Sex Traitor Monday Reads

Posted: October 12, 2020 | Author: | Filed under: just because | Tags: , , , | 22 Comments

Good Day Sky Dancers!

I’m really in a bit of a twist today. I’m trying to decide if I want to see OfDonald try to convince any one that she’s anything other than the member of a cult that basically sees women as men’s property and sperm vessels. I’ve been trying to get women’s rights ever since I was told it was not possible for little girls to play little league baseball in grade school.  I feel like my life’s work is about to be trashed by all these old men riding on the back of yet another woman.

We know who she is as she turns on her on kind: “From the New York Times: “Rooted in Faith, Amy Coney Barrett Represents a New Conservatism”.  I do not know how her faith–more taliban like terrorist fanatacism to me–should guide any one but her self.  She made her choice. Let us all make ours.

Justices Neil M. Gorsuch and Brett M. Kavanaugh, Mr. Trump’s two previous nominees, had the kind of background traditional for Supreme Court nominees of both parties, featuring Ivy League schools and government jobs on their résumé as well as establishment religious beliefs. Judge Barrett embodies a different kind of conservatism.

Judge Barrett is from the South and Midwest. Her career has been largely spent teaching while raising seven children, including two adopted from Haiti and one with Down syndrome, and living according to her faith. She has made no secret of her beliefs on divisive social issues such as abortion. A deeply religious woman, her roots are in a populist movement of charismatic Catholicism.

From her formative years in Louisiana to her current life in Indiana, Judge Barrett has been shaped by an especially insular religious community, the People of Praise, which has about 1,650 adult members, including her parents, and draws on the ecstatic traditions of charismatic Christianity, like speaking in tongues.

The group has a strict view of human sexuality that embraces once-traditional gender roles, such as recognizing the husband as the head of the family. The Barretts, however, describe their marriage as a partnership.

Some former members of the group say it could be overly intrusive. Other members, like Judge Barrett, appear to have treasured their connection to it. But she does not appear to have spoken publicly about the group, and she did not list her membership in the People of Praise when she filled out a form for the Senate Judiciary Committee that asked for organizations she belonged to.

Around the time of her appeals court confirmation, several issues of the group’s magazine, “Vine & Branches,” that mentioned her or her family were removed from the People of Praise website.

Family members have also declined to comment on her participation.

To Judge Barrett’s critics, she represents the antithesis of the progressive values embodied in Justice Ginsburg, her life spent in a cocoon of like-minded thinking that in many areas runs counter to the views of a majority of Americans.

She has made clear she believes that life begins at conception, and has served in leadership roles for People of Praise, and her children’s school has said in its handbook that marriage is between a man and a woman. Her judicial opinions indicate broad support for gun rights and an expanded role for religion in public life.

“Amy Coney Barrett is everything the current incarnation of the conservative legal movement has been working for — someone whose record, and the litmus tests of the president nominating her, suggest will overturn Roe, strike down the A.C.A., bend the law toward big business interests and make it harder to vote,” Elizabeth B. Wydra, the president of the liberal Constitutional Accountability Center, said, referring to the Affordable Care Act.

It’s not her religion that makes her unsuitable for the court.  It’s the way she believes every one must follow it and tends to dictate that from the judiciary.  That’s something that is distinctly against the first amendment that says the state not provide legislative support to a religion of its choice and making.   Her views are starkly fanatical and  quite in the minority which is why the Oldest Living Confederate Widow is rushing this through despite putting an entire group of senators at risk of Covid-19 and the entire process in jeopardy.

Women’s rights is just one area where she will rip across the civil rights of others. From the Daily Beast: “Will Amy Coney Barrett Finally Explain Her Ties to Anti-Gay Hate Group?”

She told Franken in 2017 that she was “generally aware” that the Alliance Defending Freedom had been categorized as a far-right hate group. What does she know about the group now?

In 2017, then-Senator Al Franken asked federal judicial nominee Professor Amy Coney Barrett a simple question: What is the nature of your relationship with the far-right legal advocacy organization Alliance Defending Freedom? At the time, Barrett pleaded ignorance about ADF’s sustained campaigns against LGBTQ people both in the United States and abroad.

“I’m invited to give a lot of talks as a law professor and it is not—I don’t know what all of ADF’s policy positions are,” Barrett told Franken. “It has never been my practice to investigate all of the policy positions of a group that invites me to speak.”

Another extremely important issue is this:

The Washington Post has extremely good coverage on this decision which OfDonald will also be willing to strike down.  “Barrett Supreme Court hearing expected to focus on health care, with the pandemic looming over the proceeding”.

“We are all agreed on two starting points: One is the importance of the Affordable Care Act,” Sen. Richard J. Durbin (Ill.), the No. 2 Democratic senator and member of the Judiciary Committee. “And secondly, the extraordinary effort to drop everything — covid-19 relief and any other consideration by Congress — to focus exclusively on filling this Supreme Court vacancy.”

A Supreme Court nomination hearing touches on a panoply of legal and policy issues that may come before the nine justices. But this time around, Democratic senators will have a much tighter focus, each drilling Barrett with questions about the legality of the Affordable Care Act and telling stories of constituents who have benefited from President Barack Obama’s signature health-care law, according to Democratic aides who, like others, spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe the strategy.

Democratic senators on the committee have held at least four conference calls in the past week to fine-tune their Barrett strategy, while Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) has spoken regularly with Sen. Dianne Feinstein (Calif.), the committee’s ranking Democrat.

SACRAMENTO, CA – MARCH 24: Members of the Handmaid Coalition of California hold signs as they march to the California State Capitol during a March for Our Lives demonstration on March 24, 2018 in Sacramento, California. More than 800 March for Our Lives events, organized by survivors of the Parkland, Florida school shooting on February 14 that left 17 dead, are taking place around the world to call for legislative action to address school safety and gun violence. (Photo by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)

A majority of Americans agree with the former Republican position that this court position be put on hold.  ABC reports “Majority says wait on the SCOTUS seat; 6 in 10 favor upholding Roe: POLL. Americans say they prefer to wait to fill the vacancy until next year, 52%-44%”  I do not understand how any American supports the founding of a theocratical autocracy.

Six in 10 registered voters say the U.S. Supreme Court should uphold Roe v. Wade as the basis of abortion law in the United States, and a majority in an ABC News/Washington Post poll — albeit now a narrow one — says the Senate should delay filling the court’s current vacancy.

Sixty-two percent in the national survey say they would want the court to uphold Roe, while 24% would want it overturned; 14% have no opinion. There are broad political, ideological and religious-based divisions on the question.

Separately, 52% say filling the seat opened by the death of Ruth Bader Ginsburg last month should be left to the winner of the presidential election and a Senate vote next year. Forty-four percent instead say the current Senate should vote on Trump’s nomination of Amy Coney Barrett to the position.

That’s a closer division than the 57%-39% preference for waiting in an ABC/Post poll late last month. That poll was conducted before Trump nominated Barrett and the Senate moved to proceed with her confirmation hearings, scheduled to start Monday.

Opposition to action has dropped among political independents, from 63% to 51%. Eighty-three percent of Democrats favor waiting to fill the seat, while 77% of Republicans in this poll, produced for ABC by Langer Research Associates, support action now.

Similarly, 77% of conservatives want action by the current Senate; 64% of moderates and 87% of liberals say wait. Among registered voters who want Roe upheld, 68% say the Barrett nomination should be set aside; among critics of Roe, 71% want the Senate to proceed.

Meanwhile, the insane orange thing on steriods can’t wait to pack the courts with some one that will let him skirt the law.

So yes, We’re living in a dystopian novel framed by a Life Long Criminal Grifter and a group of fanatics that make the Taliban look compassionate. Welcome to the Theocratic Kleptocracy of America.

So, I hope you’re all well and doing as well as possible in these truly Dark Times where we may lose our Republic.  Vote !!!! VOTE!!!! VOTE!!!!

What’s on your reading and blogging list today?

Friday Reads

Posted: September 30, 2011 | Author: | Filed under: 2012 presidential campaign, Catfood Commission, collective bargaining, Congress, financial institutions, Health care reform, Labor unions, morning reads, Republican politics, Republican presidential politics, SCOTUS | Tags: , , , , , , , , | 18 Comments

Good Morning!

I can hardly believe we’re headed into the last quarter of 2011.  Such  a year we’ve had!

So, the GOP is going after some of the things for which I will happily contribute tax dollars.  They’ve got some pretty whacked values as far as I’m concerned.

Setting a collision course with Democrats that could drag out for months, House Republicans on Thursday unveiled plans to cut federal money for job training, heating subsidies and grants to better-performing schools.

The draft measure for labor, health and education programs also seeks to block implementation of President Barack Obama’s signature health care law, cut off federal funds for National Public Radio and Planned Parenthood, and reduce eligibility for grants for low-income college students.

Democrats and tea party Republicans opposed the bill, blocking it from advancing through even the easy initial steps of the appropriations process on Capitol Hill. Instead of moving through the Appropriations Committee and the House as a whole, the $153 billion measure is instead expected to be wrapped into a larger omnibus spending bill this fall or winter that would fund the day-to-day operating budgets of Cabinet agencies.

Negotiations between Republicans controlling the House, the Democratic Senate and the White House are sure to be arduous. The measure is laced with conservative policy “riders” opposed by Democrats that would affect worker protections under federal labor laws and block the Education Department from enforcing rules on for-profit colleges that are often criticized for pushing students to take on too much debt.

“It looks like we’re in for a long, difficult process,” said Rep. Rosa DeLauro, D-Conn.

House Appropriations Committee Chairman Harold Rogers, R-Ky., said excessive and wasteful spending over the years had put many programs and agencies on “an irresponsible and unsustainable fiscal path.”

Actually all of those Dubya Tax cuts and wars and letting Wall Street Run amok with speculation instead of investment is what put us on that “irresponsible and unsustainable fiscal path” and most of them voted for all of it.  I’m not willing to bail out any more of their donor base with my hard earned dollars by defunding the future of our children.  What on earth can we do about these evil people and the feckless dems that won’t fight them?

The court fights over the new health care law have been stepped up and SCOTUS has come into play in a big way.  Which of the justices are likely to uphold AEIcare-cum-ChafeeCare-cum-DoleCare-cum-RomneyCare-cum-Obamacare?

The four more liberal justices on the court — Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen Breyer and Obama appointees Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan — should have no trouble reading the Constitution as bestowing broad powers on the federal government to regulate all manner of commerce. Although the court in recent years has pinched back congressional efforts to use the Commerce Clause to promulgate laws prohibiting guns near schools and those targeting violence against women, these were clearly non-commercial activities and quite different from the health-care law and its regulation of the medical insurance marketplace. Stronger and more directly applicable precedents remain, in which the court blessed the government’s regulation of wheat and marijuana production because these activities had an impact on interstate commerce.

The marijuana case (known formally as Gonzales v. Raich) may be particularly important because two of the more conservative justices — Antonin Scalia and Anthony Kennedy — joined with their more liberal colleagues to uphold the law under the government’s Commerce Clause powers.

Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and Samuel A. Alito — both George W. Bush appointees — shouldn’t be counted out either. Roberts and Alito joined an opinion in 2010 that recognized the government’s “broad authority” to enact a civil detention scheme for sexual predators under a different constitutional provision. This provision allows federal lawmakers “to make all laws which shall be necessary and proper” to uphold the powers assigned to Congress — including the power to regulate interstate commerce.

Michelle Bachmann’s campaign is running out of cash.  Even the NY Post thinks she may not make it to the Iowa Caucuses.

Will Michele Bachmann make it to Iowa? Insiders are whispering that the Tea Party darling’s financials are grim and she may be out of the race before she makes it to the Iowa caucus in February, even though she has a strong base in the state. Sources tell us say Bachmann’s skeletal staff are holding their collective breath until the deadline to disclose her fundraising report on Oct. 15. Meanwhile, we hear a computer vendor has called her campaign headquarters threatening to shut down the power due to an outstanding bill. Sources say she had about $400,000 at the beginning of September, but also stacks of bills. “She does not like to ask for money. She should have been focusing on big donors about three months ago,” a source said. “She’s only cultivated low dollar donors with direct mailings and that’s hurt her.” But at a rally in Virginia yesterday, Bachmann declared that she does not intend to back out of the race. “We intend to be the comeback kid in this race,” she said. Her rep said, “None of that is true.”

There’s a two part series at Bloomberg written by Collin Woodard on how the U.S. is really a country of regions.  Part One is here.   Part Two is here.  It’s a really interest read and something I have thought about for some time as I’ve tried to find some place in this country where I can live in peace.  For one, I’m trying to leave any region that’s described as bible buckle, bible belt, or bible anything!

Forget the state boundaries. Arbitrarily chosen, they often slash through cohesive cultures, creating massive cultural fissures in states like Maryland, Oregon and New York. Equally burdensome are the regional designations with which we try to analyze national politics — the Northeast, West, Midwest and South. They’re illusions masking the real forces driving the affairs of our sprawling continent: the 11 regional cultures of North America.

These 11 nations — Yankeedom, Tidewater, New Netherland, New France, Deep South, Greater Appalachia, the Midlands, First Nation, the Far West, the Left Coast, El Norte — have been hiding in plain sight throughout our history. You see them outlined on linguists’ dialect maps, cultural anthropologists’ maps of material culture regions, cultural geographers’ maps of religious regions, campaign strategists’ maps of political geography and historians’ maps of the patterns of settlement across the continent. I’m not the first person to have recognized the importance of these regional cultures. In 1969, Kevin Phillips, then a Republican campaign strategist, identified the distinct boundaries and values of several of these nations and used them to accurately prophesize the Reagan Revolution in his “Emerging Republican Majority,” a political cult classic.

More and more groups are joining the move to take on and occupy Wall Street. The New York Transportation Workers are the latest to announce they will join the protest today.

Occupy Wall Street has been picking up some decent support from unions in the past few days. Yesterday we reported that the Teamsters Union declared their support for protestors, and we also found out that the United Pilots Union had members at the protest demonstrating in uniform.

Today we learned the Industrial Workers of the World put a message of support on their website as well.

UPDATE: Verizon union workers have joined the protestors in NYC.

McClatchy reports that mortgage modification are still a mess even after four years. Quelle surprise!

Today there are at least 4.2 million homeowners who, like Palomo, are late on their mortgage payments or somewhere in the delinquency and foreclosure process. The first wave of foreclosures came during the 2008 financial crisis as subprime mortgages given to weak borrowers imploded. Now the subsequent economic downturn and high unemployment keep housing depressed.

The administrations of George W. Bush and Barack Obama both offered incentives for lenders to help homeowners modify their mortgages. Those efforts haven’t achieved much.

And four years into the housing crisis, banks and their bill collectors, known as mortgage servicers, are still under fire for their response to troubled borrowers.

“I would say they are somewhat better than they were three years ago, but still woefully inadequate to meet the demand, given the still remarkably high levels of distressed borrowers they are attempting to deal with,” said Paul Leonard, director of the California office of the Center for Responsible Lending, a Durham, N.C.-based advocacy group.

From December 2009 through June, more than 1.6 million government-backed mortgage modifications had been started, but only 791,000 became permanent. These numbers remain well below the goal of 4 million modifications that the Obama administration set for itself.

That should give you a few juicy bits to chew on with some coffee!! What’s on your reading and blogging list today?