For Anyone Interested in Lilypond Music Engraving

these introductory tutorials are among the best of all Youtube tutorials I've yet found on any topic,  right up there with the Frugal Computer Guy's.

Trolls Must Have Taken A Holiday

 or they didn't notice either.

At least twice in Yesterday's posts I reversed the two last names of The Honorable Ketanji Brown Jackson, as I so often will when someone uses two last names.   I have so much respect for her,  despite her ruling on the 14th Amendment's ban on insurrectionists holding federal office, that I will, for once, apologize for the oversight.   I blame the singer songwriter Jackson Browne whose name got into my head long before I heard of Ketanji Brown Jackson.   Browne wrote what might be the best Christmas song ever written by a pagan since the medieval period.  Maybe I'll post it during the season.  

I'm surprised the tireless meter-maid of orthography who trolls me didn't put on his little uniform and write me a ticket over it.   Or at least I was when I got round to re-reading it and saw I hadn't corrected what I wrote rather quickly, despite the right name order appearing in what I copied from another website.  I'm posting this to get his goat.  

Wish I'd Taken The Text Route Instead Of The Graphic One Twenty So Years Ago

that is instead of going with the now totally defunct Finale music publishing program.  I liked Finale well enough though it was expensive, clunky,  often didn't exactly work exactly as advertised and in some ways was very frustrating.   I wasn't exactly thrilled with its graphic-base which I'm pretty disillusioned with - though I have been experimenting with MuseScore as a replacement.  But the most frustrating thing about it was that after decades of investment into it in work and buying updates,  the goddamned company that made it discontinued it making a deal with another outfit for a whole different replacement that I'd have to buy and which doesn't look to me to be compatible with my previous work preserved in a soon to be useless format.   I'm now suspicious of anything that might get pulled out from under such an investment in work and money which I think any graphic-based music engraving program will probably turn out to be.    But there was and still is an alternative that is free, open-source and text-based - making it far, far more flexible and portable in that the score is contained in a text file that can be moved on to any platform and stored that way.   And Lilypond is available for all of the main operating systems and hardware architectures.   I haven't tried to take a text file from one to another to see if the portability is 100% but I'm betting it is. 

I've started, in my old age, to learn Lilypond programming for music engraving and am shocked to find that once you've learned the commands,  it's far, far easier to use than any graphic-based program I've tried,  and I've tried about four of those.   It has its limits though if I were smart enough to program what I wanted into it,  those could be overcome.   I've been working on a major project which is still in the pencil on music paper stage,  I think I'll try to put it into print with Lilypond instead of the alternatives.   Granted I won't be able to take advantage of some of the features of those  but I'm guessing I'll be able to use the simple find and replace features of one of the simple text editors I use to do a lot of that.  And I may find someone has already programmed that feature into it somewhere.     If it works I'll let you know but if I was advising a student on such things these days,  I'd suggest they try it out and see if it works for them.   One thing,  I'd advise them never to invest years of work into a complex graphic interface or other such complex program because you never know when some company or owner of it will pull the whole thing down.  

Constitutional government under the present Court regime is a fiction.

Weaponizing Regular Court Procedure Is One Of The Main Venues Of Lawerly And Judicial Corruption of Our Government 

AS IS OFTEN THE CASE one of the best analyses of the doings among lawyers and judges I read comes from RMJ.   After attracting me with a tweet by Ron Filipkowski that says what I feel about the indictment of the original Trump enabler,  James Comey:

I honestly don’t care about James Comey.

But I want to live in a democratic republic.

His indictment proves we live in a banana republic, where the autocrat personally orders indictments of his political enemies, and when his own officials refuse he finds new ones that will.

RMJ  goes on to comment on a statement by Representative Dan Goldman as to why the prosecution has to fail because it's based on a false summary of testimony by Andrew McCabe*  by the sleazy Senator Ted Cruz.  

Goldman: Fundamentally, there's a major flaw here, which is that this false statements count is predicated on Ted Cruz's summary of Andy Mccabe's testimony…

Which summary, I understand, was not a fair representation of McCabe’s testimony. The whole perjury charge is based on he said/he said, and it may be what Cruz said, is not what McCabe said. OTOH, all Comey did was stand by his statement, so did he lie? Or did he just testify differently than McCabe did? Aside from the fact that perjury requires a willful lie, not just a misrepresentation or a disagreement between witnesses (why isn’t McCabe indicted? That way lies the malicious prosecution defense Trump has opened the door for.). Perjury is probably going to be impossible to prove in court. Not that Comey should have to incur attorneys fees to remain out of prison. But any lawyer for DOJ who appears in this case can be challenged for ethics violations before the bar that issued their license. I can even see them losing their federal license (not to practice law, but to appear in D.C. federal court). The trial court could easily do that, for the grossly unethical nature of this case.

While I expect that will ultimately work to either win a case by Comey or to get the charges thrown out,  that doesn't count on the level of corruption in the higher levels of the federal judiciary put there by Republican-fascists in the Senate,  Republican-fascist presidents,  mostly Bush II and Trump, and the ultimate corruption of the Roberts Court majority, the most corrupt Supreme Court in our history.  They summarily abolish century old laws and nullify and amend even older parts of the Constitution, itself, on behalf of the stupidest, most corrupt, most criminal president in American history,  Trump.   

These days they aren't even much coming up with a plausibly rational argument for upending even the most "settled" of legal lore,  they are ripping up everything, proceedures, regulations, rules, laws,  and, yes,  even those things in the Constitution that don't serve their financial, political and ideological desires. 

They are making  WHATEVER THEY WANT the law of the United States. 

Eventually you have to look at what motivates Roberts, Alito, Thomas, Goresuch, Kvanaugh and Barrett in what is the most sustained attack on a democratic republic in our history,  more effective and longer lasting than the treason of the Confederates,  more effective and longer lasting than the Taney Court's imposition of slavery on even the free states,  more effective than the Plessey Court imposing American apartheid - which the Roberts Court is reinstalling by overturning the Civil Rights and, especially, the Voting Rights Acts which were the very laws that for the first time sought to make the United States the true democracy it was alleged to be since the Jeffersonian revolution sought to take the first major step in doing that.

They certainly know what they're doing when they enable Trump in breaking the law by nullifying it,  they are destroying good government on behalf of Trump family and billionaire oligarch corrupted government.   The next time they have one of those Supreme Court Historical Society cotillions I wish one of the invitees would throw that in their faces but, of course, the kind of courtly crooks and corrupt lawyer types that go to those would never do that, making their "honors" have to notice that real People notice they are filthy corrupt liars and crooks, themselves.    

They certainly have motives of self-interest in that.   All of them either grew up in relative affluence - affluence their chosen profession of the law is generally entered into to pursue,  I doubt anyone goes into the law not expecting to make lots of money from it.   I suspect some of them either had no talent for or liking for the harder work of lawyering so they went into the somewhat less money making ends of it - though still handsomely compensated.    I will note that of all of them,  Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson is the only one who ever acted as a defense lawyer.**    I might suspect some of them had a liking for dabbling in the aristocratic folklore that a lifetime in legal scholarship boils down to.   But like all folklore, it is flexible and easily bent into whatever form you want it to take or to amend it into a new piece of lore to suit your present purposes.   THAT IS PRACTICALLY THE DEFINITION OF A SUPREME COURT DECISION AFTER THE MARBURY V MADISON POWER GRAB BY THE SUPREME COURT, ITSELF.    You can read the many posts I made from Government by Judiciary by Louis Boudin [see my archive] to see that that is the actual truth of what they do.  As early as 1911, Louis Boudin was warning that under Marbury and its dependent rulings, the first significant one of which was the infamous Dred Scott decision and on which virtually every corrupt ruling by the Rehnquist and Roberts Court rests,  the Constitution meant only what a simple majority or more of fewer than ten black robed men said it did - and that given their ability to do so under Marbury, that even that meaning was temporary at best.   He noted the frequency of the corruption of that system and its destruction of equality under the law and democracy.   Yet Marbury is such a basic part of the folklore of the law - though entirely absent from the Constitution - that it, itself serves as the one and only securely basic law of the United States.   Constitutional government under the present Court regime is a fiction. 

I do think that ultimate it all comes down to getting the most money for themselves, their families, their class and those who they figure are in the best position to give them more of that.   They may have some emotions invested in the bull-shit excuses to overturn egalitarian democratic republican governance to do that,  the "Constitutional folklore that they learned from their equally corrupt and fascistic law profs at Harvard, Yale, Princeton, etc. who, no doubt, learned it from others of the same fascistic and larcenous predilections.   

But I think their personal bigotry, prejudice, racism and misogyny are as easily served by the same legal bullshiteese that is the very stuff of lawyer talk and Supreme Court decisions.   As was found out in such as the Prigg decision, Dred Scott, Plessy, . . . Dobbs,  Shelby County v. Holder, Bronovich v. Democratic National Committee, Trump v United States,  there are no limits to the lies, the twisting of words,  the outright fabrication that the Supreme Court doesn't get away with because there is no real democratic or even rational limit placed on them.    The worst things the president or congress or anyone has ever gotten away with with Supreme Court blessing IS THE REAL DEFINITION OF WHAT IS CONSTITUTIONAL UNDER SUCH A DANGEROUSLY FLAWED CONSTITUTION AS WE HAVE AND HAVE HAD SINCE MARBURY IF NOT FROM THE START.    People complaining that Supreme Court decisions aren't based on the letter of the Constitution are fools playing that game because as the Court has proven over and over again in our history,  what that letter says doesn't really mean anything except what they say it means.  

Until the Constitution is changed to reign in the corrupt Supreme Court, there will be no safety for egalitarian democratic republican government and there will be no such a thing as enduring change for the better.    It is the engine of corruption that can demolish even the emergency salvage operation mounted by the Congress after the Civil War and in the adoption of the Voting Rights and Civil Rights Acts and that rarest of all things under our Constitution,  Court led progress such as in Roe v Wade.  

The Roberts Court will either be the last of the flagrantly corrupt Supreme Courts or it will be the proof that the reservations of the antifederalists, such as "Brutus" were well founded, far more so than the claims of Madison, Hamilton, John Jay and their colleagues.    I would bet that the Roberts Court won't be the last or even the worst of them unless there is sweeping Constitutional reform in the wake of Trump and what I believe will be even worse under Vance. 

*  I have entirely more respect for Andrew McCabe than I do for Comey and I'd trust what he said far more than the rest of them.   I have to say that in this attack on Comey and the one on his daughter,  he is getting what he promoted in his sandbagging of Hillary Clinton late in the 2016 campaign, along with the New York Times and other organs of the "free press."   Whole lotta karma going down, these days. 

** This summary of her CV at her nomination says, interestingly.

Jackson would be the first public defender to become a Supreme Court justice in the history of the Court.   She would be the first justice with substantial criminal defense experience since Thurgood Marshall retired in 1991.

It is certainly no accident that the other most recent "justice" to have practiced in that low-compensation area was the first Black Man to have been put on the Court,  Thurgood Marshall.   Just as it is no accident that no Republican nominee in recent history has had such a history, if there ever was one.  There are few who get nominated to the Supreme Court that you'd be tempted to sell as someone uninterested in making money out of the law but she is certainly one of those you could make a case for in that area.   None of the Republican-fascists would go into that category. 

Considering that the Honorable Ketanji Brown Jackson  was one of those the white supremacist idol,  Kirk slandered I'm going to give the rest of her qualifications which are compared to the fascists on the Supreme Court:

Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson is One of the Most Qualified Nominees for the Supreme Court Ever

February 25, 2022

JACKSON WOULD BRING AN UNPARALLELED BREADTH AND DEPTH OF EXPERIENCE 

Jackson would be the most experienced trial court judge to join the Supreme Court in almost a century.

Jackson served on the United States District Court for the District of Columbia for nearly 8 years, giving her more trial court experience than any sitting Supreme Court justice and more than any justice since Edward Sanford, who was nominated to the Supreme Court in 1923.

Jackson would be only the second sitting justice to serve at all three levels of the federal judiciary.

Only Justice Sonia Sotomayor has also served as a District judge, Circuit judge and Supreme Court justice.

Jackson would bring more years of experience as a judge than four of the sitting justices combined.

Jackson has more than eight years of experience as a judge; that’s more than Justices Thomas, Roberts, Kagan, and Barrett had combined when they were confirmed.

Jackson would be the first public defender to become a Supreme Court justice in the history of the Court.

She would be the first justice with substantial criminal defense experience since Thurgood Marshall retired in 1991.

JACKSON HAS WON BIPARTISAN SUPPORT AND PRAISE

Jackson has been confirmed by the Senate on a bipartisan basis three times. In 2021, Jackson was confirmed to the United States Circuit Court for the District of Columbia with the support of Republican Sens. Murkowski, Collins, and Graham. 

Former Republican Speaker of the House Paul Ryan: “My praise for Ketanji’s intellect, for her character, for her integrity – it is unequivocal.”

Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX): “Very impressive background … extensive trial court experience.”

Republican-appointed judge Thomas Griffith, who supported Jackson’s elevation to the D.C. Circuit after observing her work as a judge, recently said: “Her academic record is remarkable. She has a breadth of experience, which is really quite unique.”

When Jackson was nominated to the D.C. Circuit, she received support from Supreme Court clerks for Justices Scalia, Thomas, Rehnquist, Kennedy, Souter, and O’Connor.

INDEPENDENT ANALYSTS: JACKSON IS ‘HIGHLY QUALIFIED’ WITH A ‘GLITTERING RESUME’ AND A ‘VERY DISTINGUISHED RECORD’

CNN: “She has a very distinguished record as a trial court judge and now an appellate court judge.”

Boston Globe: “A sterling educational background, a distinguished track record on the federal bench, and a reputation for both brilliance and an even judicial temperament. … A reputation as brilliant and meticulous”

PBS: “Jackson has a resume seemingly tailor-fit for the moment.”

Vox: “Well qualified for the job. … Significant judicial experience.”

CNN: “A glittering resume.”

Jennifer Rubin, Washington Post: “Top-flight academic qualifications” 

Elie Honig, CNN Senior Legal Analyst: “Ranking among the absolute finest judges I’ve ever seen in action … a truly exceptional federal judge”

Paul Bulter, Washington Post Columnist: “[A] résumé … from central casting”

SCOTUS Blog: “She would bring a wide range of experiences”

Bloomberg: “The most complete resume [among frontrunners on Biden’s reported list] for a seat on the high court.”

LA Times: “Those who know Jackson say she always drew praise and respect.”

Financial Times: “Her rise in the legal profession has been widely regarded as formidable”

Slate: “A deep understanding of labor law”

So you made it through the rapture? Now what? by Rev Ed Trevors

Catholics May Include Some Real Nutters But They Aren't Typically Superstitious Schofield Reading Nutcases - Hate Mail From An Idiot Atheist

TYPICALLY, CATHOLICS DON'T believe in "the rapture" and if anyone knew anything about what I say about religion, they would know I especially wouldn't.   It is bull shit.  I'm not saying a few idiots who remain nominal Catholics while having read the lower ends of popular protestantism (so low that I won't honor it with an upper case letter) or, more likely, listening to it in the media fall for that dispensationalist crap but that, as your snarky question if I'm all ready for this only latest prediction of the date when all those clothes will suddenly be left on the floor as their naked owners are raptured up into the air, only shows they don't read much about the religion they profess.   I'm no sure but I think that imagery is either "Late Great Planet Earth"* or the even bull shittier "Left Behind" fiction, so far more of the TV age than anything biblical.  

It was popularized through the various dispensationalist cults of the late 19th century and especially by the bull shit commentary on the KJV by Cyrus I. Schofield.** 

There are nutcase Catholics and catholics but this rapture bull shit isn't part of Catholicism and predicting the date of the "end of the world" is something that's surprising to find so popular within Protestantism.  Here's how the old King James Version in Matthew 24 debunks that practice:

36 But of that day and hour knoweth no man, no, not the angels of heaven, but my Father only. 37 But as the days of Noe were, so shall also the coming of the Son of man be. 38 For as in the days that were before the flood they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day that Noe entered into the ark, 39 And knew not until the flood came, and took them all away; so shall also the coming of the Son of man be. 40 Then shall two be in the field; the one shall be taken, and the other left. 41Two women shall be grinding at the mill; the one shall be taken, and the other left.

42 Watch therefore: for ye know not what hour your Lord doth come. 43 But know this, that if the goodman of the house had known in what watch the thief would come, he would have watched, and would not have suffered his house to be broken up. 44 Therefore be ye also ready: for in such an hour as ye think not the Son of man cometh.

45 Who then is a faithful and wise servant, whom his lord hath made ruler over his household, to give them meat in due season? 46 Blessed is that servant, whom his lord when he cometh shall find so doing. 47 Verily I say unto you, That he shall make him ruler over all his goods. 48 But and if that evil servant shall say in his heart, My lord delayeth his coming; 49 And shall begin to smite his fellowservants, and to eat and drink with the drunken; 50 The lord of that servant shall come in a day when he looketh not for him, and in an hour that he is not aware of, 51 And shall cut him asunder, and appoint him his portion with the hypocrites: there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth.

Jesus didn't know the date but some evangelical carny huckster does?   

I apologize for that KJV stuff,  if I wasn't talking about that kind of protestantism I'd have given it in the Good News or Common English Bible.   I don't know about you but the use of the language KJV and its imitators sets off my B.S.  alarm due to that being the use it's generally put to in American culture.   It's too bad because despite its defects as a translation (ALL TRANSLATIONS AS WELL AS ALL EDITIONS OF SCRIPTURE HAVE DEFECTS) as a literary project it was excellent. 

I think the evangelicals will all be in place the day after today just as they were when the original Adventist apocalypse failed to arrive on schedule.   And the second one and every one set since then and believed in as fervently by such nutcases as who take such bull shit seriously but not to do to the least among them what they would do for God, to love others as they love themselves or to do unto others as they would have done unto them.  No one who professes Christianity but who fails at even approximating those acts should ever be taken as a representative of Christianity.  

* Someday I might write again about what a two-faced, pseudo-lefty the very cynical and bitterly aging Orson Welles was.  If I'm skeptical of evangelical "christianity" I'm far more skeptical about anything that derives from show-biz, either "christianity" or "leftist" politics.  

** Schofield was one of those family-abandonning,  divorcing, remarrying adulterers I talked about the other day.   I think he was probably screwing around on his wife even before he abandoned her and his kids.  That didn't keep him from a second career (he'd been a particularly shifty law-readin' lawyer and sleazy politician) in "evangelical ministry."   He had absolutely no academic or scholarly credentials when the frickin' Oxford University Press published his massive "Schofield Bible," almost 1400 pages of the KJV with his extensive on-the-same-page commentary.   That book was massively marketed by the various evangelical outfits and popularized such nonsense as well as such dodgy stuff as "christian zionism" (lower case intended) which was a superstitious reading of Scripture popular with many a rabid antisemite of the time and down to today.   I find the suspicion that the Oxford University publishing of such a book by a man without any academic credentials or career was funded by the zionist Baron Edmond de Rothschield - who would have had the pull to get them to do it in the first place - is believable if not provable.   Its popularization of millennialist protestant notions about that most unfortunate of all Biblical books, Revelations, in which all the Jews will be living in Palestine and either convert to "christianity" or be obliterated,  drives American foreign policy far, far more strongly than any Jewish zionism that there is.   It would seem that Oxford is still cashing in on that franchise, today  

So Did Grinder Really Get Crashed

by the Charlie Kirk memorial shopping channel show?*   I'm seeing reports of that all over,  not that I'm happy to find out there are that many screwed up neo-fascist gay men that they could do that looking to get hooked up in AZ.   

* I mean, merch.   They were selling merch at a "memorial service."   These guys are trashy.   

Republican-fascism Has Reached The American Satyricon Level Of Decay

 

The corrupt brain worm addled ambulance chaser lawyer put the even more feeble-minded (I'm thinking untreated syphilis is a real possibility) and corrupt Trump in front of the camera - maybe RFK bought some stock in horse medicine and wants the price to go up.  

On the worst day of his life Joe Biden was more articulate and with it than Trump is ever, these days and for a good part of the past decade.   

Proud of what you've wrought,  Roberts?   OK with the addled tyrant you and your Ivy educated, unitary executive fascist elite lawyers have created?    You will go down as the most corrupt and vile members of the frequently compromised Court in its history, even Taney and the concurring "justices" in Dred Scott didn't do the damage to the country you have. 

Hey, hey RFK how many kids did you kill today?

And Roberts, Alito Thomas, Gorsuch, Kavanaugh and Barret?  You will all go down as the most corrupt and partisan "justices" in history.   Your only hope is for Trump and/or Vance to nominate more corrupt than you.  Cannon is rumored to be the next one up,  she'll fit right in with the Roberts Court majority. 

Already With The Hate Mail On My Morning Post

A COMMENTATOR AT the great Seneca Project Youtube channel where that compilation of Kirk in his own hateful,  violence advocating words said it best 

 "When MLK was murdered, his supporters were not ashamed of the statements he made."

As I believe Keith Olbermann pointed out, one of the things that the Kirk brigade of Trumpler Junger and on air Republican-fascists are targeting People for IS QUOTING WHAT KIRK SAID!  

Here's the original posting of what should become the classic expose of the hypocrisy of the Kirk deification campaign.   

Charlie Kirk in his own words. We Report. You Decide.

Similarly we find nowhere in the New Testament an understanding of Christian discipleship compatible with a life devoted to one's own success,

I AM GETTING THE FEELING that the Charlie Kirk deification is already getting old and is soon going to turn into a backlash,  if it follows the typical example, it will be more like The Onion's already satirical view of that  His life and sayings don't lend themselves to long-term durability on that count because the most of them were generally disgusting advocacy of rottenness and evil,  the things which got him the patronage of rich Republican-fascists and which made him rich on top of that.   His was a career in peddling racism, ethnic and religious bigotry, hatred of the least among us, hatred of LGBTQ+ People all with a sickly high-fructose glaze of religious hypocrisy.   I am not above mentioning his oh-so-recent widow embarking on a major fund-raising effort themed on his death

After vowing that her husband’s mission will continue, the widow of Charlie Kirk has made a major fundraising push following the right-wing political activist’s assassination.

It comes as the reverberations to the shocking, fatal shooting of the 31-year-old pro-MAGA firebrand on September 10 continue throughout the U.S. and around the world.

Some American leaders, both Republicans and Democrats, have called for unity and an end to political violence in the wake of his tragic death in Utah last week. Others have used the assassination as a rallying cry.

On Sunday alone, a blitz of fundraising texts went out under Erika Kirk’s name for both the organization co-founded by Kirk, Turning Point USA, which organizes and trains young conservatives, as well as its political advocacy arm, Turning Point Action.

How touching.   If by "touching" you mean not touching at all.   Among those I know the only effort like that would be to aid a young widow with children whose bereavement would mean immediate economic hardship and perhaps ruin,   most often with ruinous medical expenses not to mention funeral costs.  Kirk reportedly left $12 million from his career in peddling hate and economic inequality, his family will not be immediately destitute.   

I think they leave us with no alternative but to point out the evil that he spread,  

. . . including hatred towards Christians who, instead of making a broadcast display of their putative "Christianity" instead practiced what Kirk and his ilk would vilify as "woke"* which is, in fact, to follow The Gospel, The Law and The Prophets,  it is in advocating that that Jesus said you were to love your neighbor as yourself and immediately following that with the parable of the Good Samaritan which proved that "your neighbor" wasn't only a stranger but a stranger of a different People.    I didn't realize that until I read some of what he said slamming those who were faithful to Scripture - such as Ms. Rachel advocated when her Pride Month program advocated loving everyone, the occasion that Kirk called stoning Gay People as “God’s perfect law when it comes to sexual matters.”    Like all straight men I've ever known of he ignores that by "God's perfect law" he would have to have favored the stoning death of Ronald Reagan and Donald Trump as well as a whole host of other straight, white Republican-fascist adulterers,  as I pointed out last week, if you took the Gospel of Jesus seriously,  you would have to include every straight, white, Republican "christian" man and woman who had committed adultery, including those who divorce and remarry.   Of course "THAT'S DIFFERENT"  it always is when it's straight, white, affluent, "christians" whether they be a "Most Christian Monarch" who lives an adulterous lifestyle or a right-wing Republican like Trump or Reagan violating their marriage vows while wrapping themselves in the phony aura of Protestant Bible worship -  I doubt either of them ever read a passage of it.    

Reading about these things this morning reminded me of this passage from a book which I find I continually go back to,  Living Jesus by Luke Timothy Johnson.  In his concluding chapter he said:

It is at this point, in fact, that we find the most consistent testimony in the writings of the New Testament - namely, that there is a necessary congruence between the character of Jesus' human life and the character of Christian discipleship

Nowhere in the New Testament is there an image of the human Jesus that is compatible with attitudes of hubris, hedonism, envy, arrogance acquisitiveness, self-aggrandizement, hostility or violence.  Jesus is everywhere associated with the faithful obedience toward God and meek, compassionate, self-emptying service toward other people. 

Jesus' character reveals him to be someone who hopes in the power of God rather than in human manipulation, who faithfully obeys God rather than his own project, and who loves with a self-giving of time and energy and presence to the needs of others in preference to his own.   

That is why the cross of Jesus stands as the central symbol for his entire life;  his death was in faithful obedience to God even when he wanted to live;  his death was an act of love to overcome alienation between humans; his death was the ultimate expression of hope in God who can call into being that which does not exist and therefore can give life to the dead.

Similarly we find nowhere in the New Testament an understanding of Christian discipleship compatible with a life devoted to one's own success,  pleasure, comfort, freedom from suffering, or power at the expense of others.  Everywhere we find the qualities that are found in Jesus advanced as essential to the following of Jesus;   the same faith, the same love, the same hope.  The basic pattern of faithful obedience to God and loving service to others is the image of Christ that the Spirit replicates in the freedom of those who belong to Christ. 

Jesus was certainly not one of the white-racist Republican bros,  Jesus lived a thoroughly woke life and so do those who try to follow him.  There is no room in that for the current American Republican ideology, lifestyle or . . . well, I guess I'll resort to calling it culture.  

Christians who do try to practice Christian discipleship are going to have to make that the final test of the public profession of Christianity.   It is entirely incompatible with the life that Kirk advocated, he said the man who did advocate that, The Reverend Martin Luther King jr, was a phony and rotten.  Kirk said that of a man whose career before his assassination did, in fact, leave his wife and children without millions of dollars, a man whose memory Kirk lied about to vilify him.     We have to point out the hypocrisy of those Republican-fascists and others who profess Christianity while advocating late-stage capitalist materialism in its most fascistic form, such as Kirk did. 

* THERE IS NO MISTAKING THE RACISM OF THE ANTI-"WOKE" BULLSHIT OF TRUMPIAN-FASCISM.   "Woke" is a word from the Black American vocabulary, originally specifically referring to those who had become fully aware of and opposed to racism.   It's no accident that it was turned into a dirty word among the current and most overtly fascist of our indigenous facists, the white supremacists who the financiers first tried to harness in the 1950s and 60s to fuel the Republican-fascist ascendency,  something that that hypocritical homosexual William Rusher and his buddy, the silver-plated tongued William F. Buckley pioneered and which Nixon Reagan, Bush, Bush II and Trump brought to power - along with the Republicans on the Rehnquist and Roberts Court.   When you hear one of them say "woke" you can hear the "N" word implied.  

Saturday Night Short Opera - James Agee and Samuel Barber - Knoxville Summer Of 1915

 

Russell Thomas - Tenor

Simon Lepper - Piano 

I know it's not an opera but it is a very effective mono-drama.   I wrote a piece about this music about twelve years ago, you can find it in my archive if you're curious.   It was going through my head so I went looking for a performance I hadn't heard and wondered if a tenor had ever recorded it,  this is the one I found.  I don't know if Barber ever authorized a tenor singing of it, the original having been commissioned by the great soprano Eleanor Steber whose piano accompanied performance I posted then (still available on Youtube) but this is one mighty fine performance, both Russell Thomas singing it and Simon Lepper playing the piano.   

Three More Gun Deaths That Charlie Kirk Thought Were "Worth It" To Have The Second Amendment

Bishop Timothy Senior of Harrisburg said he was "deeply saddened" by a shooting in rural Pennsylvania that claimed the lives of three police officers and injured two others.

York County law enforcement officials were attempting to serve an arrest warrant to a man at a farm in North Codorus Township Sept. 17 when the man opened fire before being shot by an officer, officials said.

"At this difficult time, I entrust all those impacted to the loving care of our Lord," Senior said in a Sept. 18 statement. "We recognize and honor the bravery and selflessness of law enforcement officers, who daily put their lives on the line to protect others. Their courage reflects the highest ideals of service and sacrifice."

"As a community, I call on all people of good will to join me in praying for healing for the two injured officers, and comfort for the families of the three officers killed," he added. "May Christ, the Prince of Peace, bring comfort to those who suffer and guide our community to healing and unity."

And as Bishop Senior mourns them,  Cardinal Timothy Dolan is calling Kirk a "a modern day St Paul."

The grinning, asinine Dolan is about as full of shit as it's possible for someone in his position to be,  joined by that other crock of crap,  Robert Barron.   The US Catholic Conference of Bishops is still full of the worst appointees in living memory, put there by JPII and Benedict XVI.   I hope that Pope Leo retires Dolan as soon as he can get round to it,  I thought he hadn't turned 75 yet but he did in February,  they're required to proffer their resignation,  his should be accepted as soon as possible and he should be shunted into something where he can't make so much of an ass of himself and a scandal to the Catholic Church.  

As AOC said at the link, 

We should be clear about who Charlie Kirk was. A man who believed that the civil rights act that granted black Americans the right to vote was a mistake.

And he should always be remembered as someone who was entirely OK with the epidemic of gun death in the United States.  We know he was BECAUSE HE SAID HE WAS. 

Trump Is Rotting Before Our Eyes

 like Louis XIV did.  

It's a matter of time at this point. 

This Time There Are No Real Stalinist Spies

and ideologues to muddy the waters like there actually were during the late 40s-mid-60s red scare.   And it wasn't as if any of those were any actual danger to American democracy except a very, very few of the actual spies for Stalin.   There was less than a zero chance that America was going to go commie back then, that was just a way for old line Republicans to scare the grandparents and parents of today's Trupzi voters into voting against their own economic interests.   

This time the colluders with the neo-Stalin are the Republican-fascists,  and I mean every one of them from Trump to the leadership of the House and Senate and the six actual fascists who sit on the Supreme Court,  the hugest irony of American history is that in 2025 it is the Republicans who are more than all-in on selling the country to a Stalinist-expansionist-imperialist dictator and making sure that all American institutions,  from the always-Quisling corporate media to the pathetic universities and colleges,  the Ivys as well as those who are dependent on Republican-fascist dominated legislatures and governors are acquiescent if not enthusiastic.  Any Republican who isn't in on that left the party just before or during Trump I.  

This time there is not going to be any hypocrisy in the resistance to the Trumpian-McCarthyism,   there is not going to be any whining about the violations of "free speech" or other rights by those who support a Russian dictator who crushes all of those as there were in the first and second red scares.  There is not going to be any question of disloyalty in that opposition to American democracy BECAUSE IT IS THE TRUMPIST-NEO-MCCARTHYITE SIDE WHO HAVE BETRAYED NOT ONLY AMERICAN DEMOCRACY BUT EVEN THE REPUBLICAN FORM OF GOVERNMENT.   The Roberts Court did that last year as they prepared the legal system for exactly the fascism that Trump II embodies and practices.  

And as I have pointed out and will repeat,  seeing what the Roberts Court traitors have done for the stupidest, most vulgar, most criminal, most financially corrupt president in American history IMAGINE WHAT THEY WILL DO ONCE J. D. VANCE TAKES OVER AND THE EVEN MORE OVERTLY FASCIST THIEL, HIS OWNER, IS THE ONE WHO IS PLAYING THE ELON MUSK ROLE.

It is a smaller irony that what got us here was the Warren Court making it possible for the New York Times and all other media to lie with impunity from a lied about individual or group suing them for those lies - ironically in itself, them doing so when it was a white supremacist fascist, the Sullivan who they thought they were ruling against when what they did over the next six decades was to empower the white supremacists by their "civil liberties" ruling.   And, as I pointed out again the other day,  what they did in 1964 the Burger Court furthered into overtly aiding big-money corruption of our elections in Buckely v Valeo (in that case the Buckley they sided with was an overt fascist) and to further corrupt our politics in the Citizens United ruling.   The Warren Court's precedents that ended up aiding the corruption of our politics, preparing us for the previous most corrupt president in our history,  Nixon,  the one whose administration used to hold the record for number of members of it indicted for crimes committed in office,  Reagan,  Bush I who pardoned his way out of a criminal investigation of himself with the aid of Bill Barr,  Bush II, installed by the previously most baldly partisan political Supreme Court in our history,  and then Trump who the Roberts Court made a king - though the lower courts and the cowardice of the likes of Merrick Garland and the manipulations of "THE LAWS DELAYS" played their own role in this. 

Don't expect that there will be any relief of this from the Courts because the Roberts Court, sitting atop the government ALONG WITH THEIR CHOSEN REPUBLICAN-FASCIST KING will do everything it can to thwart the reestablishment of not only democracy but,  republican governance, itself.   That is another of the ironies of this, that it was the "republican" party which has abolished republican governance in favor of Republican-fascist gangster-dictatorship.   It would take a Democratic Congress and President finally, once and for all, refusing to go along with the Marbury v Madison power grab by the Supreme Court to thwart that and the lawyers and Constitutional scholars among the Democrats can be counted on to chicken out on that emergency measure to save egalitarian democracy.    I have no confidence in the lawyers, least of all the "civil libertarians" among them.  

There is so much that has to be changed in the U.S. Constitution but one of the most essential is stripping the Court of lifetime appointments,  their self-created power to nullify laws duly enacted by the Congress and the flagrant corruption that those like Thomas, Alito, Roberts and Coney-Barrett are overt examples of - and I wouldn't at all be shocked to find others of them revealed as being as overtly corrupt.    

Another thing that has to change is that those who hold office, the ones who take an oath to "protect and defend the Constitution" have to be formally required to pledge to protect and defend EGALITARIAN DEMOCRACY.   And it must overtly be equality as well as democracy because we have had apartheid-democracy and it leads exactly in the same direction we have gone.   The Constitution is a piece of paper, as the Rehnquist and Roberts Courts have proven, as the Taney and Marshall Court proved before,  it means nothing under the present rules except what the corrupt "justices" in their majority say it means which means it means nothing.    It doesn't serve EQUALITY,  so it doesn't serve legitimate democracy, the equally expressed decision of a majority of how the law will be and how we will be governed.    

In the series of posts I made of the late 18th century anti-federalists' warnings about the Constitution - which I am about to get back to - it was clear that a lot of what they saw as dangerous in the Constitution has turned out to be far more prescient than what the federalists of the highly touted federalist papers claimed for their work.   None of them more prescient than "Brutus" warning about the potential corruption not of BUT THROUGH THE SUPREME COURT.  

The warnings about the Senate are as proven by history as those about that insult to democracy, the Electoral College and those who had reservations about the presidential system that was set up.   I have been reading the notes made from inside the dangerously secret meetings of the Constitutional Convention by Robert Yeats,  who many believe penned the "Brutus" letters.    The publication of those preceded the publication of Madison's far less orderly notes, the only known extensive record of the otherwise secret meetings.   It was after the publication of the Madison papers in 1840 that the abolitionists, most notably another author I've cited extensively, the radical abolitionist Wendell Phillips,  was able to make the case that the Constitution was, in fact, a pro-slavery compact between the Southern slave-power and the Northern financial interests,   in being that it was also what I have concluded it is, an anti-equality and so anti-democracy compact made among aristocrats hostile to democracy and its "adoption" rigged by them in most of the states.   There is no honest way to back up the lie coined by the federalist James Wilson that it was adopted by "the whole" American People, it was as rigged an election as those held today in the former slave power and other Republican-fascist strongholds now that the Rehnquist and Roberts Courts have annulled the Voting Rights Act, the duly enacted and re-enacted law of a bi-partisan Congress that, for the first time in our history, gave us the potential of a truly democratic government.  

The very structure of our government has to be changed to make another Trump or Bush II or Reagan or Nixon not only possible but, in light of that history since the Sullivan Decision - A LIKELIHOOD UNDER THE CONSTITUTION.    The Constitution will always thwart equality and so democracy from now on,  it has been doing so since its adoption,  EVERY STEP OF PROGRESS BOUGHT WITH OCEANS OF BLOOD, BY BLACK PEOPLE AND OTHER PEOPLE OF COLOR, WOMEN, WORKERS, LGBTQ+ ETC. TURNED BACK BY THE SUPREME COURT, OFTEN USING THE SO-CALLED "BILL OF RIGHTS" AS THEIR BASIS FOR THWARTING EQUALITY AND DEMOCRACY.    That is the true history of the United States under the Constitution, they've perfected their sandbagging of democracy for the entire time,  they get even the most devoted proponents of equality and democracy to go along with the system that does that by the fake reverence for the meaningless document and suckering them with those oaths into thinking it is anything than what our history proves it is and always has been, an aristocratic instrument that will always turn oppressive,  the danger that we face, today, is the greatest danger of that which the whole People have faced in our history.   

I'm Sounding Like A Broken Record, For Those Who Are Familiar With Vinyl Recordings

 OLBERMANN HAS THE BEST essay on what produced the milieu in which Kirk was assassinated with a huge litany of citations of Trump's advocating deadly violence INCLUDING GUN VIOLENCE AND "SECOND AMENDMENT" TACTICS.   And if that's not enough he plays a clip of Kirk advocating political violence,  advocating that President Biden be put to death in the mix.   It is the best essay I've read about this. 

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In other news,  in the wake of FOX Lies Brian Kilmeade advocating the murder of homeless People,  in the fifth incidence of mass shooting violence IN MINNEAPOLIS MINNESOTA! in recent time, two homeless encampments have been the victim of mass shootings last night.

And the response of the city is to destroy the homeless encampments,  NOT BY, YOU KNOW, HOUSING THE HOMELESS PEOPLE THERE,  but by bulldozing where they live.   

“If this city truly treated these shootings like the emergencies they are, people would already see grief and trauma counselors on the ground,” Sabri told local media after the shooting. “Instead, the mayor’s answer is the same tired move we’ve seen for years: displacement. Bulldoze people’s tents, fence off their space, and call it leadership.”

The city promptly moved to clear out the encampment on Sabri’s property, which could nullify the drawn-out legal battle between the two.

As the cost of housing continues to soar beyond the means of most Americans and the number of unhoused people rises across the country, the topic is increasingly prevalent on the national stage.

The shootings were two of five mass shootings to occur in Minnesota’s largest city in the past two weeks, including one at a local Catholic school that killed two children.

A Trump executive order month earlier directed governments to begin “shifting” people without stable housing into “long-term institutional settings”, something many critics feared could lead to a direct criminalization of homelessness.

Fox News host Brian Kilmeade recently floated the idea of “involuntary lethal injection” for homeless individuals around the country, stating: “Just kill ‘em.”

It's unfortunate that they didn't include the Roberts Reublican-fascist controlled Court in the story because,  IN AN ENTIRELY MORE PRACTICAL WAY THAN KILMEADE FLAPPING HIS FLABBY LIPS THEY HAVE LEGALIZED THE FIRST STEP IN KILLING THE HOMELESS,  MAKING IT POSSIBLE FOR LOCAL GOVERNMENTS TO ILLEGALIZE HOMELESSNESS.   To ban homeless People living because in order to live you have to live somewhere where you can live.  The clean, well dressed, billionaire grifting six Republican-fascists on the Roberts Court were more elegant in their language BUT THEY ACTUALLY MOVED THE CONSTITUTION IN THE DIRECTION THAT KILMEADE ADVOCATED.    Those millionaires and soon to be millionaires didn't address the typical unwillingness of governments to make an effort to end homelessness,  they would certainly never say there was any kind of government obligation to do that,  so all they have to do is harry the homeless out of their town into another town or into some wild area where they can't possibly live for long and that's the same thing as saying they can be harried to death.   Considering how many of those who are homeless are children might help understand that this is worse than the British death camp system of the workhouses which had, at their foundation, the same Malthusian intention.  

If "They" Killed Kirk The Ones Theying Us Are The Ones Who Provided The Gun And Trained His Killer And Gave Him The Ideology To Think It Was OK

I HAVE POINTED OUT many times here that lies are the lifeblood of the Trump movement, that if lies were not permitted to be told freely by our corporate media and individuals then American democracy would never have been in any danger.  There is a reason that Donald Trump, even in Trump I had a proven record as the biggest liar who has ever been president of the United States,  and there have been plenty of also-rans especially among recent Republican ones.  

That permission for the media to lie with impunity was first given in the Sullivan Decision of the Warren Court in which those "liberal" justices, who, by the way, were hardly "liberals" even then, I wouldn't even put William O. Douglas in that category.* Certainly foremost in those lies are the lies targeting groups of People,  People of Color, Women, LGBTQ+, the destitute.  Note: I'll have something to say about Kilmeade saying the quiet part out loud and how the Roberts Court isn't all that far behind him in its desire to kill off the destitute.    And certainly far from least among those who they lie about are  "liberals."  Lying about liberals, real and some of the liberalish libertarian kind has been the lifeblood of the modern conservative movement,  certainly from the time that the fascist and racist with a silver plated tongue,  William F. Buckley and the more in print and behind the scenes traitorous faggot, racist and Buckley's fellow fascist William Rusher .**

But to get back to my theme.   This short piece by Paul Blumenthal says it quite well. 

“They couldn’t silence him so they killed him,” Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-N.Y.) told the Albany Times-Union.

“They’re killing us in our churches. They tried to kill our president. They killed Charlie, one of our greatest advocates,” conservative podcaster Matt Walsh said on X.

“If they won’t leave us in peace, then our choice is fight or die,” billionaire Elon Musk wrote on X.

“They are at war with us!” Fox News anchor Jesse Watters said on Sept. 10.

Life: Jesse Watters’ ‘War’ Remarks After Charlie Kirk’s Killing Have Experts Sharing 1 Dire Warning

“The evildoers responsible for my husband’s assassination have no idea what they have done,” Kirk’s widow, Erika Kirk, said. “They should all know this: If you thought that my husband’s mission was powerful before, you have no idea what you just have unleashed across the country and this world.”

“They almost killed Donald Trump, they killed Charlie Kirk, both outdoors,” Rep. Nancy Mace (R-S.C.) told Fox News Digital.

Who “they” is is rarely said explicitly, though it is heavily implied — some blurry coalition or Venn diagram encompassing Democrats, liberals and political opponents; but also institutions that are already right-wing targets such as think tanks, donors and higher education, with some conservatives blaming the one semester of college suspect Tyler Robinson attended for radicalizing him.

Conservatives’ efforts to blame some vague “they” for these attacks are not a slip of the tongue: It crafts a narrative of victimhood aimed at enacting retributive repression or violence against their political opponents. This is made explicit in calls to indict billionaire liberal donor George Soros, investigate and dismantle liberal nonprofits and target media companies, none of which appear to have had any involvement, as a response to Kirk’s murder.

Vice President JD Vance made this clear in a furious speech stating that the country cannot be united unless the institutions of the political opposition are dismantled and destroyed.

"They" is not the kid who is the guy who shot the right wing liar, racist, misogynist and targeter of LGBTQ+ People,  they is their political opponents who didn't provide the shooter with an uncontrolled gun, with an apparent lifetime of gun culture and the ability to gain his proficiency in killing.   "They" didn't provide him with a social, "religious" and political culture in which such a killing would be held to be justifiable,  THAT WAS THE MODERN RIGHT WING OF WHICH EVERY ONE OF THOSE "THEYING" ASSHOLES ARE MAJOR FIGURES IN. 

If they want to put the blame for the murder of Charlie Kirk on a "They" the one that really fits that role is THEM.    And I would include Kirk himself in that.   HE DID SAY THAT GUN DEATHS WERE WORTH IT TO HAVE THE SECOND AMENDMENT WHEN IT WAS A "THEY" WHO DIDN'T INCLUDE HIM.   He was a part of what killed him and that should never be forgotten. 

No one on the left should ever let them get away with this one because IT'S ONLY WHEN CERTAIN PEOPLE ARE MURDERED THAT THEY CARE AT ALL ABOUT IT AND THEY OPENLY DELIGHT WHEN OTHER PEOPLE ARE TARGETS OF ASSASSINS AND ATTEMPTED ASSASSINS.   Kirk did that when it was one of theirs who went to kill Nancy Pelosi and nearly did kill her husband.   And when it wasn't Kirk proposing a fund to bail the assassin out,  it was others of his ilk who were trying to justify it by painting Paul Pelosi as gay.   And the corporate media lets them get away with having it every which way all the time.   The idea that the "free press" is a pillar of democracy is as crumbling to dust in reality as it is a major participant in the destruction of democracy.  Buckley and Rusher had a lot to do with that, too.   Two of the original false=faces of American fascism.   Two huge liars. 

*  "Civil libertarians" who put the rights of words over the lives of human beings and other living creatures aren't liberals in the traditional American meaning of the word.   Douglas was a civil libertarian, his "liberalism" was more in line with the corrupted meaning of that word derived from 18th century laissez faire than the ethic of doing unto others what you would have them do unto you and loving others as you love yourself.   That corrupt understanding of liberalism is really not much different from the money side of the Republican-fascist coalition.  Even many former laissez-faire libertarian Republicans have had to face what their ideology produced in the real test of history instead of lawerly-liarly language. 

** I've become more interested in the role that the putrid hypocrite and general asshole William Rusher played in turning what was merely a conservative Republican Party into the Republican-fascist party we have today,   all the time being protected as an in-the-closet gay man by the viciously anti-gay conservative movement.   As can be heard in this confrontation of Buckely biographer Sam Tanenhaus by Margaret Hoover on the resurrected "Firing Line" in which she complains that it was unfair of him to "out" the long dead Rusher even as Tanenhaus says that when he interviewed him he "outted" long lists of other men.  Rusher's hypocrisies and lies were his whole personality and existence.    May he linger in hell a long, long time. 

If I knew I had twenty more years I'd do a study of the decidedly bizarre frequency of male homosexuals in the worst of the American fascist movement.  William Rusher is an especially putrid specimen of that pathology.    I am, by the way, entirely on-board with outting Republican-fascists who are living a sex life in the closet.  Not only those who bash other LGBTQ+ People but the racists, misogynists, haters of the poor and destitute.    From here on in,  I'm all in with them as much as I am LGBTQ+ People.   

I've Changed My Mind We've Got To Destroy The Phony Front They're Putting On Kirk To Make Him A MAGA Martyr He was As Bad As Some Of The Worst Of Them - Hate Mail

I WOULD WELCOME SOMEONE, anyone documenting to me any time that any MAGA,  Republican-fascist,  Trumpzi, or anyone on the right who has recently invoked the many instances when Leviticus or other verses in the Bible command the stoning murder of straight men who commit adultery or any or a range of sexual or other crimes.   I'm trying to think of any time I ever heard anyone, even the most rabid of old-line "trad" Catholics who may still take Luke 16:18 or Matthew 5:32 seriously* take the logical step to say that according to Leviticus those straight adulterers have to be taken out and stoned to death. 

I would welcome it knowing full well that apart from, perhaps, some of the cultists of the late and excommunicated Fr. Leonard Feeney, you won't find a one.    

I would like to know when Kirk or any other Republican-fascist influencer ever advocated  that treatment for straight adulterers explicitly or even in the wink and nod way that Kirk did when he and his fascist bros were slamming an nice young woman on instagram for advocating love - I'll give you the link to where you can hear what he actually said.

MS Rachel, in her Pride Month message pointed out that Jesus said that Loving God with all your heart and loving your neighbor as yourself were the very basis of the Law and the Prophets:

37 He replied, “You must love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your being,[a] and with all your mind. 38 This is the first and greatest commandment. 39 And the second is like it: You must love your neighbor as you love yourself.[b] 40 All the Law and the Prophets depend on these two commands.”   Matthew 22: 37-40  Common English Bible 

You can listen to what Kirk and the other creeps said,  you might notice that Patriot Takes gives you the gist of what Kirk asserted SPECIFICALLY ABOUT THE STONING GAY PEOPLE  PART OF IT:

While criticizing YouTuber Ms. Rachel for quoting “love your neighbor” to defend celebrating pride month, Charlie Kirk quoted a Bible verse used to justify stoning gay people “to death.”

Kirk called the stoning verse, “God’s perfect law when it comes to sexual matters.”

I have no idea why Stephen King backed down but his original reading of it was right,  it's exactly what Charlie Kirk was advancing in his selective reading of Scripture, just as everyone selectively reads it while calling one of the most brutal of verses EVER REALLY FOLLOWED UP TO AND INTO THE MODERN ERA AS THE REST OF IT IS IGNORED.   If you think that kind of thing is over,  when Charles Rhines was sentenced to death in South Dakota (executed in 2019) one of the jurors took him being gay into their decision he should die.  One who sentenced him said that just sending him to prison for life would be what a gay man would want.  The courts wouldn't even look at the evidence:

South Dakota executed death row prisoner Charles Rhines on November 4, 2019, following unsuccessful litigation on multiple fronts. A South Dakota judge issued an execution warrant for Mr. Rhines in June 2019, on the heels of the U.S. Supreme Court’s refusal to grant certiorari review of his claim that his jurors had sentenced him to death based on his sexual orientation. From 2016 to 2019, Mr. Rhines had attempted to obtain judicial review of that claim, armed with sworn statements from multiple jurors confirming this basis for their decision. However, state and federal courts repeatedly refused to grant him a hearing to determine whether his death sentence was constitutional in light of the new evidence.

I could go on and on with that.  I would point out that even today that anyone who murders a gay man in many, perhaps all states could put him on trial by bringing that up and many law scholars say that that should be allowed. 

Perhaps someone should give the generally thoughtful Stephen King that real context to what Kirk said as an excuse to reject the "Love your neighbor"  "all your neighbors" part of what Ms. Rachel said.  

Kirk called the stoning verse, “God’s perfect law when it comes to sexual matters.”   I'm sure that he and the bros would reject the parts about straight guys getting stoned for committing adultery,  I'm sure they'd exempt their god-man Trump for his lifetime of violating what Kirk called "God's perfect law when it comes to sexual matters."   And that's just one of the massive hypocrisies, lies, racist slanders, etc.  that came out of that fountain of hate and advocacy of violence. 

* Every one that putteth away his wife, and marrieth another, committeth adultery: and he that marrieth her that is put away from her husband, commmitteth adultery. Luke 16:18

But I say to you, that whosoever shall put away his wife, excepting for the cause of fornication, maketh her to commit adultery: and he that shall marry her that is put away, committeth adultery. Matthew 5:32

Douay-Rheims Bible

Olbermann Is Excellent Today

STARTING WITH KILMEAD'S FINAL SOLUTION to homelessness while dealing the Republican-fascist attempt to turn Kirk into Trumpzi America's Horst Wessel better than anyone I've encountered, he analyzes Putin's trial runs for his attempt to reestablish the Soviet Union with turning the entirety of Eastern Europe into his vassals and then move on to Western Europe with the American Republican Party being all-in on it here.    I would have to give you the entire transcript to do justice to how he covers everything, including the attacks on Kirk by Laura Loomer and Nick Fuentes (far more likely to have influenced Robinson than anyone on the left,  that that white supremacist troll-boy) and why the fascist mouth flappers from FOX Lies to the most obscure of them online are freaking out about one of their getting shot - by one of theirs - is because they never believed all of that violence they have called for since right-wing hate-talk radio first started getting off the ground in, like, the 1920s might touch their lily white hides but now they have to figure someone might do what they wanted done unto so many others being done unto them. 

Just listen to it.  

Hate Mail

 Dave Rubin?   That right-wing whore?   

I read what he said,  I stand by what I said.  No LGBTQ+ PERSON who saw that doesn't know what it means.   Especially given who his audience is.   I'd advise anyone who is inclined to take him seriously should consider that very carefully. 

If they insist on presenting my choice as between children's safety and Lady Chatterly's Lover, the book goes.

ANSWERING MY MOST persistent and persistently wrong troll brought the reaction to this early post of mine to mind.    I will call your attention to the very last line added to it noting that I first posted it on June 1st, 2006 less than a month after I started posting regular blog pieces.  I vaguely remember it was in reaction to a Supreme Court ruling that protected commercial speech while the members of the Roberts Court diminished the noted consequential harm to children their ruling would result in.  Maybe I should go back and try to figure out which of the atrocities of the Rehnquist years that might have been.  

It's unfortunate that the original comments this piece got deleted by the technology it was done in dying because being a violation of liberally-lefty free-speech absolutism, it got a huge reaction, far more than I was used to getting at the time.   I will admit that I included the line about Lady Chatterly's Lover because of the iconic first-amendmenty vibes that piece of tripe held due to its ancient legal suppression - D. H. Lawrence is a very overrated writer who would have been even more forgotten if that piece of junk hadn't become a rather stupid cause celebre.   There is no work of fiction I'd put above the rights of children but I chose that one for that reason.   But the idea that someone would dare put the rights of real, living children over words was deemed to be beyond tolerance at even a feminist blog of the time.  It is insane to put a book over the rights of anyone.   I have no common ground with "liberals" or any left that puts the make-believe "rights" of objects over the lives of humans and other living beings. 

Rereading this last night it struck me how much of it was a description of what Jeffrey Epstein, Ghislaine Maxwell, Trump and the other Birthday Book 12-year-old boy types were regularly doing to children,  the youngest we know about, 14.  If their crimes had been revealed then, they certainly would have figured as examples of what I was talking about.   As it turns out, the children were the ones who have lost out entirely under our pathologically degenerate legal system.   Don't tell me that's unrelated to the permission of pornography. 

Monday, August 14, 2006

The Most Important Right Children Have is to the Protection of Adults

Do you hate people who pretend that children are like adults, too? Who pretend to pretend that children are like adults. They know children aren't like adults and that's the reason they do it. They want to use them. It's not just those ironically misnamed "pedophiles" who most certainly don't love children. Advertisers, markerters, fast food and entertainment companies, youth sports and those sordid beauty pageants we found about when the little girl was murdered in Colorado, they don't love them either. All of them fall on the same continuum of adults and industries turning children into commodities and business opportunities.

Judges and the law too often go along with the pretense of the pretense. Pretending that children are little adults because that's how their bread is buttered. They pretend to be standing on high principle while allowing the violation of children's' most important right, to be protected from creeps and their business partners.

Children aren't little adults only because they're too small to protect themselves physically, they aren't able to reason at a level sufficient to see through con men. Even at the fairly advanced age of their teens they can't talk themselves out of doing the first dumb thing that seems attractive. If you need proof, just ask a public health nurse what happens to her teen pregnancy case load in the months after the carnival comes to town. Children being targeted by advertising are a lot younger than those. Toxic consumerism is turning out to be the major health threat facing children in the developed world.

The religion of free trade has successfully hidden some of the worst child abuse for profit. Children kept as slaves still produce a lot of what is sold here. It's not just the discount junk either, they produce some of the higher ticket stuff too. The trade in children as sweatshop workers isn't that far removed from the trade in them for sex, there is a lot of cross over between the two. When not enslaving children directly, their parents are kept from caring for them with long work hours at too little pay to feed or house them. That is happening here in the Unites States as well as across the third world. That is what is hidden behind the happy face of advertising and the trained voice of the corporate spokeswoman who WAS chosen for her gender.

Children are seen by corporations as either disposable robots for maximizing profit by cutting production costs or as easy marks on the consuming end of the production cycle. In the post Reagan-Thatcher world we live in the legal system and larger society threat them that way too. How bad are conservatives for children? Never forget, Thatcher blocked action that would restrict children being used as soldiers. Conservatives are filth.

The most important right that children have is to the protection of adults, their parents, their community and the world. For children that is more important than the entire Bill of Rights. Without it they have no life and no chance to pursue their own happiness free of deception and the worst forms of abuse. They have a right not to be lied to by mass media. This is so clear that it shouldn't ever have gotten lost. It might be prettied up in legal nice talk but too many law professors, judges lawyers and the constitutional purity industry have chosen corporate profits over the protection of children. Theories of freedom of the press concerning commercial speech are part of it. And that's over. If they insist on presenting my choice as between children's safety and Lady Chatterly's Lover, the book goes. Handing that crap over to the far right for them to throw against real, important First Amendment protections is one of the stupidest things that the free speech absolutists do. Theories of the market and its artificial rights are the rest of it and the far right isn't going to do anything to endanger those. Civil libertarians aren't so stupid that they can't come up with more nuanced ways to protect children and the right of speech while keeping corporate interests from deceiving us all at the same time. But it's not possible until you stop making believe that corporate "speech" deserves the same protection as the lives of real people.

Theories are supposed to help clarify the truth, not to shield degenerate behavior. Any legal theory that leads away from a society protecting every child here and around the world is the come hither call of a carny barker and a brothel Madame. Corporate lawyers and spokespersons who tell these lies don't belong on the morning shows chatting with Diane and Matt, they belong on the grainy footage of the Dateline camera.

First posted Thursday, June 01, 2006 on olvlzl