And again he thought the thought we already know: human life occurs only once, and the reason we cannot determine which of our decisions are good and which bad is that in a given situation we can only make one decision; we are not granted a second, third, or fourth life in which to compare various decisions. —“The Unbearable Lightness of Being” Milan Kundera
1.
Just when you think the Supreme Court isn’t completely sucking up to the Republicans, earlier this week the a 6-3 majority dismissed the “independent state legislature” theory, which would have given state lawmakers nearly unchecked power over federal elections. Of course, Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel A. Alito Jr. and Neil M. Gorsuch dissented. Also, the court ruled that the Biden administration could set priorities for which undocumented immigrants to arrest, rejecting a challenge from two conservative states that pressed for more aggressive enforcement. Another recent ruling cleared the way for a challenge to Louisiana’s congressional map to advance, raising the chances that the state will soon be required to create a second district that empowers Black voters to select a representative.
But then, BUT THEN, they ruled yesterday that colleges and universities can no longer take race into consideration as an express factor in admissions, a landmark decision that overturns long-standing precedent that has benefitted Black and Latino students in higher education. More information in this New York Times article. A bit of background from the New Yorker: The term “affirmative action” was introduced in an executive order issued by President John F. Kennedy on March 6, 1961, articulating a policy of proactively impeding discrimination in hiring. In the ensuing years, there have been many iterations of this practice: numerical targets or “quotas” in the early days; increasingly sophisticated formulas pegged to goals of diversity more recently. But the common thread was a sober, if imperfect, attempt to grapple with the abiding inequality in American society and to navigate closer to equitable representation in our institutions and opportunities. It yielded significant results as an engine that drove integration in the wake of the civil-rights movement and helped expand the Black middle class.
Again, my friend in LA (former KC-ite) Gary Durrett summed it up with his delicious verbal gymnastics: Two members are flat-out unfit ... corrupt, unethical, untruthful piss boys for the plutos and the church. The three new members are pathological liars - who bullshit their way through confirmation and did a 180 when they put their asses in the seats. McConnell stole two of those seats while the Democrats pulled their best "WHA?" faces and pouted when Mitch shitcanned the threshold for all judicial nominees and ran an uninterrupted 4 year conveyor belt for 35 year old flying monkeys groomed in the Leonard Leo Federalist laboratories. This has been a right wing boner in the making for 40 years & now that they're fully erect - where does anyone think we start to unring that fucking bell?
But my favorite was the scathing rebuke from Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson: With let-them-eat-cake obliviousness, today, the majority pulls the ripcord and announces “colorblindness for all” by legal fiat. But deeming race irrelevant in law does not make it so in life. And having so detached itself from this country’s actual past and present experiences, the Court has now been lured into interfering with the crucial work that UNC and other institutions of higher learning are doing to solve America’s real-world problems. No one benefits from ignorance. Although formal race-linked legal barriers are gone, race still matters to the lived experiences of all Americans in innumerable ways, and today’s ruling makes things worse, not better. The best that can be said of the majority’s perspective is that it proceeds (ostrich-like) from the hope that preventing consideration of race will end racism. But if that is its motivation, the majority proceeds in vain. If the colleges of this country are required to ignore a thing that matters, it will not just go away. It will take longer for racism to leave us. And, ultimately, ignoring race just makes it matter more.
2.
We are so against President Biden!! What has he done for us? He’s weak and feeble!! Well, he does totter a bit when walking but who of us over 70 doesn’t? And he has to keep pushing back from the lunatics in the House. Even Liz Cheney says, “What we’ve done in our politics is create a situation where we’re electing idiots.”
Democrats are horrible about tooting their own horns so here are just a few items rolled out recently from the the Biden-Harris Administration, plans that benefit all Americans; the educated to the illiterate goobers.
A. For the first time ever, President Biden’s American Rescue Plan (ARP) included more than $500 million in SSBCI support that has been set aside for, and applied for, by Tribal Governments. This is the first ever inclusion of dedicated, direct support to Tribal Governments in the State Small Business Credit Initiative (SSBCI) program to help enable investments in Tribal enterprises and small businesses.
B. On Monday, the Department of Commerce announced funding for each state, territory and the District of Columbia for high-speed internet infrastructure deployment through the Broadband Equity Access and Deployment (BEAD) program —a $42.45 billion grant program created in the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law and administered by the Department of Commerce. Even the goobers might like this…
C. The Administration is doing its best to combat individual State’s ignorance of the attempt to push all people in the LGBTQI+ community back into the closet. Earlier this month, in celebration of Pride Month, the Biden-Harris Administration is announcing new actions to protect LGBTQI+ communities from attacks on their rights and safety. Read more specifics here. As Lee Papa says, I fully believe that most people in the United States don't believe any of this is a threat to them or their precious kids. But, like with so many issues, they give into pressure from their peers or their churches to hate where they just don't have that hate. But that means they might be persuadable. As we learned with same sex marriage, once it was decided, it went away as an issue (until recently when the Christian nutzoids realized this insane Supreme Court might actually overturn it).
D. And this week the Biden-Harris Administration announced, along with the USDA, its selection of 50 projects for potential award, totaling approximately $300 million. These innovative projects will help improve access to land, capital, and markets for underserved farmers, ranchers, and forest landowners. The Increasing Land, Capital, and Market Access (Increasing Land Access) Program, which is funded by President Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act, works to increase access to farm ownership opportunities, improve results for those with heirs’ property or fractionated land, increase access to markets and capital that affect the ability to access land, and improve land ownership, land succession and agricultural business planning. Click the link for more details.
3.
Speaking of ignorant lawmakers attempting to push all people in the LGBTQI+ community back into the closet, Kansas Attorney General Kris Kobach, a fervent orangeman supporter, outlined his legal interpretation of an anti-transgender law, advising state agencies to revert some Kansans’ driver’s licenses and birth certificates back to the genders assigned to them at birth. Kansas Senate Bill 180 defines male and female based on a person’s physical anatomy at birth and prohibits transgender people from using restrooms and locker rooms and goes into effect July 1. Republican legislators were able to override Gov. Laura Kelly’s veto during the legislative calendar so you know they’re walking around the Senate floor with woodies in their pants. Kobach gave his opinion that the statute would require Kansas driver’s licenses to be based on “biological sex at birth” and that any existing licenses that have been updated with gender would be required to reflect sex assigned at birth for all future licenses. His opinion has no legal authority, but may influence policy decisions or court filings.
Erin Reed digs into the details and repercussions of this in Kansas and several other states (Montana, North Dakota, Tennessee, and others) that are jumping on the anti-LGBTQI+ community bandwagon. She writes The consequences of rolling back transgender people’s legal markers would be disastrous and fraught with difficulty. The state would have to compile a list of people who have changed their gender marker and determine the reason that each change was made, otherwise it would risk overturning gender markers for intersex people as well—a risk they may decide to take. It would potentially make it so that transgender people stopped by police will come under extra scrutiny for not having a matching gender marker or gender presentation. Likewise, it could affect the way transgender people are treated in situations where they do not wish to disclose their gender identity, such as presenting it in restaurants, bars, or at entertainment venues. And in an updated post she writes on Tuesday, in a sudden legislative maneuver, North Carolina advanced towards becoming the 20th state to outlaw gender-affirming care for transgender minors. The development took place in the Senate, which was hearing House Bill 808 – initially aimed at prohibiting gender-affirming procedures for trans youth in state-run facilities. However, an amendment was introduced that expanded the scope of the ban to encompass all medical care for transgender minors within the state.
Sen. Renee Erickson, R-Wichita, asks the question, “I will ask you, what is a woman? What happens if some days I feel like I’m 70? Can I go change my driver’s license, qualify for Social Security?” She also said people could identify however they choose but couldn’t “change biological truth.” I realize it’s difficult for Stepford Wives to think outside the Country Club but when they’re our duly elected officials we have a problem. And that outfit!
One good bit of news is that Douglas County District Attorney Suzanne Valdez (Lawrence, Kansas, of course) said Friday that her office will not prosecute any case under Kansas Senate Bill 180. In a released statement Valdez said, “As District Attorney, I was deeply saddened when this law was passed. In today’s chaotic world where we should treat one another with dignity, understanding and compassion, the Kansas legislature chose to create a law that is senseless and, quite frankly, potentially dangerous to our trans community.” She said her office will “continue to focus our efforts on ensuring public safety by prosecuting crimes committed against children, sexual assault matters, gun violence and all other violent crime.”
If you’re not familiar with Kris Kobach he’s been doing damage to citizens for many years. He has been a key architect behind many of the nation’s anti-voter and anti-immigration policies, including Arizona’s draconian and controversial 2010 “show me your papers” law (which requires police to determine the immigration status of someone arrested or detained when there is “reasonable suspicion” a person is not in the U.S. with lawful authorization). He’s also a very vocal advocate for documentary proof of citizenship requirements for voting and is an anti-abortion extremist. What a swell guy.
4.
Wildfires, blah, blah, blah, blah, climate change, blah, blah, blah, wildfires, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, climate change, blah, blah, wildfires, blah, blah, blah, blah, climate change. There. I did my part. I can change some habits but an electric car, or any new car for that matter, is out of my financial reach. I will say that my two vehicles—a 2001 Dodge van for music and home projects and a 2000 Corolla for around town—each have less than 100,000 miles. We are pretty frugal with our other utilities as well but we also don’t want to live like the Flintstones. So I’m here to pass on to you who have friends in high places that Coal, oil, and gas companies are now directly linked to worsening forest fires across the western United States. Well, it’s not like there weren’t hints for the past 50 years. Wink, wink, nudge, nudge. But actual living, breathing scientists released a thorough study last month—peer-reviewed even—and found that 19.8 million acres of burned forest land—37 percent of the total area scorched by forest fires in the western United States and southwestern Canada since 1986—can be attributed to heat-trapping emissions traced to the world’s 88 largest fossil fuel producers and cement manufacturers.
In an interview with Carly Phillips, a research scientist with the Science Hub for Climate Litigation at the Concerned Scientists, writer Elliot Negin asks Phillips why it is so important for scientists to figure out the role these companies and their products have played in creating the climate crisis. Phillips replied that Major fossil fuel companies and their trade groups knew that burning fossil fuels would dramatically reshape our climate since at least the 1960s. In the 1970s and ’80s, Exxon’s own scientists predicted—with startling accuracy—how global temperatures would increase, as well as the consequences for humanity. Despite having this knowledge and the opportunity to change course to avoid catastrophic warming, fossil fuel companies took a page from the tobacco industry’s playbook and orchestrated a decades-long campaign to deceive the public, cast doubt on climate science, and delay climate action at all levels. But just like Big Tobacco in the 1990s, the fossil fuel industry must be held accountable for the damage it has caused. Dozens of cities, counties, and states across the country have filed lawsuits to do just that.
Canadian activist Tzeporah Berman, writing for the Guardian, states that A lack of scientific knowledge about climate change is not the barrier. Nor is a lack of cleaner, safer, cheaper energy alternatives. The IPCC said as much last year – the barrier is vested fossil fuel interests putting their profit above our safety. For more than five decades, oil and gas companies have muddled the truth and blocked progress. They’ve spent millions on PR campaigns to convince the public that expanding fossil fuels is safe, reasonable and unavoidable and that the alternatives are problematic and unreliable. It’s working. Canadians are alarmed about climate change yet are largely unaware that most of Canada’s carbon pollution comes from fossil fuels like oil and gas. Half of the public say they’re unsure whether “solar panels emit more greenhouse gases during manufacturing than they end up saving”. Governments need to represent us, not fossil-fuel profiteers. We need plans to phase out fossil fuel production and emissions. Plans that include protections and support for communities and workers dependent on oil, gas and coal.
Oil, gas and coal are burning us. Politically and now literally. That’s why 101 Nobel laureates and over 3,000 scientists are calling for a fossil fuel non-proliferation treaty. Six countries and 84 subnational governments have already endorsed it. It’s time for yours to get on board, too.
Tiny Tidbits of Goddamn!
1. Fifteen thousand dollars to enlarge your penis. The pandemic began fueling a boom in the male-augmentation market, according to the New Yorker, but all is not larger-than-life in the penile stretching world. A truck driver whose device dug into his pubic bone told me that he felt like a “prisoner in my own body.”An executive at an adhesive company, who hid his newly bulging crotch behind a shopping bag when walking the dog, began to have nightmares in which he castrated himself. A sales specialist at an industrial-supply store sent me his diary, which imagined Elist as its addressee. “I wish you would have told me I would lose erect length,” he wrote. “I wish you would have told me it could shift and pinch my urethra and make it difficult to urinate.” Goddamn!
2. Governor Greg Abbott of Texas signed a law last week eliminating local rules requiring water breaks for workers. The measure, which will take effect later this year, will nullify ordinances enacted by Austin and Dallas that mandate 10-minute breaks for construction workers every four hours. It also prevents any other local governments from passing similar worker protections. Of course he fucking did because it’s about the cruelty. Hispanic workers made up a third of all worker heat deaths since 2010, according to an NPR/Columbia study. David Cruz, the communications director for League of United Latin American Citizens National (Lulac), a Latino civil rights group, said “In the midst of a record-setting heatwave, I could not think of a worse time for this governor or any elected official who has any, any kind of compassion, to do this. This administration is incrementally trying to move us backwards into a dark time in this nation, when plantation owners and agrarian mentalities prevailed.” Goddamn!
And now…
Goddamn!! It’s 8 am and I’m ready for a cocktail now. 😳
Thanks Mr. Over Achiever, One of the few posts I look forward to every week. Long live the father of Sonic Chorizo Gumbo. I'm a huge fan of the faces of the man from Kansas.