Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson received her official commission to the Supreme Court on Friday, in a tradition-laden ceremony that welcomed the court’s first African American woman. https://t.co/z59Uv7UFrM
— The Washington Post (@washingtonpost) September 30, 2022
Cherish the good things:
… Jackson, 52, has been on the job since late June. But the investiture ceremony marked the first time she has taken her place on the mahogany bench, in the newest justice’s traditional spot at the far left of Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr.
Roberts wished her a long and happy career in their “common calling,” and President Biden and Vice President Harris, along with their spouses, were in the front row. They met privately with the justices before the ceremony, which started late and lasted only five minutes. The court’s new term begins Monday…
The scripted ceremony provided no opportunity for Jackson — or anyone else — to make remarks.
But during an event later that day at the Library of Congress, she appeared to become emotional as she reflected on what she said has been an outpouring of support since her confirmation in the spring. She said she was humbled by the “fanfare” that has accompanied her ascension to the high court, and that young people are “seeing themselves portrayed in me.”…
Jackson received a standing ovation when she said, “I have a seat at the table now. I have a seat at the table now, and I’m ready to work.”…
As Rep. Shirley Chisholm said, “If they don’t give you a seat at the table, bring a folding chair.”
NEW: President Biden is reforming the President’s Committee on the Arts and the Humanities, which was dissolved in 2017 after all its members resigned in protest against President Trump’s comments about the “fine people on both sides” in Charlottesville https://t.co/OpifDubUBE
— Jennifer Schuessler (@jennyschuessler) September 30, 2022
President Biden begins his remarks to celebrate Rosh Hashanah by saying Kamala won’t be the last woman to be Vice President or President. pic.twitter.com/RcrCXaTIx1
— Asma Khalid (@asmamk) September 30, 2022
#FOIAFriday SCOOP: DOJ released a doc to me in response to a 5 year old #FOIA request. It's a doc I didn't specifically ask for. It's a transcript of an off the record discussion Obama had with reporters about Trump, et al, 3 days before he left office
— Jason Leopold (@JasonLeopold) September 30, 2022
Whether or not you agree with him, President Obama did his best to warn the Media Villagers:
… “I think that four years is okay,” Obama said. “Take on some water, but we can kind of bail fast enough to be okay. Eight years would be a problem. I would be concerned about a sustained period in which some of these norms have broken down and started to corrode.”…
Presidents occasionally hold off-the-record discussions with journalists. However, it’s rare that a transcript of such talks is released publicly.
Obama’s nearly 90-minute conversation with reporters covered topics such as his commutation of Chelsea Manning’s prison sentence for leaking classified documents, saying she didn’t deserve a 35-year sentence. He also noted that Edward Snowden’s leaks about US surveillance of private citizens “identified some problems that had to do with technology.”…
Obama said he didn’t believe Trump was particularly interested in starting any wars other than “bombing the heck out of terrorists,” an option Trump cited several times in his 2016 campaign and presidency.
“I think his basic view — his formative view of foreign policy is shaped by his interactions with Malaysian developers and Saudi princes, and I think his view is, ‘I’m going to go around the world making deals and maybe suing people,’” Obama said. “But it’s not, ‘let me launch big wars that tie me up.’ And that’s not what his base is looking from him anyway.”
As for the GOP, Obama said he thought “the Republican Party now is ideologically completely incoherent.”…
“So what’s bound them together is opposition to me, opposition to a fantastical creature called the liberal who looks down on them and just feeds all that regional resentment,” Obama said. “And there are a handful of issues, like guns, that trigger that sense of ‘these folks aren’t like us and they don’t like us and act like us.’ And there’s obviously some racial elements that get put out into that stew.”
Obama said his No. 1 concern about the incoming Trump administration was the potential politicization of law enforcement. He advised reporters at the time to pay close attention to the Justice Department…
For all of Trump’s harsh criticisms about Obama, the 44th president said Trump’s public persona was radically different than in his private interactions.
“He’s very polite to me and has not stopped being so,” Obama said. “I think where he sees a vulnerability he goes after it and takes advantage of it.”
Baud
I think that’s a very Republican thing, being two faced. It’s a large part of why the media doesn’t take GOP fascism seriously — they are perfectly pleasant to journalists at DC cocktail parties.
sab
Obama was a very perceptive man. And thoughtful
EaTA Also very smooth about being an outsider looking in, and fully aware of that status.
NotMax
Vino alert.
Currently reduced from $11.99 to $6.99 at Costco (did not memorize when the special ends when there last) is the Reserve Field Blend Lodi red wine from Hook or Crook Cellars – 2018 vintage per back label. Good, tasty quaff, full-bodied but not overwhelming nor in any way cloying or harsh.
Amir Khalid
Malaysian developers? Do tell, Barack.
sab
@NotMax: Half off? Bad batch?
sab
Obama sure was right about politicization of law enforcement.
NotMax
@sab
Really cannot go wrong at that price laying in several bottles now for the upcoming holiday season.
RandomMonster
Can’t think about wine before 8am.
Baud
@RandomMonster:
Only 6 more minutes.
Geminid
Beto O’Rourke and Greg Abbott debated last night in McAllen, Texas. There’s an article about it in Politico, and I expect there’s coverage in state and local media including the Texas Tribune
That will likely be theonly debate.
NotMax
@NotMax
Curiosity got the better of me. A very quick search around the web revealed some likker stores selling the exact same bottle for 25 simoleons.
sab
@RandomMonster: Not Max is in a different time zone, but otherwise I agree.
sab
@NotMax: Show off. Foreign curencies? Cokie Roberts was right and Hawaii is exotic not America?
NotMax
@sab
At current exchange rates that’s 3½ quatloos.
:)
Geminid
@NotMax: Kroger’s Bay Bridge and Walmart’s Oak Leaf are still holding steady at $2.99 a bottle. I cannot speak to their qualities except- “inflation resistant!”
Baud
@Geminid:
The supply chain is strong!
rm
@sab: EaTA Also very smooth about being an outsider looking in, and fully aware of that status.
Yep, or as someone smart put it, “born with a veil, and gifted with second sight in this American world”
Mike S (Now with a Democratic Congressperson!)
@Baud: I think that has changed, at least with the MAGA Republicans. Doug Mastriano, the crazy insurrectionist candidate for PA Gov, is refusing to talk to ANY regular main stream media. Even local TV stations even ones not in Philly and Pgh.
Baud
Congrats to Mariners fans!
Baud
@Mike S (Now with a Democratic Congressperson!):
I hope so. We really need the media to wake up.
Baud
We’re not worried enough about the future.
https://v.redd.it/yus0ueep56r91
Benw
Obama is the smartest president. His existence broke a lot of people in the media.
Also, I just told my cat “it’s a laptop, not a cat-top” which worked out super well.
rikyrah
Good Morning, Everyone😊😊😊
Baud
@rikyrah:
Good morning.
NotMax
@Baud
Bwa-haha.
What time is my stint on flying pig watch?
Matt McIrvin
Obama’s remarks don’t sound perceptive to me, they sound far too sanguine. A year and a half after Trump got out, this country is still holed and taking on water. He believed in America to an extent that I cannot.
MomSense
I’m watching Chef Jose Andres on Ali Velshi’s show this morning and I just love that human being. He is the best of us out there practicing radical hospitality and love.
Sanjeevs
https://mobile.twitter.com/olliecarroll/status/1576181521794228224
Shalimar
Bill Maher was on his HBO show last night (really, HBO? why do you continue giving this asshole a platform?), and he was saying Kamala Harris is bad at being a politician and Biden should replace her in 2024.
This seems to be the opinion of a lot of white guys lately. It seems obvious to me that there has been a rightwing slime machine aimed at Harris from the start just like it was against Hillary Clinton in the ’90s, almost none of the allegations against Harris are actually true, and misogynistic fucksticks like Maher take these attacks and amplify them.
As a white male, I just want to say if there was a virus that only killed white males, I wouldn’t oppose my fate.
rikyrah
Because people are foolish about COVID, you can get KN-95 masks for a good deal on AMAZON
rikyrah
@Shalimar:
And folks are standing up to the misogyny😠😠about MVP
RandomMonster
When he made those comments, I think many of us had a stronger belief in America.
MomSense
@Sanjeevs:
Just watched some videos of Ukrainian soldiers after they liberated another settlement in Donetsk. They had a good ole Russian flag stomping to house music.
Baud
@Shalimar:
Haters love giving Dems advice. The nuttier the better, so when Dems reject it, the haters use that to justify supporting fascists.
Gvg
@rikyrah: I was a kid when Hillary was First Lady and I am telling you it was really obvious then that a lot of men just hated her because she was a smart woman who wasn’t submissive enough. The thing is she seemed perfectly ordinary to me, like my school teacher mother, not pushy at all, so I took their attacks personally. And I have always been disgusted with the fools who fell for the propaganda against her.
On the other hand I saw it working and measured it and one of the reasons I picked Obama over her is I thought he hadn’t as much propaganda built up against him because he was newer and I thought he had a better chance of winning. If someone with better odds had challenged Hillary in 2016 that I agreed with I would have backed them. Bernie was a sure loss IMO. Not fair to her but the GOP has gotten scary.
I need these women haters pinned down so women and men who care can see it, even the ones who don’t pay much attention until right before elections. I have known for years, but it needs to be more voters.
UncleEbeneezer
@Baud: This seems like something that is absolutely central (though not exclusive) to Conservatism. Two-faced, Bless Your Heart-ism.
Matt McIrvin
@Shalimar: It’s the heckler’s veto: smear someone six ways to Sunday and then say they’re bad at politics for attracting the smears, or “where there’s smoke there’s fire”. Just jettison the target and surely the smears won’t settle on somebody else! Of course one of the things this does is to permanently exclude anyone from a group that bigots hate.
MomSense
@rikyrah:
It enrages me how many of my cohort, middle aged white women, are critical of MVP. Most of their actual reasons are complete nonsense once you ask questions to get past their generalized concerns.
OzarkHillbilly
From the New Yorker: How the War in Ukraine Might End
Goemans, who now teaches political science at the University of Rochester, wrote his dissertation on war-termination theory—that is, the study of how wars end. A great deal of work, Goemans learned, had been done on how wars start, but very little on how they might conclude.
……………………………
When we first spoke, in early September, Goemans predicted a protracted conflict. None of the three main variables of war-termination theory—information, credible commitment, and domestic politics—had been resolved. Both sides still believed that they could win, and their distrust for each other was deepening by the day. As for domestic politics, Putin was exactly the sort of leader that Goemans had warned about. Despite his significant repressive apparatus, he did not have total control of the country. He kept calling the war a “special military operation” and delaying a mass mobilization, so as not to have to face domestic unrest. If he started losing, Goemans predicted, he would simply escalate.
And then, in the weeks after Goemans and I first spoke, events accelerated rapidly. Ukraine launched a remarkably successful counter-offensive, retaking large swaths of territory in the Kharkiv region and threatening to retake the occupied city of Kherson. Putin, as predicted, struck back, declaring a “partial mobilization” of troops and staging hasty “referendums” on joining the Russian Federation in the occupied territories. The partial mobilization was carried out in a chaotic fashion, and, as at the beginning of the war, caused tens of thousands of people to flee Russia. There were sporadic protests across the nation, and these threatened to grow in size. Meanwhile, Ukrainian forces continued to advance in the east of their country.
In a terrifying blog post, Goemans’s former student Branislav Slantchev laid out a few potential scenarios. He believes that the Russian front in the Donbas is still in danger of imminent collapse. If this were to happen, Putin would need to escalate even further. This could take the form of more attacks on Ukrainian infrastructure, but, if the goal is to stop Ukrainian advances, a likelier option would be a small tactical nuclear strike. Slantchev suggests that it would be under one kiloton—that is, about fifteen times smaller than the bomb dropped on Hiroshima. It would nonetheless be devastating, and would almost certainly lead to an intense reaction from the West. Slantchev does not think that NATO would respond with nuclear strikes of its own, but it could, for example, destroy the Russian Black Sea Fleet. This could lead to yet another round of escalation. In such a situation, the West may be tempted, finally, to retreat. Slantchev urged them not to. “This is it now,” he wrote. “This is for all the marbles.”
It’s a thought provoking read, not too long.
Subsole
@Baud: Is this love from the media coming from the actual reporters, though? Or their management?
Or is the fish rotting from higher up the spine?
Subsole
@RandomMonster: Worth remembering that his faith was not entirely misplaced.
Once we all realized how badly we had screwed up, the armies of democracy swung into action. The vast majority kicked, gouged, bit and screamed for four years. The fact we held on against that daily onslaught somewhat validates Obama’s faith.
The American people usually do okay when it’s crunch time. The trouble is getting our national head out of our national asscrack before we hit the iceberg.
Part of what is tooth-grindingly aggravating about this nation, is that we are second to none at damage control, but absolute crap at avoiding damage. So we waste all our potential bailing water…
zhena gogolia
@Subsole: Give Jimmy Carter a second term, elect Al Gore, elect John Kerry, elect Hillary Clinton . . . . We’d be in a very different world. And Putler would be contained.
zhena gogolia
@OzarkHillbilly:
Can’t bear to read it. Great visual at this tweet:
frosty
@zhena gogolia: Interesting take except I disagree about Hillary Clinton. The hate on the right is so strong her Presidency would have been a failure. If the Republicans took Congress she would have been impeached as Job One. Probably not convicted in the Senate though.
catclub
@Subsole:
If Hitler does not declare war on the US, would we declare war on him? We had only declared war on Japan. The Ken Burns special shows how unpopular war with Germany was up until the declarations. America First was a big thing. Lindberg was almost as popular as Roosevelt.
Subsole
@zhena gogolia: Yeah. I try to imagine a world without Reagan, and…I can’t. I have no frame of reference. I was born just after his inauguration. The damage that man wrought is so fundamental to my reality I genuinely cannot conceptualize a world without it.
I can imagine a world without Bush, but I try not to because it hurts a little too much.
Another Scott
@OzarkHillbilly: Thanks for the pointer. Thoughtfully trying to learn from history is important.
I assume that people in the Pentagon have similar thoughts that it won’t be over quickly, but Ukraine will win. What comes after is still far too unknown.
Cheers,
Scott.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
the part that Bush and his rolling disasters played in the proverbial loss of trust in institutions that paved the way for trump is woefully under discussed, as is his, and his brother’s, cowardly silence in the six year dumpster fire we’re living through.
trollhattan
Jackals who live in the Greater Phoenix Metroplex would be well advised to leave during that Insurrectionistfest–has there ever been more-compelling meteor bait?
Geminid
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: I think Bush’s failure in Iraq definitely degraded faith in the Republican establishment, and enabled the radical takeover of the Republican party from 2009 to the present.
Had it not been for that war, Karl Rove’s plan for an enduring Republican center-right majority could have succeeded, and the establishment might have kept the upper hand over the radicals.
Omnes Omnibus
@Matt McIrvin: I stand with Obama on this.
catclub
@Geminid:
i doubt it. leave the GOP in power for 12 years and they will demand all the things not yet delivered in the first 8. Democrats would be the same way. The Court overturns RoeVWade even sooner.
Subsole
@catclub: You raise good points.
It’s a tough call. I think Hitler declaring war was inescapable, simply because Lend-Lease was keeping his enemies in the fight. So the question of public desire is rendered academic by political realities.
That said, if he didn’t?
I could argue it either way. I would think postcards from Bergen-Belsen might do some unpleasant things to “father” Coughlin’s ratings. (If we ever saw them. The FTFNYT had stories written about concentration camps in the 30s. They spiked them.)
We’d probably fuck it up and wait far, far, FAR later than we should. But eventually, yes, I think we would fight him. For reasons pragmatic if not noble.
We’d fight him if for no other reason than he was at heart a flake-ass stumbledicked fuckup who could not help blundering into catastrophe, and would eventually do something to piss us off.
That is, I think, the American pattern. Let it fester until the arm falls off, then go try and graft a whole new arm onto the stump…
Silly side note: I once tried to write an AU where America stayed neutral. The Nazis conquered all before them, and basically turned all of Europe into a really, really fucked up Yugoslavia – that fell apart the same way Tito’s did when Hitler died. Japan ended up choking to death on China, the Axis fell hard, and a much more cruel and atavistic USA became a kind of inverted USSR trying to impose order on its Latin American dependencies.
I gave it up because:
1. I am not a writer. At all.
and
2. I didn’t need the added depression of living in that world.
Subsole
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Oh yes.
Free Speech Zones were pretty much what ripped the scales from my eyes. Like, damn. Y’all aren’t even trying to hide what y’all are, are you?
Budget-ass Ingsoc bastards…
Omnes Omnibus
@catclub:
But he did. Counterfactuals aren’t particularly useful.
Mike in NC
Trump’s idea of the fine arts was limited to Ted Nugent and Kid Rock.
EarthWindFire
@MomSense: They tried to give you actual reasons? Wow. I’m genuinely amazed by that.
Any specific question I ask a middle aged white woman hater of MVP (or Hillary) gets shut down. There’s no discussion once I ask for specifics, especially if they brought up the topic. Guess they’re pissed off to find that I’m not one of them (being a middle aged white woman myself).
Mai Naem mobile
John Roberts can just go fuck the right off. Smug POS. I was listening to Pod Save America and they had one of their game show bits discussing Hillary. Ugh. It just makes me so so sad that this fucking country didn’t elect her. So so many things would be different. COVID would have been handled a gazillion times better. Three assholes who shouldn’t be on the USSC wouldn’t be on USSC right now. I doubt Putin would have invaded Ukraine with other pain associated with the invasion. The Nazis wouldn’t have been encouraged in this country. So many lost opportunities.
grandmaBear
@OzarkHillbilly: I’ve been following Slantchev’s blog, and I think he has some good insights. Not wearing any rose-colored glasses though, so it’s sobering reading.