Eight Is Enough for Court "Balance."

It's about integrity...

So, the Republicans want to give due attention to the solemn task of advising and consenting on a Supreme Court nomination and they want to spend as much time as they think it takes to review the record of Sonia Sotomayor . They say there are so many cases that it's unfair to rush the confirmation hearings. They didn't care to do that for nominees from President Bush, but a lot of things they did for President Bush are now not the right thing to do, anymore.


Do't think that's true? Well, aside from running up huge public debt there is the insistence, now, that war funding bills not carry funding for anything else as they did back in the day when it was conservative pork being carried...I digress. It's hard to focus on one example of a lack of integrity when so many others have their hands waving in the air to be recognized.

Back to the Supreme Court nomination...

Some in the media believe that the delay insisted on by Conservatives is a part of fund raising. Both sides will do it but the Conservatives need to shake down their base, at this point, more than the Progressives do. Others think that the Party of No is just dragging its feet to keep other things from getting done as they try to run out the clock til the next election when they hope, through the Fox style propaganda they are developing, they might win a few more seats and more power to frustrate change.

I wonder, though, in my own little cynical, bottom of the barrel corner of the world, if that's all there is to it.

If Justice Souter is gone and the court cranks up operation in October one justice short won't that work to the advantage of the "strict constructionalist" who also hold to the modern and radical doctrine of original intent of the founders (quite to the contrary of the intent of the founders)? It may cause a number of 4-4 ties. These in some cases will work out to the advantage of the Right, and in some may prevent them from denying things like redress of grievances for wage discrimination and the like.

I don't know for sure but if the retiring justice wasn't one of "theirs" might they not think it worth it to create an albeit small period of time in which the court can hear and make decisions in which there is one fewer justice who was not a safe vote for them, anyway.

So, there it is, in my view--a Lily Award for Senator Sessions and the gang.

Remember what Lily Tomlin, our patron saint, here, said: "No matter how cynical you get--it's hard to keep up."

Does anybody really know what time its? Does anybody really care?

I found this and I shook my head.

"ABC News produced a heartbreaking tale of woe about harried professionals scheming to reduce their incomes to avoid higher tax brackets. A dentist told the reporter she was contemplating cutting “her income from her current $320,000 to under $250,000 by having her dental hygienist work fewer days and by treating fewer patients.”

"Neither she nor the reporter appeared to have any idea how marginal tax rates work. To wit, she’d pay the higher 36 percent rate only on income above $250,000. The current rate is 33 percent. Hence, Dr. Happy-Tooth’s brilliant plan would save her exactly $2,100 in taxes at a cost of $67,900 in foregone income.

"No wonder people like her vote Republican."

And for Democrats, I might add.

People who report and comment on the news are smart enough to figure this stuff out and at the same time it's entirely possible that they really don't get it.

Still, I wonder: ESPN would never send someone out to cover an upcoming three game series between the Yankees and the Red Sox who would say that one team or the other would sweep the series because it had a pitcher against whom the other had not had a hit in seven years. People who cover baseball know the game well enough to know that pitcher could not pitch all three games. That's not how baseball works. Pitchers rarely start games, except in the most dire of circumstances, any more frequently than once every four days.

And baseball reporters know that.

And, by the way, those who play the game know that, too.

So, in the story alluded to, above, we have someone covering the impact of taxes on earnings--and someone paying those taxes--both of whom are ignorant of how taxes work!

One of them is misleading an audience and the other is contemplating a course of action that will cause serious economic detriment to herself.

If this is ignorance or if it is a guileful attempt to mislead others it does not portend well for democracy or reflect positively on the human condition.

I think I'd rather believe that the dentist and the reporter are doing that, rather than believe that they are so ignorant about something so vital to their own well being that they are doing self destructive things as they try to maximize their well being.

I'd rather believe that someone would lie to damage the other side in the ongoing class war, on the one hand, and the war for audience, on the other. Wowsers!

I'd rather believe people are that dishonest than believe they are that stupid. I don't know that I do believe that, but I know that's what I'd rather believe.

I guess that means I get the Lily, today.

Oh, Sigh

"I don't need any lessons on telling the truth to the American people..." said Senator McCain, continuing on to say that if he did he wouldn't seek counsel in that regard from a a Chicago politician.

What's the debate going to be like, tonight?

The Democratic Whatever It Is Committee (the DWIIC?) is now running an ad of the Good Senator saying that the American people are smart enough to know that people who run nothing but negative ads has no vision for the future or doesn't want to lay that out at the present time.

How weird it is that such footage can be played by the speaker's opponents with such confidence in it being perceived as irony by the public! Is McCain's credibility completely upside down?

And Palin. Palin shows they're failin'.

O'bama is "palling around with domestic terrorists" and Reverend Wright...

Maybe Governor Palin knows that her ticket is toast this time and she wants to get as much attention as she can so that in four yearts, or eight, she can come back as a re-invented figure who reads the magazines and knows Supreme Court cases, and such. Will she be the front runner for the R nomination in 2012?

Clarence Page said that Palin knew that the debates are a TV show and she played it that way. She could become very skillful in the medium.

Or will she go back to Alaska in an irretreivable disgrace, blamed for the loss or just with so much negative baggage...

But Nixon had a lot of negative baggage and back he came.

"But You, Governor Palin, are no Richard Nixon."

Oh, the Lily? McCain, of course. He has to know he's not telling the truth to the American people. O'bama is not a Chicago politician. He has not been a part of that machine. If O'bama is a Chicago politician then McCain is a Hanoi politician.

Is this never going to be over?

Could this year be the rhyme line for 1964? Is this another horrendous defeat for the Republicans such that it sets up a countering victory like Ronald Reagan's?

I should stop writing before I start to rival McCain for today's Lily.

The Tool of Mavericks

Sarah Palin has a rhetorical tool box that served her well in the debate last Friday, generating talking points interspersed with personable affectations--at least personable as seen by some people's sensibilities.

Unlike the two interviews she did, when the reporters were able to ask her to be specific about something she said and showed that she didn't really say anything, at all, in this debate she was able to skip over the surface like the flattest of flat stones. When Biden called her on things she was just able to to repeat what she said, without any supporting fact or information, and say that Biden was "wrong."

The plan, now, is to keep her away from anyone who can ask her a follow up question.

She winks, she mugs, her folksy outside the beltway style--her beauty contestant personality: she's joined the "Team of Mavericks."

No matter how cynical I get...