The Gaypocalypse: Dissent (Translated)

Chief Justice Roberts

+ Look, the petitioners make a good point based on fairness and equality, and clearly it has some merit. But that’s not the position of the court to legislate, we’re here to interpret the Constitution; we get to say what is law, not what should be law.

+ The arguments for marriage equality are dope, but the legal ones just don’t cut it. The Constitution doesn’t say what marriage should be so we need to leave that to the individual states to decide.

+ Why we gotta be legislating from the bench, guys?!

Justice Scalia

+ I don’t fucking care what people do, but you know what this shit says? This says the ruler of 320 million people are 9 judges right now.

+ We are literally robbing the people of the ability to govern themselves, literally robbing them (cries).

+ Before we put a stop to this, the debate over the whether people could marry their significant other was the awesome because it displayed passion from both sides… but I’m gonna ignore the fact that if I made the same arguments with slave owners & abolitionists, I might be called racist.

+ My fucking colleagues are insane. They’re all from Harvard or Yale. Not one of them is a Westerner (and California doesn’t count). There’s not one single evangelical Christian on this court, this body is so like not representative of this country. This is bullshit.

+ What the fuck is ‘freedom of intimacy?’ I didn’t realize that was a freedom (sarcasm)

+ (salty fucking tears)

Justice Thomas

+ Hahaha, why am I even here? Everyone knows I’m the most worthless sitting justice. I didn’t even ask a single question during oral arguments in the span of 8 years.

Justice Alito

+ Before we intervened, the public was arguing amongst themselves and it should’ve like totes continued that way.

+ This country was founded on ‘liberty,’ but like what does that even mean? Liberty is such a postmodern concept.

+ Now five unelected judges are imposing this shit on the country. Marriage is about one man and one woman, gay marriage doesn’t have deep roots or traditions… because traditions are important (like when we killed Native Americans and marched them to their death, enslaved black people for a few hundred years, beat women and traded them as chattel, and tested chemicals on minority soldiers in WWII because you know… mah traaadditttionnnsss).

The Supremes: King v. Burwell

+ The Affordable Care Act, colloquially known as “ObamaCare” made health insurance exchanges and each state had the option of making their own or using a federal one.

+ More than two thirds of states refused or did not make their own exchanges, and used the federal exchange instead so a lot of people are getting subsidies from using federal exchanges… think 8 million people.

+ Part of the law in question gives federal money (subsidies) to people who are within 100%-400% of the federal povery line. For reference, the federal poverty line for an individual is $11.7K, and a family of four is $24.2K annually.

+ The law says the federal money can go to people who buy insurance from an exchanged created “by the state,” not “by the federal government.” The whole case was on whether by “the state” is inclusive of the federal government. Think literal interpretation vs. someone saying “enemy of the state.”

+ If the dissenting opinion today was the majority, those 8 million people would have their subsidies revoked and forced to pay market rates to the health insurance companies. I assume the plan was to create some negative feedback loop and eventually ObamaCare would crumble on itself because more than two dozen states refused and/or have yet to create state exchange.

+ The majority opinion delivered by Roberts basically is like, “Yo, the text is ambiguous but in context to the whole law… it makes sense for it to work like that, and that’s what it’s intended.”

+ But you might say, well intent is different than actual text? It is, but it’s up to the Supremes to interpret the law and if Congress don’t like it, Congress can rewrite it. Welcome to other branch of our government.

+ So people get to keep their federal subsidies, regardless of whether they purchased their insurance on a federal or state exchange now.

June 25, 2015

+ The French are at it again with their favorite past time, another protest. This time it’s against Uber with Taxi drivers taking it off the streets… refusing to work. If only their was an alternative, a cleaner, friendlier, simpler alternative to hailing a cab? This is real capitalism at work, it’s the survival of those that can adapt the fastest and it seems things are getting a bit violent.

+ The predominantly black Briar Creek Road Baptist Church of North Carolina was set ablaze doing more than $250,000 in damage yesterday morning. One theory was that this was done as a racially motivated attack especially with the recent Charleston shooting where gunman Dylann Roof killed black people attending a church group and his racist manifesto was discovered. Let’s see if all those “southern pride” folks who proudly display the (incorrect) confederate flag bother to help out their black neighbors.

+ The Supremes are at it again, this time upholding ‘Obamacare’ in a case of King v. Burwell where subsidies are granted for federal exchanges. The ruling can be found here. My favorite part is when Scalia, in his dissenting opinion suggests we should be calling the ACA ‘SCOTUScare’ as the court swung 6-3 in favor of the administration.

+ The woman who cried wolf, Jeannine Risley of Pennsylvania has been charged for making false rape accusations and her FitBit gave her away. It appears she was walking around when she was supposed to be sleeping at her employer’s home, on top of the fact there was no physical proof and she was recently demoted at her job by said employer.

+ 139 years ago today, General Custer was defeated in the battle of Little Big Horn by the Lakota. The idiot of a General marches 600 soldiers to their death against a force of 2.5K plus Lakota & Cheyenne. Aside from the general horrendousness that was the American genocide of its native peoples, Custer also killed women & children. He’s American Hero just like Andrew Johnson who clearly deserves to be on the $20 bill (grumble).

How The British Made I.S.I.S.

+ The British reneg on their promise of helping the Arab groups that fought with them against the Ottomans after WWI. They sign the secret Sykes-Picot agreement and cut up the middle east into French & British mandates without regard to culture, religion, and ethnic groups.

+ The Iranian government attempts to renegotiate oil contracts with the British owned Anglo-Persian Oil Company (known today as BP) for more equal revenue sharing.

+ Iran gets word that the American Standard Oil in Saudi Arabia is splitting its revenue 50/50.

+ Iran goes back to the British wanting more revenue share and better working conditions, at which point the Brits tell the Iranians to ‘fuck off.’

+ Iran elects a new Prime Minister who wants to nationalize the Anglo-Persian Oil Company and so the Brits call up U.S. President Eisenhower for some help throwing around words like “communism” and “destabilization.”

+ Operation Ajax launches and with the assistance of the CIA there is a coup d’état and the democratically elected (and highly popular Prime Minister) is overthrown and the Shah is given control of the country.

+ The Shah is a horrible dictator for nearly 3 decades as the Iranians learn the CIA backed his coup.

+ The Shah is overthrown by secular opposition and theocrats, and in the power vacuum the Shiite Islamic theocracy wins. The anti-Western Ayatollah Khomeini comes to power and the liberals flee to the west (which is how we get the ‘Shahs of Sunset’).

+ The Ayatollah Khomeini calls for Islamic revolutions across the middle east to kick out the foreigners, especially in countries that are a little too western-friend (e.g., Saudi Arabia).

+ The Grand Mosque of Saudi Arabia is seized by local Islamic militants and hundreds are killed which scare the ruling family, the House of Saud. These militants want stricter enforcement of Sunni Islam, expulsion of foreigners, and a theocracy.

+ The King of Saudi Arabia begins to make the country more religious, promotes Wahhabism (a more orthodox version of Sunni Islam), and begins to export these dangerous militants outside of their borders into bordering countries to buffer themselves against the Ayatollah and his Shiites, expanding their (loose) Sunni influence.

+ The Soviets invade Afghanistan, and Osama bin Laden fights them off with the backing of Saudi Arabia. The U.S. joins in and gives Saudi jihadists weapons to defeat the Soviets.

+ Saddam Hussein kicks off the first Gulf War in 1990 by invading Kuwait for driving down the price of oil (which kept Iraq from baying off its debt it acquired during the Iraq-Iran War where the U.S. sold his country weapons) stealing oil from a disputed region in Iraq and is called out by Saddam as only existing due to British political maneuverings.

+ Kuwaitis hire a U.S. PR firm called Hill + Knowlton to spin a fake & horrific testimony of Iraqi barbarianism by a woman named ‘Nayirah’ to move the country to war. Nayirah testified in front of Congress about how she, a nurse, witnessed Iraqi soldiers stealing incubators from babies in hospitals. Nayirah was later discovered to be the daughter of the Kuwaiti ambassador.

+ The House of Saud asks for U.S. intervention as Iraq has a large army, so the U.S. installs military bases in Saudi Arabia to protect the Kingdom.

+ The U.S. doesn’t leave at war’s end and the Saudi Jihadists begin to view these bases as a sign of U.S. occupation.

+ In 1993, al-Qaeda attack the World Trade Center where 6 died and there were 1,000+ injuries.

+ In 1998, the Kenyan embassy was bombed by al-Qaeda.

+ In 2000, the U.S.S. Cole was attacked by al-Qaeda.

+ In 2001, the Pentagon and World Trade Center was attacked by al-Qaeda, and the U.S. enters a war with Afghanistan to find Osama bin Laden and wipe out al-Qaeda.

+ The U.S. enters a war with Iraq and remove Saddam Hussein under the premise of ‘weapons of mass destruction’ and having ties to al-Qaeda (he had neither as we would later learn).

+ Insurgent groups with political stakes take advantage of the destabilization of Iraq as an opportunity to begin their land & power grab. Islamic State of Iraq Syria (ISIS) is one of these groups, born out of al-Qaeda.

+ In 2014, Vice publishes a documentary on ISIS where at 36:50 an ISIS militant stands on the border or Iraq & Syria and says ‘we do not believe in the Sykes-Picot agreement.’

June 23, 2015

Okay, I Make Lamb

+ 70% of Greek mortgages are not being paid.

+ The Greek economy has been failing, and there have been talks about removing them out of the European Union. Greece needs to make a €1.5 billion payment to the IMF by the end of June.

+’Austerity’ is haphazardly being imposed on the country which is a basically a severe cut in spending, and an increase in taxes. People are either leaving, investing outside the country, or outright refusing to pay to avoid debt bondage.

+ This is worsened by the fact that the Greek government is not an issuer of its own currency, so they have the option to just default which may pave the way to the rest of the Mediterranean countries that owe money – cough – Italy, Spain, Portugal. That option involves Greece leaving the eurozone, readopting the drachma and deals with its own shit.

+ How did Greece get into this mess? Well, when it applied for membership, it sort of lied about its financial health, and you can guess what happened afterwards… bailouts—and now the taxman more fiscally healthy Germanic & Nordic countries have come to collect.

For truth, Justice, and the American Way

+ During WWII the U.S. did chemical experimentation on troops, segregated by race. Mustard gas, Lewisite and other chemical weapons were tested on minorities in the attempts of creating a better soldier.

+ 60,000 enlisted men were enrolled in this government program that was declassified in 1993, after federal officials admitted in 1991 that they conducted experiments on enlisted men.

+ The testing was done in secret and participants received no follow-up health care or monitoring. Soldiers were sworn to secrecy with threat of dishonourable discharge.

+ To this day, soldiers are given drugs for uses never studied or approved by regulatory agencies, and the majority of these drugs are not tested in combination. The military presents a unique community that allows for possible arrangements of human testing that would be difficult to conduct in civilian life.

Puff, Puff, Pass

+ The White House has greenlit marijuana research. Marijuana researchers still need to obtain DEA-approved grow facility. The U.S. Government also currently holds a patent on Cannbinoids.

+ The hiccup is that marijuana is still a Schedule 1 which means the FDA will not approve any medical uses, even though the government provides medical marijuana to some people already (Compassionate Investigational New Drug Program).

+ Schedule 1 drugs are classified as those that have the high potential for abuse and/or have no currently accepted medical use in treatment in the United States.

+ There are arguments that Obama could do more as the DEA & FDA report to the office of the President as they’re departments of the Executive branch and/or that the Controlled Substances Act gives the Attorney General or POTUS the ability to reschedule drugs.

+ Preliminary studies have shown marijuana to reduce seizures, anti-anxiety, anti-psychotic, and anti-inflammatory but without more medical research, these preliminary studies are just that.

+ Fun Fact: There was a Nixon-appointed commission, the National Commission on Marihuana and Drug Abuse that launched dozens of research projects, and is still to this day the most comprehensive study into marijuana use and they recommended marijuana use not be a criminal offense, but was overruled by President Nixon.

June 22, 2015

Ring-around-the-Rosie, a Pocket full of Posies

+ 16 year-old boy from Colorado has died from a rare case of the plague last week, and health officials suspect it’s the septicaemic plague, related to the bubonic plague. Roughly 7 people die each year from the plague, which is usually transmitted by fleas in infected rats, mice, and squirrels.

+ Officials don’t know for sure which plague, but bubonic, septicaemic or pneumonic plague are all caused by the same Yersinia pestis, which is still endemic in many parts of the world; the western United States, South America, subsaharan Africa, India, and East Asia.

So Bloated, Can’t Move

+ Yet another report (by CHEM Trust) comes out saying that ‘fracking’ is dangerous, and there should be a European Union wide moratorium until regulatory reform can be taken underway.

+ Fracking is the new vogue way of getting oil out of the ground by shooting water and chemicals to free up natural gas and oils. People are saying this destroys the natural water tables, and increasing seismic activity.

+ Lots of special parties want fracking halted or very regulated, and you can guess oil companies are saying that fracking is perfectly safe. The only issue is, no one trusts them to not cut corners or do it safely.

Campers Beware

+ Officers Keith Sandy and Dominique Perez are facing murder charges for the killing of James Boyd on March 16, 2014.

+ In 2014, a large group of police officers responded to a report of a homeless and mentally ill man camping in the foothills of the city. Boyd was asked to drop the camping knives he was carrying and he appeared to be doing so in the video when was tasered, fired upon with rifles, fired upon with bean bag guns, and attacked by police dogs. He was hit in the back with the rifle with three rounds and died the next morning.

+ You might recall this incident where the officer quote-unquote said “I’m going to shoot this guy in the dick.” #ToProtectAndServe

June 21, 2015

I Wish I Was In Dixie! Hooray, Hooray!

+ If you didn’t know, the biggest take away after the Charleston shooting is going to be a national discussion on whether it’s appropriate to fly the Tennessee Army Battle Flag otherwise known to the layman as the ‘Confederate,’ or ‘Rebel’ flag on a government building (in South Carolina).

+  South Carolina State Rep. Norman “Doug” Brannon announced on Friday, June 19th that he would introduce a bill to remove the flag from the state capitol. Note this isn’t doesn’t stop people from displaying this flag on private property… which is a great identifier of who is an idiot, it’s akin to a facial tattoo.

+ South Carolina’s actual flag is blue with a palmetto plant and crescent moon on it. I mean, I get it’s not as cool looking, but you don’t see Germans wearing swastikas talking about Deutsches Reich pride or it flying on their government buildings.

+ The ‘confederate’ flag was never popular until the 1950’s until the Dixiecrats & Klu Klux Klan started to use it as a sign of dissent against the Civil Rights Movement, so that whole ‘southern pride’ is manufactured bullshit.

+ This Tennessee Army Battle Flag was never adopted by the Confederate, and its history is wholly anti-American supporting treason, secession, and an economy based on the subjugation of humans and should be a relic of museums not flown over municipal buildings. #TakeItDown

A Beautiful Racist Mind

+ The manifesto written by Charleston shooter Dylann Roof was found Saturday morning on a site called “The Last Rhodesian,” a reference to Rhodesia, a part of what is now Zimbabwe where white colonist fought a war in the 1960’s to establish a separatist state. The site was registered on February 9, 2015 and to his last known address. Fun quotes below:

+ “I was not raised in a racist home or environment. Living in the South, almost every White person has a small amount of racial awareness,simply beause of the numbers of negroes in this part of the country.”

+ “Niggers are stupid and violent… Black people view everything through a racial lense.”

+ “I wish with a passion that niggers were treated terribly throughout history by Whites, that every White person had an ancestor who owned slaves, that segregation was an evil an oppressive institution, and so on, but it isn’t true. None of it is.”

+ “I have no choice. I am not in the position to, alone, go into the ghetto and fight. I chose Charleston because it is most historic city in my state, and at one time had the highest ratio of blacks to Whites in the country… We have no skinheads, no real KKK, no one doing anything but talking on the internet. Well someone has to have the bravery to take it to the real world, and I guess that has to be me.”

+ “Please forgive any typos, I didnt have time to check it [sic].” Yes, because the issue here isn’t trying to get people to understand or come to your defense, it’s your typos you’re concerned about.

+ Now can the conservatives stop saying he was some sort of communist/leftist committing some sort of anti-Christian act, please? These people should be called out for their stupidity here, here, and here. Thank you.

Thank You For Smoking.

+ On Friday, June 19th, Gov. David Ige of Hawaii signed a bill raising the legal smoking age to 21 starting January 2016, and prohibiting the smoking on state parks and beaches starting July 1st.

+ This is wonderful legislation as now everyone under the age of 21 will stop smoking immediately, much like how no one under the age of 18 smoked. Okay, you can sense my sarcasm there but I’m inclined to lean with the state here, even though I don’t think the legislation will be very effective but anything that makes smoking more difficult is a plus in my book… because no one likes to make out with an ash tray.

+ The takeaway message here is those 15 year olds need to know someone who is 21+ to buy them cigarette packs now, and even at the age of 18 it’s not like they’ll be able to cross state lines you know (with Hawaii being an island for those less geography inclined).