21 thoughts on “Memorial Day Weekend Open Thread”

1. Johnston's campaign haul for the Mayor's race now nearing $6 mill, with about $4 mill from the PAC Advancing Denver. Top 3 contributors to the PAC: Reid Hoffman of LinkedIn about $1.3 mill, Michael Bloomberg $500K, Kent Thiry $450K.

   https://twitter.com/CPRMarkus/status/1661779929112137730

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   1. I don't have a horse in the race since I live in Jeffco but thought that had I still lived in Denver, I would probably vote for Brough.

      But seeing that Mike Bloomberg saw fit to spend $500,000 on Johnston puts Johnston into a whole different and better light.

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2. "Pride Month Is A Cynical Exercise In State-Enforced Homosexuality". Federalist Society:

   Conservatism circles the drain of the culture wars. Apparently Obamacare will require us to have sex with someone of the same gender sometime in June.

   More seriously, David Kurtz at TPM points out how radical the Supreme Court has become, but it isn't even Conservatism any more:

   I’ve been working on paring back the conservative v. liberal construct in describing the Supreme Court. “Conservative jurisprudence,” as existed as recently as 20 years ago, arguably had an internal logic and consistency to it. It could be applied – though it wasn’t always, of course – in a consistent and even-handed way that defied particular outcomes. There was a discipline to it, at least in theory. It possessed some intellectual rigor that was worth grappling with even if you were a progressive. There is very little that remains “conservative” about the current Supreme Court majority or what we think of as the Federalist Society’s conservative legal movement. It’s right-wing radicalism that is more outcome-based than they ever accused liberals of being.

   Ultimately, however, this is no longer a legal issue to be solved in court. It’s a political issue to be fixed by winning elections. It will be a long, slow climb out of a deep, dark hole. No hand-wringing. Just do it.

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   1. Typical load of Federalist Society horseshit.  Extolling the "virtues" of "conservative jurisprudence," which is basically 19th century thinking and judges playing very bad, rank amateur historians.  Not to mention the financial and ethical corruption the Court embraces more and more. 

       

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3. Skipping Friday and just going right into the weekend, Pols? I like your style.

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4. Ian Millhiser tweets:

   One thing that I hate about covering people like Clarence Thomas or Neil Gorsuch is that if you accurately describe their beliefs, using quotations from their opinions, you still sound like an insane person.

   The most important thing to understand about Clarence Thomas is that, in addition to being corrupt, he's is completely fucking batshit insane and wants to do utterly sociopathic things to the United States of America.

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   1. Thomas & Gorsuch Declare Child Labor Laws Unconstitutional. Ian Milhiser at Vox.com

      On Thursday, the Supreme Court imposed strict new limits on the Clean Water Act. The Court’s decision in Sackett v. EPA is likely to do serious harm to the government’s ability to quell water pollution, including in major waterways such as the Mississippi River and the Chesapeake Bay.

      Meanwhile, Justice Clarence Thomas wrote a concurring opinion that would so severely limit Congress’s power to legislate that he might as well have taken several volumes of the United States Code and lit them on fire.

      To be clear, a concurring opinion is not the law — it merely reflects the views of the justices who sign onto it. And this particular opinion is unlikely to garner five votes to become law unless the Court’s membership changes drastically. But that does not change the fact that Thomas (and Gorsuch, who joined his opinion) is one of only nine justices, and their views tend to shape the ideas of lawyers and judges throughout the legal system.

      Under the approach Thomas lays out in his Sackett concurrence, the federal ban on child labor is unconstitutional. So is the minimum wage, federal laws protecting the right to unionize, bans on workplace discrimination, and nearly all other regulation of the workplace. Thomas’s approach endangers countless laws governing private business, from rules requiring health insurers to cover people with preexisting conditions to the ban on whites-only lunch counters. And even that is underselling just how much law would be snuffed out if Thomas’s approach took hold.

      Though Thomas has said similar things in the past, his opinion in Sackett is one of the most nihilistic opinions written by any federal judge in the last nine decades. This opinion is particularly notable, moreover, because it is joined by another justice, Neil Gorsuch. Gorsuch, who was appointed to the Court in 2017, had not previously revealed just how far he is willing to go in sabotaging the United States government.

      That means that there are now at least two votes on the Supreme Court for an act of judicial arson unlike any in US history.

      …

      The one important point to understand from this very technical conversation about US constitutional law is that decisions like Darby laid out the legal framework that makes it possible for the federal government to regulate private industry.

      Countless laws — including anti-discrimination laws like the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Americans with Disabilities Act, environmental laws like the Clean Air Act and Clean Water Act, and basic workplace regulations like Occupational Safety and Health Act, the minimum wage, or federal laws governing labor relations and unions — exist today because Hammer was overruled and the Supreme Court stopped placing arbitrary limits on the Commerce Clause.

      And Thomas and Gorsuch would sweep all of this away.

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   2. And the really scary part is that starting next to Ginni Thomas, Clarence is the more rational and stable one.

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5. In 911 call, Lauren Boebert’s son accuses father of “throwing” him around the house

   Boebert, who filed for divorce last month, said she has “taken action to ensure there are better days ahead for all of us.”

   https://www.denverpost.com/2023/05/26/lauren-boebert-jayson-throwing-son-911/

   and

   Lauren Boebert Bristles At Biden Plan to Tackle Anti-Semitism: ‘They Want to Go After Conservatives’
   https://www.mediaite.com/news/lauren-boebert-bristles-at-biden-plan-to-tackle-anti-semitism-they-want-to-go-after-conservatives/

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6. CNN Poll: Biden has a lead over Democratic primary challengers, but faces headwinds overall | CNN Politics

   RFK, Jr. is polling at 20%. He can probably nudge that up to 30% by rolling out his announcement that his cousin, JFK, Jr., will be his running mate.

   Where they go one, they go all.

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7. Just as I suspected . . .

   ChatGPT is a Republican

   Here’s What Happens When Your Lawyer Uses ChatGPT

   The lawsuit began like so many others: A man named Roberto Mata sued the airline Avianca, saying he was injured when a metal serving cart struck his knee during a flight to Kennedy International Airport in New York.

   When Avianca asked a Manhattan federal judge to toss out the case, Mr. Mata’s lawyers vehemently objected, submitting a 10-page brief that cited more than half a dozen relevant court decisions. There was Martinez v. Delta Air Lines, Zicherman v. Korean Air Lines and, of course, Varghese v. China Southern Airlines, with its learned discussion of federal law and “the tolling effect of the automatic stay on a statute of limitations.”

   There was just one hitch: No one — not the airline’s lawyers, not even the judge himself — could find the decisions or the quotations cited and summarized in the brief.

   That was because ChatGPT had invented everything.

   https://www.nytimes.com/2023/05/27/nyregion/avianca-airline-lawsuit-chatgpt.html

    

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8. Who knew that when they really want to, Republicans can actually grow some cojones and do the right thing …..

   Texas House of Representatives votes to impeach Attorney General Ken Paxton (msn.com)

   If only they had done this with Trump in DC.

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   1. Texas Tribune clarifies the vote

      The vote to adopt the 20 articles of impeachment was 121-23…. Impeachment was supported by 60 Republicans, including Speaker Dade Phelan and all five of the representatives from Collin County — where Paxton and his wife have lived for decades. All 23 votes in opposition came from Republicans.

      So, it is increasingly clear:

                                              REPUBLICANS ‘R’ REVOLTING                                        

      With Paxton, it is clear that the 24 Republican TX Representatives voting against impeachment and those beyond the House (Trump, Cruz, et al) supporting his continued tenure in office are the sort of Republicans who are revolting, in the sense of disgusting, sickening, or nauseating.

      With the threats of retaliation from Paxton and Trump, it is clear there are two factions who will be embattled in upcoming elections. I’m expecting some sort of conflict, or as the thesaurus suggests, one side rebelling, rising up, taking to the streets, and perhaps even taking up arms against those who formed a majority to impeach.

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9. If it pisses off the Free Dumb Carcass and if it pisses off the Squad, it can't be all that bad ….

   Biden and McCarthy Reach Debt Ceiling Deal to Avert U.S. Default – The New York Times (nytimes.com)

   IMHO, the cut to the increase in IRS funding was probably the worst part of the deal. Everyone is screaming about the debt, but they've decided to reduce funding for one thing that would actually bring in more money without raising tax rates. 

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10. Biden Holds a Royal Flush in Debt Limit Negotiations. Talking Points Memo.

    Really interesting, new take claiming that Joe Biden has had the deck stacked all along.

    From TPM Reader RC …

    You were wondering how Biden was able to get such a good deal; in the end all this drama just amounted to getting the budget-negotiation process started early, with the GOP’s main takeaway being something (spending freeze) that their control of the House already guaranteed them via the tool of passing continuing resolutions.

    Joe did a far better job than anyone imagined he could, for about the 79th time in a row.  But that said, the key thing to recognize is that Biden’s hand was much stronger than anyone I read seemed to understand.  What the media got right is, if a default destroyed the economy, that would hurt Joe/Dems in the general; even if people in some sense knew it was the GOP’s fault, they’d still mostly follow the heuristic “if things are going well, I’ll vote for the incumbent; if not, throw the bums out!”

    But consider this: what if a default _isn’t_ devastating for the economy?  And what if Joe and Kevin both know it?  Well in that case, default is fine for Biden, because he can then blame whatever economic difficulties occur between now and Election Day on the GOP-created default! 

    …

    Journalists should have been asking themselves, “what do the markets know, or think they know, that we don’t?”  Here’s a likely answer: if all else fails, the Fed can solve the default problem, and they don’t need a platinum coin to do it.  All the Fed needs to do is… buy the defaulted bonds!

    I know this seems so sinple as to be almost silly, but remember, buying bonds is something the Fed does on a regular basis; such activity is commonly referred to as “quantitative easing” or QE.  It’s just absolutely normal for the Fed to make bond purchases. 

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11. FDFQ has a touching message of hope, respect, and patriotism on Memorial Day today. 

    His statement reads as follows:

    "Happy Memorial Day to all, but especially to those who gave the ultimate sacrifice for the country they love, and to those in line of a very different, but equally dangerous fire, stopping the threats of the terrorists, misfits, and lunatic thugs who are working feverishly from within to overturn and destroy our once great country, which has never been in greater peril than it is right now. We must stop the communists, Marxists, and fascist "pigs" at every turn and make America great again!"

     

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    1. " and fascist 'pigs' "

       As he squints, through the mirror darkly.

        

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       1. …while sitting on his golden toilet! 
          

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          1. But what's with the TP roll? I thought he uses White House memos to wipe his ass.

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12. Oh, the vapors Lady G would face if locked up in a Russian jail ….

    Russia issues arrest warrant for Lindsey Graham over Ukraine comments – POLITICO

    Not so sure if I would describe the current military aid to Ukraine as "the best money we've ever spent" although I would agree that it is money well spent on a good cause. (Just because Blanche's hero speaks exclusively in superlatives doesn't mean that she has to do the same.)

    Peskov is correct in that Lindsay Graham is a great shame as a senator although not for the reasons the Kremlin thinks.

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13. Mobile home community residents are increasingly buying their own communities, or turning to nonprofits who buy them and make them into land trusts. In several communities such as Boulder and Steamboat Springs, the "Trailer Parks" are the only affordable housing for the people who make the town function : cooks, teachers, maintenance techs, hospitality staff. Sam Tabachnik's excellent Denver Post long form article details these efforts. It isn't paywalled from this link.

    This communal land ownership is possible thanks to a bill from last year's legislature: 1201. Out of state investors can still triple the rent on the land the mobile homes sit on, and Governor Polis has threatened to veto any limit on this exploitative business model. Even limited "rent control" on land under a double-wide is too much restriction for our libertarian Governor.

    Some folks here enjoy saying "trailer trash" to vilify these folks and to make themselves feel superior  to them. But I have nothing but admiration for those who are buying up the land under their communities, trying to keep a little piece of the American dream possible.

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