The Constitution was written to frustrate ambition

Jasciu of the Daily Kos community started a post with:

For nearly two and a half centuries, the American experiment has endured by virtue of its capacity to restrain power. The Constitution was less a blueprint for efficiency than for frustration: ambition checking ambition, institutions restraining one another, power fractured and parceled out to preserve liberty. Yet over the last century, one of the most profound threats to this equilibrium has crept in largely unchallenged. Two entities—the political party and the modern corporation—have come to wield a quiet dominance over the electoral system, the judiciary, and the regulatory state, placing organized selfish power at the very heart of our republic.

They propose an amendment to the US Constitution to remedy the problem. I won’t quote the whole text, but here are the main points. No political party shall administer elections. Elections shall be conducted by nonpartisan bodies. No political party shall control or influence the nomination of judges. [Michigan Supreme Court justices are nominated by the parties, then run as “nonpartisan.”] Corporations are not persons with political rights. They shall not finance elections. Corporations shall not have control over regulatory agencies. The author does recognize the difficulty, close to impossibility, of getting this amendment approved in the current political climate. Commenters added other needed amendments or sections of broader amendments. From iyouwemeus: A corporation shall not be equated with a natural person or citizen. Money shall not be considered speech. Money to influence any part of government shall be transparent and controlled by law. A corporation owning more than one type of media outlet shall provide balanced and truthful news and free political advertising. Bots generated by AI shall not be equated to a natural person and shall be identified. From btfjd: Abolish the filibuster. Increase the size of the Supreme Court. From dfhamel: The filibuster must be active – a senator actually talking on the Senate floor. Rules for the House that don’t change when the party in power changes. Supreme Court Justices, Department of Justice leadership, and FBI leadership must be independent from the president. Instead of appointed by the president they should voted on by the people after a vigorous vetting system. I would add more: Congressional and state legislature districts shall be drawn by citizen redistricting commissions representing the political parties and citizen diversity. The right to vote shall not be denied. Ryan Krugman, in an article for Inside Climate News posted on Kos, wrote that there is a Make Billionaires Pay march planned for September 20 in New York City, which is during the United Nations General Assembly when many world leaders will be in town. They will be protesting more than inequality; they also have demands for climate and social justice. Billionaires are targeted because they are pushing and profiting off the climate crisis. They even profit off the people displaced by the climate crisis by those people being caught in low-wage work. They also profit by being in the detention business. The climate movement is getting good at building solidarity with other social movements. That includes being involved in the Black Lives Matter protests. In Tuesday’s pundit roundup for Kos Chitown Kev quoted Mike Lofgren of Salon. Here’s a bit of the quote:

If you pay attention to the details, America is rapidly transforming from a service state — one that provides education, health care, infrastructure and parks to its citizens — into a carceral state that punishes and imprisons them.

Kev added:

I’ll say it again: Trump imagined designing a wall to keep people output wall can function to keep people in as well. It’s the reason why the metaphor always seemed ominous to me.

Here’s also a portion of the quote by Lorenzo Tondo of The Guardian:

Out of the International Association of Genocide Scholars’s (IAGS) 500 members, 28% took part in the vote. Of those who voted, 86% supported the resolution. The resolution states that “Israel’s policies and actions in Gaza meet the legal definition of genocide in article II of the United Nations convention for the prevention and punishment of the crime of genocide (1948).” ... The resolution said the IAGS recognised that “since the horrific Hamas-led attack of 7 October 2023, which itself constitutes international crimes”, the government of Israel had engaged in systematic and widespread crimes against humanity, war crimes and genocide, including indiscriminate and deliberate attacks against the civilians and civilian infrastructure, including hospitals, homes and commercial buildings, of Gaza.

From Paul Sonne of the New York Times:

Now, Mr. Putin’s fortunes have changed — and so has the world. Nowhere was that more apparent in recent days than in Tianjin, China, where leaders from member states of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, the Eurasian security grouping, met on Monday alongside heads of state from other countries. Mr. Putin used his stage to publicly blame the West for the war in Ukraine. He gleefully held hands with Prime Minister Narendra Modi of India and erupted in laughs as the pair joined in a huddle with the Chinese leader, Xi Jinping. Leaders from Iran, Nepal, Tajikistan, Turkey and Vietnam glad-handed Mr. Putin in private meetings that ran past midnight.[...] The elephant in the room was President Trump, who has helped end Mr. Putin’s isolation, both by welcoming him to U.S. soil for the first time in a decade and by clashing with leaders from Brazil, India and South Africa, pushing them closer to Mr. Putin. Mr. Trump’s relationship with Mr. Modi has unraveled as New Delhi has resisted pressure from Washington to credit the U.S. leader with ending the military conflict between India and Pakistan. Mr. Trump has piled tariffs on India in response, singling out New Delhi for buying Russian oil.

In the comments is a cartoon by Bill Bramhall. It shows RFK Jr. pushing a woman off the roof of a building renamed “Department of Health and Human Sacrifices.” Chacal suggests perhaps that could be shortened to “Department of Health and Harm.” A meme posted by exlrrp and from funny snarky joke shows a perky woman holding a teacup saying in response to the nasty guy’s lack of public appearances and speculation of his health:

I can’t believe it’s already is-he-dead-yet season. I still have my holy-s***-he’s gonna-start-WWIII decorations up.

In today’s roundup Greg Dworkin quoted Jeff Tiedrich’s personal blog.

Let me state right up top that I didn’t believe any of this past weekend’s rumors that Dear Leader had shuffled off this mortal coil. But clearly, something is very wrong with Donny, and it’s being covered up — and because it’s this White House, staffed by the most incompetent clownf***ers ever to have f***ed clowns, it’s being covered up in the most inept manner possible.

On the same topic, in the comments exlrrp posted a meme with the words, “Have we been seeing Trump lately, or is it his doppleganger?” Beside a photo of the nasty guy is a woman with a very similar face and hair style.