Do Away with Supreme Court Lifetime Appointments

When our country was born, life expectancy was in the mid to high 50s. Therefore, making a Supreme Court nomination a lifetime appointment didn’t appear to be an extreme idea. Obviously today, life expectancies are much higher than they were over 200 years ago.

Every time there’s a Supreme Court Justice nomination, the nation must endure a long, drawn out battle in the Senate. Why must we go through this agony? It’s time to update the Constitution and make the nomination a onetime 10-year term. If someone wants to add a couple of years to that number, I would be OK with that. I’m confident that change would make the nominations proceed more quickly and without so much conflict. No, it won’t go smoothly, but it should help dramatically scale back the level of antagonism between the parties.

If we had one ten-year term, a legal genius named Clarence Thomas would have been off the Supreme Court 15 years ago, and from a legal perspective, the country would be much better off . Instead of 25 long years of silence on the court, we would have only had to endure 10.

I believe in order to make this change, we would need an amendment to the U.S. Constitution which would be quite an arduous task. I think it would be worth it.

Life: Political Choices

Let’s start with the premise that life isn’t fair nor easy. For millions of people around the globe, obtaining water and food is a daily challenge. Forget about the comforts Americans take for granted such as electricity, air conditioning, all-wheel drive cars, and super markets with a wide array of food options which would blow the minds of many people around the world.

Today we’re going to concentrate on Americans. We all have a wide array of options on how we choose to live our lives. For example, one can be fiscally irresponsible, depend on others for their daily existence, treat those around them with disdain and/or literally steal from those who worked hard for their tangible items. In America, we have a significant class of people who never go to work and obtain almost everything they have by stealing from others. That’s one of the reasons we have the largest prison population on the planet.

One luxury of being American is the wide array of news and information available to those who want to make the effort. We have fabulous newspapers in many towns and cities, plus numerous mass media options which allow us to stay current on national and global news.  You may not agree, but I think the majority of Americans fail to take advantage of these resources and instead rely upon others to tell them how they should feel about various issues. They don’t  read and do their own research, they listen to famous broadcasters or news networks which are actually political shows where the news is used as the vehicle to get across their political messages. In essence, they are told how they should feel about certain issues.

This was on display for the entire country during the 2016 Presidential campaign. If you watched the large Trump rallies, every time he mentioned the TPP or NAFTA, his blue-collar crowd would boo vociferously. I would bet every penny I have that 95% of Trump’s supporters don’t know what the TPP is and how it does or doesn’t impact their lives. Don’t know about you, but I find that terrifying. How can be adamantly opposed to something when they don’t even know what it is?

Conservative TV political commentator Joe Scarborough said for the first time in many years, Appalachia voted Republican.  He then added, millions of Appalachians depend on Obamacare for their health and survival, yet they voted for a man who promised to do away with the program which keeps them alive. I realize Hillary was a terrible candidate so their choice wasn’t easy, but how can someone vote against their own interests?

In the future, we’ll talk about other issues, both mundane and important. We hope you’ll continue reading and provide feedback.

Trump Voters Live in an Alternate Reality

I know many of you are probably thinking I’m generalizing about a large group of people and I’m being too harsh. Please keep reading before you jump all over me. Trump supporters apparently live in an alternate reality, devoid of facts and accurate information. Check out of some of their beliefs.

  • Many surveys reveal almost 2/3 of Trump supporters believe President Obama was born in Kenya.
  • Almost 40% of Trump voters believe the value of the stock market went down during the 8 years of the Obama administration (It more than tripled)
  • 2/3 (67%) of Trump voters believe the unemployment rate rose during the Obama administration while we know it went down significantly.
  • Surveys reveal the majority of Trump supporters approve of the Affordable Care Act but disapprove of Obamacare. Please don’t tell them they are one and the same.

If you watched Trump’s campaign rallies, he always brought up the TPP and the crowd roared with loud rounds of booing. Hello! I would bet every dollar I have that 95% or more of Trump supporters don’t even know what the TPP is, let alone how it would impact their lives. During those same campaign rallies, Trump told his supporters Hillary wanted to take away their guns, and if elected, she would abolish the 2nd Amendment. Both statements are false, but the second one is pertinent to my argument. Trump voters are too dumb to understand that a President cannot abolish an Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

Although he eventually changed his message, Trump repeatedly told his supporters he was going to expel 11 million illegal immigrants and the crowd would cheer. How in the world could anyone possibly believe such a lie? If Trump tried to implement this program, it would tie up the federal court system for more than a decade, cost countless billions of dollars, and would almost certainly be a complete failure.

Of course, we remember Trump’s favorite lie his supporters believed. He’s going to build a 22-billion-dollar plus wall on the Mexican border and Mexico would pay for it. Are you laughing, because I am. By the way, Trump supporters don’t know the following two facts.

  • Almost half of all illegal immigrants currently in our country came here legally and overstayed their visas. Obviously a wall won’t change that.
  • Per the FBI, most terrorists don’t come in via Mexico, they come across the Canadian border.

Trump Voters and Double Standards

During the Presidential campaign, Trump voters demonstrated some of the most extreme forms of hypocrisy I ever saw. They held Hillary to the highest standards possible, and that’s ok because she was running for President of the United States.  However, when it came to their boy Trump, standards went out the window. Trump was the first presidential candidate in approximately 40 years who refused to release his tax returns. He had a bogus excuse about this year’s return being audited. OK, let’s pretend that was a valid reason, then why didn’t he release previous years returns as Hillary did? Can you imagine the outrage from Trump voters if Hilary refused to release her tax returns? We would be hearing comments such as she’s a crook, what is she hiding, and this proves how dishonest she is. But Trump gets a free pass as his voters proclaimed tax returns don’t tell us anything. Really? Than why was Trump afraid to release his?

On many other issues, Trump was never pressed nor held accountable by his supporters. He refused to explain how he would replace Obamacare, he couldn’t explain how or why Mexico would pay for his bogus wall on the southern border, he couldn’t explain how he would eliminate ISIS, he wasn’t forced to prove his absurd allegation that President Obama was an original founder of ISIS. Trump instead proclaimed he knew more than our generals. He was never asked to prove that President Obama wasn’t born in the United States, he was never asked to explain how he was going to export 11 million illegal immigrants, and he was never asked to explain how Hillary was going to abolish the 2nd amendment and take away everybody’s guns. Of course you and I know a president doesn’t have the authority to abolish amendments to the U.S. Constitution.

Do you remember how many times Trump voters and Trump chastised President Obama for issuing Executive Orders to meet his agenda? By the way, Obama issued far less orders than G.W. Bush. Trump’s been in office a little less than 2 weeks and he’s issued an array of Executive Orders. Trump supporters who are ecstatic over all of them. Aren’t they the same voters who vehemently protested President Obama issuing Executive Orders to advance his agenda? They said Obama was circumventing the Constitution and breaking the law by writing Executive Orders.Trump Double Standards are impossible to accept. But why do people engage in this type of activity? I think it’s fascinating that a Trump voter can take diametrically opposed positions on the same issue and never realize nor admit the level of their hypocrisy. What does that tell you about a Trump voter?