I have read at least 2 political experts' opinions recently, and they say we are no longer a republic but an authoritarian state. Worse, that there is only one way to fix it.
Last Friday’s Supreme Court’s decision saying that federal courts can’t do much to rein in Donald Trump was what broke me, I think, although Crom knows things have been in a state of constant crumbling since November.
*** *** ***
Send all lists of criminal charges against the Trump regime to the International Criminal Court in The Hague. That's what it's there for.
The only reason I am not obsessing about the death of democracy is that my husband fell down the stairs and broke his neck and is now disabled and we can’t get him home because he keeps getting horrible respiratory infections and I’ve watched him nearly die four times so far.
Well, that's what my European ancestors did. This is why I was born an American.
All of us whose ancestors came from elsewhere are the descendants of runaways. Maybe this is why running away is such an attractive option for us, too.
Thank you, Dok. It's good to know I'm not alone in this. And you too are not alone.
When the fascists are done cratering this country -- and they WILL crater it, because as it turns out fuckery almost always wins in the short run -- we will rebuild it. We will curse them for the waste, and the loss, and the suffering, and the needless expenditure of effort, but we will rebuild it.
And then America really WILL be great again. Or at least good again, which will be an enormous improvement over the place we're headed now, and possibly even a bit older and wiser. I can settle for that. I have to settle for that, and so I will.
"When the fascists are done cratering this country -- and they WILL crater it, because as it turns out fuckery almost always wins in the short run -- we will rebuild it."
I'm sorry, but when has that ever happened in this country? Did Slick Willie roll back Reganomics and rebuild the welfare state? No. He also cut taxes and helped further dismantle it! Did Barry tear down DHS and ICE and repeal the PATRIOT Act and punish those responsible for the Great Recession? No, he continued the stupid "War on Terror" and lectured us that those responsible for it may have immoral but did nothing illegal!
The Dems do NOTHING to repair the damage that the right does to society in such a way that it never happens again. Instead they paper over the holes and carry on more or less as the the Republican's they replace did!
For me, it wasnt feeling angry or sad,it was this feeling of emptiness.this sense of feeling nothing like "whatever, watching youtube now" honestly,I wish it was sadness or rage, emptiness felt infinitely worse
What is it that the 90-year-old said about being 90? ‘It's better than the alternative!’ We all have to keep going because it's definitely better than the alternative.…
And then there's my second bitch. I have been getting this at the top of my Google feed for nearly a month;
"Goodbye to retirement at 65 New rules yada yada yada.' Every time, sourced from a new site with an alphabet stew of an address. Mostly. It also has MSN, Yahoo and People addresses.
It's AI slop, of course. But it's persistent, relentless and has quickly taken over all the human content farming on the Webz. You got people who generate dozens of articles like this, buy old sites or create new ones, and then just spam it out in the hopes that one will become viral due to a few dumbasses being curious about the headline.
Which is just clickbait and nothing new, except that this shit is appearing at the top of my Google News feed every fucking day for nearly a month.
Kandiss Taylor, a MAGA adherent who recently ran to be Georgia's governor, took to X on Saturday and wrote (about the Texas flooding), "Fake weather. Fake hurricanes. Fake flooding. Fake. Fake. Fake."
While I admire Taylor's restraint re: Exclamation Points!, I will here offer my own unfounded conspiracy insight: Kandiss Taylor is running not for "Office" but for "Orifice". Specifically Sir's anus, which she hopes to wipe and cleanse with her very own home-distilled Witch Hazel before slowly, carefully pulling up Sir's new, clean, fresh diaper. From the front.
Wow...barbed, witty, progressively more scathing right up to the denouement "from the front."
Love it, but ewwwwww, I need brain bleach! Some images I can 't handle for more than a minute or two, no matter how disgustingly hilarious. ;)
The fact that Kandiss Taylor remains alive and unsmitten by the Almighty should be proof for any reasonable person of the non-existence of said Almighty.
It's the self-aggrandizing, sicko, fancy me-too grasping in all its cruel, derivative, and unoriginal glory that grates and grates. Not to mention the spelling of "Kandiss". Why not tip the canoe with "Tahyeluur" too?
I remember, back in 1975, the Bicentennial. What with all the converging avenues of Hype, I should have been burnt out by July 4th. Stil, I managed to gather the energy to show up and enjoy the actual day.
I'm pretty sure I won't be doing that for 250. I'm kinda ashamed. In any case, I can't celebrate. I also hate the noise.
Bear Flag Day is June 14th. Conveniently close to Juneteenth.
"Trump move seen as 'astonishing' attack on red states and rural voters" -- Raw Story
Hey MAGA. You don't want to hear this but Sir has repeatedly said he cannot tolerate being in the same room with any of you. Let alone the same country. Sir cannot bear to shake your hand. Sir cannot hear you when you speak. Sir cannot see you when you wave. Sir will not lead you into battle. Sir will gladly abandon you to your fantasies. Sir has no more use for you and yours and your kind. Sir wants your existence to end.
By whom? Seems to me the shitkickers commenting from their double-wides are lapping Trump's shit up with relish, denying that it will have any ill effect on them. Laughing and gloating over all those who are going to loose benefits because they're lazy.
Articles like this are pure copium. Just admit that the hicks, hillbillies, and the other white trash living in the sticks are too stupid to know what's best for them, as always.
Reasonable people have been trying very very very hard to explain this to them, to no avail. I have some relatives as well as very old friends from grade school that I have loved for years, that I have tried to explain this to. I have shown them the clips ("Taken out of context!") and the actual printed news stories ("Fake news! Liberal lies!")
You are very right about that. They do not want to hear. They will go down in unnecessary poverty because of Trump. but they will of course blame it on Biden/Obama/Deep State/Whatever. Anything except the malevolent entity responsible.
On the plus side of this opinion is that the District Court of Northern Texas, with its MAGA federal Trumpist judge, can not longer issue nation wide injunctions and all of its previous nation wide injunctions no longer apply outside of his district.
This also reduces the number of cases entering the Supreme Court's Shadow docket, something that was becoming a problem for the Court and for the public. This forces more cases to come up through the Circuit Courts, which is really a good thing in the long term.
It also reduces venue shopping by litigants who hope to find a federal court that was more likely to issue a nation-wide injunction. Why should a group of conservative people in Minnesota have standing to sue in a Texas federal court? Let the circuit courts fight things out before the Supreme Court steps in. Messy, yes, but the Supreme Court will fix that eventually.
Minnesota is actually not a hellhole of conservatism, but yes, there are some pockets of pro-Trump sentiment.
But as I hail from the North Florida/Southeastern Georgia region, where Trump flags and signs were almost as ubiquitous as curbside mailboxes, I can say that I can almost feel safe here.
That is, I look for silver linings where I can find them. as you do, and I can find far more in Minnesota than I ever could in Florida or Georgia.
I still believe Stacey Abrams won the governor's race against Brian Kemp, even though by the thinnest of margins. But somehow, evil prevailed.
The point is, she found enough individuals who recognized what was going on and responded to her message. But Kemp was backed by the burgeoning MAGA movement, and there were some irregularities in the balloting/voting process that I felt were not adequately explained.
No, I mean what I said. Pockets. The cities are blue, and much of the rest is either light blue or purple. The deep red MAGA pockets exist (generally the further west you go, the more red you see) and if you know where the really dark red spots are, you can avoid them if possible. Those are areas where my friends wouldn’t feel safe, so we don’t go there, or we drive through them without stopping.
I agree, but mark my words: this will only count for liberal decisions. If Kasmyrick (sp?) needs to issue an order blocking a left thing, I'm sure the Supreme Corruption will be okay with that.
We will see soon enough. I'm sure that there are a lot of nation-wide injunctions being challenged right now. They will take time to litigate, but the next 6 months should be interesting.
Yes, it will be. And I don't see any quick fix to that. Populations can move, people can vote, but the demographic change necessary to swing the political landscape will take time to be seen. We get our first chance in about 15 months.
Um. You seem to be missing the point. If the Gods of the Supreme Court don't like the decision, they will overrule it, citing Celtic Runes, and Egyptian Common Law, if necessary.
The courts will not save us. Nobody will save us. Unless we save ourselves.
I get the point. Mainly that we don't know which way the Supreme Court will jump at this time. John Robert's love with a unitary executive with very little checks and balances to control him v. his disdain for Donald Trump. Roberts is quickly becoming the 21st Century's version of Chief Justice Taney.
The thing is, as much as I dislike the loony Six on the court right now, I don't want any of them leaving while Trump is president. I've very relieved that neither Thomas nor Alito retired at the end of this term.
“I get the point. Mainly that we don't know which way the Supreme Court will jump at this time.”
No, actually you DON'T get it. They will string us along until they get to something they think is really important, and then they'll fuck us all up the ass. THEY HAVE MADE THAT ABUNDANTLY CLEAR. Also, they have made it abundantly clear that they don't give a shit what anybody thinks of them. Scalia cited a gofdamed 17th century East Anglia Witchunter as precedent to overturn Roe vs. Wade, and got away with it.
The courts will not save us. No matter the best intentions of many, the Supremes are corrupt partisans who will step in to stop anything that threatens rightwing power. The same is true about the administrative state, the media, the “opposition” establishment and any other institution you care to name.
Scalia was dead long before the Dobbs decision came down. It was Alito who wrote Dobbs and cited to .
The current majority has made it abundantly clear that "originalism" means whatever the majority wants it to mean, and they will go out of their way to ignore the fact that we have adopted a written constitution for the very reason to avoid capricious changes as to our constitutional rights at the hands of the executive or legislative branches of government.
In Dobbs, Alito stated for the majority, "In interpreting what is meant by the Fourteenth Amendment’s reference to “liberty,” we must guard against the
natural human tendency to confuse what that Amendment protects with our own ardent views about the liberty that Americans should enjoy." (Slip Opinion at 14.)
From there, Alito goes on to dig into English Common Law concerning abortion, citing to a 13th-century treatise by Henry de Bracton (Slip Op. at 17);
3 Institutes of the Laws of England 50–51 (1644) by Sir Edward Coke (aka The Witchfinder) (Slip Op. at 17); 1 History of the Pleas of the Crown 433 (1736) by Sir Matthew Hale (Slip Op. at 17); and "English cases dating all the way back to the 13th century"(Slip Op. at 17).
Of course, Alito ignored any opinion or treatise in support of abortion rights, or the developments in American jurisprudence giving rise to abortion rights and greater freedoms for women in general. Anything in the legal text in support of abortion rights Alito just states they are "of little importance for present purpose". (Slip Op. at 22.)
And Alito made it very clear that the aim of Dobbs isn't just to end abortion as a constitutional right, but to end the right to privacy under the Fourteenth Amendment.
Yes, the current majority of six conservative justices are working very hard at limiting our rights as protected by the Constitution, and handing a lot of power to the executive. I, and others, do very well in getting it. They are not ethical in how they are doing this, and they don't care how poorly written their opinions are, so long as their goals are met, as shown in the recent Trump v. CASA decision, concerning nation wide injunctions issued by federal district courts.
As I stated, we will soon see how the Supreme Court handles its CASA decision. We don't know if the Court will be equal handed in its ban on national injunctions, or if it will favor conservative courts over liberal ones. I'm not expecting the Supreme Court to act in good faith, but we do have to wait and see what happens.
Um there's a reason Winnipeg is (by Canadian standards) "affordable." Because it's a frozen shithole for half the year. Someone even wrote a song called "Winnipeg is a frozen shithole."
I have read at least 2 political experts' opinions recently, and they say we are no longer a republic but an authoritarian state. Worse, that there is only one way to fix it.
Last Friday’s Supreme Court’s decision saying that federal courts can’t do much to rein in Donald Trump was what broke me, I think, although Crom knows things have been in a state of constant crumbling since November.
*** *** ***
Send all lists of criminal charges against the Trump regime to the International Criminal Court in The Hague. That's what it's there for.
The only reason I am not obsessing about the death of democracy is that my husband fell down the stairs and broke his neck and is now disabled and we can’t get him home because he keeps getting horrible respiratory infections and I’ve watched him nearly die four times so far.
So recharging is… hard.
America is fucked up.
Life is short.
I encourage you to escape to a better country with a better class of people.
It's the American Way.
Well, that's what my European ancestors did. This is why I was born an American.
All of us whose ancestors came from elsewhere are the descendants of runaways. Maybe this is why running away is such an attractive option for us, too.
If it took this long into this to break you, you are much, much stronger than I am (was).
Hang in there(?) Everything is indeed pretty horrible. It helps at the margins to know we're not alone...maybe?
A cool statue, unhappily yours, kmblue187.
Thank you, Dok. It's good to know I'm not alone in this. And you too are not alone.
When the fascists are done cratering this country -- and they WILL crater it, because as it turns out fuckery almost always wins in the short run -- we will rebuild it. We will curse them for the waste, and the loss, and the suffering, and the needless expenditure of effort, but we will rebuild it.
And then America really WILL be great again. Or at least good again, which will be an enormous improvement over the place we're headed now, and possibly even a bit older and wiser. I can settle for that. I have to settle for that, and so I will.
Hang in there.
"When the fascists are done cratering this country -- and they WILL crater it, because as it turns out fuckery almost always wins in the short run -- we will rebuild it."
I'm sorry, but when has that ever happened in this country? Did Slick Willie roll back Reganomics and rebuild the welfare state? No. He also cut taxes and helped further dismantle it! Did Barry tear down DHS and ICE and repeal the PATRIOT Act and punish those responsible for the Great Recession? No, he continued the stupid "War on Terror" and lectured us that those responsible for it may have immoral but did nothing illegal!
The Dems do NOTHING to repair the damage that the right does to society in such a way that it never happens again. Instead they paper over the holes and carry on more or less as the the Republican's they replace did!
Well, we'll just have to try and get it right this time, I guess. I'd rather plan for a comeback than for a funeral.
For me, it wasnt feeling angry or sad,it was this feeling of emptiness.this sense of feeling nothing like "whatever, watching youtube now" honestly,I wish it was sadness or rage, emptiness felt infinitely worse
YES! THIS!!!
What is it that the 90-year-old said about being 90? ‘It's better than the alternative!’ We all have to keep going because it's definitely better than the alternative.…
And then there's my second bitch. I have been getting this at the top of my Google feed for nearly a month;
"Goodbye to retirement at 65 New rules yada yada yada.' Every time, sourced from a new site with an alphabet stew of an address. Mostly. It also has MSN, Yahoo and People addresses.
It's AI slop, of course. But it's persistent, relentless and has quickly taken over all the human content farming on the Webz. You got people who generate dozens of articles like this, buy old sites or create new ones, and then just spam it out in the hopes that one will become viral due to a few dumbasses being curious about the headline.
Which is just clickbait and nothing new, except that this shit is appearing at the top of my Google News feed every fucking day for nearly a month.
MAGA doesn't scare me as much as this.
Kandiss Taylor, a MAGA adherent who recently ran to be Georgia's governor, took to X on Saturday and wrote (about the Texas flooding), "Fake weather. Fake hurricanes. Fake flooding. Fake. Fake. Fake."
While I admire Taylor's restraint re: Exclamation Points!, I will here offer my own unfounded conspiracy insight: Kandiss Taylor is running not for "Office" but for "Orifice". Specifically Sir's anus, which she hopes to wipe and cleanse with her very own home-distilled Witch Hazel before slowly, carefully pulling up Sir's new, clean, fresh diaper. From the front.
I double-dog-dare him to drive to anyplace in Kerr County, Texas, and spout that shit.
( Identifies as "her" )
Wow...barbed, witty, progressively more scathing right up to the denouement "from the front."
Love it, but ewwwwww, I need brain bleach! Some images I can 't handle for more than a minute or two, no matter how disgustingly hilarious. ;)
The fact that Kandiss Taylor remains alive and unsmitten by the Almighty should be proof for any reasonable person of the non-existence of said Almighty.
It's the self-aggrandizing, sicko, fancy me-too grasping in all its cruel, derivative, and unoriginal glory that grates and grates. Not to mention the spelling of "Kandiss". Why not tip the canoe with "Tahyeluur" too?
Your comments slay me, but every time I upvote anything on Wonkette, the red marks disappear a few seconds later. Drives me nuts.
If the red marks persist, see your doctor?
I guess the Whigs would appreciate the nod. :D
I remember, back in 1975, the Bicentennial. What with all the converging avenues of Hype, I should have been burnt out by July 4th. Stil, I managed to gather the energy to show up and enjoy the actual day.
I'm pretty sure I won't be doing that for 250. I'm kinda ashamed. In any case, I can't celebrate. I also hate the noise.
Bear Flag Day is June 14th. Conveniently close to Juneteenth.
All I recall from '75 is that Iggy split from The Stooges. I think...
I remember the Bicentennial Minutes.
On reflection Iggy may have split in late '73, early '74. Yup, Google sez '74.
My upvotes keep disappearing. I hate this computer
ICE be onto you…
"Trump move seen as 'astonishing' attack on red states and rural voters" -- Raw Story
Hey MAGA. You don't want to hear this but Sir has repeatedly said he cannot tolerate being in the same room with any of you. Let alone the same country. Sir cannot bear to shake your hand. Sir cannot hear you when you speak. Sir cannot see you when you wave. Sir will not lead you into battle. Sir will gladly abandon you to your fantasies. Sir has no more use for you and yours and your kind. Sir wants your existence to end.
By whom? Seems to me the shitkickers commenting from their double-wides are lapping Trump's shit up with relish, denying that it will have any ill effect on them. Laughing and gloating over all those who are going to loose benefits because they're lazy.
Articles like this are pure copium. Just admit that the hicks, hillbillies, and the other white trash living in the sticks are too stupid to know what's best for them, as always.
But Sir has taught us "Say it enough times ten and it's true!"
Reasonable people have been trying very very very hard to explain this to them, to no avail. I have some relatives as well as very old friends from grade school that I have loved for years, that I have tried to explain this to. I have shown them the clips ("Taken out of context!") and the actual printed news stories ("Fake news! Liberal lies!")
You are very right about that. They do not want to hear. They will go down in unnecessary poverty because of Trump. but they will of course blame it on Biden/Obama/Deep State/Whatever. Anything except the malevolent entity responsible.
Like religion and football Sir fills a cavity in their heads with a sweet, sweet goo that accelerates the rot until collapse is complete.
Big-time stud-daddy move. Totally gonna slobber and cavil harder than ever.
Extra props for the rarely-encountered "cavil".
On the plus side of this opinion is that the District Court of Northern Texas, with its MAGA federal Trumpist judge, can not longer issue nation wide injunctions and all of its previous nation wide injunctions no longer apply outside of his district.
This also reduces the number of cases entering the Supreme Court's Shadow docket, something that was becoming a problem for the Court and for the public. This forces more cases to come up through the Circuit Courts, which is really a good thing in the long term.
It also reduces venue shopping by litigants who hope to find a federal court that was more likely to issue a nation-wide injunction. Why should a group of conservative people in Minnesota have standing to sue in a Texas federal court? Let the circuit courts fight things out before the Supreme Court steps in. Messy, yes, but the Supreme Court will fix that eventually.
Looking for silver linings where I can find them.
Minnesota is actually not a hellhole of conservatism, but yes, there are some pockets of pro-Trump sentiment.
But as I hail from the North Florida/Southeastern Georgia region, where Trump flags and signs were almost as ubiquitous as curbside mailboxes, I can say that I can almost feel safe here.
That is, I look for silver linings where I can find them. as you do, and I can find far more in Minnesota than I ever could in Florida or Georgia.
I still believe Stacey Abrams won the governor's race against Brian Kemp, even though by the thinnest of margins. But somehow, evil prevailed.
The point is, she found enough individuals who recognized what was going on and responded to her message. But Kemp was backed by the burgeoning MAGA movement, and there were some irregularities in the balloting/voting process that I felt were not adequately explained.
By "pockets' you mean every part of the state outside of the Minneapolis/St. Paul area?
No, I mean what I said. Pockets. The cities are blue, and much of the rest is either light blue or purple. The deep red MAGA pockets exist (generally the further west you go, the more red you see) and if you know where the really dark red spots are, you can avoid them if possible. Those are areas where my friends wouldn’t feel safe, so we don’t go there, or we drive through them without stopping.
I agree, but mark my words: this will only count for liberal decisions. If Kasmyrick (sp?) needs to issue an order blocking a left thing, I'm sure the Supreme Corruption will be okay with that.
We will see soon enough. I'm sure that there are a lot of nation-wide injunctions being challenged right now. They will take time to litigate, but the next 6 months should be interesting.
Interesting for some, devastating and perhaps deadly for others.
Yes, it will be. And I don't see any quick fix to that. Populations can move, people can vote, but the demographic change necessary to swing the political landscape will take time to be seen. We get our first chance in about 15 months.
Um. You seem to be missing the point. If the Gods of the Supreme Court don't like the decision, they will overrule it, citing Celtic Runes, and Egyptian Common Law, if necessary.
The courts will not save us. Nobody will save us. Unless we save ourselves.
I get the point. Mainly that we don't know which way the Supreme Court will jump at this time. John Robert's love with a unitary executive with very little checks and balances to control him v. his disdain for Donald Trump. Roberts is quickly becoming the 21st Century's version of Chief Justice Taney.
The thing is, as much as I dislike the loony Six on the court right now, I don't want any of them leaving while Trump is president. I've very relieved that neither Thomas nor Alito retired at the end of this term.
"citing Celtic Runes, and Egyptian Common Law,"
Chef's kiss. : )
“I get the point. Mainly that we don't know which way the Supreme Court will jump at this time.”
No, actually you DON'T get it. They will string us along until they get to something they think is really important, and then they'll fuck us all up the ass. THEY HAVE MADE THAT ABUNDANTLY CLEAR. Also, they have made it abundantly clear that they don't give a shit what anybody thinks of them. Scalia cited a gofdamed 17th century East Anglia Witchunter as precedent to overturn Roe vs. Wade, and got away with it.
The courts will not save us. No matter the best intentions of many, the Supremes are corrupt partisans who will step in to stop anything that threatens rightwing power. The same is true about the administrative state, the media, the “opposition” establishment and any other institution you care to name.
We're gonna have to save ourselves.
Scalia was dead long before the Dobbs decision came down. It was Alito who wrote Dobbs and cited to .
The current majority has made it abundantly clear that "originalism" means whatever the majority wants it to mean, and they will go out of their way to ignore the fact that we have adopted a written constitution for the very reason to avoid capricious changes as to our constitutional rights at the hands of the executive or legislative branches of government.
In Dobbs, Alito stated for the majority, "In interpreting what is meant by the Fourteenth Amendment’s reference to “liberty,” we must guard against the
natural human tendency to confuse what that Amendment protects with our own ardent views about the liberty that Americans should enjoy." (Slip Opinion at 14.)
From there, Alito goes on to dig into English Common Law concerning abortion, citing to a 13th-century treatise by Henry de Bracton (Slip Op. at 17);
3 Institutes of the Laws of England 50–51 (1644) by Sir Edward Coke (aka The Witchfinder) (Slip Op. at 17); 1 History of the Pleas of the Crown 433 (1736) by Sir Matthew Hale (Slip Op. at 17); and "English cases dating all the way back to the 13th century"(Slip Op. at 17).
Of course, Alito ignored any opinion or treatise in support of abortion rights, or the developments in American jurisprudence giving rise to abortion rights and greater freedoms for women in general. Anything in the legal text in support of abortion rights Alito just states they are "of little importance for present purpose". (Slip Op. at 22.)
And Alito made it very clear that the aim of Dobbs isn't just to end abortion as a constitutional right, but to end the right to privacy under the Fourteenth Amendment.
Yes, the current majority of six conservative justices are working very hard at limiting our rights as protected by the Constitution, and handing a lot of power to the executive. I, and others, do very well in getting it. They are not ethical in how they are doing this, and they don't care how poorly written their opinions are, so long as their goals are met, as shown in the recent Trump v. CASA decision, concerning nation wide injunctions issued by federal district courts.
As I stated, we will soon see how the Supreme Court handles its CASA decision. We don't know if the Court will be equal handed in its ban on national injunctions, or if it will favor conservative courts over liberal ones. I'm not expecting the Supreme Court to act in good faith, but we do have to wait and see what happens.
Um there's a reason Winnipeg is (by Canadian standards) "affordable." Because it's a frozen shithole for half the year. Someone even wrote a song called "Winnipeg is a frozen shithole."
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xLlsjEP7L-k
Eh, they’re not so bad!
You know things are bad when smart people contemplate moving to Winnipeg