I normally don't do this but there's so much airing right now that I need to make a schedule for myself otherwise I will fall even more behind than I currently am.
I'll probably catch up on My Love Mix-Up this evening and I might save the first two episodes of I Saw You in My Dream for tomorrow (WHY did they drop two at once when we're all in the trenches?). I should've already caught up with that one but I decided to binge ATEEZ's entire discography instead and made my watch schedule a future me problem.
So, not counting tomorrow this is what my week is gonna look like.
Sunday:
The Trainee
Love Sea
Monday:
This had become my Japanese BL catch-up day but since there's a new JBL that started and a new Thai BL starting that airs on Mondays I'm splitting it up
Battle of the Writers
Takara's Treasure
Twilight Out of Focus
Tuesday:
Designated free catch-up day for whatever I inevitably fall behind on
Wednesday:
Meet You at the Blossom
Century of Love
The Rebound
Thursday:
Knock Knock Boys
Meet You at the Blossom
Century of Love
The Rebound
Friday:
My Love Mix-Up
This Love Doesn't Have Long Beans
4 Minutes
Saturday:
I didn't dislike Sky Valley which started last week but I'm also not sure if I liked it enough to keep up week to week so I'm leaving it off.
I Saw You in My Dream
I Hear the Sunspot
Mr. Mitsuya's Planned Feeding
Sunset x Vibes
Apropos of the January 6th Report, Jill Lepore writes a very useful and not overly long critique titled
The American Beast
in the January 16 issue of The New Yorker magazine. She tells us that the report, unlike the very readable 9/11 Report, is difficult to like for its size and its utter lack of compelling story-telling. And it just blames Donald Trump for the insurrection, without examining how such a travesty could have happened: why did so many people believe ?
Overturning Roe Is McConnellâs Legacy as Much as It Is Trumpâs
With yesterdayâs Supreme Court ruling, overturning Roe v. Wade and 50 years of legal precedent has left a majority of Americans feeling troubled, upset, and angry. Many are rightfully channeling their anger toward SCOTUS, whose slate of decisions this session represents an alarmingly extremist, backward-looking, and divisive slant. Many are channeling their anger at the former President, who appointed three of the five judges in the majority decision in Dobbs v. Jackson.
But letâs not forget the man who perhaps bears the lionâs share of credit for this â to use Justice Alitoâs own term â egregious turn in American judicial history.
Mitch McConnellâs ruthless leadership of Senate Republicans since 2007 is the key element of the series of events that allowed Fridayâs decision to transpire. His time as senate leader has been characterized by overreaching abuse of the filibuster and a propensity for changing procedural rules to achieve his objectives.
McConnell is the longest serving Senate Republican leader by far, surpassing Bob Dole by almost 4 years. Although he started out as a pro-choice moderate in the 60s, McConnell shifted strategies after a close election call in 1984 and embraced a more far-right agenda. In this respect, he perhaps embodies the dramatic shift in the Republican party over the last several decades.
McConnell stated in a 2010 interview with the National Journal, âThe single most important thing we want to achieve is for President Obama to be a one-term president.â In that moment, he admitted, publicly, what we all already knew. Republicans have no interest in working with Democrats to enact policies that help the American people. They make no attempt to find middle ground and work together. They seek only to obstruct, so voters become frustrated with the inaction and inefficacy of Dems, and vote them out.
Two-thirds of Americans did not want Roe v. Wade overturned. Yet the former Senate majority leader, overseeing a GOP that represented a minority of Americans, has been able to dictate policy and assert an extremist agenda on an unwilling nation. Letâs look at how he accomplished this.
Step 1: Obstruct Obama Appointees
Americans saw firsthand, in constant media coverage, McConnellâs often successful attempts to block President Barack Obamaâs legislative agenda. The 44th President boldly proclaimed the importance of seeking middle ground on a host of issues, including abortion, in his 2008 nomination speech. This sentiment was widely supported by Americans at the time, but data also showed the issue becoming more and more polarizing. McConnell capitalized on this division, painting the centrist Obama as an extremist socialist.
It worked. The right always viewed Obama as a radical leftist. And then there were Dems who wanted him to be a champion of the left, a task at which he often failed. Repeated attempts to find middle ground were met with rejection. Obama could achieve little in partnership with the other side, especially after Republicans regained control of the Senate in January 2015.
But what Americans didnât see on their front pages or the nightly news were McConnellâs successful efforts to block Obamaâs appointments of federal judges. McConnell held votes on just two Obama appointees during the then-presidentâs last two years in office.
Trump was able to fill all 54 vacancies, with mostly white men.
Step 2: Merrick Garland
There was one judicial blockade that the public got to see unfold. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia died on February 13, 2016, 270 days before election day. Just 10 days later, McConnell announced that there would be no hearing, and no vote on any appointee Obama may have.
This was shocking and had never been done before, but McConnell held firm, invoking the so-called âBiden Rule.â This rule supposedly suggested that the senate should not confirm a presidential nominee to the Supreme Court in an election year, and should instead wait to âgive [voters] a voice.â
To be clear, no such rule exists. McConnell was referencing a comment made by Joe Biden in June 1992, an election year in which there was no Supreme Court vacancy. His comments were made in light of the recent contentious Clarence Thomas hearings in 1991. Itâs worth noting that Biden only advocated postponing any hearing until after Election Day and never proposed not considering a nominee at all.
It ended up being a non-issue. There was never an opening, or an appointee, and the Senate never voted on any such rule. Nonetheless, McConnell was able to use the decades-old words of Obamaâs own vice president against him. Thomasâ nomination process, the longest for any confirmed justice in modern history, took 99 days from nomination to confirmation. Joe Biden made his senate remarks 132 days before Election Day 1992. Merrick Garland was nominated on March 16, 2016, 238 days before the 2016 election.
Step 3: Neil Gorsuch
McConnellâs gamble paid off. In a result that most could not predict, Donald J. Trump was elected the 45th president of the United States. Merrick Garland would never get his day before the Senate, and Trump would get to appoint a justice for the open Supreme Court position.
Democrats (rightfully) cried foul. McConnell abused his power to subvert the will of the American people who had elected Barack Obama and given him the right to appoint Supreme Court justices for the duration of his term. Garland wasnât even the biggest threat to McConnellâs agenda. Garland was a moderate. A theoretical President Hillary Clinton could have selected a much more progressive option.
Just 11 days after taking office, President Trump nominated Neil Gorsuch, a staunch pro-life conservative, to the Supreme Court. Gorsuchâs nomination process was not without controversy. Though in the majority, McConnell lacked the 60 votes needed to approve a Supreme Court justice.
So, he changed the rules. Invoking the ânuclearâ option, McConnell lowered the threshold for approving an appointee from 60 votes to 50. After 20 hours of public testimony, Gorsuch was approved to SCOTUS with 54 votes. Three Democratic senators joined the majority â Joe Donnelly of Indiana, Heidi Heitkamp of North Dakota, and Joe Manchin of West Virginia.
Step 4: Brett Kavanaugh
At the end of the SCOTUS session in June 2018, Justice Anthony Kennedy announced his retirement. Kennedy had been the swing vote on the court for years. He penned the majority opinion in the landmark Obergefell v. Hodges case that essentially made gay marriage the law of the land.
This was a gift to Trump and McConnell. Obama needed to pick a moderate like Garland to have any hope of a Republican-controlled Senate approving his nominee, should they even bother to consider him. Trump faced no such hurdle, and could appoint a stalwart conservative to fill the spot of the moderate Kennedy.
Trump nominated DC Appellate Court judge Brett Kavanaugh on July 9, 2018. Despite a history of advocating for pro-life causes, and passing Trumpâs litmus test for only appointing pro-life judges, Kavanaugh insisted to senators like Maineâs Susan Collins that he was not going to overturn Roe. Kavanaugh proclaimed at his confirmation hearings, âRoe v. Wade is an important precedent of the Supreme Court. It has been reaffirmed many times.â
Kavanaughâs abortion stance took backseat to the larger controversy â whether he had committed sexual assault against Christine Blasey Ford back in 1982. In the end, Kavanaugh was confirmed 50-48. Collins voted in favor.
Step 5: Amy Coney Barrett
Liberal icon Ruth Bader Ginsberg passed away on September 18, 2020, just 47 days before the 2020 election. More than a year earlier, McConnell had been very glib in his insistence that he would proceed with confirming any Trump appointee in 2020, even though it broke the rule he had invented in the previous election cycle. And he did.
With their hypocrisy on full display, Trump announced that he would nominate Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court on September 26, 2020. With a mere 39 days before the election, Trump and McConnell though it appropriate to proceed with confirmation hearings. The previous five confirmation hearings took an average of 77.6 days. Recall from earlier that Merrick Garland was denied a hearing with 238 days before the election. There was no possible justification for proceeding with the nomination, but Trump and McConnell did anyway.
Naturally, Democrats bemoaned the Republicansâ haste. Coney Barrett was confirmed within 30 days of the announcement, the quickest since Chief Justice Robertsâ confirmation in 2005. When Democratic senators questioned both the rush attempt and her lack of experience, Coney Barrett responded that she had turned over 1,800 pages of documents addressing her 30-year record. By contrast, her immediate predecessors presented much more â Kagan, 170,000 pages; Gorsuch, 180,000; Kavanaugh, more than a million.
Not a single senate Democrat voted for Coney Barrettâs confirmation. Sheâs the first Supreme Court justice since 1869 not to receive a single vote from the minority party.
A Lasting Legacy
The conservative supermajority on the current Supreme Court has been assembled through flagrant disregard for tradition, bipartisanship, and even the Constitution. Each of the three was put in place under dubious circumstances that required rejection of precedent and abandonment of reason. For as much credit as Trump gets for flooding the court with his judges, none of it would have been possible without McConnellâs shameless distortion of procedural norms. Like a petulant child whoâs about to lose a game, he changed the rules to secure his desired outcome.
This is not to say that a Democrat in the same position wouldnât do the same thing. But we havenât seen that, so speculation is irrelevant. All we know is that McConnell did.
The January 6 hearings are showing us how close we came to having our democracy overthrown by a seditious megalomaniac. Millions of Americans believe an otherwise preposterous fabrication, that our election was stolen. It is a lie concocted by the old guard, terrified of losing the semblance of power they once held. Their backwards, racist, anti-feminist ideology seeks to return us to a time when people of color and women knew their place. Their big lie embodies their bigotry, seeking to subvert the will of a diverse electorate. In their minds, the will of people of color, women, LGBTQ+ people, immigrants, and non-Christians is illegitimate. Theirs is the only true morality and the only valid vision.
Overturning Roe v. Wade is not the endgame. It is one landmark on a path of destruction of the principles of liberty and freedom, and restoration of the systems that oppress âthe other.â As Justice Thomas openly admits, Fridayâs decision paves the way for turning back the clock on contraception and gay marriage. (Interestingly, Thomas has been silent on Loving v. Virginia, which also uses the right to privacy to secure a right to interracial marriage.)
But even those are small pickings compared to the big picture. Filling the courts with judges to do their bidding was only the first phase of McConnellâs devious agenda. We are seeing the second phase unfold before our eyes, as Republic legislators across the country work to upend election laws, further marginalizing voters unlikely to agree with their policies. When the majority donât agree with you, your best course of action is to silence the majority â to take away their voice.
The proposed changes to voting laws will undoubtedly favor Republic outcomes. This not only seeks to ensure the continued influence of a party that represents an increasingly minority viewpoint, but also floats the possibility of a re-emergent Trump or any of his successors that will move America closer to fascism.
These restrictive voter laws will inevitably find themselves before the courts. The next Presidential election might end up before the courts as well. McConnell has done everything to ensure he has the edge when that happens.
Image: Senator Mitch McConnell at Conservative Political Action Conference in 2011. Photo by Gage Skidmore. Used under CC BY-SA 2.0 / Cropped from original.
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