It's All Slop And Trump Wants To Replace Education With It

IT SHOULD BE THE LAW OF THE LAND that the "AI" robots that the blow-up, world-champion, Soviet-style honey pot trap,  Melania Trump wants to replace the nation's school teachers with HAVE TO REPLACE THE FACULTY AT ALL OF THE ELITE PREP-SCHOOLS IN THE COUNTRY BEFORE THEY PUT ONE IN ANY PUBLIC SCHOOL.   And I do mean a law as in that will never happen because the elite will never let the only kids in the country they care about,  their own, to be subject to what Melania and whatever bull  shit billionaire "AI" conman put her up to this are peddling. 

"AI" is essentially a souped-up search engine that will indiscriminately return wides-spread lies, myths, nonsense, etc. as if it was accurate information, only to be believed by the naive and gullible who often have no idea that they're being sold junk info.   I couldn't imagine a worse idea than to have robots spouting "AI"   Since we know Melania is a rather good example of natural stupidity with a penchant for plagarism (she stole Michele Obama's speech, remember?) would be pushing what is, in effect, automated plagarism which definitely doesn't disriminate as it will steal from the worst as well as the best.  

Democrats,  the teachers unions, should definitely make this proposal the law of the land when they get that chance.   Make the super-rich buy that bullshit first.    And deport Melania while you're at it.  

About The Truth About Cesar Chavez Being Told

AT FIRST I WAS SUSPICIOUS of the breaking stories accusing Cesar Chavez of sexual crimes and violations of Women's rights.   It wasn't until I read that Dolores Huerta was one of those revealing those horrible truths that I knew they were credible.   Her admission that she had covered up his attack and abuse of her for decades in order to protect the Farm Workers Movemet that she had dedicated her life to was all the confirmation I needed to take those accusations as credible no matter how much I didn't want to believe someone I'd considered a hero had done things like that. 

We develop ideas of those heroes from a combination of their own appearances and words but also from the narratives that are published around them.   I will admit that my concept of Cesar Chavez the hero of the Farm Workers Movement was a creation of both of those and not of any kind of deep, serious knowledge of him, his colleagues such as Dolores Huerta or their movement.   It was certainly part of my life to read about that, especially as presented in the liberal Catholic media and circles that my parents and other family members supported and subscribed to.  

Now more of the reality of what happened then and why it happened as it did has to form our ideas of him and, entirely more importantly, the movement he came to be the figurehead of.   This article by Kat Armas is the most probing and thoughtful one I've yet seen to do that.   It questions how the culture that produced that first impression of those things was, itself, distorted by the diminiution of Women's struggle, work and sacrifice in that movement due to the general sexism of the time and even the liberal media milieu.  

To revisit Chavez's legacy, then, is not only to reassess a man, but to recognize how narratives themselves are formed; how power, proximity and even empire — the systems of power and domination that structure social and political life — shape which voices are amplified, and which are silenced. Women's stories are not simply side notes; they are essential to understanding the full human cost of social justice work, and the deeper truths that often remain just outside the official record.

I recommend the entire article which shows that Cesar Chavez, himself, should have grown up with entirely more respect for Women than he did, especially in his moral formation because his mother and grandmother had had such a strong and decisive part in that.   Today I don't have the time  to do justice to the entire article now,  nor the theologies that are presented in it,  the informal though all important Womens' theologies that are not recorded in writing or documented or taken seriously (until, maybe now) that, certainly, must share the forms and methods and character of those in the earliest Church,  Jesus, himself, not having written anything and many, almost certainly most of the first followers of Jesus being either non-writers or illiterate, themselves.  The Catholic Church has ignored and denied that reality ever since they decided that Women were not allowed to preach,  them basing that on the WRITINGS  of Paul, even though Paul also named Women as Apostles and carriers of the Gospel.  Or at least Epistles.  

I'll try to get back to this as soon as I can.   I will give this as an example of why the Catholic Church should have a policy against rapid canonization.   I don't know if any kind of formal or informal process to canonize Chavez has been mounted, though I would bet such has been at least discussed.   You can compare these revelations about him to those which have been revealed about Josemaria Escriva, the dubious Opus Dei "saint" whose canonization cause probably had the financial and power backing that would certainly have opposed the United Farmworkers cause. 

Verified X Account Puts Literal Bounty on Mohammad Marandi; Musk Leaves It Up

 

While Declaring "NO KINGS" Remember His Corrupt Court Is Planning On Ratfucking The Election For Him

I HAVE BEEN TELLING EVERYONE I COULD that the Roberts Republican-fascists were going to directly AND ACTIVELY try to rig the election for their Republican-fascist party way back when that election was the last one.    With the oral arguments the other day,   it couldn't be more obvious that the entire,  Federalist (fascist) Society,  Republican-fascist six Republicans on the Court are doing exactly that.   I'm beginning to think our only hope is that the Republicans fuck up the economy so badly that it will be a landslide election of the kind that put LBJ or the on that put FDR in the presidency and one which will give Democrats a majority in the House and a filibuster proof majority in the Senate but we can't depend on that.

I have also been telling everyone for far, far longer that the Supreme Court, despite the Nina Totenberg style lore surrounding them IS AND HAS BEEN THE MOST CORRUPT BRANCH OF THE GOVERNMENT GOING BACK TO WHEN JOHN MARSHALL WAS THE CHIEF JUSTICE.   Then, as now, race and partisanship was central to the corruption of that Court,  I've gone into and over the record of the Court and subsequent ones.  I have leane very heavily on one of the current best historians of the Court, Paul Finkelman and that previous one,  Louis Boudin to make what I say is an irrefutable case that the Court, certainly after the unconstitutional Marbury power grab by John Marshall, after the infamous pro-slavery decisions - a whole host of those during the Marshall years, including the infamous Prigg decision penned by the official oppoent of slavery on the court, Joseph Storey and every decision that Marshall authored which sided with even those slavers who broke federal law passed to outlaw the importation of slaves.   That was only the begining.

The Roberts Court is certainly the most openly white supremacist Supreme Court during my lifetime.   Though one that doesn't need to imply the "N" word to make it the spirit of its rulings.  And that certainly includes that monument of psycho-pathology,  Clarence Thomas.    It is probably the most consequentially white supremacist since the Plessey Court THOUGH THE TOTALITY OF ITS RULINGS PUTS IT MORE IN THE SAME CLASS AS THE TANEY COURT OF 1857.    The ruling which they will hand down allowing Republican-fascist dominated states and very likely, before November, in a case in which the Republican-fascists in the Congress and the Trump regime will blatantly violate the Constitution as written to ratfuck elections around the country marks, in addition to Trump v USA and other decisions and indecisions that rig things for Trump and Republicans have certainly, already, earned them the same role in history that Roger Taney and his colleagues have earned themselves.  

If that miracle of a Democratic watershed election happens,  against the certain resistance of the ilk of Chuck Schumer and other establishment lawyer-Congressmen, the Supreme Court has to be finally and definitively cut down to size, whether by packing the bench with those who reject such atrocities as the Marbury-Dred Scott power the court gave itself to nullify duly adopted federal laws and the even worse practice that not only the Roberts but other Courts have taken on itself TO NULLIFY SUCH THINGS AS THE ANTI-INSURRECTION PROVISIONS OF THE 14TH AMENDMENT have to be done. 

Trump AND THE REPUBLICAN MAJORITY IN THE CONGRESS AND ON THE SUPREME COURT have laid bare the fatally, anti-democratic nature of the Constitution and our entire legal framework through their knocking down those flimsy and makeshift "norms and practices" that have been the only things that have not caused our alleged democracy to be exposed for the oligarchic tyranny that it has been just under the surface.   Among other things, that has cost, almost certainly permanently, the position of world leadership that the United States achieved during the 20th century.  That Joe Biden almost saved that from the effects of Trump I only to have the free-press and the regime of lying with impuity that the Warren, Berger, Rehnquist and Roberts Court started and maintained sink Biden who was the most domestically successful president since LBJ.   Thout the media addled American population may not realize that,  the world has no choice but to face that reality.   Unless the Constitution of the United States is drastically changed to prevent another Trump or Bush II or, I'd say even going back to Nixon,  I hope and pray the world never trusts the United States ever again.   No one should trust a system that, having produce Trump I would then produce Trump II.   The Roberts Court was central to that happening as was the free press as was the billionaire oligarch class even more so that Putin and the Saudis and the others who the Court allowed the power to sway our politics WITH THE FULL KNOWLEDGE THAT THOSE ENEMIES OF DEMOCRACY FOREIGN AS WELL AS DOMESTIC FAVORE THEIR REPUBLICAN-FASCIST PARTY.

If Democrats have any chance of crushing the Roberts Court they must do it or that loss of faith that America force onto the world will have to be the hard reality of even the most idealistic of Americans.  By that I don't mean those who fall for the civics piety of Sorkin or Burns or Miranda or even those whose naive faith in America is based on something more real.   I mean those who are idealistic enough to face the hardest of reality who still understand that anything but government by the consent of an informed majority who vote out of good will on an egalitarian basis.    If Democrats don't defeat the lawyers who have so much invested in the system as it has been and is to overturn what has produced this situation, starting with radically changing the Supreme Court, then I'd suggest we will have to dump that party as well and try something else.   Not trying is not an option.   Not facing the hard reailities of what will waste our efforts is also not an option.    Dump Schumer.   He's more of an obstacle than Fetterman is, at this point. 

If Democrats only take the House they should zero out the budget of the Court except for the Constitutionally gurarnteed salaries of the "justices."   They should defund the Supreme Court's fascist-marble palace, not allowing it to keep the lights on or to have internet access.   They should definitely get rid of the clerkships and other perks and hold hearings on the corruption of the members of the Court.   I don't care if all three of the Democratic appointees of the Court are upset and discomforted by that,  I don't especially care about any members of the Court as compared to the damage they've done to us all.   Cut it down to the size of a Supreme Court in a modern democracy,  one which doesn't ratfuck things for oligarachs and against justice.   Tear down the obscene lie over the door of that fascist-marble palace,  that place doesn't produce "equal justice under law."   They produced Trump II. 

When Asked Why I Haven't Commented On The Death Of Mueller

I'll rest on what I said about him while he was alive.   I didn't trust or respect him, I don't trust or respect anyone who remained a Republican after Nixon, Reagan, Bush I and Bush II,  You certainly know I don't trust anyone who stayed one even as Trump I was in its earliest days.  He did.  I'll leave it as that.   

Speaking About The Billionaires' Hostile Takeover Campaign Of The Catholic Church

I DON'T KNOW IF THE OPUS DEI CULT coopted John Paul II or if, as I long ago suspected, he was all in on it.   Early in his papacy I suspect he was an actual CIA asset before and during at least the early years of his papacy, but he was certainly part of what is being revealed about how evil and dangerously powerful that fascist cult has been.   

The warnings were given  eary and contiuously from the 1940s, when those who were alarmed by the authoritarian secret society started telling the Vatican that it was dangerous.    I'm not that familiar with those warnings until the reactionary and, in so many ways, disasterous papacies of JPII and Benedict XVI, so I don't know how the other popes and figures in the Vatican took those warnings, though clearly they either weren't taken as seriously as they should have been or the warnings were things that didn't bother them very much.   Benedict, whatever else you can say about him, at least took some of those warnings serously, though he was a weak man when it came to opposing the powerful and wealthy,  and too beholden to the seriously flawed legacy of his patron and predecessor,  JPII.   John Paul II, on th other hand, was a total sucker for the fascist, neo-medieval, hyper-clerical-financially-tied-in cult.  He rushed through the canonization of its truly evil founder, Josemaria Escriva whose sainthood is as dubious a one as has been given official status in the modern period.   He also made the cult a power in itself, a "personal prelature" which was not answerable to local bishops.   

It is encouraging that Pope Leo has had a private meeting with the author of what appears to be an extremely important expose of Opus Dei, Gareth Gore, and that Leo seems to take the revelations of corruption, moral, financial, personal, human trafficking and enslavement, secretive political influence and everything else that Gore has documented in his book, Opus: The Cult of Dark Money, Human Trafficking, and Right-Wing Conspiracy inside the Catholic Church.   You can hear him talking about his meeing, here. 

It's not only liberals and liberal Catholics who think Opus Dei is dangerous,  here's a conservative Catholic,  (John Farrell identifies himself as such at the beginning of his review) who goes into considerable detail.   I will post just some of what he says that directly corrupts U.S. politics.* 

The most notorious figure in the American Opus network was the late Father C. John McCloskey, a former Wall Street broker turned priest of the prelature. In 1998, he was appointed the head of the Catholic Information Center (CIC) in Washington, D.C. Initially a modest chapel and bookstore entrusted to Opus Dei, the CIC, under McCloskey, became a central meeting place for high profile conservative Catholics working in the nation’s capital. He became famous for the conversions of right-wing politicians and scholars: the likes of Newt Gingrich, Senator Sam Brownback, and the late Judge Robert Bork. McCloskey also became a regular commentator on shows like CNN’s Crossfire, NBC’s Nightly News, Dateline, and Meet the Press, where he inveighed against “the culture of death,” contraception, IVF, and abortion, famously insisting that no Catholic could vote for Democrats with a clear conscience.

Around 2002, as the clergy abuse scandal was turning the American Catholic church inside out, McCloskey suddenly disappeared from public view. It would only come out in 2019 that he had been removed from his post at the CIC after a married woman member of Opus Dei sought legal action over his aggressive sexual overtures to her in private counseling sessions. Members of Opus Dei at first assured the woman that McCloskey would no longer serve in active ministry and settled the case for just under a million dollars. When she discovered that McCloskey was not only in active ministry but hearing confessions, she went public with her story. McCloskey, a heavy drinker, died of early Alzheimer’s at a home for priests in early 2023.

Even without McCloskey, the CIC has continued to be a magnet for conservative U.S. Catholics, including Leonard Leo, a leading member of the Federalist Society, which is dedicated to installing ultra-conservative judges in the federal courts and ultimately on the supreme court. According to Gore, in his chapter on Opus Dei’s connections in American politics, the overturning of Roe v. Wade would not have been possible without the direct involvement of Opus Dei insiders working for Trump and longtime Catholic influencers like Leo. With Trump’s re-election, their involvement will only deepen through their connections with the authors of Project 2025, spearheaded by the Heritage Foundation. Its President Kevin Roberts is a patron of Opus Dei’s Catholic Information Center where he receives regular spiritual guidance.

One of the foremost tools of corruption by Opus Dei is its secretiveness which was baked into it from the start, like an organized crime network.   Members are required or encouraged to keep their membership in it a secret so there is no reliable way of knowing if someone who is suspected of Opus Dei membership is, actually, a member.   I certainly wouldn't put lying about that past any of that list of Republican-fascists given in that passage or, really, anyone who gives any reason to make someone suspicious.   I would like it if Leo ordered an end to such secrecy if for no other reason than that it might lessen the suspicion of that for those who are innocent of cult membership.   I strongly suspect at least a three of the right-wing Catholics on the Supreme Court of membership, though two of those would seem to have defected to the Episcopal church, at least that's what I recall them claiming.  Episcopalians, beware. 

I would like there to be a full investigation into whether Opus Dei has trafficked people to or from or inside of the United States, especially those Women who are suckered into it young and then spend their lives slaving away for men who they are never even supposed to see.   I would like any crime they are involved in any corruption they are involved in exposed and those involved prosecuted.   As a Catholic, I would like to see the thing entirely exposed, its secret documents made public, testimony of its victims taken in public and the thing dissolved.  

Unfortunatly,  I don't think there is any liklihood that the disgusting canonization of Escriva to be disavowed by the Catholic church, I'm unaware of any proceedure for doing so and to do so would bring that other dubious saint,  JPII into disrepute.   Personally,  I don't find anything about either of their alleged saintliness to be at all convincing.   I would welcome a very severe slowing down of the saint-making process that JPII sped up so he could indulge his theatrical tendencies,  I don't think anyone should be canonized for more than a century after their deaths when all of those with personal interests in that are, also, long gone and the cover ups of any potential scandals ended.   I especially think there should be a moratorium in not ban on canonizing popes.   

But, then, I'm old enough to remember when a long list of early and medieval saints were taken off the calendar back in the 1960s, including such popular ones as St. Valentine and St. Christopher.   You never know what they might do sometime in the future though I'm not going to live to see it. 

* In looking around online you will find a lot of lies that are clearly posted by either those in Opus Dei or those who like he corrupt fascist cult.   One of the things I read said that Pope Paul IV was an admirer of the cult.   Farrell says this in his review: 

In private, Gore writes, Escriva was given to fits of rage, and open contempt for popes John XXIII and Paul VI. As Gore shows in a depiction of one revealing meeting between the two, it seems Pope Paul saw through Escriva from the beginning.

I can't say that Paul VI is among my favorite popes but I've had reason to come to respect him a lot more than I used to.   I think a lot of the things I didn't like about him were a result of his trying to cope with the extremely powerful reactionaries and arch conservatives in the hierarchy and in Catholic circles.   I hope Leo has the courage to effectively suppress such as that.