Give it up
For years most of us wished Justice Ruth Ginsburg would retire so that Obama could appoint her successor and save the Supreme Court. But she didn't, and so he couldn't. And now look where we are.
The same thing is playing out now with Dianne Feinstein, the U.S. senator from California. She's 89 years old, came down with shingles more than a month ago, and has missed so many votes in the narrowly divided Senate, including on the Judiciary Committee, that Biden can't get his judicial nominees confirmed.
I thought I was bad, still collecting a paycheck as a mid-boomer-vintage geezer. But somebody tell Feinstein. She was born in the first year of FDR's first term. It's time to retire. Not a year and a half from now. Yesterday.
Maybe they can appoint that Chinese spy driver she had been using for decades....
ReplyDeleteDianne certainly doesn’t need the money. Buy, her staff needs her vote.
ReplyDeleteMost states make their judges retire in their 70's. There should be an age limit for politicians too.
ReplyDeleteI think 65 would be appropriate for politicians and voters as well.
DeleteThe trouble is her staff doesn't want to give up the power they've accumulated. And if they toss her, who's next? I just counted ten Dems in the upper chamber who are older than Gatsby. This problem is just getting started.
ReplyDelete^This.
DeleteRemember when western-chauvanists (or anyone observing things, really?) used to joke about senescent Brezhnev-era bureaucrats who knew the wheels were coming off the machine, but knew they’d be dead or have their pensions vested by the time that happened?
These people are all a decade+ older than the people we used to make fun of in the late Soviet burn-out years…
…I guess I’ll say for this for our immortal gargoyle class; there are a handful of people old enough to know how the machine works, without much to lose and able to proceed and make *some* deals (when awake and healthy enough?), bad/compromised as they are?
Pot-kettle-black & all criticism is a mirror or involves becoming the thing you claim to hate/be opposed to at some level, ironically or just flatly?
Sux for us, as her staffers will weekend-at-Bernie’s her until they can grab their lifelines or golden parachutes…
…she was no prize/Dixie-crat presiding over a very captive CA audience, anyway…
Look for more articles leaking from her staffers when it’s time to put her out to pasture or about how they ‘tried so hard to do the right thing & change the system from within’…sure…
At least the republicans are a real party and get some younger killers in there, even if they mostly are slobs and morons and have deeply unpopular agendas bouyed by our constitutional settlement…
…but the democrats don’t *really* want to govern/have a million excuses for why they won’t, so, business as usual / seems to be the ‘new normal?’
Green newbs with no real power that become time servers and hacks or total mummies in an iron lung Ginsberg, Biden, Pelosi & Feinstein style? What’s the avg. age there? 85? Already north of the actuarial tables by a few years even for those that don’t do physical work & are relatively privileged in society &/or lucky?
Even Ed Markey & Sanders, who at least seem cogent, vaguely the ‘less bad’ (of the choices) & basically healthy enough to be present are a million years old?
The incisive substance of your comments notwithstanding, you have a delightful writing style, Anonymous.
DeleteValid/interesting take. Thank you.
ReplyDelete