Category Archives: History and Politics

Supreme Court confirmation in the Age of Koch

As appalling as the behavior of the Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee, Cruz, Cotton, Hawley, Blackburn, et al was as they attacked and tried to provoke the supremely qualified Ketanji Brown Jackson, having no substantive criticsm they focused on their populist talking points, Critical Race Theory, children’s books about racism, violent crime, particularly sexual crime, rape and pedophilia, with a few snide asides about defending Nazis and the questions about transsexuals, the failure of Democrats on the committee to call out this harassment was equally despicable.

The final party-line vote (three nays from the coatroom from three of the GOP’s biggest assholes) and the Republican en masse walkout during applause for Ketanji Brown Jackson when her confirmation was announced could not have been more like a choreographed Klan rally if the party of Trump had actually worn pointy white hoods while pulling their racist, misogynistic stunts. Such is politics in the age of Koch/Trump, good people on both sides, on both sides.

Compare the confirmation numbers of Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Trump’s second appointee Brett “Boof” Kavanaugh, a man who demonstrated his lack of judicial temperament when he snarled, hissed, snorted and whined about a secret cabal of powerful left-wing dark money-fueled hitmen and liars determined to destroy his life as revenge for his decades of work as a right wing partisan. Recall that the Trump Administration and Don McGahn made sure to classify thousands of pages of Kavanagh’s partisan writings that would have brought the Federalist Society star’s judicial impartiality into serious question. McGahn also personally took care of the 4,000 FBI tips that came in during a rigorous six day FBI investigation into allegations arising from Kavanaugh’s prep school days.

Ginsburg was more forthright in discussing her views on topics about which she had previously written. The United States Senate confirmed her by a 96–3 vote on August 3, 1993. She received her commission on August 5, 1993 and took her judicial oath on August 10, 1993.

Boof, 50-48, lifetime tenure, second straight party-line Supreme Court justice vote after McConnell abolished the filibuster for Supreme Court nominees. Yeah, it was a bipartisan confirmation, I know, pile of shit and living monument to lucrative corruption, Joe Manchin, voted with Trump’s team. In fact, you could say it was Manchin’s vote that put Kavanaugh on the Supreme Court.

After a contentious confirmation process that became focused on allegations of sexual assault, the final vote was far less dramatic, with every senator previously indicating how he or she would vote. The final two hold outs, Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) and Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.V.), both decided to support Kavanaugh.

https://www.politico.com/interactives/2018/brett-kavanaugh-senate-confirmation-vote-count/

USA! USA!!! etc.

More from Truth Social

In fact, Trump said he deserved more credit for drawing such a large crowd to the Ellipse — and that he pressed to march on the Capitol with his supporters but was stopped by his security detail. “Secret Service said I couldn’t go. I would have gone there in a minute,” he said.

source below

Sure they stopped him, just like when he tried to leave the hospital, infectious with a life threatening case of Covid, against all medical advice, to drive around D.C. in a sealed car for a strongman photo op, forcibly infecting his Secret Service detail.

Also, you know. that’s why Stop the Steal event organizers never applied for a permit to march — expensive, plus, tons of extra DC cops along the route! Secret Service never would have allowed that!

You know, just like the Speaker of the House is responsible for single handedly stopping the mob the defeated president unleashed on the Capitol. What can the president do if a mob of his most diehard supporters is intent on “legitimate political discourse” that includes possible lynching? That’s the Speaker’s, the Mayor of DC’s problem!

Then, a flash of the former POTUS’s political genius, on the subject of Mo Brooks’s claim that Trump asked him to rescind Biden’s election victory:

“I didn’t ask him to do it. He’s in no position to do it. I certainly didn’t ask him to do it. But I believe when you see massive election fraud, I can’t imagine that somebody who won the election based on fraud, that something doesn’t happen? How has it not happened? If you are a bank robber, or you’re a jewelry store robber, and you go into Tiffany’s and you steal their diamonds and get caught, you have to give the diamonds back,” he said.

And he’s still a big international player!

Earlier this week, Trump claimed, Viktor Orban, the prime minister of Hungary, called him to thank him for endorsing him and to credit Trump with the win. “After I endorsed him, he went up like a rocket ship,” Trump claimed of his unusual endorsement.

The best people, the best people!

https://wapo.st/3rchay1

Trump surprisingly doubles down

This from an interview with the Washington Post, under the headline: Trump deflects blame for Jan. 6 silence, says he wanted to march to Capitol

By Josh Dawsey
April 07 at 7:19 AM ET
PALM BEACH, Fla. — Former president Donald Trump voiced regret Wednesday over not marching to the U.S. Capitol the day his supporters stormed the building, and he defended his long silence during the attack by claiming House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and others were responsible for ending the deadly violence.
“I thought it was a shame, and I kept asking why isn’t she doing something about it? Why isn’t Nancy Pelosi doing something about it? And the mayor of D.C. also. The mayor of D.C. and Nancy Pelosi are in charge,” Trump said of the Jan. 6, 2021, riot in a 45-minute interview with The Washington Post. “I hated seeing it. I hated seeing it. And I said, ‘It’s got to be taken care of,’ and I assumed they were taking care of it.”

Ten dimensional chess, yo, terrifying to even contemplate the next move…

Heather knocks one out of the park

Not that facts and coherent argument matter that much to the truly faithful, here’s Heather Cox Richardson:

The Republicans explicitly backed former president Trump and insisted that the investigation of the January 6 insurrection was simply a way to try to keep Trump off the ballot in 2024 and to distract from scandals potentially involving President Joe Biden’s son Hunter (who holds no government office).

link below

The question the mass media is now regularly asking is why did nobody on the left pay attention to Rudy Giuliani’s and Trump’s repeated allegations about dirty Hunter Biden (the ones Zelensky refused to announce an investigation into before Trump’s first impeachment). Is it simply because Hunter Biden (still under investigation by the DOJ for possible tax evasion) never had a government job, none of the sleazy deals he made are alleged to have happened while his father was in office, and the wild allegations were launched amidst a barrage of unhinged lunatic lies, many ongoing though long ago debunked, from the same people, could that be why? Just asking.

But, particularly if you are in the middle of an ever more revealed criminal conspiracy to overturn legitimate election results in the 2020 presidential election, you have to have a strong point to counter-attack so Jeff Bezos and the Grey Lady will both run articles about how hypocritical Democrats are not talking about the theoretically not impossible Hunter Biden laptop scandal right now instead of completing the work of the belatedly formed the January 6th Select Committee (witch hunt!), which should have been strangled in its cradle, after a proper birth and baptism in Christ, of course.

Heather nails some big essential truths, as she so often does. Highly reccommended.

https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/april-6-2022?r=e1b04&s=r&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=email

Fervent rage at 2020 election and the vaccine!

Like feelings themselves, the religious faith of the faithful Is not subject to debate. It is a question of faith and if you have true faith, so-called facts take a backseat to your deeply held belief. Hucksters, scammers and con men may often abuse the trust of people of deep faith, but that is not a concern to the faithful.

The New York Times, with a chilling description of the religious fervor animating the faith-based army of Trump believers. Heaven help us.

Rituals of Christian worship have become embedded in conservative rallies, as praise music and prayer blend with political anger over vaccines and the 2020 election.

The Growing Religious Fervor in the American Right: ‘This Is a Jesus Movement’

A lawyer from the Heritage Foundation defends the poor Thomases

The PBS moderator points out that this is not the first time that Ginni Thomas’s political activism has raised these questions of influence, and mentions a recent Affordable Care Act challenge. He doesn’t mention Bush v Gore or Trump’s Muslim ban case, but the point is made.

Then it’s time for the conservative defense of the victimized Thomases. At 2:44 Mr. Malcolm begins his master class in fancy legal footwork to dazzle an opponent and sway a jury. He doesn’t think Clarence needs to recuse just because his wife Ginni is an attorney and conservative activist consulting for multiple organizations with occasional business before the court (during Bush v Gore she worked for Bush). Malcolm flashes legal gold, worth every penny they pay him.

“Yes, look, I completely disagree with that. Ginni Thomas is not a lawyer, she is not a litigant, she does not work for any organization that is a party to any lawsuit. There’s no reason to believe that she is in any legal jeopardy, whatsoever.”

That’s why the Heritage Foundation pays him the big bucks!

Whataboutism 101

If it’s good enough for the American Enterprise Institute website, why not Jeff Bezos’s Washington Post? Justice Biden must resign!

After all, one Supreme Court Justice has a wife who is a highly paid, prominent right wing extremist activist/consultant with clients’ cases regularly before the court and the other has a son who is a sleazy scumbag! Fair is fair.

from the AEI website

The Guardian reported that the AEI received $1.6 million in funding from ExxonMobil, and further notes that former ExxonMobil CEO Lee R. Raymond is the vice-chairman of AEI’s board of trustees.

two second google search result

Party of the lynch mob

Most people know by now that the so-called Pizzagate “scandal”, involving an imagined Hillary Clinton-run child sex trafficking ring in a DC pizza place, was bullshit. Hence the rise of Q, to prove that even though unfounded, it is a fact that a secret cabal of powerful extreme left-wing cannibal pedophiles (get it, moron, they’re SECRET, duh!) is actively opposing the greatest US president in history, who Jesus personally inserted as president to fight just such an evil antichrist cabal.

It makes as much sense as many other things, pulled directly out of a fevered hater’s ass. Let not “truth” be the enemy of effectively weaponized hatred! Hallelujah!

Great piece in yesterday’s Washington Post, by Radley Balko, on the mainstreaming of the insane QAnon conspiracy theory by the GOP. These amoral, madly ambitious fucks (lawmakers like insurrection abetters Hawley and Lyin’ Ted) know exactly what they’re doing. Here’s hoping there is a hell, these bastards definitely deserve VIP treatment down there in the eternally hot place.

This paragraph by Mr. Balko caught my eye, there are links to details on each of these outrageous stories in his opinion piece, linked below.

Of course sexual abuse of children is real, and it inflicts devastating, lifelong damage. But it is our very disgust at these crimes that allows opportunists to seize them for unrelated political ends. The result isn’t just unfair attacks against politicians or judicial nominees. It often means ruined lives. Parents have been accused of abuse and even prosecuted for innocuous photos of their young children. Children have been convicted and labeled as sex offenders for texting one another sexual explicit images of themselves. In Virginia, one prosecutor even asked a court’s permission to photograph a minor boy’s erect penis to prove the boy had sent an explicit photo to an underage girl.

You know, just asking the judge to let you photograph the kid’s erection, as you do when you hate fucking pedophiles, even the underaged ones.

https://wapo.st/3j74CTQ

Profiles in Courage, GOP style 2022

Here they are, three of them, lions of integrity.

All three vote in the solid 50 vote Trump Senate caucus, almost always, specifically to make sure every one of Biden’s initiatives and attempted reforms fails, but here they take the brave stand of announcing their yea vote for a supremely qualified candidate several of their naysaying colleagues had previously voted for in her Appeals Court confirmation, in those cooperative days before MAGA and the plot to lynch democracy.

Regular profiles in goddamned courage.

On the bright side, the bought and paid for Democratic filibuster duo can fuck off on this vote.

Democrats need to pick up four or five seats in the Senate, in spite of corporate media and its relentless both- sidesism. Our democracy depends on it.