Lobenthal.com

This is what a representative government–the kind that the right-wing elitists on the Supreme Court are trying to extinguish–looks like.

This is American democracy.

This is what’s called being held accountable for your actions.

Advocate for Americans and the rest of the human race Kristin Mink relates on Facebook that:

“EPA head Scott Pruitt was 3 tables away as I ate lunch with my child. I had to say something. This man is directly and significantly harming my child’s — and every child’s — health and future with decisions to roll back environmental regulations for the benefit of big corporations, while he uses taxpayer money to fund a lavish lifestyle. He’s corrupt, he’s a liar, he’s a climate change denier, and as a public servant, he should not be able to go out in public without hearing from the citizens he’s hurting.”

Larry Beinart at Al-Jazeera explodes it head-on.

“When it comes to money and power,” Kennedy had been “an agent of the top one percent in its class warfare against the rest.”

Justice Kennedy voted against democracy over and over again, and last week was just the lallapalooza icing on the cake.

As Beinart writes: “His final act, timing his retirement so that Trump could select his replacement and Mitch McConnell still had control of the Senate to ram it through, is compelling testimony that he was committed, above all, to transferring as much power and wealth to the right, to corporations, and to the rich, as he possibly could.”

His ridiculously weak strategy is to abandon any demands that Trump’s latest Supreme Court horror appointment be tabled until after the election.

Cory Booker made the persuasive argument last week that Trump, the subject of a criminal investigation, should not be able to name his own judge.

Apparently, Schumer didn’t listen.

It took the Democrats one week to back down. Schumer himself was saying that after McConnell created a new paradigm for judicial appointments in an election year, the GOP would now have to abide by it.

That was just flushed away as well.

As I said, the Democratic leaders are doing everything they can to ensure that they lose in November. Dissing their base as always will once again be a losing strategy.

Schumer’s editorial in the Times features his characteristic plaintive pleading addressed to whatever rump coalition of “moderate” Republicans still exists.

No political leadership could behave this ineptly and maintain credibility.

I asked a friend why is it that the 18-year-old Parkland kids are so much better at waging politics than Pelosi and Schumer.

Because it actually means something to the kids, he said. They understand that their future is on the line. Pelosi, Schumer, et.al. are simply too old, too comfortable and complacent.

Mitch McConnell is laughing his head off.

and then retreats to Lickspittle Bartiromo’s safe space to shake his finger at the Democrats.

Meanwhile, the Democratic leaders scold Maxine Waters for demanding that Trump and the GOP’s atrocities be confronted head on.

Brava to Rep. Waters for refusing to take it like a Democrat, but instead all but ripping Chuck Schumer a new posterior.

Politely, of course.

Sen. Collins is, as usual, setting the bar as low as possible and setting herself and her constituents up to be played.

All Trump’s new Supreme Court nominee has to do is whisper that Roe is the law of the land [but, we know, not for long] and she’ll fold like a cheap suit.

There is no difference in tone or even substance between her propaganda duet with Herr Trump and what we see in societies that have gone entirely totalitarian.

“News Corpse” at Daily Kos gets granular about every unhinged, traitorous remark exchanged between Aspiring Dictator Trump and Groveling Hand Holder Bartiromo.

“Where is Barack Obama?” is the title of an unsparing cover story in New York Magazine by Gabriel Debenedetti.

I would argue that it’s not that Obama’s refusal to engage is new; it’s that the calamitous Trump presidency throws it in to such higher relief.

Will the judicial candidate support Trump’s conviction that he is above the law?

Back in the 4th century B.C., Theophrastus in his “Characters” describes “Dissembling”:

“He pretends he has not heard when he hears, and says he has not seen when he sees; and when he has admitted you right he avers he has no remembrance of it. He’ll look into this, doesn’t know that, is surprised at the other. . . “

The Democrats couldn’t sustain a filibuster against even John Roberts and Samuel Alito.

And look where we are now.