News bits

The Supreme Court again

The Hill raises the same alarm that other sites are raising about what the radical right Supreme Court is going to do to us in its 2022-2023 term. Although The Hill blandly calls the effort “remaking U.S. constitutional law in a conservative image,” that misses the point. Republican judges are remaking the law into a Christian Sharia and brass knuckles capitalist kleptocracy-theocracy. The article mentions several cases including these little gems:

•  Sackett v. EPA is likely to lead to greater land development and loosen requirements on businesses that discharge pollutants into waters (brass knuckles, anti-regulation, pro-pollution, pro-development capitalism)
•  In Moore v. Harper, the radical right is asking for state legislatures to have power to rig elections and overturn election results the controlling state party dislikes, where that power is almost absolute and essentially unreviewable by state or federal courts (GOP’s anti-democratic tyranny of the minority)
•  In 303 Creative LLC v. Elenis, the radical right wants all businesses to be able to discriminate against anyone in the LGBQT community on the grounds that it burdens religious beliefs or practices (Christian nationalists building Christian Sharia law for Christian Taliban legal standing) 

The Hill, like most or all other major MSM news sources still do not understand. What is happening is not merely conservatism. It is theocracy, single party tyranny and unfettered kleptocracy for both capitalists and the Christian Taliban. The MSM appears to be clueless.

Toxic GOP rhetoric

The Hills reports that on his propaganda site, the former president commented that Mitch McConnell must have a death wish because he supported some legislation backed by Democrats. It is a surprise that McConnell supports anything the Dems support. There must be something in it for him. 

Anyway, the main point is that, given T****’s track record of publicly inciting violence using toxic rhetoric, some folks took his death wish comment as incitement for some enraged, hate-driven crackpot with a gun to assassinate McConnell.

In the old normal times, this would not have made news. But in these new normal toxic times, it’s likely that Republican rhetoric is creeping into calls for assassinations by elites, with the approval and support of most of the GOP rank and file.

From the brazen crackpot files

In a truly strange twist of brazen mendacity, the former guy (TFG) is suing CNN for defamation. TFG is asking for $475 million in damages for CNN’s reporting on the Big Lie about the stolen 2020 election fantasy. The AP comments:

The lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, focuses primarily on the term “The Big Lie” about Trump’s false claims of widespread fraud that he says cost him the 2020 presidential election to Joe Biden.

Trump’s lawsuit claims “The Big Lie,” a phrase with Nazi connotations, has been used in reference to him more than 7,700 times on CNN since January 2021.

“It is intended to aggravate, scare and trigger people,” he said.

Golly, we wouldn’t want to aggravate, scare and trigger anyone. TGF conveniently ignorers his own copious but ruthless aggravating, scaring and/or triggering rhetoric. One can only hope that the court throws this brazen crackpottery out. The fear is that a T**** judge, e.g., Loose Cannon (Aileen Cannon), will get the case and find lots of merit because the 2020 election really was stolen in their fevered, hallucinating radical right mind. 

In the old normal times, this would not amount to news worth reporting. But in these new toxic normal times, replete with toxic T**** judges, no one can know what this will lead to. How much damage this case might cause is unpredictable. Probably little to none, but that is just a guess.

One thing is almost certain. Lawsuits like this will continue until the right case with the right facts gets taken to the Supreme Court. Then, all bets are off.