Re-litigating "Settled Issues"

We are all fixated by the axiom of "starie destasis" or "settled law" in Supreme Court rulings.  But clearly what we regard as moral and acceptable behavior today hasn't always been regarded as moral and acceptable, and visa versa.  Think about it.  Norman was having fun with the Obama line of “Put yourself in their shoes”.  He’s talking about being an 1830 plantation owner.  He stresses the importance of sometimes having to “re-litigate” controversial issues such as slavery verses the abolitionists.  To that 1830 plantation owner his "whole way of life" is threatened by the rising tide of this new abolitionist movement.  Many issues are being “re-litigated” such as the abortion ruling of 1973 or some say inter racial marriage, or gay relations, or how about “separate but equal?”   Many want to re-litigate the prayer in school issue.  Hence Norman says there is inherently nothing wrong with wanting to “re-litigate” a controversial issue because it goes on all the time.  Apparently the most important thing Barbra Boxer learned in her 24 years in the US senate was that “No issue is ever settled permanently”.  We progressives should take some comfort in this because you know conservatives would like to “institutionalize” and make permanent and entrenched a lot of these pipe dreams they have that are the fondest fulfillment of the 1980 platform of the Libertarian Party with David Koch.  A part of me wishes would re-litigate the importance of things like a quazi state religion we have now, or opening every meeting of congress with a Prayer, which is utterly useless.  I mean THIS congress praying at all is almost like “taking the Lord’s name in vain”.

ABC didn’t have their network news early at five thirty as I figured they would.  The sound system wasn’t working too well on the early part of Obama’s farewell speech in Chicago.  He made a big thing out of it being in his home town where he got his start and he was drowned out by applause all through the early part of his remarks.  The sound got better and he preached on three topics.  One was American excellence and how the United States doesn’t go to war except for a just cause and talked about our brave fighting men throughout history.  He talked about the onward push toward social progress throughout our history.  He talked about how the US won’t go into a country to fight without also enforcing our humanitarian principles.  Then he talked at length of the many things that are better now than eight years ago.  One of them apparently is not tax revenue to California.  Jerry Brown states that he’s going to have to make cuts in the budget so that it will be balanced.  Apparently he doesn’t want to dip into that growing “rainy day fund” to fund “unexpected dips in revenue” like he claims we are having right now.  On the other hand Donald Trump claims to be doing wonders for this economy and he’s not even president for nine more days.  President Obama said the improvements in life in the United States and the “rise in imcomes” is greater than anyone would have imagined eight years ago.  The third thing the President talked about was this political rhetoric and respect for our fellow citizens and how the quality of discourse had dropped dramatically in this country. I think this is the most important topic the President touched on.  Finally he gave accolades to his wife, Michelle, and his two daughters and Vice President Joe Biden, and his White House staff and how we hold the most important position we have in this country and that is of private citizen.  He says “The thing is that I didn’t say I would make the changes in this country but you the citizen has to make the vital changes”.  He said he wasn’t comfortable with the phrase “Post racial America” because we aren’t there yet but we have made lots of progress.  I would say we have retrogressed dramatically over the past eight years on race matters.  The speech over all probably took about fifty minutes.  It ended about four minutes to seven and I went out to smoke a cigarette and when I was back here Jeopardy was on.  So apparently there was very little if any post speech commentary by the media, and perhaps that is all for the best.

This is Wednesday morning January 11, 2017 and it rained last night and early this morning.  Trump finally held his press conference today but little was learned.  I turned on the TV and at first there was no picture at all.  The screen didn’t even light up.  I turned it off and on again and now it came in fine.  I had the TV on before eight.  But Donald Trump was late and the reporters had to review all of the issue.  But first Trump was introduced by a guy who attacked buzz-feed and CNN for propagation of a false intelligence report.  But I’m at a loss to find out what was false about it.  TH says buzz-feed was talking about Trump’s strange relations with women in other countries.  After this Mike Pence spoke.  Then Donald Trump came on with his lengthly critique of the reporting profession liking some and not others.  But then this other lady comes on and virtually takes over the thing for twenty minutes or something talking about Donald Trump’s divestment procedures and why a Blind Trust or just selling off the assets would cause more harm than good creating chaos or raising more questions than it solves.  At seven minutes to nine I went out for a cigarette.  The news conference went on till seventeen after nine and then Stephanopolis continued commentary till nine thirty.   The observation can be made that Trump still seems in campaign mode criticizing Hillary and talking about building the border wall and making Mexico paying for it.  Trump wants to get started with construction right away.  Now Trump appears to say that if the Russians did the hacking it’s because the democrats didn’t have good defenses against it, like the Republicans have.  Trump said he had no connections with overseas deals and he claimed that he doesn’t know whether Russia will be an ally of ours or not.  Trump did not deal (except perhaps to deny) with the question about Putin learning things about Trump so he could blackmail him.  There was no boring in to a particular topic until you got a satisfactory answer.  That kind of reporting is a thing of the past.  At one point he froze out a rather vocal reporter saying he wasn’t going to take questions from his organization.  There was a loud clamoring to ask questions but Trump’s dealings with the actual reporters took maybe a half hour if not less of that hour and fifteen minutes. 

Rhapsody in black is doing January of 1965 and they have played “Quicksand” just now and “I Think I’m Going Out of my Head”, “How Sweet it Is”, and “The Jerk”. They also played “The Name Game”, “How Sweet It Is” and “Yes You Will” by Joe Tex and “There’s a Change that’s gona Come” by Sam Cooke. Later on they played “Walking in the Rain” by the Ronettes and “Saturday Night at the Movies” by the Drifters. The Raiders are losing to the Texans in Houston. They say the Texans could be the very first team to play the Super Bowl in their own stadium. Glenda still hasn’t gotten a cigarette from her daughter and I’m expecting a white one.