Seizing his chance, the Duce strikes a deep blow at Social Security, Medicare

None of this is legal or constitutional.

But it's one hell of a victory for the hardest of the hard right.

Add this to the giant Trump tax cut for the rich and his continuing efforts to destroy utterly every jot of the ACA and you will see him endearing himself to the plutes whose support is deathless for the most vicious version of capitalism possible.

This kind of move shows Trump knows how to make his populism appealing to the really big money on the right.

And his repeated use of unconstitutional means is just so typical of the increasing radicalism, extremism, and ferocity of the American political scene.

Trump signs executive orders after coronavirus relief talks falter

President Trump on Saturday signed orders to extend unemployment benefits, suspend payroll taxes, and offer federal eviction and student loan relief, taking unilateral action that is on shaky legal ground amid stalled negotiations about a fifth round of coronavirus relief in Congress.

Pence jabs at Roberts, peanut gallery says "Yeah!"

Maybe they missed his handling of the trial in the senate?

So Pence and others are pressuring him to line up with the other Republican justices in future by accusing him of voting against them in the past only because he has repeatedly caved to pressure.

Mike Pence is 'totally right' to criticize Roberts and conservatives are deeply 'alarmed': Carrie Severino

Vice President Mike Pence is "totally right" in his criticism of Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts as the court is once again a paramount issue for voters going to the polls in November, author and former Supreme Court clerk Carrie Severino told "Fox & Friends" Friday.

Pence tore into Roberts, calling him a "disappointment to conservatives," during a discussion with Christian broadcaster CBN News on Thursday. 

His comments came in the wake of several cases in which Roberts, an appointee of former President George W. Bush, sided with the court's liberals in majority opinions.

"Conservatives are deeply alarmed at this pattern of decisions that make Chief Justice Roberts look much more like a politician than a judge and that is not his job," Severino said.

Severino is president of the Judicial Crisis Network and one of the people involved in putting together President Trump's new Supreme Court list.

"I'm not sure if that's sort of an anti-Trump effect on his part," Severino said, pointing out, "[Roberts] likes to say there are no Trump judges or Obama judges, but he seems to be an anti-Trump judge at this point."

Pence pointed in particular to Roberts voting in 2012 to uphold ObamaCare, a more recent decision to uphold Nevada’s coronavirus-related limits on church gatherings, and a Louisiana case that determined whether abortion-clinic doctors should have admitting privileges at local hospitals, CBN reported, as "a reminder of just how important this election is for the future of the Supreme Court."

"What's so disturbing is you see this pattern and even some of the dissents from his own colleagues suggesting that, perhaps pressure from outside the court is what is making him not want him to appear too conservative, so he seems to be trying to play both sides," Severino said.

"Some of the most recent reporting from the court suggests in cases he has flipped his decision again, may be because he is concerned about the media backlash if the court rules certain ways," she said. 

"But, you know what? Chief justice, that's not your job. Your job isn't to look at the opinion pages and figure out what's going to make them put the court in the best light. Your job is to follow the Constitution and the law."

Roberts swings his vote, again

Supreme Court again rejects church challenge to virus restriction

The Supreme Court in a split decision Friday rejected a Nevada church’s request that it block the state government from enforcing a cap on attendance at religious services. 

The decision was a 5-4 ruling, with Chief Justice John Roberts joining the liberal wing.

The court’s order was unsigned and did not provide any reasoning, common practice when the high court acts on emergency applications. 

The court’s conservative justices filed three dissents.

So Roberts isn't a "conservative justice", Tal Axelrod?

The decision comes in response to a suit from Calvary chapel Dayton Valley arguing that it was being treated unfairly compared to casinos, restaurants and amusement parks. 

Churches in the state have a firm 50-person limit, while other businesses have been told to cut their availability to half of their fire-code capacities.

Alito:

“The Constitution guarantees the free exercise of religion,” Justice Samuel Alito wrote in dissent. 

“It says nothing about the freedom to play craps or blackjack, to feed tokens into a slot machine, or to engage in any other game of chance. But the Governor of Nevada apparently has different priorities."

Phooey.

Only Thomas even pretends to take the actual, absolutist and ludicrous language of the First Amendment seriously.

Everybody drills holes in it, allowing regulation and weighing of competing considerations and exceptions.

And Roberts merely insisted that the facts just didn't bear out the claims of discrimination against religion, refusing Alito's invitation to compare apples and oranges (churches and casinos), instead comparing apples and apples (churches and theaters).

Roberts:

The Friday ruling marks the second time the high court has blocked an effort from a church to invalidate state restrictions on attendance. 

The court ruled 5-4 in a similar case in May to reject a challenge from a California church.

“Although California’s guidelines place restrictions on places of worship, those restrictions appear consistent with the free exercise clause of the First Amendment,” Roberts wrote in May. 

“Similar or more severe restrictions apply to comparable secular gatherings, including lectures, concerns, movie showings, spectator sports and theatrical performances, where large groups of people gather in close proximity for extended periods of time.”

Conservatives blast Supreme Court ruling: Roberts has 'abandoned his oath'

Conservative lawmakers blasted Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts after he sided with the court's liberal justices in a 5-4 decision Friday that rejected a Nevada church’s request to block the state government from enforcing a cap on attendance at religious services.

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) tweeted early Saturday morning that Roberts had "abandoned his oath."

"What happened to that judge?" tweeted Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.).

"Freedom of religion is our first freedom. Yet SCOTUS has ruled that casinos can host hundreds of gamblers, while churches cannot welcome their full congregations. Justice Roberts once again got it wrong, shamefully closing church doors to their flocks," Cotton added in a statement.

Defending its imposed restrictions, Nevada stated that its regulations didn't target places of worship unfairly, saying that other large gatherings — like concerts and movie theaters — were treated “the same as or worse than houses of worship.” 

The complaint made its way to the highest court in the land after being rejected by a district court and a circuit court.

Three of the conservative justices wrote dissenting opinions on the emergency order.

Still not happy with the Bozo in the White House

A Study in Self-Pity

Chris Wallace’s interview of President Trump, which aired on Sunday, is well worth watching if you’ve got a strong stomach.

The parts about the pandemic are as terrifying as you’ve heard—a veritable catalog of unfitness, incompetence, and willful ignorance that will leave you grateful for America’s system of federalism.

But I actually thought the most interesting and telling bit of the interview was at the very end, and wasn’t about the virus. Here’s the final question and answer:

WALLACE: Whether it’s in 2021 or 2025, how will you regard your years as President of the United States?

TRUMP: I think I was very unfairly treated.

And he drones on about that for a good while, his complaints liberally salted with absurd lies and conspiracy theories.

Asked to reflect on his term so far as he seeks re-election, the president’s answer is that he was treated unfairly. 

Even when he is literally invited by his interviewer to say good things about himself, all he can reach for is resentment.

Perhaps a little over the top

The panic is excessive and likely more than a little faux.

From the same folks who assured us O was a Marxist and a Communist (or anyway a communist) in 2008 and again in 2012.

And said the same of his agenda.

And, really, this should remind us all of Sarah Palin attacking O for "palling around with terrorists".

Radical Marxist and communist Obama gave us Ocare and TARP and, with a nudge from Joe Biden, today's rabid revolutionary, support for gay marriage.

And encomia on the joys and glories of "democratic capitalism", as I recall.

He did occasionally nod toward the further left, as he did when he spoke (wrote?) of Ho Chi Minh's alleged admiration for the American Revolution showing how not a red he was.

And his links with Rev. Wright and the racial/racist left were certainly problematic.

But he also personally ridiculed the extremists as "the professional left".

Anyway, these guys always say stuff like that about Democrats and even their most tamely progressive agenda commitments.

And leaders of massive political demonstrations are always way further out ideologically than the folks who follow them into the street in support of specific causes or demands.

Hey, ask Bill Ayers how the revolution went after Nixon stopped using draftees in Vietnam.

The Revolution Is Winning

Naive and absurd

Evangelicals and other religious conservatives don't care a fig for his faith or his sincerity.

They care about judicial appointments and they want someone to stop and even reverse the decades long deterioration of the position of Christian faith and Christian morality in the culture and the law.

They will flat out prefer Trump the pussy-grabbing hypocrite and libertine who supports American clericalism to Biden the man of sincere faith who opposes it and will continue to undermine it.

Biden's bid touts faith, courts even religious conservatives

Made me laugh. But their stupidity will hurt their families, friends, employees, and cohorts

Mississippi Legislature Has Mass COVID-19 Outbreak After Lawmakers Refuse To Wear Masks

The number of coronavirus cases linked to an outbreak at the Capitol has grown to 36, which includes 26 legislators.

A history that should have got better after Communism, but didn't

Largely because Bush pere and the rabidly anti-Communist American classe politique who gave us containment, Korea, Vietnam, and the Taliban were all way too gleeful to publicly dig and dance on the grave of the old Russian Empire, most of what the Soviets still had of it split off with the fall of Communism.

That created the vast well of Russian resentment that powers Putin's strongman regime and the wide appeal, among Russians, of dinging America in world politics.

Do 'bounties' on US troops in Afghanistan reflect a line crossed or 'nothing new' in long US-Russia history?

Afghanistan

The bullshit just goes on and on.

The rise of Muslim fundamentalism got the greatest boost in its history when that knee-jerk anti-communist boob, Republican and conservative hero Ronald Reagan, gave the Taliban to the world in order to mess things up for the Russians in Afghanistan.

Russians in Afghanistan would be bad?

Oh, please.

Nowhere near as bad for us, for Afghanistan, or for the entire Muslim world as us handing that country to the Taliban.

That gave us, well, the Taliban, a much-strengthened Al-Qaeda, the attacks of 9/11, an endless war in Afghanistan, a huge rise in terrorism and jihad all over the region, ISIS, the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people, and the ongoing wastage of trillions of dollars.

Yes, Reagan gave us that, with Bush fils not far behind him.

Stupid, stupid, stupid.

Meanwhile, Democrats to a man (or woman) are shocked, shocked, that Russians would subsidize military operations against US forces by enemies whom we once subsidized to carry out military operations . . . against the Russians!

A lot of Russia owns Trump claptrap, for day and days.

Why the Great Fat Orange Klansman is mad as heck and itching to appoint another supreme

Supreme Court, in 5-4 ruling, strikes down restrictive Louisiana abortion law

The Supreme Court ruled Monday that Louisiana's tough restriction on abortions violates the Constitution, a surprising victory for abortion rights advocates from an increasingly conservative court.

The 5-4 decision, in which Chief Justice John Roberts joined with the court's four more liberal justices, struck down a law passed by the Louisiana Legislature in 2014 that required any doctor offering abortion services to have admitting privileges at a hospital within 30 miles.

. . . .

The challengers said the requirement was identical to a Texas law the Supreme Court struck down in 2016. 

With the vote of then-Justice Anthony Kennedy, the court ruled that Texas imposed an obstacle on women seeking access to abortion services without providing any medical benefits. 

Kennedy was succeeded by the more conservative Brett Kavanaugh, appointed by President Donald Trump, who was among the four dissenters Monday.

Justice Stephen Breyer, who wrote the Texas decision, also wrote Monday's ruling.

. . . .

Roberts said he thought the court was wrong to strike down the Texas law, but he voted with the majority because that was the binding precedent. 

"The Louisiana law imposes a burden on access to abortion just as severe as that imposed by the Texas law, for the same reasons. Therefore Louisiana's law cannot stand under our precedents."

Will he respect precedent enough to uphold Roe?

Others surely would not.

Democrats liked Roberts' call but noted Kavanaugh and Gorsuch were not on their side.

Sara Gideon attacks Susan Collins on abortion rights after Supreme Court ruling

Gideon touted her endorsements from groups supporting abortion rights like NARAL Pro-Choice America and Planned Parenthood Action and publicly questioned whether Collins still believed that Kavanaugh viewed Roe v. Wade, the landmark 1973 decision in which the court ruled that the Constitution protects a pregnant woman's right to choose to have an abortion, as "settled law."

Chief Justice John Roberts sided with the four liberal justices because of Supreme Court precedent, emphasizing that the Louisiana law was identical to a credentialing requirement in a Texas statute invalidated by the court's 2016 ruling in the case of Whole Woman's Health v. Hellerstedt. 

Kavanaugh dissented with the other conservative justices, writing that the Supreme Court "should remand the case for a new trial and additional fact finding under the appropriate legal standards."

Thomas tears into abortion precedent, says Roe v. Wade should fall in dissent on Louisiana case

Thomas called Roe v. Wade 'farcical,' the court's reasoning for calling abortion a right 'amorphous' and its abortion jurisprudence 'grievously wrong'

Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas filed a blistering opinion dissenting from a Monday decision to strike down a Louisiana law that required abortion doctors to obtain admitting privileges at a nearby hospital, calling the court's record on abortion "grievously wrong."

The pitched dissent made clear that Thomas is ready to tear down the court's protections for abortion completely in his most explicit comments yet that precedents all the way back to Roe v. Wade should fall.

Conservative groups see abortion ruling as catalyst for reelecting Trump

Vice President Mike Pence tweeted, “After today’s disappointing decision by SCOTUS, one thing is clear: We need more Conservative justices on the U.S. Supreme Court.”

White House Ironically Complains That SCOTUS Judges Can Make Decisions Without Being Elected

So of course he wants to appoint more of them to put unelected conservatives in possession of the law.

Antifa in the news

According to Wikipedia, most antifa groups or individuals are committed to criminal actions.

Antifa (short for anti-fascism or anti-fascist) is not an organization but a movement in which numerous groups and individuals participate.

The movement as a whole is extremist, far left, soi-disant revolutionary, anti-capitalist, anti-government, and all of that is contrary to the official as well as real commitments and ideas of the Democratic Party.

And while of course there are and have always been anti-fascist liberals and anti-fascist conservatives, the antifa movement and ideology rejects, excludes, and opposes both liberalism and conservatism, no matter how anti-fascist.

Paul Waldman notes the Trumpist right has made much of antifa, though their exclamations of alarm are about on a level for stupid mendacity with their idiotic lies about Joe Scarborough murdering an employee, Hillary Clinton running a child sex ring out of a pizza parlor, Ted Cruz's dad killing FJK, and Hunter Biden's criminal activities in Ukraine.

Which is not to say there are no such people, at all.

But it really doesn't come to much.

I'll huff and I'll puff and I'll blow your house down!

Trump threatens to close down social media platforms which ‘silence conservative voices’ after Twitter posts warning under his tweet

Twitter did the least they could do about his nauseating lie and do anything at all.

And they still got blessed with the rage of the blowhard who can never stop pretending to have powers he doesn't have.

They should have just deleted his tweets.

Or at least labeled them lies.

When our mini-Mussolini does that - threatens to exercise powers he does not have - and gets freak-out headlines does he just laugh and laugh at us all in private?

Oh, and if I were a conservative I'd resent the smear implied when he disguises defense of his own ability to pour out lying shit all over the hive-mind of the conservative movement as a defense of access for conservatives and conservatism.

Um, on second thought, I guess I wouldn't.

This will grow

Up to now crowds have been small gaggles of organized nutbags.

But that is changing.

This could get really big.

The overwhelming majority of the antiwar demonstrators against the Vietnam war did not share the revolutionary ideologies of the organizers.

They were really in very large measure anti-draft demonstrators.

Hence when Nixon stopped sending draftees to fight the demonstrations faded to obscurity.

And now?

The leadership is nutbags of various kinds and very hard core right wingers.

But the big supporting crowds, if eventually there are big supporting crowds, will be made up almost entirely of people who cannot afford not to work, people whose small businesses are failing, people who have no insurance if they don't work, and so on.

These are people who, being now unemployed, have the time but not the means to travel to faraway sites to demonstrate, absent the helping hands of willing donors.

And, again, the ideology of the donors is one thing, while that of the individual participants is another.

The majority of them will not be far right in their overall politics and will be less radical than the leadership or the donors in their desires concerning the rollback.

An unknown proportion of them will not even be voting for Trump or other GOP candidates this fall.

Thousands of Americans backed by right wing donors gear up for protests

Fury and despair: behind the viral image of Americans protesting against lockdown

A lot of people are convinced that for them and their families taking their chances is safer and better than the lockdown.

Who is to say that not a lot of these people are right?

The Duce to newsies, the governors, and the rest of us, too: "When somebody is president of the United States, the authority is total."

I would have written "the stunned newsies" but neither they nor anyone else is any longer stunned by the enormity of this president's narcissist self-worship, nor by his grandiose fantasies of power.

Trump's sexual/political, S/M fantasy of total domination

US president Donald Trump has claimed he has ‘total authority’ to supersede decisions made by state governors to ease social restrictions during the coronavirus pandemic. 

‘When someone is president of the United States the authority is total', Trump said during a White House press briefing. 

Reporters questioned the assertion, asking: ‘You said that when someone is the president of the United States their authority is total. That is not true. Who told you that?’ 

Trump replied ‘We are going to write up papers on this'. 

Although claiming he had the authority to ‘call the shots’ for each state's lock-down regulations, Trump insisted he was ‘getting on very well with the governors’ and is ‘certain there won’t be a problem’

Yes, this is all about who controls the lockdown and the rollback of it.

Oh, how these states' rights Republicans love their constitution, their limited government, their checks and balances, and how they dread tyranny.

Hey, don't tread on me! Oh, no!

So you say you like small government and states' rights better?

We get that that's code.

It means - among other things and leaving aside such stuff as white nationalism, white supremacy, white Nativism, fascism, authoritarianism, and populism - that you like crime better than government.

You think that the cure is worse than the disease.

Worse for you, because you're a white male, a plute, a 1 percenter, or a crook.

And if you talk like that you're probably all four.

What are they afraid of, those right wingers demanding an early end to lockdown?

Irreversible economic damage or irreversible measures of social democracy?

Just another thing to fear about the virus

If you are hospitalized for it you might have dirt injected into your veins because the orange moron in the White House thinks it's a miracle cure and has bullied the medical establishment into compliance.

Hydroxychloroquine: how an unproven drug became Trump’s coronavirus 'miracle cure'

THE DUCE PICKS HIS GUINEA PIG. Trump: I have asked US pharma CEOs to offer Johnson experimental Covid-19 treatments

Do you suppose Boris is glad of the role?

Why Trump's media allies are turning against Fauci amid the pandemic

The new Laetrile war pits the party of stupidity against the rest of us.

Fox on board for accepting more infections and deaths to send people back to work

Brit Hume And Tucker Carlson

Part of their patter echoes the president's wild underestimation of the numbers both of those who will be infected and of those who will be killed.

They are talking about tens of thousands who die from seasonal flu.

And while they admit this is more lethal they are in utter denial as to how much more lethal.

As we move into the spring and summer months this could get to be an election issue, with Trump and the GOP getting the votes of everyone chafing under the yoke that governors have imposed and Democrats defend.

And that could be a lot of people, by then.

They could win running on stupidity and fantasy, defending policies that literally cost lives.

As they did last time.

Obama urges Americans to continue social distancing despite Trump's wishes to reopen economy

Pelosi angrily rejects a question that slanders her with a Trumpist talking point

They cannot deny he did what he did and cannot convince anyone it wasn't illegal or it doesn't matter.

So it's all bullshit about Democrats hating him for his unexpected victory over Hillary that they wish out of hatred and resentment to delegitimate and overturn.

She's not one to make it easy.

Nancy Pelosi tells Sinclair reporter James Rosen: ‘Don’t mess with me!’

“Do you hate the president, Ms. Speaker?” the reporter, James Rosen from the conservative Sinclair Broadcast Group, asked during Pelosi’s weekly press briefing at the Capitol.

“I don’t hate anybody. We don’t hate anybody. Not anybody in the world. Don’t accuse me,” she said, leaving the podium to approach Rosen and pointing at him as she spoke.

He then interrupted her, saying he was asking about a charge from a GOP lawmaker during the House Judiciary Committee’s impeachment hearing Wednesday that Democrats wanted Trump gone only because they didn’t like him.

“I did not accuse you. I asked you a question. Rep. [Doug] Collins yesterday suggested that the Democrats are doing this simply because you don’t like the guy. I think it is an important point,” he said, referring to the Georgia lawmaker, a fervent Trump backer.

He was as good as heckling her, making very sure to repeat the allegation to her face as provocatively as possible.

Pelosi then walked back to the podium and continued to lecture Rosen.

“This is about the Constitution of the United States and the facts that lead to the president’s violation of his oath of office. And as a Catholic, I resent your using the word hate in a sentence that addresses me,” she said, adding that she prays for Trump.

Eyes Wide Open

Climate crisis: 11,000 scientists warn of ‘untold suffering’

Denial is a coverup.

The party of denial is the party of triumphant selfishness on a sociopathic scale.

The very thing that makes democratic socialism utterly impossible and social democracy a heck of a push.

Denial is a coverup for that selfishness.

"Untold suffering?

"Yeah, but not mine.

"Not my problem, compadre."