A BUMBLE BEE, AN EVIL BUMBLE BEE

"Cans of tuna fish. They go out and buy tuna fish and soup. You know that, right?  Because they throw it. It's the perfect weight, tuna fish, they can really rip it, right? And that hits you. No, it's true. Bumble Bee brand tuna." 

So says Donald Trump, the ostensible leader of the free world – and brand ambassador, apparently for Bumble Bee Tuna. 

While we’re all waiting for our $200 voucher to pay for the guaranteed 100% effective COVID-19 vaccine, both of which will miraculously appear in (checking my calendar) about a month, we can pass the idle hours by thinking about the Supreme Court.

As everyone likely to be reading this post knows, Trump has nominated a right-wing Catholic lady for a lifetime term on the Supreme Court.  I care a lot about the right-wing part, and not so much about the Catholic part.

There are plenty of reasons to vote NO on Amy Coney Barret.  Setting her qualifications aside, there’s a presidential election coming up in five weeks.  No less a judicial authority than Amy Coney Barret herself was emphatic in 2016 that it’s just plain wrong to alter the balance of power on the Supreme Court in an election year.  She’s got a lot on her mind.  Maybe she’s forgotten her earlier opinion. 

Or maybe – because she’s a Republican, after all – she’s just a hypocrite.  Or maybe – because she’s human, after all – she simply sees the risk/reward issue differently now that she’s the one who’s taking the risks and stands to reap the rewards.  Who among us would turn down a job that pays in excess of a quarter million dollars per year for the rest of our natural lives, if all we had to do to earn the money was outlaw abortion AND deprive poor people of health insurance coverage?  Easy money, right?  Cast the first stone, and all that.

As we’ve come to expect, though, the GOP That Couldn’t Shoot Straight revealed their Barrett confirmation strategy prematurely.  They were confident that they could portray Barrett as the victim of anti-Catholic prejudice.  Never mind that Joe Biden is Catholic.  No, any opposition to Barrett can only be rooted in religious prejudice. 

Right wingers from Marco Rubio to Hugh Hewitt tweeted savage attacks on Barrett’s critics.  Sadly, they couldn’t find any prominent Democrats who criticized Barrett on religious grounds.  So they cast a wider net.  And sure enough, they found a few inflammatory statements on Twitter and Facebook from some left-leaning randos.  Voila, proof of a conspiracy to keep Catholic jurists off the Supreme Court. 

That might come as a surprise to the four Catholics already on the Court, but whatever.  

(As a reminder, when you see right wingers comparing “the Left” with the Republican Party, understand that they’re being dishonest.  An apples-to-apples comparison would either be “Left vs. Right,” or “Republicans vs. Democrats.”  But if they stuck to quoting actual Democratic office holders, they couldn’t use as evidence the intemperate tweets of some adjunct professor at South Succotash State Junior College, or a minor league standup comedian.)

Apparently, Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee are considering boycotting the whole affair.  Maybe that’s the right approach.  Show your contempt for the shitshow by including yourself out. 

On the other hand, I’d love for at least one Democrat – maybe Senator Kamala Harris (D) CA – to get Barrett on the record about her change of position on the whole “balance of power during an election year” thing.  And also see if she’ll promise to recuse herself from any issues that may arise about the legitimacy of the 2020 presidential election, since the guy who’s trying to appoint her has said explicitly that he wants her on Court for that very purpose.