Thank you, Greg. I hope that when we win in the autumn (god please!) that we massively increase the IRS and DOJ budgets, and prosecute every politician and bigwig and super-rich donor, especially The Heritage Foundation and the Federalist Society etc etc. The super-rich and their toads the GOP will destroy America. They feel this is their LAST SHOT.
#MAGA LOVES that Trump is a bully and gets away with it.
MAGA knows that #Trump is their ONLY CHANCE for bullies to take over the country.
They are NEVER going to give up that chance.
They will happily destroy anyone who gets in their way.
And those evil types will happily burn our country to the ground so they might rule over the ashes. America is facing an existential struggle against darkness
This is also a very strange darkness. Live and let live is not in their lexicon. Catholics are only 18-20% of the US population. Up until recently, the number of Catholics on SCOTUS have been few. Maybe that's why. Of course, the Catholic aggression can backfire as well. Opus Dei is an aggressive, fascist arm of the Church, a relic from Franco Spain; why was it unleashed here?
Unfortunately, I agree. They seem to be one of the elements attacking democracy...Leo represents a whole cabal allied with the Koch Empire, which has always leaned toward Russia and paleoconfederate outlook of the southern states - they just like that dictatorial model that fits their goals. Ally that with foreign (Russian) disinformation campaigns and you have a lethal attack in our everyday world of working and living. They are the disharmony.
My sense has always been that they really are true believers, that their faith is this stuff is sincere. The only way to bring about their ambitious religious goals is to have a dictatorship, because none of that crap flies in a democracy.
Growing up in the 60's, my Catholic parents were so upset at the prejudice against their faith and their candidate, JFK. Why, Catholics would never do all those bad things...
Gorsuch is nominally Episcopalian but is one of the Leo crew. If you count him, there are seven Catholics on the Court, because Sotomayor is, too. And so is Biden, of course. It's the radical Catholic EXTREMISTS who are the problem.
Hear hear! Every dollar invested in the IRS yields something like $6 in revenue. No brainer, really.
The Hunter Biden thing is another bully move. They are delighting in it, and it's abhorrent. Purely political, intended solely to hurt Joe personally. Everyone involved should be ashamed.
It's fascinating and revealing who Alito et al get in bed with, specifically, the far right Evangelicals, not historically fans of the Whore of Babylon. And, what it shows is that this is not about Christian faith (alert, I'm not a Christian) but about shared hatred. Immigration is one of the best examples. Really, if you wanted to make the US a more Christian country, you would do everything you could to encourage migration from Latin America where the migrants are predominantly Catholic or Evangelical. But, of course, welcoming the stranger is not encouraged if the stranger is not White or help meant you had to only buy a 55" TV instead of a 60".
The hypocrisy is off the charts, along with the cognitive dissonance. Christians are instructed by Jesus to help those less fortunate, house the poor, take care of the sick, etc. Our Christian right prioritizes none of those things.
"if there’s anyone who doesn’t deserve the courtesy of privacy, it’s the smug misogynist who authored the Dobbs decision." Amen! And it's time the non-MAGA journalists and politicians started fighting fire with fire.
Alito was less dishonest in his confirmation hearing than the others, but they also mostly prevaricated, if not outright lied, about Roe in their hearings. It's fair game to treat them the same way.
« With or without religion, good people can behave well, and bad people can do evil; but for good people to do evil - that takes religion. ». Steven Weinberg
From Texas local news article: “On May 8, Gov. Greg Abbott directed Texas’ public universities and community colleges to ignore new Title IX regulations that expand protections for LGBTQ+ students. The Republican governor gave similar direction to the Texas Education Agency, which oversees public K-12 schools, on April 29.”
“President Biden wants to force every school across the country to treat boys and men as if they were girls and women, and to accept every student’s self-declared gender identity, exceeding his authority as President in order to impose a leftist belief on the next generation,” Abbott wrote.
Abbott dabbles in both radical religion and rather ignorant oil billionaires to get the direction of his narrow policies. His Supreme Court is hand-picked to make those policies bullet-proof.
It's not a traditional moral order, what Alito, Barr and their fellow travelers want is 16th century Spain with a dim, but absolute, monarch and the Catholic CHurch fully in charge. Fully in charge of the moral and religious life of the people, enforced by the Inquisition. A time marked by torture, fear of being denounced by a relative or neighbor, conquest of brown and black people, and a time in which the nobility lived above the fray, exempt from moral rules of the Inquisition, holding all of the wealth of the nation while the peasants lived, worked and died in the fields at a bare subsistence level. That's the vision, they are now so confident that they will prevail that they no longer even try to hide it.
I just read "Maggie: A Girl of the Streets," Thomas Crane's first novella. Her parents were married. And they were also horrible drunks and abusive af. And that was a book noted for its realism and accurate portrayal of life.
My point is that a return to a less "godless" era doesn't make people any happier, or less damaged, or any of it. The way to help people is to, you know, help people, which is what they never want the government to do.
When politics and religion are joined at the hip both are corrupted. That was the MO that Reagan and the gop used with the Moral Majority in order to win elections. Naysayers will claim that Rev. Martin Luther King did just that but that's a false claim. There was no "Federalist/Heritage Society" and its ilk supporting King and the overthrow of our gov.
Now after the fact, the gop is trying to sell the snake oil that their gambit is under attack by godless secularists. Nothing could be further from the truth. They reap what they've sown by cynically using religion for ill gotten gains.
A just and benevolent God would not support Trump, Abbott, DeSantis, Tate Reeves, MTG, and so on. The reason I know this is because I've read the Bible and used to go to church every Sunday when I was a kid.
The hypocracy is crazy. The Right-eous with Orange Satan at the helm. His promise to stop taxing tips seems like a new low, like working overtime to come up with any lie at all that might persuade some poor, unwary victim to part with a vote. No need for anyone now to wonder how Hitler could've brainwashed so many people. PS I'm seeing Tweets recommending Maddow's book warning about Trump. I vote we all head over there to suggest a volume by Olear.
There is that new Hitler/Nazis documentary on Netflix, and we have now reached the point in our nation's slide into authoritarianism where Netflix felt compelled to promote a Hitler doc. Yikes.
Having grown up in an Evangelical household where almost all people were doomed unbelievers, and we sang “Onward Christian Soldiers” in church, I can almost understand this mentality. But not really. Although my spiritual wounds took decades to heal, they didn’t really harm anyone outside the family. They were about having to die to get our reward (yuck!), but they certainly weren’t about having worldly power over people’s lives. Religious fervor in the hands of the powerful is terrifying!
The thing is, I don't doubt that they really believe this stuff. I don't doubt their faith. But their faith requires them to be tyrants over our lives, and that cannot be. In my limited engagement with Evangelicals when I was in high school, they were always kind and generous, and the most they wanted to do was share what they thought was an important gift with me. Nothing wrong with that at all. "I feel sad that my friend hasn't seen the light" is very different from "my friend refuses to see the light so we must force his eyes open" are very different things.
"The Lord did not people the earth with a vibrant orchestra of personalities only to value the piccolos of the world. Every instrument is precious and adds to the complex beauty of the symphony. All of Heavenly Father’s children are different in some degree, yet each has his own beautiful sound that adds depth and richness to the whole." (Wirthlin, Joseph B. (2008, April 2).
Twenty years ago, if asked, I would have said that the religion-caused downfall of America was coming from the "born again" Evangelicals. Those people whose very lives were dependent on their religious beliefs, going to church at least twice a week for hours on end; singing and screeching about Jesus Christ, their "personal" Savior; women only wearing sackcloth-like clothing that went to their ankles; and seldom getting their hair styled in any way that might have seemed to be self-gratifying. So, imagine this lapsed Catholic's shock that all of this evil was coming from INSIDE THE HOUSE!
I see Barr's Notre Dame speech as nothing but projection, and the attempt to pull focus from the evil they're doing, to the supposed "evil" secularists are engaged in. I have lived MOST of my 66 years in a society that's been just fine. I mostly keep to myself and engage with people that interest me -- I think that's called, "making friends." There are crazy people all around -- always have been -- but I've NEVER insisted that they think or act like I do. I've never tried to IMPOSE my will on them because I didn't like how they thought or spoke. That's what these people are doing, and they talk about it non-stop. They TELL US their plans CONSTANTLY and we ignore them at our peril. They are constantly trying to "convert" people to their sick way of life. Whatever happened to "live and let live?" That is no longer an option, apparently. Now, it's only, "my way or the highway."
And on the other hand, I also understand (somewhat) their frustration with the most radical nutbars on the Left. Although I think it's an exaggerated complaint, there are those on the Left that should shut the hell up because they're not helping the situation. By extension, there are also those on the Right who should do the same thing.
But, in the end, I think that most people are NOT where these two groups think they are. Project 2025 will also be a grave injustice and imposition to conservatives, as well as liberals. I expect that if the Beast cheats his way into office again and Project 2025 is put into effect, the center-right and the center-left MAY join forces to fight it. Maybe. I don't really KNOW because the radical Right likes to lump everyone into their big, radical, tent, and make them ALL seem like weirdos. There needs to be more people in power speaking out against "their own" sides, about the dangers of the fringes of the Right and the Left, while they're still fringes.
Beautifully put, Steve. Another way of saying it is, pragmatism and tolerance are always preferable to inflexible ideology. I don't like ideologues on either side.
In church, they used to talk about these early Christians who refused to renounce Jesus, even when doing so would have saved them and their families. I always thought that was dumb. I mean, what's the point of that level of rigidity? Who benefits? Not the person being tortured, not his family, not the larger movement, and not even the priests attempting to get content out of it 1800 years later. The key to people getting along is compromise.
On the other hand, there are lines we cannot cross. I don't advise compromising with Nazis, for example. Putin cannot be negotiated with. But for the overwhelming majority of people, letting them do their thing without judgment is the path to happiness for [almost] all.
The problem is best stated in the opening Alito line, "I think you’re probably right. On one side or the other—one side or the other is going to win.".
Much of life is not a contest with winners and losers. much of life is about coexisting peacefully, having respect for each other. Your gay, I'm "straight" (whatever that means), big deal! You like guns, I don't, have your guns, just be sure to responsibly own and use them. Hey Sammy, was Dobbs a contest such that you could pick a winner? Did your deliberation start with picking a winner then twisting language from the Constitution to justify your "verdict". Is every thing that crosses the SCOTUS bench about picking a winner? Is the immunity decision about intelligent legal interpretation or deciding if dipshit wins or loses? Judges and juries don't pick winners and losers, they follow the law and do the right thing.
Damn, I must be the most naive asshole on the planet?
I see an incredible amount of arrogance and self-importance by those six members of the Leo court. Personally, I think they are a different set from any court before and are reinforcing each other to push their manifesto and that of Leo and his allies. That is dangerous by definition.
Good point, Old Man. Even before this, it seemed clear to me that Alito especially determined what he wanted the outcome to be, and then worked backward and cherry-picked statutes to back his opinion. Balls and strikes, my ass.
It will be REAL interesting seeing these theocratic clowns try to put the toothpaste back in the tube on social issues. I predict there will be tipping point of outrage, especially with anti-abortion insanity, that will overwhelm whatever they try to attempt.
Just like a ‘terminator’, they will not stop 🥺
Yes, except the Terminator wanted Sarah Connor NOT to have babies.
Thank you, Greg. I hope that when we win in the autumn (god please!) that we massively increase the IRS and DOJ budgets, and prosecute every politician and bigwig and super-rich donor, especially The Heritage Foundation and the Federalist Society etc etc. The super-rich and their toads the GOP will destroy America. They feel this is their LAST SHOT.
#MAGA LOVES that Trump is a bully and gets away with it.
MAGA knows that #Trump is their ONLY CHANCE for bullies to take over the country.
They are NEVER going to give up that chance.
They will happily destroy anyone who gets in their way.
And those evil types will happily burn our country to the ground so they might rule over the ashes. America is facing an existential struggle against darkness
This is also a very strange darkness. Live and let live is not in their lexicon. Catholics are only 18-20% of the US population. Up until recently, the number of Catholics on SCOTUS have been few. Maybe that's why. Of course, the Catholic aggression can backfire as well. Opus Dei is an aggressive, fascist arm of the Church, a relic from Franco Spain; why was it unleashed here?
The purpose seems to be to destroy the USA
Unfortunately, I agree. They seem to be one of the elements attacking democracy...Leo represents a whole cabal allied with the Koch Empire, which has always leaned toward Russia and paleoconfederate outlook of the southern states - they just like that dictatorial model that fits their goals. Ally that with foreign (Russian) disinformation campaigns and you have a lethal attack in our everyday world of working and living. They are the disharmony.
My sense has always been that they really are true believers, that their faith is this stuff is sincere. The only way to bring about their ambitious religious goals is to have a dictatorship, because none of that crap flies in a democracy.
Growing up in the 60's, my Catholic parents were so upset at the prejudice against their faith and their candidate, JFK. Why, Catholics would never do all those bad things...
Gorsuch is nominally Episcopalian but is one of the Leo crew. If you count him, there are seven Catholics on the Court, because Sotomayor is, too. And so is Biden, of course. It's the radical Catholic EXTREMISTS who are the problem.
Maybe those ashes are what they mean when they talk up the coal industry?
Yeah I'm thinking that Sauron was probably a big fossil fuels guy, and look how Mordor turned out
Hear hear! Every dollar invested in the IRS yields something like $6 in revenue. No brainer, really.
The Hunter Biden thing is another bully move. They are delighting in it, and it's abhorrent. Purely political, intended solely to hurt Joe personally. Everyone involved should be ashamed.
It's fascinating and revealing who Alito et al get in bed with, specifically, the far right Evangelicals, not historically fans of the Whore of Babylon. And, what it shows is that this is not about Christian faith (alert, I'm not a Christian) but about shared hatred. Immigration is one of the best examples. Really, if you wanted to make the US a more Christian country, you would do everything you could to encourage migration from Latin America where the migrants are predominantly Catholic or Evangelical. But, of course, welcoming the stranger is not encouraged if the stranger is not White or help meant you had to only buy a 55" TV instead of a 60".
The hypocrisy is off the charts, along with the cognitive dissonance. Christians are instructed by Jesus to help those less fortunate, house the poor, take care of the sick, etc. Our Christian right prioritizes none of those things.
"if there’s anyone who doesn’t deserve the courtesy of privacy, it’s the smug misogynist who authored the Dobbs decision." Amen! And it's time the non-MAGA journalists and politicians started fighting fire with fire.
Alito was less dishonest in his confirmation hearing than the others, but they also mostly prevaricated, if not outright lied, about Roe in their hearings. It's fair game to treat them the same way.
« With or without religion, good people can behave well, and bad people can do evil; but for good people to do evil - that takes religion. ». Steven Weinberg
Oh, wow, great quote!
From Texas local news article: “On May 8, Gov. Greg Abbott directed Texas’ public universities and community colleges to ignore new Title IX regulations that expand protections for LGBTQ+ students. The Republican governor gave similar direction to the Texas Education Agency, which oversees public K-12 schools, on April 29.”
“President Biden wants to force every school across the country to treat boys and men as if they were girls and women, and to accept every student’s self-declared gender identity, exceeding his authority as President in order to impose a leftist belief on the next generation,” Abbott wrote.
He’s another tool!
Abbott dabbles in both radical religion and rather ignorant oil billionaires to get the direction of his narrow policies. His Supreme Court is hand-picked to make those policies bullet-proof.
A lot of these GOP politicians, I think they are either stupid or just pandering. But Abbott is a sadist. He's pure evil.
Nullification didn't work out so well last time a Southern state attempted it.
Abbott is pure evil.
It's not a traditional moral order, what Alito, Barr and their fellow travelers want is 16th century Spain with a dim, but absolute, monarch and the Catholic CHurch fully in charge. Fully in charge of the moral and religious life of the people, enforced by the Inquisition. A time marked by torture, fear of being denounced by a relative or neighbor, conquest of brown and black people, and a time in which the nobility lived above the fray, exempt from moral rules of the Inquisition, holding all of the wealth of the nation while the peasants lived, worked and died in the fields at a bare subsistence level. That's the vision, they are now so confident that they will prevail that they no longer even try to hide it.
So glad you’ve said this. As I refresher for what Alito and his ilk have in mind, I offer this reminder. History is a terrible thing to waste.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_Inquisition?wprov=sfti1
"around 150,000 people were prosecuted for various offences during the three-century duration of the Spanish Inquisition..."
Three-centuries?! We must nip this hoax in the bud.
Yes. That's exactly what came to mind when I read these quotes!
Absolutely. They are the new Torquemadas.
This movement is about an obsession with total control. No compromise, take no prisoners, one "faith" "religion".
These assholes don't understand that no one can ever have total control over anything, ever.
Notice how they project their sickness onto "others".
Well put, Rick.
I just read "Maggie: A Girl of the Streets," Thomas Crane's first novella. Her parents were married. And they were also horrible drunks and abusive af. And that was a book noted for its realism and accurate portrayal of life.
My point is that a return to a less "godless" era doesn't make people any happier, or less damaged, or any of it. The way to help people is to, you know, help people, which is what they never want the government to do.
When politics and religion are joined at the hip both are corrupted. That was the MO that Reagan and the gop used with the Moral Majority in order to win elections. Naysayers will claim that Rev. Martin Luther King did just that but that's a false claim. There was no "Federalist/Heritage Society" and its ilk supporting King and the overthrow of our gov.
Now after the fact, the gop is trying to sell the snake oil that their gambit is under attack by godless secularists. Nothing could be further from the truth. They reap what they've sown by cynically using religion for ill gotten gains.
A just and benevolent God would not support Trump, Abbott, DeSantis, Tate Reeves, MTG, and so on. The reason I know this is because I've read the Bible and used to go to church every Sunday when I was a kid.
The hypocracy is crazy. The Right-eous with Orange Satan at the helm. His promise to stop taxing tips seems like a new low, like working overtime to come up with any lie at all that might persuade some poor, unwary victim to part with a vote. No need for anyone now to wonder how Hitler could've brainwashed so many people. PS I'm seeing Tweets recommending Maddow's book warning about Trump. I vote we all head over there to suggest a volume by Olear.
Thanks, Maureen. I appreciate the boost!
There is that new Hitler/Nazis documentary on Netflix, and we have now reached the point in our nation's slide into authoritarianism where Netflix felt compelled to promote a Hitler doc. Yikes.
Having grown up in an Evangelical household where almost all people were doomed unbelievers, and we sang “Onward Christian Soldiers” in church, I can almost understand this mentality. But not really. Although my spiritual wounds took decades to heal, they didn’t really harm anyone outside the family. They were about having to die to get our reward (yuck!), but they certainly weren’t about having worldly power over people’s lives. Religious fervor in the hands of the powerful is terrifying!
'Onward Christian Soldiers' is a military march. It always seemed to odd to sing in church.
The thing is, I don't doubt that they really believe this stuff. I don't doubt their faith. But their faith requires them to be tyrants over our lives, and that cannot be. In my limited engagement with Evangelicals when I was in high school, they were always kind and generous, and the most they wanted to do was share what they thought was an important gift with me. Nothing wrong with that at all. "I feel sad that my friend hasn't seen the light" is very different from "my friend refuses to see the light so we must force his eyes open" are very different things.
Exactly.
In defense of DEI:
"The Lord did not people the earth with a vibrant orchestra of personalities only to value the piccolos of the world. Every instrument is precious and adds to the complex beauty of the symphony. All of Heavenly Father’s children are different in some degree, yet each has his own beautiful sound that adds depth and richness to the whole." (Wirthlin, Joseph B. (2008, April 2).
That's a wonderful quote, Lynell. Thanks for sharing.
I am all for maybe not amplifying the kazoos these weirdos are playing... ; )
Thanks, Lynell!
Twenty years ago, if asked, I would have said that the religion-caused downfall of America was coming from the "born again" Evangelicals. Those people whose very lives were dependent on their religious beliefs, going to church at least twice a week for hours on end; singing and screeching about Jesus Christ, their "personal" Savior; women only wearing sackcloth-like clothing that went to their ankles; and seldom getting their hair styled in any way that might have seemed to be self-gratifying. So, imagine this lapsed Catholic's shock that all of this evil was coming from INSIDE THE HOUSE!
I see Barr's Notre Dame speech as nothing but projection, and the attempt to pull focus from the evil they're doing, to the supposed "evil" secularists are engaged in. I have lived MOST of my 66 years in a society that's been just fine. I mostly keep to myself and engage with people that interest me -- I think that's called, "making friends." There are crazy people all around -- always have been -- but I've NEVER insisted that they think or act like I do. I've never tried to IMPOSE my will on them because I didn't like how they thought or spoke. That's what these people are doing, and they talk about it non-stop. They TELL US their plans CONSTANTLY and we ignore them at our peril. They are constantly trying to "convert" people to their sick way of life. Whatever happened to "live and let live?" That is no longer an option, apparently. Now, it's only, "my way or the highway."
And on the other hand, I also understand (somewhat) their frustration with the most radical nutbars on the Left. Although I think it's an exaggerated complaint, there are those on the Left that should shut the hell up because they're not helping the situation. By extension, there are also those on the Right who should do the same thing.
But, in the end, I think that most people are NOT where these two groups think they are. Project 2025 will also be a grave injustice and imposition to conservatives, as well as liberals. I expect that if the Beast cheats his way into office again and Project 2025 is put into effect, the center-right and the center-left MAY join forces to fight it. Maybe. I don't really KNOW because the radical Right likes to lump everyone into their big, radical, tent, and make them ALL seem like weirdos. There needs to be more people in power speaking out against "their own" sides, about the dangers of the fringes of the Right and the Left, while they're still fringes.
Beautifully put, Steve. Another way of saying it is, pragmatism and tolerance are always preferable to inflexible ideology. I don't like ideologues on either side.
In church, they used to talk about these early Christians who refused to renounce Jesus, even when doing so would have saved them and their families. I always thought that was dumb. I mean, what's the point of that level of rigidity? Who benefits? Not the person being tortured, not his family, not the larger movement, and not even the priests attempting to get content out of it 1800 years later. The key to people getting along is compromise.
On the other hand, there are lines we cannot cross. I don't advise compromising with Nazis, for example. Putin cannot be negotiated with. But for the overwhelming majority of people, letting them do their thing without judgment is the path to happiness for [almost] all.
Excellent piece Greg. Thank you!
Thanks, John!
The problem is best stated in the opening Alito line, "I think you’re probably right. On one side or the other—one side or the other is going to win.".
Much of life is not a contest with winners and losers. much of life is about coexisting peacefully, having respect for each other. Your gay, I'm "straight" (whatever that means), big deal! You like guns, I don't, have your guns, just be sure to responsibly own and use them. Hey Sammy, was Dobbs a contest such that you could pick a winner? Did your deliberation start with picking a winner then twisting language from the Constitution to justify your "verdict". Is every thing that crosses the SCOTUS bench about picking a winner? Is the immunity decision about intelligent legal interpretation or deciding if dipshit wins or loses? Judges and juries don't pick winners and losers, they follow the law and do the right thing.
Damn, I must be the most naive asshole on the planet?
I see an incredible amount of arrogance and self-importance by those six members of the Leo court. Personally, I think they are a different set from any court before and are reinforcing each other to push their manifesto and that of Leo and his allies. That is dangerous by definition.
Alito is smugness personified.
Good point, Old Man. Even before this, it seemed clear to me that Alito especially determined what he wanted the outcome to be, and then worked backward and cherry-picked statutes to back his opinion. Balls and strikes, my ass.
It will be REAL interesting seeing these theocratic clowns try to put the toothpaste back in the tube on social issues. I predict there will be tipping point of outrage, especially with anti-abortion insanity, that will overwhelm whatever they try to attempt.
I agree, Thornton. I think Dobbs will be a motivator in November that the GOP has not accounted for.