Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell. (photo: Alex Wong/Getty Images)
Charles Pierce Esquire 26 March 22
Half the political ecosystem of the United States has gone completely feral, like the wilderness around Chernobyl did.
Over the past six or seven years, I've had one line of Elvis Costello’s that keeps banging around in my head. It was there as I sat through the amazing confirmation hearings of the collection of unemployables that the previous president* installed in his Cabinet. It was there during the hearing on Neil Gorsuch’s nomination to the Supreme Court. It sounded like the genuine trumpet of doom during Brett Kavanaugh’s extended manic episode before the Senate Judiciary Committee. And it was back this week as I watched the rancid flotsam of the Republican senatorial caucus treat Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson as though she’d been caught stealing silverware from the Harvard Club. And this is what I’ve kept hearing through most of this wretched decade.
I used to be disgusted, but now I try to be amused.
I try, but I can’t do it. I can’t look at what’s going on and find any of it clever or funny. I can’t use, “but it works” as an excuse for dangerous political foolishness anymore. I’m still willing to chuckle over past political shenanigans. But what’s going on now comes too damn close to the violent politics of the 1850s for me to chuckle wisely at it. Preston Brooks was not a million laughs.
We have two political parties and only two political parties, and one of them has gone utterly insane. Half the political ecosystem of the United States has gone completely feral, like the wilderness around Chernobyl did. They conduct their politics on a poisoned landscape. Here, for example, is Mitch McConnell, leader of the Republicans in the Senate, explaining why, consarn it, he just can’t vote for Judge KBJ, a decision that was approximately as unexpected as the rising of the sun.
“I went into this process with an open mind…”
That’s as far as you have to go to know that on this, as on most things, McConnell is even more truthless than he is ruthless. He voted against Judge Jackson when she was nominated to the position she currently holds. A month ago, upon the announcement of her nomination to the Supreme Court, he said in a statement:
I voted against confirming Judge Jackson to her current position less than a year ago. Since then, I understand that she has published a total of two opinions, both in the last few weeks, and that one of her prior rulings was just reversed by a unanimous panel of her present colleagues on the D.C. Circuit. I also understand Judge Jackson was the favored choice of far-left dark-money groups that have spent years attacking the legitimacy and structure of the Court itself.
Mitch McConnell’s mind was not open on this nomination, but it remains open for business. They’re all corrupt and/or crazy. But they’re not funny and they mean what they say.
Apparently, Vladimir Putin has been browsing a lot of American substackery these days. From the Guardian:
He went on to compare the treatment Russia had received with the controversy surrounding Rowling’s comments on transgender people. “Recently they cancelled the children’s writer Joanne Rowling because she – the author of books that have sold hundreds of millions of copies worldwide – fell out of favor with fans of so-called gender freedoms,” Putin said.
Those Ukrainians with the rocket launchers are not defending their homes and families. They’re cancelling Putin. Maybe he should start a blog. Freedom!!!!
Weekly WWOZ Pick To Click: “Chilly Winds” (Wade Ward): Yeah, I still pretty much love New Orleans.
Weekly Visit To The Pathe Archives: Here, from 1937, are senators talking about FDR’s new ideas on the Supreme Court. Alas, unless you can lip read, you can’t hear what the senators are saying. Your mileage may vary on whether or not that adds to the quality of the film. History is so cool.
Most of the elders of the Republican party very much would like disgraced Missouri Governor Eric Greitens out of the race for the Senate seat held by retiring Republican Roy Blunt. Greitens resigned as governor after allegations surfaced that he had physically abused a woman with whom he was having an affair. Now, in a filing submitted by his ex-wife, Greitens is accused of physically abusing both his wife and his children. From the Washington Post:
Sheena Greitens, who now lives with their children in Austin, where she works as a university associate professor, described for the first time publicly what she says she experienced at the end of their marriage, in documents filed as part of an ongoing child custody dispute in Missouri state court. “In early June 2018, I became afraid for my safety and that of our children at our home, which was fairly isolated, due to Eric’s unstable and coercive behavior,” she wrote in the filing, which was obtained from Boone County Circuit Court. “This behavior included physical violence toward our children, such as cuffing our then three-year-old son across the face at the dinner table in front of me and yanking him around by the hair.”
Incumbent Republican senators raced to throw Greitens overboard. For his part, Greitens has posted a video in which he goes seriously bananas. From Mediaite:
I wanna tell you directly, Karl Rove and Mitch McConnell. Hear me now. You are disgusting cowards and we are coming for you. We are no longer going to allow you – not just to attack me and attack my kids, but to destroy this country, and that’s what you’re doing. You’re making life hard for millions of families around this country by cooperating with the left, by stabbing President Trump in the back, by stabbing the people of America in the back, and we’re not gonna stand for it anymore.
Know this. The freedom wing of the Republican Party, true patriots, true conservatives, we are coming for you. And we’re not just taking back our party, we’re taking back our country. We see your game, we see your lies, but we also know this: that at the end of the day, truth prevails.
The prion disease is particularly acute in Missouri. Greitens is leading almost all of the polls taken in this Senate primary. However, he does worse than all the other prospective Republican candidates against the prospective Democratic candidates. But, of course, it’s the Democrats who never can get along with each other.
Hey, Smithsonian, is it a good day for dinosaur news? It’s always a good day for dinosaur news!
Spinosaurs broke all the rules. Where most carnivorous dinosaurs had knife-like, curved teeth, spinosaurs had conical chompers more like those of crocodiles. Even the snouts of these dinosaurs were long, giving them a crocodile-like look, instead of the familiar profiles of Tyrannosaurus and Allosaurus. Some species even had prominent sails growing from their backs, ornate biological billboards that acted as social signals. But that’s hardly all. Some spinosaurs – including the immense Spinosaurus itself—were the only non-avian dinosaurs known to split their time between land and water.
To hell with the rules, says Spinosaurus. I got me some penguin bones! From National Geographic, where it’s also a good day for dinosaur news!
Now, using the biggest dataset of its kind, researchers have compared the density of the prehistoric carnivore’s bones to a wide array of living and extinct animals. The analysis found that Spinosaurus—and, surprisingly, its British cousin Baryonyx—had highly dense bone walls like penguins do, suggesting they likely spent much of their time in the water and hunted down aquatic prey.
Rules are made for lesser creatures. A few had to be broken so as to live then to make us happy now.
I’ll be back on Monday, looking forward to the full Senate’s debating the Judge KBJ nomination, which I’m sure will be engaging, and enlightening, and an embarrassment to democracies all the way back to Pericles. Be well and play nice, ya bastids. Stay above the snake-line, wear the damn masks, and get the damn shots, especially the damn boosters.
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