Video here:

There's been a lot of hand ringing, nay saying and doom predicting some of it understandable, much of it self-defeating .

But I refuse to get bogged down in pessimism. Instead, I'm following this guy's lead:

There have been several comments around here castigating Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg for not the retiring while Obama was president and thereby, according to them, being responsible for the current state of the court and the nation. "If she had stepped down, we wouldn't have this mess" ...

But targeting the blame at RBG misses an important point. She didn't have years and years in which to retire. The window for retirement that would have had the results her detractors claim that her retirement would have created was very narrow - less than 2 years between late 2012 and mid-2014.

Yes, had RBG retired between November 2012 and late spring/early summer of 2014, it is possible that Obama could have selected and had confirmed a liberal justice before the Republicans took over the Senate. Any nomination after that time would have been blocked by Senate Republicans, through filibuster, majority vote or inaction.

While it's easy to look back in hindsight and criticize RBG for not deciding to leave her seat nearly 10 years ago, that position fails to consider the actual circumstances at the time. In 2012, Ruth Bader Ginsburg was a 79-year-old justice in good health (her previous cancer had been successfully treated and she'd been in remission for years and she was strong as an ox) and at the top of her judicial and intellectual game. There was no reason to believe in 2012 and 2013 that death or incapacity was imminent - and, in fact that proved to be true since she lived and remained active for another 8 years..

So, It wasn't the least bit unreasonable for RBG to decide in 2012 to remain on the court.

When the Republicans took over the Senate in 2014, there was no longer a question of whether RBG should step down. It would have been crazy for her to do so and put the fate of her potential successor in the hands of the Republican Senate. At that point there was nothing for her to do but try to stick it out.

In other words any control RBG may have had over any of this only existed between late 2012 and mid-2014. And her decision not to step down was a perfectly reasonable one at the time. After that it was out of her hands.

At that point, the responsibility for preventing judicial disaster has shifted to Democratic voters, who knew good and well that the 2014 and 2016 elections would decide the makeup of the Supreme Court for generations. And yet too many Democrats ignored the importance of the Supreme Court and allowed the Senate to flip to Republican control in 2014, and then refused to vote for Hillary Clinton in 2016, thereby allowing Trump and a Republican Senate to shape the Supreme Court. The fact that Trump and McConnell were able to force Amy Coney Barrett onto the court is on the voters' heads, not on RBGs, since they had the ability and the power to ensure that didn't happen.

So if blame is to be assigned (which is useful only as an educational and motivational tool to help people do better moving forward to remedy the situation since blame for blame sake is a waste of time), please focus blame on the people who could have prevented this from happening and lay off of the late, great Ruth Bader Ginsburg who to her last breath gave us everything she had.

So let's hope the folks who've been calling Jacqueline Jackson irresponsible, anti-vax and an effing "moron" will back off and just wish her and her husband well as they both fight COVID.

https://wgntv.com/news/coronavirus/jesse-jackson-doing-fairly-well-in-hospital-with-covid-19/

Therein lies the problem in a nutshell ...

https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2021/08/12/census-data-race-ethnicity-neighborhoods/

https://twitter.com/jenmendez_/status/1422428192015626240

So true! I get very weary of watching politicians - especially those who have been around for decades - continue to portray themselves as "anti-Establishment activists."

When you join the most elite political structures in the world (e.g., the U.S. House and Senate), you are by definition, part of the "establishment" - and it is your responsibility to use your position to ESTABLISH new ways of doing things.

If after years of being part of the establishment, you have not effected change but are continuing to rant and rave and shake your fist at the people and institutions you have willingly attached yourself to but haven't managed to move to a new level, you have failed at the one job you have.