Friday Stuff

They all lied – yeah, that pretty much says it...



...and as Lawrence O’Donnell so correctly tells us here, all politicians (including Republican ones who profess otherwise) are pro-choice, since they sure as hell would be trying to find abortions for their wives, girlfriends, daughters, etc. if they needed to (and as usual, Dubya lied about how he felt on this issue along with the rest of the cowards of his party)...



...and David Doel brings us two clips of Ana Kasparian going off on this issue; yes, I agree with her in a lot of ways, but as much as it sucks that we have no choice but to turn to the Dems, we have no choice but to turn to the Dems to keep trying to bend that party to our will as much as they’re bent towards their corporate donors...we give up that fight, and it’s game, set and match for the “party of Lincoln”...



...and Farron Cousins tells us about this Grant Stinchfield idiot on Newsmax saying Ketanji Brown Jackson is somehow responsible for the leaked opinion on Roe, which would REALLY be a neat trick since she hasn’t even been seated on the bench of the High Court yet...what a 24-carat imbecile this guy is (and as noted previously, I agree with this)...



...and it should be noted also that our neighbors to the north are paying attention to all of the ongoing Roe-related garbage in this country (correspondent Heather Hiscox speaks with Kemlin Nembhard, Executive Director of the Women’s Health Clinic of Winnipeg, MA)...



...and when it comes to the individuals who are ultimately the true authors of the misery we’re dealing with including the attack on reproductive rights, Mehdi Hasan takes a look at billionaire venture capitalist Peter Thiel, who helped fund Trumpist nut job J.D. Vance’s winning primary campaign in Ohio (along with a few other campaigns, including this wackadoodle named Blake Masters in Arizona running against Mark Kelly for the U.S. Senate..."Hillbilly Elegy" - are you freaking kidding me??)...



Update 5/15/22: Yeah, given the recent Buffalo carnage, I would call this a particularly tone deaf comment from Masters.

...oh, and let us not forget that the “R” party has no interest in governance (they want to rule), as noted by Dem U.S. House Rep David Cicilline of Rhode Island...



...and with an eye towards what I hope will be a Happy Mother’s Day coming up, I present the following; usually I go with Etta James’s signature tune or another number, but I think a selection from Joan Baez is apropos given the ongoing struggles we face in this country for basic human dignity for our wives, mothers, daughters, sisters, etc.

Thursday Stuff

I don’t think there is one bit of hyperbole in this Meidas Touch ad; I think it’s pretty spot-on...also, I know I linked to a Daily Kos post on Tuesday about how “Strip Search Sammy” Alito referenced this 1800s nut case Matthew Hale and his Neanderthal views of women as the precedent Alito chose to cite, which in itself gives away the game a lot...more on Hale is here - I don't know about you, but I'm pretty goddamn fed up with finding myself in a position where I just have to wait for the next "body blow" from this collection of conservative nut cases, aided and abetted by chicken Democrats, and I can assure you that I intend to do more than a little something about it...



...and this clip finishes with Chip Franklin, but it starts with Rachel Maddow discussing (with Josh Gerstein of Politico) how those SCOTUS Philistines basically want to take a sledgehammer to Roe to destroy it, along with the right to privacy of course (one way to respond is here)...



...and Joy Reid provides another recap and gives “disappointed” Collins the treatment she deserves, and Lisa Murkowski is acting like she got played too, though, to be honest, anyone with a speck of brain matter could have seen where all of this was going for easily the last 30-40 years...Lizz Winstead and Elie Mystal save some scorn for the Dems on this, which is partly deserved too; it has been pointed out that the “D” party could have codified Roe into a congressional law when the Dems briefly had a majority on Capitol Hill under Obama, which is definitely a fair point...I don’t say this lightly I assure you, but the Catholic Church has been itching for this fight ever since 1973, and they’re going to get it both barrels you might say...everybody may have some difficult choices to make including your humble narrator, and that definitely also goes for conserva-Dems like that guttersnipe Chris Coons and people like Jon Tester and Mark Kelly, and in particular Bob Casey of our beloved commonwealth...you won’t be able to just say, “well, I’m a Dem and I’m pro-life” because your funders are going to tell you to oppose Roe at any cost, and as far as I’m concerned, if you do that, you might as well be a Repug.

(Another brief aside –I was once a Catholic high school student, including during 1973, and we received complimentary issues of The Catholic Standard and Times. When Roe was handed down, that publication showed nothing but fetuses in jars from cover to cover for what seemed like months. That in itself was a misrepresentation because, in the majority of cases, abortions would take place long before the fetus had developed to that point. I’m pretty sure I’ve said this before, but viewing that stuff had an impact, though I don’t think it was the one the Catholic hierarchy desired.)...



...and Jayar and Adrienne Lawrence tell us about the thoroughly militarized tactics from the LA police in response to the recent protests over the leaked ruling on Roe...



...and I now give you the latest installment of “This Day In Doomsy History” (more or less) from 5/4/16, in which we learn about Zeke Christopoulos, a transgender man from Asheville, NC who stood up and opposed the utterly awful HB2 “bathroom bill” sponsored by then-Gov. Pat McCrory; easy to lose track of the battle the wingnuts and their acolytes are waging against LGBTQ folks given this week’s news on Roe...more here and here, and a current item related to this issue (depressing, but not surprising) is here...



Update: If these 5 Republican U.S. Senate idiots want to add a warning for LGBTQ content, then I want a GQP rating for excessive conservative horseshit (here). I’ll have to admit, though, that I didn’t have “Alleged Christians Try To Distract From Destroying Roe And Criminalizing Women’s Health Care By Trying To 'De-Gay' TV Shows” on my bingo card.

...and I’m just in a mood to hear tunes this week about women having to overcome BS from men, and I think this qualifies (the chauvinistic slogan in the title comes from a one-time ad for Geritol, which, as noted here, is a product with a bit of a dubious history for non-anemic patients).

Wednesday Stuff

Lawrence O’Donnell gives us another great commentary on how we got to the utterly wretched point of Roe being eviscerated; this includes a look at how SCOTUS nominees from Republican presidents learned how to either tap dance around the question of whether or not they supported Roe or simply lie about the fact that they wanted to overturn it...people smarter than I have looked back on Supreme Court terms and labeled them based on a look at the totality of their rulings, and I can’t imagine how the Roberts court can be anything but the worst of the worst given their deliberate misinterpretation of the Second Amendment in Heller, granting religious exemption to employers for health care coverage in Hobby Lobby, gutting the Voting Rights Act, Citizens United of course, and now this latest travesty...



...and turning to another critical issue in this country where we’re falling down, the town of Shawnee, Kansas is apparently trying to criminalize co-habitation because of out-of-control housing prices...can’t wait for Johnny Harris of the New York Times to make a video about this as quickly as he made one about high-density housing in Palo Alto, CA (y’know, to make fun of those hypocritical libs)...my point as that, as Cenk notes, the problem is venture capitalists artificially inflating housing prices by buying up bunches of units; it’s not a problem you can blame on a particular political orientation (I mean, I’m sure most of the culprits are entitled wingnuts, but I can’t prove that claim to be fair)...



...and Farron Cousins tells us about a New Hampshire Republican who voted once in that state and once in MA in 2016...ooopsie, but sorry – this guy gets the “middle-aged white person” punishment of paying a fine as opposed to the minority punishment of A FREAKING PRISON TERM...



...and with that in mind, Mehdi Hasan tells us about this character in Colorado who (allegedly) copied a hard drive of voter information so the copy could be given to an “activist” trying to prove that (wait for it...) Trump actually won in 2020 (more here)...



...oh, and did you hear the one about Mango Mussolini wanting to shoot people protesting the George Floyd killing? Yeah, the biggest takeaway for me, as Francesca says, is that we got a glimpse of what a police state in this country would look like under (God help us) another Republican president...



...and speaking of shooting protestors, today is the 52nd anniversary of the Kent State massacre (more here).

Tuesday Stuff

I admit that I don’t have much to add to the travesty of this story, except to say that I agree with this; I don’t think leaking the news of the SCOTUS gutting Roe was accidental in any way; I think they couldn’t wait to take a victory lap over it (and here is one response - more here and here).

To begin, I give you this NSFW/H video from Brian Tyler Cohen (clip ends at about 7:40)...



...and Ana and Cenk bring us more on the usual conservative SCOTUS suspects lying like crazy on Roe...and yeah, they’re going to take a legal pick axe to the “right to privacy” too...hell, this court could go all the way back to Brown v. Board (and I know the Colllins stuff is repetitive, but aside from the justices in question, she deserves this treatment more than anyone else IMO)...



...and David Pakman tells us more – and I realize “Strip Search Sammy” doesn’t give a shit about precedent on Roe or anything else, but if he actually did care, he should read about Harry Blackmun, the SCOTUS justice who wrote the opinion on Roe and evolved from a conservative to pretty much a liberal (and actually, yes, the Dems have an uphill midterm battle, but I'm a little mad at Pakman for buying into the typical "conventional wisdom" that the Dems will automatically get smoked later this year, particularly in light of this)...



...so, what can we do to fight back? Well, I thought Thom Hartmann brought us a great idea from Elie Mystal about federalizing abortion center employees in Texas (“qualified immunity” works for me....“I see some more bad stuff coming” too unfortunately)...



...and Trae Crowder weighs in here with a NSFW/H commentary...



...and I and others will have more to say about this in the coming days, but for now, I'll leave you with this tune, which is the most apt selection I can think of.

Monday Stuff

Jayar, Cenk and Francesca give us the latest on the matter of student loan debt; time to “go big or go home” on this IMHO, and yeah, “wine Karen” Pirro will screech about it forever, but she’ll do that anyway (GREAT job by Cenk to remind everyone about her own debts when running her NY political campaign, and the video also gives us a well-done look at our economy, warts and all of course)...



...and the latest from Second Thought asks why socialists care about intersectional labor movements, including a lengthy and fairly-current-looking segment with Angela Davis... “Equal rights are no good if they’re not accompanied by the equal ability to exercise them,” and “exploitation is inherently multi-faceted”– Nail. Hammer. Head...



...and in the matter of people profiting from our utterly rigged economy, Robert Reich discusses how Elon Musk buying Twitter is “a win for oligarchy” (not saying Reich profits from our rigged economy...well, maybe he does, but I somehow doubt it)...



...and Brett Erlich reminds us once again what a “hustle” voter ID is, leading into a video with Jackson White pointing out what utter buffoons Trump supporters are...yeah, it needs to be pointed out again (NSFW/H)...



...and Sam, Emma and Matt of The Majority Report tell us about President Biden pardoning Abraham Bolden, the first black SS agent appointed under Kennedy, and yeah, I’m sure there’s a hell of a “back story” to Bolden getting sentenced...have to admit that I didn’t know there was an attempt to assassinate Kennedy in Chicago early in November 1963 (more here)...



...on this day in ’92, Bonnie Raitt received an honorary Doctor of Music Degree from Berklee College of Music during commencement ceremonies in Boston; that gives us an excuse for this really nice new tune from her latest release (more here).