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Where we may go after Roe goes down

Tuesday, May 3, 2022

Yesterday we learned (no need to link, everyone knows about it by now) that the Supreme Court is planning to reverse Roe v. Wade. It’s actually a bit of a surprise to me, as I expected that they would simply gradually chip away at it until it was all but overruled, but never expressly so.

Before I go on, a hat tip to the person who leaked the draft opinion, since there can be no question but that we would not otherwise have learned about this until after the election, which is when those judges who insist the court is absolutely non-partisan, would have released it, lest they hurt Republican chances in the mid terms.

I imagine I won’t be the first to make the following predictions, but I’ve purposely avoided reading commentary on the decision until after I post this, so I can honestly say these were my initial thoughts, unprovoked by pundits of the right or left.

I think the future course of American law on reproductive issues is an “and/or” proposition. The right will agitate for, and the court will, unless the Democrats get their act together:

  1. Overrule Griswold v. Connecticut, and leave it to the states whether women can have access to birth control. We’ve already seen the beginning of this movement among politicians cultivating the Trumpists. And no, I will not digress into an irrelevant discourse about the probability that Trump himself has likely paid for a good number of abortions as well as encouraging his sex partners to use birth control. Oh, wait I did digress. Anyway, whatever rationale the court is using to overrule Roe (I haven’t read the opinion) will of necessity also provide support for overruling Griswold. Needless to say, such a decision would not be particularly popular with the majority of people in this country, but the court is, in other areas, doing its best to make sure the will of the majority has no bearing on who gets elected or what laws get enacted. So, that’s one thing we’ll be hearing about.
  2. The other half of the “and/or” will require some pretzel logic by the court, as I do know, despite having not read it, that the draft opinion states that the question of abortion should be left to the states. The problem is that some states will not only opt to keep it legal, they will likely make it easy for out of staters to obtain abortions. And, of course, from the point of view of the anti-abortion establishment, every sperm is sacred, so allowing any abortions at all cannot be tolerated. So, we’ll see lawsuits brought seeking to nullify the right to abortion in such states by declaring a fetus a person from the moment of conception, and all abortions murder. This will require some fancy footwork on the part of Amy and her pals, as there would be all kinds of precedents they’d have to ignore, but don’t put it past them.

Life is full of ironies. We likely wouldn’t be faced with this possible future if Ruth Bader Ginsburg, a fierce defender of abortion rights, had done the right thing and retired while Obama had a Senate majority.

It is to be hoped that the Democrats can, at least, capitalize on this development by making it a part of their campaign, not only be attacking the reversal of Roe, but by warning that the soon the Republicans will be coming after your birth control pills. They say they will, but we’ll see.

UPDATE: Having now gotten my predictions out, I have perused my preferred sources of punditry. Here’s a good accounting of the horrors to which we can now look forward.

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The F-Word makes an appearance

Friday, April 29, 2022

It has been apparent for some time that the Republican Party is dominated by people who prefer fascism to democracy. Trump has been fairly up front about it. However, the media has been reluctant (is that the right word, or is “terrified” a better choice?) to drop the F-word in connection with the Republican Party.

So it was sort of refreshing to see that this obvious reality was acknowledged recently on Morning Joe, which I don’t watch because 1) I don’t have a TV, and 2) even if I did, I can’t stomach the bullshit, the occasional intrusion of reality notwithstanding.

Joe and his guest were discussing a poll, which among other things established that (Surprise!) Republicans are exceedingly tolerant of racist and anti-Semitic politicians. Joe seemed to think that only the anti-Semitic part qualified them as fascists, but at least it’s a start:

MSNBC host Joe Scarborough called out Republican voters later on in the segment for their turn to fascism. Scarborough said, “Less than half of Republicans believe that uttering antisemitic remarks, spewing antisemitic remarks, is a serious problem and a roadblock to being elected.”

“That tells you a large chunk of the Republican Party right now, a large chunk of the Republican base are, — I’ve been using the word ‘fascist’ for some time.”

“That there is a fascist strain in the Republican Party for at least a third or so of those members,” Scarborough said.

There’s more to fascism than anti-Semitism and racism, and the Republicans have touched all the bases, book burning and demonization of trans people being just the latest examples.

The Democrats won’t win elections by ignoring this. It’s probably true that they won’t win if they don’t learn how to promote their own successes and attack the Republicans on multiple fronts. Two of the most fascistic fascists, Abbott and DeSantis, have gone out of their way to harm their states in their endless quest to feed raw meat to the base. Democrats have to learn how to exploit that fact. Abbott and DeSantis are the most prominent examples, but the argument applies to most Republicans. Still, it’s important that Democrats point out the obvious: that the Republican Party is now the American Fascist Party and if it prevails in the next two elections, we can kiss representative democracy goodbye.

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Another thing Democrats won’t do

Sunday, April 24, 2022

I agree with the premise of this post over at Politicus USA, and my purpose here is simply to amplify on it a bit.

It appears that Trump is a bit sensitive about perceptions of his intelligence, and he’s stupid enough to use the fact that he passed a test designed to diagnose senility as proof that he’s a genius. That in itself proves that either he’s stupid and/or that he’s correctly concluded intuitively that his followers are so stupid that they’ll swallow his bullshit.

I think the “and” is the operative conjunction.

Intelligence, broadly understood, comes in many forms. I think that Trump had and still has a real talent for grifting, even as he continues to drift deeper into senility. But by other measures, he’s never been particularly intelligent, and he’s rapidly shedding any intellectual capacity he may have had.

It is a fact that it’s easy to get under Trump’s skin, and when something is under his skin, he doesn’t react particularly well. Jason Easley, the author of the post to which I’ve linked, concludes:

If the failed former president runs against Joe Biden in 2024, it is now clear how President Biden can get under his skin.

He’s absolutely right. The question is: will Biden and/or the Democrats as a whole beat on this drum and get under his skin. It’s what the Republicans and Fox tried to do to Biden, but they couldn’t sell it because it isn’t true and that became obvious to anyone listening to Biden. The more the Democrats beat on this theme, the more idiotic statements Trump will make, and at some point, even the media, which has steadfastedly refused to comment on Trump’s obvious intellectual deficits, will be forced to cover the issue.

This is just one small example of the benefits the Democrats could reap by going on the attack. But don’t hold your breath.

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Both sides are equally bad! Republican edition

Wednesday, April 20, 2022

Every once in a while you read about one or more Republicans doing the right thing and you get sort of stunned. But then, if you look closer your faith in the party of fascism is fully restored. If they do something right, it will always be for all the wrong reasons.

Case in point, the Tennessee GOP just voted to remove a loathsome Trumpist carpetbagger from the primary ballot for a (presumably safe) open Congressional seat in Tennessee.

The Tennessee GOP voted Tuesday to remove former State Department spokesperson Morgan Ortagus and others from the ballot.

The former State Department spokesperson and Fox News contributor thought she had an inside track on running for Congress by moving to Tennessee after her time in Trump’s White House and working for Mike Pompeo. Alas, it was not to be as Tennessee Republicans don’t take kindly to carpetbaggers and found some novel ways to keep her and a few others off their ballot.

Ortagus made local headlines in March when she scored a big ZERO in a talk radio quiz about the district she wanted to represent.

Sounds good, right? Well, as you would expect after remembering these are Republicans we’re talking about, it turns out that for once, the media’s shibboleth about both sides being equally bad, turns out to be absolutely true. You see, as one of the folks responsible for keeping her off the ballot explained, Trump does not really care about her, and what they’ve done was for the sake of preserving the GOP’s monopoly on bigotry of all forms:

One Tennessee Republican opined that the only reason Ortagus had gotten Trump’s endorsement was that she’s a Jew.

“I don’t think Trump cares one way or the other,” he said. “I think Jared Kushner — he’s Jewish, she’s Jewish — I think Jared will be upset. Ivanka will be upset. I don’t think Trump cares.”

The Tennessee Republican in question is one Fred Nicely. Nicely “is also the same guy who last week made the Hitler reference as a former homeless person who made good”.

Of course Ortagus is incensed that Nicely would be openly anti-Semitic in the case of a Trump supporter, though one has to wonder whether, if she gets into Congress, she will join the rest of the nutjobs and cast aspersions on the Democratic Congresswomen who are Muslims.

At all events, it’s good to see some disarray among the Republicans. There’s an old saw about revolutions eating their own, and maybe the table is being set already.

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It’s Good Friday again, time to look on the bright side

Friday, April 15, 2022

Though I must admit, politically speaking, even the bright side is looking somewhat dim.

At this point, I feel I have no choice but to put this up every year. It’s a CTBlue tradition.

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No cheers for Lamont

Thursday, April 14, 2022

I’m not totally a James Carville fan, but he’s got this right:

“If we can’t stand in there for Joe Biden and talk about the great things he’s done, then we don’t deserve to win this election in 2022,” the Democratic strategist said.

More at the link. This echoes a complaint I’ve made many times, and I think we have a perfect example close to home.

By any reasonable measure, Ned Lamont has done a good job as governor. Unfortunately, Ned had this sort of weird idea that his job was to do his job as well as possible. He forgot about the part where he must endlessly trumpet his accomplishments, or to have others in the Democratic Party do it for him. Just as an example, his handling of COVID was far better and more honest than that of the unlamented Andrew Cuomo, but who was it that got all the self generated attention?

Besides the excellent COVID response, the state is in excellent financial condition, a direct result of the fact that Democrats have been in charge for the past several years, and thus have not had to contend with obstructionist Republican governors, like the now Floridian Jodi Rell. It’s really up to Democrats to trumpet these accomplishments, but their efforts, as always, are lackadaisical at best.

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Logic 101

Wednesday, April 13, 2022

Now here’s a guy,”chiropractor, acupuncturist, and medical researcher” Bryan Ardis, who has used his brain, almost like Sherlock Holmes, to make a logical deduction from the facts available to him. He has deduced that COVID was developed and injected into the world by the Catholic Church, and his evidence is airtight. He had proven, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that COVID:

….is not a virus at all but rather a synthesized form of snake venom that is intentionally being spread via drinking water, COVID-19 treatments, and vaccines, possibly as part of a plot by the Catholic Church to turn everyone into “a hybrid of Satan.”

“The Latin definition historically for virus—originally and historically, virus meant, and means, venom,” Ardis said. “So, I started to wonder, ‘Well, what about the name ‘corona’? Does it have a Latin definition or a definition at all?’ So I actually looked up what’s the definition and on Dictionary.com, it brings up 13 definitions: ‘Corona, religiously, ecclesiastically, means gold ribbon at the base of a miter.” (A miter, the documentary then reported, is the traditional ceremonial headdress worn by Catholic bishops.)

“So, this actually could read, ‘The Pope’s Venom Pandemic,’” Ardis asserted. “In Latin terms, corona means crown. Visually, we see kings represented with a crown symbol. So put that together for me: king cobra venom. It actually could read, ‘King Cobra Venom Pandemic.’

Now, some people (not necessarily the same some people inside the head of a certain genius) might say that this deduction is highly illogical because if one is going to cause a worldwide pandemic killing millions of people, including lots of Catholics, one would not essentially sign one’s name to the crime by giving it a name that gives away the identity of the perpetrator.

But, this is where Ardis’s logical mind really shines. As I’m sure he would go on to say, the Pope knew that people would reject the idea of his being the author of the pandemic precisely because some people would say that no criminal would leave such hints as to his identity. It was, therefore, a brilliant piece of misdirection.

But some people would respond to Ardis: But even though some people would make the argument we have, other people would make an issue of the clues, so the Pope was running a needless risk. He should still have named the pandemic after something else, like maybe BIDENSFAULT 19.

But Ardis has them again. No way did the Pope have to worry, he would say, because anyone with a brain can see that anyone who tried to expose his malicious scheme based on the evidence that I’ve cited would be dismissed as a total whackjob.

So not only has Ardis proved his case with logical rigor, but he has also proven that the Pope will never be brought to justice for unleashing this snake venom on an unwary world.

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It doesn’t take Nostradamus to predict this

Tuesday, April 12, 2022

Well, this is totally unsurprising. Seems that Jared Kushner has been paid handsomely by Saudi Arabia for serving its interests, including covering up a murder. A good discussion about it by Juan Cole here. You have to hand it to Jared. He may have set a record so far as the amount of money that anyone has ever gained through corruption.

Now, here’s a prediction. Long after Jared’s corruption becomes a non-story (maybe it already is) we will still be hearing about Hunter Biden, not just from Fox, but from the “mainstream” media, that has lately felt it is its duty to try to resurrect the “laptop” story.

It remains the case that the unstated position of the media is that lying and corruption is just what Republicans do, so it’s not big news, while Democrats are expected to act ethically, and any hint of corruption, even if spread by Republicans accusing Democrats of what they themselves routinely do, is a big story.

It doesn’t help, of course, that the Democrats as a party are likely to be complicit in burying this story. A day doesn’t go by that some Republican doesn’t bring up Hunter Biden. The Democrats will likely be silent about Jared.

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Mike Lindell steps in it again

Thursday, April 7, 2022

I’m no longer practicing law, but I still can’t help but feel just a twinge of pity for whatever lawyer is representing Mike Lindell in the various libel suits that have been filed against him. Only a twinge, mind you, because he or she is probably as loathsome as Lindell. The guy just keeps making the case for the plaintiffs.

Recently he was served in a case brought by Eric Coomer, a former employee of Dominion for defamation.

Now, under still relevant Supreme Court precedent, a “public figure” can prevail in a libel suit only if he or she can prove actual malice on the part of the defendant. Now, the plaintiff in this case may or may not ultimately be ruled to be a public figure, but Lindell’s lawyers will no doubt want to argue that he is. So, here’s Lindell’s public reaction to the lawsuit:

During a broadcast later on Wednesday, Lindell claimed that he had “never talked about Eric Coomer” despite numerous statements accusing the former Dominion employee of fraud and being a “traitor.”

“Apparently he’s the president of Dominion,” Lindell stated incorrectly, “the criminal crime family here in Denver.”

“He served papers, everybody!” he continued. “Eric Coomer, you are a criminal! Eric Coomer, your lawyers better look out. I’m not putting up with this. MyPillow doesn’t even know who you are. My employees — I have 2,700 employees. Shame on you, Eric Coomer. You did a very, very stupid move, Mr. Coomer!”

Lindell claimed that Coomer would be “the first one” who goes to jail over the election.

“You’re number one on my list,” he ranted. “You’re disgusting. You belong behind bars. I heard you ran into a building the other day drunk or whatever you were, you know, whatever you did. You know, allegedly! I’ll say that for the lawyers.”

“But I will accuse you of this,” Lindell said. “You’ve been part of the biggest crime this world has ever seen, Eric Coomer, president of Dominion! You’ve even said what you did or what you were going to do. You’re disgusting. You’re disgusting, you’re evil and you belong behind bars and we will not stop to you are behind bars.”

He added: “We’re going to melt down your little machines and you’re going to hang on to your little prison bars. ‘Let me out, let me out!’ Should have thought about that, Eric Coomer, before you did crimes against the United States, the world and quite frankly all of humanity.”

If they get a super friendly right wing judge, they may be able to get these statements excluded, but it seems to me that any fair observer would have to conclude that they are evidence of actual malice against Mr. Coomer. For that matter, they could form the basis for additional counts against him.

I remember being involved in a case in which my client, several times, told me something that she thought would help her case and which I consistently told her would hurt it and that she should not mention it. She did anyway, and she lost the case. I can’t help but believe that even the most right wing lawyer would have cautioned Lindell to keep his mouth shut about Dominion from now on. It is looking more and more likely there’s one hopeful thing to which we can look forward: the end of the MyPillow grift.

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Who could have guessed?

Tuesday, April 5, 2022

Some researchers at Stamford and Yale have just announced the results of what purports to be a scientific study. It turns out, shockingly enough, that if people stop watching Fox propaganda, a fair number of them actually start trending toward the rational:

Broockman and Kalla recruited a sample of regular Fox News viewers and paid a subset of them to watch CNN instead. (Compliance was enforced with some news quizzes, for which additional compensation was offered.) Then the treatment group of switchers and the control group of non-switchers took three waves of surveys about the news.

The results: Not only did CNN and Fox cover different things during the September 2020 survey period, but the audience of committed Fox viewers, which started the month with conservative predispositions, changed their minds on many issues.

I confess that while I have some doubts about the methodology of this particular study, I am not all that surprised by its conclusion. In fact, it immediately brought to mind this exchange from Hamlet, in which Hamlet, reluctant to divulge too much in front of other witnesses, tells a curious Horatio what he’s learned after talking to his father’s ghost:

HAMLET: There’s never a villain dwelling in all Denmark But he’s an arrant knave.

HORATIO: There needs no ghost, my lord, come from the grave To tell us this.

To drive the point home, there needs no University professors come from the halls of Ivy, to tell us that Fox brainwashes its viewers or that stopping the washes will restore at least some of the brains.

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