Sometimes you read a story that causes you to shake your head and say “These fuckers…”
The current situation in Wisconsin is one such story. It makes me wish I knew how to meditate. I just took my blood pressure and the machine just said “Yikes.”
These FUCKERS.
Here’s the situation: Earlier this year Wisconsin voters overwhelmingly voted for Janet Protasiewicz, the Democratic candidate, to sit on the State Supreme Court. She absolutely crushed her opponent; we’re talking Green Bay Packers playing Western Kalamazoo State.
That flipped the Wisconsin Supreme Court from 4-3 Republicans to 4-3 Democrats.
If you know anything about Wisconsin politics, you know it is ridiculously gerrymandered; Vox has called it “America’s Worst Gerrymander.” Because of the rigged districts, Democrats have a better chance at winning the Powerball and paying off a few Republican legislators than they do of taking a majority in a free and fair election.
This was already enough to turn your blood into lava. Here is a paragraph from Jamelle Bouie in the New York Times that will make you say ‘These fuckers’:
In 2018, this gerrymander proved strong enough to allow Wisconsin Republicans to win a supermajority of seats in the Assembly despite losing the vote for every statewide office and the statewide legislative vote by 8 percentage points, 54 to 46. No matter how much Wisconsin voters might want to elect a Democratic Legislature, the Republican gerrymander won’t allow them to.
These fuckers.
Because of this veto-proof supermajority, the Democratic governor is mostly useless. The Republican legislature is in total control of the state, despite losing the popular vote. After Roe v. Wade was overturned, the legislature was able to override a governor’s veto and ban abortion with no exceptions for rape and incest. They did this based on a law from 1849.
EIGHTEEN FOURTY NINE. They wrote this law before cheese was invented, and now it’s back on the books in Wisconsin.
These FUCKERS. Right??
This year’s State Supreme Court election was a chance for change. The Democratic candidate, Janet Protasiewicz (hereafter “Janet”), promised to get rid of the abortion ban and undo the idiotic state lines. The Republican candidate ran on the opposite.
Janet creamed him. It might as well have been an election between Can of Beer and a Glass of Diarrhea.
I thought this was the end of the story and I would not have to pay attention to Wisconsin again until, I don’t know, they invented a delicious new kind of provolone.
And yet somehow, the Fuckery has increased post-election. Judge Janet won by double digits in a high-turnout election. She won in several majority-Republican districts. Wisconsites wanted her on the Supreme Court.
And so what are the bald-headed man-babies in the Wisconsin Legislature doing? Get ready to positively shriek “THESE FUCKERS”:
Republicans in Wisconsin are coalescing around the prospect of impeaching a newly seated liberal justice on the state’s Supreme Court, whose victory in a costly, high-stakes election this spring swung the court in Democrats’ favor and threatened the G.O.P.’s iron grip on state politics.
The push, just five weeks after Justice Janet Protasiewicz joined the court and before she has heard a single case, serves as a last-ditch effort to stop the new 4-to-3 liberal majority from throwing out Republican-drawn state legislative maps and legalizing abortion in Wisconsin.
Yes! Impeachment! Before she’s even heard a case! THESE FUCKERS!
“But wait,” you might be thinking. “Perhaps Justice Janet did something to deserve impeachment, like committing murder or rooting for the Bears?”
No. Justice Janet’s crime only crime was being honest with voters:
[During the campaign] Protasiewicz made no secret of her views. If elected, she said, she would defend abortion rights and give a new look at the state’s legislative maps, which she criticized as “rigged” and “unfair.”
Former Gov. Scott Walker, who remains popular among Wisconsin Republicans, said the Assembly was “obligated” to impeach Justice Protasiewicz if she tried to rule on the maps.
Robin Vos, the powerful Assembly speaker, has twice in recent weeks raised the possibility of impeachment… Senator Ron Johnson…said legislators should impeach Justice Protasiewicz before she could hear a case on the maps.
“She obviously should recuse herself from any redistricting case, and if she doesn’t, the Legislature has the ability” to impeach her, he said in a text message. “I hope they would.”
These cretins. These encrusted cumstains on the mattress of democracy. These FUCKERS!!!
The problem is she told you what her legal views were? Is that not what we want from judges? Are we just going to pretend that our judicial system is impartial and nonpolitical, and that Leonard Leo doesn’t exist?
This is especially egregious, to me, having watched Sam Alito and Neil Gorsuch get confirmed while pretending they aren’t right-wing nutjobs who would sooner chop their nards off than vote Democratic for dogcatcher.
Like: For the past two decades we’ve watched Republican Supreme Court nominees pretend that they hadn’t known since Yale undergrad that they would overturn Roe v. Wade.
“Gee, is the right to an abortion enshrined in law?” they would shrug at their confirmation hearings. “Gosh, I haven’t thought about that. Huh. What a novel question. You know, I don’t have an opinion on that, Senator. Thank you for such a thought-provoking hypothetical.”
Justice Janet did not hide her contempt for Wisconsin’s unpopular, regressive, anti-democratic laws. Brett Kavanaugh screamed “I LIKE BEER”; Janet screamed “RAPE VICTIMS SHOULD BE ABLE TO GET ABORTIONS.” One of them is apparently unfit to sit on a Supreme Court.
Now, you might be thinking, “Perhaps the good gentlemen of Wisconsin just have a steadfast aversion to judges who express their political views, regardless of politics.”
In which case surely they would be calling for recusal, with threat of impeachment, for a Republican judge who had similarly engaged in overt political speech.
Well, buckle up. Because here is a judge on the Wisconsin State Supreme Court who THESE FUCKERS haven’t said WORD ONE about:
In years past, conservative justices have argued that personal views they had previously stated did not mean they were required to recuse themselves from relevant cases.
For example, Justice Brian Hagedorn once compared homosexuality to bestiality, called Planned Parenthood “a wicked organization” and wrote that “Christianity is the correct religion, and that insofar as others contradict it, they are wrong.” He has said those statements would not warrant his recusal on cases about abortion, gay rights or religion.
I am stomping around my living room shouting “THESE FUCKERS” at the walls. My dog thinks her name is “FUCKER” now. My upstairs neighbor must think I’m doing battle against a family of raccoons.
And it’s all because of these fuckers in Wisconsin, who cannot win elections and enact their unpopular laws without putting their hemorrhoid-infested asses on the scale.
I’ve written a lot about the shitty policies of Ron DeSantis, but at least that smarmy toadstool won a mandate from his state’s citizens. Florida might be drowning, boiling, backwards, and repressed, but you can’t say it’s not what a majority of Floridians voted for.
Wisconsin, on the other hand, is being lorded over by a group of guys who lost the Super Bowl, so they beat up the refs and stole their whistles.
If there is a silver lining here, it is that impeachment is not yet a sure thing. Someone might see Jesus in a plate of cheese curds and decide to respect the will of the voters.
And as the New York Times hopefully notes, if Wisconsin Republicans do impeach, it would trigger an election in 2024, which would surely fire up the state’s Liberal voters in a presidential year.
Of course, that presupposes that Wisconsin Republicans will allow elections going forward.
These rat-fanged bastards have already shown that they do not respect the will of Wisconsites when they vote for the other side. So why waste all that money on ballots?
These fuckers. These absolute FUCKERS. These FUCKERS!!!!