Some of you will appreciate just how wild it is to see this tweet from this man. https://t.co/c4kXvfvEE2
— Franklin Leonard (@franklinleonard) July 1, 2024
Since Chief Justice Roberts is said to be a strongly traditionalist Catholic and a reader of Constitutional history, I assume he has decided in favor of pursuing his studies at the feet of Justice Taney in the afterlife. Mr. Charles P. Pierce, at Esquire — “The Supreme Court’s Immunity Ruling Is a Recipe for Utter Chaos”:
Mr. Roberts has made his decision. Now let him enforce it. Goddamn this Supreme Court. It’s got me quoting the apocrypha of that genocidal madman Andrew Jackson. The carefully manufactured conservative majority on the Court, by a 6–3 margin, ruled that presidents—specifically, Donald J. Trump, because if you think this decision will apply to Democratic presidents, please tell me where you buy your mushrooms—have something called “presumptive immunity” for “official acts” they took while in office.
This is specifically designed to hamstring Jack Smith’s prosecutions regarding the insurrection of January 6, 2021, especially in combination with the Court’s earlier decision in Fischer v. U.S. that disallowed the use of an obstruction-of-justice statute under which a number of the rioters had already been charged and/or convicted. On top of that we have Chief Justice John Roberts’s ancillary ruling, which will make a complete hash of the discovery process in any prosecution of the former president*. Roberts wrote:
Testimony or private records of the President or his advisers probing such conduct may not be admitted as evidence at trial.
In the short run, of course, this whole case, on which the Court never should have granted cert in the first place, was directly aimed at delaying the prosecution of the former president* until after the November election and thence, likely, to the Twelfth of Never. It certainly has accomplished that goal. It’s going to take months, if not years, for lower courts to distinguish between “official” and “unnofficial” acts, and every attempt will be appealed, and then appealed again. The former president*’s go-to legal strategy, the one he used to put glaziers and gardeners on the rack until they ran out of money, now has the blessing of the country’s highest court. Jack Smith is just another New Jersey subcontractor who never sees a dime…
The carefully manufactured conservative majority on the Supreme Court is done with its work deforming democracy until October. One thing on which we can all agree is that it has been worth every dime that Leonard Leo, and Harlan Crow, and Paul Singer paid for it.
I’m glad… well, I will be, eventually… that President Biden is a good man, and has already scotched many fantasies:
King Biden, long may he reign, gazed starkly upon his dominion.
"I did not ask for this power. But I shall protect it from those whom conspire to abuse it."
"Your first decree, My Lord", Uttered Vice Royal Harris.
"Summon Seal Team 6 to House Maralago. It's time to end this." pic.twitter.com/zvEbjY6tzD
— Terry Lee Watkins Jr. ??????? (@TerryWatkinsJr1) July 1, 2024
I think it is more likely than not that American democracy will survive. It is also more likely than not that you will return home safely while drunk driving. The latter does not mean society could function if drunk driving was not illegal.
— Open Source Stupidity (OSSTU) Starfish (@IRHotTakes) July 1, 2024
John Roberts DGAF because John Roberts is a rich and powerful white man with armed guards and legal immunity who plans on being buried in his SCOTUS robes. https://t.co/a8FqTz6Fvr
— Peter Wolf (@peterawolf) July 1, 2024
I said after Roe this was an activist court and so many of my former comrades on the right went into huffy eyerolling.
Conjuring an immunity that exists nowhere in the Constitution by throwing a bunch of stuff into a martini shaker seems pretty activist.— Tom Nichols (@RadioFreeTom) July 2, 2024
Vindicated by history pic.twitter.com/w8RxF2brMG
— Houthi and the Blowfish (@canderaid) July 1, 2024
I'm not saying this to shame people. I am saying it because it is the truth. If Hillary Clinton had won, we would have a 3-6 Liberal Court. The most liberal court in the history of these United States. Keep that in mind when you vote or decide not to vote the next time.
— Magdi Jacobs (@magi_jay) July 1, 2024
cain
I hope the republic will survive – but we know that a Dem president all acts are unofficial – they don’t have agency.
I wish Biden simply decides to test the SCOTUS and see where it goes.
But great analysis that the lower courts is going to be spending a lot of time trying to figure out what is official and what isn’t. I think Congress can help out with that by codifying official acts into law. We just need to get both houses of congress.
YY_Sima Qian
Too bad the Dems are too committed institutionalism & too committed to liberal democracy to exercise the executive power SCOTUS just gave them, even if the institutions have become a suicide pact.
We can start packing the courts, yet?
Chet Murthy
@cain:
I doubt that would work. Fundamentally, this depends (like so much else about democracy) on *norms*. And norms can be gamed by bad faith actors.
Anne Laurie
Fairly sure it won’t happen before the election, but (Murphy the Trickster God willing) come January, I’m assuming second-term President Biden will at the very least expand the Court to 13, to match the number of national districts.
Betty Cracker
Completely O/T but open thread, so… I finally heard from my sister, who is at a beach resort with her spouse in Grenada. They are not only safe after the hurricane rolled through, but power was restored and food and booze are abundantly available. Whew! Other parts of the island were not so lucky.
Spider-Dan
Regarding the last tweet, I don’t think SCOTUS would be 6-3 if Hillary had won – no chance in hell Kennedy voluntarily retires with a Democrat in the Oval Office – but I do think it would be a solid 5-4 with Scalia and RBG’s seats in sane liberal hands, plus Breyer’s replacement. And the amount of damage that has been done since 2017 – Janus, Masterpiece Cakeshop, Rucho, Dobbs, Bruen, 303 Creative, and all the nonsense of the last month – would all be void.
cain
@Betty Cracker: That’s great to hear! What a relief.
cain
@Anne Laurie: Isn’t Biden against it because it would politicize the SCOTUS forever? I think the SCOTUS did that to themselves.
cain
@YY_Sima Qian: It’s not just him – we have folks like Garland who is also committed to that. But Trump will change all of that.
Ksmiami
@cain: I say Biden arrest the 6 and replace them. No big deal Rt? He’s got immunITY
Chet Murthy
@cain: I’ll give Biden this: he reflects the centroid of the Democratic Party, and specifically its elected officials. But that’s the problem: behind Cinemansion there are (I once read) at least 10 Dem Sens who are against blowing up the filibuster. And without that, we can’t expand the courts. Hell, Good Ol’ Durbin wants to give G(r)OPers back the fucking Blue Slips!
JPL
The president can’t be impeached if he is immune from high crimes and misdemenors. How will Biden use this awesome power that was granted him.
Chet Murthy
@JPL: if you have immunity it’s not a crime is it?
SpaceUnit
@Betty Cracker:
That’s good news. They say a human can go several weeks without food. But booze . . . . shit, I wouldn’t know.
eclare
@Betty Cracker:
Yay! I saw horrible news reports and wondered. Thanks!
JPL
@Betty Cracker: Good news indeed!
Betty Cracker
@cain: Biden’s remarks this evening on the SCOTUS decision were heartening to me on that score. By quoting and co-signing Sotomayor’s fiery dissent and flatly accusing the court of changing a bedrock principle of American democracy, he all but called the court illegitimate. If he thought the status quo was tenable before, he has been disabused of that notion now.
Should Dems retain the presidency and senate while regaining the house, the biggest obstacle to meaningful court reform might be filibuster-philes who were hiding behind Sinema and Manchin. We need to know who they are and bring pressure to bear. The rogue court just made that job easier.
Tony Jay
It is a truth self evident that modern conservatives put into positions of power break whatever institution they’re elevated too, be it the House of Representatives, the Supreme Court or the senior executive positions of News Media organs, because the ideological and practical aims of modern conservatism are incompatible with the necessary aims and duties of those institutions in a free and pluralistic society.
So none of this is a surprise. It’s what they do.
JPL
The president owes the American people an explanation of what happened on stage. Honestly, it could happen again if it was caused by “sun downing”. I doubt that Jamie Raskin would say something unless he was fearful also. We need the strongest candidate against trump, and the supreme court spelled out why this election is so important.
In my dream scenario, Kamala stays as VP and the top is replaced by Pritkzer. If Kamala stays like I want her to, then Newsom can’t run.
YY_Sima Qian
@Tony Jay: Modern “conservatives” are more accurately described as reactionaries. Maybe most of the historical ones were the same.
SpaceUnit
@JPL:
Wrong thread.
JPL
The Supreme Court isn’t finished yet and could decide that the framers don’t want us voting for our Senators. Imagine that!
WaterGirl should do a poll on how many on this famous site slept 8 hours last night.
eclare
@JPL:
Both my dad and uncle sundowned. Obligatory IANADr., but from what I have read about the debate, what Joe did was nothing like what my relatives did. We’re talking made up locations, people, not knowing where they were or what was going on. Next morning, they were ok.
John Revolta
@SpaceUnit: I was once stranded on an expedition and some fool forgot to pack the corkscrew………..had to survive on nothing but food and water for several days…………..
(W.C. Fields)
JPL
@eclare: Thanks!
SpaceUnit
@John Revolta:
Yeah, food and water alone can’t sustain you in 2024.
satby
@JPL: He clearly wasn’t sun downing, as a stutterer (which is both a speech impediment and a neuroglitch on smoothly uttering thoughts) facing a psychopathic liar, he struggled. And was doing better even by the end of that not a debate. It’s been days of this hysterical bullshit, keep it to WG’s low rent Paltrow threads if you need constant talking down. Christ.
satby
@Betty Cracker: That’s great to hear! The videos from the hurricane landing were terrible.
Tony Jay
@YY_Sima Qian:
Reactionaries opposed to any progress whatsoever.
p.a.
Well we all need clarity. The USG needs clarity. Joe should have… *wheel spins*… Lindsey Graham arrested. Let’s see how it plays.
Also too, just effing around to avoid the really dark implications of this FTFUSSC term… anyone hear from Rand Paul about how this is an awful decision for individual freedom? Bueller? Bueller?
TBone
Last night, my normally politically astute and aware friend asked me (just before his speech) what the King Joseph the First meme I’d sent meant (!) after I’d sent a photo of Justice Sotomayor featuring her “kings” quote from her dissent. I suspect that too many people do not truly understand what immunity means and what just happened yesterday 😳
Do they really think it ONLY applies to Dotard? I believe that’s what my friend thought!!!! She’s not dumb so this really threw me for a loop!
TBone
@SpaceUnit: wrong PLANET! 🤣
TBone
I’m sending this King explainer to everyone I know. I call it “A Day That Will Live in Infamy”
https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/july-1-2024
lowtechcyclist
I stayed home from my summer construction job to watch the first day of John Dean’s testimony before the Senate Watergate Committee in the summer of 1973. You bet I appreciate it.
Spanky
Pray for me. I have an earworm and it’s Foggy Mountain Breakdown.
I guess it could be worse. It can always be worse.
Geminid
@Betty Cracker: Well, if Florida Democrats succeed in electing Deborah Murcasel-Powell to the Senate they will have added another Senator who is against across-the-board filibuster elimination. She’s in the carve-out camp.
Murcasel-Powell has mentioned abortion rights, voting rights and gun safety as suitable areas for this approach, so she might well support a carveout for a bill raising the number of Justices to say, 13.
Spanky
The geenyuses at the WaPo Headline Dept are at it again
TBone
@Spanky: they’re helping to promote the “This Only Applies to Dotard” falsehood. 🤬
Shalimar
I think it more likely would have been a 5-4 Con Court if retirements/death had played out the same. Because they would have trolled the hell out of the 50,000 Covid deaths on her watch during the campaign and it would have been the worst thing that ever happened, leading to the Republican winning in November 2020. And there is no way they let Clinton replace Ginsburg when she died. It would have played out the same way as Scalia.
lowtechcyclist
@Spider-Dan:
Mitch McTurtle had been quite clear that he was going to block any attempts by Hillary Clinton to fill Supreme Court seats during her Presidency. Anybody who thinks her first term would have ended with a liberal SCOTUS majority is living in a fantasy land. That term would have ended with Scalia’s and RBG’s seats empty, and Anthony Kennedy still on the Court.
We can argue about whether she would have won a second term, despite Covid (she’d have been crucified in the media after the plague killed ~30,000 Americans during 2020), despite being able to get nothing done for four years due to an intransigent GOP-controlled Congress (and the media would have put the blame on her), and just the continual shit-flinging by our misogynist national media that would make their treatment of Jimmy Carter look mild by comparison. But there’s all too realistic a chance that we’d never have gotten to fill those seats, even if Hillary had eked out a win in 2016.
ETA: Beaten to the punch by Shalimar!
eclare
@Spanky:
I’ve had a lot of really stubborn earworms lately, maybe to focus my brain on anything but current events. Luckily most of mine have been Taylor Swift and for some reason “Paint the Town Red” by Doja Cat. I think because it uses the hook from “Walk on By.”
Baud
I disagree with those who think the Court wouldn’t have been ours if Hillary had won. I think that’s papering over what an own goal we made not getting 100% behind her. But I’m not going to waste time arguing alternative histories.
TBone
Since no citizen here has ever had to live under the rule of an absolute monarch, a lot of people have no idea what it means. That is very frustrating. Were they never read any fairy tales as children? Do they not know what the Declaration of Independence was declaring or why it was necessary? Magic Eightball says UGH.
TBone
@Baud: thank you, I concur.
Baud
@Betty Cracker:
We need to end the filibuster because of the Court’s gutting of administrative power. They’re basically daring Congress to act, because they think Congress won’t. And it won’t if the filibuster is in place.
trnc
@Chet Murthy:
Yup. Every little thing can’t be codified. That’s why they salivate over ending Chevron.
Republicans are chaos agents. That may have been the primary intent of the immunity ruling even over getting TCF off the hook, but handing someone with unlimited pardon power the authority to order military crimes completes the hat trick.
trnc
RIP, shortly lived commentary that ACB may wind up being less conservative than we thought.
Soprano2
@TBone: Yep, I’ve noticed that. Don’t they realize it applies to all presidents, past and future? Do Republicans still really think they can prosecute Biden for all the imaginary crimes they think he committed while president? They probably do.
Geminid
@Geminid: I looked at two other Democratic candidates, incumbents Sherrod Brown and John Tester, to see what their positions are on the filibuster. Brown is on record as opposing the filibuster in general, while Tester has expressed his willingness to support carveouts.
Baud
@trnc:
“Than we thought” is doing a lot of work in that sentence.
She definitely has set herself apart from the boys club on the court this term. She’s not close to joining the good side.
Chris Johnson
@JPL: I did, near as dammit. I did my exercises as usual, thought again about how I could mention on my Tuesday livestream that I’d woke up Monday with a president and by bedtime I had a King Brandon! and then I went to sleep.
You know, back in the day, 1776 happened even though there was NO precedent for just a President ‘running the country’.
The Magna Carta happened even though there was no precedent for fucking RULE OF LAW.
We got this. It is not the end of history, it’s a choke point, where shit got real clear and direct and the propaganda zone started to break down as malefactors revealed themselves.
Dobbs moved the needle? This is Dobbs times three. It’s still a democracy. Let’s keep it, and fix what’s been smashed.
What Have The Romans Ever Done for Us?
@Spider-Dan: What boggles my mind is that fully a third of the highest court was appointed by a convicted felon who committed those crimes before making the appointments. If the press wants an easy to digest chew toy they could take a break from the should Biden step down circle jerk and talk about that for awhile. Because it’s pretty fucked up.
tobie
In the event the gods direct their favor toward us and Dems win the whole trifecta in Nov and the Court is expanded, can cases be brought that would force the Court to revisit decisions like Chevron?
Baud
@tobie:
If we don’t expand the court, the effort would be futile.
Princess
I never find myself wanting to read Freud but this article makes me want to read Civilization and its Discontents. He seems to articulate a lot about how I feel we interact with each other, not just on the world stage but on social
Media etc. I find learning about the limitations to human capacity comforting. If we know who we’re really inclined to be, we can temper a little. https://slate.com/human-interest/2023/11/israel-palestine-universities-student-demonstrations.html?fbclid=IwZXh0bgNhZW0CMTEAAR2-D-zLVXFeUG0RiDUpLaK4hOq6IAdzvXKDJcJQd3Ab7D6hvb2Y8C3nFI8_aem_sdgF_fDt7TG2LNS1qpVyug#ly4alay6w7ucut0a4qd
TBone
@Soprano2: yes and yes. I’m seething because my “smart” friend seemed to be so casual about the earthquake of bullshit that shook the world yesterday.
They do not grok the ramifications unless those are carefully spelled out for them. These are not dumb people I know, but the ‘frightened sheep’ aspect of blindness being displayed is enraging!
TBone
MOOD music
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=KTzQYfxmYzE
Betty Cracker
@Geminid: DMP didn’t commit to eliminating the filibuster, which is what I wanted to hear, but she didn’t commit to preserving it either:
Source
@Baud: Great point — “Chevron” will increase the pressure to eliminate the filibuster.
I want it gone for all the reasons discussed, but I think its elimination would have the added benefit of more closely connecting policies with election results. One argument against eliminating the filibuster is that it would result in laws whipsawing back and forth with control. Bring it on, I say. Our policies are popular; theirs are not.
Baud
@tobie:
But the Court did suggest that Congress can require courts to defer by enacting a new law to that effect. That’s something Congress could try if we get a trifecta and get rid of the filibuster.
trnc
They realize that Biden doesn’t actually abuse this power and won’t act differently than he did before the ruling.
Second, TCF would order the prosecution and tell the SC to fuck off.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
You can thank fantasy fiction for that since it makes monarchies the most awesome thing ever. Lord of the Rings for example.
tobie
@Baud: thanks. So if the Court were expanded, this would be possible. That’s a tall order but it’s our only hope.
Princess
@JPL: Here’s how you know it wasn’t sundowning and wasn’t dementia: with neither of those do you start out weak and then pull yourself together. My understanding is that the first half was the worst and people who only saw the last half thought he did fine. I think that’s flatly impossible if there’s a cognition problem. The people I know could fool you for a bit but then the strain would show and they’d crumble. Yes, it was bad, yes, it is concerning but it’s where we are and let’s all move forward with the work that needs to be done.
p.a.
@trnc: They play Calvinball. They’ll prosecute any Dem pres for anything they want in any jurisdiction they can get control over.
TBone
@Enhanced Voting Techniques:
OFF WITH HIS HEAD
is more along the lines I was trying to point to!
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ENDLDgje0Wc
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@YY_Sima Qian: It’s been observed here that the American Right’s narrative is they staged a successful revolution in the 90s and that revolution failed in the ’00s. Thus the endless rounds of RINOS purges in the GOP. This is more of a desperate rear guard action because they know they are the last of the true believers in the Revolution.
That’s also why I wouldn’t be surprised if they would be happy to accept Biden as a king since it would achieve one of their goals.
Geminid
@Geminid: Speaking of Jon Tester, Tulsi Gabbard has endorsed Testers opponent, Tim Sheehy. The former Hawaii Representative appeared with Sheehy at a rally in Kalispell three weeks ago.
Baud
@Geminid:
All of us who distrusted Tulsi from the beginning were right.
The Thin Black Duke
@Enhanced Voting Techniques: Yes.
There’s a scene in the last episode of GoT where Sam proposes a democratic system and everyone laughs at him because the idea is so absurd.
As much as I enjoyed GoT most of the time, that was a moment where I wished the Night King won.
opiejeanne
@JPL: I didn’t because the elderly one of our cats just died, at about 3:30am. Threw himself off of the bed, was carried downstairs because he couldn’t walk, and died. He was 19, poor old guy. We had an appointment with the vet on Wednesday to help him along. I was annoyed that they wouldn’t help him yesterday.
It’s now 4:15 and I don’t think I’m going to be able to sleep now.
Chris Johnson
@Baud: Bigtime. It got really obvious.
SFAW
@opiejeanne:
So sorry about your kitty. Even though you knew his time was near, it’s always painful.
SiubhanDuinne
@Soprano2:
Has a strong whiff of the old “Irresistible Force meets Immovable Object” paradox, doesn’t it?
brantl
@JPL: Oh, stop wringing your hands; I can see bone between your fingers.
SFAW
@Soprano2:
Paraphrasing Tricky Dick:
If a Republican does it, it’s not illegal.
If a Demon-crap does it, it is.
And this CSCOTUS would back them up, most likely.
TBone
Senator Whitehouse spells it out! 🔥
https://www.whitehouse.senate.gov/news/release/whitehouse-slams-scotus-decision-depriving-american-voters-of-facts-about-insurrection-leader-running-for-president/
The whole thing is short and worth a read!
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@The Thin Black Duke: and note: Tolkien was a Catholic, these Heritage SCOTUS clowns are Catholics.
eclare
@opiejeanne:
Oh no! I’m so sorry, that must have been traumatic. I’d be tempted to find a new vet.
RIP opiejeannekitty
comrade scotts agenda of rage
@Anne Laurie:
I hope that’s the case but fear it won’t be. If memory serves, President Biden setup:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Presidential_Commission_on_the_Supreme_Court_of_the_United_States
which predictably recommended nothing. I also thought, and here is where I don’t trust my memory, that President Biden at some point said he wasn’t in favor of expanding the court.
Now, he had a lot on his agenda at the time and dealing with the Extremes might have been low on his priority list and events have changed his mind.
All the more reason we need the Electoral Trifecta come November, then follow up in 2025 with a serious “lean” on our elected leaders to enact some kind of reforms.
comrade scotts agenda of rage
@opiejeanne:
Oh my, I’m so sorry.
SFAW
@JPL:
Look, he and/or his prep team fucked up: he should have come out with both (figurative) guns blazing. He didn’t, and it hurt him, in no small part because the FTFTFNYT and its quisling brethren in the media keep focusing on it. But he isn’t sundowning.
ETA: Paid political operative Robert Hur — in the parts that he (and the FTFTFNYT et al.) mysteriously seemed to have forgotten — wrote that President Biden was in command of the facts during the Hur interviews. Hur admitted it, in the parts of the report he semi-redacted. I’m as much of a Nervous Nelly as anyone here, but Sleepy Joe Brandon ain’t sundowning,
TBone
@comrade scotts agenda of rage: 💙👍❤️ YES to all of that, if my memory is serving today…
We need to keep pushing HARD.
Geminid
@Betty Cracker: A lot of Senators are keeping theur options open on this question. It will get hashed out in caucus meetings this November, and will obviously depend on whether the Democrats have 50 seats. Other circumstances will be a factor also.
Ed. For now though, they may not see much upside to talking about this question in their campaigns, especially if they are running in purple or red states.
If they keep control, I don’t think there will be much blowback if they eliminate the filibuster entirely. They still might go the carveout route, and I don’t think they’ll get much blowback if they they do that either. As a practical matter, the’ll still have to work up legislation that all 50 or 51 Senators can get behind no matter which filibuster rule they adopt.
opiejeanne
@SFAW: Thank you. It’s been a tough week. He stopped eating about 3 days ago, and before that had become alarmingly thin so we took him to the vet last week to discuss his health. He rallied after the vet visit, but then just stopped. The way old cats do.
His name was Henry. He had no right to live as long as he did, 19 years, after eating lilies when he was a kitten. We’ve only had him for the past 5 years
@eclare: We’re with this vet because we needed a better one.
TBone
@comrade scotts agenda of rage: last night my grief for our nation intermingled with (brought back to the fore) the grief of losing my family, and too many friends of the human and fur varieties. Thank you for posting that, it’s what I try to tell myself so I don’t get sucked into the void.
@opiejeanne: I hope you can find peace in your heart very soon. I hope the love you have conquers the pain.
Bupalos
@trnc: At some point we really need to change the language we use. This is the least conservative decision possible.
eclare
@opiejeanne:
Oh, poor Henry. BTW that’s why even though lilies are my favorite flower, I don’t have any, indoors or out.
SFAW
@Bupalos:
No kidding. I stopped calling them “conservatives” a number of years ago, because it was clear they’re not; my go-to designation is “RWMFs.”
TBone
@SFAW: ooooh, I like that even better than “RWNJs.”
opiejeanne
@comrade scotts agenda of rage: Thanks, and now I’m crying.
The other kitty came to us a few minutes ago, to ask if we knew that there was a dead cat in the laundry room. Dave went down and wrapped him up and carried him into the garage. She is going to miss him, when he isn’t around to play the “Mom! Make him stop looking at me/touching me!” game.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@opiejeanne: I’m sorry.
opiejeanne
@eclare: And thanks. The past few days have been traumatic, and his exit was a bit more dramatic than we expected.
Dorothy A. Winsor
I’m wearing my “Nevertheless, she persisted” T-shirt today. It seemed appropriate.
lowtechcyclist
@Baud:
OK, but that’s “we’d have gotten the Court back if not only had she won, but a bunch of other things had gone better in the months leading up to the election.”
That’s a bit different from “she gets those 80,000 votes she needed to win MI/PA/WI” but no other assumptions are made.
Now if James Comey had been in a coma for the two weeks before the election… ;-)
SFAW
@TBone:
I’m here to serve.
Basically, using “NJ” semi-implies (to me, at least) that they’re not necessarily in control of their behavior(s). All, or almost all, of their behavior is volitional. And evil.
Eyeroller
@Princess: It really wasn’t concerning. Fluency disorder (which is entirely a neurological issue and requires concentration to manage) plus cold medicine plus sore throat plus stress easily explains it, but ” if you’re explaining you’re losing.” The concern is because of the over-the-top reaction by some Democrats which the press gleefully seized because it fits their narratives of “Biden is too old” and “Democrats in disarray.”
And I do marvel at all the sudden expertise in geriatrics out there. Symptoms of sundowning include: “insomnia, anxiety, pacing, hallucinations, paranoia and confusion.” “Slightly garbled speaking and losing one’s train of thought” are not on that list.
As satby said, we need to stop this hysterical bullshit and get back on track. It probably would help for Biden to do some interviews (but not with the FTFNYT, fuck those fuckers) and pressers and such. Maybe he will now.
comrade scotts agenda of rage
@opiejeanne:
It never gets easy no matter how many times you go thru it. We love old kittehs.
And good on you for adopting an old cat in the first place.
SFAW
@Eyeroller:
Would the New York Times Pitchbot be an acceptable substitute?
And I agree re: a bunch of pressers, I think that would counteract a lot of the FTFTFNYT (et al.) BS.
Eyeroller
@opiejeanne: I’m sorry to hear that. I have a much younger (12) cat on my lap right now who has a mysterious ailment that I am not able to treat successfully. (That is, we know what it is but not what causes it.) I am afraid I may lose him this year. At least Henry had a long and I assume happy life. That’s the best we can do for them.
opiejeanne
@eclare: My daughter had no idea about lilies, and we’d never had a cat who was interested in plants like that. Henry was her first husband’s cat, I mean, he was definitely a man’s cat. He was hungry for affection and adored my husband after our son-in-law ditched our daughter. Until recently he’d climb into bed with mr opiejeanne, and settle down to sleep in my husband’s arms. He was a very charming tuxedo cat.
lowtechcyclist
@Betty Cracker:
Not only that, but people get a lot more pissed about having something taken away from them than they get if they never have it in the first place.
If we pass good stuff and the Rethugs take it away, it’s a lot worse of an outcome for the Rethugs than if we never pass that stuff because the Rethugs filibustered it.
eclare
@Dorothy A. Winsor:
It’s always appropriate.
opiejeanne
@comrade scotts agenda of rage: He was a frequent visitor to our house so we knew him well and he liked us. He loved mr opiejeanne and would insist on being picked up.
eclare
@SFAW:
I still say Dax Shepherd’s Armchair Expert podcast. He’s smart, funny, good reach, etc. His wife Kristin Bell could sit in.
Manyakitty
@Betty Cracker: glad to hear! Yay for glimmers of good news ❤️
eclare
@opiejeanne:
Oh how sweet! Tuxedos are the best, I lost mine last year. Oliver was the only pet I’ve had who died at home, that’s how I know it’s traumatic.
eclare
@lowtechcyclist:
Excellent point.
opiejeanne
Yesterday’s outrageous SC rulings already had me wound up and exhausted so that I did get a few hours sleep until the kitty’s dramatic exit, and now the Beethoven birds* are awake and singing the first foru notes of the 5th. Repeatedly.
*Song sparrows.
Princess
@Eyeroller: you marvel at the sudden experts in gerontology; I marvel at the sudden experts in speech disorders.
Eyeroller
@SFAW: The concern with pressers would be the inevitable mountain of bullshit questions. It would consist of “Do you know how old you are?” asked over and over in different ways. But he does need to show that he’s coherent. The press grabs hold of either intentional lies (Hur) or occasional lapses that are either normal or are due to stuttering so they can catapult their propaganda. And I finally cancelled my FTFNYT subscription yesterday when they came out with that bullshit that even Krugman signed on to.
Manyakitty
@Spanky: could be Dueling Banjos
SomeRandomFellow
(NB: Above is in response to a linked Xit, not a comment to this post)
IIRC, we only had a Senate majority starting in *2020* so the Republicans would have blocked Clinton’s first pick, and then, her second. We would have had a 4-3 minority after Ginsberg, and Hillary Clinton would have faced a long, fierce, reelection battle – you know the Republican hatred of Hillary Clinton knows no bounds.
If you’re going to “not shame people” don’t postulate impossible scenarios without thinking through the history. Make some fucking sense first. *Then* go on to not shaming people. Point out that the Republicans promised not to let Hillary Clinton govern, and they could have, and now, look what Trump has done in her place. “Do you think this is *okay*, that we find a Republican is allowed to commit literal murder, so long as he orders it as an official act as President, and a Democratic President isn’t allowed to pass an EPA rule that promotes better health and well-being?”
Eyeroller
@Princess: OK, I’m not a speech therapist, but it’s well documented in Biden’s case. He’s talked about his struggles with it. And people are running straight to “dementia” and “sundowning” with a lot less evidence.
Manyakitty
@The Thin Black Duke: reasonable.
Manyakitty
@opiejeanne: oh no. I’m so sorry 😔. Sending love on a difficult day.
opiejeanne
@eclare: In 1985 we lost a cat who had a series of heart attacks, which no vet* believed until they also witnessed it. Cats do have them, but it’s very rare. I took him to our vet be put to sleep after one final one, and our lovely vet wanted to observe him for a day or two. He died in the vet’s arms the next morning, and the vet was weeping when he called me. I was nearly inconsolable and probably needed therapy.
*Three vets, including the emergency vet, the vet who covered for ours while he was on vacation, and finally ours. That cat waited for our son to come home from a Boy Scout camping trip before finally collapsing. They were both 15 and had spent their entire lives together.
SomeRandomFellow
Screw you. Now, be specific you indescribable moron. *WHAT* “what happened on stage?”
His abortion answer? Stutterer caught by too many topics, too little time.
His looking like an old man? Screw you (again).
His raspy voice? Screw you (a third time)
His lack of stepping into a phone booth and emerging as Joe Perfecto? Jesus, Mary, and Joeseph the flipping CARPENTER, you’re stupid.
The American people deserve specifics for why you’re so horribly wrong, but we know that you *are*.
opiejeanne
@Manyakitty: I have the cancan playing on continuous loop because I recently watched Stardust, with De Niro’s hilarious turn as a cross-dressing pirate captain.
Manyakitty
@opiejeanne: hahahaha 🤣 😂 💃
Soprano2
@trnc: But they think he committed crimes related to the border by refusing to enforce laws (he didn’t, but that’s what they think). He’s immune from their prosecution now!
Soprano2
@Princess: Yes, this. Lots of people who talk about these things have no earthly idea what they are talking about, and obviously have no experience with people who actually have dementia.
opiejeanne
I think I’ll cancel my WaPo subscription. I’m so angry over their coverage of the debate that I don’t want to read them any more. Also thinking about dropping the Seattle Times, but not angry enough yet.
I think I might subscribe to the LA Times instead of WaPo.
Soprano2
@Bupalos: I agree, this is a radical decision. There is nothing conservative about it.
opiejeanne
@Soprano2: I’ve seen dementia up close and personal twice, my paternal grandmother who lived with us and later my mother, and it looks very different from what I saw in the debate.
SomeRandomFellow
@TBone: Trouble is, if Joe Biden had trumped up an investigation into King Vitamin Jr. – I mean, TFGjr – Democrats would have torn him apart, and felt betrayed.
When Republicans did the same thing, Republicans fucking *celebrated* violating their oaths, so they could exonerate him, during his SOTU. (Remember what’s horrible about Joe Biden? He wasn’t quiet and meek during his SOTU!) And then, he threatened innumerable lives, trying to hold on to power.
Remember: the plot was that Pence would simply miscount the ballots. Simply declare that the alternate slates of electors were valid, and the correct slates were tainted. They figured that the SCOTUS would either uphold his action, or declare it non-justiciable, which would have made Donald Trump the President right the fuck now, Insurrection Act to put down protestors – no big, it’s Official Powers that would cause the murder of protestors.
We now know that the Republicans were likely correct on their opinion of the SCOTUS’s actions if Pence hadn’t decided
1) not to carry out the plan, and
2) to show up, so they couldn’t replace him with the Senate Majority Leader who *would* have carried out the plan.
Anyway: why aren’t people pulling out their boxes of tweets from during the pandemic, and how “most of the people who died were aged past their life expectancy”?
Manyakitty
@opiejeanne: I cancelled my WaPo subscription over a headline that asked which of the two candidates would damage the country less. Not paying for that level of bullshit. They sent an email recently asking why I cancelled and they got an earful (eyeful?) in return. Not like they care, but they can add it to the data.
eclare
@opiejeanne:
Oh what a story, waiting for your son to come home. This room needs dusting all of a sudden.
eclare
@opiejeanne:
That’s what I did, got a four month trial for $1. I miss the WaPo, but with the changes at the top, it’s just going to get worse. I hope Jen Rubin and Alexandra Petri end up somewhere else.
Still getting used to the LA Times.
O. Felix Culpa
@Enhanced Voting Techniques: You might be confusing GoT with LOTR. The latter is Tolkien; GoT is George R.R. Martin, whose religious background I don’t know.
satby
@Eyeroller: that might have been a response to this from me “as a stutterer (which is both a speech impediment and a neuroglitch on smoothly uttering thoughts”).
Which is information I got from a speech pathologist (a cousin) when we were talking about it, though I rephrased her take to my understanding of what she said. Obviously “neuroglitch” is highly technical language 😆
206inKY
@Baud: The loser Democrats who voted Trump over Clinton were possibly unreachable—he had been branded too effectively by the Apprentice and too many white people chose the interesting over the good. The Democratic arsenal today is much stronger than in 2016 with Dobbs and actual fascism on the table.
Citizen Alan
In my dream scenario, everyone who mindlessly spouts misogynoir will shut the hell up.
SomeRandomGuy
@satby: Just so you know, the two descriptions are precisely equal.
Speaking is far more complicated than many people realize, for the same reason that water is much thicker and heavier than most fish realize. You’re taking thoughts – which we only kinda-understand – and turning them into words, and, at the exact same time, sending signals to a complicated set of breath and tensioning interactions (lips, tongue, vocal cords).
Now, if you understood networking, I’d ask you to imagine a broadcast storm by a faulty NIC, and how it might just knock a *few* of those interactions off-kilter.
In a digital system, that wouldn’t be too bad. But our brain is analog. (Some of the network techs who have experience from 30+ years ago might now be going “Oh, like on coax!”)
In my personal experience, if I’m getting an overload of my sensory nerves, it becomes harder – not impossible – to push words through that muck, but simpler, shorter, messages are far, far easier, and, baby-talk words (for which we have the most memory associations – we call it “baby talk” because it’s how babies learn!) are easiest of all.
Okay, but, hard tasks will result in occasional problems. That’s why they’re not called “easy tasks”. I’ve had to close my eyes and think slowly and carefully to avoid stuttering, when just under overload.
But throw on additional brainloads, like stress, etc., and there are times it becomes impossible to speak normally. You try to push words to your mouth/vocal cords/lips/tongue, and your brain says “they’re not able to coordinate right now, sorry.” You can try to force it, but, you won’t talk pretty.
I’ve ended phone conversations with “me go talk other people now.” That’s “not talking pretty”. With practice, you can get a lot better at coping, but, it will still be a “hard thing,” when, for most people, it’s so easy they don’t even recognize it’s a “thing” that can be “hard,” because they’ve never _had_ to.
Citizen Alan
@trnc:
If ACB were actually as conservative than we thought, she would step down from the court in favor of a male justice as soon as the Court completed the business of abolishing all rights for women. The evangelical position is that a woman should never be in a place of authority over a man, except when that woman in authority is especially positioned to advance evangelical dominance.
Citizen Alan
@trnc: I think that’s what all that “dictator on day 1” bullshit was about. Come in on day one, arrest enough democrats in Congress on trumped up charges to give the GOP control the house and a filibuster proof majority in the senate, and then just pass laws through regular procedures to do whatever they want.
Citizen Alan
@Enhanced Voting Techniques:
One of the funniest things to me about Star Wars is how it started with Leia as a princess and later padme as a queen. And then it all got retconned by saying that these were actually elected positions that could go to teenage girls and, in the case of queen, were term limited.
Citizen Alan
@The Thin Black Duke: Eh. Democracy doesn’t happen overnight. They eventually went with an elective monarchy chosen by the political class, which is certainly a step in the direction of democracy. Even the founders of the united states would have balked at giving the franchise to illiterate superstitious peasants at that point.
brantl
@Chris Johnson: Dobbs moved the needle? This is Dobbs times three. It’s still a democracy. Let’s keep it, and fix what’s been smashed.
Normies don’t even know, or care, what this means.
Miss Bee
@Manyakitty: That headline was also my turning point–coming right after the news that they sat on the Alito flag story for months.
Chris T.
@SpaceUnit:
It’s the Rule of 3: 3 minutes without air, 3 hours without shelter, 3 days without water, 3 weeks without food. Booze must fit in there somewhere as another “three”…