Charles P. Pierce: Ruth Bader Ginsburg Ran Out of F*cks to Give a Long Time Ago

[babylonsister]

http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/news/a46677/ruth-bader-ginsburg-donald-trump/

Ruth Bader Ginsburg Ran Out of F*cks to Give a Long Time Ago

And there are different sorts of sins in the Court.
By Charles P. Pierce
Jul 13, 2016


So, it appears that Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg has sent the flying monkeys aloft because, upon being asked about the possibility of a He, Trump presidency, she told the truth. CNN, via my old J-school pal Joan Biskupic, brings us all the high-level conservative pearl clutching.

It is highly unusual for a justice to make such politically charged remarks, and some critics said she crossed the line. House Speaker Paul Ryan told CNN's Jake Tapper on Tuesday night the comments were "out of place." "For someone on the Supreme Court who is going to be calling balls and strikes in the future based upon whatever the next president and Congress does, that strikes me as inherently biased and out of the realm."

But it takes the ferrets of Fox News to find the useful liberal idiots to chime in on cue.

Ginsburg's comments also left Democratic lawmakers squirming. "We all know that the justices on the Supreme Court have political views. I'm not sure we're well served by them airing them out in the open," Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., told Politico. "She may have got out over her skis a little bit and more forthright and political than she should have been. It's very unusual," Senate Minority Whip Dick Durbin, D-Ill., told the outlet. Mainstream media outlets also joined in the chorus of criticism. "However valid her comments may have been, though, and however in keeping with her known political bent, they were still much, much better left unsaid by a member of the Supreme Court," The Washington Post's editorial board said Tuesday. "Politicization, real or perceived, undermines public faith in the impartiality of the courts."

This is one of those days on which I'm glad I was raised Catholic and, therefore, was schooled in the difference between venial and mortal sin. Because anyone who thinks that RBG's honest assessment of the vulgar talking yam is on a par with A.) Antonin Scalia's hunting trips with Dick Cheney, or B.) the majority in Bush v. Gore including one justice (Scalia) whose son got a job with the administration that poppa helped install and another (Thomas) whose wife did, too, needs to seriously examine their consciences more than they did.

I will be told that I am a Bad Analyst because I am essentially arguing that multiple wrongs make a right, but I don't really care. Leave aside the historic reality that the Court always has been politicized, sometimes garishly so, but we are now at the end of a 30-year process in which a well-financed conservative infrastructure restructured the federal court system from top to bottom, seeding it with reliable judges who supported dubious interpretations of laws to which their ideological sponsors were unfriendly.

Ginsberg is not intolerant of conservatives; she and Scalia were opera buddies. But she's 83, sharp as a tack, and a survivor of pancreatic cancer, which generally gives you the same odds as stepping in front of a westbound freight. Her big bag of fcks was empty long ago. She's seen what's happened to the courts first-hand, and she is right to warn us that a Trump administration is just as likely to put the gardener at Mar-A-Lago on the bench as not. Liberals, of course, are supposed to make sure they use the right fork when they sit down to dinner with barbarians.

[mcar]

1. Pierce says it, as usual

[calimary]

2. Intoxicatingly good!

[Gabi Hayes]

3. problem is....how much are they discussing, say the lying creep

from Trump U, as opposed to RGB's comments?

I'd say.....every single discussion the've had on this.....like fifty on CNN/msnbc to.....ONE!

unless they showed the CNN interview earlier today. they made it sound like a debut when wolf was touting it. that should be VERY bad news, and very bad video for the Chinese potato

[longship]

5. Do you mean this Wolf?

[Gabi Hayes]

6. yeah. haaaaaaaa. that wolf. I should have

made it clear he was just introducing the clip of that guy lying as egregiously as Nixon, when he croaked, "I'm not a crook!"

[longship]

8. Perfect!

[malaise]

4. Freaking perfect Charlie

Let's see who joins Charlie and RBG

[L. Coyote]

9. Grayson nailed it too: "@realDonaldTrump needs to STFU"

[malaise]

10. Nice

That's the only language Don the Con understands

[Gabi Hayes]

7. again, I watched WAY WAY too much tube yesterday,

and ALL segments about this agreed, pretty much unanimously (all, IIRC) that it was very bad news, politically, regardless of her right to speak, the FACT that there are NO standards for SCOTUS behavior (very few mentioned that at all,), the fact that this scotus is the worst excuse for a carnival sideshow since before the theft of 2000. I saw at least ten discussions from yesterday to this afternoon, and the best that happened was the mention of the few obvious facts I included above.

I hope all of you are right, but I've seen this too many times before to hold much hope, starting in 68...63, really, but I didn't get it then). so should the rest of you.

tell me I should chill...any Xanax out there?

[L. Coyote]

11. Borowitz has a good handle on this one: "Ruth Bader Ginsburg should pick on some one her own IQ"

Trump goes down as the guy bullying and name calling on an octagenarian woman and Supreme Courty justice for using her 1st amendment right, that's not the image of a President no matter how much the media blabs from the front row of the Republican cheering section.

[Gabi Hayes]

13. I'd be enjoying this a lot more if they'd give more play to

the almost uncountable instances of Trump perfidy, malfeasance, fraud, mendacity, lunacy (more of that than anything).

and when are the DEMS going to start saying how crazy he is, every time they get on TV? did they LEARN NOTHING from the 20 year campaign to slander HRC. how stupide ARE they?
this has been going on since before Carter was president:

http://billmoyers.com/content/the-powell-memo-a-call-to-arms-for-corporations/

In the fall of 1972, the venerable National Association of Manufacturers (NAM) made a surprising announcement: It planned to move its main offices from New York to Washington, D.C. As its chief, Burt Raynes, observed:

We have been in New York since before the turn of the century, because
we regarded this city as the center of business and industry.
But the thing that affects business most today is government. The
interrelationship of business with business is no longer so important
as the interrelationship of business with government. In the last several
years, that has become very apparent to us.[1]

To be more precise, what had become very apparent to the business community was that it was getting its clock cleaned. Used to having broad sway, employers faced a series of surprising defeats in the 1960s and early 1970s. As we have seen, these defeats continued unabated when Richard Nixon won the White House. Despite electoral setbacks, the liberalism of the Great Society had surprising political momentum. “From 1969 to 1972,” as the political scientist David Vogel summarizes in one of the best books on the political role of business, “virtually the entire American business community experienced a series of political setbacks without parallel in the postwar period.” In particular, Washington undertook a vast expansion of its regulatory power, introducing tough and extensive restrictions and requirements on business in areas from the environment to occupational safety to consumer protection.[2]

In corporate circles, this pronounced and sustained shift was met with disbelief and then alarm. By 1971, future Supreme Court justice Lewis Powell felt compelled to assert, in a memo that was to help galvanize business circles, that the “American economic system is under broad attack.” This attack, Powell maintained, required mobilization for political combat: “Business must learn the lesson . . . that political power is necessary; that such power must be assiduously cultivated; and that when necessary, it must be used aggressively and with determination—without embarrassment and without the reluctance which has been so characteristic of American business.” Moreover, Powell stressed, the critical ingredient for success would be organization: “Strength lies in organization, in careful long-range planning and implementation, in consistency of action over an indefinite period of years, in the scale of financing available only through joint effort, and in the political power available only through united action and national organizations.

why the fffff do you think a third rate cretin like powell found his way to the SCOTUS? that was his reward for his lightbulb memo that really set wheels rolling toward corporate fascism, as it exists today.

[MH1]

12. I think Charlie ran out of f*cks to give, a long time ago too.

And I am enjoying it immensely.

[Mustellus]

14. I thought she was just giving Constitutional advice .....

.... to someone who obviously doesn't begin to comprehend the Constitution.

That's her job, by the way.

[zz-la]

15. I like it when she said she might have to move to New Zealand if trump won

And all the right wingers heads exploded. I also like it that New Zealand took her up on that offer.

[babylonsister]

17. They did? Hot stuff! And

welcome to DU!

[zz-la]

18. Thank you

I like it that she speaks her mind. I think that what so many of the right wingers hate the most is that a woman is daring to speak her mind. Too bad.

[babylonsister]

19. Exactly. Too bad. nt

[bucolic_frolic]

16. Trump and Scalia say anything they want

She baited Trump. He could have taken the high road, if he'd known about it.

Instead they're in this together.

Little old ladies deserve more respect that RBG has gotten here.

[Surya Gayatri]

20. Nobody says it like Charlie...Go RBG! Get under that orange skin all you want. Make the yam yell!

[BlueMTexpat]

21. I stand proudly with RBG!

I ran out of f***s to give about conservative pearl-clutching LONG ago. Because it always is VERY selective and hypocritical pearl-clutching. Thus, it is worthless, IMO.

[yeoman6987]

26. She apologized for the statements. She said she shouldn't have said them.

[BlueMTexpat]

30. I still stand with her for saying them

in the first place.

It's interesting how conservative justices can say ANYTHING they want even when they have direct interests involved and should have recused themselves and the M$M and RBG detractors here find little there.

But let RBG give a personal opinion about a truly nasty individual who has no case before the Court and is not involved with her directly or indirectly in any other way and that selfsame M$M and DU detractors are unload on her in ways when they never did on those others. Double standards much?

And she at least apologized. None of the others could be bothered to do even that. Not one.

[Rex]

22. Her favorite chew toy was Scalia, don't mess with RBG.

You can't see me!

[bucolic_frolic]

23. Bush v. Gore was a public display of partisanship by the Court

Scalia's was ranting for 20 years

Alito spoke "You lie!" and we were all squirming

So yes this too shall pass

[The Wizard]

24. Bada bing (nt)

[gaspee]

25. Amazing writing

I love him

[Cryptoad]

27. I look for her to retire

right after Clinton first SCOTUS appointment is confirmed!

[rladdi]

28. Come on now, you all know that the Supreme Court Justices are as non political as

Fox News. Loosen up folks

[Hekate]

29. Beautiful. Just beautiful.