Author: Michael A. Ventrella

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The Illuminati Killed Scalia!

All the evidence is there, clearly. How can you sheeple not see it? It must be the chemtrails Obama is spraying into the air.

Look, Obama wanted him dead and we all know Obama runs the Illuminati (I mean, I don’t think I need to go into the obvious evidence for that). antonin_scalia3-620x412And Obama is clever — he has a lot of enemies, and he is throwing us off his track by having someone near the bottom of his enemies list killed instead of ones at the top! Further, instead of having Scalia killed near the start of Obama’s term in order to prevent Scalia from voting against Obama’s wishes (as he has done for seven years), he decided to wait until his term is almost up where the death does him the least amount of good!

What a distraction! Good thing we aren’t going to fall for that (mostly because our tinfoil hats prevent the chemtrails and hidden radio waves from brainwashing us).

Obama is even clever enough to plan this at a time when Scalia was surrounded by his friends instead of when he was alone in his home. Obviously, he used mind wave technology to make the friends hear Scalia say that he didn’t feel well just before he went to bed and then to have all of the friends not notice the ninja assassins creeping into Scalia’s bedroom. But we’re not fooled!

It’s perfect! It’s so perfect because absolutely no one, including his own family, thinks there was anything suspicious about an overweight 78-year old dying in his sleep, and so have they have not requested an autopsy.

Clearly Obama did this. Who else would want Scalia dead?

No. Wait. I just realized. Who would most want Scalia dead? Scalia, the “strict constructionalist” who could convince a majority of the court that someone born in Canada should not be considered a “natural born citizen” and thus ineligible to be President? Someone from Texas, maybe (where Scalia died)?

The plot thickens!

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Editorial cartoon: Big shoes

Clay Bennett

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Why you should be happy Scalia’s gone

No, I am not celebrating Scalia’s death. I am celebrating him not being on the Court any more. I am happy that he can no longer cause harm. I would be just as happy had he merely resigned. CbIYxk6UAAAdFXX

Much of the problem with Scalia concerned his religious beliefs. He believed in a literal devil — that Satan was coercing other people to support gay rights and liberal politics. Since Scalia saw himself as doing God’s work, therefore anyone who held a different position from him was not only wrong, but evil. That is a dangerous and frankly unAmerican view for someone on the Supreme Court to have.

Intertwined with that was his conviction that not only should we consider what the Founding Fathers wanted when they wrote the Constitution, but his belief that he, and he alone, knew exactly what that was — and, amazingly, it always fit perfectly with his own views!

I’ve ranted against this kind of Constitutional fundamentalism before, pointing out that writing from the time clearly indicates that even the Founding Fathers disagreed. Hell, within a few years there were cases before the Supreme Court to determine the meaning of the Constitution because they couldn’t agree.

This attitude of “there is only one interpretation of the Constitution and it’s mine” falls squarely into his religious belief again, since he had the same view of the Bible.

And then for him to pretend that politics had nothing to do with his decisions! He’d claim to care about “state’s rights” unless a state wanted to manage its own electoral process (“but that could allow Gore to be President and we can’t have that!”). He’d say “we can’t overturn the decisions made by a democratically elected legislature” while striking down the Voting Rights Act passed by a huge majority. The only consistent thing about his decisions were his arrogant opinions that insulted everyone who disagreed with him.

But mostly I loathed the man for being so evil, so hateful of anyone different from him — for comparing gays to child molesters and saying blacks should attend lesser colleges because they’re not as smart as white people; for not caring if innocent people get executed; for arguing that discrimination against women was perfectly fine; for saying the sort of thing that, had he been head of the KKK (where he’d fit right in), you would all be saying “I’m glad he’s gone.”

Scalia is one of the main reasons that trust in the Supreme Court has dropped over the years. We used to hold our Court in high esteem, because they were the best and brightest, separate from politics, incorruptible. Then Scalia came along, thumbed his nose at Court ethics (claiming that he didn’t have to follow the same rules other federal judges follow concerning conflict-of-interest laws, “gifts” from people who had cases before the Court, and so on), insulted the other judges in his opinions, ranted publicly about “homosexual agendas” while commenting about upcoming cases, pushed the court to make political decisions like Bush v. Gore, and otherwise did everything he could to ruin hundreds of years of the Court’s image.

Damn right I’m glad he’s gone.

 

 

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Editorial cartoon: Graffiti

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Darrin Bell

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Not Mourning Scalia

Do I need to remind people of the terrible, hateful, and racist things this man has said over the years about women, gays, blacks, minorities, non-Christians?antonin-scalia-12-16-15-1.jpeg Not to mention the power of the government to screw over your Constitutional rights.

If he were the head of the KKK you’d all be happy he’s gone. But in fact, with the same views, he was instead given power to DO things about his bigotry and hatred. The fact that he had power is MORE reason to be glad he’s gone.

No, I am not going to pretend to be sorry for his passing just because he was on the Supreme Court. He was a horrible man and the world is a better place without him and the harm he caused.

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Editorial cartoon: Feelin’ the Bern

bern

David Horsey

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It’s a bird! It’s a plane! It’s Superdelegate!

Oh no, it’s a rerun.

Eight years ago, a bunch of Obama supporters were bitching all over the internet because even though Obama was doing well in the primaries, Hillary got more delegates. This is because the Democratic party has a provision for “superdelegates” composed of elected and appointed officials who automatically get to go to the convention and help pick the candidate.superdelegate

This was a provision set up over thirty years ago. And in the eight years since Obama’s election, there has been no serious movement to change these rules.

Now the Bernie people have discovered this rule and they are bitching just as loudly as the Obama people back then, claiming it’s unfair, undemocratic, illegal and “fraud.”

Well, no. You can dislike this rule, but it’s not illegal, it’s not fraud, and there’s nothing you can do about it now. Bernie was well aware of the rules of the game when he started playing. Maybe if he didn’t like these rules, he could have joined the Democratic party 30 years ago and done something about it, hm?

Mind you, I’m a Bernie supporter. But these complaints I am reading from other supporters doesn’t make me go “Yeah! The Man is keeping us down! It’s treason!” — instead it only makes us look like uneducated childish whiners.

The purpose of the Superdelegate was to prevent some demagogue like Donald Trump from coming in and grabbing the nomination away from legitimate Democrats. And in many ways, to the Democratic insiders, that definition fits Bernie, who was an independent up till now.

The rules are working exactly as they were designed.

People need to remember that primaries (and caucuses) are not Constitutional elections; they’re private rules the party uses to pick their candidate. The party could decide to get rid of primaries completely and choose the candidate in smoke-filled rooms like they used to do in the old days. You don’t have a “right” to demand anything from the Democrats any more than you have the right to demand a say in how the local Boy Scout troop picks its scoutmaster. It’s a private organization.

Now, there are a lot of changes I’d make in the primary process — for instance, let’s not let two states filled with people who do not represent a cross-section of Americans be the first two to vote — but the bottom line is that the parties can set their own rules for how they choose their candidates.

Go ahead and lead a fight to change the rules, but don’t go bitching because you don’t like the rules that currently exist when you have never done a thing in the past to try to change them.

 

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Editorial cartoon: Insult the voters, that’s a good idea

Matt Bors

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Political Scientists: “We don’t know nothin'”

Sanders and Trump have taken New Hampshire, which just goes to prove that Political Science is to science what military music is to music. bernturmp

I graduated cum laude with my Political Science degree. I worked on many campaigns (including being a campaign manager for a state representative), was a lobbyist for a while, taught political science, and continue to follow politics while blogging about it. And, like my fellow political scientists, I didn’t see this coming.

I’m not talking about predicting this a month ago. I mean a year ago — when Trump and Sanders started talking about running. Like all the other pundits that cover politics, I thought that these anti-establishment fringe candidates would fade by the time the primary season started.

Here’s what I wrote about Bernie last April:

He doesn’t have a chance of winning. He will only raise a fraction of what Hillary already has in her war chest. He doesn’t look like a President and that New York Jewish agitator vibe won’t help him in the slightest with most of the country. 

And that’s what most other commentators thought, as well. We then said similar things about Trump.

But the world has changed since we studied Poli Sci in college, and in two major ways.

First, Americans are sick and tired of politicians. We’re ready for an outsider — someone who doesn’t base his views on opinion polls and is not afraid to say what we’re thinking but have been told we’re not supposed to. For Democrats, that means talking about income equality, socialism, and social justice. For Republicans, that means embracing racism, sexism, xenophobia, and a mistrust of anyone not rich, white, and male (apparently).

But more importantly, the second factor is the internet, which has changed the way the game is played. The internet is a model of democracy — anyone can start a blog (like me!), spout an opinion, and share an article. Information no longer comes down to us from the gatekeepers — it moves up, often through “viral” posts. The mainstream media, instead of leading public opinion, is often scrambling to catch up.

This is not necessarily a good thing. So much misinformation gets passed around as fact. “I read it on the internet so it must be true” posts skew reality, and people end up believing the most amazing things. And then when the media whose job it is to report  the truth tells you that what you read on the internet is false, people instead disbelieve the media and embrace the comforting lie.

And that has helped Trump.

But the internet has also helped Bernie. He has been able to bypass the normal channels politicians usually follow, get his message out cheaply and easily, and raise lots of money without having to plead with the big donors and corporations that usually finance campaigns.

So this is a fascinating year.

And if anyone tells you that they know what’s going to happen, just remember: Nobody knows nothin’.

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Editorial cartoon: Dividing America

Darrin Bell