Beginning of the End

Actually, the beginning has already phased in with no single event being the signal.  Now some clarity emerges.

Monday, June 25, 2012 was the day our democracy staggered off to its sick bed, perhaps never to return.  The election this November will determine whether the sick bed becomes the death bed.

I purposely held back and slept (fitfully) for two nights on this so I can state my case clearly and say the blunt truths that need to be said, while not doing so in the rush of hot anger I felt when hearing the news.  In the note at the end of my recent post on Steve Bullock and his fight to save us from this day, I bitterly thanked the Supreme Fools for their unconscionable allowance of dark money in our elections.  Today I can hardly contain my wrath for their new and deliberate action.

Montana, along with twenty-one other states trying to maintain some small hold on fairness in elections, was denied the right.  Corporations and tycoons are now free to fix any and all elections wherever they see fit.  We are all being stomped by the jackboots of the Supreme Fools!  If our electorate does not wake up in time - in barely over four months - the damage will be complete and democracy as the United States has practiced it will be dead.  Gone!

The steps are quite simple and those yet to fall are easily seen in advance:
1.) The court began in 2010, in two foolish decisions, allowing big money to have its way through super pacs and the idiotic equating of money with speech.
2.) These same fools now tell us that no state even has the right to prevent corruption in its own internal elections by limiting the dark money being spent unabated in order to influence voters.
3.) Big money will now very likely double or tripple the huge amounts that were spent by the deep pockets who were able to save the unimaginably destructive governor of Wisconsin from being ousted.
4.) NO candidate who is not backed by the wealthiest Americans and/or big business will be able to withstand the overwhelming influence of money on voters this fall.
5.) Once the unthinkable happens - the setting up of an incompetent puppet of the 1% in the presidency and further filling the congress with bribe-accepting (mis)representatives - what can stop the onslaught?
6.) After a puppet president chooses and seats new toadies of the rich (to match up well with Scalia, Thomas, Alito and Roberts!), the court will assure no democratic ideals can ever be returned to us.
7.) No political party other than Republicans will have any influence in our country.  A one party system, answerable only to the wealthy, equals Plutocracy.  Mundane ideas such as voting will end one day, perhaps within twenty years.

The Supreme Fools were smart in one way: they gave themselves wealth for life.  They did as they were told to do.  Mind you, they will begin to have no power whatsoever after the sell-out is complete, but they will remain in the seats of perceived power for life and be handsomely paid by the 1% to make sure all remains firmly in control.

So, kudos to the fat cats of the court!  Oh, to be sure, they will be soon if they are not yet.  I am absolutely confident that the personal accounts of Roberts, Scalia, Thomas and Alito have been enhanced hugely in the last two years.  Now it has to be assumed that Kennedy is also suddenly very wealthy.  No more is he the voice of (cautious and limited) reason on the bench.  And now, the voices of the four remaining, intelligent and perhaps quite honorable judges, are merely irritating squeeks in the room with the five who sold out.  Soon, under a Republican administration, those other voices will begin to be replaced by staunch and greedy toadies yet to be named.

Now if I am proved wrong in my accusation of payola at the highest level in our justice system, and if these people are actually honest in their personal dealings but are merely fools, I can apologize for only one portion of my tirade.  The damage to our country remains the same.  We will not to be able to maintain any democratic future.  So, be they honest and honorable or totally corrupt, it matters not.  I will not apologize for calling them fools for that they certainly are!

A deer-in-the-headlights Democratic Senator was asked how we can ever return to any sense of fairness in elections, and he suggested that a constitutional amendment will be needed.  You know, he's right!  Now, just figure out how any bill is ever again going to get even the narrowest of majorities to overturn any self-serving actions of even the existing lower house of congress, much less the future far more Republican legislature.  Forget it!  This coming November is the end of democracy in our nation IF we do not stand as citizens and shout down right-wing stupidity with our votes!

NOW, in the next few months that remain for the practice of our democratic ideals, a thorough investigation by capable journalists could reveal some of these (alleged by me) truths.  There has to be some way of determining how much under-the-table cash is changing hands, even on this high level.  They were able to find Romney's off-shore accounts (and see how little Americans cared!), so they could also find how much money is being accepted and secretly stashed by those Supreme Court Injustices who are now gaining wealth by way of their decisions that help the rich.  SOON there will be no way to trace this activity because new laws will be passed to prevent any meddling from journalists.  Our democracy will be no more, and the money flow will soon drown out any voices from any quarter, just as those weak voices on the bench are sure to be eleminated.

Mark this date and check back in twenty years to see whether I need to apologize.  My blog, by then, may be launched from some European country where justice is then being practiced and the many once-accepted freedoms of U.S. citizens will be commonplace.  Very likely, anyone trying to write as bluntly as I have done here will have to go into hiding if he stays in this country.  More likely, such subversive calls for fairness in the coming U.S. Plutocracy will land people in prison to shut them up.  But if I am wrong in any of this and I can possibly stay in this country due to a recovery of a modicum of sanity in government, I will write that apology sooner - and gladly.

I have no desire at all to leave my home country, but I will find a way to do so when democracy leaves.

     [UPDATE on Thursday, June 28, 2012:  NO, I will not at this time take back anything I have said above due to today's ruling that the Affordable Care Act will not be overturned by the court.  The moment I heard the news on ABC, while I was pleased to hear it initially, I told my wife that I do not trust Roberts as far as I can throw him; that he no doubt had a political slant that would redound to advantage Republicans and the 1% crowd.  A moment later, the respected network reporter said that the way Roberts handled this case probably means he had a concern that the court could be seen as activist and perhaps cause a public backlash in November if the ACA were thrown out during the election year.  Yes, I'd say that even these lifetime appointees I still will call fools are not without insight and cunning.  They are playing a massive game of political chess and we pawns are still being moved at their calculated whim.

If progressives and Independents can, by any wild stroke of luck, retain the Presidency and even more wildly unlikely, regain control of congress this fall - one very timely new amendment needs to be enacted.  Slow the madness of future corruption potential by setting term limits on Supreme Court justices.  They are very fallible humans and their lifetime appointments offer them a huge temptation to see themselves as INfallible and entitled to make laws rather than help enforce them.]   

And while I have your brief attention, please click on this link a friend just sent me.  Disregard the actual meaning of WTF if it offends your ears, but just follow the simple line of thought about how our country is doing things and the obvious question of  when are we going to say we've had enough?

     July 3, 2012  Double your pleasure, double your base!
I claim no clairvoyant capacity, but may I remind you of the comment above about not trusting Roberts?  This chief protector of justice is actually a political chess master.  Polls out today show that twice as many voters from the Republican base are ready now to vote because of the court's ruling on healthcare!  Would the chief conniver risk angering a few big money cohorts (only those running corporations in the healthcare field) for the time being in order to charge up the larger body of voters?  Of course he would!  Why not?!  Besides, he can easily have them returned to full income and power soon after pushing the Republican puppet up onto the presidential throne.  And best of all (for Roberts and his partisan henchmen), he can look forward to more right-wing injustices being appointed as soon as openings occur.  All will soon be RIGHT with his world!  And it's all WRONG for democracy and for our struggling country.