Last week, the U.S. Supreme Court deliberately destroyed its own legitimacy in hopes of destroying rule of law in the United States.

Legitimacy.

It is what a government has when it largely represents the will of the majority of its people. Not the will of a small minority. And not imposing tyranny on that small minority either, it respects and protects the rights of that small minority. But we have a word for when a small minority rules the majority — that word is *tyranny* — and tyrannies are always illegitimate.

In the case of courts in English-speaking countries, they maintain their legitimacy via what’s known as “stare decisis”. That is, they based their opinions in court cases based upon a) current law, and b) previous opinions. This is not a new principle. It is one reason, for example, why the Catholic Church moves so slow — they have 1,500 years of precedents for papal opinions, and if a papal opinion doesn’t comply with that 1,500 years of precedent it can make only a tiny move towards a new position at a time, it can’t just throw out the old position altogether.

Stare decisis was the basis for the Supreme Court’s decisions for the past 150 years. Each new decision was couched in the language of previous decisions, or in the plain language of the law itself. This has at times caused issues when the Court recognized rights that were not currently respected, such as the right of black people to attend the same schools as white people, but even there the opinion was couched in Equal Protection language from prior court decisions. The Supreme Court didn’t come roaring out of 1945 intent upon guaranteeing equal rights to black people and simply ruling that black people had equal rights, it built decision after decision upon prior decision. When it decided “separate but equal is inherently unequal” it did not pull the decision out of its butt, it relied on 50 years of data showing that “separate but equal” never was plus language from previous Equal Protection court decisions showing that if the school segregation law was not treating citizens equally, it could not be law.

In this fashion the Supreme Court has typically been an anchor preventing radical change while providing for preservation of rights. The Court has at times gone off into evil territory — Dred Scott and Plessy v. Ferguson come to mind — but eventually through applying the Constitution to court case after court case managed via stare decisis to come back from the dark side. Stare decisis gave legitimacy to the Court’s opinions and thus legitimacy to the notion of rule of law. And rule of law is important, because without rule of law, what you have is rule of gun, and rule of gun always ends up with the most ruthless and most murderous in charge.

Which is why it’s utter disaster for the United States that last week the Supreme Court basically threw stare decisis into the toilet in favor of a radical coup that remade American law from scratch based upon the ideological notions of the judges. By throwing out stare decisis in favor of imposing their ideology upon the nation, the Supreme Court has basically killed any legitimacy that it had. The Supreme Court fundamentally committed a right wing coup of the U.S. government last week, a coup setting five authoritarians in charge of the nation, and killing any respect that the majority of Americans have for the court.

Why is that important? It’s important because the Supreme Court relies upon other branches of government to do its work. The Supreme Court did not enforce the desegregation of Little Rock High School. The 101st Airborne did, via the intervention of the executive branch. So the Supreme Court ruled that New York’s concealed weapon law was illegal. New York’s concealed weapon law is very popular in New York State. What is the Supreme Court going to do when New York says f**k you, we’re going to continue enforcing our concealed weapon law? Joe Biden isn’t going to dispatch the 101st Airborne to free people imprisoned for violating New York’s concealed weapon law.

For those of you who have been in the military, there is an important and fundamental principle taught to every officer: Never issue a command that you know is going to be disobeyed. It destroys your legitimacy as an officer and makes it more likely that future commands are going to be disobeyed. This is what last week’s Supreme Court did — they issued a command that they know is going to be disobeyed. They issued that command because they *know* that it’s going to be disobeyed. The Supreme Court knowingly destroyed its own legitimacy. Why? Simple — the Supreme Court in the past has been a major defender of rights for minorities in America. By deliberately destroying the legitimacy of the Supreme Court, the right wing is betting that they via rule of gun can then take away rights from minorities that were previously granted by the Supreme Court.

In short, last week’s Supreme Court deliberately destroyed its own legitimacy in hopes that rule of gun rather than rule of law will become the norm in the United States. The right wing believes that because they are the most ruthless and most murderous people in America, they will come out on top when rule of law collapses because the judicial system has lost all legitimacy. Last week’s Supreme Court decisions weren’t an accidental destruction of the Court’s legitimacy — they were a deliberate destruction by people who want to burn it all down. And if you are not a white male Christian with conservative beliefs, you should be very, very worried right now.

— Badtux the “Time to get well armed, people” Penguin

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Why do I despise Elon Musk?

Why do I despise Elon Musk? Let me count the ways:

Musk’s attitude towards laws is that laws are for the little people to follow, not for lords of the universe like him. He is quick to support law and order when it’s little people committing crimes, but he is Nixonian — “It isn’t a crime if a rich person does it.” For example, when the public health department of Alameda County ordered all businesses in the county to shut down for two weeks at the start of COVID to stop the spread of COVID, Musk refused to obey the state law giving her that power. And he has repeatedly manipulated Tesla etc. stock for his profit and then denying that he broke the law despite multiple SEC fines.

Musk runs the most racist car company in America, sued more times for racism in the past ten years than every other car company in America *combined*. Despite being a niche player with approximately 2.3% of the U.S. car market. And fish rot from the head, so that says something about Musk that makes him look… well, racist.

Musk also has little concern for the safety of his workers. Tesla has been fined by OSHA more than every other car company in America *combined*. The injury rate for Tesla’s factory in Fremont is greater than at any other auto factory in America. Again, the fish rots from the head. It’s part of his elitist attitude — “laws are for the little people, they should be glad to even have a job.”

Musk also is no friend of free speech. California has laws prohibiting retaliation against workers who speak out about illegal activities. Musk has repeatedly violated those laws by firing workers who complain publicly about working conditions or racism in his factory because free speech is for elitist scum like him, not for the peons. And when a reporter wrote about a botched introduction of a new Tesla model, Musk personally retaliated against that reporter by cancelling that reporter’s Tesla order. Because free speech is for rich people like him, not for the little people.

Basically, as far as I’m concerned Elon Musk is a grifter scam artist who managed to maneuver himself into control of several companies, take credit for their success, and use his showmanship skills to talk them up so that he can make a fortune from stock manipulation. He is the king of the pump and dump. He makes P.T. Barnum look like an amateur. There are many smart people who are responsible for Tesla becoming a successful niche manufacturer of luxury autombiles. Elon Musk’s total contribution to that success is scamming people into investing in Tesla back in the early days when it wasn’t clear that Tesla was ever going to make a profit. That’s an important contribution… but he didn’t “create” Tesla. Many, many people created Tesla, and Musk only provided one piece of the puzzle by scamming people into investing in Tesla when no sane person would have done so.

So anyhow. Tesla now has approximately 2.3% of the U.S. car market, so they’re still a niche player in the car market. Elon Musk did not somehow “fundamentally change the car market in America.” Claiming to have done so — and many other hyperbolic anti-factual claims of that sort — are another reason I despise Elon Musk.

I don’t despise Elon Musk because he’s rich. I don’t despise Elon Musk because his companies threaten established industry players. I despise Elon Musk because he is racist elitist scum. As established above.

That is all.

– Badtux the Scum-despising Penguin

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A Republican legislator turns out to be a child abuser. Gosh, and water is wet, eh?

Look at this turdball. This is Kentucky representative Mark Samsel, who was arrested on charges of misdemeanor battery on Thursday after going all Handmaiden’s Tale on multiple classrooms of students and getting upbrided by one of the students who objected to Samsel’s interjection of extremist Talibangelical beliefs into a public school classroom. Samsel then physically attacked the student.

Republican, of course. Duh.

What will it take to realize that Republican politicians of today are, by and large, odious people who at the least give lip service to hate and bigotry, and at worst are depraved child molesters and child abusers? This is the second Republican legislator arrested within the past two weeks for abusing a child. At least he did not rape this child like the other Republican legislator, but “merely” assaulted him.

And those eyes. That face. You just need to glance at this guy to realize that he’s more than a bit unhinged and not someone you want around children. I mean, he makes The Joker look sane. Yeesh.

– Badtux the “Ugh, just ugh” Penguin

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Wait, what? There are people who don’t know that women have been fired for being pregnant?

For cryin’ out loud, what kind of rock have these people been living under? It wasn’t even illegal until 1978, and it still happens often enough today that pregnancy discrimination lawyers advertise on the Internet trolling for women who’ve been fired for being pregnant. Granted, since it’s illegal now, employers won’t say “I’m firing you for being pregnant”, they’ll make up some other reason, but it’s provable in enough cases to keep those lawyers in business (remember, they don’t get paid unless they win!).

As for why employers fire pregnant women: “They take too much leave time.” “The cost of child birth drives up our health insurance costs.” “I have to hire someone to do their job while they’re out on their post-pregnancy leave, might as well hire someone full-time in their place” “Mothers of young infants perform poorly in the workplace, they’re always tired and having to leave to deal with a sick baby.” Yada yada yada. Back in the days when Elizabeth Warren was fired for being pregnant, they didn’t even bother with those reasons, they just said “a mother’s place is in the home” — i.e., the Mad Men misogynists who ran everything back then were fine with women in the workplace if the women were unmarried and had no children, but the moment the woman had a child, nope.

But apparently all this current and past history just eludes some people, who continue to insist “nobody gets fired for being pregnant because it’s illegal!” Yeah right, just like nobody exceeds the speed limit because it’s illegal….

Badtux the “it ain’t even ancient history!” Penguin

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Republican culture is white supremacist conspiracy theories leading to violence

So we had:

• The MAGAbomber, sending letter bombs to prominent Democrats,
• A shooting at Kroger where a white supremacist apparently decided to start shooting black people,
• and a shooting at a Jewish synagogue where a white supremacist killed eleven people.

All within a week.

So I’ll drop this quote here:

“[These deaths] say to each of us, black and white alike, that we must substitute courage for caution. They say to us that we must be concerned not merely about who murdered them, but about the system, the way of life, the philosophy which produced the murderers.” — Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., 18 September 1963
Birmingham, Ala.

What is the commonality between them all? All three murderers (or wanna be in the case of the MAGAbomber) subscribed to various right-wing conspiracy theories about Jews, Democrats, and black people.

Who is spreading these conspiracy theories? Is it a few nuts and cranks on the Internet? No, it is prominent Republicans, including top cabinet members and officers in our Federal government — including, of course, the President himself.

At which point we’re back to MLK Jr., who was responding to a church bombing that killed four little girls. The bombers were prominent KKK members who were also top officials in local law enforcement. MLK’s point was that if it was not these particular people, it would have been someone else who murdered civil rights workers, because the whole system of white supremacy was based upon violence against black people and their supporters.

At this point, I think we can say that the whole system of Republican supremacy is based upon violence against black people, Hispanic people, Democrats, Jews, and their supporters.

That is all.

– Badtux the Waiting-for-Kristallnacht Penguin

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Yeah, my ancestors were legal immigrants. Whoopti fucking do.

Bigots are always saying “but *my* ancestors were *legal* immigrants, unlike these brown people who just walked across the border!”.

Yeah? Really? So, how’d those ancestors become legal immigrants?

Hint: It was the same fucking way that my own ancestors became legal immigrants: they just walked across the fucking border.

Deal being, until the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 and the Immigration Act of 1882, there wasn’t a law anywhere on the books that kept you from entering the United States and becoming a citizen. You entered the United States, found a judge or magistrate somewhere to stamp your passport with an entry stamp, and five years later you took that passport to a judge or magistrate and turned it in for citizenship papers. That’s all there was to it. You just fucking walked across the goddamn border, and that was it. There was no such thing as a “legal” immigrant or “illegal” immigrant. There were just immigrants, who, five years later, became citizens.

You get these inbred redneck racist cretins who excuse their racist rantings with “well, *my* ancestors were *legal* immigrants” when their ancestors did the exact same fucking thing as the current immigrants — i.e., they just fucking walked across the goddamn border — and you know it ain’t about legality at that point. It was impossible to be an illegal immigrant back when their ancestors entered the country. There was no such thing as an illegal immigrant back then. All you had to fucking do was walk across the goddamn border and presto, you were a goddamn legal immigrant.

Nowadays, it’s pretty much goddamn impossible to legally immigrate to here from Latin American countries. For example, Mexico. A few years ago, 1.38 million Mexican citizens were waiting in line for a United States work visa or an immigration visa through a family member. But there were only 26,000 visas made available for Mexico that year. That’s a 53 year waiting list. Most of the people on that list are going to be dead before they actually get an immigration visa. The other Latin American countries have similar waiting lists, all of which basically boil down to, “we don’t want your kind here”.

To say that this is different from the way my ancestors came to America is an understatement. My ancestors from England and Scotland stepped off a boat, stepped across the border, and they were fucking legal. They did the exact same goddamn thing that all these recent refugees did — they stepped across a border — and that was all it fucking took, people. There wasn’t any such thing as an “illegal” immigrant back then. It was literally impossible to be an illegal immigrant back then. There was no such thing.

So saying your ancestor was a legal immigrant, when your ancestor came here before 1882, is ridiculous. There was no such as a “legal” immigrant back then, just as there was no such thing as an “illegal” immigrant back then. There was just immigrants, who, five years after stepping across the border, became citizens. That’s all it took — stepping across the border. Well, before 1882, anyhow. That was before racists took over our immigration policy, but that’s another story for another day.

– Badtux the Legal Penguin

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Caveat Emperor

Reminder: Race, gender, and religion are protected classes under anti-discrimination laws. You aren’t allowed to discriminate against people based on those things.

However, “liar”, “bigot”, and “baby snatcher” are *not* protected classes under anti-discrimination laws. If you want to refuse service to liars, bigots, and baby snatchers, i.e., if you want to discriminate based upon the character of their soul rather than upon the color of their skin, you are entirely within your freedom of association rights under the 1st Amendment to tell them get off your property.

I mention this because multiple Trump Administration officials have faced difficulties eating out ever since the story of the baby gulags broke. And the question is this: Is it okay to make sure that baby snatchers don’t get to eat out in peace, as Maxine Waters suggested?

On one side you have rabid racists, baby snatchers, people who harass women outside of abortion clinics, and an assortment of other white racists some of whom, our dear Hair Twitler has assured us, are good people. On the other side you have believers in justice, tolerance, decency, and kindness. We already know what the first side is like. The Trumpanzees come out of the woodwork hooting and howling and throwing feces every time their Hair Twitler tweets a twit on Twitter, making life miserable for anybody who dares criticize their God-Emperor Donald The Trump. On the other side you have nice people who really aren’t all that into getting up into people’s faces and being loud. Unless….

Unless the people they are being unkind to are BAD PEOPLE. And I have a sure-fired way of telling who are BAD PEOPLE right now: If they defend snatching babies away from their parents — or lie about it — they are BAD PEOPLE. People who force 8 year old children to represent themselves in immigration court even though it is illegal to charge someone under age 11 with a crime in Federal court because they are held to be too immature to possess mens rea, the ability to comprehend the difference between lawful and unlawful behavior? BAD PEOPLE. If they defend those who snatch babies away from their parents? They are BAD PEOPLE. If they help snatch babies away from their parents? They are BAD PEOPLE.

Yes, it really is that simple.

And what should be done with BAD PEOPLE when law fails to deal with the fact that they are BAD PEOPLE, other than a good old fashioned shunning, including refusing to date them and restaurants refusing to serve them — especially Mexican restaurants (duh)? I mean, really. Should good people associate with people who are BAD PEOPLE?

And then some good people say, “but if we just explain and are kind and patient to them, they’ll become good people!” Sadly, that really doesn’t happen. Bad people don’t possess the empathy or willingness to listen that is necessary to become good people. You take your average racist inbred vicious redneck, all he’s going to do is sneer at good people who try to be friendly with him. Because they are cruel people, and see nothing wrong with cruelty and sneer at those who do as being “weak libtards”, and are never going to change. They haven’t over the past 50 years of my life anyhow, so why would they change now?

Given that, the only thing we can do with these BAD PEOPLE is to not voluntarily associate with them. Because voluntarily associating with them says we condone being bad people, and encourages children to themselves become bad people.

So yeah, shun these motherfuckers. Shun them good. And those who go beyond being BAD PEOPLE, who actually make it possible to do bad things? Well. Play this for them at high volume:

Because no, they don’t deserve to live in peace. Because people who make children cry for nothing that the child himself did are BAD PEOPLE. And bad people don’t deserve courtesy, respect, or peace.

– Badtux the Vicious Penguin

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Trump lies about law regarding separating immigrant children from parents (again). Why am I not surprised?

So, Cheetoh Mussolini tweeted that it wasn’t him separating children from their mothers at the border. It was them mean Democrats and laws they’d passed. That is, of course, a bald-faced lie. So: What *IS* the truth, anyhow? Does the law require separating children from parents suspected of illegal immigration at the border?

A: No. Parents who are apprehended at the border are detained pending administrative deportation. They are not being jailed or put into prison, because they are not being charged with a crime. There is no law stating that children and parents cannot be detained in the same location.

CBP deliberately does not charge immigrants apprehended at the border with a crime, because being charged with a crime triggers Constitutional protections. Specifically, the Constitution guarantees a right to indictment by a grand jury, right to an attorney, and the right to a trial by jury for all Federal criminal charges. An administrative proceeding, on the other hand, can occur before a magistrate judge in an administrative hearing and incurs no right to a trial by jury, because the immigrant is not being punished, the immigrant is simply being removed back to where he/she came. CBP would rather not be tied down with having to put together grand juries and trials by jury and find lawyers for all these immigrants. Especially the lawyer part. They prefer their immigrants to be unrepresented by a lawyer, because that makes it easier to conduct a show trial whose sole goal is to deport the immigrant as swiftly as possible. Having to deal with a real trial in front of a jury in a Federal court, as vs a hearing before a magistrate judge, would bring the whole process to a standstill.

In cases where an immigrant is charged with a crime and is punished by being placed in jail or prison, children must be removed and placed with child protective services or a relative. That is because the Constitution does not allow jailing or imprisoning someone unless they have been charged with or convicted of a crime, and in general the children have neither been charged with nor convicted of a crime. This isn’t a law that Democrats passed. This is the Constitution. But as pointed out above, immigrants detained at the border aren’t being charged with a crime, they’re merely being held for administrative deportation. Being administratively detained has nothing to do with being punished, thus it’s perfectly legal for a child to be placed with a mother who is administratively detained. These detention camps may *look* like jails, but, legally, they are not.

So that’s the truth of the matter — there is no, zero, law requiring that children of parents who are being administratively detained be separated from those parents. This is because administrative detention is not a punishment, under the law. It is merely the temporary housing of those who are waiting for an administrative removal proceeding. In fact, until recently it was policy that women and children be placed together in ICE family detention facilities while waiting for their immigration hearings. It is only recently that a deliberate policy of ripping apart families and sending off the kids to foster care was instituted — a policy resulting in over 1500 children who cannot be located, children who may or may not be safe with relatives, who may or may not have been sold to the highest bidder via child trafficking.

– Badtux the Immigration Penguin

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Why are there so many ignorant people in an era with so much access to information?

I’m one of those people whose life has spanned the transition from the paper era to the digital era. When I went to college, researching any topic required going to the library and using the card catalog and microfiche indexes to locate material. If I wanted government statistics, they were on paper in what was basically 1/4th of the bottom floor of our college library and I had to use a big paper index to find them. Making a copy for later was 5 cents per page. So basically, there was an excuse back then for someone to say something stupid — the information just wasn’t easily available.

But today? If you want to look up tort costs in healthcare, you can look up the total amount spent on medical liability insurance (approximately 0.3% of total healthcare spending), then look up tort limits and healthcare costs by state, and easily see that a) the amount spent defending and paying out on lawsuits is trivial, and b) defensive medicine isn’t really a “thing”, states with strict tort limits don’t have lower healthcare costs on average than those without. Then you can go look for the real causes of high healthcare costs, which isn’t lawsuits. Despite access to every bit of information needed to prove or disprove the assertion “tort costs causes high healthcare costs”, virtually nobody does the few mouse strokes needed to do so.

Instead, we seem to have weaponized ignorance. Ignorant memes that can easily be disproved by a few mouse strokes use social media to sweep the nation within hours of their release by Russian troll factories. Despite the fact that so much information is available, most of the American public seems disinterested in looking it up. And that surprises some people.

But not me. Because I’ve studied American history (hell, I’ve lived half a century of it). Ignorance has always been the preferred state of the average American. Few regardless of the era have cared about education. There’s a *reason* why the atom bomb was built mostly by European immigrants. Even today, close to half of our STEM workforce is foreign-born or the children of immigrants. All that technology has managed to do is allow the ignorant to confirm with each other that their ignorance is truth and anything that doesn’t agree with their ignorant opinions is fake. Science textbooks? Fake. Government statistics? Fake. Scientists? Elitist fakes. By allowing them to confirm with each other that anybody who actually knows anything is a fake, their ignorance is not only confirmed, but weaponized.

The fact that immigrants have contributed much of the intellectual advancement of America in the past century is also why the ignorant are so anti-immigrant. The last thing they want is for people smarter and harder working than they are to render them obsolete. Even if they are.

– Badtux the Ignorance-spottin’ Penguin

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These people have no shame: Republican reaction to school shooting veers off into insane conspiracy theories, blame-passing

Republican lawmaker’s office and major Republican propaganda outlets claim that there was no school shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, and that all the kids being shown on TV are crisis actors.

Yeah, Anthony Borges sure is one helluva crisis actor. So much so that he got shot with 5 actual bullets.

“But these kids are too articulate!” shout the conspiracy theory pushers. Well duh. The TV folks naturally are going to focus on the articulate kids, not the average half-illiterate high school kid who would just stammer and stammer. These kids are no more articulate than the best kids were back in my day, which was admittedly before Raygun was president.

You can validate that these young people actually exist. You can go down to the high school in question, if you’re willing to leave your cloistered home, and validate that there’s a high school there, and there was really a school shooting there, you can stop high school students going in and out of the school and ask them “do you know so-and-so who was on the news the other day?” and they’ll say they’ve seen them in the hall…

Yet these Republican lawmakers and Republican propaganda tools would rather create ridiculous conspiracy theories than face up to the fact that, well, high school kids don’t like getting shot at in their own high school, and can be articulate in their distaste for being shot at in their own high school. What kind of MONSTER would do something like that, creating a conspiracy theory where it’s easy to check what actually happened?

Oh yeah, right. REPUBLICAN lawmakers and propaganda tools.

Finally, the governor of Florida called on the FBI director to resign for not doing anything about Nikolas Cruz. What, exactly, is the FBI supposed to have done? Until he shot up a high school (thus violating the federal Gun Free Schools Act), he hadn’t broken any Federal laws. Refer him to local law enforcement? Local law enforcement knew Cruz intimately already — the Sheriff’s office had already been called about Cruz’s behavior twenty times before the shooting — and other local law enforcement had already visited him another 19 times. What, exactly, was the FBI supposed to do when Florida law enforcement had already visited Cruz 39 times? Extradite him to Gitmo? Uhm, it doesn’t work like that, peeps. They couldn’t do anything about Cruz because he was angry, not crazy, and angry isn’t a mental illness (see prior post). They couldn’t do anything because he was exercising his 1st Amendment free speech rights and hadn’t stepped beyond free speech into the realm of terrorist threats (see prior post). So anyhow, apparently Florida law authorities during Governor Medicare Cheat’s term of office knew about Cruz, and did nothing. And so Scott’s flunkies are passing the buck to the FBI? For realz?

These people have no shame.

But they’re Republicans. So I guess we already knew that.

– Badtux the Disgusted Penguin

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