Donald Trump’s Interview with Supreme Court Justice Anton Scalia

An historic event took place this morning when billionaire Presidential candidate Donald Trump sat before the television cameras to interview Supreme Court Justice Anton Scalia. Here is the transcript.

TRUMP: How do I look?

SCALIA: You’re a billionaire. Why can’t you do something about that hair?

TRUMP: Good morning, ladies and gentleman. I am sharing a stage with a man I greatly admire and respect, the brilliant Supreme Court Justice Anton Scalia. Thank you for joining me.

SCALIA: My pleasure.

TRUMP: Tell me, what was your reaction when I announced my run for the White House?

SCALIA: Half the Republican Party is running for President.

TRUMP: Yes, but I’m talking about me.

SCALIA: Maybe we’d do better to switch topics.

TRUMP: Really?

SCALIA: It’s your hoe down.

TRUMP: Are you as upset as I am about the recent gay marriage ruling by your fellow judges?

SCALIA: I am hornswaggled. My fellow jurists erred grievously in their decision to give…those people equal rights under the law. The Constitution isn’t some magical document that grants people any wish they want. Mark my words, in the next few years we will see cases before the court of people wanting to marry their pet gerbils.

TRUMP: It’s like you were reading my mind. Equality under the Constitution simply doesn’t apply to everybody.

SCALIA: I have long favored monarchy as the ideal form of human organization. Democracy is simply too much for people to handle.

TRUMP: I think it would be absolutely fantastic to run for King.

SCALIA: We need men of character and proper breeding ruling us, not the genetically questionable riff-raff we are getting these days. Looking to the past is our key to the future.
 

TRUMP: Okay. Lets talk about the Gore v. Bush decision in 2000—

SCALIA: Come on, Donald. That’s ancient history. Old news. I’m not going to sit here and rehash what happened 15 years ago.

TRUMP: But I thought you just said—

SCALIA: The past is the past. Let it go.

TRUMP: Citizen’s United. Still think that was the right decision?

SCALIA: Without a doubt. It might be one of the Court’s greatest achievements. By reducing the influence of the unwashed masses and enhancing the influence of people who truly understand what power means and who should wield it, by which I mean the filthy rich, we adjusted the balance in this country to its correct position.

TRUMP: Believe me, I agree with you there. We can’t have trailer trash or liberals deciding how this country should be run. I see we’re out of time. Thank you for taking time out of your busy work gutting democracy to talk to me, Judge Scalia.

SCALIA: Thank you, David. It’s a thankless job, but someone’s got to do it.

Fantastic Friday

Yeah, Friday was fantastic. The same Supreme Court that crowned George Bush President in 2000 and declared corporations were people came through in a very big way on Friday.  In one day, this Court with a conservative majority declared same-sex marriage legal in all states, knocked down another challenge to the Affordable Care Act and helped strengthen fair housing discrimination protections. It’s like the Mississippi River changed course for a day. Unbelievable.

Of course, the heads of Scalia, Thomas and everyone at FOX News are still exploding and it’s a beautiful sight to see. After fifteen years of Bush and Bush’s legacy under Obama, those of us on the Left finally have something to cheer about.  And on top of everything else, Bernie Sanders is proving to be a viable candidate for President.

We have to savor the taste of victory while we can, because the Supreme Court still has a conservative majority, Obama is getting his way on TPP and we are still following a failed Middle East policy. But for a day or two, we can cheer our successes and thank all of those Americans who actively pushed, agitated and demonstrated for these major steps forward.

If you’re not mad as hell, you should be

Michele Bachmann wants to declare war on Islam, not merely ISIS, but a new crusade against the second largest religion on the planet. John Boehner and friends want the unemployed to get off their lazy asses and find a job. Bill O’Reilly wants to create a 25,000-member mercenary army to fight in the Middle East. And Sarah Palin gave a speech at the Voter Values Summit this past week that was so incoherent, not even the code-word attuned Tea Party attendees could figure out what had her so pissed off. Oh, the insanity escapes the mouths of these morons like projectile vomit, drenching all of us in its sticky, rank wrongness.

As the mid-term elections draw closer, the lunacy grows louder. Close the borders, impeach Obama, shrink the government, lower taxes…we are treated to a barrage of political ads coming at us from every direction full of deranged accusations and proposed solutions worse than the problem. They are strings of worn clichés and vapid emotional appeals that should insult the intelligence of anyone over the age of ten (my apologies to ten-year olds). If you are a conservative political candidate, there is almost nothing you can say that is too callous, too insulting or too ignorant for your audience. And far too many of these buffoons will be elected to office by aging white voters who think America has been going to hell in a hand basket since the end of the Eisenhower administration.

Ill-informed Republican voters are going to give us more of everything that is wrong with America — more obstructionism, more divisiveness, more intolerance, and more sheer ignorance — hastening this country’s downhill trajectory. Thanks in large part to the Supreme Court, the Koch’s and their deep pocketed friends are bankrolling CEO friendly candidates who never met a billionaire they didn’t like. Our government will continue to be a circus of ineptness.

Where’s Howard Beale when we need him?

A Supreme Injustice

The Supreme Court’s recent horrendous decisions, which primarily attack women’s rights, remind me of a phrase from the Eagle’s Hotel California — We are all just prisoners here, by our own device. We voted for the Republican presidents who then nominated a cadre of conservative ideologues to the highest court in the land, and these guys have decades left to make our lives as miserable as humanly possible.

Anton Scalia is proof positive that time travel is possible. How else can you explain a 21^st century man basing his legal decisions on a pre-Enlightenment worldview? He was powdering his wig somewhere in Italy one day and “poof,” he was transported to the current chambers of the Supreme Court. And then there’s Clarence Thomas, a man so confused by the complexity of modern life that he can’t put together a single coherent sentence expressing his opinions.

The conservatives on the court are also corporate toadies who consistently decide in favor of Wall Street over Main Street. Corporations have the same rights as people? Pulleeeze. Their decisions have turned our elections into auctions where the congressional seat goes to the highest bidder. The Koch brothers and the Waltons and the Coors are spending billions to turn Congress into an extension of their boardrooms.

And to top everything off, even if Obama were given the opportunity to nominate a judge to the Supreme Court, I don’t have any confidence that he would choose a liberal judge. His pathological need to be seen as a bi-partisan centrist has led him to make some pretty poor choices in the past. Let’s say Obama goes crazy one day and nominates a liberal judge. Would that person stand a snowball’s chance in hell of getting confirmed by our current congress?

Term limits for Supreme Court judges is the only thing that can change the nightmare scenario that is our current reality. Give judges 10 years on the bench, then they can go out and make their millions in the private sector. It’s a win/win.

Let’s consider term limits for Supreme Court justices

As the Supreme Court (I should say, the conservative majority in the Supreme Court) hands down decision after decision in favor of corporate and moneyed interests, the idea of term limits for Supreme Court justices is getting some traction. I think this is a good idea. The old argument that lifetime appointments to the court would free justices from the bipartisan ping pong match played by the other two branches of government just doesn’t ring true anymore.

            I don’t think anything could be worse than having a court majority of arch-conservative corporate stooges who could be passing out damaging decisions for the next two or three decades.

I suggest limits of ten years on the bench. This would give a particular court enough time to establish its agenda, but still allow for the court to change its perspective and add new blood in a reasonable amount of time.

Supreme Court ruling is death knell for democracy

The Supreme Court’s McCutcheon decision allowing a donor to contribute millions of hard dollars -- in limited contributions -- to political parties, candidates and political action committees is essentially the final nail in the coffin of fair, democratic elections in this country.

This is a huge win for Republicans who rely on cranky white billionaires and large corporations for a lot of their campaign contributions. Now the wealthy can skew the political system even further toward their interests and farther from the vision of democracy championed by our founders.

Making the absurd observation that influence and access are not a corruption concern, Roberts, Scalia, Kennedy, Alito and Thomas handed this country’s future over to the elites whose only allegiance is to the bottom line. I don’t believe there has ever been a time in our country’s history where the will of the people has been so callously disregarded by those in power.

We’re no longer on the road to an oligarchy, we’ve arrived.