Some comments on the Supreme Court coup by one of my friends

I wonder how many people who are out tonight, protesting the end of Roe, couldn’t bring themselves to vote for “the lesser of two evils” and rationalized their insane purity test by saying ”Roe is settled law”?

Now that Roe is gone, Clarence Thomas has his eye on Obergefell (same-sex marriage) and Griswold (access to contraceptives. Alito wants to revist Loving (interracial marriage) and Kelo (government seizing property through eminent domain to give to another for private development.

Several want to “modify” (in other words, overturn) Miranda, Escobedo, and Gideon, which provide safeguards for those accused of crimes.

SCOTUS also overturned New York’s concealed carry weapons law, effectively mandating that the whole country is a “must-issue” jurisdiction.

Women can say goodbye to what few rights they have remaining: FMLA, equal pay (such as it is), protection from domestic violence, obtaining credit without a male co-signer, etc.

Racial and ethnic minorities can say goodbye to all of their rights as well.

Jews, Muslims, and other non-“christians” will once again be targeted by vengeful Talibangelicals.

Fundamentalist voodoo will replace science and drive our children’s education.

All those pesky environmental and occupational safety regulations standing in the way of increased corporate profits will be swept away.

A free press, freedom of speech and freedom of assembly will be eliminated in the name of “national security.”

Health care will be available only to the wealthy, after Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid are abolished as “wasteful entitlements.”

And this will be the status quo for the rest of our lives, because SCOTUS is a guaranteed lifetime job . Barrett and Kavanaugh are in their fifties: they’ll be there for the next 30 years.

Make no mistake about it: the GQP is bringing us to a theocracy that makes Iran under the Ayatollahs look benign.

Still think they were “both the same”?

Was it worth it? Was your demand for political perfection worth losing America as we knew her? Is your conscience still clear, now that your refusal to vote for the lesser of two evils brought us the far greater evil? An evil that will last for decades, if not longer?

I hope you “conscience voters” are satisfied.

This is on you. You did this. Your arrogant naïveté, your refusal to “compromise” your “principles,” your abject failure to see the world as it was, elected trump, even moreso than the racists and misguided idiots who voted for him.

I hope you’re really some Goddamned proud of yourselves tonight.

Go out and hold your candlelight vigials, sing “We Shall Overcome,” and… BASK IN THE KNOWLEDGE THAT THIS IS ** YOUR** FAULT.

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White supremicists manage to torpedo Fascistbook

Fascistbook managed to peeve enough of its users that it lost users for the first time ever last quarter.

A lot of those users went to Reddit. I can say things on Reddit that would get me a 30 day ban on Fascistbook. So why would I spend time on Fascistbook, other than the desire to post cat pictures?

The purpose of social media is to express yourself. By trying to turn Fascistbook into a safe space for white supremacists by banning those who are mean to white supremacists, Fascistbook’s white supremacist board of directors including Peter Vile have made Fascistbook a hostile place for those who wish to express themselves. And naturally, people are going elsewhere to express themselves since Fascistbook has, well, banned them. Duh.

Really, the only people surprised are Nazis and white supremacists who thought they were the majority and thus running off the anti fascists was no big deal….

• Badtux the Oft-banned Penguin

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You can tell them by their hats

So how did it happen that there were so many Germans willing to round up Jews and march them into gas chambers?

Well, it started with rhetoric. Rhetoric by the Nazi Party leadership in their Party newspaper, the Daily Stormer, and in speeches and radio broadcasts. Rhetoric painting Jews as criminals, as rapists and thieves, as terrorists and vermins.

We’ve seen the same kind of rhetoric from Donald Trump and his supporters — rhetoric that might have come right out of the pages of the Daily Stormer in the 1920’s, except with immigrants from south of the border in place of the Jews. With the inevitable result: there’s now a significant part of the American population that would be willing to round up immigrants and march them into gas chambers.

Just look for the hat if you’re wondering who they are. MAGA!

– Badtux the Sadly Snarky Penguin

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So it is done. Apartheid is coming

The next 40 years

This is the main reason that Kavanaugh had to be confirmed immediately, before the Democrats got control of the Senate and could block apartheid supporters. The fact is that white people are becoming a minority within America. When that happens depends on who you ask, but it is happening, and will happen.

Given that, the only way that angry white males, of which Kavanaugh is one, can retain power is via apartheid — by taking away the vote from populations that, well, aren’t white. They dream of a return to the pre-Voting Rights Act segregated South, where black people were denied the vote by any number of means from poll taxes to lynchings, except nationwide and applied to non-whites across a broad spectrum. They really don’t have any choice. George W. Bush had made outreach to Hispanic populations, but Donald Trump has done nationwide what the California Republican Party did two decades ago — via racist acts against Hispanic populations, especially by kidnapping and losing children at the border in order to punish parents, they’ve lost the Hispanic vote for a generation.

The thing about apartheid, however, is that it is not a long time stable situation when it’s the majority of an entire nation that is being suppressed. South Africa and Rhodesia found that out the hard way, they managed to keep their non-white populations suppressed, but the violence needed to do in the face of guerilla warfare by the majority resulted in international repulsion and eventual collapse of their economies and the army of suppression that was funded by their economies. But our angry white male leaders think they have the answer to that — our current cradle to grave police state that tracks everybody from birth to death will allow them to take out the leaders of any opposition with ease, while also being used to remove information about them from the Internet so that angry mobs that wish to hang them from the nearest lamp posts won’t know where to find them.

But of course police states aren’t stable either. They can be maintained for a long time, but only at the expense of collapsing the economy and the impoverishment of the nation, because smart people don’t like police states. Smart people flee police states, or tuck their heads down and refuse to do the sort of entrepreneurship and innovation needed for an economy to thrive for fear that they might attract police state attention. But perhaps the angry white males view being on top of an impoverished failed state is preferable to being ruled by non-whites.

Given how many guns there are in the United States, I am not seeing any way that this situation does not result in bloodshed. Apartheid worked in the American South only because those being suppressed were a minority in the nation as a whole. But I cannot believe that the majority in states like California that are already “majority-minority” will sit by idle while their brethren elsewhere are being suppressed. Either there will be bloody military suppression of resistance, or secession followed by war. All I know is that a hard rain’s gonna fall.

— Badtux the Apocalyptic Penguin

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So apparently Mad King Trump cannot be indicted and can pardon himself

At least, that’s what his lawyer Gooniani says, and what he has tweeted.

Methinks that Mad King Trump’s role model is this:

Except King Joffrey was less petulant.

Apparently “it’s not illegal if the President does it” has become the guiding principle of Republican rule. Huh. Why am I not surprised.

— Badtux the “Was he elected President, or King?” Penguin

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The week from hell

That was my week last week, thus the long delay. Yes, I’m still alive. Just very, very busy, between working long hours and writing the modern Russian novel.

It was the week from hell from the viewpoint of the country, too. President Dumpster Fire set off a trade war, apparently out of spite. Despite everybody from car makers to beer manufacturers telling him that his tariffs on aluminum will cause prices to go sky high and force them to move manufacturing out of the USA, he did it anyways — right after his close friend and former economic advisor Carl Icahn dumped his steel stocks.

This is the same Donald Trump who says he wants to be President for Life. Given his age and weight, let’s hope that life isn’t too long. Cheeto Mussolini, indeed.

Meanwhile, the Russia probe continues to swirl around the Orange Racist Russian Stooge. Former Trump Aide Sam Numberg says he’s going to defy the grand jury subpoena that he received. Hope he looks good in stripes! But in public comments on various news shows he said Trump’s close advisor Carter Page was colluding with the Russians and was a “scumbag” and a “weird dude”. And said well, he probably was going to cooperate anyhow, since he doesn’t look good in stripes. Ya think?

Meanwhile, Roy Moore says he needs donations because he spent all his money running for the Senate. Here, Roy, here’s my donation. I’m giving you back everything that you’ve given everybody else who needs money:

And, of course, conservatives have delayed a bill to prevent child marriage in Kentucky. Because being able to marry your neighbor’s 13 year old daughter that you got pregnant via rape is family values, not pedophilia. Can we just call them the Grand Old Pedophile party, now?

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Busier than a one legged cowboy at an ass kicking contest

I’ve been working 16 hour days the past few days fixing some stuff that needed fixing ASAP. Not going to talk more about that, other than to mention that Amazon has killed the performance of their platform with fixes intended to improve security, and move on.

So anyhow, we learned this week that Cheeto Mussolini doesn’t know the definition of the word “treason”. In case you’re wondering, it’s the one and only crime defined in the Constitution:

Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying war against them, or in adhering to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort. No person shall be convicted of treason unless on the testimony of two witnesses to the same overt act, or on confession in open court.

So basically: If you’re giving aid and comfort to our nation’s enemies in some overt act, then it’s treason. So, let’s see what Cheeto Mussolini thinks is treason:

Not clapping along with the Republicans during the State of the Union address.

Err…. looking for that in the Constitution… not finding it….

But hey, the Constitution is just a piece of paper anyhow, right? Right?!

– Badtux the Snarky Penguin

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The Constitution is just a piece of paper

The most dangerous place for a reporter to be in America today is at a protest. Not because they’re attacked by protesters. Rather, because police officers regularly attack the press at protests and regularly destroy their equipment. 1st Amendment guarantee of a free press? The Constitution is just a piece of paper, right?

Meanwhile, even when reporters do get the story, media outlets are afraid to print investigative reporting about oligarchs because the oligarchs own the courts and can put them out of business.

Indiana proposes licensing only “responsible” people to be reporters. Presumably any reporter who dares report on a protest or reports things the oligarchs don’t want reported is “irresponsible”.

And of course the Orange Racist Russian Stooge keeps trumpeting that any media critical of him is “fake” and his deplorable followers regularly threaten reporters.

Combined with the fact that most reporters now aren’t full-time staffers of newspapers, they’re part-time stringers for wire services who don’t have access to the legal resources of a major media outlet, and you get a serious issue where proper reporting is being suppressed by the government and the government’s supporters.

One of the first things that fascist regimes try to do is shut down any media that’s critical of them. Erdogan has done that in Turkey, and it appears the deplorables and their God-Emperor Donald the Trump are bound and determined to see that happen here too. Because remember, people. The Constitution, and the 1st Amendment that it contains, is just a piece of paper.

Or is it that the Constitution just has one paragraph, the 2nd Amendment?

So confusing!

– Badtux the Press Penguin

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Nazis. Goddamn fucking Fascistbook sides with goddamn fucking Nazis. *AGAIN*.

Facebook bans Jim Wright due to complaints from Nazis that he was being mean to Nazis — *AGAIN*.

In this case, Jim Wright reported someone to Facebook who made a death threat — and Facebook kicked *him* off, rather than the Nazi.

I swear, do we gotta just call it goddamn fucking Fascistbook, already? It’s getting to be about as useful as tits on a goldfish, what with all the trolls and their troll farms making sure to get anybody who is anti-Nazi kicked off of the platform.

I don’t get it. What does Facebook get out of pandering to fucking Nazis? Eyeballs, you say? So apparently Facebook thinks that Nazis are more appealing to advertisers than Jim Wright’s followers, and thus if it comes down to Nazis vs Jim, they side with the Nazis every time? Why they came to that conclusion, I don’t know. Jim’s followers are highly educated and probably relatively wealthy compared to the average Nazi loser. I mean, all the Nazis really buy is Nazi paraphernalia, hardly a huge advertising market. But that’s what Facebook is doing — siding with a bunch of losers over a bunch of winners.

I don’t get it. I really don’t. You’d think that someone with a name like Zuckerberg would side with anti-Nazis rather than with goddamn fucking Nazis, given that the Nazis would like nothing better than to shove his rich Jew ass into the nearest oven and turn it to “Roast”. But maybe it’s all the goddamn fucking Nazis they got working for them like Peter fucking Thiel, who is probably the only motherfucker in the whole goddamn Silicon Valley who is more vile than Venod Khosla (the rich motherfucker who desires to steal California coastline for his own private beach, despite the fact that California beaches have been public property for over 40 years). At this point I doubt Zuck knows — or cares — what’s going on with Fascistbook. I mean, he’s got his bajillions of dollars. He don’t care. He doesn’t have to.

So there we go. Our President is a goddamn fascist Nazi sympathizer (“and some of them, I’m sure, are good people” my ass). The biggest social network is, as far as I can tell, run by goddamn fucking Nazis. The Republican Congress don’t seem to care about any of that. Shit, why don’t rename the United States the 4th Reich and get it over with, already?!

– Badtux the Grumpy Penguin

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Nobody ever died for a rag

Thought for today:

Nobody ever died for a piece of fabric. People have died for their country, for their buddies, or just because God is an iron, but never for a piece of fabric.

A piece of fabric is just that — a piece of fabric.

— Badtux the “Symbolism is overrated” Penguin

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