Men like Bill Barr, Mike Pompeo, Mike Pence, Brett “Boof” Kavanaugh, are obvious and proud partisans. Their every action is in service of predictably advancing a political agenda. By predictably I mean that you can forecast how they will respond, based on the desired political outcome. Trump wants to hold up a Bible in front of a church during peaceful protests? Bill Barr will justify the use of police violence to deprive that crowd of its First Amendment right peaceably to assemble, blame violent Antifa and antifa-like leftists (without a shred of proof found by the FBI) for trying to deny the president the opportunity to make himself look like a follower of Christ. Thankfully these men will be gone as soon as Trump is out of office. Not so for the almost two hundred carefully vetted right-wing partisans he has appointed to lifetime posts on the federal judiciary. Not so for Boof Kavanaugh, poisonous partisan.

Here, in a beautiful moment of false optimism, we have “non-partisan” Senator Susan Collins explaining her partisan vote for the most divisive and nakedly partisan Supreme Court nominee since Clarence Thomas. She expressed her “fervent hope” that the appointment of Judge Brett “Boof” Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court will “lessen the divisions in the Supreme Court so that we have fewer five-four decisions, so that public confidence in the judiciary and our highest court is restored.”

How did that fervent hopey changey thing work out for yuh, Susan?

Let’s have a look at the recent confidence-restoring partisan five-four decision on the forced Wisconsin election. Justice Boof Kavanaugh wrote the opinion ruling in favor of the emergency appeal by the Republican National Committee seeking to overturn two rulings extending by six days the deadline for submitting unreceived mail-in ballots in Wisconsin. First a little background detail on straight down the middle “balls and strikes umpire” Boof.

Boof’s mother, Martha Kavanaugh, a former judge supposedly passed on to her dear son her primary advice for judges:  use common sense– what smells right, what smells bad?   Who stands to gain by lying?   Who is more likely telling the truth?

Excellent advice, of course, although, if you look at her son’s decisions, he pretty much takes only one part of that advice, who stands to gain by lying? and applies it to his legal reasoning.   Then rules each time for the more powerful party, who stand to gain even more, by cleverly using legal technicalities to obscure the real issues. A much more respectable judicial method of getting the desired outcome than outright lying, we can all agree.

You want a short course in the crabbed, narrow legalism that makes that kind of reframed ruling possible, read his sickening 5-4 suck-it-cucks opinion overturning two federal courts and forcing Wisconsin voters to stand on long lines, during a raging plague, to vote in person, or not have their votes counted at all.   

You need only read a paragraph or two of his unappealable opinion, and his second to last paragraph, to get the full flavor of it. Then skip to  Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s clear, short, definitive dissent — it’s only 2-3 pages.   Only then will you see an actual statement of the facts, what is at stake in the case.

She’s 100% right, as right as the dissent was in Dred Scott, as right as the dissent often proves to be whenever short-term 5-4 partisan decisions are rendered. Kavanaugh, who maturely writes that the dissent is “quite wrong” is 100% wrong himself- not to mention that he ignores crucial facts in his “narrow”, counterfactual and idiotic ruling (though he claims, in a few words, toward the end of his legal “I know you are, but what am I?” to have given the issue of COVID-19 serious thought). No matter, he has his own and four other stout-hearted, fellow hardline corporatist votes and the dissent only four judges in total.  5-4, we win, suck it cucks!   

Which is, of course, the McConnell mantra for winners.

I’d urge you to read the Ginsburg dissent in that outrageous, partisan 5-4 Wisconsin election case, short and sweet and easy reading.

 Then think of how many more faithless, partisan zombie zealot extremists like Kavanaugh our zombie president has given lifetime zombie judgeships to.   Picture zombie McConnell making that facial expression, showing his great self-satisfaction, like a gassy zombie baby taking a greasy dump in its diaper, Mitch’s equivalent of a human smile, with the accompanying baby shit smell.  Brings tears to my eyes, seeing that look on the smug bastard’s face.

This is how they do it, how fascistic types always do it– a lie that makes people mad is ten times better than all the subtle nuances of the truth.  As every partisan knows.

Let us leave aside the irony of former Minneapolis police officer, Derek Chauvin, literally “taking a knee” on the neck of a handcuffed man, aping the posture taken by NFL players to protest that very practice —  deadly police violence against unarmed citizens.   Leave aside, also, the grotesque irony of the arrested cop being named Chauvin [1].    Leave aside the alarming fact that a federal anti-lynching law came to the floor of the Senate during a raging public debate over lynching, under the color of law, days after this alarming lynching under color of law, and was not passed.

Leave aside the fact that, almost one hundred years after the resurgent Ku Klux Klan reached its official peak membership at 2.4 million, and lynching of black “troublemakers” continued for decades afterwards unchecked by authorities, there is still no federal anti-lynching statute.   No wait, that last bit is what I want to write about.

FDR couldn’t sign the anti-lynching legislation that came to his desk eighty years ago.  Had to put it in a desk drawer, exercise the old pocket veto.   It would have enraged the Dixiecrats, those devout southern racists of FDR’s own party whose votes he needed for New Deal Legislation.   He simply couldn’t sign a law that would give the federal government the right to prosecute racists who lynched people in the former Confederacy.  His wife, Eleanor, was furious that her husband would not show the courage to sign the bill into law.

Lynching itself, the practice of hauling a black person out of his or her home, or vehicle or out of a jail cell, and making a spectacle of torturing and killing him/her, has gone largely out of practice, thankfully.   Oddly, the numbers of lynchings in the twentieth century roughly match the annual killings, by police, of unarmed black citizens, the former victims of most lynchings in this country, in recent years.

Is it fair to call the slow suffocation death of a handcuffed man pleading for his life a lynching?   I think so.    Is the answer “you’re lying when you say you can’t breathe because if you really couldn’t breathe you couldn’t fucking say you can’t breathe” an unmistakable sign of depraved indifference, a complete renunciation of a human’s absolute human right not to be choked to death by a police officer?   Again, the answer would seem to be yes.

Yet the call for a federal law to make such lynching a crime, a federal crime, prosecutable by federal authorities in every state (in the manner of Nixon’s Controlled Substance Act of 1970, the legal cornerstone of our current regime of Prohibition) was opposed as recently as the other day by lovers of liberty, like Kentucky’s Rand Paul.   You see, there are narrow grounds to oppose, on general principle, a law that is theoretically good but could be used to prosecute non-killers who had only the best of intentions when they selected a victim based purely on hatred of another group.

An asshole with a podium can always make an argument, it would appear.   There is always a narrowly focused, carping criticism to be made that invalidates the whole.    Just because you oppose a federal anti-lynching law doesn’t mean you support the right of a racist in Georgia, say, (a state with no hate crime laws) to act as he sees fit towards his social inferiors, without fear of some federal storm troopers swooping in to decide which liberties he may have, even if he hasn’t even caused the death of anybody.   Liberty, after all, means freedom and freedom is good.  Ask Rand Paul.  Here is the man in his own words.

[1]  from Wikipedia

Chauvinism is a form of extreme patriotism and nationalism and a belief in national superiority and glory. It can also be defined as “an irrational belief in the superiority or dominance of one’s own group or people”.^[1] Moreover, the chauvinist’s own people are seen as unique and special while the rest of the people are considered weak or inferior.^[1]

According to legend, French soldier Nicolas Chauvin was badly wounded in the Napoleonic Wars. He received a pension for his injuries but it was not enough to live on. After Napoleon abdicated, Chauvin was a fanatical Bonapartist despite the unpopularity of this view in Bourbon Restoration France. His single-minded blind devotion to his cause, despite neglect by his faction and harassment by its enemies, started the use of the term.^[2]

In this relentless shit-storm, there is so much of great portent that we miss. I just caught up with this maddening decision from a month or two back.

This detail, the Supreme Court’s cursory decision allowing Republlcans in Wisconsin to overrule the governor, and prudence, in ordering an immediate in-person election during a pandemic– provides a vivid example of how skilled lawyers become clever judges. These creatures have long fucked the people by framing large issues of justice and prudence as a strict, narrow question of law.

The privileged few, particularly those unappealable giants of the Supreme Court, often pretend to decide a highly partisan case only on the merits of the narrow question in front of them, surgically applying the exact letter of the law. The question of enforcing the rights of recently freed slaves, rights guaranteed by the Fourteenth Amendment? A narrow question of law nullifying those rights, which are, in fact, not even implicated in this case at bar.

Here’s fucking Trump appointee, and rabid long-time partisan, Boof Kavanaugh at work, read it and retch.   Here’s a small slice of Kavanuagh’s 5-4 decision, summarily overruling, the day before the election in dispute, the two lower federal courts:

The dissent is quite wrong on several points [1]. First, the dissent entirely disregards the critical point that the plaintiffs themselves did not ask for this additional relief in their preliminary injunction motions. Second, the dissent contends that this Court should not intervene at this late date. The Court would prefer not to do so, but when a lower court intervenes and alters the election rules so close to the election date, our precedents indicate that this Court, as appropriate, should correct that error…

Of course, ever supremely reasonable, Kavanaugh adds this in his second to last paragraph:

The Court’s decision on the narrow question before the Court should not be viewed as expressing an opinion on the broader question of whether to hold the election, or whether other reforms or modifications in election procedures in light of COVID–19 are appropriate. That point cannot be stressed enough.

That point cannot be stressed enough.

And “Boof” is, of course, merely a reference to flatulence, not to the practice of forcing a large quantity of alcohol into the anus through a tube for purposes of getting outrageously drunk.

Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg clearly sets out the issues Mr. Kavanaugh does not need to reach with his “narrow” reading:

The Court’s order requires absentee voters to postmark their ballots by election day, April 7—i.e., tomorrow—even if they did not receive their ballots by that date. That is a novel requirement. Recall that absentee ballots were originally due back to election officials on April 7, which the District Court extended to April 13. Neither of those deadlines carried a postmark-by requirement. While I do not doubt the good faith of my colleagues, the Court’s order, I fear, will result in massive disenfranchisement. A voter cannot deliver for postmarking a ballot she has not received. Yet tens of thousands of voters who timely requested ballots are unlikely to receive them by April 7, the Court’s postmark deadline. Rising concern about the COVID–19 pandemic has caused a late surge in absentee- 4 REPUBLICAN NATIONAL COMMITTEE v. DEMOCRATIC NATIONAL COMMITTEE GINSBURG, J., dissenting ballot requests. ___ F. Supp. 3d, at ___–___, 2020 WL 1638374, *4–*5.

The Court’s suggestion that the current situation is not “substantially different” from “an ordinary election” boggles the mind. Ante, at 3. Some 150,000 requests for absentee ballots have been processed since Thursday, state records indicate.2 The surge in absentee ballot requests has overwhelmed election officials, who face a huge backlog in sending ballots. ___ F. Supp. 3d, at ___, ___, ___–___, ___–___, 2020 WL 1638374, *1, *5, *9–*10, *17–*18. As of Sunday morning, 12,000 ballots reportedly had not yet been mailed out.3 It takes days for a mailed ballot to reach its recipient—the postal service recommends budgeting a week—even without accounting for pandemic induced mail delays. Id., at ___, 2020 WL 1638374, *5. It is therefore likely that ballots mailed in recent days will not reach voters by tomorrow; for ballots not yet mailed, late arrival is all but certain.

Ginsburg’s quite correct dissent, ends, after correcting several of Kavanaugh’s misleading statements:

The majority of this Court declares that this case presents a “narrow, technical question.” Ante, at 1. That is wrong. The question here is whether tens of thousands of Wisconsin citizens can vote safely in the midst of a pandemic. Under the District Court’s order, they would be able to do so. Even if they receive their absentee ballot in the days immediately following election day, they could return it. With the majority’s stay in place, that will not be possible. Either they will have to brave the polls, endangering their own and others’ safety. Or they will lose their right to vote, through no fault of their own. That is a matter of utmost importance—to the constitutional rights of Wisconsin’s citizens, the integrity of the State’s election process, and in this most extraordinary time, the health of the Nation. —————— 5Memorandum f:

“Boof” to be flatulent, defiantly and to nauseatingly stinking effect.

[1] The dissent begins, framing the issue in way Kavanaugh flatly dismisses as “quite wrong” in overturning the decisions of the two lower courrts:

JUSTICE GINSBURG, with whom JUSTICE BREYER, JUSTICE SOTOMAYOR, and JUSTICE KAGAN join, dissenting.

The District Court, acting in view of the dramatically evolving COVID–19 pandemic, entered a preliminary injunction to safeguard the availability of absentee voting in Wisconsin’s spring election. This Court now intervenes at the eleventh hour to prevent voters who have timely requested absentee ballots from casting their votes. I would not disturb the District Court’s disposition, which the Seventh Circuit allowed to stand.

We know that logic loses against rage, blind faith, hatred, a loaded gun, a sword, a bullwhip, a lynch mob and so forth.    Still, let us apply a small bit of basic logic to the claim that highly organized left-wing extremists have any motive to turn peaceful protests against an unbroken pattern of legalized lynchings into headline- grabbing, senseless violence.  

We apply what Martha Kavanaugh, the Supreme Court justice’s mother, a judge, famously taught her son:  use common sense.  Does it smell right or does it smell bad?   Who stands to gain?   Who has the motive to break the law or lie?

The nation witnesses a slow suffocation murder by police over the course of almost nine agonizing minutes.   Witness videos show a police officer kneeling on the neck of a handcuffed man who is on the ground.  The New York Times might write that the “arrested man died after being placed in police restraint,” but few who watch that video would use that convoluted passive voice to describe the cold-blooded killing we can all watch for ourselves.  A cop, acting with depraved indifference (at best), had his knee on a handcuffed man’s neck (his neck!) for almost three minutes after the man was unconscious.   With the active assistance of three police colleagues.

It took about a week, and massive nationwide protests during a pandemic, but eventually all four of the officers who killed the handcuffed man were arrested and charged in his murder.   We note that all four killer cops were immediately fired by their police department.   Not suspended with pay or placed on administrative leave pending hearings, fired outright.   Very unusual, unprecedented, maybe.

There has been tremendous mass outrage, rightfully so, and protests in all fifty states as well as in cities around the world.    In some places there has been looting, stores ransacked and set on fire, police cars and police stations set ablaze.   This is beyond dispute.  The city I live in has an 8 pm curfew because of looting.    The mayhem is a terrible thing, and it also detracts from the power of the peaceful, legal protests using protected expression to demand an end to unaccountable deadly violence by police against unarmed civilians.   

Now comes the Martha Kavanaugh test of common sense and basic logic:

Who stands to gain by shifting the conversation from the righteous demand that police be held accountable when they kill an unarmed person (usually black) to the question of rioting, lawlessness, violent anarchy and direct, tangible, terrifying threats to our civilized American way of life?

Attorney General Barr had an immediate and forceful answer: lawless, organized left-wing extremists and violent anarchist agitators who, in a concerted national strategy, crossed state lines to incite violence in protest after protest turned riot.   These dangerous criminals, he promised, will be prosecuted and jailed under anti-terrorism laws.   Trump tweeted about designating Antifa as a terrorist organization for purposes of using all the tools of counter-terrorism to wipe them out.

source

Who stands to gain by turning peaceful mass protests into violent events that require police violence to contain?

Antifa (short for anti-fascist), an umbrella term for groups without any central leadership, is modeled on the armed groups who fought Nazi thugs and other violent fascist gangs in the streets of nations faced with an imminent fascist future.   Public violence is a well-known tactic of the right, and of fascists in particular.   Fascism glorifies masculine strength and the imposition of will by violence.   Fascists like nothing more than bloodying the faces of their hated enemies.   Picture political demonstrations in any pre-fascist nation, you see blood.

Whenever the left held a rally in Weimar Germany, it would be broken up by squads of violent Nazis, breaking heads.   Without men on the left, willing to slug it out with Nazis, there is only Nazi violence and the rule of terror.   Antifa groups attended the white supremacist rally in Charlottesville a few years back, were among the “very fine people on both sides” with the alt-klan, the alt-Nazis and the various other alt-right white nationalist groups.   A group of angry young white men surrounded the outspoken professor Cornell West at one point.   West was rescued by a group of Antifa fighters who intervened to get him out of danger.   He expresses gratitude to them to this day.

People who come to peaceful mass protests armed with bats, wearing helmets, and masks, with molotov cocktails, may have varying motives.  It’s impossible to tell members of one group from the other without catching them and investigating who they are.   

But strictly as a matter of logic — why would a group whose aim is to counter fascism, particularly in this perilous moment in human history when the USA is ruled by a rigidly authoritarian president who admires and emulates strongmen like that murderous clown in the Philippines, like his lover in North Korea, his close authoritarian ally in Brazil  — conspire to turn widespread peaceful protests against authoritarian unaccountability into riots?   

The only purpose of turning a peaceful assembly into a looting mob is to make them look like dangerous criminals on the news and give the authorities every excuse to break the heads of black people, and whites of conscience, who are assembling and marching with them.  Tear gas, flash-bangs, rubber bullets, beatings with truncheons, are the least these wild animals deserve.

The simple answer is that Antifa and “left-wing extremists” and “violent anarchists” have no motive whatsoever to incite violence at these peaceful demonstrations.  It would be counter to their mission of fighting fascism.  The “plan” to create a massive law enforcement emergency requiring the national guard and all the weapons of counter-insurgency would be an absurd one, advancing no left-wing, anarchist or antifascist purpose.    Fomenting violence and creating a public perception of peaceful protesters as enraged, out-of-control lawbreakers, can only have the opposite effect, as you realize thinking about it for even half a minute.

The only people with a motive to encourage crowds to smash store windows, throw incendiary devices and overturn police cars are the other “very fine people” —  the hardcore, gun-toting core of our mad, pathetic president’s hellbent white nationalist base.   

We also note here that al-Qaeida means “the base” in Arabic —

القاعدة

Not for nuttin’.