Mitch McConnell

Fandango’s Flashback Friday — April 8th

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Wouldn’t you like to expose your newer readers to some of your earlier posts that they might never have seen? Or remind your long term followers of posts that they might not remember? Each Friday I will publish a post I wrote on this exact date in a previous year.

How about you? Why don’t you reach back into your own archives and highlight a post that you wrote on this very date in a previous year? You can repost your Friday Flashback post on your blog and pingback to this post. Or you can just write a comment below with a link to the post you selected.

If you’ve been blogging for less than a year, go ahead and choose a post that you previously published on this day (the 8th) of any month within the past year and link to that post in a comment.

This was originally posted on April 8, 2018.

The Personification of Thwart

When I saw today’s one-word prompt, “thwart,” the name of the Senate Majority Leader, Mitch McConnell, immediately came to mind. McConnell’s primary mission when Obama was President was to thwart everything Obama did.

Obama was elected in 2008. When McConnell became the Majority Leader in 2010, he said that his “number one priority is making sure President Obama’s a one-term president.” Fortunately for America, he failed.

In 2016, McConnell said, “One of my proudest moments was when I told Obama, ‘You will not fill this Supreme Court vacancy.’”

As justification for thwarting Obama’s Constitutional right to appoint a Supreme Court Justice after the sudden death of Antonin Scalia in early 2016, McConnell said, “The American people‎ should have a voice in the selection of their next Supreme Court Justice. Therefore, this vacancy should not be filled until we have a new President.”

But in January of 2017, McConnell changed his tune. When newly elected Donald Trump nominated U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals judge Neil Gorsuch to fill Scalia’s vacancy, Democratic senators vowed a fight, insisting on keeping the rule that a majority of 60 votes be required for confirmation. That’s when the man who prevented Obama from filling the Scalia’s vacancy said, “Apparently there’s yet a new standard now, which is not to confirm a Supreme Court nominee at all. I think that’s something the American people simply will not tolerate.”

Is this not the height of hypocrisy? And that is why I consider Mitch McConnell to be the personification of thwart.

Who would get your vote?

Mitch and Chuck

Fandango8 Comments

“He has a clear pattern of obstruction of justice and yet you’re willing to exculpate him,” Chuck said. “What are you thinking?”

“Well,” Mitch said, “when it comes to federal judges, his time in office was a bonanza for the conservatives. And he was always very generous to those of us who offered him our loyalty and blind support.”

“Mitch, you really disappoint me,” Chuck said, “if you ever hoped to serve as an example of how good politics in America should work, you have failed miserably.”

Written for these daily prompts: The Daily Spur (pattern), MMA Storytime (obstruction), Your Daily Word Prompt (exculpate), Ragtag Daily Prompt (bonanza), Word of the Day Challenge (generous), and Fandango’s One-Word Challenge (example).

One-Liner Wednesday — Impeachable Offenses

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“President Trump committed impeachable offenses and I’m pleased that Democrats are moving to impeach him.”

Mitch McConnell, United States Senate Majority Leader

That’s right, Mitch McConnell (aka The Grim Reaper, aka Moscow Mitch) has finally found his balls and has publicly split with with Donald Trump after four years of having his lips firmly planted on Trump’s butt.

Well, Mitch, all I can say is way too little and way, way too late.

Written for Linda G. Hill’s One-Liner Wednesday prompt.

The Personification of Hypocrisy

Fandango35 Comments

Mitch McConnell On February 13, 2016, Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia died. 2016 was a presidential election year, and Scalia’s death occurred nine months prior to that election.

President Barack Obama nominated a moderate federal judge, Merrick Garland, to fill Scalia’s seat on the Supreme Court. However, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell refused to hold a confirmation hearing. McConnell said:

“The American people should have a voice in the selection of their next Supreme Court Justice. Therefore, this vacancy should not be filled until we have a new president.”

And in something so ironic that if it appeared in a political novel, your reaction would be that it was too contrived to be believable, McConnell invoked the so-called “Biden Rule” as further justification for why the Senate would not consider the nomination of Merrick Garland to the U.S. Supreme Court in an election year.

Yes, the “Biden Rule,” as in then Vice President Joe Biden and the current Democratic opponent running against Donald Trump.

Then Senator Biden argued in a speech in June 1992 that President George H.W. Bush should wait until after the election to appoint a replacement if a Supreme Court seat became vacant during the summer of an election year.

McConnell used Biden’s argument from that 1992 speech to explain why, in 2016, he intended to block President Barack Obama’s Supreme Court pick in an election year.

“The Senate will continue to observe the Biden Rule so that the American people have a voice in this momentous decision.”

Fast forward four years.

Last night, after the news that Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg had passed away, and only a month and a half before the 2020 presidential election, that same Mitch McConnell is singing a very different song:

“President Trump’s nominee will receive a vote on the floor of the United States Senate.”

Well, Mitch, it’s time to invoke the real Biden Rule. After learning last night of RBG’s death, Biden said this:

“… the voters should pick the president, and the president should pick the justice for the Senate to consider.”

Mitch McConnell is the personification of hypocrisy and he should not be permitted to get away with this. But given the actions over the last four years of the spineless, soulless Republicans who hold the majority in the U.S. Senate, he probably will.

Why Trump and Republicans Love the Pandemic

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8D9FF8F6-14EF-4EE8-B9A8-1BE377CC3F45While most of us have been focused on the coronavirus, Trump and his Republican enablers have been quietly changing the shape and future of America.

Trump is back to being a reality show host and is holding daily rallies from the White House, where he’s bragging about how great his ratings are — while Americans are dying.

Trump has been ramping up construction of his vanity project, the border wall, despite the fact that there are stay-at-home orders in the border states between the U.S. and Mexico.

The stock market is soaring — the Dow is up more than 2300 points this week — while COVID-19 cases and deaths continue to rise and unemployment applications are setting new records, highlighting the differences between the haves and have nots in this country as the rich get richer and the regular folks lose their jobs — and their health insurance.

Mitch McConnell, the Senate Majority leader, is continuing to pack the federal court system by nominating young, unqualified, ultra-conservative judges, which nominations the Republican senators will rubber stamp.

And speaking of the federal courts, in a 5-4 vote along ideological lines, the conservative justices on the Supreme Court sided with Republican state lawmakers in Wisconsin by halting a lower court order to extend absentee voting in that state’s primary election to April 13, a measure that would have expanded options for avoiding in-person voting amid the coronavirus pandemic.

This decision, at the urging of the GOP, will effectively disenfranchise tens of thousands of Wisconsin voters. And by requiring in-person voting when people should be staying at home, the Republicans would rather risk exposing more people to COVID-19 and risking their health, if not their lives, than permit more people to submit mail-in ballots.

But as Trump said this week of Democratic voting proposals in the face of the pandemic, “They had things, levels of voting that if you’d ever agreed to it, you’d never have a Republican elected in this country again.” Duh!

Yes, the coronavirus pandemic is the best thing that has happened to the Republican Party since 2016, when Trump lost the popular vote but won the White House.