Yes, I agree that the shorter video, for the primary reason that you can see a human face responding to Senator Whitehouse's words, is very powerful. I would love for every American to see those 9 minutes and, hopefully, grasp them the way you and I did, Dan.
I posted that shorter video specifically because you can see Ms. Barrett. You can see her gulping, looking horrified and feeling shame. Not for anything specific she has done but because what she sits through there is an explanation of how she is not there on merit. She is not there because she is a great legal scholar, she is not there because she is a wonderful mommy. She is not there because she is the best choice or the most qualified. She is there because wealthy business people PAID for her to be there. They paid secretly through massive donations into rotten scams like The Federalist Society to control the court. They literally handed their list of candidates to the Trump Administration and said "Here, these are the judges we want you to seat." and Trump took that list and announced it as his own.
A key thing that Senator Whitehouse explains is that 80 to nothing score were not cases involving abortion, gay rights, or the ACA...those are just show ponies, trotted out to distract the public. The people paying for the court do not care about abortion or gay rights...not one single iota. They do not care about your Christian beliefs, they care about money and power.
They probably do care about striking down the ACA because that involves money and viciously the part about the ACA they have the biggest problem with is the patient protections part of it. The parts that protect you if you have a preexisting condition (most mentioned), that eliminates lifetime and yearly dollar limits on your coverage so the insurance companies can't say "We've spent enough on you, now you can go die (or suffer or go broke trying to pay your medical bills).", that prevent employer retaliation, that hold insurance companies accountable for what they do and rate increases...they hate these things because they give regular people rights that will cost them money. That they can't go around. This is why the Trump administration is in court suing to strike down the ACA, they want to eliminate the patient protections and give control of people's healthcare back to bean counters that will shut it off when they want to, eliminate your rights to legal retaliation, and take all accountability away from employers/big business.
They care, as Senator Whitehouse states, about power and holding on to it. The 80 to zero set of SCOTUS decisions that the wealthy care about are the ones that do the 4 things Senator Whitehouse mentions. Keeping dark money in politics, diminishing the power of jury trials, weakening regulatory agencies (we knew this was a massive goal of the Trump administration from day one), and voter suppression through gerrymandering and voter suppression laws...in other words the few maintaining a firm grasp on political power.
All you need do is look at the money, the quarter of a billion that has purchased the court, and how it flowed in. You can see the front agencies as he shows us, the same small groups that do nothing but spend all of their time rigging our justice system, but the people paying for this are allowed to hide behind them, to create the illusion there are multiple agencies all with names that sound great...The Federalist Society, The Judicial Crisis Network, ha, the crisis being we can't let anybody onto a court that will rule against us remaining wealthy and in control.
This is who and what Mitch McConnell and Donald Trump are fighting for. Mitch McConnell is so blatantly in the bag and filthy that he no longer even bothers to try to hide it.
It's all so pathetic and shameful and how people in Kentucky or Texas or Ohio, or Florida can return absolute scum like McConnell, Cruz, Jordan, Rubio to their positions is just mindboggling. Lindsey Graham so openly lies now and has gone so far into just pulling down his own pants to show he will say absolutely anything and openly bullshit people that if he wins his reelection the people of South Carolina should feel nothing but shame and disgust for themselves. How can you vote for people like this? Donald Trump is the gold standard of liars but Lindsey does all he can to catch up with him.
The Supreme Court is supposed to be a sacred thing. The heart of justice and protecting the people of this country. What Senator Whitehouse laid bare for all to see is that the statue of the blind goddess of justice should have her fingers crossed on one hand and the other hand stretched out behind her back waiting to be slipped the payoff money. That's our Themis.
I hope that if people watch the 9 minute version it inspires them to watch the full 28 minute one. It is 28 minutes that openly and precisely details not just what a sham this hearing process is, because a lot of money was spent to give us this perverse sideshow, but exposes the utter rot in great detail that is eating away at our government and anything we could laughably call a democracy.
Whitehouse does give us hope though, as he appeals to Barrett to think about what he is explaining, in that he shows people still have the power to stop this. That these wealthy lowlifes fear things like a jury of regular people and our ability to vote. We still have these powers, these levers of change and justice available to us.
However, as Trump lawyers fan out across the country suing states to keep people's votes from being counted (an utter absurdity in itself that should cause Trump to get destroyed in this election) these last doorways to any sort of control and power we have are being shoved closed as we push to hold them open.
This is what Senator Whitehouse is making clear. Thank whatever deity you like that there are still men like him in our government that make the effort to put it all in front of us. To give us a chance to understand what our fight is and how we can win or lose it.
Yes, we need to expand the court, this is clear. We need to restore the court to be representative of the people and so that it exports justice for all...not the few with the fattest wallets.
