(#6300) If only this was the calm before the storm!

      For me, this time feels like a term used in baseball. The dog days of August. Where all the teams are weary from a lot of games played and the temperatures are hot to boot! This political climate is similar to me in that I am weary and it is still just May. We have 6 months to go before we can change the dynamic of this horrendous time. Then two months after that before we actually get to implement our change. The usual framework for our national politics is the candidates are well into their strategies for winning. Yet not this time when so much is still up in the air as to district boundaries all over the nation. The Virginia case as a prime example.
     As the high court there continues to mull a decision about the legitimacy of a vote to change district boundaries, the candidates are left in limbo. Where now also the United States not supreme court has opened the door to racial gerrymandering many republican states are now changing their district boundaries to exclude minority vote. To keep up with this advantage republicans sought, democrats must also consider changing boundaries so as mot to get bushwhacked by this republican abhorrence. Too many candidates for federal office are not even sure where or if they can run for office. The republican party has turned our natural election season into a clear clusterfuck! So no rest there!
     It is bad enough that trump spends everyday attacking the working middle poor class, minorities, women, old folks, children, our allies, and even his own supporters. I feel like everyday I am inside a clothes dryer on a cycle set to infinity! Yet I am a survivor! Whatever it takes to keep breathing and moving forward while keeping my honor and principles intact is my charge. Because each day I wake up and he is still punishing us is another day behind us that we have survived. He is running out of days to break us. Even though he is grinding us down as he can he is also grinding himself down from the sheer volume of his recklessness. I yearn for the calm to return. But it can't return until the time of trump is diluted or stopped.

(#6299) Our political future has to get greater than our sports teams.

      I know how tough it is to put anything above our sports that we follow with passion. I get it that not even our political future is as capturing as our hope for our teams to win win win! Yet in the big picture these teams we so fervently identify with are not really ours. They belong to very wealthy people who make money off of our devotion. It is difficult to see that way because of our investment of time and energy into a lifelong sense of a pseudo community ownership. Truth is I haven't been able to afford tickets to see any of my favorite teams for quite a long time.
     If it is difficult for me to prioritize expenditures on entertainment how much more difficult is it for those who have fewer resources than me? Which I presume is not a small circle of folks. Anyway, not so much about the cost of supporting my favorite teams is the cognitive dissonance of putting them above my and others' general welfare. Our politics is the most important element in our future. Politics decides which people live easy and which ones live hard. At the moment the ones living easy are the wealthy and the ones living hard are the working middle poor class. That dynamic is turned on its head as it should be the wealthy living less easy and the working middle poor class living a lot easier.
     We the people have allowed this to happen by not engaging in the priorities of the day. We listen to our favored speakers whether they speak truth to power or not. We tell ourselves that we are just one person unable to make a difference so we turn away from the struggle. We go about our day still putting the hopes we have for our sports teams on a higher priority than our actual day to day living. We don't consider as much the value we have to leave for our children so that when they are faced with horrible conditions in their lives they won't know how to fight back for a better world. They will only see that sport outcomes are more important than an honorable fairness in life.

(#6298) The longer it takes for the Virginia Supreme Court to rule on redistricting the benefit goes to Democrats!

      I, Like many, are every hour looking to see if the ruling by the Virginia Supreme Court on the referendum on redistricting voted on by Virginians last April 21 has been published. It to this moment has not. Oral arguments were last Monday, 4 days ago. There were several points of contention offered by the Tazwell judge so obviously each needs to be addressed. But that isn't all. There were other lawsuits filed by republicans that are being folded into how the final decision will be adjudicated. Simply corralling all the complaints and addressing all the concerns will take a bit of time. However, there is another factor at play here and that is timing.
     The longer it takes the Virginia high court to weave the logic of their decision the more the opportunity for the new maps from the vote to stand. Even if later they are found to be unconstitutional. The reasoning here is that there is a vote about to take place that affects each district in this case. So time is critically short to getting to a decision even though it takes time to get all of the contentions correctly cured. So as I wait for the decision to come I am not overly anxious because by default the outcome may well be a good thing for democracy if the wait time is extended.
     My sense is that the high court understands this as a factor and are diligently working to complete their task of ruling one way or the other. They may have already completed their decision and are just working out the textual nuance of writing it. Yet to get to a decision they would already have the general concept of their reasoning at hand. For me I am leaning toward them still not at a final decision because they have not incorporated all the available evidence they need to rule with wise intent. If it does seem to be the case that they need much more time they could well rule that the new maps apply for this 2026 election with a decision coming later as to any future election under the new maps.