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The Orange Circle

The first thing that came to my mind on reading this clip from Powerline [1] was an old Gary Larson “Far Side” You remember the one…. two deer stand upright in a forest, one with a very visible circle target on its chest. The other second deer sympathizes: “Bummer of a birthmark, Hal.”

Mario Cuomo, whatever other talents he may have, has developed a talent for painting proverbial orange circles on his own back…. with his mouth. Let’s take the clip that Powerline did, and tear it apart, line by line as a demonstration of just what I’m talking about.

“Now, the Republicans in the Senate…are threatening to claim ownership of the Supreme Court and other federal courts, hoping to achieve political results on subjects like abortion, stem cells, the environment and civil rights that they can not get from the proper political bodies: the Congress and the presidency.”

Funny. I don’t recall Mario ever complaining when the Democrats over the last 60 years had ownership of the courts, and unquestionably used such ownership to achieve political results on subjects like abortion, stem cells, the environment and civil rights that they can not get from the proper political bodies: the Congress and the presidency. Is Mario really saying that the activities of the Democrats over the last 60 years are invalid? This is going to come as quite a shock to Howard Dean, I suspect.

How will they do this? By destroying the so-called filibuster, a vital part of the 200-year-old system of checks and balances in the Senate that allows the fullest possible debate before one of the president’s choices for the Supreme Court or other federal courts is allowed to take his or her place on the bench. That would be a change so undesirably destructive that it has been called the nuclear option.

Actually, Mario is showing his bias here… and that his bias is overcoming his understanding of history.

The Republicans say it would assure dominance by the majority in the Senate. That sounds democratic until you remember that the Bill of Rights was adopted, as James Madison pointed out, in order to protect all Americans from what he called, the tyranny of the majority.

A tyranny, that dare I point this out again, Mario, you yourself didn’t seem to mind not so long ago. But what you seem to be forgetting is the idea of the tyranny of the minority, which you now support, is also as big or bigger a problem.

And it sounds nearly absurd when you learn that the minority Democrats in the Senate actually represent more Americans than the majority Republicans do.

And of course this ‘majority’ simply didn’t vote for Democrats, then, eh? How can this be, Mario? Are we still dealing with the meme of the ‘stolen election’? Or are you given tacit admission to the fact that the Democrats did not get and still do not have the support of the people? The fact of the matter is, the last Democrat to gain the White House on a true plurality… (without riding a dead man’s coat tails) was FDR.

Mario, it seems, represents a party that has not been ‘progressive’, nor has it had popular support, since the 1930’s.

And he’s just shown us their attitude hasn’t changed since then, either.

Thus we see the dayglow orange circle on the back.  Mario may find his own party taking aim if he keeps this up.