Honored 2 take oath from Justice Clarence Thomas. Ive long admired & deeply respect his judicial philosophy & historic Supreme Court service
— Mike Pence (@mike_pence) January 16, 2017
MLK day tweet. https://t.co/hrnHB9HjRu
— Schooley (@Rschooley) January 16, 2017
When it comes to the President-Asterisk’s administration, we’ll never be sure! The Washington Post‘s art critic reports “The controversy behind the painting that will hang at Trump’s inaugural luncheon”:
… Since Ronald Reagan’s second inauguration in 1985, an American painting has served as a backdrop during the inaugural luncheon, at which members of Congress play host to the newly installed president. When Donald Trump is made the 45th president of the United States on Jan. 20, George Caleb Bingham’s “The Verdict of the People” will be the chosen painting, hanging on a partition wall behind the ceremonial head table in the Capitol’s Statuary Hall.
The painting was finished in 1855 by an artist best known for his Mississippi River scenes, which burnished the rough-and-tumble and often violent West into a benign and mythological place, ready for investment, development and full participation in American political life.
“The Verdict of the People,” which shows a large crowd celebrating or mourning election results in a Missouri town, is part of a series of three large canvasses created in the 1850s, each taking up the theme of democratic self- governance… Despite the title, “The Verdict of the People,” and the seeming jubilation of many of the figures in the picture, Bingham was representing a despairing moment in the life of his state, and American politics.
“Bingham is a Whig Painter, using these images to depict a Democratic victory,” says Adam Arenson, associate professor of history at Manhattan College in New York, and an expert on Missouri history. As a Whig, Bingham was anti-slavery while the Democratic Party, at the time, was either proslavery, or complicit in status-quo acceptance of it. “The Verdict of the People” was painted just as Congress passed the disastrous Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854, which put a future of slavery in Kansas to a popular vote. Thugs from Missouri got in the fray, crossing the border to attack abolitionist settlers. One of the state’s senators, David Atchison, called on his supporters “to kill every Goddamned abolitionist” if necessary to secure Kansas as a slave state.
“Bingham is painting out of a great fear that popular sovereignty and the Kansas-Nebraska act will lead to an irreparable divide in the country,” says Arenson. “It represents a moment when democracy was unable to handle the conflict of the country.”…
And so Bingham’s painting is an almost ideal emblem for a president who came to power on a promise to “Make America Great Again.” Blunt seems to read this painting as a reassuring sign that American electoral politics have always been messy and fractious. But he chose an image that in fact depicts a (likely) proslavery candidate triumphing in the name of an America that denies not only full suffrage, but basic human and constitutional freedoms to its African American population.
The painting’s use at the inauguration also highlights a problem that opponents of the new president will face again and again: Is there method in what appears to be simply blundering cultural ignorance? Is there design in casual remarks and off-the-cuff observations that seem to be deliberately provocative? …
Before his 2009 inauguration, Obama spent MLK Day visiting with wounded troops and volunteering at a DC homeless shelter. Where is Trump? pic.twitter.com/ucF6yUh3II
— Matt McDermott (@mattmfm) January 16, 2017
Trump's version of reaching out to the community is sitting in his tower and making the community come to him.https://t.co/V6fSuqaQ14
— Schooley (@Rschooley) January 16, 2017
schrodingers_cat
All of the above.
wag
T minus how many days until we’re all fucked by Trump? I ready for his administration to be done already
O. Felix Culpa
Clarence Thomas’s “judicial philosophy”? I don’t know whether to laugh or cry.
amk
I get uncle tom. but, what’s the upside for MLK jr here?
NotMax
Can Thomas really stand and do things anymore without having Scalia’s arm up his butt to work him like a ventriloquist’s dummy?
Irresponsible not to speculate.
(The sound you’ll hear as Pence is sworn in will be Thurgood Marshall spinning at warp speed.)
Omnes Omnibus
The answer is yes.
JordanRules
Pence praising the ugly parts of our institutions doesn’t feel as weird as what orange booty mouth is doing, but it’s still foul and unworthy of our ideals.
Yarrow
We are so fucked.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@amk: according to Lawrence O”Donnell, 3rd is leading a push to get photos put on social security cards in response to voter ID laws
I suspect Roberts has delegated Sourpuss Alito to take over that duty.
JPL
@Yarrow: Yes we are.
Omnes Omnibus
@Yarrow: When I was is basic, a colonel whose office I had been sent to clean asked my what my next schooling was. I said OCS and he asked how long the course was. I told him and he said, “Hell, you can stand on your dick in corner for that long.”
SatanicPanic
@NotMax: Thomas is a crank but he has a distinct judicial philosophy, such as it is. I don’t like him either but I think it’s a bit much to suggest he didn’t get this way on his own.
amk
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
wrong man. wrong place. wrong time.
Ruckus
Clueless or Deliberately Evil.
With dense it’s both. He may be slow but what he does say or do is absolutely evil.
Omnes Omnibus
@Ruckus: Yep, he is slow, but he gets to evil eventually and inevitably.
Yarrow
@Omnes Omnibus: You can. If you survive. Take away the ACA and many will die. Cut us off from the intelligence sources our allies have and people will die. And then there are those pesky nuclear weapons.
Who knows what this upcoming administration will bring. Things like this catch my attention:
A “head-on confrontation with China sounds like something we don’t want.
WJS
Has there ever been a time in modern American history when so many unqualified, unlikable people were ever handed so much power?
When you line up Justice Thomas with the rest of them, the sheer lack of accomplishment in public life is stunning. Everyone makes a big deal out of Mattis, but would he really be on anyone’s short list for anything? This isn’t just the gang that couldn’t shoot straight–none of these people would be a part of a McCain, Romney, or Rubio administration. Instead, they are a cabal, a regime, and a farce.
GregB
Why is Thomas’ service historic? Has Pence bought the revisionist rightwing lie about Thomas being the first African-American on the SC?
If so, will he be paying to have Thurgood Marshall photoshopped out of pictures by one of his Russian handlers?
Suzanne
@Yarrow: I am still amazed that he’s in the rainbows-and-sparkle-ponies phase of telling us all the good stuff we’re going to have re: ACA “replacement”. Like, dude, at this point, there has to be a plan. I mean, I love free shit as much as the next girl, but I can do math, and healthcare is fundamentally a math problem.
Omnes Omnibus
@Yarrow: The point is that it will hurt but that the country will survive. I don’t mean to minimize the horrors that many will experience.
I was also trying to use black humor, but that doesn’t work with everyone.
Omnes Omnibus
@GregB:
First Uncle Tom Justice?
Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (Formerly Mumphrey, et al.)
Donald Trump is evidently so hard up for people to show up to his swearing-in that he’s made himself an infomercial begging people to come see it. On the bright side, I hear he’s found somebody to play music for him, so that’s taken care of, at least. The house band who play every Friday at the Holiday Inn in Paramus must be so thrilled to have gotten this gig.
Gin & Tonic
@Suzanne:
And in that (among other things) you differ from the PEOTUS.
Omnes Omnibus
@Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (Formerly Mumphrey, et al.): Not getting out of the boat.
SFAW
@WJS:
I thought he (and the others) had to commit an actual act of treason before being sentenced to a firing squad?
Or did you mean something else?
Miss Bianca
@Omnes Omnibus: You insult the name of Uncle Tom by the comparison. As Harriet Beecher Stowe wrote him, he was a dignified and upright man who chose to die under torture rather than betray his trust to fellow (female) runaway slaves. I don’t think Clarence Thomas could boast as much.
SFAW
@Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (Formerly Mumphrey, et al.):
Until the Deadbeat Shitgibbon stiffs them, of course. It’s not like he has $400 to piss away on stuff like that.
Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (Formerly Mumphrey, et al.)
@GregB:
Do people really say that Thomas is the first Black Supreme Court justice? For realz? I find that most hard to believe and not at all hard to believe, at the same time.
Omnes Omnibus
@SFAW: Not when the revolution comes. Of course, I still expect to be one of the first up against the wall when it comes. Leftists kill the liberals first.
SFAW
@Miss Bianca:
As one who has never read that book, I thank you for educating me. Of course, now I gotta add it to my “Read” list.
Omnes Omnibus
@Miss Bianca: I will confess to using the idiomatic, not literary, interpretation of the phrase.
SFAW
@Omnes Omnibus:
That may be, but I think you being a Cheesehead outweighs that. Not in a good way, unfortunately.
By the way, congrats on The Pack’s win. Glad it was the Cowboys what got beat.
Eric U.
the racists have been living in the shadows for so long they specialize in weird little symbolism like the painting. And I think Uday and Qusay are deep into that stuff, so they probably asked for suggestions.
Omnes Omnibus
@SFAW: The revolution won’t worry about state borders.
Thanks for the ‘grats. I went for one of my final superstitions at fieldgoal time. It may have worked.
Another Scott
@Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (Formerly Mumphrey, et al.): He was the first black SCOTUS justice appointed by a Republican. You know, the only legitimate Presidential party. Ergo, he’s the first black SCOTUS justice.
HTH.
:-/
He has a biography that is painful to read and it is even more painful to think about how he could end up the way he did having lived the life he did….
Cheers,
Scott.
Major Major Major Major
@Omnes Omnibus:
And then of course the revolution fails because nobody else knows how to drive.
cbear
Clarence Thomas, aside from being a major league asshole, is an intellectual and legal lightweight. His regressive, reductionist legal philosophy will be considered by future legal scholars to have had the weight of a pubic hair on Coke can.
Omnes Omnibus
@Another Scott: For a very successful man, he is still very bitter and he aims it in a weird direction.
SFAW
@Omnes Omnibus:
I’m almost tempted to ask about it, but I’m worried that it’s one of those Cole-esque, naked-floor-mopping things, and I really don’t need that image popping into my head …ah, shit, too late!
Yarrow
@Suzanne: Didn’t you hear? We’re going to get to see the plan in a few weeks! It’s almost ready! Uh huh.
@Omnes Omnibus:
I hope you’re right. So much is changing it’s hard for me to feel confident about that. Russia would like to see the US split up and the CalExit folks are getting plenty of funding from Putin. California is a massive economy so it’s not unrealistic to think about that.
Timurid
@Another Scott:
My cousin’s wingnut husband gave me a copy of that masterwork for Christmas one year. Good times.
Omnes Omnibus
@Major Major Major Major: Just call an Uber.
Major Major Major Major
@Omnes Omnibus: I think leftists claim to have boycotted Uber forever ago.
amk
@Another Scott:
he fershure hasn’t forgotten his childhood days.
Omnes Omnibus
@Yarrow: Let me ask you this: what do we do now? Give up? Or go on and resist? I recommend rereading Camus.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Suzanne: some interesting news on that front, from CNN
I figure Price represents Pence’s influence, and him being kept out of the planning suggests the limits of Pence’s influence. I wouldn’t go so far as to say I’m optimistic, but Trump doesn’t give a fuck about Ryan or anything that crowd wants. Making Ryan et al vote for something they don’t want would be a classic trump dominance play.
SFAW
@cbear:
Someone here — don’t recall who, but not one of the trolls — once told me that Thomas actually had a sharp legal mind, vis-a-vis SCOTUS cases. Not being a lawyer, I cannot dispute that in any effective manner. I was not convinced, but could also not refute it. Not even THUS!
Omnes Omnibus
@Major Major Major Major: Oh dear, we may be stuck.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Major Major Major Major: because RAHM! ! ! ! ?
Omnes Omnibus
@SFAW: He has a consistent legal philosophy. It is dipshitical, but consistent.
Another Scott
@Timurid: Ouch!
Seriously, just reading the biographical summary at the web page (in my earlier comment) is painful. In each little story we get to the point where we think, “Ah, the right choice is clear! Surely he’s going to make the right choice this time!!” And he doesn’t.
The story of him and Bolton kinda shocked me. I had a very conservative friend in early high school in Cobb Co, GA (he was an actual Bircher). We had interesting conversations about politics and lots of things, but when he gave me “None Call it Conspiracy” to read and I saw the bit about (very roughly) “… if you believe that is a coincidence, well then there have been no less than 9,147 coincidences since …” even my teenage self could see that it was stupid nonsense. It sounds like Clarence hit that “figuring out what I believe about politics” phase much, much too late and it stuck.
Neurologists would have a fascinating time taking his brain apart, I’ll bet.
:-/
Cheers,
Scott.
SFAW
@Omnes Omnibus:
That may be, but that wasn’t what was being propounded by the as-yet-unrecalled commenter. Pretty sure it wasn’t you, nor burns.
randy khan
@O. Felix Culpa:
I’m not remotely a fan, but Thomas does have a judicial philosophy, which he applies very consistently. It’s antediluvian in the extreme, but it is consistent. (In fact, as Scalia got more ideological over time, he and Thomas started to split a bit.) And, of course, none of this is to ignore his personal failings.
Omnes Omnibus
@SFAW: Dear god, I would never call him sharp.
cbear
@randy khan: ““A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines….”
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
Doesn’t anybody in the incoming Cheeto Benito regime know about the MLK day of service? Or do they just think that’s for the little people? Or are they doing theirs very quietly, as Matthew suggests prayer is appropriate?
randy khan
@SFAW:
Thomas isn’t stupid. He’s stubborn and would fit nicely on the Taney Court, but he’s not stupid.
All that said, he was manifestly unqualified to be nominated to the Supreme Court, even not considering Anita Thomas (and, lest we forget, the other women who didn’t get to testify). He wasn’t even really qualified for the D.C. Circuit, where he’d sat for something like a year before Bush I picked him.
Timurid
@Another Scott:
Some of the most incorrigible misanthropes are self made men. “I did it, so nobody in the history of the world had, has or will have an excuse.” My copy went to the used book store unread. Unopened, even. The 15 seconds it took me to skim the blurb on the back of the dust jacket… I would like those back.
Omnes Omnibus
@randy khan: He is outside of general legal philosophy.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Didn’t Bush put him on that court cause they figured Marshall was getting old and they wanted a “pro-life” black person with a law degree to replace him? I guess we should be glad Janice Rogers Brown wasn’t on their radar.
No One You Know
I’m pleased to report that Trumpify has done its job on the Book of Faces infomercial. As a result, I can imagine that my inaugural invite, had I chosen to apply, would have emitted itself from a Dusty Barrel of Fermented Pee-pee.
Another Scott
@randy khan: s /Anita Thomas / Anita Hill/
IIRC, he has written unanimous opinions for the SCOTUS, so, like you said, he’s not a stupid man.
Cheers,
Scott.
SFAW
@Omnes Omnibus:
Indeed. As I said above, tweren’t you I wuz talking about.
Which is not to say that I won’t reverse that statement, if the Pack wins SBLIII and you become annoying about it.
Timurid
@Another Scott:
Book smart, street stupid.
SFAW
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
I think a large part of his selection was an early application of Cleek’s Law.
ETA: And Bush et al. did not force Marshall out, his health did. It’s unfortunate that he couldn’t hold out for another couple of years, but then again, Bill Clinton was not much on the radar in 1991.
rikyrah
@Yarrow:
They have a billion people. We don’t. They could literally give a third of their population for war, and have 2/3 left.
We.do.not.want.war.with.China.
Yarrow
@Omnes Omnibus: I’m unclear why you are asking those questions. Resistance is required. I still think the future of the country is uncertain.
rikyrah
@cbear:
Unca Clarence is the very definition of slave catcher.
PIGL
@Omnes Omnibus: maybe not this time.
PIGL
@rikyrah: along with the large population they apparently have some very excellent anti-ship munitions. If they really do have the capacity to take out the carrier strikeforce from over the horizon… then no we really don’t want a war.
Darkrose
@Omnes Omnibus: Clarence Thomas hates black people, including and especially himself.
Ruckus
@Miss Bianca:
I’m also pretty sure if you asked CT about Uncle Tom, he’d get it wrong.
Shalimar
@NotMax: Clarence Thomas has disagreed with Scalia over the years as much as he has with any other conservative justice. Thomas isn’t one of the rare great justices, but he is as competent as most other choices at the time would have been. You don’t get considered for an appointment without meeting the basic standard for being a Justice, Harriet Miers possibly excepted.
The idea that Thomas is incapable of forming his own opinions is a mixture of his unwillingness to speak from the bench and blatant racism. It needs to die. Clarence Thomas is just as evil and horribly original in his own way as Scalia was.
aimai
@NotMax: Stop already. We’ve had many arguments about this here. CT is not Scalia’s puppet and never was. Its highly problematic to assert this.