Today, The Supreme Court of the United States voted unanimously to force states to keep Trump on the ballot, despite the 14th Amendment to the Constitution clearly disqualifying him as an insurrectionist oath-breaker.

Worse, a majority of 5-4 voted that no state could EVER remove a Federal candidate- effectively shielding every insurrectionist with a single stroke.

Some thoughts:

This is the absolute death of SCOTUS's legitimacy. Every justice, and I include the "liberal" ones in that, has arguably violated their oaths of office to the Constitution, and earned impeachment. The Supreme Court is increasingly acting as, effectively, an arm of the Republican Party- which is to say, of Trump and Vladimir Putin.

The Constitution does not change because SCOTUS chooses to ignore it, and neither do the oaths of office of officials who swore to uphold it. Any office-holder who's oath was worth more than the paper its printed on has a duty to refuse to recognize Trump's eligibility, regardless of SCOTUS.

I'm calling it now, Biden will win the 2024 election- as he will be the only eligible major party candidate. If the disqualified felon gets more votes... well, I think that very unlikely, but if so he would still be ineligible, and see above re duty of officials not to recognize or obey him.

This makes it all the more vital that Biden win the most votes and electors, to avoid a catastrophic Constitutional crisis where there is no clearly legitimate President-elect.

We must prepare for further SCOTUS rulings ignoring the Constitution to advance fascism, including a possible ruling that Trump has immunity for crimes he committed, and attempts to overturn the election if Republicans don't win.

Voting is still vital. Best case scenario, Trump loses by such a landslide Republicans can't overturn it on a technicality, and don't dare try. Worst case scenario, it will help motivate people, and provide further moral and democratic legitimacy to resist a MAGA coup attempt.

Prepare to resist. I want to be very clear that I am NOT advocating for violent resistance here, and this is not merely a disclaimer for legal purposes. There are very few evils worse than civil conflict, it often hurts the most vulnerable worst, and it and rarely leads to a swift or equitable solution, and the side that leaps to it first will lose a great deal of legitimacy and support. If there is violence, let MAGA fire first, not us. But Blue state officials need to be preparing to resist a Trumpian coup attempt. And every patriotic America needs to be preparing for mass protest and acts of civil disobedience come November. If you are in a union, look into what plans, if any, your union has made to call a general strike should Republicans attempt a coup (some unions made such plans in 2020, which were never activated).

Of all the civil rights policies enacted by U.S President Lyndon Johnson, affirmative action is arguably one of the most enduring – and most challenged.

Johnson made it clear during a commencement address at Howard University on June 4, 1965, where he stood.

In his speech, “To Fulfill These Rights,” Johnson argued that civil rights were only as secure as society and the government were willing to make them.

“Nothing in any country touches us more profoundly, and nothing is more freighted with meaning for our own destiny than the revolution of the Negro American,” Johnson said.

In my view as a scholar of the history of affirmative action, Johnson’s speech and the legal structure it helped produce directly contradict those who would dismantle affirmative action and besmirch diversity programs today.

As the Supreme Court looks ready to strike down affirmative action in college admissions, it’s my belief that unlike the court’s conservative majority, Johnson understood that the U.S. could not serve as a moral leader around the world if it did not acknowledge its past of racial injustices and try to make amends.

https://sign.moveon.org/petitions/clarence-thomas-must-go

My new dream job is to become a sound engineer for debates involving any major political topic so when the arrogance starts spewing out I can just pull the plug out and go ”Oopsie, looks like it’s broken and can’t be fixed 👉🏻👈🏻” how funny would that be

CLOSED FOR REMODEL

Not really, but I feel like it.

As I am pondering some current feelings on remodels, I just realized that it is almost July. I generally lean towards feelings of deconstruction and rebuilding in the summer months. I don’t know what it is about the middle of summer and my need to tear down everything and start over. Right now, my feelings of ‘burn it all to the ground’ are exacerbated by my feelings on the current state of a country where I feel like me and my friends are no longer safe and/or welcome. Some have talked to me about seriously moving to Canada. Some of us are just too tired for the fight. I’m leaning towards being too tired. In middle school, I became an activist for the planet, denouncing pollution and handing out free seedlings. In high school, my activism turned to the AIDS crisis and sex education. In college and beyond, my activism turned to voter representation and getting people to the polls.

Today, my activism is in throwing money at Planned Parenthood and AbortionFunds.org.

One of the most valuable and most difficult lessons I learned when Chris got sick was that eventually, I must accept that there comes a time when there is nothing that I can do to fix things.

Do what you can, with what you got, where you are. -Squire Bill Widener

The consequences of accepting that there is nothing I can do to fix this current problem is to turn the fixing to the self. Saturday, I rewarded myself for no reason with a trip to the Container Store where I purchased things to reorganize the linen closet. The linen/medicine closet is now perfectly organized and I can tell you exactly how many COVID home testing kits we have. It’s six. We have six COVID at home tests. I also installed LED lights so we can now see all of the COVID home testing kits. When I felt like I’d done enough with that closet, I moved to the food closet (yes I know it’s normally called a pantry, but a brain fart years ago changed the naming the system). I threw out old snacks and cake mixes and reorganized all of the pasta. I’m not stopping there. I purchased a Bagster dumpster not too long ago that’s begging to be filled up with garage trash. I will most likely tear down this blog and rebuild it with new pictures and ways to purchase pictures and I might start walking around the house punching hand weights into the air (it’s exercise).

This is what I do.

When I can’t fix the big thing, I find other things to ‘fix’. Once, I almost rented a drain snake to cart down to my basement until someone convinced me that I could not physically lift a 200lb drain snake down the basement steps alone. That’s not true. I know how gravity works and still believe I could have gotten that 200lb drain snake down the basement stairs.

It’s the up that’s the problem.

"Justice Elena Kagan memorably castigated him for treating 'judging as scorekeeping,' whining about 'how unfair it is' when he loses, and repeating the same bad arguments 'at a higher volume.' Justice Sonia Sotomayor has repeatedly accused him of outright dishonesty by misrepresenting precedent and dangling false promises. In a fed-up dissent in just her first term, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson compared a Kavanaugh majority opinion to the children’s book If You Give a Mouse a Cookie. [Samul] Alito’s rebuttal to Kavanaugh’s dissent in Sackett v. EPAconsisted of exactly one sentence: Kavanaugh’s argument, Alito wrote, 'cannot be taken seriously.'"

Justices are 'losing patience': Brett Kavanaugh skewered as a 'lightweight' in brutal analysis

Hold up.

This guy?

“The consequences will extend long past my nomination. The consequences will be with us for decades. This grotesque character assassination will dissuade confident and good people of all political persuasions from serving our country, and as we all know, in the political system of the early 2000s, what goes around comes around.”

This piece of shit?

The guy who spent his entire life as a right wing activist judge, who was part of the Brooks Brothers “riot”, snarled and barked and insulted the Senate Judiciary Committee during his farcical confirmation hearing, who lied repeatedly about his history of sexual assault, his gambling debts, and threatened to explicitly hurt people who he views as antagonistic to him ... turns out to be an intellectual lightweight in the mold of Thomas? He doesn’t give a flying fuck about law or justice or precedent, he just wants to hurt people he doesn’t like under the color of law?

Wow. None of us saw that coming.

Impeach Justice Thomas

Everyone is like: “Why get mad about this story? Clarence Thomas knows he’s untouchable. We all know that.” But the fact that he sent out a statement *right away* acknowledging some wrong doings suggests this story is bad. And it might get a lot worse.

Why is someone so supposedly super powerful getting nervous?

Is this the tip of the iceberg?

Clarence Thomas's billionaire benefactor Harlan Crow’s firm advocated for rolling back the wetland protections the Supreme Court's 5to4 decision just gutted. The obvious conflict of interest raises questions about not just the ruling’s legitimacy but the entire court’s.

The majority of today's Supreme Court: four old white men, one black man and a handmaiden who imposes her religious cult beliefs on 170 million women.

SCOTUS is empowered to interpret the law, but they are not gods. If they declared tomorrow that Trump was dictator for life, would that suddenly make it Constitutional? Of course not. Neither can they erase the 14th Amendment, section three, by which a person who violated their oath of office to the United States by engaging in insurrection is disqualified from holding a range of offices, including the Presidency. SCOTUS never even tried to claim that Trump's actions did not amount to insurrection. They simply asserted there was a requirement to disqualify him (a vote by Congress) that does not exist in the law, thereby effectively neutering Amendment 14, Section III and clearing the path of every insurrectionist, past and future, to hold office. There remains a very strong argument that Trump cannot lawfully be president, fuck whatever SCOTUS says, no more than if he were a child or a non-citizen. So when you vote in November, you are not voting for who will be the next President- you are voting for whether there will BE a legitimate president at all.

The three decisions included: one from January 13, 2022, that invalidated some COVID-19 workplace protections (National Federation of Independent Business v Department of Labor, Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA)); one on June 23, 2022, that voided some state laws restricting handgun carry (New York State Rifle and Pistol Association Inc v Superintendent of New York State Police (Bruen)); and one on June 24, 2022, that revoked the constitutional right to abortion (Dobbs v Jackson Women’s Health Organization).

A group of health researchers, led by Adam Gaffney at Harvard University, modeled how these decisions would impact Americans' morbidity and mortality in the near future.

[…]

In all, the researchers estimate that the three decisions combined could lead to around 3,000 deaths total in the coming decade if nothing else changes. The higher-end estimate, which the researchers note could be more realistic, would be nearly 6,000.

The estimates are considered conservative.

[…]

Still, the estimates make clear that the high court's decisions can have far-reaching effects on many aspects of Americans' lives, including their health. "The findings of this study suggest that these Supreme Court decisions may harm the health of US citizens for years, and possibly decades, to come."

Supreme Contempt

Aloha kākou. Time was of the essence. The United States Supreme Court’s 9-0 decision to allow President Trump to remain on states ballots arrived just in time before tomorrow’s Super Tuesday elections. Far left democrat states tried to prevent voters from choosing the Presidential candidate of their choice. They tried to rig the election process in favor of one party. It was a far reach for…

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'Maybe Clarence didn't need to disclose those trips'

He lied about ginny's $650k income & hid a billionaire "buying" real estate from him and letting his mom live there rent free, even though he's legally required to disclose any property sales over $1k, Dave.

From the recent SCOTUS dissenting opinion

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) on Tuesday said that the Supreme Court has “gone rogue” after it overturned Roe v. Wade last month, a move that upset Democrats who say several justices had not been forthcoming about their feelings regarding the 1973 landmark abortion rights decision during their confirmation hearings.

Ocasio-Cortez said the move from the conservative wing means a number of changes should be considered for the high court.

“I believe impeachment should be on the table. I believe court expansion should be on the table. I believe that ethics rules should be on the table. I believe that recusal requirements should be on the table,” Ocasio-Cortez told reporters.

“I think all of it should be considered right now. And we shouldn’t be putting any tools out because of … the degree of which this court has gone rogue.”

Ocasio-Cortez also noted one Supreme Court Justice whom she believed should be impeached.

“I believe that Clarence Thomas should be impeached without a shadow of a doubt,” the New York Democrat said.

Ocasio-Cortez noted a letter that she and Rep. Ted Lieu (D-Calif.) wrote to Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) asking Democrats in the upper chamber to take a position on whether Justices Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh, who were also a part of the majority opinion to overturn Roe v. Wade, had lied under oath during their confirmation process.

Not all Senate Democrats, however, are on board with considering impeachment against some of the Supreme Court Justices that joined the majority opinion in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization.

“I don’t think it’s realistic,” Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) told “Fox News Sunday” over the weekend regarding impeaching Thomas. “I think it’s a mistake as to whether he’s going to be impeached. It’s not realistic, but [Thomas] should show good judgment. If this court is going to be credible, it has to be as apolitical as possible.”

Responding to Durbin’s apprehension about considering impeachment against Supreme Court Justices, Ocasio-Cortez called it a “crisis of legitimacy.”

“Here’s where I think there’s a very serious issue: Is the United States Senate about to establish a new precedent that it is now acceptable and there will be no consequence for a nominee to lie to duly-elected members of the United States Senate in order to secure a lifetime appointment to the highest court in the land?” she asked.