Horrors and Grifters and Ghouls, O! My
Heightening the fuck outta some contradictions
Links are at the end.
Artificial intelligences will not write my posts, sadly.
Clarence Thomas is ludicrously corrupt, in the long tradition of people who think that whatever they do is right and proper because they believe themselves to be right and proper. It’s a corollary to the Nixon Principle, or I suppose vicey versey.
In the frenzy of the conflict in Israel and Gaza, and the lesser frenzy of who will be running this country between now and when the doors close, I completely missed this ProPublica story providing further details about known and unknown (ah, Rummy . . .) benefactors providing the erstwhile pubic hair purveyor with luxury travel and accomodations worth many tens of thousands of dollars in total.
Among the things the story notes is that the supposed referee of federal judiciary behavior, the Judicial Conference, appears to have punted about a decade ago on the kinds of corrupt benefaction Thomas and Alito and probably others have enjoyed lo these many years.1
We’re supposed to pretend the Supreme Court as an institution is worth what it’s supposed to be worth just in case the denizens of it do something we like.
People who blame successive Israeli governments—most especially the current one—for the recent atrocities perpetrated by Hamas are right. People who blame Hamas for the atrocities perpetrated by Hamas are also right. People who blame successive U.S. governments for the atrocities committed by Hamas and Israel are also right.
We have any number of federal legislators and other officials around the country advocating genocide, same as in the Israeli government. Never again, excluding people who are not considered people by right-thinking people.
Tom Cotton is among the would-be genocidaires. “Bounce the rubble,” he says, which is military-speak for bombing something into rubble and then carpet bombing the rubble.
Readers may remember Cotton for wanting to turn the army loose on civilian supporters of Black Lives Matters.
I am prepared to lose billionaire support for my educational foundation in retaliation for my anti-genocide stance, and for supporting the cancellation of billionaires genocidal or not.
This is one of those horrors which, like the now evidently inexorable onslaught of global warming, have obvious solutions which no one with the power to undertake will undertake, or even undertake to consider petitions for palliative care in the wake of a failure to undertake.
Tikkun Olam, bro.
And Speaking of failures to undertake, a guy who would have been among the most toxic ever leaders of our very very very fine House—and we’ve had enough doozies that the currency is exceptionally strong—appears to have beat a forced retreat, in part because his supporters are levying all sorts of threats, including death ones, against his colleagues who were already unenthused about a Jim Jordan speakership.
With the another debt ceiling festival coming at us in a few weeks, yr. editor can say with confidence that the people who are most thoroughly screwed by these and forthcoming shenanigans are the ones who least deserve it.2
Exxon wins! The oil giant doubled down on gigantism and societal collapse by purchasing one of the largest oil and natural gas producers in the Permian Basin, indicating that shareholders and executives are all-in on pumping the hard stuff until it runs out.
Leaving it in the ground would be a sin, you see.
Exxon paid almost $60 billion for Pioneer Natural Resources, which sounds like a lot but is not even 10 percent more than the company reported in profits last year.
The Permian Basin mostly hosts fracking operations. Fracking takes a lot of water, so companies like Pioneer and Exxon buy up huge quantities of the fresh stuff to inject into their wells, and then dump the heavily polluted residue elsewhere.
Given that the Basin is located in the Southwest of our great nation, spending water on something that accelerates the global warming that makes water increasingly locally precious seems unwise, but people who are cultivating sand often don’t have any other appreciable resources.
New Mexico regulators say that the tens of millions of gallons of wastewater from fracking can be recycled, possibly into potable water, but it’s hard for waste water treatment facilities to treat water when they don’t know what wastes are in it, which they don’t know because frackers have managed to keep the ingredients of their toxic brews secret from the people most affected by them, who are of course the people with the least amount of power.3
Haha! You’re a loser, I’m a loser, everybody’s a loser except the people getting Exxon dividends, which they can use to truck in their own fresh water. (Full disclosure: I have a relative who gets money from Exxon dividends and buys me stuff with it, so on this issue I can claim even less moral authority than usual.)
Music: I enjoyed all of these, the first two most of all.
The Stroppies, “Levity;4” Big Joanie, “Back Home;5” Deradoorian, “Find The Sun;6” Living Hour, “Someday Is Today;7”
And that Comrades, is all I got. Please share it if you like it, and consider subscribing if you’ve not—it’s free unless you want to pay.
Be well, take care, mind the gap.