Today is Thursday, February 29, 2024. Tomorrow is Friday, March 1, 2024. I’m still reeling from the decision by the corrupt Extreme Court yesterday in the Drumpf immunity case that now might be delayed even further along in 2024. This is totally outrageous since now I’m hearing this case could be moved as late as July, not May or even in June, as it’s being discussed now on the Alex Wagner show on MSNBC. Who knows if this Teflon Don will ever be tried and convicted before Election Day, which is what he and his team are banking on? As I mentioned in yesterday’s blog, the Supreme Court’s foolhardy decision to take up the case mirrors the adage “justice delayed is justice denied” in the matter of the United States versus Donald J. Trump!

Yesterday, I mentioned a Daily Kos article on the retirement of Senate Minority Leader “Bitch” McConnell which lists 17 worst things McConnell did to destroy democracy, so his leaving should not be an occasion of sorrow at all. The writer of this article is Joan McCarter and its title is “The 17 worst things Mitch McConnell did to destroy democracy.” Here are some of those things listed below.

1. He stole a Supreme Court seat from President Barack Obama

When Justice Antonin Scalia died in February 2016, McConnell insisted that the seat would remain empty because it was an election year and, according to a rule he created, the seat could therefore not be filled.

The hypocrisy of this doddering old man was clearly apparent three years later when asked what he would do if the same situation arose in 2020 under then-President Donald Duck, he facilely said, “Oh, we’d fill it,” and that’s what he and his Republican majority did just that when liberal-leaning Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg died on September 18, 2020, with no consequences whatsoever!

2. He stole a Supreme Court seat from future President Joe Biden

And he did this after changing his “no new Supreme Court justice in the last year of a president’s term” rule – to install the ultraconservative Amy Coney Barrett – to the chagrin of the late feminist justice – on the court just eight fucking days before the 2020 election.

The night Justice Ginsburg died in the fall of 2020, according to McConnell’s former chief of staff, McConnell told Drumpf he would absolutely fill the vacancy just weeks out from the election, “and you’ve gotta nominate Amy Coney Barrett.”

3. He packed the federal judiciary for Trump with white men, many of them unqualified

While the Supreme Court seats may be the most visible part of McConnell’s stacking of the judiciary, his goal went even further. As Frontline noted, that meant he wanted his legacy to be one of “filling the federal judiciary with conservative judges.”

4. He vowed to obstruct Obama

Speaking to the National Journal in 2010, McConnell famously said, “The single most important thing we want to achieve is for President Obama to be a one-term president.”

5. He vowed to obstruct Biden

In 2021, McConnell said, “One hundred percent of our focus is on stopping this new administration.”

6. He made the debt ceiling a permanent hostage starting in 2011

Even though McConnell may not have invented the government shutdown, he did make sure that shutdown threats were a regular part of American politics while shutting down efforts to fix the problem.

7. He turned the filibuster into a weapon

McConnell used the filibuster “more than ever in history” during the Obama administration to try to deny Obama any legislative victories, just as he’d threatened to do. And he kept using it long after Obama left office, including to block a 9/11-style January 6 committee. Despite the poignant appeal from the mother of fallen Capitol Police Officer Brian Sicknick to support the commission, this son of a bitch asked some Republican senators to join the filibuster as “as a personal favor” to him. He certainly had no sympathy for the police officers who were seriously injured during the Trump insurrection!

8. He voted to acquit Trump after the Jan. 6 insurrection

Just like he blocked the nomination of Merrick Garland to the Supreme Court because of idiotic timing, he refused to convict Herr Drumpf for the insurrection he inspired because of timing. So this is the person to thank for our continuing nightmare with Drumpf even to this day, as he gleefully runs for a second term for no apparent reason other to escape prison. Damn him!

9. He built a career, and a big campaign nest egg, fighting gun safety regulations

That includes pulling down $1.3 million in donations from the National Rifle Association (NRA) while blocking efforts to address mass shootings. “No single individual may be completely responsible for America’s failure to address gun violence, including school shootings, but McConnell comes close.”

10. He destroyed campaign finance reform and filibustered any effort to get money out of politics

At one time he might have called money in politics “a cancer,” at the start of his long ignoble career, but he devoted himself to protecting that cancer nevertheless. And even spreading it when he got too secure in his position.

11. He blocked votes to save the Voting Rights Act (VRA)

That included refusing to hold hearings on an amendment named in honor of the great congressman and civil rights icon John Lewis. He claimed he was a supporter of the VRA at the beginning of his career, but as Senate leader, he weakened the act at every turn. This, along with his other moves to make it more difficult to vote, earned the appropriately named “Turtle” the nickname “the gravedigger of American democracy.”

12. He tried to kill Obamacare – and failed

After the repeal attempt failed, the Turtle whined, “This is clearly a disappointing moment.” He added, “I regret that our efforts simply were not enough this time.”

13. He blew off coal miners with black lung disease from his own state

That included giving a group of miners who drove from Kentucky to meet with him just two minutes of his time, but McConnell always found time to help mine owners prop up the dying industry. He failed to support legislation that would reclaim mine land for economic development.

14. He’s working with the Trump campaign right now to endorse Trump for another term

After first condemning Drumpf for his involvement in the January 6 insurrection, McConnell, like so many of his pusillanimous colleagues, eventually came around to offering total obeisance to the Golden Idol. This new upcoming endorsement of the person who wanted to “torch” our institutions is not shocking, given the loathsome character of this repugnican.

15. He named himself the “Grim Reaper.”

He vowed to kill – literally kill – progressive legislation to address climate change and expand Medicare. He ridiculously called this humanitarian legislation part and parcel of a “socialist” country. How absurd is that? He actually took credit of calling himself the Grim Reaper in 2019.

16. He took an infamous picture in front of a Confederate flag

He said the photo of him beaming in front of the racist flag was taken when he was a freshman senator, at a meeting of the Sons of Confederate Veterans. And, no, he isn’t even sorry these many years later.

17. He tried to silence Sen. Elizabeth Warren. It backfired.

During a floor speech against the confirmation of Jeff Sessions as Drumpf’s attorney general in 2017, the Massachusetts senator read – or tried to read – a damning letter from Coretta Scott King, written in 1986, which blasted Sessions for “the awesome power of his office to chill the free exercise of the vote by black citizens” while serving as a United States attorney in Alabama.”

McConnell didn’t like that and insisted Warren had violated a rule – she hadn’t – against demeaning a fellow senator. And he cut her off.

“She was warned,” McConnell said. “She was given an explanation. Nevertheless, she persisted.”

However, the joke was on the Turtle because his tsk-tsking of Warren became a meme. And a hashtag. And a tattoo. And a fundraiser. And a rally cry.

So as McCarter concludes her long list of reasons why Bitch McConnell was no sterling force for democracy but an actual destroyer of democracy, she says what I and so many aware Americans feel about his retiring and that is, “good riddance.” May the real Grim Reaper really come for you in your sun-dappled retirement!

I hope you enjoyed this frank review of one of the Senate’s darkest leaders, Mitch McConnell, from the Bluegrass State, which also boasts another douchebag, Rand Paul. We can only imagine who his successor will be!

Stay safe and be well.