Ethical And Moral Standing

God Bless Jimmy Carter, As He Reaches Age 100 On Tuesday!

admin Leave a comment

It is hard to believe, but former President Jimmy Carter, the 39th President of the United States, reaches age 100 on Tuesday October 1.

There have been many occasions where Carter had health crises and also lost his wife Rosalynn, and one would think his life was nearing its end.

But here he is, still mentally alert, although physically unable to take care of himself, and reaching the centenarian accomplishment.

Carter has been much underrated for a long time, and his accomplishments have not been adequately acknowledged, and instead, his failures and shortcomings, particularly with the Iran Hostage Seizure, have caused the general public and many scholars to rate him only in the mid 20s at best in Presidential rankings.

His record and accomplishments are often overlooked or ignored, including:

The Egyptian Israeli Camp David Accords

the Panama Canal Treaty

best environmental record of any one term President

his promotion of human rights

his diplomatic recognition of mainland China

three Cabinet agencies (Education, Energy, Health and Human Services)

his ethical and moral standards, and lack of corruption

his tremendous intellect and high IQ

his common decency, empathy and compassion

his genuine religiosity, being a “true” Christian, not a phony

and his post Presidency activities through the Carter Center

and Habitat For Humanity activities, including personal building of housing for the poor

Nobel Peace Prize in 2002

All these are to be applauded, and one would wish for public recognition of his greatness on Tuesday, and beyond!

The Corruption Of The Supreme Court, With Five Appointees By Presidents Who Lost The Popular Vote!

Ronald 1 Comment

With the likelihood that Amy Coney Barrett will be successfully confirmed to be the replacement of Associate Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg on the Supreme Court, we are about to have a Court with five appointees by Presidents who lost the national popular vote, but still won the Electoral College.

George W. Bush lost the national popular vote to Vice President Al Gore in 2000 by a 540,000 margin, but was able to select Chief Justice John Roberts and Associate Justice Samuel Alito in 2005 and 2006.

And now Donald Trump, who lost the national popular vote to Hillary Clinton in 2016, by a 2.85 million margin, has been able to select Associate Justices Neil Gorsuch in 2017, Brett Kavanaugh in 2018, and now Amy Comey Barrett in 2020.

And even more infuriating is that three of these five appointees helped the George W. Bush campaign in the Bush V Gore Supreme Court case, assisting him winning the case in a majority Republican selected Court in December 2000–specifically, John Roberts, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Comey Barrett!

And the right wing Federalist Society, which has been on a 40 year campaign to make the federal court system move to the extreme right on such issues as health care, abortion, gay marriage, gun rights, so called freedom of religion, deregulation of the economy and the environment, suppression of voting rights and labor rights, has fully succeeded in its campaign to undermine American democracy and a sense of humanity!

So when one complains from the right side of the political spectrum at the “horror” of Democrats “packing the Court” if they were to add seats to the Supreme Court, one has to say the level of hypocrisy is enormous, when that has been the commitment for four decades of the Right in American politics.

And who can say that if the Republicans were to win control of both houses of Congress and the Presidency, that they would not be willing to promote “packing of the Court’, so that they could add two to four more seats to the Supreme Court, and make the Court not just the 6-3 margin it will now be, but possibly 8-3 or 10-3, if two to four seats were to be added!

And one more point: Two of the six member Republican majority have had sexual misconduct hanging over their heads, although it has not affected their tenure on the Court, speaking specifically of Clarence Thomas and Brett Kavanaugh. So the ethical and moral standing of the Court has been damaged irrevocably!

But do the conservatives and the Federalist Society care about this? Not one iota!