SCOTUS

Not Political, Just Kangaroo…

by MyBaconPress

I was struck by a couple of headlines in Friday’s Guardian. One of them blared, ‘Supreme court’s Voting Rights Act ruling cited misleading data from DoJ.’ Basically, the article explained that corrupt “Justice” Samuel Alito cited data that suggested that black voter turnout had exceeded white voter turnout in the last election in Louisiana. Turns out, one had to use some rather creative accounting to get that outcome, which, you will not be surprised to hear, was not supported by any other measure.

The other headline? ‘Tennessee Republicans redraw maps to erase last Democratic, Black-majority district.’ THAT headline is the direct result of the Robert’s Kangaroo Court’s ruling that racism is over and not a problem in voting, based on fraudulent data. The second headline pretty much condemns the first as a biased and ridiculous decision. The court wanted to help Republicans, so the court helped Republicans. It’s pretty simple, really.

Oh, yeah, John Roberts, the leader of this band of thieves, insists “supreme court not ‘political’ after Trump-friendly rulings.” Oh, well, if he says so. Wait, what’s the rule? Actions speak louder than words? Hmm, that makes it seems like he’s saying one thing and doing another. THAT sounds like classic politics, to me…

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If you’re anything like me, you need a break from from his ugly face from time to time. You need a distraction, something to clear your mind from the insanity. To that end, I’ve been watching videos on YouTube that are rather mindless and easy to take.

I found this guy, SB Mowing. All he does is drive around town (Wichita, I think) and clean up yards of abandoned and overgrown properties. He shows his work in ten minute videos, all at very high speed. The videos are all pretty much the same. How much variation can there be in mowing a lawn? But watching them is strangely satisfying.

It’s like watching a fish tank. It has a calming effect I can’t explain, but do yourself a favor. Find ‘SB Mowing’ on YouTube and give one of his videos a look. You might find it has the same calming effect on you that it has on me. No, I don’t know the guy and he doesn’t know (or likely care) that I’ve written about him. But I digress. That isn’t what I wanted to write about at all.

Another video series I’ve stumbled across is a cop showing videos of traffic stops when the driver of the vehicle is what is sometimes (incorrectly) called a ‘Sovereign Citizen.’ These videos are not relaxing. There’s quite a bit of shouting. They’re more…astonishing.

There’s a whole scam out there on the internet “teaching” people that they don’t have to follow the law. It all looks and sounds very official and it teaches it’s adherents to think they can get away with things if they just play semantic games. For instance, when they get pulled over, obviously driving, they insist they’re NOT “driving.” They’re just “traveling.”

They have stacks of papers, all of which are intended to prove they don’t have to follow the law because of this or that obscure section of a commercial code or whatever. For reasons I don’t understand, they’re also told to be obnoxious to the cops, or at least that’s how it seems since they invariably are obnoxious to the cops. They’ll only open their window a crack, not all the way down. They challenge the cop’s authority almost immediately. They shout a lot.

They don’t register their vehicles. They honestly believe they don’t have to. That’s usually what gets them pulled over, where it is soon discovered they also don’t have a valid Driver License, which they insist, they also do not need. These are ticket offenses but – also invariably – the “travelers” argue and agitate and fail to cooperate so aggressively, they usually escalate their charges to felonies and end up in handcuffs going to jail.

The reason I mention it is this: these people genuinely and honestly believe they’re going to get away with this. (It should be mentioned, NONE of these people are up for Mensa membership any time soon.) They genuinely and honestly believe they’ve found some magic bullet nobody else has found and now they’re free to live their lives outside the law. It never crosses their mind that NOBODY likes paying vehicle registrations or for Driver Licenses and EVERYBODY would be waving those pages if they had any effect, whatsoever.

but they believe it. Deeply. They follow the script. They go through the motions. They wave the papers and demand to see supervisors and sheriffs. They shout at cops, refuse to cooperate, wave their papers some more, and insist they know more after fifteen minutes on the internet than the cops who do the job every day and, oh yeah, have been through school on the subject.

Always, the free travelers lose these confrontations. Occasionally, one of them will realize as they’re being put in the back of the cop car that maybe they’ve been deceived, but mostly, they go into the back seat screaming and yelling and certain they’re going to get the cop’s jobs and receive a massive payout from their promised lawsuits. Spoiler alert: they don’t. I think that’s the thing that so fascinates me about these videos – the level of dedication the “travelers” have in their clearly false belief.

And they do believe, faithfully and fervently. Their faith does not save them, though. Their belief does not translate into beating the consequences of their actions. It’s mind-boggling. Then one thinks of the general population of the United States. These kinds of people are everywhere, clinging desperately to some fraudulent belief or another. It reminds me to reexamine my own beliefs from time to time. Am I staying loyal to some erroneous thinking just because it’s comfortable, like an old shoe?

For clarity, this is an observation about MAGA. I mean, these free travelers may or may not be MAGA but they clearly display the MAGA mind and MAGA’S dedication to wrongheadedness. The free travelers believe in their thing just as deeply as MAGA believes in 47 and no amount of evidence can convince them they’re wrong – even after going to jail, going to court, then going to prison.

The Free Travelers faith in that stack of papers consistently lands them in jail. MAGA’S faith in 47 has made the US a nightmare to live in and a laughingstock on the world stage. They don’t know that. They can’t see it. But their faith does not save them (nor the rest of us) and their belief does not translate into beating the consequences of their actions for any of us. I wish we could get them to reexamine their beliefs but faith never seems interested in introspection or closer inspection. Curious…

How The Dems Win…

by MyBaconPress

Three. That’s the number of excuses, I’m sorry, “explanations” regarding Joe’s terrible, horrible performance at the debate. Three. The first was that he had a cold. The second was that his prep team overworked him. The most recent was that he had just flown around the world. Twice. He was tired.

The thing is, when Trump ran against Joe and lost in the fair and honest election of 2020, most of us were NOT voting FOR Joe. We were voting against Trump. Most of us had the attitude that we would have voted for a cold ham sandwich over Trump. We need to remember that – and do it again. The threat that is Trump still exists and, in fact, has become FAR more threatening than he was in his first term.

It’s a little funny that MAGA does exactly the same thing for Trump. That is, I’m reminding people to overlook Biden’s shortcomings and vote for him anyway, to block Trump. MAGA, too, will overlook Trump’s shortcomings and vote for him. The difference? Thinking Americans will be voting for a guy who has been a pretty good President and MAY be having “Senior Moments.” MAGA will be supporting a serial criminal – “a one man crime spree,” Biden called him, an adjudicated rapist, a person who lies like nobody has ever seen, the personification of the Seven Deadly Sins, AND the person who experts have agreed was the worst President in the history of this once-great nation.

You remember his first term, right? Those were the years the economy was destroyed, more people lost jobs and more Americans died than any time in our history – including the American Civil War. Yeah, that was great.

Trump inherited an economy that was humming along. He managed to kill it – and over a million Americans – in only four years. “That was Covid-19!” screams MAGA. Yep. His pathetic handling of Covid-19, you mean. Covid-19 was a pandemic, meaning it hit worldwide. NO other nation suffered the number of deaths America suffered.

Then we put Biden in office and no other country recovered from the damage of Covid-19 as fast at the US, either. Biden is better than Trump. Here’s the thing. Biden is better than Trump, even if Biden has full-blown Alzheimer’s. (He doesn’t.) But the point here is, it doesn’t matter what condition Biden is in.

Rational Americans were willing to vote for a cold ham sandwich against Trump last time. We MUST keep the mindset. Every American who loves this country, despite her issues, needs to get out and vote against Trump again. We weren’t enthusiastic about Biden last time and we don’t have to be this time. He was the anti-Trump and THAT, more than any other thing, is what we need to stay focused on. Biden is the Anti-Trump.

You won’t be voting FOR Biden. You’ll be voting against the Destroyer of Worlds, and that’s pretty important…

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But the election is just the first hurdle. MAGA has a plan to simply install Trump if he loses at the ballot box. In my last column, I asked for input. If you have any ideas how we might save this country, I’d love to hear it. Then, I had one! Sure, it’s a long-shot. Long shots are pretty much the option left so tell me what you think of this: Right now, today, Biden needs to appoint four more Justices to the Supreme Court. The Democratic controlled Senate could, should, have them all confirmed and ready to go by the time the next Court sits.

The now-rational 7-6 majority would be in charge of overseeing future legal challenges, not the insane, ideological 6-3 bullshit that has done so much harm and is just itching to do more. There would be nothing the cons could do to stop it. The now-rational majority might even be able to bring some past rulings back for review. I don’t know about that one. I’d need to ask a lawyer and I haven’t seen any since I got the idea. It doesn’t matter, though.

It’s no joke about MAGA trying to simply install Trump in the House if he loses at the ballot box. It’s an actual plan and they have all the pieces they need in place to make that happen, should they execute that evil, unamerican plan. And why wouldn’t they? Any legal challenges will, obviously, be taken to the SCOTUS to be settled. If the SCOTUS is still the SKCOTUS (meaning infested by Kangaroos), the decision is a foregone conclusion. “Who cares what the Constitution says? We love our guy!” If rationality has been returned to the court, America has a chance. Otherwise?

Yeah, yeah, MAGA would scream about how unfair it is – exactly the same way the left screamed when Moscow Mitch stole that seat to pack the court with crazies. The difference? Biden would be working to save the country, where MAGA is hell-bent on destroying her. Besides, MAGA is wrong about everything. Everything! Why the hell would any rational person listen to any MAGA about anything political, ever?

Biden has promised not to abuse his new powers as king. I appreciate that, but if USING those powers to save the nation would, well, save the fucking nation, I’d say do what you have to do. In fact, the ONLY way to get enough time to fix what the corrupt court has wrought is to change the structure of the SCOTUS. Not doing so only sets us up for evil king Trump, who will most definitely abuse his power.

But Biden wouldn’t BE abusing his power. Appointing Supreme Court Justices is a core power of the President, defined in the Constitution. He would just be doing his job. Expanding the court might be the only way to save the country. It would likely save his Presidency, too.

I often feel like the left plays the “Washington Generals” against the right’s “Harlem Globetrotters” which is a bit ironic since the Globetrotters are mostly black and MAGA is mostly racist but that’s a different column. (For the uninitiated, the Generals are the “team” the Globetrotters play against in their “games.” The Generals are expected to lose to the Globetrotters…)

I hold that actions speak louder than words. When the Dems could win a fight but don’t? I can’t explain that any other way than they didn’t WANT to win the fight and I honestly believe the left has been throwing the game to the right for decades. They LOOK like they’re putting up a fight but their job is to lose, so lose they do. But I’m STILL suggesting this because it gives America a fighting chance.

In the best tradition of Six Degrees of Separation, if you know a way to get this idea in front of the President, please use it. NOW IS the time.

Expanding the court by adding four more rational people is perfectly legal, and even if some think otherwise, it’s a core power and not to be questioned – according to the very court Biden would be expanding. Such a bold move would, I believe, re-energize the Biden campaign, too. He could save the country AND himself as President. It’s a win-win. The only question is, do the Dems WANT to win?

Kavanaugh…

by MyBaconPress

Can somebody – anybody – please tell me why we, the people are suffering through this Kavanaugh show-hearing?  It’s a massive waste of time and money.  It’s clear the GOP doesn’t want anybody to know anything about this guy.  That was made evident when the White House decided to withhold a hundred thousand pages of documents about him.  Of course, they need plausible deniability so they dump forty-two thousand pages on the Democrats fifteen hours before the “hearing” begins.  Nice.

Worse, though…none of the people in the spotlight of one of these “hearings” shows up without having been trained and prepped and Kavanaugh is no different.  He’s not going to tell Diane Feinstein how he feels about guns.  He’s not going to answer honestly regarding his views on abortion or whether he thinks a (Republican) President should be President for life.  He’s going to regurgitate the non-answer response that some “expert” told him to say.

We all “know”, though.  He was selected in the first place because of his belief that a sitting President can’t be criminally investigated – a “belief” he has apparently developed since he helped Ken Starr stalk and harass Bill Clinton.  He worked for the Bush 43 administration and I recently heard John Yoo say nice things about him.  Of course, John Yoo should be expecting to spend a few eons in hell as the legal crap-stain who authored the idea that torture is okay if you juuussst call it “enhanced interrogation.”

Roe vs Wade is in the cross-hairs now, as well, but Kavanaugh isn’t going to SAY so during the show.  He’ll just blubber out some words about how he’ll always make all decisions with respect to established law and blah, blah, blah.  People refer to Roe vs Wade as being about abortion but it’s my understanding (I’m no lawyer) that it really codified privacy between a doctor and a woman patient (including abortion).  Once unraveled, perhaps men can once again get their wives doctors to issue a full report to them regarding what’s happening with their wive’s now semi-private parts.  Don’t worry, ladies.  We men know what’s best for you…

The Republicans don’t care that he’s issuing canned answers and the Democrats can’t do anything about it.  They don’t have the information they need to research the guy and they’ve been intentionally denied the time to seek it out on their own – which really just reinforces the fact that when the Republicans say, “Show’s over.  Let’s vote,” the vote will happen and the Democrats can’t stop it or change it.  The Republicans will vote “yes” in lock-step, the Democrats will vote “no” in lock-step and Brett Kavanaugh will become the next “Justice” of the United States “Supreme Court.”  (These days, “Supreme” just means it comes with Sour Cream…)

So…if the GOP is hiding as much information as they can – and they are – and the GOP has enough votes to push the guy through regardless of what the Dems think – and they do – why are we wasting time, money, energy, and resources on this dog-and-pony show?