“He shall have Power, by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, to make Treaties, provided two thirds of the Senators present concur; and he shall nominate, and by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, shall appoint Ambassadors, other public Ministers and Consuls, Judges of the supreme Court, and all other Officers of the United States, whose Appointments are not herein otherwise provided for, and which shall be established by Law: but the Congress may by Law vest the Appointment of such inferior Officers, as they think proper, in the President alone, in the Courts of Law, or in the Heads of Departments.”

That’s from the Constitution. Article II, Section 2. Generally speaking, it’s referred to as the Advice and Consent Clause. The idea is to keep an out-of-control President from naming his horse to some position of importance. If the President nominates his horse, the Senate takes a look at the qualifications of the nominee and votes accordingly.

In OG America, that was how we did it. It was a one-at-a-time process. The Senate had a little time to look into each new nominee. If a Senator happened to notice the nominee was a horse, he had a chance to vote against the horse. Oh, but this isn’t OG America anymore, is it? This is MAGAmerica and in MAGAmerica, there’s no real need to vet nominees. 47 declares he wants his horse? He gets his horse.

The “opposition party” (really, I mean the Dems) stood in the way of several of Donny’s appointments. He DOES, after all, keep appointing podcasters, talking heads he’s seen on TV, and other such highly unqualified people to high-ranking posts. In a functional democracy, these Bozos wouldn’t get past the door. But this isn’t a functional democracy. It’s MAGAmerica, where the Congress does as it’s told by the Executive Branch, no questions asked.

So, when faced with fierce opposition – or even just mild obstinance – from the timid Dems, the GOP got tired of the process with each and every new unqualified nominee. And, as always, whenever the GOP faces opposition, they shift to their go-to behavior – they cheat. In THIS case, they’ve changed the rules for themselves and are NOW allowed to “batch process” nominees.

Donny won’t send one name. He’ll send, oh, say, 250 names, in a group. The Senate will pretend to advise and will rubber-stamp the consent on the entire group, all at once. If one of those names happens to be that of Donny’s horse, well, the horse is now Ambassador to Nauru or whatever. But you can see what gets lost, right? The review process. There’s no chance to vet the group, especially the horse. The horse just slips on by, the 197th name on the list.

As of this writing, the GOP has promised – now would be a good time to reflect on other GOP promises and how well they’ve been kept – that this ‘nuclear option,’ as they’ve termed it, will not be used on judicial nominees under any circumstances. It just won’t. No way. Not at all. Not judges. We wouldn’t DO that. Because we said so, that’s why. We pinkie-swear and, this time, we really, really mean it.

So expect the next package of nominees from the White House to be judicial nominees. Also, expect the next package of judicial nominees from the White House to receive it’s rubber stamp and move forward. We can all find out which television show the new judges came from later. Lovely.

Make no mistake, this is a bad thing. Imagine not interviewing each candidate for a job and, instead, just hiring every person who put in a resume with no review. You might get lucky. You might find a qualified person in there. But you’re also going to find a large number of people who should not be doing the job they’re doing, and you’ll likely find them as they fail.

And really, this is a bad analogy. In my example, at least, the quality of the candidates is random, based on who applied. In this real-life nightmare, we can take comfort that each of these hand-picked candidates will be unqualified but loyal toadies willing to do as they’re told, when they’re told, so long as it’s Donny doing the telling.

People might call it ‘eroding’ the Constitution but really it’s ‘corrupting’ the Constitution. The President was never intended to have this much power. The complete surrender of Congress by the cons – along with the compliant servitude of the Robert’s Supremely Corrupt Kangaroo Court, of course – has overturned our once-great nation and reduced it to a banana republic. There’s no fight, anymore, to “save” our democracy. Now the fight is to “recover” our democracy – and it ain’t looking any too good…

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I thought it was funny when Jesse Watters, a Fox Not-News spokesliar, tried to list examples of violence from the left after the Charlie Kirk murder. When it came to violence against people, he got exactly one example, the shooting of Steve Scalise. Other than that, though, he had to count burning Teslas and/or calling someone names as “violence.”

“The very first essential for success is a perpetually constant and regular employment of violence.” That’s a quote from Hitler’s ‘Mein Kampf.’ Perhaps it explains WHY the GOP adamantly refuses to do anything about all the gun violence in this fast-failing nation. It’s part of their plan. (And, yes, that’s one of the names they were called as an act of “violence:” Nazis. But I stand by the obvious – if you don’t want to be called Nazis, don’t act like Nazis…)

The cons, of course, like to pretend the violence comes from the left. It remains true that every GOP accusation is an admission, though, so when they say violence comes from the left, they’re acknowledging that the violence – FAR more often than not – comes from the right.

So, I came up with a betting game. It goes like this: You name a violent act against a person committed by a known lefty. I give you a dollar. Then, I name a violent act against a person committed by a known rightie, and you give me a dollar. We’re even, right?

Round two, values are doubled. You name a person, I give you two dollars. I name a person, you give me two dollars. Still even. We keep going that way, each round doubled in the amount, until neither side can come up with anymore names. If one side does but the other side can’t, the one who did gets paid and the game moves to the next round – and remember, each round doubles. Round 1 was one dollar. Round 2 was two dollars. Round 3 is four dollars, round 4 is eight dollars, and so on and so forth until both sides are out of names (and, I confess, I suspect the MAGA would be out of money).

Do you think any MAGA would play my game with me? My guess is, they would not. I suspect they KNOW which side perpetuates violence the most, denials notwithstanding. It’s one thing to shout it at people with nothing on the line. It would be VERY costly to bet on it on a doubled-each-round basis…

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Oh, hey, just in case you forgot, a helpful reminder: Donald Trump was best friends with an accused and convicted child sex trafficker named Jeffrey Epstein for fifteen years. Trump wrote Epstein a letter in which he drew a picture of (possibly) a nude child and wrote, “may each day be another wonderful secret.” Supporters of Trump are supporters of an alleged pedophile…