Okay, so there may be a tiny ray of hope on the horizon as far as our “elections” go. As we all know (or should know) the egregious ruling of the Robert’s Supremely Corrupt Court in 2010’s ‘Citizens United vs FEC’ seriously damaged the credibility of our elections. The ruling was written by a moron who once worked as a corporate lobbyist, Anthony Kennedy, may he soon burn in hell.

What makes me think he’s a moron? Well, he wrote as part of this assault, “Independent expenditures, including those made by corporations, do not give rise to corruption or the appearance of corruption.” Right? Hasn’t that been your experience? Come to think of it, wasn’t that exactly why political contributions were capped, because other, better people DID see that independent expenditures, including those made by corporations, DO give rise to corruption and the appearance of corruption?

Really, it was completely predictable and Kennedy’s comment proves without question he’s either a moron or straight up evil. ‘Moron’ is a grace, in this case. The thing about ‘Citizens United’ is that it basically created a nightmare election funding scenario that has allowed rich people to buy our “elections.” Or, um, did it? It turns out, not by itself.

‘Citizens United’ essentially created PACS and Super PACS, which let so-called ‘dark money’ into our elections. The story is, nobody knows where the money comes from in the PACS and Super PACS. Somehow, though, the politicians all seem to know who owns them and which favors must be granted by which politician to which rich person.

But there was another, subsequent case, called ‘SpeechNow vs FEC.’ If ‘Citizens United’ created the dark money pipelines, ‘SpeechNow’ ripped the caps off of the contribution amounts. Without ‘SpeechNow,’ the One Percent would have had a far harder time “anonymously” purchasing elections via Super Pacs over the last 16 years, because those entities would have had to rely on much smaller donations, meaning they would not have been able to grow so large and so fast.

So really it was the one-two punch of ‘Citizens United’ and ‘SpeechNow’ that created the corrupted election environment that has done so much damage to this once-great nation. Recently, I wrote about a challenge to ‘Citizens United’ coming out of Montana. Montana has taken the position that corporations might have the right to contribute (They don’t. They’re not people. If they can contribute, my car can contribute.) but they don’t necessarily have the power to do so. States define corporate powers and, in that capacity, can declare corporations do not enjoy the power to contribute.

Now Maine is ginning up a challenge to SpeechNow. In 2010, the Obama administration (classic ‘both sides do it,’ eh?) had an opportunity to challenge SpeechNow. Attorney General Eric Holder opted to not challenge the ruling. He said, and this puts him in the Kennedy camp – moron or evil, that ‘SpeechNow’ will “affect only a small subset of federally regulated contributions.”

‘Citizens United’ didn’t overturn contribution limits. ‘SpeechNow’ did. And, ironically, ‘SpeechNow’ might have been challenged under Citizens United. But, in my opinion, someone probably bought Holder off and no challenge was presented. The upside of Holder’s feckless failure? A challenge, then, might have enshrined ‘SpeechNow’ as Supreme Court precedent since there wasn’t 16 years of corruption to point to at the time. But there is now.

And that’s what Maine is trying to do, use all of the available evidence of corruption and chicanery from the last 16 years to challenge ‘SpeechNow.’ You see, in 2024, Maine overwhelmingly passed a ballot initiative limiting contributions to Super PACS. But rich people LIKE owning the elections and they don’t WANT limits on their power to enrich themselves by inflicting damage on work-a-day Joes. So, they filed a lawsuit against the initiative.

They cited ‘SpeechNow.’ They included an odd point in their suit. They pointed out that proponents of the ballot measure “designed it to prompt a test case, intended to reach the U.S. Supreme Court.” Well, you bet’cha they did. That’s HOW one challenges Supreme Court rulings; create another case. It happens all the time. (“All the time” being hyperbole, but it happens a lot.)

Okay, so this is where “I’m not a lawyer” becomes important. I’m not going to try to maneuver the legal weeds of this case. The upshot is, though, between Montana’s clever response to ‘Citizens United’ and Maine’s awesome efforts to overturn ‘SpeechNow,’ there’s a real and actual possibility we, the people, could regain our voices in “elections,” making them just elections again. That would be great…

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Did you hear the one about the moron from the USA trying to teach the Pope about Catholicism? Look, I don’t see the Pope as the moral leader most of the world does. One does not get to be a “moral leader” while protecting pedophiles and that’s a de facto part of the job of the Pope. When all is said and done, the Catholic Church is a business and no business can afford to have it’s retailers (Priests, in this case) all removed at once.

The Pope, any Pope, has no choice but to protect the Church by protecting the Pedos. I get that. I don’t like it, but I get it. I will not be lining up for moral guidance from the Catholic Church anytime soon, though. But to pretend you know MORE about religion that the Pope? That’s some brass, you know? This is one of their “What do experts know?” bits, and they’re seeing that experts know just tons and tons more than laymen. That’s what makes them experts. The Pope is an expert on religion. Whiskey Pete is a drunk.

Whiskey Pete started praying to God for the blessing to destroy human beings and kill as many as possible in an illegal war. The Pope pointed out that God probably is not on the side of the aggressors in this case. After invoking Jesus, over and over, after posting memes of Trump AS Jesus and then with Jesus, after saying prayers taken directly from the pages of the script from ‘Pulp Fiction,’ this regime thinks the Pope should “stay in his own lane…”

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47 was giving a speech in Las Vegas to promote his “no tax on tips” trumpery. He read from the teleprompter, which he never uses, “The great big beautiful bill (sic) also slashed taxes on millions of Americans, small businesses, including restaurants, dry cleaners, corner stores,” the president said, before pausing to add an aside.

“What is a corner store?” He asked the room. “I’ve never heard that term. I know what a corner store is, but I’ve never heard it described… A corner store. Who the hell wrote that, please?” He added, looking around as the audience laughed at him. There’s the ‘everyday Joe’ MAGA supports because he’s “one of them.” He’s never heard the term “corner store?” He’s 79 years old, fercrissakes. Somebody make sure he identified that giraffe correctly…

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Well, I hardly had a chance to write about the Strait of Hormuz being open before it closed again. Donny’s blockade blockade is the reason. As part of the negotiating process, Iran let up on the Strait. That’s called an act of good faith. 47, as always, misread the situation and responded like the incompetent moron we’ve all come to know and really, viscerally hate. He started turning back Iranian ships.

Iran stopped punishing the world as an act of good faith but Donny doesn’t understand the words “good” or “faith” and decided the beatings would continue until morale improved. Absolutely predictably, Iran closed the Strait again. I fear this war may continue for a long time for no reason other than Donny is too stupid to figure a way out of it…