A quote worth remembering from the Notorious RBG

 It's worth remembering this quote from the late Ruth Bader Ginsburg captured on my television screen on July 12, 2016.

"I can't imagine what the country would be with Donald Trump as our president." - Ruth Bader Ginsburg #NotoriousRBG pic.twitter.com/UfufNQCf06

— True Blue Liberal - #BidenHarris2020 (@TrueBlueLiberal) July 12, 2016

She tempered these statements about the Republican nominee for President soon after they became public, but that didn't make them any less true. None of us -- in our worst prognostications -- could have imagined what the country would become with Donald Trump as our president.

Remembering Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, dead at 87

A True Blue Liberal POTUS & SCOTUS Poll

Here's a poll that will be up on the @TrueBlueLiberal Twitter page this week about President Trump and two of his favorite judges:

POLL:
Due to his very, very GREAT respect for the American justice system, the next judge whom @realDonaldTrump plans to elevate to a seat on the Supreme Court, if he gets the opportunity, is...

— True Blue Liberal (@TrueBlueLiberal) November 14, 2017

Dewey Beats Truman Redux

Here are CNN and Fox News reporting this morning's Supreme Court decision on the Affordable Care Act with all the care of overactive retweeters on Twitter:

I'm not clear from these edits though. Was CNN getting its updates by watching Fox? Or was Fox getting its breaking information from CNN? I'm confused.

Corporate Rights in America have now trumped any mythical "States' Rights", even in Montana

Yes, they do exist.

Dear Montana,                

A hundred years ago the citizens of your young state stood up strongly to copper kings like William Andrews Clark, who in the words of Mark Twain, "bought legislatures and judges as other men buy food and raiment. By his example he has so excused and so sweetened corruption that in Montana it no longer has an offensive smell." You didn't just complain about these Gilded Age robber barons. You passed a referendum in 1912 that stated clearly a "corporation may not make ... an expenditure in connection with a candidate or a political party that supports or opposes a candidate or a political party." That clear will of Montana's early citizens was upheld again by the Montana Supreme Court in 2011.

Both the votes of your people and the decisions of your highest court were dismissed by five men on the US Supreme Court yesterday, without hearing the specific merits of your case, and by simply citing - in an unsigned opinion - their own ill-considered Citizens United decision as the basis for ignoring your will.

It should be clear to all of us that the rights of corporations (whether American or multinational) now trump the rights of American citizens, at least according to the 5-4 conservative majority on the U.S. Supreme Court. Dear Montana, Please think about the importance of that thin majority voting against your interests on the Supreme Court before you present your "safe" electoral votes to Mitt Romney in November. His goal is to change that majority to a safer 6-3 or 7-2 for his corporate friends. 

You could also try signing Senator Bernie Sanders petition for a Consitutional Amendment, but our current Congress doesn't show any lack of love for corporations desires over states' rights either so the chances of his anti-corporate amendment passing are slim. Our most important task now is to avoid a President who will give a lifetime tenure to more of the worst corporate stooges on the nation's highest court.

Just a Suggestion,

True Blue Liberal

It may be cruel, but it's not unusual in the USA.

The real news out of the Supreme Court today is not that the Justices decided children shouldn't be sentenced to die in prison, but that four members of the court -- John Roberts, Sam Alito, Tony Scalia, and Clarence "The Silent" Thomas -- voted to uphold the right of states to impose life in prison without chance of parole for children 14 and under.

"Determining the appropriate sentence for a teenager convicted of murder presents grave and challenging questions of morality and social policy... Our role, however, is to apply the law, not to answer such questions. The pertinent law here is the Eighth Amendment to the Constitution, which prohibits 'cruel and unusual punishments.' Today, the court [majority] invokes that amendment to ban a punishment that the court does not itself characterize as unusual, and that could not plausibly be described as such."            -- John Roberts

Read more: http://www.upi.com/Top_News/US/2012/06/25/Court-No-life-without-parole-for-teens/UPI-69051340639955/#ixzz1ypXQTTpS

He didn't say that life in prison without the chance of parole for a 12-year-old wasn't cruel. Therefore a punishment that is both Cruel AND Usual -- ie, enforced by 29 of our most backward states -- is not unconstitutional in the minds of the four dissenters.  This sort of judicial logic would have upheld slavery.

A liberal watching SCOTUS, even on days when the decisions go the right way by a thin margin, has to be a masochist akin to those on the left who watch Fox or listen to Rush, hence today's anagram: Roberts, Scalia, Alito, Thomas = To Roast a Liberal Masochist. 

Abraham Lincoln Explained the Dangers of Corporate Personhood in 1864

Two years ago today I posted this quotation from South Carolina's least favorite Republican President (at least they don't hate Barack Obama enough to secede from the Union) in honor of the Supreme Court's Citizens United case that had just been decided earlier that week. I followed it at the time with a short rant about the ramifications of this groundbreaking Corporate Personhood case, but now it doesn't need any further elaboration:

"I see in the near future a crisis approaching that unnerves me and causes me to tremble for the safety of my country. As a result of the war, corporations have been enthroned and an era of corruption in high places will follow, and the money power of the country will endeavor to prolong its reign by working upon the prejudices of the people until all wealth is aggregated in a few hands and the Republic is destroyed. I feel at this moment more anxiety for the safety of my country than ever before, even in the midst of war. God grant that my suspicions may prove groundless."

--Abraham Lincoln (letter to William F. Ekins, 21 November 1864)

"Corporations are people, my friend." -- Mitt Romney

I'm still so sorry that the heckler didn't take his cue from Terrance and Phillip and respond with, "I'm not your friend, buddy."

But seriously, the real responses to this idiocy of Mitt "Buddy" Romney's are myriad, but the more I think about it, the more I think that even if you accept the January 21, 2010, Citizens United decision of the Supreme Court that corporations have the same unlimited rights to free political speech of any other person -- and the rights to back up that speech with all their substantial resources -- the heckler should have followed up with, "But are they American citizens?"
Even if corporations are people, why should these people without a country, these supranational groups with unlimited resources that moves jobs, factories, and corporate headquarters offshore, have any say in the domestic politics of their former home? Or in the politics of any country in which they have some of their tentacles planted?

Another Quote of the Day from Another Prominent Republican

I see in the near future a crisis approaching that unnerves me and causes me to tremble for the safety of my country. As a result of the war, corporations have been enthroned and an era of corruption in high places will follow, and the money power of the country will endeavor to prolong its reign by working upon the prejudices of the people until all wealth is aggregated in a few hands and the Republic is destroyed. I feel at this moment more anxiety for the safety of my country than ever before, even in the midst of war. God grant that my suspicions may prove groundless.

--Abraham Lincoln (letter to William F. Ekins, 21 November 1864)

This quotation from the Great Emancipator seems especially appropriate in this week when the five conservative members of the Supreme Court fully removed the previous restrictions on corporate speech in political contexts andgave the corporations of America -- and the rest of the world -- "corporate personhood" that called for the protection of corporate "free speech" rights, with all the money that they can throw behind that speech. Imagine how sponsored speech will drown out real human speech when fully unleashed. The Fox-sponsored Tea Parties will seem like a tea party when there's so much corporate "grass roots" Astroturf covering the American landscape that we'll never need another lawnmower.

Though it's nothing to laugh about, it was very hard not to play with the idea of giving corporations even fuller personalities under the #CorporatePersonhood hashtag on Twitter a couple of days ago:

1. TrueBlueLiberal Is the GOP so wedded to its capitalist orthodoxy that they're happy about Hugo Chavez's Citgo having a political voice? #CorporatePersonhood 1 day ago
2. TrueBlueLiberal When Beef Products, Inc. was a little kid, he did unspeakable things to neighborhood cats. #CorporatePersonhood 1 day ago
3. TrueBlueLiberal it's no longer hog heaven at the Smithfield Corporation home since the kids have read Foer's "Eating Animals" #CorporatePersonhood 2 days ago
4. TrueBlueLiberal The wife of FedEx has more complaints than compliments about his single-minded obsession with speed. #CorporatePersonhood 2 days ago
5. TrueBlueLiberal Archer Daniels Midland was a stuck-up Waspy jock in high school & he got worse with age. #CorporatePersonhood 2 days ago
6. TrueBlueLiberal Young Waldo Martinsburg was an extremely unpopular nerd until he took his nom de rap of "WalMart" #CorporatePersonhood 2 days ago
7. TrueBlueLiberal Were the Baby Bells committing incest when they remarried? Don't any basic taboos apply when we're discussing #CorporatePersonhood ? 2 days ago
8. TrueBlueLiberal I hope the real census counts all the corporations too! #corporatepersonhood RT @TCDL GOP CENSUS SCAM IS AN OUTRAGE http://bit.ly/8qgA0l
9. TrueBlueLiberal Or when you first conceive of incorporating. RT @ZenobiaDTC I guess life now begins at the moment of incorporation. #corporatepersonhood 2 days ago
10. TrueBlueLiberal AIG's schoolmates always believed that milk-money thief Abner Ignatz Golddigger would end up in jail one day. #corporatepersonhood 2 days ago
11. TrueBlueLiberal Bob&Carol&Ted&Alice have nothing on Proctor&Johnson&Gamble&Johnson. #corporatepersonhood 2 days ago
12. TrueBlueLiberal Do corporate persons have genders? Is Coca-Cola a Girl and Pepsi a Boy? Or vice versa? #corporatepersonhood 2 days ago
13. TrueBlueLiberal Kraft is accusing Cadbury of being a real bridezilla about their pending nuptials. #corporatepersonhood 2 days ago
14. TrueBlueLiberal Microsoft is thinking of switching to a new - cooler - pocket protector #corporatepersonhood 2 days ago
15. TrueBlueLiberal Young ExxonMobil could never take a bath without leaving a ring around the tub. #corporatepersonhood
16. TrueBlueLiberal Wells Fargo's favorite game is still "Cowboys and Indians" #corporatepersonhood
17. TrueBlueLiberal General Motors is still worried about the stigma of being demoted to Corporal Motors. #corporatepersonhood 3 days ago