A Nation of, by and for sale by the Right People
Everyone else can suck it
Link here.
Yes, it’s true. People exist still who believe LGBTQ people are abnormal and subhuman. They’ve been around through all recorded human history, and guys like Stitt think we need to hide them from the kids.
It’s what some will do just before they start criminalizing biological urges and people’s choices and consent.
Be it a standard hatefulness on the part of the governor or just garden variety idiocy from a substandard IQ doesn’t really matter. The signs of fascism are all over this schmuck.
As near as I can tell, PBS is mainstream stuff. So are gay people. And yeah, I’m preaching to the choir. And I know the game: there’s always gotta be a bogeyman that weak politicians want you to fear.
It’s just getting mighty dangerous these days, much like the 1960s. There’s always been some polarization with politics but it’s been half a century since I’ve seen the level of violence running this high. And for what? Because of who we love?
Guys like Stitt have to be voted out of office and it can be done, even in Oklahoma.
Effective messaging, eh wot?
Loneliness presents a profound public health threat akin to smoking and obesity, U.S. Surgeon General Vivek H. Murthy warned in an advisory issued Tuesday that aims to rally Americans to spend more time with each other in an increasingly divided and digital society.
Murthy said half of U.S. adults experience loneliness, which has consequences for mental and physical health, including a greater risk of depression, anxiety — and, perhaps more surprisingly, heart disease, stroke and dementia.
His advisory calls for a collective effort to “mend the social fabric of our nation,” including teaching children how to build healthy relationships; talking more to relatives, friends and co-workers; and spending less time online and on social media if it comes at the expense of in-person interactions.
Having spent a few years in the demographically oldest county in the country (Pasco County Florida where we used to joke that the average age is ‘dead’) I’ve observed this a lot among the elderly. One wife, husband, or partner dies and the person left becomes increasingly isolated. But some don’t.
The pandemic made lots more people aware of social isolation as loneliness spiraled upward. Many got more antsy and were more likely to be confrontational, etc. when the restrictions eased. Lately, I’ve been getting involved in more extracurricular activities, just to make fresh contacts that have been missing in my life long before the pandemic. I can distinguish between aloneness and loneliness again.
Loneliness can be a killer. If you’re not feeling it, consider reaching out to others who are. Rehab centers and assisted living facilities can always use an occasional visitor for elderly folks with minimal social support networks. You can be a gift, bringing laughter and affection that can renew our social contract with the world which is critical to the health of all.
MANY A PUNSTER HAS USED IT BUT NOW IT APPEARS THERE ACTUALLY IS A FELONIOUS THUNK
There is a Privileged ManBrat running amok on social media demonstrating anew that inheritance rights are not good for societies, be they Musk, Crow, Trump, or Hayden.
I wasn’t gifted amounts like these guys and I’m glad I wasn’t or I could be a whiny bitchy narcissistic know-it-all control freak misanthrope too.
Instead of being a pseudo journalist bearing bad puns.
Really, I’m not sure which is worse to inflict on the world. But at least I’m not trying to ship the little people to Mars.
The Human Condition
VERDICT IN THIS MORNING
Here’s the timeline:
September 29, 2020: Trump gives orders to Proud Boys to “stand back and stand by” in a public speech.
January 6, 2021: Proud Boys help to lead an insurrection at the Capitol. Several deaths occur on that day and after and hundreds of police are injured during the riot.
May 4, 2023: Four Proud Boys leaders convicted of seditious conspiracy.
Also May 4, 2023: Online Proud Boys supporters make bad comparisons to protests by Black Americans that didn’t involve sedition, didn’t attempt to end elective government, didn’t try to thwart the votes of the majority of American voters, didn’t try to hang the Vice President or the House Speaker and didn’t cause the deaths of any police officers.
ProPublica, the independent journalism consortium is out with a follow up on the Harlan Crow’s purchase of a Supreme Court Justice. They first broke the story a month ago about Crow’s expensive and extensive gifts to Clarence Thomas.
They reported that Harlan paid nearly $54K in tuition for Mark Martin (a grandnephew Thomas has said he raised as a son) at Hidden Lake Academy (a Georgia boarding school), and also paid more for Martin’s attendance at Randolph-Macon Academy in Virginia. Though the exact amounts paid aren’t clear, the total for for 2 years might exceed $100K.
Thomas didn’t report these on financial disclosure forms because rules and ethics don’t apply to him. Also for his wife, a famous cult follower who’s also guilty of attempted insurrection, but she won’t be prosecuted because nobody wants to piss off her husband as he could find fresh ways to steal more rights from women.
Harlan Crow defended the tuition gifts by claiming Thomas’ grandnephew was an ‘at risk youth’ and that Democrats were just picking on him for partisan reasons.
Also Justice Thomas wants you to know that none of what he’s gotten came from Equal Opportunity laws. He earned them the old fashioned way, sucking up to billionaires with judicial decisions that grant them more wealth and power.
Out of fairness, it seems our Senate should send a questionnaire to all 9 justices.
1) Since you became a SCOTUS judge, has anyone:
a) bought a home or property from you and let a relative of yours live in it rent-free?
b) paid the tuition for any of your relatives at a private school?
c) paid all your costs for expensive vacations nearly every year for two decades?
d) paid for and accompanied you to retreats restricted to one sex only?
e) provided a donation of half a million dollars to a political group headed by your spouse or partner?
h) gifted you with a $19,000 Bible?
2) Prior to becoming a SCOTUS judge, have you:
a) ever been accused of sexual assault or harassment?
b) had an FBI background check that limited who the FBI could interview?
c) been romantically involved with a cult member, election denier or promoter of efforts to invalidate a legal and secure election result?
3) Can you define in 200 words or less what you believe constitutes grounds to recuse yourself from cases before the SCOTUS?
4) Have you ever justified breaking a law, regulation or rule by claiming some unnamed predecessor told you that any gift from a friend, no matter how large, never has to be reported?
5) Is ignorance of the law a legal defense that will provide a favorable outcome for the defendant?
6) Are the ethics rules different for conservative Catholic judges than they are for non-partisan judges with other religious beliefs?
7) Does Leonard Leo or Harlan Crow (or some other billionaire) have the sweetest farts?
More, from Mother Jones:
Since last month’s revelations about Justice Thomas, others have trickled out, suggesting the Supreme Court is a rich mine of un- or under-reported ethics violations.
Last week, Politico revealed that Justice Neil Gorsuch sold land in Colorado to the chief of a law firm with frequent business before the court without disclosing it. Days later, Business Insider reported that the chief justice has been mischaracterizing his wife’s income; what he had designated as “salary” on disclosure forms are actually commissions she earned placing attorneys at elite law firms, many of whom have frequent business before the court. Between 2007 and 2014, according to whistleblower documents turned over to the Senate Judiciary Committee, Jane Roberts made more than $10.3 million dollars from her legal recruitment work. No wonder Justice Roberts declined to testify on recent ethical lapses at the court.
Over the weekend, the New York Times reported on the relationship between George Mason University’s right-leaning Justice Scalia Law School and the three conservative justices—Thomas, Gorsuch, and Brett Kavanaugh—it has hired as professors. Other faculty members, including one who teaches alongside Thomas, frequently file friend of the court briefs seeking to sway the justices. Gorsuch and Kavanaugh have both taught handsomely paid two-week junkets in Europe, with all costs covered. “Some of this sounds like all-expenses-paid vacations, with a little teaching thrown in,” one legal ethics expert told the Times; in an email about teaching in Padua, Italy, for almost $30,000, Gorsuch replied: “Fantastico!”
It’s another example of justices benefitting financially and enjoying luxury paid for by conservative allies, who, in exchange, get proximity to the court.
And let’s keep in mind that Crow became Clarence’s buddy a half dozen years after he was approved as a SCOTUS judge.
Got a billion dollars? You too could be Clarence’s next BFF.