I came across a statistic that really scares me and may explain why the Republicans won so big in yesterday's midterm election: A close-to-equal number of Democrats and Republicans think that an electoral sweep by the other party is dangerous to this country. But both figures are less than 30 percent. I am within that percentage, having read also that the number one priority of the Republican agenda under our newly elected Speaker of the House, Mr. McConnell, is bombarding ISIS. Number one priority. I forget what number two was, but it wasn't gutting Obamacare. Hear, hear. That's on the agenda, though. I think that number two may have been to get the Keystone XL Pipeline approved. Oh, slashing Obamacare is right up there as number four and number three is to let NSA "keep on snoopin'". I just found these other figures in New Republic. They rank the gutting of Dodd-Frank as number one.
Why go on about disasters waiting to happen come 2015? Instead we should do the 21st-century equivalent of building bomb shelters. What would that be? Leaving the country?
I have to add that as long as the GOP has so politicized SCOTUS, it's our turn--to gently goad Justice Ginsberg into stepping down quickly, before January, so that the Senate will ratify another liberal before it becomes Republican-heavy. I adore Ginsberg and her values and principles and decisions. But just as Sandra Day O'Connor said she wouldn't step down unless a Republican was elected in 2000, so my favorite Justice should do what she can to maintain the 5-4 illness in SCOTUS to prevent it from becoming a hopelessly diseased 6-3.
I don't mean to offend her--such suggestions before have met with hostile indignation.
Let's sweep away the best thing that ever happened to liberalism ourselves, before the Republicans deal us a far harsher blow. "Keep 5 to 4 as never before!" is a possible chant. Please come up with better ones.
And I'm at least as much a Western European-style socialist/Green Party idealogue as I am a Democrat. One foot in, the other out.
