Don't Agonize, Organize.

Been thinking what I want to say about the dangerous insanity of this current SCOTUS. What can one say? So many things, mixed with outrage, flood the mind. And, also, words become hard to form with tears flowing from your eyes and smoke billowing from your ears. I needed a few days. Crying with protestors in the streets after that ill-fated decision to overturn Roe, (after undoing NY's gun law), while I was not actually out there in the streets with them, was helpful. 

We have four justices who should not even be on the court. Let's work on impeaching them for lying under oath during their confirmation hearings as a start. Mitch McConnell, who owes his allegiance ($$$) to Leonard Leo of the Federalist society, a Catholic Opus Dei member, (I think he has placed 5-6 justices on the court, most are Opus Dei?), installed Neil Gorsuch into the seat he stole from President Obama. 

Scalia had suddenly died leaving the vacancy during Barack Obama's last year in office. Obama nominated Merrick Garland. Mitch thought, no way is this black Democratic president going to appoint three justices. So, he created his new rule: POTUS can't nominate a justice to the court within 10 months of a POTUS election. And, go figure, it worked. Dems are just too polite. To understand what a cold, rather heartless rightwing justice Gorsuch is, look up his record. And read, too, how even the other justices think he's an arrogant, patronizing know it all.

 

Then, about five minutes before the end of the reign of Donald J. Trump, (orange Caligula, as I refer to him), Mitch shoved Amy Coney Barrett into RBG's seat when RBG made the unforgivable mistake of dying before Joe Biden could take his place in our Oval Office. Because Amy's a woman and so was RBG, women will be happy, MM figured. A woman is a woman is a woman, to bastardize Gertrude Stein's poem. Of course, women knew that ACB did not smell as sweet as RBG. But, MM got away with it. Again, Dems were too polite. And meanwhile, Amy isn't even qualified to be on the court. She's the least experienced justice in 30 years, I read, (I guess the last least qualified was Thomas 30.). She never tried a case, and her opinions showed her to not care about justice or people's rights. She signed an anti-abortion ad and said she forgot about that, while avoiding abortion questions, just saying precedence is precedence. And she was literally, a "Handmaid" in her Catholic cult, People of Praise, where men make the decisions and women serve the men and God. Sounds like judge material to me.

Kavanaugh should have been left by the side of the road with a beer keg and a box of Kleenex. Lied and cried and yelled at his confirmation hearing about how much he loves beer. In that confirmation hearing, Beer Bong Kavanaugh's behavior also just screamed Supreme Court Justice material. Didn't it? It had to make you as proud as it made me. What a shocking performance. Witnesses came forward to shed light on his past sexual assaults. Christine Blasey Ford did the right thing to try to save the court and the nation. But, to no avail, and she suffered for it, even having to move out of her home due to threats. And he got onto the court. And who paid off all his very large debts remains a mystery. And another mystery to me, is why didn't Kavanaugh's wife pack up the kids and get the hell away from that snivelly little fool? 

Clarence Thomas, Uncle Tom or Peeping Thomas, as he's been referred to, had a similar problem with his past. Anita Hill was a hero back then, too, but also to no avail. It remains a white man's world, after all, due to gerrymandering and cheating and voter suppression. And few are whiter than that black man.

 

So, two sexual assaulters helped undo Roe v Wade for women who are raped, or are victims of incest, and become pregnant. Even if your doctor says you will die in childbirth, you will be forced to die in childbirth now, or be charged with murder. Stranger than fiction. Life always is. Isn't it? About 30 years after Thomas' confirmation hearing and Anita Hill's testimony, "Gin" Thomas, that lovely MAGA insurrectionist, called Anita very early one morning, demanding that she apologize for the things she'd said about her husband back then. Bit of a delayed reaction, I'd say. I figured Ginni had been tippling all night long, and got more enraged with every drink until she drunk dialed her husband's old nemesis and dumped on poor, unsuspecting Anita Hill.

 

We are losing our democracy and sliding into a theocracy. A theocracy which gives more rights to guns than to women. I still do not understand the guns and god thing or what makes "Christians" think Jesus would be into any weapon. Have they ever actually read what Jesus purportedly said? To me it is an unholy alliance from hell. 

Leonard Leo's long range plan has been to unravel our democratic republic and replace it with a theocracy. And he's been very good at it. He is well funded by Koch brothers and others and because Dems are just too polite. 

Let me amend myself. US is not becoming a theocracy. It is fast becoming a Christofascistic state. QAnon Christofascism. Women in the Jewish religion have the right to an abortion. They believe life begins at your first breath and ends at your last breath. I guess they will have to demand a religious exemption to this Christofascist ban to receive their God given right to reproductive healthcare.

The world is astounded and frightened to see what America, the democratic country they looked up to, is becoming. I think they fear for us and laugh at us by turns. I think the world is still dumbstruck by how uneducated Americans are and how many guns US has, (393.3 million guns to about 330 million citizens.), and how many mass shootings, (at least 250 so far in 2022), and how many children are murdered in their classrooms. How does any civilized nation comprehend, explain, or defend it? 

And I hope those who are applauding that now public funds have to pay for religious schools, too, and that coaches are allowed to pray on the field, enjoy when a Muslim school demands taxpayers support it, and an Islamic Imam spreads his rug out and prays to Allah to bless their games, or asks Allah to kill America, the Great Satan. Or the Church of Satan prays that their team wins. Go Satan!

What a world. I'm back where I started. What can one say about the state of the union today? Stop the world, I want off? My suggestion is that Dems stop being so freakin' polite! And that everyone of voting age, get off their asses and get out and vote in November like their country and their lives depend on it! They do! It's not too late to reverse a lot of the damage done.

 

We can stop our downfall by taking more control of Congress, ending the filibuster, and expanding SCOTUS. While we’re at it, let’s set term limits, too.  This justice for life is not working, either. The generic post Roe reversal poll I read recently, had Dems up by 10 points. We can do this! 

As the phrase, the Afro-American woman civil rights activist, Florence Rae Kennedy, coined, and many, including Gloria Steinam and Rosi Braidotti, quoted, and Occupy Wall Street movement turned into a bumper sticker, said: "Don't agonize, organize!" 

And Rosi Braidotti is right. "Violence, pain and resentment are conducive to paralysis, not to change." Don't go down with the ship, yet. Remain positive and fight like hell. Re-radicalize! VOTE!

Free Time for Equal Time

        The traitorous coup thrower, and would be despot, feels he is not getting his fair day in court. He demands equal time. Just not under oath. He wants hours of free TV prime time to repeat his "rigged election" mantra to rebut the "Russia, Russia, Russia, here we go again" witch hunt. The former guy (TFG) is, apparently, glued to these hearings, (Cheating on Fox News with CNN, I assume.), and it's causing his bloated pumpkin head to explode. 

At a conference in Nashville, hosted by the Faith and Freedom Coalition, TFG said, "There's no clearer example of the menacing spirit that has devoured the American left than the disgraceful performance being staged by the unselect committee." (except for "unselect," it sounds more like Stephen Miller.) 

TFG had only lost his case in 61 courts, after all. Drop in the bucket. He has never been known to let facts, laws, a judge's opinion, (or 61 judges' opinions), or the majority popular vote, or a majority of electors, or the Constitution get in his way. It's good to be King. He knows how to play to his gullible MAGA followers. Lie, lie, lie, and lie some more, double down, rinse and repeat, and keep repeating the lies until the Second Coming. 

His "Christian" followers love him and believe every bit of the word salad that spews from his mouth. He is their savior. What he is, is the consummate con man, maybe the best America has ever seen. I loved when he called the January 6th Select Committee, "con people. They're con artists," he said. Oh, the irony wasted on the irony deficient. 

Malignant narcissists lie and project their behavior onto others. And if TFG was not so dangerous to democracy, America, and life itself, he would be a fascinating masterclass in abhorrent behavior and some of The DSM-5's 157 mental disorders, such as sociopathy, borderline personality and histrionic personality disorders. And who knows? Maybe Mental health workers could coin some new diagnoses after analyzing him. 

We came within 40 feet of throwing our country into "a revolution inside a Constitutional crisis," according to Republican Judge Michael Luttig at the last hearing. Not sure where the mob thought they were going to go with this overthrow of the government after assassinating Mike Pence and Nancy Pelosi, and anyone else who got in their way at the Capitol, but in TFG fashion, it was not well thought out. (Maybe it's due to his ADHD, or dyslexia, or Adderall snorting, or dementia, or...? Insurrection by the Keystone Cops. 

And now TFG just wants to tell US about "the good things, the things that we want to hear," about that day. "It's a one-way street. It's a rigged deal." He needs to give his side of the story, so it's fair and balanced and unbiased. And then, victimhood is another sign of malignant narcissism. 

The fourth January 6 Select Committee Hearing airs, nearly everywhere but Fox News, tomorrow 9am till 12:30pm PT. Don't miss a minute. 

Jocosa Puella June 20, 2022

Hang In for the 2nd Edition

        It's 2022. I think I last entered a blog post in 2011? Life certainly does get in the way, between deaths, (and ensuing family feuds), illnesses, pandemics, disasters, natural, and man made, as in Republicans and Donald Trump. 😬 When asked on Twitter what I think is the single biggest threat to the world today, I always answer, Republicans. 

Life has not been the same in America since that lying, orange con man and Putin useful idiot, along with his 24 years younger "Slovene-American" mannequin and alleged ex-model, third wife, descended the escalator at Trump Tower in 2015, to the applause of his paid extras. And then with Putin's help, lied, finagled and gerrymandered his way into our White House. Saddest day I can remember, until his dystopian inauguration speech, anyway. 

But, we lived through those very frightening years, despite all the sleep deprivation due to nightmares. So, tomorrow is the second January 6th Select Committee hearing. It feels like Christmas Eve to me. I'm setting my alarm and recorder. I suppose 7am is too early for popcorn. So, coffee it is with some oranges and toast, too. It is a party, after all.  

The first hearing, on the 9th, did not disappoint. I thought the committee, and the former ABC TV executive news producer, James Goldston, did a spectacular job laying out their case against Donald Trump, Proud Boys, Oath Keepers, and other fools who bought into orange Caligula's lies and conspiracies. 

Like brilliant prosecutors, they are building their case, showing how Trump knew full well he had lost the election. No plausible deniability. And they clearly showed that he planned this for at least a month with the Proud Boys. They showed us that he felt his VP had it coming when the mob yelled and chanted, "Hang Mike Pence!" And he gleefully watched the violence and terror at the Capitol on his bank of TVs in the dining room off the Oval Office. He never called for any help, and let the Capitol and Metro Police fight it out with the out of control mob for hours. 

As officer, Caroline Edwards, who sustained a brain injury that day, said, she was not trained in hand to hand combat. And Trump kept rewinding the video to watch the violence again to relish in all the people who were fighting for him. It would be sad that the ex-POTUS is so deeply insecure, due to being so badly treated as a child, that seeing people commit mayhem and violence in his name made him feel loved. But, I am all out of Fs to give about that cruel, criminal sociopath. 

I feel like I pretty much already knew most of what they were presenting, except Ivanka's actually throwing her demented dad under the bus. That was fun. Talk about mannequins. She looked like a gaunt robot. But, Ivanka has so much more money than her dear old dad, (Thank you, China. Thank you, Saudi's MBS.), she doesn't need to worry about being disinherited. 

But, I hadn't fully realized the amount of advanced planning and number of reconnaissance tours of the Capitol to find the most vulnerable areas to breach the building. I, also, can't wait to see who else in the Republican party was involved in organizing and helping those tours. I think we all have our suspicions, of course, but to be continued... 

And I learned on Thursday that the Proud Boys actually hired a documentarian to record their insurrection. 😳 I don't know about you, but I would think that the first rule of committing an egregious and treasonous federal offense would be to not record it. But, maybe that's just me. 

I hope you will not miss this history in the making tomorrow morning, either. To be continued. 

Jocosa Puella June 12, 2022