Many years ago I used to spend my Sunday afternoons listening to the Sunday news/talk shows wankerfest shows on C-span radio. I gave it up when I began to my feel brain cells dying in pain from the relentless stupidity. Today, I had to run an errand and the car radio was tuned to C-span. So, I caught a few minutes of a CNN panel discussing yelling about something that might have been a political issue. It was hard to tell.
Through the din, I did pick up that John Boehner had somebody ghost write a post for him that was published on the former news network’s web site. As the panel began to argue about the God SCOTUS given right for white men to control any and all lady parts I reached my destination.
I avoided C-span on the way home. Once there, I decided that I should read the post created for the great orange invertebrate. Turns out that the word salad has something to do with suing Barack Obama.
The reasons stated to justify Boehner’s lawsuit are fuzzy, unconnected to the law, the Constitution, logic or even reality. That will no doubt make it a winning stunt and distraction for the White Walkers animating the corpse of the GOP.
If enough of these zombies can be motivated to vote in November, the oligarchs who run the show will make more money. And nothing will mobilize the Teatardick base of the GOP like an appeal to racial code talking.
The base is outraged that a black man is President. They are outraged that he dares to exercise the exact same type of Presidential powers that white Presidents have used in the past. They are outrage that he does not seek permission of the white GOP minority before he acts.
John Boehner gets the outrage of his base. He fears his base and needs them at the same time. To fluff them he will do anything. And so he is preparing to sue the President of the United States for the “crime” of being an uppity negro.
Take the racial code-talking away and there is nothing to support or justify his lawsuit at all.
As silly as this lawsuit will be, sillier still will be the way that the very serious people inside the beltway will pretend that race has nothing to do with it.
Should be a fun summer.
Cheers
ulee
What the fuck is wrong with you? Can’t you just be alone with your thoughts? Typical fucking man.
Dennis G.
@ulee: Too hard. The 70s taught me to share my feelings…
Cassidy
Tea baggers ain’t the only one on this bandwagon. Gotta couple thread today to show that.
SuperHrefna
Love the title, love the photo, hate the weeping cheeto with the fire and fury of a thousand suns. I really hope efgoldman is right and he never files suit because I honestly cannot go though all that again.
dmsilev
@efgoldman: Oh, something will be filed, it just won’t go anywhere anytime soon. File a lawsuit in say September as a froth-up-the-base exercise. By the time it actually gets in front of a judge, it’s probably the middle of next year at the absolute earliest. First round of appeals, 2016. And by that point, nobody will care any more, since we’ll all be in the throes of the next Presidential race.
It’s a political exercise pure and simple, but for it to work as such, Boehner has to at least go through the first formal steps.
Elizabelle
I could get used to having you back, dengre.
Never tire of that lovely pic of PBO and his young visitor.
Ben Cisco (onboard the Defiant)
Kay Hagan volunteer came by today, a first for Casa de Cisco. I told him so long as she supports us, we’ll support her. I hope she gets it figured out that she can win without the bigots, but she won’t without the rest of us.
Kay
Characteristically.
I love how “passing legislation” now means “out of one chamber”. I can’t follow this drunken rambling. Does this mean they have to get something thru the Senate to sue the President? I guess they need something to sue on? They can’t just sue him for being President. I knew that much.
And, hello Dennis! I’m glad you’re back.
Mnemosyne
@efgoldman:
That they were given the presidency in the next election by essentially saying, Nice country you have here, shame if something happened to it?
I’m not sure the Republicans learned the impeachment lesson we wish they had learned.
dmsilev
@efgoldman: Just like peak wingnut, there’s no such thing as Peak Froth. There’s always more money to extract, a few more marginal votes to attract, etc.
As far as the suit itself is concerned, you’re right that standing would probably be the first thing that is fought over. That itself would probably get appealed all the way up to the Supreme Court, so it could be a couple of years before the actual merits of the suit were argued.
Cacti
Dismissed either for lack of standing, or failure to state a claim upon which relief can be granted.
Dennis G.
@Cassidy: One of the powers of white supremacy in America is that it transcends most notions of left and right. Over the last few years cypto-racist green lanternism has found a well fertilized home regardless of POV among white folks. It is much like the way white America decided to forget about race in the wake of the Civil War and decide to find common ground in fantasies of racial superiority.
The only difference now is that they all agree that they are white folks better than Obama. I think that their shared whiteness is why Nader has found common cause with Grover Fuckin’ Norquist.
Kay
Oh, well, it’s bipartisan, Says so right there in the name.
dmsilev
@Kay: There’s some sort of House-only legal apparatus (which if memory serves has the term ‘Bipartisan’ in its name but of course does what the majority of the House wants). It’s still not clear what Boehner will be suing over (beyond “Presidenting While Democratic”, of course), since he so far has avoided specifics even when directly asked.
dmsilev
@efgoldman: Well, yeah. I can’t find the exact quote, but when reporters asked Boehner for the particulars of what he was going to be suing Obama for, the response was along the lines of “I haven’t decided yet”. Clearly a Congressman following in the fine legal traditions of Daniel Webster.
Kay
@dmsilev:
Thanks. I followed some links. “Bipartisan legal advisory group”. Suing on…they don’t know yet.
I’m not making any predictions. I think that’s a crap shoot in the current climate. The GOP judges have all gone bonkers, too, it seems to me.
Anoniminous
@efgoldman:
There’s always the Ninth Amendment: The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.
Presidentin’ while Black is disparaging to some white people.
karen
And the rules don’t seem to apply because threatening the overthrowing of the Government, saying Obama should be shot dead and that if they don’t get their way on election day, they should come locked and loaded with their guns for a “Second Amendment solution.”
All those things like the Secret Service, going home, playing golf, things that were typical with Presidents, are impeachable crimes when it comes to a black President.
It’s different for some reason when it’s against a black President and I fucking hate it!
Dennis G.
@Kay: We are in a post-law era when it comes to Republican appointed Judges. The partisan affiliation at the time a case is decided is now the only thing that matters and that is decided by which side in a case spends the most money.
It is the free market at work…
Anton Sirius
@dmsilev:
Demographically-speaking, they have to keep scrounging up those marginal white votes, just to try and tread water in the short term.
MattF
Open thread means I can post (via jwz) Pneumatic Sponge Ball Accelerator. I have to note in passing that I would never have spontaneously googled that particular colocation of lexicalisms.
Cassidy
@Dennis G.: I think, from our side anyway, it’s just good ol’ fashioned class prejudice. The suburban left spent a lot of time being the “champions” of minority classes. That didn’t mean they actually wanted to talk to them, just about them.
Suffern ACE
@Kay: that’s what I’m worried about. I could see placing the country into receivership just to get rid if Obama.
burnspbesq
@Dennis G.:
Clearly, you have no idea how stupid that statement makes you look.
karen
@Kay:
They think that Obama being alive is impeachable.
Suzanne
@karen: I am not sure that racism is the sole or even the largest factor in their hatred of Obama. They hate him because he isn’t in their tribe, sure, but that has as much to do with how he doesn’t fellate their “job-creating” needle dicks and doesn’t go to an Evangelical church and isn’t grossed out by Teh Ghey and seems to respect his wife as an equal partner in their marriage. I think they would hate a white Dem just as much (they impeached the last white Dem, FFS), and they seem to be OK with black dudes in their party as long as they behave the way the rest of them do.
MattF
@karen: The crime is PWB.
Kay
@dmsilev:
I think it’s a funny political tactic. Once you’ve been thru one fake impeachment the power of the threat sort of fizzles, so I guess they need a new gimmick.
Did we already have the Benghazi hearings? I’ve been busy. Hearings have to be a summer thing. That’s traditional. Tick, tock!
waspuppet
@efgoldman: Precisely. He will never actually file. He just has to say he will. He was actually asked what grounds he had and he could barely even croak out an answer (and when Neil Cavuto, of all people, asked Michele Bachmann the same question she couldn’t even manage that). Notice that Rand Paul still hasn’t filed his much-ballyhooed suit, and that was months ago.
Kay
@Suffern ACE:
I was genuinely mad, in a personal way, when they shut down the government because I had no idea what it would do to the economy and I was just getting rolling again. Just furious. “Do you have ANY IDEA what we have been thru? Do you?”
The idea that they would deliberately and carefully thwart my efforts. God. Leave me alone. Jerks.
dmsilev
@Kay:
We’ve had a few rounds of them, none of which have found any evidence of any actual wrongdoing by the administration. Which is, of course, proof that more hearings are needed.
In this case, history repeats itself, first as farce and then as slightly less amusing farce.
Dennis G.
@burnspbesq: It it the “post law” part or the Obama part you find stupid…
Marmot
I think you slept through the Clinton administration.
SiubhanDuinne
@Elizabelle:
Our POTUS has a real gift for genuinely connecting with babies and children — one that goes way beyond the usual “politicians-kissing-babies” meme. I’ve seen probably hundreds of photos and video clips of him with little kids over the past six+ years, and not once has he failed to engage. It is a beautiful thing to see.
Elizabelle
@SiubhanDuinne:
Agreed, Ms. Siubhan. It’s genuine.
patroclus
I read that and the words “failure to state a claim upon which relief can be granted” sprang to mind. All Boner mentioned was “executive actions,” so will the courts be asked to invalidate every single executive action that Obama has taken? That sounds rather vague and certainly overbroad, at the least. Surely, Boner’s lawyers will attempt to narrow it down?
But after reading the last thread, I think I’ll await what Larry Johnson, Dear Leader Greenwald and Edward Snowden and some former Republicans who supported the Iraq war have to say on the matter before I can form a final judgment.
Kay
@dmsilev:
Well, this new witness should clear everything up. Oh, forget it. It doesn’t matter what he says. Let’s parse that Jake Tapper interview with Susan Rice again. That’s the smoking gun.
Kay
@burnspbesq:
They’re going to extend that home health care union decision. Alito laid out a roadmap and there’s already a California case tee’d up. They’re responsible for retaining their own credibility with the public. They were handed it. An unearned gift. Now they have to keep it, or not.
chopper
Sir Accuse, Orangeman will never file.
Botsplainer
Joan Rivers drops the N bomb.
http://www.breitbart.com/Breitbart-TV/2014/07/06/Joan-Rivers-Drops-The-N-Word-On-Huff-Post-Live
Color me unsurprised.
Howard Beale IV
The post numbers on CNN is spinning upward like crazy.
WaterGirl
@Howard Beale IV: I understand each of the words in that sentence, but I have no idea what you are saying.
Roger Moore
Rih’s ears are burning.
Keith G
What little money I have would be bet on this threatened course of action not amounting to much in the real world. It’s theater.
Brother Shotgun of Sweet Reason
Welcome back DennisG/dengre. And I love that pic.
El Caganer
@Botsplainer: To be fair, they may not be aware on her home planet of how insulting that term is.
Frankensteinbeck
@Dennis G.:
I think the objection, minus the troll language, is that Republican judges in general are being slandered. For example, they are playing a large part in overturning anti-gay marriage laws right now. There are maybe two handfuls of completely lunatic partisan hack right wing judges.
Unfortunately, one of those hands is Scalia, Alito, Thomas, Kennedy, and Roberts. The nuts are all at the top of the tree.
rikyrah
Glad to see you back. The crime is being President while Black.
Mnemosyne
@Frankensteinbeck:
Nice. And sadly accurate.
Fred
@efgoldman:
” Dems (President’s Attorney) can and should go to court right away and fight it on standing, that there’s already a defined process in the Constitution.”
Exactly! Congress has impeachment power so taking their beef to the courts is making an end run around separation of powers. The courts should kick it back to congress but of course Boner would pick a friendly judge.
Can Obama take any action to preempt the suit? “Go to court right away” sounds great but it’s hard to defend against a legal action that hasn’t been filed and since this IS a nuisance suit for political effect the timing will , as has been noted, not be to Obama’s advantage.
Tired of Guns
Boehner is Beyond Belief.
History repeats the old conceits
The glib replies, the same defeats
Keep your finger on important issues
with crocodile tears and a pocket full of tissues
I’m just an oily slick on the wind up world with a nervous tic
in a very fashionable hovel
You hang around dying to be tortured
you’ll never be alone in the bone orchard
This battle with the bottle is nothing so novel
Lurking Canadian
What does it even mean for the Speaker of theHouse to sue the President? Can’t he introduce articles of impeachment any time he likes? Why is this suit even possible?
Keith G
@Lurking Canadian:
A lot of things are possible that never amount to much. It is theater born of a bankrupt ideology filling itself up with fearful imaginings. Would the GOP ever consider this if they thought they had an even shot in the 2016 election?
President Obama called it a stunt. He is correct.
I have a hard time imagining that this will every be argued before a judge.
Elizabelle
@Tired of Guns:
But not tired of poetry.
Thank you!
another Holocene human
@Ben Cisco (onboard the Defiant): Right on. Goes for pretty much any Democrat.