There's Nothing Wrong
I’m conceding to the powers of the internet intelligentsia today. Amid last weekend’s musings were thoughts of my sister and husband fighting off covid. And my truckdriving sister and husband dealing with the aches and pains from being rear-ended by another semi.
Today my visiting sister-in-law and I will head to a festival where we, too, will do our best not to contract any viruses or accidents. So I’m turning much of this over to smarter people than I.
Which means extra reading assignments for you. Today’s links are very important, especially the 4 from Heather Cox Richardson, the historian I’d make required reading in any social studies or civics class. And because there’s so much to cover in this newsletter, this one counts as two.
Repeat after me: there’s nothing wrong.
Wealth of Elon Musk 2012: $2,000,000,000
2022: $231,300,000,000
Wealth of Jeff Bezos 2012: $18,400,000,000
2022: $140,900,000,000
Wealth of Mark Zuckerberg 2012: $17,500,000,000
2022: $61,300,000,000
U.S. Federal Minimum Wage
2009: $7.25
2012: $7.25
2022: $7.25
There’s nothing wrong.
Not only do I understand the legal language flaws in the original Roe v. Wade decision, I understand that some of those justices who passed it viewed it as flawed too. But I also understand that overturning it was ethically and legally flawed. The Supreme Court’s power is not at the top of the power pyramid. Nor are executive or legislative actions.
Biology is.
The court is a political amalgam and always has been. Now, for the first time in 90 years, it’s an extremist court. There is no use in any further pretense that there’s impartiality and objectivity at work, as a review of recent confirmation hearings make clear.
Seditious conspiracy to tear down our government, our democracy and our union is not confined to Loud Boys and Oaf Kreepers and the PastryRat Flunk.
The dapperly dressed members of the Pedophilist Society are on the take, too. They’ve stacked US courts at every level with proponents of ‘originalism’, a theory that even the founders and authors of the US Constitution would abort as it leads to the thing they did not want: the dissolution of the United States.
The Fourteenth Amendment opening:
Section 1. All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.
Equal protection of the laws….
That’s right, even fetuses the size of a cherry tomato have to be protected. From evil women. Who aren’t persons again. America is great again.
Even our crotches aren’t equally protected. Big Brother is sniffing you…. or considering it.
There’s nothing wrong.
The extremist SCOTUS, ruling against Roe, now has fresh precedent to tear at all human rights laws that protect anyone but heterosexual white males with money. Any claim to rights of privacy have been terminated.
They may say they won’t but they’ve already demonstrated their word has zero value.
YOU MUST ELECT REPUBLICANS TO CONGRESS BECAUSE JOE BIDEN RAISED GAS PRICES.
The Prince of Saudis who had a live journalist dismembered that the US was supposed to be protecting? The head of the Russian Mafia Russia? Nah, they have nothing to do with oil prices.
They’re not trying to get DarnOld Hump re-elected. That’s just silly talk.
Teddy Roosevelt dismantled corporate monopolies but it’s easy to see the rightwing extremists have already granted them free license to exist and with the Citizens United ruling of the already conservative court of 2009, they’ve permitted them to secretly buy everyone elected to office.
Franklin Roosevelt went further, building a safety net to help people survive in the Great Depression. Conservatives have always hated that and dreamed of the day they could end that. Now their wish is granted. America is great again. When they’re done, the net will be gone. They won’t touch Social Security…. will they?
I dunno. With covid misinformation, fake cures, attacks on science and anti-vax conspiracy theories, they helped kill off more than a million Americans, most of them over 50, so maybe they’ll find it more affordable now.
Maybe not.
There’s nothing wrong.
The extremist SCOTUS has also eliminated the protective Voting Rights Act. They’re in the process of handing over voting rights and processes to the states, using those old-fashioned ‘state’s rights’ arguments that began as a defense of slave states and caused our deadliest war.
Republican dominant states may now decide the next presidential race, no matter how the majority of the citizens vote. No matter what the electoral college outcome is.
The SCOTUS also neutered the EPA that was signed into law by Richard Nixon. Utilizing the same rationale they can easily go after worker safety agencies like OSHA. All business regulation is endangered now. So great - business is free to get more dangerous again.
There’s nothing wrong.
Fetuses are safe. Children? Not so much.
The coal and oil companies are safe to pollute the environment and kill off tens of millions via faster global warming now that the EPA has been hamstrung by this extremist SCOTUS.
And the only option the current president has to stop all this is to end the filibuster in the Senate and add four more SCOTUS justices.
That can’t happen as long as coal polluters keep buying off fake Democrat Joe Manchin and fake Green Party Democrat Kyrsten Sinema.
(In the long term, the only good news is that Manchin’s political machine has been dismantled, but that may prove too little too late if democracy dies in the next two years.)
There’s nothing wrong.
Cutting to the chase now. A former Labor Secretary sounds the alarm.
Now go read the fine works of historian Heather Cox Richardson.
1) On the latest from the January 6th committee.
2) Very important on the SCOTUS rulings.
3) On the Civil Rights SCOTUS is starting to undo.
4) Finish with this video of her engaging with phone callers.
But there’s nothing wrong.
There’s nothing wrong.
There’s nothing wrong.
Nobody’s trying to shut down freedom of thought and speech. Really, there’s nothing wrong.
And another cheery good morning to you! Nothing but sunshine lollipops and rainbows, in this, the best of all possible worlds!