In a oped piece in the Washington Post this morning, Joe Biden proposed common sense reforms to the SCOTUS.  It would have been really nice had he proposed those 3 1/2 years ago rather than as a lame duck president, but it’s a badly needed proposal.  In those years of dawdling, an obviously corrupted court has taken a hatchet to the Constitution and almost 250 years of settled law.  The radical majority has been rapidly disassembling longstanding administrative law, voting rights, women’s rights to choose their own reproductive healthcare, gun safety laws, bribery laws, and longstanding understanding of Constitutional principles such as immunity.  They’ve also actually invited parties to bring lawsuits to the court to speed up their destruction (see US v. Trump).

The problem with the court, though, is not just the last few years.  The current crisis has been building since  Reagan nominated Robert Bork and Antonin Scalia and GHWB nominated Clarence Thomas.  Bork was the original originalist, believing the Constitution should only be interpreted through the Founders’ eyes, ignoring what happened between 1789 and current day.  It’s idiotic. The concept is radical and has brought us some of the worst SCOTUS decisions since the disastrous Dred Scott decision in 1857 that ruled that the Constitution did not protect enslaved Americans.

Chief Justice John Roberts has presided over this abortion (pun intended) and has inexplicably defended not only the court’s decisions, but has steadfastly resisted oversite from the Legislative branch and reforming itself.  He has allowed Thomas to flout both the law and common sense, ignoring the fact that he (as well as Alito) have been bought and paid for by partisan and corporate interests.

Even while acknowledging the crisis at the SCOTUS, Biden has been reluctant to step in.  He started a commission to study the court and make recommendations, but three years later, he’s done nothing.  Only now, after he became a lame duck, is he proposing long needed change.  Beyond waiting WAY too long to propose changes to the court, there’s no chance that they’ll get a fair hearing in the legislature.  The Insurrectionist Party, which clings to a tiny majority in the House, has no interest in doing anything beyond putting its collective nose up TFG’s diapered ass, so reform bills will no nowhere for now.  They LOVE the Court as it is, and only a change in November will make reform of the Court possible.

What can we do?  Vote.  Every single incumbent and candidate who supports TFG or this court must be defeated.  That, of course, is not going to happen in one election, but it’s a start.  And that’s the only chance we have of pulling us back from the brink.

The NYTimes is reporting what all of us can just imagine, that Biden is pissed about his long term allies abandoning him after long years of loyal public service.  He’s still isolating at his Delaware beach home, trying to get over yet another case of Covid as his campaign crumbles around his ears.  What’s happening is tragic, and most certainly not fair to Biden, especially after the events of 2016.  2016?  Read on.

I find it pretty rich that the very people who are whining and hissing through gnashed teeth about the calls for Biden to step aside in 2024 are the very ones who gleefully celebrated pushing him aside during the 2016 election because it was Hillary’s “turn”.  It was unfair, unwise, and strategic blunder.  Pushing Hillary in front of Biden is the precise reason that TFG is even around today.  Let’s review: Immediately after the 2012 election, Obama handed Hillary the keys to the DNC.  She immediately fired all of the senior staff, installed her loyalists, including Debbie Wasserman Schultz, unwound all the reforms that Obama had put in place, and began building a huge wall of money to keep out all other viable candidates before the primaries even started.  Those efforts were aimed directly at Biden to push him aside and keep other candidates like Bernie at arm’s length.  How?  I’ll tell you how.

The Joint Fundraising Agreement Hillary forced onto the DNC in 2015 was actually a giant money laundering operation that washed money from donations to state parties through the DNC and then immediately to her campaign coffers.  That kept the DNC and state parties starving for money and all of the control in Brooklyn, not in DC.  DNC staff had to run EVERYTHING by Brooklyn, including hiring, press releases, primary process, EVERYTHING. The result was that a candidate, who had not even been nominated yet, was in total control of the primary process.  Another irony is that all of this was discovered through WikiLeaks’ leaking of DNC emails which marked  the trail that Donna Brazile later followed to get to the bottom of the corruption.  The public scandal was “Hillary’s emails;” the actual scandal was Hillary’s complete control of the DNC and rigged primary process fully ONE YEAR before she won the nomination.

Mad about Biden now?  Blame Hillary.  And those who supported her.  The Queen of Coasting blew it by pushing Biden to the curb, and not taking TFG seriously, and not campaigning in battleground states when she desperately needed to as she started slipping in the polls.  Add her incompetence to meddling by the Russians, Clinton Foundation scandals, and the ridiculous “Hillary’s emails” scandal, and you get the disaster we all witnessed live on national television.  Hillary was clearly qualified to be president, but as I’ve said many times before, a TERRIBLE candidate and incompetent manager.  Oh, and one last thing; Biden didn’t pull out of the 2016 campaign because his son Beau died; that was a diversion.  Biden bowed out because Hillary boxed him out with Obama’s assistance.  Those are the facts.

So, while you’re all pissed off about Biden being treated unfairly in 2024, remember that you probably supported him being treated REALLY unfairly in 2015.  And, in 2015, he was a vibrant well conditioned, fast on his feet 72 year old.  The tragedy is that, but for Hillary’s corruption and mismanagement, added to Obama’s benign neglect of the DNC, Trump would still be playing golf and losing money while putting his name on cheesy buildings in Asia rather than getting ready to waltz back into the White House in 2024.

So, get over yourself and read the objective numbers.  It’s a cold hard truth, but the 2024 election is already lost unless Dem leaders move quickly and decisively.  After all, they’re 4 years behind, and they’ve got three months to have any chance of pulling this out.

There’s a lot of reporting that Biden is being shielded by his wife, Jill, and his close staff from the reality of polling numbers which, besides personal pride, is one of the reasons he is stubbornly hanging on.  To counter the effort to get him to step down, it’s now coming out that he’s going to propose an overhaul of the Supreme Court including an actual ethics policy and term limits.  It’s also being reported that he’s going to propose a Constitutional amendment to restate that the President is not immune from prosecution for criminal acts.

There’s not a chance in hell of any of these proposals seeing the light of day, especially with Fascist control of the House and many of the states.  BUT, it’s the right subject.  Biden is way too late, but THIS is a key issue, and a Hail Mary is about all he’s got left.  The SCOTUS is now bought and paid for by billionaires lead by Leonard Leo and it’s got to be fixed.  However, with today’s politics there is no quick fix, especially with the juggernaut created by Leo and his Federalist Society.  To make real change here, the People will have to overcome the do-nothing inertia that paralyzes the Congress.  I’m not hopeful, at least at this point.

Maybe this effort by Biden will save his candidacy.  I don’t think it’s enough to overcome his negatives, but it’s something, especially if this proposal gains real traction that gives people some hope.

In other news, the DNC gave up on its attempt to ram through Biden’s nomination during July even before the convention rules committee meets.  Postponing this vote tells me that there are serious discussion going on behind closed about what to do about Biden.  This has got to be decided sooner rather than later.

At long last, the fake gold plated billionaire facade is falling down around TFG’s ears.  Longstanding watchers have known that he’s always been full of hot air, not money, and had it not been for Fred Trump’s fortune and Russian money, TFG would have fallen by the wayside years ago.  Because they are well known, I won’t list all of his failures, but he’s lost banks and investors billions over the years, has been a pariah in New York for 40 years and only pulled himself from the brink with a successful “reality” television show and selling real estate to Russian oligarchs.

He used the presidency of the US as a cash cow, raking in millions at his hotel in a US government owned building in DC , overcharging government agencies for hotel charges, and making millions from foreign countries who laundered money through his resorts and buildings.  All of that, though, didn’t actually build any long term wealth for TFG because he really only owns a fraction of his properties with investors and massive debt.  Because of his terrible reputation and disastrous presidency, even his licensing deals have dried up.  Even with all that foreign money, his resorts lose millions every year and the musical chairs game is coming to an end.  He now owes massive financial penalties for sexual assault, massive financial fraud, and defamation that he’s still committing, and the tab is now well over half a billion dollars.  He’s admitted in official court papers that he doesn’t have the money to pay.

So, TFG is for sale. The purchase price is only reachable by the billionaire class consisting of guys like Musk, Bezos, and a handful of others, and on Sunday he met with Musk in Palm Beach.  Even after his $44 billion fiasco with Twitter, Musk is still estimated to be worth over $200 billion, and Bezos is more.  I’m not convinced that Musk is buying because much of his fortune is in SpaceX and Tesla stock, but there’s also this other little detail that SpaceX is significantly dependent on the US government for a good chunk of its revenue even though they don’t disclose the amounts.  So, if Musk purchases TFG and he loses the election, he would be hundreds of millions in the hole and have a pissed off Biden to deal with.  I don’t believe Bezos is a buyer.  It’s just not his style.  So, what if a Russian oligarch purchases him?  There’s not a lot we can do, especially since the Thomas Trump SCOTUS has pretty much unwound any meaningful campaign finance laws.  As well, it’s unclear if there are any state or federal requirements for Trump to disclose where he got the money to pay off his debts except for IRS regulations and if he’s president, that doesn’t mean anything.

So picture this – there’s a really good chance that we could have a president that has been bought and paid for by an oligarch who will remain unidentified; the DOJ will quickly drop all federal charges against him.  That leaves the NY hush money case and the Georgia RICO case which Fani Willis has almost singlehandedly fucked up for all of us with her love life. On the same day of his inauguration, he’ll immediately begin disassembling the US government as we know it through Project 2025 and re-forming it for his own benefit which includes consolidating power to the Oval Office and turning the DOJ into a weapon to prosecute political enemies like Joe Biden, Alvin Bragg, Fani Willis, and may others.

How’s that picture look?  So, sleep well tonight, dear readers, as the rest of 2024 could be the end of the US as we know it if Americans don’t get off their ass and take responsibility for themselves.

As expected, the SCOTUS ruled that individual states cannot keep an insurrectionist off their own state ballot.  The opinion was unanimous.  But what isn’t talked about as much in the media is what the majority did next, which was writing in a new constitutional provision specifically designed to protect none other than the subject of the ruling, TFG.  Even though the opinion was unanimous, it was unanimous only in saying the states can’t ban insurrectionists from the ballot.  The four women justices disagreed when the Trump Wing of SCOTUS went far beyond the question before the Court, adding a new requirement that a candidate can only be blocked under the 14th Amendment by FEDERAL LEGISLATION, which, in the current environment, is impossible.  It doesn’t impose that same rule on other provisions of the 14th Amendment such as the two term limit, just the insurrectionist provision.  So the Trump Wing of SCOTUS actually wrote in a new Constitutional requirement to disqualify an insurrectionist.  This is called legislating from the bench. And again, done so in the service of TFG to help him take over the US government in January 2025.

The Trump Wing of the SCOTUS often hides behind federal legislation in its opinions to help their own political party.  One glaring example of this is when they declined to stop clearly unconstitutional state gerrymandering  that has permanently disenfranchise millions of voters like those of us in Texas where Dems have to win 58% of votes in districts statewide to have a chance of taking a majority of Congressional seats.  SCOTUS says it’s not its job to protect from that, so disenfranchised voters have no recourse for justice.

So the SCOTUS continues to run interference for TFG, helping him run out the clock to the election in November.  Oh, and by the by, Clarence Thomas once again didn’t recuse in a case where he is clearly conflicted.

Your welcome.

Let’s just say it right up front – the current majority of the Supreme Court doesn’t give a flying fuck about the Constitution, the Rule of Law or you.  Given opportunity after opportunity to be the last line defense of The People against a continuous onslaught on the rule of law and common decency the Court has failed miserably time after time.  John Roberts has presided over the biggest abortion (no pun intended) of jurisprudence in US history, and appears to have lost what little control he had over what can now only be termed the Trump-Thomas Court of Law by and for the Highest Bidder, bought and paid for by Leonard Leo and the billionaire class.

Over the last two decades the Court has unraveled decades (sometimes centuries) of well established constitutional precedent, ruling that money equals speech (for billionaires and corporations), money doesn’t corrupt, gun safety laws are inconvenient to criminals and gun manufacturers, the EPA is a waste of time, political gerrymandering that destroyed state and federal legislatures is OK, unions that protect workers’ rights are tiring for corporations, separation of church and state is a quaint concept, state funding of religious schools is fine, public health policy to protect the health of the nation is unconstitutional, law enforcement can’t be held accountable for abusing the rights of the accused or wrongly convicted, access to reasonable healthcare is not a right, and state funding of campaign to counter billionaires’ money is illegal.  Added to this long list of disasters are the most damaging rulings, which were the gutting of the Voting Rights act and the reversal of Roe v. Wade, which is the first time in United States History that a personal right was taken away.  As I write this, the Trump-Thomas Court is now actually considering reversing the long established principal that US agencies can implement US law (Chevron Rule) and if a bump stock, which turns a rifle into a machine gun actually turns a rifle into a machine gun.  During oral argument Alito remarkably mused that bump stocks should be allowed so people with arthritis can easily fire off 400 rounds a minute.  Finally, Alito and Thomas have already sent the signal that marriage equality and contraception are on the chopping block as abhorrent as that idea is.

On top of all that, the Court is now actively helping TFG avoid prosecution by slow walking his ridiculous claim that a US president has absolute immunity from any criminal prosecution, even for murder.  So get this – in December, US Attorney Jack Smith, so he can get the election interference trial before the People before the next election, begged the Court to hear TFG’s claim that he has absolute immunity .  Oh, NO, says the Court, being all law and order, let it go through the appeals process first.  OK, so Smith does that and the DC Circuit quickly handed down a unanimous ruling that Trump’s claim is nonsense with an opinionthat legal experts say was “masterful”.  Of course, TFG then appeals to the Court, and then, after sitting on it for 16 days, decides that oh, we want to hear the case anyway, even thought there are no legal issues left undecided, pushing their hearing off to late April.  In other words, the Trump-Thomas Court is actively running cover for TFG to get him through the election for the highest office in the land without going to trial for trying to overthrow the US government.  If TFG is elected, it’s then game over for all the federal cases including the one for election interference and the stolen classified documents case.  It’s not just likely, but damn certain that the Court will then step in again and stay the state court cases against him until they carry him feet first out of the White House (whenever that happens) since he’ll never voluntarily leave office if ever handed it again.

And there you have it.  The United States Supreme Court, which is supposed to be the last line of defense against corruption, criminals, bad law, insurrection, and the stripping of constitutional rights is doing just the opposite, throwing The People to TFG and his goons.  And they’re doing it while failing to police themselves against blatant corruption.  As Steven Colbert put it last night, for the election case hearing, Thomas will put his tip jar out for that one. And Sam will be whining about how unfair Americans are toward him.  I mean, he’s just doing his job taking away rights and pandering to religious zealots and gun nuts, right?