DL Open Thread: Thursday, October 12, 2023

Best Thing Dubya Ever Said:

Word. Just remember this before you demand to know ‘Whose side are you on?’   That kind of intimidation says a lot more about the intimidator than about the intimidated.

End of lecture.

If there is one redeeming feature about the Israel/Hamas War, it’s that Donald Trump has not been on my TV screen for the last three days.  Small consolation indeed, but something.

Supreme Court Poised To Uphold South Carolina’s Racial Gerrymandering.  Don’t be shocked–they gutted the Voting Rights Act, which protected against racial gerrymandering:

The justices and attorneys alike all candidly acknowledged that South Carolina legislators had manipulated their maps to artificially maximize Republican vote power and minimize Democrats’. They made no attempt to obfuscate that state Republicans were determined to pick their own voters, to rig elections until it became virtually impossible for their party to lose.

It’s a reflection of how grotesque redistricting cases have become ever since the conservatives on the Supreme Court, in 2019, decided that partisan gerrymandering cases were no longer justiciable in federal court. The only danger for South Carolina legislators, then, would come from the Supreme Court agreeing with the district judge panel that they’d used voters’ race — rather than party — to try to achieve that partisan end. It paints another layer of farce onto the case that, particularly in the South, race and partisan lean are often inextricably linked.

The right-wing justices, almost all of whom sounded firmly on the side of the South Carolina lawmakers, were dismissive of the plaintiffs’ case, which they said rested on circumstantial evidence.

Meaning, it’s time to read this award-worthy article about Leonard Leo, the man who reshaped the Supreme Court and the entire Federal judiciary.  Please read it:  You’ll emerge smarter and angrier.

My Kind Of (Former) Billionaire:

The selfless billionaire is a rare creature indeed. Chuck Feeney, who died on Monday at the age of 92, was one of them. He is “my hero and Bill Gates’ hero,” Warren Buffett once remarked. “He should be everybody’s hero.” Indeed, Feeney was an inspiration for the Giving Pledge that Buffett and the Gateses launched in 2010, whose 241 megawealthy signatories have promised to dedicate a majority of their fortunes toward charitable pursuits.

Feeney did a lot better than a “majority.” By the time the pledge was announced, he was reluctant to join because he was no longer a billionaire. He’d long since heeded Andrew Carnegie’s advice that a rich man should distribute his fortune for the public good during his lifetime—else “die disgraced.”

Feeney, who was Irish-American, used his riches over the years to broker a peace agreement in Northern Ireland, finance a public health system in Vietnam, ex­pand access to AIDS drugs in Southern Africa, and support young leaders around the world—the Atlantic Fellows—who are working to improve their societies. He bankrolled Ireland’s public university system and donated billions to American universities—including about $1 billion to Cornell—never allowing the schools to affix his name, or Atlantic’s, to the buildings he paid for. He lobbied, too, to keep himself off the Forbes list, and managed to dispense with huge sums before the New York Times finally outed him in 1997. His stealthy ex­ploits earned him a nickname: “the James Bond of philanthropy.”

Will The Rethugs Ever Elect A Speaker?

The inability of House Republicans to agree on who will lead them has left the chamber in an effective standstill since Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) was ousted as speaker, unable to consider any legislation to aid Israel in its war against Hamas or pass any appropriation bills to avoid a potential government shutdown in mid-November. Neither issue produced enough urgency for Republicans to quickly elect a speaker as many had hoped, again highlighting the conference’s deep divisions.

At least a dozen Republicanshave refused to back Scalise for speaker. Their reasons include what they say is the lack of a plan to fund the government, no plan to change how Washington works, anger that McCarthy lost the job, and opposition to giving the next person in line a promotion. Some lawmakers also were angry at Scalise’s effort to block a proposed conference rule change that would have kept House Republicans voting behind closed doors until a speaker nominee earned 217 votes. A vote on the proposed rule change failed in Wednesday’s meeting, and Scalise was able to grab the nomination with a simple majority.

The closed-door R Caucus meeting was a cluster-bleep:

Multiple Republican lawmakers said it was a monumental mistake for Scalise to block a measure that would have united the Republican conference behind a speaker nominee behind closed doors.

Nearly 100 members backed a rule change that would require the speaker to find 217 Republican votes before they adjourned from their closed, no-phones-allowed conference meeting. Scalise and his allies worked on tabling the motion because they knew he would win the nomination with a simple majority, and made a bet that it would be easier to coalesce around him on the House floor with the public pressure of the cameras rather than if the vote were closed. They were able to successfully table the proposed change.