Tag Archives: Sam Alito

Fearfully Fearless Predictions for 2024

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Voici les prédictions 2023 apocalyptiques de la célèbre "Nostradamus des Balkans"

Having reached the point where I can say conclusively that I’ve been around for a while, I’m here today to say that I do not recall anytime in my many years that so many people I know or read have expressed so much apprehension for the coming of a new year.

Everyone is expecting the worst.

It comes up in conversation — ok, mostly with my lefty, Trump-despising cronies — but also in blogs, in comments, in asides from strangers. With “Jesus, this one going to be sick … “, being — in para-phrased form — a common refrain. Maybe you do, but I don’t remember this as the calendar turned from say, 2013 to 2014. Or even 1967 to ’68, and ’68 was a seriously bad year anyway anyone looks at it.

For a while I was thinking of doing a semi-facetious list of the ways 2024 is really going to jump the rails of common sense, decency, legality, etc. This list would have included predictions like:

1: Thanks to a ruling of the Supreme Court, with Clarence Thomas refusing to recuse, Donald Trump will be declared the winner of the 2024 election despite again losing the popular vote by millions. Legal battles in Ohio, Michigan and Arizona will result in the Court certifying contested Electoral College electors mere days before the inauguration.

2: Violent protests will erupt across the country and in D.C. as a result, suspending the inauguration and forcing Trump to take the oath indoors under heavy security.

3: An “October surprise” — a startlingly realistic AI-generated deep fake — will so badly damage Joe Biden, much as the Comey letter eroded Hillary Clinton’s support days before the election in 2016, that it will shave tens of thousands of votes in key states, putting a Court decision about the Electoral College in complete control of asserting the winner.

And so on …

But, good lord! What a bummer, right? Who wants to think about this stuff, even if — guessing here — millions already are?

While I continue to doubt both Biden and Trump will make the 2024 ballot, neither has any serious impediment — other than age — in this first week of the new year. I can not imagine the Supreme Court, its dogmatic allegiance to “originalism” withstanding, will do anything to complicate Trump’s myriad legal fights. It certainly won’t uphold Colorado’s 14th amendment decision, no doubt resting its decision on an argument Sam Alito intuits from a Spanish Inquisition case from 1503.

Likewise, in my morose stupor of the moment, I predict the same Court will strategize a way to avoid making any definitive decision on Jack Smith’s request for a ruling on Trump’s total immunity from prosecution on anything; parking tickets, exploiting illegal immigrant labor, stiffing contractors, raping women in department store dressing rooms, inciting a riot to overthrow the government, you name it. The Alito-Thomas bloc will devise a plan effectively exonerating Trump, certainly until after he’s reelected, at which point he can (and will) pardon himself.

I had a couple dozen more like this penciled in for added emphasis, but, damn man! It’s just too dystopian, even for me, a guy who can’t wait for the “Mad Max: Fury Road” sequel.

One thing that constantly rattles through my alleged brain though is how much of the over-arching chaos of this moment, and the looming chaos of 2024 (and beyond), rests at the feet of two people: Trump and Vladimir Putin, two guys who are not exactly unfamiliar or uninvested in each other.

Putin is obviously the key element in the war in Ukraine, and the powerful suspicion is that he is also a primary figure behind Iran’s support of Hamas and Hezbollah, on the grounds that any and all chaos that absorbs and consumes western democracies serves his long term interests.

It seems smart to bet that Putin’s long-standing support for Trump — via internet troll farms and social media disinformation — will, as I suggest with that “October surprise” business — only accelerate and become much more sophisticated this year, since a Trump defeat could likely seal Putin’s fate as well among the Russian elites.

Anyway, I promise I’m scouring the web for more uplifting topics to rant on about in the months to come. Maybe even something about Taylor Swift! Please stay tuned.

As Sordid an Example of “Legislating from the Bench” as We’ll Ever See.

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How the Federalist Society came to dominate the Supreme Court – Harvard Gazette

Not that there was really any question, you understand. But with this “leak” of the Supreme Court’s imminent abortion ruling we can pretty well dismiss the notion that there is ever a “settled” argument in this great, grand democratic experiment of ours. Given sufficient connivery, bad faith and partisan fervor, nothing is ever truly decided and settled.

Court watchers and other sage heads — like Slate’s Dahlia Lithwick — are at the moment undecided about why and who leaked Sam Alito’s 98-page screed/draft of the court’s upcoming opinion. Was it someone trying to gin up enough public outrage to … do something about it? On a court where there’s a locked-in-stone five votes to decide in favor of anything the Federalist Society/evangelical right has on their to-do list?

Or was the leak from someone sympathetic to overturning Roe? An arch-partisan wet dream that has never polled higher than 30% with Americans since 1973? The thinking being that given Americans’ inability to focus on anything longer than two weeks would mean the howling and protesting — from the majority of citizens — will be exhausted by June when the formal decision is expected to be handed down?

Predictably, FoxNews world is already declaring that the “real scandal” here is … the leak … not Alito’s thinking.

Whatever, there’s little doubt that overturning a “settled law” that has maintained 70% support for 50 years will be the signature decision of John Roberts’ court. This vote will be his legacy. And as I’ve followed the news since last night, Roberts has neither said or signalled anything about how he will vote or whether he’s trying to work the team to modulate the greatest example of “legislating from the bench” in modern American history.

The Roberts angle of this is interesting because from everything I know about the guy he is the classic between-the-forty-yard-lines institutional conservative … getting trampled like so many others of his fading ilk by hyper-partisans with a truly hypocritical regard for constitutional integrity. Like so many old-school, country club Republicans, he’s watching the cumulative effect of so many of his status quo/progressive-resistant decisions coming back to wreak havoc on the dignity of the institutions they claim to so revere.

The abortion argument is so treadworn there’s nothing fresh to be said about it. My personal attitude — shared by many in polling over the decades — is that while I could never consent to it in my relationships, and certainly not as “casual” birth control, the idea that The Government has any standing to dictate to a woman what she can and cannot do — even in the case of rape or her health for chrissakes — is about as anti-democratic, anti-libertarian and anti-American experiment as it gets.

What makes the pro-life argument even worse — which is to say even more hypocritical — is that poll after poll and study after study shows that Godly-divined, Christ-sanctioned anti-abortion partisans are nearly as rabidly opposed to social welfare spending — for people like single-mothers — as they are to choice. For them, support for life stops at birth.

Here’s George Carlin’s classic “pro life” rant.

Amy Klobuchar popped up on Rachel Maddow’s show last night making brave sounds about how this means liberals and everyone else in favor of Roe as it stands has to, you know, band together and gird for the fight to change Congress before this authoritarian stampede gets any worse.

To which I say, “Well, good luck with that.” As someone pointed out on Twitter this morning, over two million people have signed a petition to cut Johnny Depp’s ex-wife out of the next “Aquaman” movie because she was so so crazy mean to Johnny.

By contrast, the outrageously sordid tale of Clarence Thomas’s wife cavorting with abject nutjobs and insurrectionists — with his full knowledge — trying to subvert the Constitution by overthrowing an election has faded from public interest with no apparent legal consequences.