Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

“Jesus paying for the sins of everyone is an insult to those who paid for their own sins.”

T R E 4 5 O N

Republican speaker of the house Mike Johnson is the bland and smiling face of evil.

In my day, never was longer.

But frankly mr. cole, I’ll be happier when you get back to telling us to go fuck ourselves.

One of our two political parties is a cult whose leader admires Vladimir Putin.

Sadly, media malpractice has become standard practice.

Bark louder, little dog.

Polls are now a reliable indicator of what corporate Republicans want us to think.

This country desperately needs a functioning fourth estate.

Weird. Rome has an American Pope and America has a Russian President.

So it was an October Surprise A Day, like an Advent calendar but for crime.

Jesus, Mary, & Joseph how is that election even close?

Beware of advice from anyone for whom Democrats are “they” and not “we.”

Democracy is not a spectator sport.

Second rate reporter says what?

There are consequences to being an arrogant, sullen prick.

The “burn-it-down” people are good with that until they become part of the kindling.

Good lord, these people are nuts.

If you voted for Trump, you don’t get to speak about ethics, morals, or rule of law.

We can show the world that autocracy can be defeated.

“In the future, this lab will be a museum. do not touch it.”

The republican caucus is covering themselves with something, and it is not glory.

Every decision we make has lots of baggage with it, known or unknown.

You are here: Home / Open Threads / The Balls on These People

The Balls on These People

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It’s just astounding:

Justice Clarence Thomas defended the independence of the Supreme Court on Thursday and warned against “destroying our institutions because they don’t give us what we want, when we want it.”

Thomas, the longest serving justice, acknowledged that the high court has its flaws, comparing it to a “car with three wheels” that somehow still works. But he said the justices are not ruling based on “personal preferences” and suggested that the nation’s leaders should not “allow others to manipulate our institutions when we don’t get the outcome that we like.”

The justice’s remarks came during a lecture at the University of Notre Dame in which he talked about traveling by RV in the mountains of North Carolina and Tennessee with his wife, Ginni. Thomas reflected on his childhood in the segregated South and his religious faith. He also alluded several times to the political polarization in the United States.

“We’ve gotten to the point where we’re really good at finding something that separates us,” Thomas told the crowd of more than 800 students and faculty gathered at the school’s performing arts center.

Aside from Thomas’s long list of cruel, precedent breaking, and often times completely made up votes as a Supreme Court Justice, ole Clarence is married, as the article noted, to a woman named Ginni. I’ll let you do your own google searches.

I hate these people.

Reader Interactions

254Comments

  2. 2.

    Four Seasons Total Landscaping mistermix

    Between Thomas’ and Barrett’s recent remarks, I think they get it that everyone thinks they’re hacks.  I guess that’s the good news?

  3. 3.

    The Moar You Know

    So, Barrett and Thomas answering a question that hadn’t been asked.  That’s interesting

    ETA:  I agree with another poster in a previous thread who says that this obvious PR effort is patronizing as fuck, the underlying message being that if anyone was smart enough to understand “originalism” they couldn’t possibly object to any of the horrific rulings and opinions these clods will make for the next forty years.

    I understand it just fine, originalism is making shit up and pulling it out of your ass, the most original of all human practices.

  4. 4.

    Gin & Tonic

    “Originalism” my ass. I’d like Thomas to explain in what “originalist” interpretation a black man is sitting on the Supreme Court or is married to a white woman.

  6. 6.

    Baud

    I agree with Thomas.  That’s why I call on Republicans to join with Democrats in increasing the size of the court.

    For unity’s sake.

  10. 10.

    Adam L Silverman

    What is most interesting in all of this dissembling from Thomas and Coney Barrett and others telling us not to believe our lying eyes, is that the real goal here is NOT Roe. Nor is it Griswold. Those are intermediary objectives. The real goal is to repeal Loving and Brown and, ultimately, to either rule that the Reconstruction amendments are unconstitutional based on how they were passed through Congress or to completely hollow them out the rest of the way. The goal is now, and always has been, to remove anything that provides 1) a constitutional right to privacy and 2) a constitutional right to citizenship for just being born in the US and all the rights, privileges, and duties that result from birthright citizenship. And if they are unable to simply make these illegal outright everywhere in the US, they will settle for reestablishing that the states have the constitutional responsibility and power to deal with these issues, so we have a patchwork creating two different United States. The ones that protect these rights and the ones that don’t. The goal has been and always will be to return to the status quo before the Civil War.

  11. 11.

    Gin & Tonic

    I’m likely to keep harping on this bullshit, but bullshit it indeed is.

    Apple tells the Navalny team the reason it removed their Smart Voting app is because the Navalny orgs have been declared extremist by the government. Truly outrageous compliance with authoritarian bullshit. t.co/6G5tNc8wom
    — Ilya Lozovsky (@ichbinilya) September 17, 2021

  12. 12.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @Betty Cracker:

    Ha! Me too!

    My RWNJ flat-earther Covid-denying anti-vaxxer anti-masker Trump-loving brother and his significant whatever-she-is are trying to give me a hard time because I’m not going to our great-niece’s wedding in Phoenix in October. They sent an email earlier today simply frothing about how excited they are that they’ve booked their flight, car, and hotel. I responded in two words: “Have fun.” Apparently that was interpreted as hostile.

  16. 16.

    Tony Gerace

    I’ve never understood Clarence Thomas (nor have I tried very much to do so). One of the most reactionary Supreme Court justices in history is a black man who grew up in poverty under Jim Crow segregation. It makes no goddamn sense to me.

  17. 17.

    Kay

    I don’t even know what they think they’re protecting anymore.
    Can he describe the values he ascribes to that institution and give us specific examples of when the instiution has lived up to the description?
    It’s sloppy careless thinking to continue to use “institution” as a kind of proxy for a set of values. Perhaps we could go one step deeper and prove the theory. The thing should speak for itself, but since it apparently isn’t perhaps some of the defenders could stop relying on sentimentality and narrative and get real clear on what values this instuition currently embodies. I’ll need examples.

  18. 18.

    Another Scott

    But Thomas was in the minority for years and years and often few joined his dissent.  Clearly that shows that he hasn’t gotten everything he wanted so obviously they’re not ruling based on his personal preferences. Whatever is the problem??!1

    Repost – BallsandStrikes.org:

    “We are not in a ‘crisis’ when it comes to the Supreme Court,” wrote legal commentator David Lat on June 24, rolling his eyes at the purported urgency of enacting “radical” reforms to the federal judiciary. “The Court is not ‘out of control,’ ‘out of whack,’ a ‘threat to democracy,’ or ‘dangerously out of step with the people.’”

    Each of these characterizations proved unequivocally wrong. On July 1, the term’s final day, the six Republican appointees took a jurisprudential buzzsaw to what remains of the Voting Rights Act in Brnovich v. Democratic National Committee. By making future challenges to voter suppression laws almost impossible to prove, Brnovich greenlights a tidal wave of anti-democratic bills winding its way through state houses even as you read this sentence. That legislation is championed, of course, by Republicans who have gleefully embraced the Big Lie about the 2020 election and are thrilled to have the chance to meddle in the next one. The opinion in Brnovich is a bizarre, convoluted mess that more or less ignores the law it claims to interpret. In dissent, Justice Elena Kagan castigated the majority opinion as a “law-free zone” laced with occasional “random statutory words” for effect. Her outrage is righteous and satisfying; because it earned only three votes, it is also basically irrelevant.

    Mere minutes later, the Court released another 6-3 opinion in Americans for Prosperity Foundation v. Bonta, this time striking down a California law requiring that charities disclose the identities of their largest benefactors. The new standard embraced by the—surprise!—six-conservative majority will make challenges to campaign finance disclosure laws much easier to win, enabling even more of the kajillionaire political spending blessed by the Court a decade ago in Citizens United to take place without the public finding out about it.

    That’s just hysterical ranting, amirite? The 3rd Amendment has held strong for 200+ years, so everything is fine…

    Grrr… Fight for 15!!

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  19. 19.

    Jerzy Russian

    @SiubhanDuinne:

    My RWNJ flat-earther Covid-denying anti-vaxxer anti-masker Trump-loving brother

    All of these things are not really up for debate, but one of these things is not like the others.

  24. 24.

    matt the somewhat reasonable

    Well, it’s a lifetime appointment. I guess there are alternatives to adding new seats if it’s really a problem.

  27. 27.

    Kay

    They honestly just make it worse when they do these editorials. The justice is scolding the public and the politicians the public elect. In what idiot world is that not political?
    This thing doesn’t even hang together at all. None of it makes any sense.
    Do they not get that branching out from writing political rants in opinions and instead delivering these screeds is going in the wrong direction? It’s this weird kind of hyper-educated stupidity where they have turned a relatively simple concept into utter nonsense.
    It doesn’t hang together and hold up to any kind of rational analysis because what he and Barrett are saying isn’t true. No one believes it because it isn’t true. They can give speeches, write books, do whatever and it still won’t be true.

  28. 28.

    Spanky

    @Adam L Silverman: 

    The real goal is to repeal Loving and Brown and, ultimately, to either rule that the Reconstruction amendments are unconstitutional based on how they were passed through Congress or to completely hollow them out the rest of the way.

    Do not discount the possibility that Clarence Thomas may just be too chickenshit to file for divorce. The rest is pure IGMFY.

  29. 29.

    Cacti

    The fact that not one, but two right wing SCOTUS hacks have felt the need to issue a public denial in the same week about their hackery suggests that they’re worried.

    They know they overreached.

  31. 31.

    Betty Cracker

    @Adam L Silverman: Someone else made a similar argument here not too long ago, i.e., that the repeal of Roe is actually a step toward the ultimate goal of striking Brown v Board of Ed., etc. It often seems the right has a one-track mind, but I think they’re perfectly capable of being misogynists, xenophobes, homophobes, white supremacists, etc., all at the same time.

  32. 32.

    Bill Arnold

    @Four Seasons Total Landscaping mistermix:

    Between Thomas’ and Barrett’s recent remarks, I think they get it that everyone thinks they’re hacks. I guess that’s the good news?

    Yes, but they and the rest of the SCOTUS RW hacks. (giving Roberts a pass for now because he’s at least concerned about his legacy) need 100X times as many people telling them that they are partisan hacks.
    Strangers in restaurants should be regularly telling them that they are partisan hacks, loudly for all around to hear.
    These partisan hacks should not feel like they have a right to be insulated from the consequences of their partisan hackery.

  35. 35.

    Suzanne

    @Betty Cracker:

    It often seems the right has a one-track mind, but I think they’re perfectly capable of being misogynists, xenophobes, homophobes, white supremacists, etc., all at the same time. 

    This is exactly right. They miss the days when mediocre white dudes were successful and financially secure, with a wife at home cleaning their house and making their meals…. and all they had to do for this birthright was roll out of bed. Now women have jobs, gays have spouses, immigrants have jobs (and work harder than they do), and everyone realizes that white dudes are nothing special.

  36. 36.

    New Deal democrat

    @Adam L Silverman:

    Don’t forget, they also want to reinstate the Lochner doctrine and throw out all economic regulation.

    When they overrule all the right to privacy cases, they are going to have to do some major hand waving to except the case that started it all, Pierce vs. Society of Sisters, which upheld the right of parents to send their children to religious schools.

  38. 38.

    Kay

    @Brantl:

    At the end of the day, for judges, the opinions should speak for themselves. If the Right wing court’s opinions need background explanations and a kind of narrative defense outside the orders they issue then they’ve already lost the legitimacy they need. The work has to stand on its own. If it doesn’t it isn’t the fault of anyone outside those who produced it.

    We understood the Texas order and really that’s all we need to understand. You’re under no obligation to divine the Federalist Society legal theory behind the order. He can do these societal criticisms all he wants. He had a chance to make his case. That’s the opinion and the order. Really we gave him much more than he gave us- we didn’t even get a hearing on the merits.

  40. 40.

    dm

    I’ve always thought that “originalism” was self-contradictory.

    The authors of the Constitution deliberately did not keep minutes of their debates because, like making legislation and sausage, you don’t want to observe such things.

    So the original intent of the authors of the Constitution was that we not take their original intent into account.

  41. 41.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Cameron: It is very accurate. They’re not particularly subtle about it. And while a lot does go on behind closed doors at FedSoc and other conservative political and religious movement events, they haven’t been exceedingly discreet.

    It is important to remember that the initial attempts to capture and remake the courts begins with Falwell, Schaefer Sr, and other evangelicals trying to come up with a way to get around, if not roll back, Brown. There issue in the late 60s/early 70s wasn’t abortion. They didn’t care about it at all. But they didn’t have the numbers and they certainly didn’t have the influence. The one group of Christians in the US who did were the Catholics. Then in the early 70s, a then obscure, traditionalist Catholic physician named C. Everett Koop entered the discussion. Koop explained to them that Catholics were opposed to abortion. Falwell and his fellow travelers also noted that a lot of ethnic Catholics up north and in the midwest weren’t thrilled with busing for schools to achieve desegregation. So they pivoted to abortion. Up until the revolt at the Southern Baptist Convention annual meeting in 1976, the SBC had been pro Roe V Wade. Not because they liked or didn’t like abortion, but because it conformed to their belief that these types of issues should be made by the individual in consultation with their specific minister in line with Luther’s teaching that each person was a priest unto themselves. After the SBC revolt and takeover by hard liners, which mirrored what happened with the NRA and several other political, social, and religious organizations over a two year period between 1976 and 1978, the SBC lurched hard to the right and officially opposed abortion and called for Roe to be overturned. But the real goal was to reinstate segregated schooling, separate but equal, and Jim Crow. The latter were always the real objective. But to get there, to dismantle the jurisprudence and keep everyone organized to remake the courts to do so, it was necessary to go all in against abortion because that kept the traditionalist Catholics mobilized and involved. And that has been the real play ever since. Sure the Kochs would like to still see the New Deal overturned, so that’s been worked into the strategic objectives too, but the ultimate and original goal has always been Loving, Brown, the Reconstruction Amendments, and gutting the 4th Amendment, which actually delineates a right of privacy in the language in use at the time.

    Let me explain that last point. No one in the 1790s used privacy the way we do today. Privacy meant to be naked and was used as a loose descriptor for anything done when in a state of undress. It is why the 4th amendment uses the language of being “to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects…”. This actually delineates a right of what we would today call privacy. But our originalist textualists are not just bad political and legal historians, they’re bad linguistic historians as well. They have just hand waved away that the English spoken and written and understood by the Founders and the Framers is not the same language we speak today. They keep looking for the original, plain meaning of a text that they do not understand because they don’t understand that the while the language may appear to be the same that we use today, it isn’t. That there’s 240 years of linguistic evolution that has to be accounted for.

    You see this in the use of freedom. The Founders and Framers weren’t insterested in freedom. They were interested in liberty. Specifically ordered liberty, where rights and privileges were bounded and balanced by duties, obligations, and responsibilities. And they were interested in both individual and civic liberty. Some of the amendments are specifically about individual liberty. Some, like the 2nd, are actually about civic liberty. But they were all about ordered liberty and not freedom. The current conservative political and religious movements in the US, going back to the mid 20th century, have first purposefully misconstrued this for their own purposes so that we’ve now reached the point where a plurality of Americans don’t know or understand this at all. And that includes the 6 FedSoc members that make up the majority of the Supreme Court. Just like it included Scalia before he died.

  42. 42.

    Jeffro

    Yes, what is up with all this partisanship and divisiveness, say Amy Coney Barrett, Clarence Thomas, and Mitch McConnell.

    They’re trying to get us to self-blind ourselves, eyerolling this hard…

  44. 44.

    Kay

    Well, today I’m glad my daughter and my grandaughter live in NY. I wanted them closer than that’s not why they moved there but I feel better that they’re there and still have a full set of rights.

  45. 45.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @dmsilev:

    You know, back when I was actually wasting breath trying to talk sense into him about his flat-Earth beliefs, I used to invite him to get a window seat on a plane and simply look at the curvature of the Earth he could see with his own eyes. The FES folks have some ridiculous riposte to that argument that I never bothered to memorise.

  48. 48.

    Jeffro

     

    @Cacti: they most certainly do.  Kinda panicky.

    I hope we make it past the mid-terms and NFLTG Biden lowers the boom on all of this stuff.  Pleeeeeeeeeease, Uncle Joe?

  49. 49.

    Ruckus

    @Adam L Silverman:

    The goal has been and always will be to return to the status quo before the Civil War.

    QFT

    Progress, what fucking progress. We don’t need no stinking progress. We can live by candlelight and horse drawn plows, we can have slaves and whips and hangings for those that don’t toe the line of white is right.

    Did I get the sentiment about right? They are conservatives and want what they perceive to be justice and reality. They think aging means to go back in time a couple centuries. What does Thomas think he’d be if that happens, still a supreme court justice, or one of those hanging from a lamp post? I wonder if all the advancements made possible by people of color or women would be torn from reality and not used because of color or women? Remember it was a  woman who solved the concept of mRNA vaccines. Of course they don’t believe in them either.

    It amazes me that actual progress of humanity has made the world better and regression would screw them just like everyone else and they have no idea.

  51. 51.

    Ohio Mom

    Intellectually, I believe in evil but I still have a lot of trouble accepting its existence on an emotional level. I’m left questioning, what is the matter with theses people? How does my privacy (as person they don’t know at all) or recognizing a black person’s rights as a citizen affect them?

    Then I go back to reminding myself they are motivated by a force more powerful than I am capable of comprehending.

  52. 52.

    Bill Arnold

    @Mai Naem mobile:

    I’m going to be straight with my like…16 followers. As a military urologist if scrotal swelling was a vaccine side effect I would be the first to know. No one is more attentive to their testicles than men in the military.
    — John McCauley (@erinokp99) September 15, 2021

    (His twitter account has a lot more followers now :-)

  53. 53.

    SiubhanDuinne

    Since it’s an open thread…

    Jane Powell, RIP

    She was in many ways my introduction to grand opera. When I was maybe five years old, my father gave me an abridged album of Hansel and Gretel, starring Jane Powell as Gretel and the fabulous Basil Rathbone* as both narrator and Witch. My mom said I used to walk around the house all the time reciting (in a supersonically high-pitched sing-song voice) “This is THE story of Hansel AND Gretel, as set TO music by Engelbert HUMperdinck. Now whenEVER a story is SET to MUsic, it is called an OPera…”

    Of course I loved Powell’s movies. Seven Brides for Seven Brothers remains one of the great Hollywood musicals, and one of my own faves.

    All that said, if anyone had asked me, I would have guessed she had died years ago. She was 92.

    *When I was a student at Northwestern 1961-62, Basil Rathbone was a guest speaker at some event I was involved in. For reasons lost in the mists of time, I ended up squiring him around campus and at some point reminded him of that H&G recording. He seemed astonished (but pleased, I think) that anyone would even remember it by then.

  54. 54.

    Cmorenc

    @Adam L Silverman:

    Nope, the current SCOTUS wont likely even overrule Roe or Griswold or Oberkfeld (sp?) or Loving.  Instead, they are more likely to aggressively follow the tactic used in Shelby v Alabama to construct so many limiting qualifications and procedural obstacles that the rights are effectively just hollowed-out shells, nominally still standing but inaccessible and uninhabitable in any meaningful sense.

  55. 55.

    Kay

    I am curious though- because none of these people are dumb. Can Barrett really tell herself that it was helpful to the concept of judicial independence to star in what was a campaign ad for Donald Trump during her rushed, bizarre, wholly political installation ceremony?

    Or is she just mad that they lost even with her endorsement? She didn’t have the votes.

  56. 56.

    hueyplong

    If you believe that the SCt is full of hacks (we do), you’d believe that they’re very much connected to the Federalist Society and the GOP in general.  Which means you’d have reason to suspect that they’ve had access to and are being motivated by the GOPer politicians’ review of political polling.  And that they’re a bit concerned about what that polling says.

    So yes, it’s possible that their public utterances are based on a perception that they’ve overreached.

    Of course, the actual application of that word (overreach) by the media is strictly limited to Democrats.  No GOPer has ever “overreached.”  They have at times felt “uncomfortably concerned” by the desires of “the base,” but they have never overreached.  Nor, by media definition, could they have.

  57. 57.

    Jeffro

    Looks like ‘replacement theory’ is quickly becoming GQP orthodoxy and a justification for anti-democratic measures.  Even legal immigration is some sort of Democratic scam to bring millions here and ‘breed more D voters, therefore, we must get rid of democracy itself:

    It’s no accident that people like Patrick support onerous voter suppression efforts and that people like Stefanik and Carlson validate the lie that Donald Trump’s defeat wasn’t democratically legitimate and handwave away the true insurrectionist intent of Jan. 6.

    That’s because such bad actors routinely employ hallucinatory depictions of Apocalyptic threats supposedly posed to their cagey version of the “nation” by liberals and Democrats, which are then used to justify the most maximally anti-democratic tactics. The left is out to replace and destroy you, so anything goes in response, even subverting our democratic order if necessary.

  58. 58.

    dmsilev

    @SiubhanDuinne: There’s a great documentary on Netflix, “Behind the Curve”, about flat-earth types and the lengths they’ll go to try to “prove” their theories. My absolute favorite moment in the film is when a bunch of them get together and buy a $20,000 laser-ring gyroscope, a device sensitive enough to respond to the Earth’s spinning on its axis. They say “well, if the Earth is a spinning sphere the gyroscope will precess 15 degrees every hour”, they fire it up and sure enough, 15 degrees per hour is what it does, and then they just stand around saying “no, that can’t be right”.

  60. 60.

    Ruckus

    @SiubhanDuinne:

    Apparently that was interpreted as hostile.

    It wasn’t?

    They wouldn’t have asked me that if I’d said it. They would know it was. I’ve always taken someone getting hostile to something I’m not going/going to do, because of their interpretation, as being hostile.

  61. 61.

    Another Scott

    @Cmorenc: +1

    Overtly gutting these things take away their talismans to rile up their supporters.  “Roe is gone, babies are safe forever!  Relax now and have some pudding!!” – said no GQPer, ever.

    The fight will never be over on their side, so it must never be over on our side.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  63. 63.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Spanky: He’s counting on the state he lives in not making it illegal once he and four other justices overturn the ruling. He’ll adjust his RV travel accordingly after that.

  65. 65.

    hueyplong

    @Percysowner:  “Completely agree. They are looking to take us back to the 1860s and cement a win for the Confederacy.”

    If I could tweak it, I’d say they are looking to take us back to the 1850s, when the country was moving heaven and earth to appease the slaveholding states (so as to prevent secession).  About mid-1857, only with a more robust enforcement of the Fugitive Slave Act.

  66. 66.

    Adam L Silverman

    @New Deal democrat: I haven’t forgotten, but that’s a separate track that comes in via the Kochs. As for Pierce V Society of Sisters, it will get reimagined as a 1st Amendment religious freedom right for Christians as part of their ever growing understanding of the 1st amendment and how it protects Christians rights to do whatever they want as long as they claim they’re doing it because their Christians and how it protects them from receiving any consequences by others – Christians, non-Christians, Federal, state, and/or local government, the private sector – because they are Christians.

  68. 68.

    Shalimar

    @SiubhanDuinne: If money isn’t a problem, he could get on a plane today and fly around the world with only a few stops along the way. Wherever he thinks the end of the earth is, he could look down at that longitude and see personally that he’s wrong.

  69. 69.

    Kay

    @hueyplong:

    So yes, it’s possible that their public utterances are based on a perception that they’ve overreached

    They only care about the institutional credibility to the extent that the institution lends them personal credibility. If the thing is less valuable their seat is less valuable. And that’s true- it’s a real fear they should have. But it’s a selfish interest, not a public interest.

  71. 71.

    Kent

    @Adam L Silverman: I actually don’t think the real goal is Roe, Griswald, Loving, or Brown.  Those are all mostly related to culture war distractions to keep the white base entertained.

    I think the REAL objective of the conservative movement (or at least its deep pocketed corporate and billionaire backers) is repeal of the Commerce Clause and a roll-back of the ability of the Federal government to tax and regulate.   They’ve already mostly neutered the IRS.  But also have their sights on the EPA, Commerce, Interior, Labor, etc.  The real goal isn’t to roll back to a pre-Brown land of Jim Crow.  But rather, to an 1890s pre-progressive era Robber Baron time period when the rich could just John Galt their way to power and glory without government interference.

  72. 72.

    waratah

    George Will on Andrea’s show MSNBC told her that all it will take is to have a super hero to step up and save the Republicans. That is my interpretation of his words. I was going to change the channel but decided to see what he had to say

  73. 73.

    taumaturgo

    It will be interesting to say to least to hear Justice Sotomayor’s public remarks regarding the current state of the court. Her dissents have been insightful and scathing clearly pointing to her undeniable qualifications to sit as a Chief Justice.

  75. 75.

    Kay

    @Kent:

    Agree. I think business interests will come to really regret backing them too, because it’s an archaic and unworkable theory of a modern economy. It means decline.

  77. 77.

    Kay

    @taumaturgo:

    I really connect with her. I don’t know her obviously and I don’t know anything about her so it isn’t personal history or narrative – I don’t like the “SCOTUS as celebrities” and I think it has not been a good idea- I understand her words and her thinking. I’ve just come to really value her work.

  80. 80.

    West of the Rockies

    This is hardly an original thought, but I believe Thomas has never been able to live down the disgrace and shame and resentment he must feel inside for having been so exposed during the Anita Hill hearings.  I think that is why he is such a dour man.

  82. 82.

    sherparick

    @Four Seasons Total Landscaping mistermix: ​  No, I think it is pedal to the metal gaslighting because of the reaction to the abortion decision and their anti-public health decisions granting “religious” exemptions from the duty not to spread contagious diseases to other people. Also, they are about to issue some astounding decisions over next term or two that will attempt to blow up every progressive piece of legislation enacted since 1900, and they want people to believe they were just “following the law and Constitution” & their personal fondness for John Galt’s speech in Atlas Shrugged had nothing to do with it.​
    ​
    ​

  86. 86.

    Cacti

    @Jeffro: Yep.  It’s a full blown fascist movement.

    The next step will be overt calls for violence against Democrats as mainstream Republican policy.

  89. 89.

    zhena gogolia

    @SiubhanDuinne: Ooh, lucky you to meet Basil Rathbone! One of my favorite actors. The closest I got was hearing his son speak at a screening of one of the Sherlock Holmes movies at Yale.

  90. 90.

    Subsole

    @Kay: The last five years have left a rather indelible divot in my faith in America’s commitment to rational analysis.

    I imagine they are banking on that, to the extent they are banking on anything.

  93. 93.

    Omnes Omnibus

    Two things. First, a hit dog hollers. The accusations of bias are hitting home. They know what they’ve done. Second, courts are supposed to speak through their opinions and order (as Kay has noted). The fact the they are out defending themselves shows that they know that their official work cannot stand on its own merits. Third*, the Supreme Court has not always been a place that defends the rights of ordinary people. It started to do so during FDR’s presidency. It peaked under the Warren Court and had been regressing bit by bit since then. Most of us grew up under an anomalous Court.

    *Two points, three points, whatever.

  97. 97.

    Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)

    Am I the only the person who found this little tidbit interesting?

    The justice’s remarks came during a lecture at the University of Notre Dame in which he talked about traveling by RV in the mountains of North Carolina and Tennessee with his wife, Ginni.

    I wonder if he and Ginni (and the other conservative justices) are going to continue doing these little things they’ve taken for granted or will they have to basically live in a bubble like the POTUS has for decades, given wider public knowledge/publicity of their recent awful, authoritarian decisions

  98. 98.

    Subsole

    @Adam L Silverman: Question: So the socialists kind of have it backwards? The money guys were always piggybacking the bigots rather than vice versa?

    Regardless, that really is a concise and excellent summary, Adam.

    Thank you.

  102. 102.

    Subsole

     

     

    @Ruckus: It makes perfect sense if you just remember this:

    Conservatives don’t want to live under conservatism.

    They want to force everyone else to.

  103. 103.

    mali muso

    @Another Scott: Planning to stop by my local registrar’s office today to early vote in person. Did my due diligence on the local candidates that aren’t listed by party so I don’t accidentally vote for loonie school board reps or county supervisors. Ready to go vote blue all the way up and down the ticket!

  104. 104.

    sdhays

    @Kay: At least Thomas wrote an editorial. Barret decided to make these remarks at Mitch McConnell’s slush fund with McConnell sitting on the stage nearby. The subtext was pretty clearly, “We’re going to do whatever the fuck we want, and you can’t do anything about it.”

  106. 106.

    Another Scott

    @Baud: Dunno.  I didn’t watch it.  twitter.com/TerryMcAuliffe has clips.

    Last night, Glenn Youngkin showed Virginia who he is once again: a Trump wannabe who will send our commonwealth right into a ditch.

    pic.twitter.com/K8Z0Vcn0mt

    — Terry McAuliffe (@TerryMcAuliffe) September 17, 2021

    There are several Youngkin yard signs in my neighborhood, but I’m not worried. Terry Mac is working hard and has lots of motivated Democrats behind him. He knows how to campaign in Virginia, and Youngkin is a pathologically bad fit for the state right now.

    HTH.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  108. 108.

    Kent

    @Subsole: The money guys rely on the bigots for votes.  The bigots are the only ones willing to be fooled in mass.  That is all there is to the relationship.

  109. 109.

    scav

    Their greatest legal minds keep insisting on larger and larger public platforms that they are innocent, entirely innocent of any cookie interaction — all the time with crumbs on their chins and melted chips right in the folds of their flapping lips.

    I’m having a hard time believing they even fool themselves, however much they will themselves to.

  112. 112.

    Subsole

    @Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): They are thinking that by the time they do, they will have the means to crush it.

    Part of the point to creating two parallel Americas as Adam laid out is to make it harder to coordinate/rally resistance. It just gets filed as not my problem, life in the blue states rolls on, and the people in Conservistan get crushed.

    Hell, didn’t we have a big thread not too long ago about cutting red states off and just leaving them to rot? THAT is what they are counting on. Right there.

  113. 113.

    Puddinhead

    @Adam L Silverman: there’s also a naked political scam aspect to this. Get a politically-connected preacher to lie to his flock over decades about something, making them have an easily disproved sincerely held belief. Since it’s sincerely held, it can’t be questioned, but it can be used to weaken any laws advantageous to their political opponents. Scalia used this gambit in the Hobby Lobby case IIRC. Now it’s precedent.

  114. 114.

    Another Scott

    @Baud:

    BlueVirginia:

    From the McAuliffe for Governor campaign:

    KEY MOMENT: Glenn Youngkin Won’t Require COVID-19 Vaccines For Nurses Treating Immunocompromised Cancer Patients

    MCLEAN, VA – In last night’s first general election debate, Glenn Youngkin said he won’t require COVID-19 vaccines for nurses treating immunocompromised cancer patients. Youngkin’s appalling refusal to mandate COVID-19 vaccines for those working with the Commonwealth’s most vulnerable patients is reckless and would harm Virginians.

    […]

    HTH.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  119. 119.

    germy

    More news from upstate NY

    More teacher suspensions today- this time in Argyle. A district employee tells us 9 teachers in this rural district refused COVID vaccines/testing. The superintendent says they’re just complying with NYS health guidelines.

    — Stella Porter (@stellaportertv) September 17, 2021

  125. 125.

    trollhattan

    @SiubhanDuinne: ​
     Phoenix temps may drift below 100 by then so as a time of year to go, excelsior! As a place to visit, meh, wedding or no wedding. Avoiding hours-long travel in a metal tube during the time of Covid? Priceless.

  126. 126.

    catfishncod

    @Kent: 

    You and Adam are both sort of right. The far-right movement consists of two movements with two overlapping, but distinct, goals. Albionica, the desired end-state of bigots like Tucker Carlson, requires the undoing of Brown and all that it supports. (Loving would be too overt to directly touch; they’ll use, ahem, extralegal means on that.) But the operation is bankrolled and guided by the billionaires of Plutorica, whose white whale is West Coast Hotel and whose goal is restoration of Lochner.

    The price of Plutorican goals was to install enough fanatics to enable Albionic court decisions. There are those who understand that goal (Roberts, Kavanaugh, probably Gorsuch) and those who don’t (Barrett, Thomas, and probably Alito), and Roberts’ eternal headache comes from being unable to keep a lid on Albionic zealotry long enough to quietly shape a Plutorican jurisprudence.

  128. 128.

    lowtechcyclist

    The thing about originalism is that, even if it’s a totally honest and internally consistent judicial philosophy, it’s not like there’s a right and a wrong judicial philosophy from a strictly legal, judicial standpoint.  You can’t prove that originalism is right and the more mainstream judicial approach is wrong, or vice versa.

    So these are just different judicial philosophies. And they produce different political outcomes.  A legal scholar or a Constitutional lawyer or a judge gets to choose which philosophy they prefer.  Obviously, that’s a very political choice.

    So there’s no reason for anyone to somehow treat judges or Justices as being somehow impartial and above the fray.  Their judicial philosophy is going to dictate a somewhat limited range of outcomes to their judicial decisions.

    Perhaps within that range, a judge or Justice can be fairly impartial.  But their philosophy has already determined the range within which the outcomes of their decisions will lie.

    And the rest of us have every right to care about what those outcomes are, to see the philosophies behind them as political choices, and regard those philosophies as good or bad, as desirable or abhorrent, depending on our own political preferences.

    The legal establishment has tried to pull the wool over our eyes on this, to tell us that the main thing is that Justice Soandso is an intellectually honest judge, and that’s all that should matter.  That’s bullshit.  Being honest in reasoning from one set of axioms can produce vastly different outcomes than reasoning from another set of axioms, and we should damn well care what those axioms and likely outcomes are when judges get nominated.

    In particular, they should not somehow be off limits for consideration when the Senate gives its advice and consent.  They should be very much at issue.

  130. 130.

    Ruckus

    @Suzanne:

    As a white dude can I say that a lot of white dudes have been rolling along with their whiteness as their entire character for their entire lives. And think that is absolutely normal. It isn’t what you do, it’s what you look like. A very crappy outlook on life. You are 100% correct, whiteness is nothing special. They had to try to make it special because they have nothing else.

  131. 131.

    dnfree

    Clarence Thomas should be too embarrassed to even mention divisiveness, since that’s his wife’s apparent sole purpose in life.

  133. 133.

    Ruckus

    @Kent:

    This is certainly one of their goals.

    Money is the end all, be all to conservatives. They don’t care how they get it, as long as they have more of it than anyone else. And that the government can’t take any of their ill gotten gains away.

  134. 134.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): It is preventable. I see nothing to indicate that anyone that has the capability and ability to prevent it is really willing to do what it would take to prevent it. Those that are really willing to do what it takes to prevent it have neither the power or the influence to prevent it. Which means that while it is preventable, it most likely will not be.

  135. 135.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Cacti: There are already overt calls for violence against both Democrats and other Republicans now. It’s why Congressman Gonzalez (R-OH) is retiring from Congress and politics.

  136. 136.

    RaflW

    @Four Seasons Total Landscaping mistermix: Alas I’d add Breyer to the mix of people doing the hacking. I know he has his latest book to sell, but he’s singing from the same tattered, risible songbook. “Oh, we’re not partisan, hahaha.” And “Lalalala I can’t see or hear what is happening in the real world.” It’s pathetic.

  137. 137.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Omnes Omnibus: And to pivot off of this:

    Most of us grew up under an anomalous Court.

    This is also the case with the news media, Congress, most state governments, and most municipal governments. Most of us grew up in an anomalous US. One that didn’t really exist before the late 60s/early 70s and that is both regressing and being forced back as a reaction to this anomalous fifty years to what it was before that.

  138. 138.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Subsole: To a certain extent. But a lot of the money guys funding this stuff are also, themselves, bigots. They’ve just got the manners to hide it for the most part. And when they’re not racial bigots, they’re certainly religious ones.

  139. 139.

    oldgold

    The 14th Amendment, which is the target, did more than amend the Constitution. It restated it.  Bringing the Constitution in line with the promise of the Declaration of Independence.

  140. 140.

    Chris Johnson

    I think it’s a form of signaling.

    The SC proceeds to do right wing shit, on purpose, and tries to cover it up and leave plausible deniability.

    Democrats say, “Stop doing that, because you’re the Supreme Court and are supposed to be impartial and judicial!”

    Meanwhile, Trump fanatics say, “Do WAY MORE of that, because you’re the Supreme Court and exist to crush our enemies!”

    So it’s signaling, with McConnell right there to underscore it. The message is, ‘remember how we’re supposed to have our thumb on the scale SUBTLY? You bastards, don’t flip the table we’re on, we cannot get away with being nakedly partisan past a certain point!’

    Trump people don’t care. This is the Supreme Court trying to stay in control, trying to remain an institution rather than become openly functionaries for a disgraced ex-autocrat. The message is ‘we can’t give you ALL you want’. And Trump people don’t care. They’re greedy, they want it all, and they don’t care about the Supreme Court’s interests or legitimacy.

  141. 141.

    JoyceH

    @mali muso: ​
     

    Planning to stop by my local registrar’s office today to early vote in person. Did my due diligence on the local candidates that aren’t listed by party so I don’t accidentally vote for loonie school board reps or county supervisors. Ready to go vote blue all the way up and down the ticket!

    That’s my problem, since the local positions aren’t listed by party. I missed the county Dem meeting this month, and have no idea even if my supervisor is up this time, and who the loons are. I need to find someone local to ask. And who to vote for on the Tri-County Soil and Water Conservation District. (Trick question – they’re always lucky if they get even one nominee per slot.)

  145. 145.

    taumaturgo

    @Kay:  I really connect with her. I don’t know her obviously and I don’t know anything about her so it isn’t personal history or narrative

    Check out her memoirs, My Beloved World.

  146. 146.

    Kelly

    @Adam L Silverman: Most of us grew up in an anomalous US.

    My wife and I have been talking about the anomalous US since the 2016 election. We’ve been sheltered from the deterioration living in Oregon where liberals have been steadily gaining political power. Events since 2016 burst our pleasant bubble. Probably a lot of that in blue states. Probably a lot folks had the bubble burst much earlier. Prominent Oregon Democrats have tended to try to get along with our increasingly combative Republicans. The recently published redistricting maps are an encouraging departure from get along to just make the best Democratic map. Hoping this is the new trend.

    As always your writing clears up this topic and makes me realize of course that’s what’s going on. Thanks to you and the rest of the jackals clear things up for me.

  147. 147.

    Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)

    @Adam L Silverman:

    So what are you saying, then?

    That all the money that’s been donated recently to groups like Four Directions might as well have set on fire? That Stacey Abrams, Nancy Pelosi, Joe Biden, Merrick Garland, etc are just dummies that don’t know what they’re doing or are spineless?

    That we’re fucked no matter what we do? I refuse to believe that

  148. 148.

    Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)

    @JoyceH:

    Where I live, the county GOP has a school board candidate’s yard signs set up in front of their HQ who’s running for a seat on my school district’s board.

    So, I know not to vote for him lol

  150. 150.

    Geminid

    @Kay:

     

    @taumaturgo:  Sotomayor’s opinions may stand out because she has a better base of knowledge than most justices. They tend acquire academic and Justice Department policy job experience, then serve on a federal appellate court. Sotomayor did not work in the ivory towers. She got her experience in years of trial practice first as a federal prosecutor, then as a federal District Court judge. I think Sotomayor has her feet on the ground in a way the others do not.

  151. 151.

    Jeffro

    @Omnes Omnibus:Could you pick Thomas out of a crowd?

    (sorry, I know this wasn’t addressed to me, just had to chime in): I was once in a Kennedy Center elevator with Thomas a few years back.  Did not realize it was him until he stepped out and another elevator rider said, “wow…that was Justice Thomas…”

    At which point, my kids go, “who?”  =)

  152. 152.

    cain

    @Ruckus: hey, how long before they just want to be part of Britain again and just give up this here United States or maybe build a kingdom with Trump as king.

  155. 155.

    cain

    @cwmoss:

    But if he gets his wish, won’t he not get his? I mean he’s literally working to dismantle his own freedom? If you can’t marry across race, his marriage would be illegal. Hell, maybe such law would be the same thing – enforcement left to citizens not the govt. Imagine being molested because your wife or husband is a different race or just a different skin tone.

  156. 156.

    Edmund Dantes

    @Adam L Silverman: something tells me they want to take a crack at Reynolds Vs Sims when the right case comes along.

    make gerrymandering even worse by allowing true cracking and packing by having districts not have to have roughly the same number of people in them.

  157. 157.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Kelly: I wish I didn’t have to clear things up. I’ve been having the same conversation with my mom. That this is how things have always been. That the last fifty years are a blip and probably won’t last much longer. And that this isn’t something new, rather it is now so explicit because it is feeding the 34/7/365 news media and so unrestrained in its targeting that she no longer has the ability or privilege to not see it.

  158. 158.

    cain

    @Kelly: Yes, it’s time for the sake of democracy to work towards making sure that we are dominant. The GOP have shown that they don’t believe in anything other than wealth and bigotry. They are traitors of the highest order and should be called to heel.

    We need to take back our institutions and then set them on the Kochs and the Murdochs. We had a war on drugs, but this drug is a lot more powerful than street drugs.

  159. 159.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @Adam L Silverman: At the same time, the conditions for most people have been shitty for most of human history.  The fact that we have achieved these anomalous results is proof that shitty conditions are not inevitable and we don’t need to accept them.  We have shown that we can do better, so we should do better.

    I am sorry if people now feel like I am driving you away from the blog again.

  161. 161.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): No, that’s not what I’m saying. What I’m saying is that there’s a lot Joe Biden can do, but he doesn’t control the Senate. Hell, Chuck Schumer barely controls the Senate. There’s a lot Schumer and Pelosi can do, but that requires finding ways to move Manchin and Sinema. Garland is a good, decent man. But he’s also an institutionalist. The DOJ and FBI have been purposefully broken over the course of the Reagan, Bush 41, Bush 43, and especially the Trump administrations. An institutionalist is the wrong person to fix the problems. Trying to reimpose norms to a broken institution isn’t going to deal with what is going on. And until or unless a minimum of three Supreme Court vacancies open up while the Democrats have control of the Senate, there is nothing Biden, Schumer, Pelosi, and/or Garland can do about the Supreme Court because there aren’t the votes in the Senate to expand it. Nor are there the votes in the Senate to add two new states. Or to fix the malapportionment problem that was created in the early 20th century to further preserve rural power.

    As for Stacey Abrams, she’s wonderful. But she’s one person with one organization. Is there a Stacey Abrams in every state that needs a Stacey Abrams? No. Wisconsin has Ben Wikler who is doing yeoman’s work. I’m not sure NC has anyone equivalent. Florida certainly doesn’t. Everyone pays attention to Beto in Texas, but the people I know in Texas think he’s a show pony not a work horse and you’re wasting time, money, and opportunity if you send him and his organization money.

    Again, those that have the power, are unable for a variety of reasons to prevent this. Those that don’t have the power, but want to prevent it, have no ability to do so.

    Provided we’re talking about working within the systems we have now: elections, legislation, and executive action. If we’re not talking about that, well, let’s just say those options are not something that the vast majority of Americans who would want to see positive change have the capacity and capability to undertake.

  162. 162.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Omnes Omnibus: You’re not driving me anywhere. Though the next time I have to go to Wisconsin, you may now be on the hook for picking me up at the airport.//

    No arguments from me. Things do not have to be the norm. Or, perhaps, we have the ability to establish a new and better norm. But that takes work that I’m not sure will be done.

  164. 164.

    raven

    FDA vaccine advisers reject Pfizer’s booster request

    Vaccine advisers to the US Food and Drug Administration rejected Pfizer’s application to add a third, booster dose of its coronavirus vaccine to the two-dose regimen.
    Members of the FDA’s Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee rejected the application by a vote of 16 to 2. But they reserved the right to amend the question being asked in a second round of voting.

  165. 165.

    Shakti

    @Chris Johnson: Maybe?

    But both of those justices spoke to an audience pre-screened to march lockstep with them.  Notre Dame is a Catholic university and Covid Barratry’s alma mater. And do we even need to go into the type of people who’d attend a Mitch McConnell Center lecture (founded 1991?)

    It’s not like these types of talks have been well covered in the past and I can’t find pre- talk information on IG or social media for them. On the center page, there’s no item for Covid Barratry’s appearance. And the WaPo story on Thomas mentions three students who protested but were promptly removed.

     

    I’m guessing these are fundraisers for well connected assholes so they can gloat.

  167. 167.

    raven

    @germy: I think that’s for everyone and they’ll vote on 60 and up next.

     

    The voting question: Do the safety and effectiveness data from clinical trial C4591001 support approval of a COMIRNATY booster dose administered at least six months after completion of the primary series for use in individuals 16 years of age and older?

  168. 168.

    mali muso

    @JoyceH: ​
      I downloaded the list of candidates from the Virginia BOE website and then drilled down to see who was running in my area. Then a quick google search on each name gave me enough information to know who was who. Ie, the school board candidate who is an “independent” and wants to “take back our schools” is a big NO. Sadly enough, regardless of party affiliation or lack thereof, every single candidate was a white guy.

  169. 169.

    germy

    nytimes.com/live/2021/09/17/world/covid-delta-variant-vaccine

    Dr. Sharon Alroy-Preis, Israel’s head of public health services said the summer’s rise in the number of hospitalized patients who had been fully vaccinated with Pfizer’s vaccine was “scary.” She said 60 percent of severely or critically ill patients and 45 percent of those who died during what she called the fourth surge had received two injections of Pfizer’s vaccine.

    But committee members, including some government officials, appeared deeply skeptical of the Pfizer’s data and Israel’s analyses. Dr. Philip Krause, one of the F.D.A. vaccine experts who authored the medical journal review, criticized Pfizer’s presentation of data that had not been peer-reviewed or evaluated by the F.D.A., arguing that possible problems in the modeling within could understate the vaccine’s efficacy.

     

  171. 171.

    Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)

    @Adam L Silverman:

     No, that’s not what I’m saying.

    Funny, sure sounds like that’s what you’re saying. Basically, the GOP are going to win and there’s nothing we can do about it so why bother.

    If we’re not talking about that, well, let’s just say those options are not something that the vast majority of Americans who would want to see positive change have the capacity and capability to undertake.

    Nobody really knows what they’re capable of until they’re in the moment and thrust into those circumstances. Besides, IIRC, revolutions don’t have the majority of the population participating anyway.

    Not that I want one. I’d much prefer to do it via elections, legislation, etc. But given the choice between giving up and accepting a right-wing boot on my neck forever, I’ll choose to fight, because there’s always a chance, no matter how small, that the authoritarians will be defeated.

    Frankly, the folks behind the Civil Rights Movement didn’t quit. They faced violent terrorism and forged ahead

    I want you to know I respect and like you a ton Adam. I just strongly disagree with you on this

  173. 173.

    bluefoot

    @Adam L Silverman: ​
      Yep. It’s not just white supremacy, it’s white supremacy by the self-appointed elites. And they are running the typical RW playbook of “repeat the lie enough time and we’ll be able to get away with it.” Trying to gaslight the entire country into rolling over.

  174. 174.

    Subsole

    @Ksmiami: Except it actually isn’t.

    You know what IS efficient? The German army punching a hole through the French lines then slowly disintegrating because it outran its overstressed logistical tail. That was pretty efficient.

    Gas, flamethrowers, tanks, artillery, barbed wire, shock troops, airplanes, zeppelins, civilian bombing, unrestricted submarine warfare and human wave assaults…not so much.

    I guess Franz Josef finally dying and the Tzar abdicating were also effective, as well. Kind of. Russia and the Balkans are still getting over the aftereffects.

    My point being, if it comes to the point where we are shooting, the good guys have already lost.

  175. 175.

    oatler

    The next Civil War will be fought schoolboard meeting-to-schoolboard meeting. Kind of like that house-to-house fighting they used to do in days of yore.

  176. 176.

    AM in NC

    @catfishncod: You forgot the third strain: Gilead, whose goals to move us back before Roe,  before Griswold, before any equal protection rulings, before the 19th amendment. All fundamentalists/conservatives of whatever religious persuasion (Catholic, Evangelical Protestant, Jewish, muslim, etc.) explicitly relegate women to secondary status vis-a-vis men.  The conservative political movement ties racism, sexism, and class politics together into a toxic stew where one branch reinforces the other.  They need more white babies to keep America the “Real America”, well, that necessitates controlling women’s reproduction.  They want to keep the uber wealthy uber wealthy at the expense of everyone else, well that involves riling up the white working class to hate on non-whites so no economic solidarity can form. Race, class, and sex – it’s all 3 the Conservative movement wants to move us back decades, and decades, and decades, and decades (if not centuries) on.

  178. 178.

    Ksmiami

    @Subsole: America regressing to a Conservative Gilead is hell. The only option at that point is to crush the enemy into powder. Sorry I’m rooting for Covid

  179. 179.

    joel hanes

    The horrifying thing is that Thomas is (if you ignore that he should have been recusing himself from cases because of his wife’s interest therein) a more principled and consistent jurist than Alito, and probably than Kavanaugh.

  180. 180.

    Subsole

    @oatler: This.

    If you really wanna reverse this shit, start fighting for local control. It cuts the legs out from these awful bastards, slows their national projects as they have to fight recalcitrant locals, it’s (comparatively speaking) absurdly cheap, and it actually makes you feel empowered instead of locking you into a death spiral of despair and rage.

  186. 186.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    I’m gonna put my hope, faith, money and effort into upcoming elections, hope people who share my broad goals for the polity learn and remember the lessons of 2018, 2020 and just about every election since, put my head down and carry on. I’ll wait till December 2022 before I start tramping through the Colorado foothills looking for Ghost to Most’s Camp Wolverine.

    Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Nevada, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Virginia, Wisconsin….

  187. 187.

    AM in NC

    @Adam L Silverman: This parallels Picketty’s argument that the post-WWII up until now period has been the exception world-wide, as far as wealth distribution and economic opportunities for regular people are concerned as well.  The cataclysms of the Depression and WWII (so close on the heels of WWI) upended a lot of the old norms and structures, and replaced them with new ones.  Now it feels like everything is reverting back to the status quo ante. Which is what existed for most of human history.  I’m not letting that happen without a fight, though. Fuck these greedy, selfish, death eaters.

  189. 189.

    Ksmiami

    @Omnes Omnibus: hmm don’t know as I’ve never been pushed like this to consider the future in extremis… I mean you could say that the right weaponizing Covid is also a war crime. In studying civil wars and wars thru history, I think there’s no such thing as just killing methods. All wars are just failure, but I’d rather go down fighting.

  191. 191.

    David ? ☘The Establishment☘? Koch

     The Balls on These People

    said in Christopher Walken’s choppy Queen’s accent

  193. 193.

    raven

    FDA vaccine advisers votes to recommend booster doses in people 65 and older and those at high risk

    Vaccine advisers to the US Food and Drug Administration voted unanimously Friday to recommend emergency use authorization of a booster dose of Pfizer’s vaccine six months after full vaccination in people 65 and older and those at high risk of severe Covid-19.
    Members of the FDA’s Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee had rejected a broader application – to approve the use of booster doses of Pfizer’s vaccines in everyone 16 and older six months after they are fully vaccinated.

  194. 194.

    Uncle Cosmo

    @Ksmiami: Mustard gas is effective and efficient.

    What an egregiously STUPID comment. Yet another instance of an ignoramus shooting from the lip. It is neither. And in fact it’s not even a gas at temperatures that humans live in, but a liquid or solid.**

    Mustard agents (there are several types) are percutaneous – i.e., they act when they come into contact with surface cells (skin, eyes, respiratory or GI tracts). They are vesicants (blister-causing). Most notably, they are persistent in the environment: mustard agents when scattered across an area can linger on the surface for days or weeks (being, inter alia, remarkably insoluble in water) and can be stirred up when people or vehicles cross that space, to land on skin, eyes, etc., and cause injury.
    Mustard agents were used in WW1 for area denial: saturating a region with mustard makes it difficult and cumbersome for the enemy to send forces through, as vehicles would need to be “buttoned up” with good filtration systems, and individual soldiers would need to be fully covered up – entire body, not just masked – in what the US Army calls Mission Oriented Protective Posture level 4, or MOPP 4, to keep droplets or vapor from contacting the skin, eyes, etc.

    Mustard agent on bare skin, eyes, etc. will cause awful blistering, but it would take an awful lot (delivered in the right place, e.g., respiratory system) to cause death – and even then rather slowly. Anyone who wants to kill someone rapidly and reliably with chemistry would use a nerve (anticholinesterase) agent like sarin, soman, VX, or “Novichok”, or (for up close and personal work) something like cyanide (which the Soviets used to assassinate Ukrainian dissidents). “Mustard gas” would be the very last and most ineffective choice.***

    (NB I worked in CB defense under contract to the US Army Medical Research And Materiel Command for better than 15 years. Fuck with me at your own risk.)

    ** And FYI sulfur “mustards” do not even smell like mustard so much as garlic. But Senfgas sounded much more pithy than Knoblauchgas to the Reichsheer, I guess…​​

    *** Did someone mention ricin delivered by umbrellas (the Bulgarian Markov)? The point of ricin was to simulate death by heart attack without being detectable. In Markov’s case, the assassin fucked up – traces of the stuff were found in a bb-size pellet discovered jammed into the target’s leg.

  195. 195.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @Ksmiami: You proposed using mustard gas.  If you can’t see where you are heading, at least rhetorically, others can.  And it is not a pretty place.  We are supposed to be the good guys, and that means forswearing war crimes and eliminationism.

  196. 196.

    Ksmiami

    @raven: welp been fighting as hard as I can at the ballot box, donations, causes and volunteering thru the country and especially in TX, but if we only lose when we win and lose when we lose, then yes, taking a few hundred dumb as fuck rightwingers down with me (only if they attack) seems a small price.

  201. 201.

    Ksmiami

    @Uncle Cosmo: I guess I misspoke: whatever guns that these cretins attack with will require more creative and wider retaliatory reprisals. I’m not some bumpkin that thinks gettin guns would achieve anything. But you’re lying to yourselves if you think they aren’t primed for a lot of violence and a literal hellscape if they get any more power.

  202. 202.

    Baud

    I propose we destroy the fascists by making a vaccine to a highly infectious and  deadly virus freely available to everyone.

  203. 203.

    Another Scott

    @germy: AFAICS, the evidence isn’t there that people in general need them yet.  Maybe oldsters with serious pre-existing conditions, but not people in general.

    Important thread about a new preprint on vaccine efficacy and the extent of waning. t.co/nqLCuzFc1a

    — Carl T. Bergstrom (@CT_Bergstrom) September 15, 2021

    We’ll see how things evolve, of course.

    (IANAMD)

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  204. 204.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    OT: MSNBC reporting FDA has approved Pfizer boosters for people over 65 and otherwise at high risk, six months after second shot

    Bet Pfizer is pissed they waited till after the market closed

  207. 207.

    hueyplong

    @Ksmiami:  If it makes you feel better (and I think it does), the venn diagram of Gilead types and anti-vaxxers is probably a circle within a circle.

    As Dante intended.

  209. 209.

    Another Scott

    @germy: Twitter experts have made the point that it’s vital to sort the results by age.  Oldsters have many more serious underlying issues and dominate the hospitalization and death counts.  That has to be considered in the analysis.  (And, of course, it’s much, much worse for unvaccinated oldsters with severe underlying conditions.)

    See, e.g. CT_Bergstrom

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  211. 211.

    WaterGirl

    @Baud: @Yutsano: @SiubhanDuinne:

    Good news to report on that front.  The immediate eviction crisis has been averted.

    There’s still a ways to go before Billin is totally out of the woods, and I think Cole will likely put something up this weekend so we can chip in to help.

    I worked with one of our BJ peeps – who wishes to remain nameless – to get Bill enough money to pay the 2 months of back rent today.  So thanks to his generosity, that money is in Bill’s account today.

    I contacted one of our awesome BJ attorneys in CA to let him know about Bill’s situation, and he offered to help Bill at no charge, to write a letter to the landlord if Bill would like him to, and to connect Bill with a tenant attorney the he knows personally.

    So if you are inclined, think about saving the loose change in your pocket for whatever Cole does this weekend.  We got Billin set up with Zelle yesterday so we could get the money to him ASAP, and I was amazed at how well Zelle works.

    Balloon Juice really does have the best people.

  220. 220.

    Ksmiami

    @raven: sorry -Holocaust survivor heritage: it would be too easy for me to bail and buy immigration to Ireland etc. But some things are worth fighting for

  225. 225.

    Cameron

    @raven: Works for me.  70 yo + COPD.  Guess I’d better start looking for a shot.  The data from Israel isn’t encouraging, although I’m not somebody with the skills to evaluate it.

  234. 234.

    Cameron

    I’ve owned a copy of Srdja Popvic’s Blueprint for Revolution for a couple years, but never got around to reading it.  Might be a good time to do that.

  237. 237.

    Mike G

    @Tony Gerace: ​
    One of the most reactionary Supreme Court justices in history is a black man who grew up in poverty under Jim Crow segregation. It makes no goddamn sense to me.

    There’s always a few cowardly assholes whose response to oppression has been to suck up hard to the oppressors and show contempt for their peers.

  239. 239.

    sab

    @Tony Gerace: He got an affirmative action scholarship to a college that he did not have the educational background to do well at wirhout some extra help, which he didn’t get, so he floundered and just barely got by. Being bright, he did get by, but just barely. Instead of blaming the school that failed him, he has always blamed affirmative action.

  240. 240.

    catfishncod

    @AM in NC: In my schema – ought to write it out one day – both Gilead and its close cousin New Jerusalem (aka Scuddertopia) are factions of Albionica: the ones that prioritize, respectively, theocratic social control of reproduction/family and marriage/relationships vs. overt political fealty to the idols of Albionic Christianism (and, implicitly, to the Faithful Flock of that cause).

    The Plutoricans are not highly connected with the causes of Gilead at all. There are some — mostly of nouveau-riche stock — who are advocates for Gilead, Scudderism, or both. But by and large, Plutoricans are not true believers and certainly are not going to let mere preachers push them around.

  242. 242.

    E.

    @Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): ​
      Dude he’s being realistic. Kelly up above is saying “gosh until recently I had no idea” and many of us have some well-to-do and well-meaning liberal family members who cannot understand what the fuss is about and go on and on about fucking recycling and light bulbs. Maybe Adam is saying that sometimes looking the situation squarely in the face for once instead of making vague comments about how there is always hope and we will always keep on fighting is the only way to pull off something this implausible. Because you add this political climate to this atmospheric climate and you get a civilization ending nuclear explosion. If we don’t want that we all need to check our privilege. Including our privilege to hope.

  243. 243.

    catfishncod

    @Adam L Silverman: “The last fifty years were an anomaly.”

    You say that as if it were some fluctuation in the galactic background radiation, rather than as the direct result of a cascading series of f*clips by the elite caste of Western civilization:

    * Setting up Europe as a alliance-network powder keg with no way to damp or defuse it;

    * after four years of pointless death and destruction, setting up Western Civ as a *financial* house of cards instead, again with no real backup plan;

    * when that collapsed, the results varied from ‘suck it up, peasants’ (America) to various newfangled variants on the same old authoritarian theme, leading in short order to political pyromaniacs. We all know where THAT led.

    In sum, it wasn’t an ‘anomaly’ so much as the end result of a civilization grown too complex to fit the concepts or capabilities of the supposed Masters of the Universe.  If you see signs that the new batch are any smarter, wiser, or more capable, I will defer to your greater situational awareness. But it does not seem so to me.

  249. 249.

    brantl

    @waratah:George Will on Andrea’s show MSNBC told her that all it will take is to have a super hero to step up and save the Republicans. That is my interpretation of his words. I was going to change the channel but decided to see what he had to say

     

    Are you a masochist?

  251. 251.

    brantl

    @Subsole: I listened to the Clarence Thomas hearings, he was as dumb as dirt. The only sense he’s ever shown is not to ask more than about a question a year in SCOTUS hearings.

  252. 252.

    brantl

    @Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): He’s implying (HINT,HINT, HINT) that we all need to get off our ass and fight for what we believe in, ALL OF US. Seems pretty obvious, given what he just said. If you’d thought about it much, the conclusion is inevitable.

  253. 253.

    Barry

    @Tony Gerace: “I’ve never understood Clarence Thomas (nor have I tried very much to do so). One of the most reactionary Supreme Court justices in history is a black man who grew up in poverty under Jim Crow segregation. It makes no goddamn sense to me.”

     

    He’s a member of Ordo Dei, so he’s a fascist sympathizer.  He’s been a fascist enabler for his entire career.

     

    It also might be that he realized that being a black Yale Law School grad was nice, but being one happy to f*ck others blacks opened even more doors.

  254. 254.

    Barry

    @Kay: “I don’t even know what they think they’re protecting anymore.”

     

    Power, wealth, privilege and the ‘right’ to f*ck those below them.

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