Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Polls are now a reliable indicator of what corporate Republicans want us to think.

It’s all just conspiracy shit beamed down from the mothership.

My years-long effort to drive family and friends away has really paid off this year.

fuckem (in honor of the late great efgoldman)

We will not go back.

Stand up, dammit!

The next time the wall street journal editorial board speaks the truth will be the first.

Their boy Ron is an empty plastic cup that will never know pudding.

This has so much WTF written all over it that it is hard to comprehend.

The “burn-it-down” people are good with that until they become part of the kindling.

You don’t get to peddle hatred on saturday and offer condolences on sunday.

You passed on an opportunity to be offended? What are you even doing here?

They are not red states to be hated; they are voter suppression states to be fixed.

Republicans cannot even be trusted with their own money.

When you’re a Republican, they let you do it.

Giving in to doom is how authoritarians win.

A tremendous foreign policy asset… to all of our adversaries.

It may be funny to you motherfucker, but it’s not funny to me.

Never entrust democracy to any process that requires Republicans to act in good faith.

Those who are easily outraged are easily manipulated.

Rupert, come get your orange boy, you petrified old dinosaur turd.

Oppose, oppose, oppose. do not congratulate. this is not business as usual.

Nothing worth doing is easy.

It’s always darkest before the other shoe drops.

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Archives for June 2014

A Setback for Frackers

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This seems like very good news:

New York’s highest court has upheld the bans on natural gas drilling passed by two small Upstate towns.

It is a major decision for the future of hydrofracking in New York state, where the drilling process has been on hold for more than five years. The decision allows towns to forbid fracking and other forms of gas drilling within their borders. The state Department of Environmental Conservation is still deciding whether to allow hydrofracking in New York.

“Today the court stood with the people of Dryden and the people of New York to protect their right to self determination. It is clear that people, not corporations, have the right to decide how their community develops,” said Dryden Deputy Supervisor Jason Leifer in a prepared statement.

The towns of Middlefield and Dryden had been taken to court over bans their town boards had instituted. Drilling companies argued that only the state could regulate gas drilling; the towns argued that under their “home rule authority” granted by the state they had rights to control land use.

Trial judges, intermediate appeals courts and now the state’s highest court all agreed with the towns.

“The towns appropriately acted within their home rule authority in adopting the challenged zoning laws,” the court of appeals said today. “The zoning laws of Dryden and Middlefield are therefore valid.”

Why shouldn’t a community be able to decide whether outside energy interests can poison their land or not?

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The Hobby Lobbyists’ War on Women, Continued

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Charles P. Pierce, at Esquire, on the history of the RFRA and the revenge of ‘Little Nino’ Scalia:

… Back in the early 1990‘s, [Al] Smith and another man were denied unemployment benefits by the state of Oregon because they had tested positive for the active ingredient in peyote, which has been a sacrament in various Native American religions since before bread and wine became sacramental in Christianity. Smith pursued his case all the way up to the Nine Wise Souls then sitting on the Most High Bench, who ruled against him. Not yet short-timing his day job, Justice Antonin Scalia who, of a Sunday, takes bread and wine instead of peyote as part of his own religious rituals, wrote the majority opinion in the case…

Almost everyone from the religious right to the ACLU popped their corks over this and, in purported response, the Congress passed the Religious Freedom Restoration Act in 1993. (And yes, you are still entitled to ask, “Restoration? Where’s it been?”) Bill Clinton, just beginning to triangulate himself toward re-election, signed the thing. Since then, a gradual slippage regarding that act has been quietly underway. The RFRA is no longer about peyote. It has become a Trojan Horse, sliding the country toward a de facto kind of established religion, which today’s ruling in Burwell v. Hobby Lobby makes eminently clear. Religious freedom exists in the realm of medicine only to those religions that the Court finds acceptable—and, I would argue, only to those religions to which the members of the Court belong. Much will be written, and rightly so, about the boneheaded social subtext of the following nut paragraph in the 5-4 decision read today by Justice Samuel Alito. It is so obviously discriminatory toward ladies and their ladyparts that no explanation seems necessary…

Kat Stoeffel, at NYMag:

… There’s some irony here. When the ACA rolled out, right-wing commenters claimed that Democratic women wanted daddy Obama to cover their “slut pills” and reproductive rights advocates went to great pains to explain that, no, they merely wanted the insurance industry regulated to have a more up-to-date, gender equitable definition of “preventative care.” (For 62 percent of American women, it currently includes contraception.) The ruling amounts to a punt: putting the responsibility for birth control back in the hands of the government while maintaining serious yardage with regards to religious expression, not to mention the status of women’s individual sexual and reproductive lives. It’s still a political battleground, distinct from the many other places religious beliefs could intersect with health care…

Justice Ginsburg takes on all the underlying issues at stake in this exception to the RFRA. “The exercise of religion is characteristic of natural persons, not artificial legal entities,” she wrote. Meanwhile, the Affordable Care Act “trains on women’s well being, not on the exercise of religion, and any effect it has on such exercise is incidental.” There’s also this: “Accommodations to religious beliefs or observances, the court has clarified, must not significantly impinge on the interests of third parties.” Her dissent includes a subtle reminder to question the protection of religious expression when the “third parties” all happen to be members of the same group, which has been historically discriminated against. In 1966, she points out, the owner of a restaurant chain “refused to serve black patrons based on his religious beliefs opposing integration.” Then, the court upheld the Civil Rights Act, unanimously; today it was split along gender lines.

(As a feminist, I also found it laudable that Stoeffel’s piece appeared in NYMag‘s “Daily Intelligencer” general-news blog, and was not relegated to its ladyblog “The Cut”, which is where most reproductive-news stories end up.)

Erik Loomis, at LGM:

…The absurdity of the Hobby Lobby decision (only contraceptives are exempted for religious beliefs because of sluts) is obviously part of the Republican war on women, but it is also very much a war on the poor. An IUD costs about a month’s worth of wages at the minimum wage. If an executive can’t get birth control because her employer gets too hot and bothered thinking of her having sexy time, she can afford it on her own. A Hobby Lobby floor worker? Probably not. For women workers at closely held corporations, this decision will be devastating.

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Monday Evening Open Thread: More Rich-People Problems

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If (when) America goes full-metal police state, there will still be “good people” critiquing the shine on the jackboots and making sure that doors are only kicked down in compliance with all local noise ordinances. News report from Joe Coscarelli at NYMag:

Today’s Wall Street Journal features hilarious, practically parodic complaints from neighbors of Fed chair Janet Yellen, who just don’t understand why she needs such fat and sloppy security guards. This is a Georgetown gated community, crotchety residents say, and there are rules here (50 pages of them, including a two-pet maximum). And Yellen’s massive security detail, with their visible fast food, giant, leaky vehicles, and “doughnut bellies” are just an eyesore.

According to one neighbor — who was granted anonymity “because she is worried about federal-government reprisals” — “we have this group, overweight, wearing the most ridiculous blue uniforms with the most ridiculous blue caps, and they have guns that are visible.” Meanwhile, their vehicles idle for “approximately 22 minutes daily,” according to an official complaint, and then pull out “speedily … all the while spilling fluid onto the street, which has now left a permanent stain,” against the neighborhood’s explicit “no car fluid stain” rule (seriously)…

From the WSJ article:

… The neighbors now want the FBI, an independent consultant, or the Fed’s inspector general to evaluate “what appears to be an excessive level of [Federal Reserve] security” on Ms. Yellen’s street at “enormous government cost to taxpayers.”…

On June 5, homeowners formed a committee to develop a standardized lease that would bar security operations from renting Hillandale homes. Others argued that too many rules could damage property values in the community, where sale prices can surpass $3 million.

Nonsense, says Mr. Shawn, who is on the new committee. “We need to put in proper safeguards. How are we going to feel if somebody leases to the Taliban?”

(Mildly surprised that the Taliban could pass the security check?)
***********

Apart from agreeing that Home Owners Associations are the worst, what’s on the agenda for the evening?

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Apparently, Mitt Romney Was Right

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Remember when Mitt Romney explained to all of us that corporations are people, too? Apparently the Supreme Court is in agreement:

The Supreme Court endorsed corporate personhood — holding that business firms have rights to religious freedom under federal law. Not only do corporations have rights, their rights are stronger than yours….Protecting women’s rights, according to the Court, isn’t a good enough reason for the government to force a business corporation, at least a privately held one like chain craft store Hobby Lobby, to include birth control in its insurance contrary to the business owner’s wishes.

In a serious blow to women’s reproductive rights, the Supreme Court ruled 5-4 in Burwell v. Hobby Lobby that for-profit employers with religious objections do not have to provide contraception coverage under Obamacare. So not only are corporations people now, but they have religious preferences. We can’t wait until they have the right to marry.

Team Blackness discussed the many levels of this ruling with facts and much yelling, and sprinkled in a conversation on Iggy Azalea to really get our blood pressure boiling.

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Apparently, Mitt Romney Was Right

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Remember when Mitt Romney explained to all of us that corporations are people, too? Apparently the Supreme Court is in agreement:

The Supreme Court endorsed corporate personhood — holding that business firms have rights to religious freedom under federal law. Not only do corporations have rights, their rights are stronger than yours….Protecting women’s rights, according to the Court, isn’t a good enough reason for the government to force a business corporation, at least a privately held one like chain craft store Hobby Lobby, to include birth control in its insurance contrary to the business owner’s wishes.

In a serious blow to women’s reproductive rights, the Supreme Court ruled 5-4 in Burwell v. Hobby Lobby that for-profit employers with religious objections do not have to provide contraception coverage under Obamacare. So not only are corporations people now, but they have religious preferences. We can’t wait until they have the right to marry.

Team Blackness discussed the many levels of this ruling with facts and much yelling, and sprinkled in a conversation on Iggy Azalea to really get our blood pressure boiling.

Subscribe on iTunes | Subscribe On Stitcher | Direct Download | RSS

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Germany v Algeria Round of 16 Open Thread

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Time for a little payback for Algeria 32 years in the making?

I lived in Germany for three years and my favorite dish remains Sauerbraten:

2 cups water
1 cup red wine
1 cup cider vinegar
1 lemon, sliced
1/2 large onion, diced
1 clove garlic, diced
10 whole cloves
2 bay leaves
2 tablespoons white sugar
2 tablespoons salt
1 tablespoon juniper berries, crushed (optional)
1 teaspoon whole peppercorns
1 (4 pound) boneless beef chuck roast
2 cups chopped onions
2 cups chopped carrots
1 cup diced celery
8 gingersnap cookies, crushed

Heat water, red wine, cider vinegar, lemon, 1/2 onion, garlic, cloves, bay leaves, white sugar, salt, juniper berries, and peppercorns in a saucepan over medium heat until sugar is dissolved, about 5 minutes. Allow marinade to cool and pour into a resealable plastic bag. Add beef roast, coat with marinade, squeeze out excess air, and seal bag. Marinate in the refrigerator 2 to 3 days, turning the roast twice a day.
Place onions, carrots, and celery in a slow cooker. Remove roast from marinade and place atop vegetables. Strain marinade and pour 2 1/2 cups over roast; reserve remaining marinade.
Cover and cook roast on Low for 8 hours. Turn slow cooker off. Transfer roast to a cutting board and cover with aluminum foil. Strain cooking liquid into a large bowl and return vegetables to slow cooker to rest.
Heat about 3 cups cooking liquid and gingersnaps in a saucepan over medium-high heat, adding reserved marinade as needed, until gravy is thickened, about 10 minutes.
Slice roast and serve with vegetables and gravy.

I’m not surprised that Algerian food, like Moroccan food has couscous as a staple. This one sounds great:

Saffron and Raisin Couscous with Fresh Mint

Ingredients

2 cups water
½ teaspoon saffron
1 teaspoon extra virgin olive oil
½ teaspoon salt
2 cups couscous
¼ cup raisins
3 Tablespoons fresh mint, chopped
Procedure

In a saucepan, bring the 2 cups of water to a boil and add the saffron.
Remove from the heat, cover, and let stand for 30 minutes.
Return the pan to the heat, return to a boil, and mix in the olive oil, salt, couscous, and raisins.
Remove from the heat, cover, and let stand for 30 minutes.
Top with the fresh mint.
Makes 8 servings.

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SCOTUS Decision on Harris vs. Quinn

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In addition to ruling that noted corporate-person Mr. Hobby Lobby needn’t sully his immaculate digits with snowflake baby blood by providing contraception coverage to his female employees, the US Supreme Court also ruled today that state-paid home caregivers who received a whopping salary increase and benefits as a result of union negotiations on their behalf can choose to be freeloading scabs.

Some see the ruling as the thin wedge that will eventually make all public sector workplaces “right to work” shops. This prospect makes plutocrats like the Koch Bros. and Walton heirs polish their monocles energetically and spin the tips of their waxed mustaches with glee since the rise of public sector unions have kept the union movement from collapsing altogether in the US.

It’s not like the court hasn’t made a narrow ruling before only to come back and essentially gut a critical protection (Voting Rights Act, anyone?). TPM has an excerpt of Justice Kagan’s good news-bad news dissent to the majority decision.

Ah well. It may ultimately prove to be a Pyrrhic victory eventually. Knitting needle and blade-sharpening futures may rise.

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