Maybe I Should Stop Looking At The Comments Waiting For Moderation

I STOPPED caring about what the Geritol and Ex Lax set at Eschaton said quite a while ago,  about the time Phila and NTodd left.   I encountered a few people I liked there, some of who I keep up with,  I have no interest in any who I know still frequent there.   If I cared to I'd look for the first time I compared it to Harry Hope's bar - which was quite apt - but I don't even care enough to look in my archive for that.   It's a sheltered day-care for geezers, like those talking-face videos they have to keep dementia sufferers sitting in one place,  nothing more.

Pundit Stupid Inputs And Poll Slop

MEDIA MATTERS FOR AMERICA has a summary of the total and complete negligence of the broadcast networks to cover policy during this election.  That's not a shock, they've pretty much stopped covering policy in favor of Republican-fascist talking points, polls and pundits all obviously in service to helping Republican-fascists in this most dangerous election in our modern history.   The idolized and lauded "free press" has entirely reversed the only reason for ever including it in the First Amendment,  that it serve to accurately and honestly inform Americans on what we need to vote responsibly and to live better, safer lives as citizens in a viable democracy.

It's going to have to happen sometime, either now or after a total disaster, the media is going to have to be a. kept from spreading lies, b. to really give accurate, timely and important information and c. stop aiding white supremacists, billionaire and millionaire enemies of democracy (their owners and advertisers and in many cases its "journalists", in short).   If they don't serve those purposes they don't deserve any kind of special privileges which the drafters of the First Amendment so naively phrased in the language of rights.   Rights inhere only to human beings and other living creatures,  they do not inhere to artificial entities,  everything from the "press" and organizations and corporations right up to and including nation states and other national entities.  

While I'm sure this will be put off many times as the enemies of democracy try again and again,  we have got to start breaking the idols of Constitutional and First Amendment conventional piety.   It's pretty clear many of the online "journatlists" of the right and the play-left (Greenwald, is a perfect example) are in league with the international fascist movement which Rachel Maddow sensibly called The New Axis,  Putin, XI, the Kim regime in North Korea and the Iranian clergy-gangsters.  And others.    They are joined by many if not most of the big media companies,  the NYT, WaPo, etc.  As I mentioned recently the supposed alternative of PBS, NPR and C-SPAN sold out lots earlier.  

They should be made liable for lies told about politicians and politics, sued into non-existence.   If Hillary Clinton had been able to sue for the lies that even the most august of them told about her she could have bankrupted them and we'd never have had Trump.   If Trump had been able to be sued for all of the lies he told about  he would have been eddling knock off junk on sidewalks decades ago. 

This election should be the death of the myth of the New York Times as a great institution of American democracy and American culture.   It is the property of a wealthy family out for another big slug of Trump giveaway.   I think it's what an insightful Latin journalist said it was, a gaming platform with a bit of journalism attached to it.   If A. G. Sulzberger is still in control of it in 2028, he will be doing his best to get Republican-fascists elected.   He has done something I wouldn't have thought was possible, being more of a piece of slime than Pinch was.  

Off With Their Wealth - Let Them Keep Their Heads, Put Their Asses In Prison

THE RECENT New York magazine revelations of the lavish travel junket that America's most openly MAGA "justic" Alito and his fascist flag flying wife took at the invitation of the putrid Princess Gloria von Turn und Taxis (Gloria von Tut) is the latest reason that we need drastic and far reaching court reform but it's only one facet of the part of the connections between America's Republican-fascists and the still very rich and decadent and very dangerous detritus of European royalty.  You should read the linked to article if, like me, you let this reporting go during the last weeks of the campaign that has had us all sitting under a razor sharp sword.  The revelations of that link to one of the three "justices" I said should be under immediate investigation for possible tax fraud and other law breaking if Kamala Harris wins tonight is just the beginning.  

Here's an older must-read article from open Democracy about how the still dangerous royals and nobles of Europe are tied in with the neo-fascist wave that we are pushing against here.  

Just as a sample.

While far-right leaders from Italy to Hungary position themselves as siding with the ‘grassroots’ against liberal elites, this is also a VIP-studded network: Princess Gloria – a friend of Steve Bannon, who plans to use her palace in Germany as a summer school for European populists – is not the only aristocrat involved.

openDemocracy reviewed the programmes for each of these events since 2004, and found about 100 politicians among the 700 people listed as speakers over the 15 years – along with an archduchess from Austria, a French prince, and a Portuguese duke.

 “On both sides of the Atlantic”, noted Hillary Margolis, a researcher for the NGO Human Rights Watch, increasingly “politicians and lobbying groups misrepresent efforts to improve gender equality – including access to reproductive health and rights – as dangerous to children, families and so-called “traditional values”.

“There is now a real transatlantic movement on these issues”, added Heidi Beirich, director of the Intelligence Project at the Southern Poverty Law Center, which has designated the WCF an anti-LGBT ‘hate group’ for “pushing for restrictions to LGBT rights under the guise of the defense of the ‘natural family’”.

 The WCF is key to this cross-border ultra-conservative organising, Beirich said, “bringing together organisations from predominantly Europe and North America, but also other regions, to strategise and push for their agenda”.

Joseph Grabowski, a WCF spokesperson, told openDemocracy this week that it disputes the SPLC’s ‘hate group’ designation and called it “an unfortunate slight for the countless Americans and the people around the world who hold the same views as we do on marriage, the nature of family and the right to life”.

No doubt there is far, far more to this than these two articles have documented.  One could ask why an American "justice" is allowed to receive lavish gifts from these fascists and be knighted into any kind of foreign "knighthood" as Alito was.   That a lot of this involves Catholics and Catholic institutions should be troubling for Catholics,  Pope Francis has done more than any other pope to clean up at least some of the most well known of these "orders" but the question has to be asked why should they be allowed to exist as official Catholic entities.   I wrote years and years ago about how John Paul II made the Aussie smut king and tabloid liar and world wide fascism promoter Rupert Murdoch just such a "papal knight" when he wasn't even Catholic.   As someone who is still considered a Catholic the whole thing stinks.   Such big name Catholics as the putrid Cardinal Raymond Burke is all in on it (I wonder if he and the princess share fashion secrets when they get together).  

This is more of what I was talking about with white Catholics' fascism problem, considering the resources for financing neo-fascism these tiara and coronet headed thugs hold,  it is something that should concern American and other democracies national security agencies,  including those in Germany, France, Italy, etc. where those thugs operate from.   Royalty and other such aristocratic designations should be ended, including stripping them of their property.    While I might not agree with cutting their heads off on moral grounds,  I can say that any American official who is in league with it should be impeached and investigated for possible crimes.  Alito should be first on that list.  

Timothy Cardinal Dolan Should Resign Over His Pastoral Negligence Alone

INSTEAD OF writing a response objecting to what I said about the white Catholic fascism problem after the Al Smith Dinner and Trump's Nazi Rally in Madison Square Garden I'll go with this report about how the almost exclusively white, male, elite US Catholic Conference of Bishop's almost entirely non-condemnation of what was said in either case.   Especially note what it says about the smarmy, ever-smiling Tim Cardinal Dolan.  

Among the first to speak on behalf of the Catholic Church was San Juan Archbishop Roberto González Nieves, who issued a statement on behalf of his Puerto Rican brother bishops: "Puerto Rico is not a floating island of garbage. Puerto Rico is a beautiful country inhabited by a beautiful and noble people." The "joke," he said, not only provoked "sinister laughter, but hatred."

Only a few Catholic leaders have joined Gonzalez in condemning Hinchcliffe's disparaging remarks. The Diocese of Youngstown, Ohio, issued a statement saying, "There is no room in the Church of Christ, nor the world, for hatred of ones' brothers and sisters, or for any malice to be held in one's heart against them." San Antonio's Archbishop Gustavo García-Siller described Hinchcliffe's remarks as demonstrating "a lack of maturity."

But the silence among many Catholic leaders is reminiscent of the decades of cover-ups and excuses when tens of thousands of children suffered from the sexual abuses perpetrated upon them by Catholic priests and other religious leaders.

The silence of New York's Cardinal Timothy Dolan is especially noteworthy. New York City has the highest proportion of Puerto Ricans in the United States, the majority of them Catholics and faithful church attendees. Yet, even now, days after Trump's rally, not a word from Dolan.

In the past, Dolan has boasted of his close relationship with Trump, calling him "a great gentleman" and a "great friend of mine," telling Trump in 2020 that he calls him more often than his 90-year-old mother in Missouri. Those comments stand juxtaposed to Trump's crude references to women, boasting in 2016 that he likes "grabbing them" and "forcibly kissing them."

During the COVID-19 pandemic, Dolan pleaded for funding to keep the diocese's Catholic schools open. In return, he received $1.4 billion in federal aid at Trump’'s direction. Maybe he has $1.4 billion reasons for keeping quiet now.

Dolan is not alone in keeping mum. Jack Jenkins, a Religion News Service reporter, tweeted that all the bishops in the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops he contacted to respond to Hinchcliffe's remarks either refused to answer or did not respond.

The US Catholic Conference of Bishops is mostly staffed by those appointed by John Paul II and Benedict XVI and they are mostly a moral and pastoral disaster.   I hope Dolan is retired soon.  He always reminded me a lot of the criminal Bernard Law, the one who took it on the lam when he knew he was facing a subpoena as the clergy sex abuse scandal broke and who was given a plum assignment by the morally problematic JPII.  He clearly has no problem with Trump's history of sexual abuse and rape and I'm sure he's not stupid enough to be unaware of Trump having wanted his mistress who became his second wife to have an abortion, since that's the excuse a lot of them use for supporting Republican-fascists.   The Catholic right has always had a strong double-standard on even the issues that they allegedly care about most.  

On The Cusp Of Democracy Or Facism - What The Supreme Court And The ACLU Have Wrought

LISTENING TO THE video The False White Gospel: Rejecting Christian Nationalism,  hearing Jim Wallis talking about how Trumpists, Republican-fascists encouraged by Steve Bannon and others to park trucks with America's swastika, the Confederate Flag full or guns next to polling places, near predominantly Black Schools, etc.  Hearing him talk about how officials managing polling sites have to be concerned about armed attacks ON OUR POLLING PLACES, it occurred to me that the very real, very violent, terrorism conducted by almost exclusively white, Republican-fascists is of absolutely no concern to our elites, certainly not the legacy and corporate media, certainly not the goddamned Supreme Court which has aided in arming these terrorists with full knowledge that that was what they were doing. 

America's elites, white, wealthy, owners of most everything have been setting us up to be terrorized by their white-supremacist gangs for the past fifty years and the goddamned free press have been largely all-in on the effort.

It is insane that we are putting up with the courts and, especially the Supreme Court doing this in full view for as long as they have been striking down laws to reign in the weapons that are an intrinsic part of this terror.   If the goddamned Supreme Court members and their staff had to experience WHAT THEY PERMIT SCHOOL CHILDREN AND POLL WORKERS TO EXPERIENCE it might make some difference.  Short of that, the Congress, if it is not in the hands of the goddamned Republican-fascists have to remove the protections that shield the "justices" from the results of their decisions and those they allow to stand through the shadow docket.   

It is, in some ways, just an extension of the terrorism that has been used to suppress Black People, other People of Color and others for our entire history,  that has been the legalized practice under slavery then Jim Crow and under the Roberts Court revival of Jim Crow in which white supremacists steal the representation of People of Color just as was embedded into the Constitution under the infamous 3/5ths rule that the end of legal slavery enhanced into a theft of 5/5ths of the representation enumerated but stolen from those they prevent from voting and having representation.   

If Kamala Harris becomes president, if she gets a Democratic Congress she has her work cut out for her.   One is getting several Amendments overturning the outrageous decisions of the Roberts Court,  overturning Women's ownership of their bodies,  making a Republican-fascist president a dictator (you can be certain if Biden or Harris exercised the power they gave Trump, that would be different), outrageously legalizing the post-facto payment of bribes - something that you'd expect the most corrupt of banana republic Courts to do - but one of the most important ones is to disarm the legions of white-supremacist thugs and fanatics before they become the invisible army of white supremacy that I have ever reason to believe that everyone from the perfumed, manicured John Roberts down to the most white supremacist "justice" in modern history,  Clarence Thomas, fantasizes preventing equality and democracy from coming into effect.  

If they are not under criminal investigation right now,  Roberts, Alito and Thomas should be, as should the spouses of Roberts and Thomas.  If Democrats have control of both or either house they should subpoena the tax records of all five of them to make sure they have not been cheating on their taxes and if they have they should be prosecuted.   Including the "justices".  Kavanaugh's past and whether he lied under oath before the Senate Judiciary Committee should also be investigated and if he did he should be prosecuted.   I don't think anyone should worry about discrediting the Court, it's done that job already.   

I will mention the ACLU because they have played as big a role as any outside group in creating this situation through their "free speech" and other positions which have brought us to where we are.   I've gone into that at length here.   I could mention other lawyers groups and the lawyering-liaring profession in general.   I have some reservations about Kamala Harris because she was educated into the culture of the law and might have a hard time imagining something as unconventional as a president who, like Abraham Lincoln, rejected the Supreme Courts usurpation of power under Marbury v. Madison,  the basis of the Dred Scott decision and a whole volume of other judicial outrages.   I think it's well past time that the Presidency and Congress declared that Court usurpation null and void and they cut the Court down to the size they have in more secure democracies.   I heard that the wonderful Fran Lebowitz suggested that President Biden dissolve the Court with the imperial powers that the Roberts Court invented for the most criminal of modern American presidents.   I don't think he'd need to go that far but declaring Marbury v Madison illegal would do the same thing, along with those criminal investigations and prosecutions mentioned above.   The Supreme Court being cut down to size is one of the things that is essential because the fascist Roberts Court will nullify any attempt to clean up our country as the goddamned Court did with the campaign fiance reform laws passed after the Nixon crime spree became public.   I think if Kamala Harris becomes president she should demand those Constitutional Amendments ending Roberts' legalized corruption,  their nationalization of Women's bodies, turning the president into a dictator be adopted or she will exercise the powers that the Court gave Trump.   It will be the only way she'd get it past enough Republican-fascist controlled state legislatures to overcome the goddamned Roberts Court white supremacist fascists.   Short of that, court packing will be necessary as will be imposing term limits - send them back to riding the circuit after a reasonable term.   Something has to be done and with the out of control Court it will have to be drastic.   We can't allow the Courts to have the kind of power they have assumed on their own.