It’s the kind of ruling that makes me hope 5 justices come down with Parkinson’s or a form of cancer that we were probably 5 years from having a cure for.
I get the vibe from this Supreme Court majority that if Trump simply wakes up one morning and decides to declare that he is Zeus Omnipotent, they will not only back him up legally but shout encouragement. Because you don't want to be on the wrong side of Zeus, right?
Excellent use of Calvinball. But you all know every possible white male candidate for Justice should have come under consideration ahead of Ketanji, at least that was the opinion of some racist misogynists. Scratch that, many.
We should pray none of the Immoral Majority dies before we get a Democratic president and Congress. God bless Ketanji, and ladies,(excepting Barrett) keep fighting.
I hope we're encasing KBJ, Kagan, and Sotomayor in kevlar and feeding them whatever they need to stay alive forever. It's already going to take a generation just to have a shot at turning this Court around. If Dementia Cheeto gets another pick, it might never happen.
And I go back to 2028. Assuming there is an election, the GOP will do everything it can to make sure the opposition starts in a deep hole. 2026 is a test run. The Democratic Party is responding better now - unlike REDMAP - but is still playing catchup. I say again, they need to be locked in a room, wargaming the election, with very clever people putting on the mindset of the Stephen Millers on the other side and thinking up every way the GOP will try to ratfuck them. Learn from that and put in place your own strategies AHEAD OF TIME.
REDMAP wasn't a secret operation. Karl Rove wrote about it in the WSJ in 2008 (I think). The GOP tells you exactly what it's going to do, well ahead of time (they project) and then they tell you what the next steps are and why, all along the way. This should not be hard to counter.
One thing the Democrats can't do is to rely on their own noble ideas and character to win the day, in some kind of stark comparison to the muck and filth of Trumpism. It hasn't worked since Obama.
And they can't rely on ridiculing Trump (or Vance, or whomever comes next) and getting under their thin skins. Kamala Harris did it during the campaign. We were all thrilled. She lost. (She's probably got the FBI pounding on her door at this moment). Y'all are tickled that Newsom's doing it now. That's fine, enjoy it, but understand that it's a sugar high, it's going to pass, and it's not going to win 2026 or 2028 for us.
I wonder how many people will get the Calvinball reference? It’s been 30 years now since Bill W. retired…are C&H still part of our cultural zeitgeist?
Of course, given the likely age demographic of people who will actually read a SCOTUS opinion, much less a dissenting opinion, I’d say she’s got a good chance to still be relevant.
C&H are absolutely part of the cultural zeitgeist of at least some of us
They weighed in on the fascists' attacks on Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion, in real time
"Calvin says to Hobbes "DEI initiatives were not put in place to ensure lower-qualified minorities could get hired instead of more highly-qualified white people. It was put in place to ensure lower-qualified white people were not hired instead of more highly-qualified minorities."
It's a shame that Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson stands alone in her dissent -- as too often seems to be happening with the dissenting opinions that protect people other than White men during the terms of this SCOTUS -- but that does not make her opinions either less correct or less recognized by those of us willing to read (which I understand might certainly be your secondary point in our current culture of "I'm 'too busy' to deal with the truth")
“As Calvin and Hobbes makes clear in a recent cartoon…” As far as I know, Watterson hasn’t drawn a new C&H for the last 30 years. Please, prove me wrong!
What I meant — and that I feel quite weary in reiterating — is that the SENTIMENT is very much relevant. Did you read the part where the piece quoting that particular cartoon (which I didn’t see until this year) was dated February 11, 2025, approximately 7 months ago?
When these White boys get it - when some of the rest of us have been trying to warn for a decade — it kinda feels like someone still going “butbutbut” at this particular historic moment is doing an “I’m gonna be deliberately wilfully blind right now” thing
Sorry M - not sure why this is spinning you up. All I was curious about was whether Bill Watterson wrote an actual new strip recently. A quick Google doesn’t turn it up, just the article you referenced. I’ve got no issues with anything you are saying, just trying to clarify where it comes from. As a big C&H fan, it would mean something to me if Watterson spoke out now.
I’m not “spun up”, as you’re trying to both paint and insinuate
I am pointing out that you’re strawmanning and perhaps more than a little overfocused on nitpicking the smaller ancillary point while simultaneously completely missing the bigger one
The swift descent into authoritarianism, guided by Federal Society's creep into the SC, and Heritage Foundation's Project 2025 blueprint followed by this current White supremacist regime, is astonishing me at how easy it was for them. Only 40 years of crafting a takeover and finding the perfect malignant narcissist to make the right-wing drool over its utopia in the US. Non-millionaires lives mean nothing, absolutely nothing, to these ghouls, who are killing off every single health and life saving funding from the federal regime.
MVP Harris said something similar without naming any names or organizations
But she did speak directly about "capitulation" -- without which any even casual student of authoritarianism and
It's the *passivity* and *refusal to push back* that have enabled and emboldened these people.
Putin and the Heritage Foundation and the so-called "Federalists" -- the white supremacist Russians and the aligned Confederacy -- knew their plans could not and cannot succeed without "the passives" . So did the Nazis with the Vichy.
Now, of course, there is a sizeable minority of us who've been saying this this whole entire time
But what's amazing to me is the sheer numbers of people who literally refused to ACKNOWLEDGE that it was being said, let alone actually be willing to HEAR what was being said about it.
The Reasons the Country Is Divided - Racism & Greed
Stuart Stevens - a Republican (possibly ex-Republiican; I'm not sure at this point) and Lincoln Project founders - put out a video JUST TODAY that said "Donald Trump is a racist and we need to not be afraid to say so".
What if he and his fellow co-founders had been willing to say something like that back in 2015-16, the era of the golden escalator?
Or even consistently from 2011 -- the time when the Orange Felon (under Putin's subtle-for-him direction, I have not the slightest doubt given the totality of circumstances) started lobbing the racist birtherism against 44 -- *until* 2015?
What the fascists seem to realize in full, that the Vichys of our time appear to be in denial about, was that this country is juuuuust racist enough to have let it all pass.
Somewhere in his black soul, John Roberts - the Roger Taney of our generation - knows that what he has done in these past few years means that a future court is now free to shred precedent and rule in favor of a president of the other stripe. If we last that long. And I hope we do. And I hope that court rips ass.
Elie Mystal was very clear several years ago about John Roberts not wanting Black people to vote.
Anybody who read - or read about - John Roberts' writing the majority decision in the Shelby County case in 2013 knows that John Roberts never wanted Black people to vote.
We could have had 13 justices on the Supreme Court and Joe Biden could have appointed those justices. We could've had an Attorney General who moved a bit faster to prosecute the worst at the top. We could've had a Senate Majority Leader who wasn't so set in maintaining regular order. Could've, would've, should've.
It seems to me that these Judges are driven by hate of people and love of money. Don’t they fear that someone they love may be denied the help for a disease that might have been cured by one of these grants?
Sadopopulism is very stupid and costly, but it does feel very good to the unreconstructed. And the Taney Court is for the purpose of enshrining the bigotries and ignorance of the unreconstructed. Yes, it's killing our "seed corn," but they do not care as long as they can enjoy the power in the here and now, and smash the minorities that they hate. That's what happens when you let the unreconstructed Republican Party control things; they shave off decades of progress.
We can all look forward to dying with brutishly shortened lives, just like most people in the original Gilded Age would while they toiled for the wealthy.
While the rest of the world will stride past us in the "Knowledge economy", our leadership will show the world that we are still the world leaders in pullups, pedophilia, and conspiracy theories.
Democrats need to split the 9th and 5th to create 15 circuit courts. Pack the newly created 14th and 15th circuits with the most liberal lawyers around, and add six more SCOTUS justices so there’s one justice to supervise each circuit court, whenever Democrats have control of the White House and Congress.
Naked power grabs seems to be where we’re at as country. Grab the power to do good.
The worst part of this is that Elie Mystal wrote an ENTIRE PLAN about this in 2020
2020.
The Biden White House dragged their collective feet, fellow Democrats in the House & Senate when Ds controlled those chambers dragged their collective feet
Too many other regular citizens went "lalalalala" and/or didn't bother to read what was written about this.
And now look.
"There Is One Way Out of This Crisis: Expand the Court" - the Nation, 2020
NIA only had funding for 1 out of 10 grant proposals in the early 2000s. We were already behind other modernized countries with research funding then. We do not have an affordable, accessible healthcare system. What we have are reallllly wealthy health insurance company CEOs. Tell me that the American public is ok with this….
It’s the kind of ruling that makes me hope 5 justices come down with Parkinson’s or a form of cancer that we were probably 5 years from having a cure for.
I get the vibe from this Supreme Court majority that if Trump simply wakes up one morning and decides to declare that he is Zeus Omnipotent, they will not only back him up legally but shout encouragement. Because you don't want to be on the wrong side of Zeus, right?
" they will not only back him up legally"
Well ... it won't be that, exactly
Excellent use of Calvinball. But you all know every possible white male candidate for Justice should have come under consideration ahead of Ketanji, at least that was the opinion of some racist misogynists. Scratch that, many.
We should pray none of the Immoral Majority dies before we get a Democratic president and Congress. God bless Ketanji, and ladies,(excepting Barrett) keep fighting.
I hope we're encasing KBJ, Kagan, and Sotomayor in kevlar and feeding them whatever they need to stay alive forever. It's already going to take a generation just to have a shot at turning this Court around. If Dementia Cheeto gets another pick, it might never happen.
And I go back to 2028. Assuming there is an election, the GOP will do everything it can to make sure the opposition starts in a deep hole. 2026 is a test run. The Democratic Party is responding better now - unlike REDMAP - but is still playing catchup. I say again, they need to be locked in a room, wargaming the election, with very clever people putting on the mindset of the Stephen Millers on the other side and thinking up every way the GOP will try to ratfuck them. Learn from that and put in place your own strategies AHEAD OF TIME.
REDMAP wasn't a secret operation. Karl Rove wrote about it in the WSJ in 2008 (I think). The GOP tells you exactly what it's going to do, well ahead of time (they project) and then they tell you what the next steps are and why, all along the way. This should not be hard to counter.
One thing the Democrats can't do is to rely on their own noble ideas and character to win the day, in some kind of stark comparison to the muck and filth of Trumpism. It hasn't worked since Obama.
And they can't rely on ridiculing Trump (or Vance, or whomever comes next) and getting under their thin skins. Kamala Harris did it during the campaign. We were all thrilled. She lost. (She's probably got the FBI pounding on her door at this moment). Y'all are tickled that Newsom's doing it now. That's fine, enjoy it, but understand that it's a sugar high, it's going to pass, and it's not going to win 2026 or 2028 for us.
Thank you for your attention to this matter.
I wonder how many people will get the Calvinball reference? It’s been 30 years now since Bill W. retired…are C&H still part of our cultural zeitgeist?
Of course, given the likely age demographic of people who will actually read a SCOTUS opinion, much less a dissenting opinion, I’d say she’s got a good chance to still be relevant.
C&H are absolutely part of the cultural zeitgeist of at least some of us
They weighed in on the fascists' attacks on Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion, in real time
"Calvin says to Hobbes "DEI initiatives were not put in place to ensure lower-qualified minorities could get hired instead of more highly-qualified white people. It was put in place to ensure lower-qualified white people were not hired instead of more highly-qualified minorities."
https://brookingsregister.com/stories/dumping-dei-a-very-bad-idea,120838
It's a shame that Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson stands alone in her dissent -- as too often seems to be happening with the dissenting opinions that protect people other than White men during the terms of this SCOTUS -- but that does not make her opinions either less correct or less recognized by those of us willing to read (which I understand might certainly be your secondary point in our current culture of "I'm 'too busy' to deal with the truth")
https://ballsandstrikes.org/scotus/nih-cuts-ketanji-brown-jackson-calvinball/
“As Calvin and Hobbes makes clear in a recent cartoon…” As far as I know, Watterson hasn’t drawn a new C&H for the last 30 years. Please, prove me wrong!
What I meant — and that I feel quite weary in reiterating — is that the SENTIMENT is very much relevant. Did you read the part where the piece quoting that particular cartoon (which I didn’t see until this year) was dated February 11, 2025, approximately 7 months ago?
https://bsky.app/profile/tribelaw.bsky.social/post/3lwsz25tjuc2p
When these White boys get it - when some of the rest of us have been trying to warn for a decade — it kinda feels like someone still going “butbutbut” at this particular historic moment is doing an “I’m gonna be deliberately wilfully blind right now” thing
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j-SQAaAaNbg
Sorry M - not sure why this is spinning you up. All I was curious about was whether Bill Watterson wrote an actual new strip recently. A quick Google doesn’t turn it up, just the article you referenced. I’ve got no issues with anything you are saying, just trying to clarify where it comes from. As a big C&H fan, it would mean something to me if Watterson spoke out now.
I’m not “spun up”, as you’re trying to both paint and insinuate
I am pointing out that you’re strawmanning and perhaps more than a little overfocused on nitpicking the smaller ancillary point while simultaneously completely missing the bigger one
Sorry that my focus doesn’t align with yours.
An authoritarian state, you have it, a complete fascist take over to come , all under the disguise of the ‘interpretation’ of the Constitution.
The swift descent into authoritarianism, guided by Federal Society's creep into the SC, and Heritage Foundation's Project 2025 blueprint followed by this current White supremacist regime, is astonishing me at how easy it was for them. Only 40 years of crafting a takeover and finding the perfect malignant narcissist to make the right-wing drool over its utopia in the US. Non-millionaires lives mean nothing, absolutely nothing, to these ghouls, who are killing off every single health and life saving funding from the federal regime.
MVP Harris said something similar without naming any names or organizations
But she did speak directly about "capitulation" -- without which any even casual student of authoritarianism and
It's the *passivity* and *refusal to push back* that have enabled and emboldened these people.
Putin and the Heritage Foundation and the so-called "Federalists" -- the white supremacist Russians and the aligned Confederacy -- knew their plans could not and cannot succeed without "the passives" . So did the Nazis with the Vichy.
Now, of course, there is a sizeable minority of us who've been saying this this whole entire time
But what's amazing to me is the sheer numbers of people who literally refused to ACKNOWLEDGE that it was being said, let alone actually be willing to HEAR what was being said about it.
The Reasons the Country Is Divided - Racism & Greed
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UY2HDGQWdXw
Nazis Hated Museums Too
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HqWHjrhVXMY
Stuart Stevens - a Republican (possibly ex-Republiican; I'm not sure at this point) and Lincoln Project founders - put out a video JUST TODAY that said "Donald Trump is a racist and we need to not be afraid to say so".
What if he and his fellow co-founders had been willing to say something like that back in 2015-16, the era of the golden escalator?
Or even consistently from 2011 -- the time when the Orange Felon (under Putin's subtle-for-him direction, I have not the slightest doubt given the totality of circumstances) started lobbing the racist birtherism against 44 -- *until* 2015?
What the fascists seem to realize in full, that the Vichys of our time appear to be in denial about, was that this country is juuuuust racist enough to have let it all pass.
And now look.
Ta, Marcie. I try to keep hatred out of my heart but these fascist assholes make that impossible.
https://www.wonkette.com/p/another-day-another-supreme-court/comment/148422608
Yeah but mad props to Justice KBJ for inserting the term "Calvinball" into American jurisprudence forever. We are not worthy.
Somewhere in his black soul, John Roberts - the Roger Taney of our generation - knows that what he has done in these past few years means that a future court is now free to shred precedent and rule in favor of a president of the other stripe. If we last that long. And I hope we do. And I hope that court rips ass.
Elie Mystal was very clear several years ago about John Roberts not wanting Black people to vote.
Anybody who read - or read about - John Roberts' writing the majority decision in the Shelby County case in 2013 knows that John Roberts never wanted Black people to vote.
Why did people refuse to pay attention?
We could have had 13 justices on the Supreme Court and Joe Biden could have appointed those justices. We could've had an Attorney General who moved a bit faster to prosecute the worst at the top. We could've had a Senate Majority Leader who wasn't so set in maintaining regular order. Could've, would've, should've.
We could have avoided all this if Hillary had won in the first place.
Amen
It seems to me that these Judges are driven by hate of people and love of money. Don’t they fear that someone they love may be denied the help for a disease that might have been cured by one of these grants?
Why, no. THEY will always be able to get whatever they need.
Money may not buy you true love or home grown tomatoes, but it CAN buy you a LOT of other shit,
What the actual fuck are my taxes paying for?
https://drstaceypatton1865.substack.com/p/so-why-are-we-paying-taxes
"So Why Are We Paying Taxes?"
Necropolitics in America means paying taxes to a government digging our graves.
A giant police state, concentration camps, and gilding the White House in gaudy bullshit.
Sadopopulism is very stupid and costly, but it does feel very good to the unreconstructed. And the Taney Court is for the purpose of enshrining the bigotries and ignorance of the unreconstructed. Yes, it's killing our "seed corn," but they do not care as long as they can enjoy the power in the here and now, and smash the minorities that they hate. That's what happens when you let the unreconstructed Republican Party control things; they shave off decades of progress.
We can all look forward to dying with brutishly shortened lives, just like most people in the original Gilded Age would while they toiled for the wealthy.
While the rest of the world will stride past us in the "Knowledge economy", our leadership will show the world that we are still the world leaders in pullups, pedophilia, and conspiracy theories.
And our world leader is a leader in pullups, pedophilia, and conspiracy theories
At that age I think the brand is called “Depends.” ;)
Democrats need to split the 9th and 5th to create 15 circuit courts. Pack the newly created 14th and 15th circuits with the most liberal lawyers around, and add six more SCOTUS justices so there’s one justice to supervise each circuit court, whenever Democrats have control of the White House and Congress.
Naked power grabs seems to be where we’re at as country. Grab the power to do good.
How?
The worst part of this is that Elie Mystal wrote an ENTIRE PLAN about this in 2020
2020.
The Biden White House dragged their collective feet, fellow Democrats in the House & Senate when Ds controlled those chambers dragged their collective feet
Too many other regular citizens went "lalalalala" and/or didn't bother to read what was written about this.
And now look.
"There Is One Way Out of This Crisis: Expand the Court" - the Nation, 2020
https://www.thenation.com/article/politics/supreme-court-packing/
EXPAND THE COURT
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aLjvzQfPQs0
Yep the old way fell. Fine
NIA only had funding for 1 out of 10 grant proposals in the early 2000s. We were already behind other modernized countries with research funding then. We do not have an affordable, accessible healthcare system. What we have are reallllly wealthy health insurance company CEOs. Tell me that the American public is ok with this….
The American public is NOT okay with this. Ask Brian Thompspn.
Anything else would be socialized medicine. Gasp! Horrors!