Finally Friday Reads! Trash problems are Everywhere!!!

“East River From the Shelton” (1926), Georgia O’Keeffe

Hi Sky Dancers!

I learned something from the Mayor yesterday.  Every city in the country is having trouble picking up and dumping its trash mostly due to Covid-19.  No one can send excess garbage pick-up capacity to New Orleans because no city has more pick-up ability than trash. It is possible to deliver your trash to the dump if you’re motivated enough to sit in line and mask up as heavily as possible. You can also demonstrate at the Trash Parade tomorrow although I wouldn’t taking any trash to dump at city hall if you go.

With that being said, let’s talk about the big Trash parade in the District and Uncle Clarence Thomas who usually lets the ghost of Antonin Scalia and his wife do all the talking for him.  Oh, and Sarah Palin hasn’t been vaccinated so let’s start the death watch now!  Alaska and Idaho hospitals are so overcrowded they are rationing care!.  Republicans now own Death Panels!

Just like that, the Supreme Court’s judge with the most conflicts of interest pulls an Amy Coney Barret.

Justice Clarence Thomas defended the independence of the Supreme Court on Thursday and warned against “destroying our institutions because they don’t give us what we want, when we want it.”

Thomas, the longest serving justice, acknowledged that the high court has its flaws, comparing it to a “car with three wheels” that somehow still works. But he said the justices are not ruling based on “personal preferences” and suggested that the nation’s leaders should not “allow others to manipulate our institutions when we don’t get the outcome that we like.”

The justice’s remarks came during a lecture at the University of Notre Dame in which he talked about traveling by RV in the mountains of North Carolina and Tennessee with his wife, Ginni. Thomas reflected on his childhood in the segregated South and his religious faith. He also alluded several times to the political polarization in the United States

“We’ve gotten to the point where we’re really good at finding something that separates us,” Thomas told the crowd of more than 800 students and faculty gathered at the school’s performing arts center.

Thomas is the latest justice to add his voice to the mix and publicly come to the court’s defense in the face of growing criticism that the nine justices are merely politicians in robes.

“I think the media makes it sound as though you are just always going right to your personal preference. So if they think you are antiabortion or something personally, they think that’s the way you always will come out. They think you’re for this or for that. They think you become like a politician,” Thomas said in response to a question about public misconceptions of the court.

“That’s a problem. You’re going to jeopardize any faith in the legal institutions.”

New York Street with Moon, 1925, Georgia O’Keefe

Yes, that made me throw up in my mouth a little too.  So let me get back to the Trash Parade on September 18th and this link to VOX and a piece by Aaron Rupar: “The Justice for J6 rally is Trump supporters’ latest attempt at revisionist history. The September 18 event is prompting officials to raise fencing again around the Capitol. Extremism experts are skeptical.

Two days ahead of a Trump-inspired rally outside the Capitol on behalf of people who have been charged with crimes in connection to the January 6 insurrection, former President Donald Trump released a statement supporting the cause of the Justice for J6 movement.

“Our hearts and minds are with the people being persecuted so unfairly relating to the January 6th protest concerning the Rigged Presidential Election,” Trump said, invoking his oft-repeated lies about the 2020 presidential election, which he lost to Joe Biden. “In addition to everything else, it has proven conclusively that we are a two-tiered system of justice. In the end, however, JUSTICE WILL PREVAIL!”

Trump’s statement tosses fuel on a combustible situation. A Monday statement from the US Capitol Police warning about “concerning online chatter about a demonstration planned for September 18” already raised worries that Saturday’s Justice for J6 rally could spiral out of control and result in violent scenes reminiscent of January 6. But extremism experts are skeptical.

Jared Holt, a domestic extremism researcher with the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Lab, wrote recently on his website that online chatter indicates the event is likely to be a bust.

“I am highly skeptical that [right-wing extremists] would appear in any kind of significant numbers without at least some kind of indication of that appearing in the communities they so often frequent,” Holt wrote. Reached this week via Twitter direct message, Holt said he still isn’t seeing indications September 18 will amount to much. In fact, he is seeing members of far-right groups warning that the event is likely to be swarming with informants.

Holt’s assessment is backed up by Michael Edison Hayden, a spokesperson for the Southern Poverty Law Center, who told Talking Points memo he’s “not witnessed anything that would indicate large numbers of far-right demonstrators, or Proud Boys in particular, will attend this event.”

But Capitol Police’s warning and decision to mobilize extra law enforcement resources illustrates how much of a concern Trump-inspired extremism remains nine months after the insurrection — as well as how focused law enforcement is on preventing another January 6 from happening.

It’s a long read but worth it.

New York: A Painting, “Radiator Building–Night, New York” by Georgia O’Keefe of American Radiator Building, 1927.

There’s a lot of brief information in that Washingtonian link.

The two main speakers are Joe Kent, who’s challenging GOP Representative Jaime Herrera Beutler in Washington state, and Mike Collins, a Republican running for Congress in Georgia. Braynard will host alongside Cara Castronuova, a pro-Trump boxer who appeared on season 11 of The Biggest Loser and founded a group called Citizens Against Political Persecution. Family members of people held on January 6 charges will likely speak, Braynard says.

Members of Congress including Matt Gaetz, Marjorie Taylor Greene, Paul Gosar, and Louie Gohmert attended Look Ahead America’s DC events in July. Greene and North Carolina Representative Madison Cawthorn have said they don’t plan to attend, and neither do Gohmert and Colorado Representative Lauren Boebert; none of the other members’ offices have yet responded to queries from Washingtonian about whether they plan to attend or speak. What about Trumpworld? The Daily Beast reported late last month the former President’s circle has been silent about the event so far. Braynard says “we’ve had some mighty allies” but wouldn’t say whether he’s been in touch with anyone in Trump’s ambit: “We will never disclose our conversations we’ve had.”

More extremist Republican figures who refused the vaccine are now severely ill with Covid-19.  As the links above show, they are basically overcrowding hospitals causing people with other emerging issues to be sent home to die or flown to hospitals miles away.  Washington State hospitals are filling up due to Covidiots from Idaho.  The Daily Beast is reveling in every one of them.  “Laura Loomer, Who Once Said ‘Bad Fajitas’ Were Worse Than COVID, Says She’s Tested Positive. The far-right activist said in a Gettr post that she’s experiencing severe coronavirus symptoms.? ”  The Death Watch is real for these kooks.

The far-right, anti-Muslim, anti-vaccine conspiracy theorist Laura Loomer says she’s tested positive for the coronavirus, after suffering from severe symptoms that she wrote left her feeling like she “got hit by a bus.”

In a post on the Trumpist social network Gettr, Loomer complained that she started suffering from “fever, chills, a runny nose, sore throat, nausea and severe body aches” on Wednesday that she said felt like “a bad case of the flu… So I took a COVID test and it came back POSITIVE.”

She added: “I have not taken the COVID-19 vaccine, and I don’t plan on ever taking it because it is unsafe and ineffective. Today, I immediately started a treatment of Azithromyacin and Hydroxychloroquine. I’m also taking the OrthoMune dietary supplement.” She said she’s also received the Regeneron antibody treatment used by ex-President Donald Trump.

Yeah, all the rich nuts get the Monoclonal Antibodies developed by Regeneron.  The poorer folks just get to die.

The Shelton with Sunspots, N.Y.Date:
1926,Georgia O’Keeffe

Reuters reports that Florida Governor Ron DeSantis still hasn’t found the bottom of the moral depravity pit. Hassan Kanu writes that  “Florida governor conflated ‘black joy’ with protest, judge says”. Florida clearly has trash issues. Maybe the Courts can deal with it.

A federal judge on Thursday blocked part of a sweeping anti-protest bill enacted by Florida Republicans and Governor Ron DeSantis, writing that officials’ reaction to peaceful protests in the summer of 2020 is akin to the unlawful racist backlash seen during 1960s protests against Jim Crow laws.

Chief U.S. District Judge Mark Walker in Tallahassee said that the governor made an embarrassing mistake – or worse – when his offices “conflated a community celebration of a federal holiday commemorating the end of slavery with a protest.”

He issued a preliminary injunction blocking enforcement of the new definition of rioting under the Combating Public Disorder Act.

DeSantis’ lawyers in defending the law had submitted to the court a Facebook post as evidence that Black Floridians continue to freely exercise their protest rights – except the flyer actually announced a “Black Joy” event celebrating America’s first official Juneteenth holiday.

And when Texans cross their borders, it appears it’s not their very best.  This is from NBC News: “Carmine’s hostess attacked after asking diners for proof of vaccination. Cellphone footage obtained by NBC New York shows a brawl outside Carmine’s on the Upper West Side.”

Three people were arrested for allegedly assaulting a New York City restaurant hostess on Thursday after she asked a group of diners visiting from Texas to show proof they had been vaccinated before seating them.

Cellphone footage obtained by NBC New York shows a brawl involving several people outside Carmine’s Italian restaurant on the Upper West Side. Staff and bystanders intervened to break up the melee after it broke out around 5 p.m. ET, the station added.

Oddly, enough, the first time I ever saw New York City was on the way to Madrid and smack in the middle of a garbage strike.  People that deal with garbage really need to be paid better.  It was my first but not the last trip to Europe.  There, I learned that the last thing I ever wanted to be identified as was an American. I actually found myself in England at one point explaining that not every one of us is like that couple that just left that table who hailed from Stockton, California.

The ugly Americans are even identifiable down here in New Orleans as they behave rudely everywhere it seems. The only problem is, we have an excess of trash at the moment and not enough of those saintly men who take out the trash.  I’m definitely glad they’re making $20 an hour down here now and that I can still gift them six packs whenever I can.

Have a safe and happy weekend!

What’s on your reading and blogging list today?