Watched the important part of the Brit Coronation on Spectrum and it all gave me a very strange feeling. Here we sat on this day in 2023, drowning in modern technology, watching a ceremony that’s thousands of miles away; a ceremony that dated all the way back to pagan rituals. A good percentage of the participants, born after the computer was invented, were honoring this ancient concept of royalty that they weren’t really living under. It all seemed pretty weird.
The picture of this modern man sitting in ceremonial robes, holding an orb and scepter just didn’t compute. Is it time to end the monarchy? People in England have been asking that question for a long time. Maybe it’s time for a referendum?
*****
The biggest political football available is rolling closer to the out of bounds marker as we get to a point where the Federal Government no longer has cash to pay its debts. But this is a 100% phony crisis, completely invented and built by the GOP. Since 1960, the debt ceiling has been raised 78 times to accommodate the needs of the nation without any catastrophe occurring. This is the result of our twisted system, which requires that we must set a hard debt ceiling number, regardless of the financial needs of the country each time the old debt limit expires. This has been done because we are trying to make the debt ceiling dictate how much we spend. But that can never work because what we have to spend in order to satisfy the commitments to those we owe has already been dictated, before we set the new debt limit, by what we have committed to those we owe.
What we should do is have the debt limit remain constantly flexible depending on the needs of each budget. The budget is what we should be arguing about, not the debt limit.
It’s time that congress recognizes its responsibility and creates a flexible debt ceiling so that America can continue to meet its financial obligations. The money we are talking about here is money that has already been spent, not new money we are planning to spend.
The GOP has been yowling about Biden not wanting to meet with them to discuss these problems, but the House only passed a budget a couple of days ago and it has not even passed the Senate, so until now, there was nothing to talk about. Biden says he will meet with the GOP members of congress, but they have to be willing to talk sensibly and not just grandstand.
Senator James Langford of Oklahoma gave This Week a very clear and precise description of where the Republicans stand on this situation and why. How much of that can the rest of us buy? We’ll see.
This is a situation where the nation is hurtling toward a cliff. We have always been able to stop in time and reset. Let’s hope we can do it again. With the current people in government that may not happen. One of those people is Patrick McHenry, Chairman of the Financial Services Committee who sat with Margaret Brennan and told America that the President had refused to meet with Speaker McCarthy and therefore it’s his fault if we default. The fact that there was never anything to talk about because the House had not passed a budget didn’t seem to be in McHenry’s sphere of understanding. He kept babbling about the three months in which nothing was done without acknowledging that the budget was only passed three days ago.
******-
Brennan also interviewed Kristen Sinema this Sunday, with Sinema pleading the case for immigration reform. I’ve never been a big fan of Sinema, but it seems that this is her battleground, and she needs all the support she can get. The basic solution to immigration is not difficult if all the parties are really looking to solve the problem but they never are. This has become a blame game battlefield for both parties to attack each other and it’s unfortunate that both are too stupid to realize it’s too important for that. What we need to do is establish facilities in each of the countries that are sending us multitudes of refugees that can process the refugees before they leave their countries. Then we have to establish a closed border policy that does not allow anyone who has not already been first processed in their own country, access to the U.S. In the event that those facilities are compromised and the refugees unable to get the proper accreditation we must then set up facilities at a few border points here. If we do that, we also must create proper housing for those that are forced to plea their cases at our border and hire enough judges to swiftly process them. We also have to advertise this policy all over the southern hemisphere so people will know not to follow coyotes here.
*****
Four members of the proud boys have been convicted of Seditious Conspiracy and a few other felonies this week. They face up to twenty years.
That’s a long time, almost as long as their leader, Donald Trump has been indulging in various criminal activities around the county. But wait! Trump isn’t facing any of the time these fools are. How come? He’s the leader that they followed to the capitol. He’s the lying scum that told them to follow him and kill Pence. Why wasn’t he on trial with them? Well, maybe it’s because he’s the ex-President and there are those in this country who think he’s entitled to special treatment. This blog says no! This blog says hang the crook!
*****
Everyone who reads this blog regularly knows I’ve been writing about Clarence Thomas since he managed to inveigle his way onto the Supreme Court. Times have not changed. Over his far too long tenure, Thomas has managed to violate every concept of moral value associated with good government and especially with his position on our most important legal entity.
In his current position he and his wife Ginni, are under scrutiny for accepting foreign travel and vacations provided by a politically involved friend. His wife is also accused of accepting under the table payments from a person with business before the court. This so sullies his position on the court as to make it impossible for any decision in which he takes part to be anything but unacceptable.
All by himself, Clarence Thomas is a movement in bad government and a reason why Justice Roberts must create a set of rules by which the court must abide in order to maintain any sense of believability before the people of the nation. To be acceptable to the nation as a body that holds those before it to at least normal standards, the court must hold itself to higher standards.