Not only am I optimistic, I am fired up and excited as hell. I haven't felt the joy, the enthusiasm, or the optimism like this since 2008.
I almost — almost, not quite because we're all still recovering from the Trump traumas — want to believe that this feeling, shared by so many other people, represents a fever breaking in America, a rejection and repudiation of the people who did their best to lead us into a dystopian, fascist, nightmare.
We have a huge fight ahead of us. They aren't running a campaign as much as they are preparing for another coup, and we will have to turn out an incredible number of voters to account for all the places they have people in place to deny and contest when he loses.
Before the debate, I was concerned. After the debate, I was despondent.
But now, I am fired up and excited as hell. Kamala Harris is going to be an incredible president, and there's a good chance she pulls the House and Senate with her. If that happens, we get SCOTUS reform, Trump faces the music for his crimes without interference, (and maybe some of his co-conspirators go with him, Mark Meadows), and we push the demons Trump unleashed back into the darkness where they belong.
But it only happens when ALL OF US turn out to vote. It only happens when we get all of our friends and family to vote. It only happens when we volunteer, stay involved, and SHOW UP.
Same goes for the Gang of Six on the 'Supreme' Court and all Republicans. VOTE for Biden, VOTE Democrat, send all these traitorous spineless Chrisofascists back to the darkness they crawled out of. Your life may very well depend on it.
Yeah, I'm talking about those Nazgûl motherfuckers on SCOTUS. Like almost everybody I know, I spent yesterday vacillating between 1) feeling depressed and helpless and 2) wanting to set fire to the entire combustible world. The decision yesterday that POTUS (and Trump in particular) is essentially above the law was appalling and frightening, but the fact that it was delivered in smug terms by the most conspicuously corrupt and openly partisan SCOTUS in history was insulting. It's like they're standing there, grinning in their black robes, saying "Fuck yeah, we're corrupt. And ain't nothing you plebs can do about it."
Justice Sotomayor, in her properly raging dissent, wrote, "in every use of official power, the President is now a king above the law." And she's right. That whole notion that nobody is above the law has gone straight down the porcelain facility. This is an unprecedented fuckwankery. This is deep fuckwankery; fuckwankery down at the cellular level. I mean, the spouses of two of the Justices (Alito and Thomas) openly supported the insurrection/insurrectionists, and yet those two tainted pricks didn't have the fundamental sense of decency to recuse themselves from the case.
What makes this even more galling is the fact that those arrogant motherfuckers on SCOTUS were put on the bench by partisan politicians who represent a minority of US citizens. A combination of partisan gerrymandering, voter suppression, and the absurdity of the Electoral College means that the US is largely ruled by the minority. And in recent years, that minority cheated, lied, and wriggled around enough to install three partisan hacks onto the SCOTUS bench.
Wipe the smiles off the faces of 6 of these corrupt wankers.
Every single one of the Justices sitting on this SCOTUS testified under oath that they respected stare decisis, the legal concept that courts should follow precedent. At least six of them lied about that. This Court has largely shat all over precedent. For almost half a century, Roe guaranteed a woman's right to choose. That's gone. The Bakke decision on race-conscious admissions in higher education was the law of the land for almost as long. Not any more. For 40 years, Chevron — Jesus suffering fuck, people, there have been 70 SCOTUS and some 17,000 or so lower court cases based on Chevron, which states courts need to defer to the experts in various regulatory agencies when deciding how to interpret a law. A judge probably doesn't know enough to decide what level of exposure to a certain chemical or substance would be harmful to a child. A judge probably doesn't have a fucking clue about the long term effects of effluent run-off from a hog containment farm into a local river upstream from a small town. Experts need to decide this shit, not judges. But nope, this SCOTUS has turned that power over to elected or appointed judges.
Wait…I forgot bribery. Last week, this SCOTUS (and I am NOT MAKING THIS UP) made the bizarre decision that while it's illegal for a public official (like, say, a mayor or a member of Congress, or possibly a judge) to accept a bribe, it's perfectly for fine for them to accept a gratuity. A bribe is the offer of money (or something of value) from a person/entity beforethe public official makes a decision affecting that person or entity. A gratuity is accepting the same fucking thing after the decision is made. Seriously, the Court says bribes are bad but gratuities are okay. This decision was written by the Justice whose massive credit card debt was mysteriously paid off before he was nominated. You know who I'm talking about–the guy reliably accused of sexual assault. That guy. (Okay, Kavanaugh.)
If you're reading this hoping that at the end I'll suggest some way to make you feel better about the situation…sorry. If you're hoping I'll cobble together ideas for a way forward, or maybe offer some practical advice on how to minimize the damage…nope. Maybe tomorrow or at some point in the future. For now, all I have to say is let yourself be angry or depressed for a while. Maybe just be numb for a while.
But pretty soon we'll need to get over it and resist. Resist in any way we can. Resist in every way we can. But today it's literally raining here in the heartland, and for today that's fine.
The court has ruled on presidential immunity. "A former president is entitled to absolute immunity from criminal prosecution for actions within his "conclusive and preclusive constitutional authority," the ruling says. "There is no immunity for unofficial acts."
So, a president is not fully immune. Personal acts aren't immune, presidential acts MIGHT be immune, but there is some presumption of immunity for official acts.
Obviously this presumption of immunity is nowhere in the Constitution. The originalists are definitely being original, and boy are we eff'ed; so much for Republican arguments that judges shouldn't legislate from the bench. The argument now is going to be about what is or is not "an official act."
I wish that the SCOTUS made it clear what is an official duty (you know, like duties as defined in The Constitution) versus everything else, but they didn't, and so here we are.
There is no way the DC trial gets underway before the election.
The decision is here. I'm reading the dissenting opinion first, and oof. Sotomayor writes that the majority's grant of immunity "reshapes the institution of the presidency" and "makes a mockery of the principle" that "no man is above the law."
We are totally eff'ed in the dark.
Justice Jackson:
The majority of my colleagues seems to have put their trust in our Court's ability to prevent Presidents from becoming Kings through case-by-case application of the indeterminate standards of their new Presidential accountability paradigm. I fear that they are wrong. But, for all our sakes, I hope that they are right.
In the meantime, because the risks (and power) the Court has now assumed are intolerable, unwarranted, and plainly antithetical to bedrock constitutional norms, I dissent.
UPDATE 1:
"You can hear the echoes of Richard Nixon saying, 'If the president does it, it is not illegal.'" — MSNBC's Katy Tur
VOTE BLUE LIKE YOUR LIFE DEPENDS ON IT…BECAUSE IT DOES!
Much like The Orange Russian Wig Stand, Thomas seems to think he's untouchable. But karma has shown us time and again that no one is untouchable. As Ben said at dinner last night, "I'm really looking forward to watching his fall."
Congress has to get rid of him and pass legislation so it never happens again. No president has ever tried to buy a SCOTUS justice, but we never imagined we have Trump as a President.
The only way to get rid of Thomas and his traitorous wife is to make sure Democrats are in charge of the White House, Senate, and House come November and then increase the size of the Supreme Court to the point he and the other insurrectionist-enablers become irrelevant.
A couple weeks ago — the day before Valentine's Day, in fact — the House GOP impeached the Secretary of Homeland Security, Alejandro Mayorkas. Why? Did he commit any 'high crimes and misdemeanors'? Nope. Is he even suspected of committing any HC&M? Nope. Did the Republicans actually think there was any way in hell the Senate would act on this? Nope. So why did they impeach him?
Because: 1) Donald Fucking Trump wanted somebody — preferably Biden, but anybody in the Biden administration — impeached. 2) They want to use scary brown immigrants as an election issue. 3) Pure malignant spite and the desire to hurt people. 4) They hope it'll give their base the appearance that they're doing something. 5) They wanted to say 'Fuck you' to Joe Biden and his entire administration.
These are all bad reasons to impeach anybody. That pisses me off. But what pisses me off just as much — and maybe more — is that there are people who absolutely fucking deserve to be impeached. People who are totally impeach-worthy. People whose past behavior has earned an impeachment and whose future behavior actually threatens the future of representative democracy in the United States. People like this fucking guy:
Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States Clarence 'Deep Pockets' Thomas
Right now, we have the most openly corrupt and partisan SCOTUS in US history — and ain't nobody more openly corrupt and partisan than Clarence Thomas. He's had his hand out since Day One. This avaricious sumbitch would steal the sugar out of a cake. Hell, he'd do it while you watched and dare you to call him on it. He barely tries to hide it. For decades, he's received 'gifts' from billionaire 'friends' whose business interests depended on favorable SCOTUS opinions. These are 'friends' he made after he was tapped for SCOTUS; it's not like they're his old high school buddies. He's accepted these gifts, he's failed to report them as he's required to do, and he's ruled on their cases. That's some serious grifting, right there.
Then, of course, there's all the awful shit his wife has pulled. I'm talking about her encouraging and promoting the January 6th Insurrection, which is truly bad its ownself. And when her shit came up before SCOTUS, did Clarence recuse himself like any ethical jurist would? Nope. He not only sat on the case, he was the ONLY justice on the bench that voted in a way that protected his wife.
There is absolutely no sustainable argument for Clarence Thomas to remain an Associate Justice on the Supreme Court of the United States. I mean, there are other assholes on SCOTUS we could do without, but Clarence is the bull goose grifter and the most obvious and deserving candidate for impeachment.
I can say, with absolute confidence and mathematical certitude, that if Clarence had been appointed by a Democrat and had been writing liberal decisions, the Republicans would have held a decade worth of hearings by now. If Congressional Republicans are willing to impeach Mayorkas over bullshit, why aren't Democrats willing to impeach this grasping, covetous bastard? What in the stonewashed fuck is wrong with Democrats? Why won't Democrats at least TRY to do what's right?
You don't have to answer that. The answer is pretty obvious (SPOILER: they're comfortable political cowards who'll mewl and grizzle about how unfair it all is, but won't fucking act).
Look, I'm not asking Democrats to act like Republicans. I mean, they're assholes. They're willing to lie, fabricate, mislead, obfuscate, and deceive in order to score petty political points. Democrats don't need to do that. They can just present verifiable facts to support a legit impeachment inquiry.
Seriously, the US would be better off if Democrats would just TRY to impeach this asshole. It would be a worthy effort even if the Senate failed to convict him. So c'mon, give it a shot, Democrats. What have you got to lose?
