The Christian nationalist Supreme Court supports corporate emotional abuse

Activist Republican judges weigh in 

The Washington Post writes:

Supreme Court: No emotional harm awards in some discrimination suits

The Supreme Court split along ideological lines Thursday in dismissing a discrimination lawsuit filed by a deaf and legally blind woman who wanted to sue a physical therapy business for emotional distress.

The court ruled 6 to 3, with conservatives in the majority, saying facilities that receive federal funds under laws such as the Affordable Care Act cannot be held liable when the harm alleged is emotional rather than a financial loss.

A district judge dismissed the suit because it said Cummings could not pursue damages based on emotional harm, and a panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit agreed.

So did Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., writing for the majority. He said the general rule is that damages for emotional distress are available only in “highly unusual” contracts, and there was no reason to believe it covered the kind of agreements such facilities enter into regarding federal funds.

It is not just the case that Republican federal judges are merely Christian nationalist theocrats. They are also laissez-faire capitalists and neo-fascist judicial activists. One can look forward to a continuing stream of decisions that take power from consumers, one after another after another, and gives that taken power to companies. The power flows to both for-profit and non-profit human beings called corporations. This is just one example of how the power shift from human people to corporate people is going to play out. 

If you want to give companies more power taken from real humans, vote neo-fascist, vote Republican! If not, go pound sand.

Nuclear war scenarios

Princeton's Science and Global Security (SGS) does nuclear Armageddon simulations. Their 2019 Plan A comments:

SGS developed a new simulation for a plausible escalating war between the United States and Russia using realistic nuclear force postures, targets and fatality estimates. It is estimated that there would be more than 90 million people dead and injured within the first few hours of the conflict.

This project is motivated by the need to highlight the potentially catastrophic consequences of current US and Russian nuclear war plans. The risk of nuclear war has increased dramatically in the past two years as the United States and Russia have abandoned long-standing nuclear arms control treaties, started to develop new kinds of nuclear weapons and expanded the circumstances in which they might use nuclear weapons.

This four-minute audio-visual piece is based on independent assessments of current U.S. and Russian force postures, nuclear war plans, and nuclear weapons targets. It uses extensive data sets of the nuclear weapons currently deployed, weapon yields, and possible targets for particular weapons, as well as the order of battle estimating which weapons go to which targets in which order in which phase of the war to show the evolution of the nuclear conflict from tactical, to strategic to city-targeting phases.

The resulting immediate fatalities and casualties that would occur in each phase of the conflict are determined using data from NUKEMAP. All fatality estimates are limited to acute deaths from nuclear explosions and would be significantly increased by deaths occurring from nuclear fallout and other long-term effects.

In the months after nuclear war, fatalities from fallout and other long-term effects like lethal radiation exposure, coupled with untreated skin piercing injuries would far surpass deaths from immediate nuclear blasts. The scale of human suffering and death would dwarf everything in prior human history. That includes Hiroshima and Nagasaki combined and multiplied 10-fold. Human deaths would be billions, not just tens of millions.

Acknowledgement: Thanks to PD for bringing Nuclear Princeton and Princeton's SGS effort to my attention.

The Left Hand of (Supposed) Darkness

 On ‘sinister,’ ‘dexterity,’ ‘gauche,’ and ‘adroit’

What to Know

Sinister, today meaning evil or malevolent in some way, comes from a Latin word simply meaning "on the left side." "Left" being associated with evil likely comes from a majority of the population being right handed, biblical texts describing God saving those on the right on Judgment day, and images depicting Eve on Adam's left. Consequently, the Latin for "right," dexter, finds its way into positive words like dexterous, and the French word for right (droit) is found in adroit.

Why Was 'Left' Considered Evil?

The association of the directional left with evil is likely attributed to the dominance of right-handed people within a population, and consequently the awkwardness of motions made from the left side of the body.

Such darkness wasn’t always attached to that side, however. The Ancient Celts, for example, worshipped the left side, associating it with femininity and the fertile womb. But beginning with the appearance of Eve on Adam’s left side in accounts of Genesis, the Christian tradition finds instances of the left side being pinned to immorality.

The Book of Matthew describes how God will divide nations on the Day of Judgment, “as a shepherd divideth his sheep from the goats; and he shall set the sheep on his right hand, but the goats on the left,” with those on the right sent to the kingdom of Heaven and those on the left “cursed, into everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels.” Left-handed people comprise only 10 percent of the population, and the preference for the left hand demonstrated by the popular minority was attributed to demonic possession, leading to accusations of witchcraft.

In the 20th century, anthropologists and psychologists identified left-handedness as a biological anomaly, one associated with deviancy but that could be corrected away with behavioral reinforcement.

If 'Left' Is Evil, What About 'Right'?

The historical association of sinister with evil or backwardness is balanced linguistically by the fact that dexter, the Latin word meaning “on the right side,” comes with a largely positive connotation that survives throughout its linguistic descendants.

To be dexterous, for example, is to be good with the hands (like a surgeon) or a clever thinker, while one who is ambidextrous uses one’s left and right hand equally well.

The French word for “right or straight,” droit, gives us our word adroit, with a meaning similar to dexterous. The parallel is carried on by other words. The French word for “left,” gauche, is used in English to mean “lacking social grace” (“it’s considered gauche to arrive without a gift for the host”); a synonym of gauche, also from French, is maladroit (“a maladroit attempt to express his condolences”), which again utilizes the French word droit.

And of course, our word right is used to mean “correct," “true,” or "ethically sound" (“a right answer"; "didn't have the right address"; “the right thing to do”).

A popular maxim found on refrigerator magnets says that if the right side of the brain controls the left side of the body, then only left-handed people are in their right minds. In spite of that observation, the linguistic bias against the left side, and left-handedness in particular, is entrenched in English and many other languages, and likely will never go away.

https://www.merriam-webster.com/words-at-play/sinister-left-dexter-right-history

Faux News is the neo-fascist propaganda arm of the neo-fascist Republican Party

Rolling Stone writes:

CNN on Monday published a slew of text messages between Trump Chief of Staff Mark Meadows and prominent Republican lawmakers and conservative figures — including Hannity. The Jan. 6 committee has already released several texts exchanged between Meadows and Hannity, but the ones released Monday are particularly striking, demonstrating just how firmly the White House had Hannity secured under its thumb.

“Hey. NC gonna be ok?” Hannity wrote Meadows last Nov. 3, asking whether Meadows’ home state of North Carolina was going to go to Trump.

“Stress every vote matters,” Meadows replied. “Get out and vote. On radio.”

“Yes sir,” Hannity wrote. “On it. Any place in particular we need a push”

Meadows pointed to Pennsylvania, Arizona, and Nevada, in addition to North Carolina. “Got it,” Hannity responded. “Everywhere.”  

Twitter user @acyn responded to CNN’s report by pointing out that Hannity has in the past claimed he is “not told what to say” and that “we have always been independent and follow our on path on this show.”  

We now have pretty hard evidence that Hannity’s highly rated show was basically state-run television while the former president was in office.

Hannity happy to take orders on what to say on his show pic.twitter.com/tuidtVWfF7

— Acyn (@Acyn) April 25, 2022

Hannity: I don’t vet the information on this program that I give out pic.twitter.com/xZPdHcR1Bh

— Acyn (@Acyn) December 1, 2020

That speaks for itself.