Kennedy / Kerry on Alito

If there was any doubt that Alito was a great pick for the Supreme Court, Kennedy and Kerry certainly put it to rest on the floor of the Senate today. We have elections to choose presidents that get to appoint supreme court judges, and it is completely unsurprising that the other side isn't going to like them. Of course, if the other side follows the constitution, they are supposed to discover if the judges are qualified and then "consent", maybe something like 96-3 as the Republicans did for Ruth Bader-Ginsberg when they were in about the same numbers in the Senate as the Democrats are now. Naturally, reasonable people would never expect Democrats to be reasonable, so Kerry and Kennedy just did a good job of doing what one would expect.

Both Kennedy and Kerry should have provided some great sound bites for commercials in the fall, Kennedy especially looked like a man unhinged and out of control, one would have thought that Alito drowned his daughter in a car or something. (Mary-Jo Kopechne could not be reached for comment).

There is always something sureal about guys like Kennedy and Kerry screaming about "the little guy". One married into 800 million, and the other was born to a dynasty and has never known life without privliege and 100's of millions of dollars at his service. If either really wanted to "help the poor", they could give away 100's of millions to the poor, keep just a paltry 10-20 million each, and "scrape by" with a nice luxury condo or two each, fly commercial (horror!) and still do essentially anything they wanted for recreation as often as they wanted. But of course that would be a HUGE step down for them, and one THEY are not going to take.

On the other hand, they spend all their days trying to take actions to prevent a few million Americans from having a shot at building up a million or so and retiring someday to a decent but far from the lifestyle that they won't even deign to consider as a "sacrifice step down". They have the multiple homes, compounds, private aircraft, and trust funds that let them live the life of royalty while they try to deny the opportunity for a decent number to move to "upper middle class" with caps on Roth IRA's, high taxes on 401Ks, deduction limits, and has high a tax rates on income as they can possibly get. They know that income is the only leverage a lot of people have to escape dependence on the government, and they want to keep them dependendent so they can control their votes. During the '80s, too many people moved up enough to see a higher plane and ended up Republicans. They can't have that kind of opportunity.

It must be a cyncal life, living in opulent wealth, and holding as much of the masses as possible on the "Government Plantation" where any attempt to improve their station is beaten down with as much vigor as possible by programs that are supposed to be "fair", but only hurt people at a far lower srata then the lofty heights of a Kennedy or Kerry. There are few things that Democrats hate more than someone who has actually lived the American dream and moved up from government dependence to even a small level of personal independence. People like that leave their plantation, and when Democrats talk about plantations, they know of what they speak.