long run.

I have my suspicions about the incident still.  Whoever did it, needs to face the full extent of the judicial system.  Republicans are already howling for blood as it is.

StupidiNews!

• Iraqi forces, backed by US air power and military advisors, have begun the military effort to retake the Iraqi city of Mosul from ISIS, which has controlled the city since early 2014.
• The federal defamation trial against Rolling Stone magazine over a debunked 2014 rape allegation story at the University of Virginia begins today.
• China has launched its longest planned manned space mission to date as the Shenzhou 11 mission is expected to see two astronauts dock with the Tiangong 2 space lab.
• After a series of mechanical issues, the US Navy says its latest Littoral Combat Ship, the USS Coronado, is ready for duty in Southeast Asia.
• The FAA has officially banned all Samsung Galaxy Note 7 smartphones from all flights after the now discontinued phone was launched with battery charging problems leading to fires.