Get a Rope

If the SC strikes down the Affordable Care Act we’re going to be witness to something quite remarkable: a right-wing court simultaneously affirming that:

1) States Rights are so expansive that they prevent the Federal Government from instituting a market based system of universal health insurance coverage.

2) States Rights are not so expansive that they allow State Governments to prevent corporations from pouring massive, unlimited funds into the effort of buying elections.

What were witnessing is a Conservative majority on the Supreme Court that is probably the most radical and most damaging of the last 100 years.

@Serolf Divad:
Shorter Scotus… He Who Has the Gold Makes the Rules

Argh!

TJ/ 5:30 AM. I go out front on my daily newspaper hunt.

Drunk Wayne [DW]: Good morning, JNOV!

Me: Hey, Wayne.

DW: I need your help.

Me thinking: Of course.

Me: What’s up?

DW: I can’t get these DVDs to play.

Me thinking: It is too early for this shit. Does he have fucking Lo Jack on me? Shouldn’t he be stupor sleeping?

Me: Are they bootleg again? [We've been through this before.]

DW: No. I paid $5 this time.

Me: Wayne. You got beat again.

DW: ?

Me: Clue one–they’re in Ziplock baggies. Clue two–they cost $10 or less. Clue three–you bought them from some guy on The Avenue, and his merchandise is displayed on a card table. Just rent them from now on.

DW: But can you make them work?

Me thinking: I wonder if I can if I try to convert them from…naw… Fuck it.

Me: There’s a missing code on the DVDs and a code in your player so they won’t work.

DW: Thanks, JNOV.

Me: No problem, Wayne

Programming note: Orly Taitz, DDS, Esq. will be on the Stephanie Miller Show this morning in the show’s third hour starting at 11 JNOV Daylight Time, 9 Nojo Time.

Live stream lynx:
http://www.stephaniemiller.com/listen-live/

@JNOV: What a charming encounter to have so early in the morning. I’m imagining birdsong while sunlight just touches the treetops as pugs romp in the streams.

@JNOV: Reminds me of when I bought a cassette of Metallica’s Master of Puppets from a Palestinian guy at the Albuquerque flea market. Took it home, popped it in the player and it sounded like was was recorded underwater. Bootlegs delayed my entry into total Metallica fandom.

Damage, Inc.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NbLMrce7OJI

I thought of you, SFL, when reading about the juvenile sentencing decision. You win some, you lose some, especially with this Court.

@mellbell: I thought of SFL as the Giants pounded the crap out of the Dodgers last night.

Awesome card & alt text.

@¡Andrew!: Nojo was nice enough to pull my comment for today’s alt-text, as I ponder to which Not-American country I plan to emigrate.

@¡Andrew!: This one (also bar-themed!) is pretty good, too.

@matador1015: I strongly recommend Vancouver, Canukistan, if you have the means.

@mellbell: Henri, Le Chat Noir, whose ennui we sympathized with recently, is back with a new episode, a dreaded trip to Le Vet. He even has his own website. Sacrebleu!

@redmanlaw: nothing hurt worst than listening to my dead head friends bootleg grateful dead cassettes from the shows they went to. watching them twirl around and play air guitar while they listened eased the pain though.

Thursday is when the Supremes are expected to declare war on the sick and unhealthy give the country over to the plutocrats rule on Obamacare.

So why aren’t corporations required to get consent before spending money for political purposes from each of its individual owners; the individual shareholders of stocks, the individual owners of mutual funds (not the managers of the funds) and the individual owners of pensions (again, not the pension fund managers but the employees & retirees who own the pensions)?

It seems total hypocrisy to deny the actual owners of the corporations any say in political expenditures by the employees of their property. Not to mention lacking any say regarding the grossly inappropriate lucrecompensation taken by their managerial employees.

@matador1015: Did I see a Bat Signal? No?

Okay, fine. The nice Friends of Harry Nillson spent a couple hours today at Stinque World Domination Headquarters installing a monstrous Skynet Remote Unit, so I’m preoccupied right now with dictating the fate of media empires.

@nojo: Would not a Nora Ephron tribute thread be timely?

SKYNET! We are right fucked!

Thanks for the support with DW. He made me miss a bus today talking about my wildflowers. I was like, “Gotta go!” CwtBotH says he’s afraid of me. Not afraid enough. Yet.

Catching up on Breaking Bad. I think I’m in Season 3, and I hate EVERYBODY except Walt Jr. EVVVVERRRRYBODDDY. At least Pitman is honest. I still hate him, though. I hate Walt. Maybe I like dude with the bell a little. Maybe I just like his bell.

Tonight, I was invited back to Egypt. I’m not sure I’m ready to go just yet.

@Dodgerblue: We’re so fucking broke up that the Pirates might beat us.

@¡Andrew!: Team ¡Maru!

@Dodgerblue: Not my hero. All due respect, but that thread isn’t mine to lead.

@JNOV: When you look at the contraption they left behind, it’s more Brazil than Terminator.

@nojo: I never saw Brazil, and I’m still working on Berkeley in the ’60s. I don’t know if you got into TSCC, but I loved the Skynet backstory, the appearance of some sort of Skynet crop circle flying thingy in the season finale, and, of course, they cancelled the shit.

@Dodgerblue and Nojo: The pianist?

@JNOV: The visual premise of Brazil is that all creative technological development stopped around 1945, and we’ve been keeping things patched together since then.

@JNOV: You’re supposed to be more aware of Nora Ephron than Dodger or me. Or maybe it’s a White Wimmin Thing. Anyway, she’s very ill.

@nojo: re: Brazil. Oh! Re: Nora Not Jones: I guess I need to work on passing better.

@nojo: She’s dead!

@nojo: A witty essayist, wrote and directed a couple of movies, died today of cancer at 71.

@Dodgerblue: That sucks.

@Dodgerblue: Fuck cancer! “Heartburn” was one of the best post-divorce revenge stories ever. She was a great essayist – punchy short sentences with good rhythm.

ADD: As an example, BeRightBack posted on the Book of Faces a link to Ephron’s spoof essay The Girl Who Fixed the Umlaut.

@mellbell: Awesome card. Also, the SCOTUS decision was pretty awesome – not a total ban on all life without parole sentences for kids – but requiring that thought be given before imposing the sentence rather than automatically imposing it is a big deal.

@Dodgerblue: Another shut out by Los Gigantes! One game back.

@SanFranLefty: Fuck all, we haven’t scored a run since Benedick was in knickers.

@JNOV: The Penisianist made me nuts. I could not get past the idea that a piano, dumped on a beach, rained on and pounded by waves, could somehow be playable. A problem compounded by the itinerant traveling tuner. If the writer knows the premise makes no sense putting up with it I am not.

Apart from that, carry on.

@Dodgerblue: You’re confusing me with Catt. Though it’s true one did wear short trousers as part of one’s school uniform. We went into long trousers, or ‘strides’, at 13. Since when I have not been seen in shorts – for obvious reasons.

@Benedick: I’m not a big fan of hers either, but that one song, er, what was it? It was pretty the first 20 times I heard it.

@JNOV: Native New Yorker?

Mind you, I thought the movie she later made with Meg Ryan sucking cock was pretty terrific. But that’s always good.

@Benedick: Nope

I know why, and it’s never my fault.

@Benedick: Wait. What?

The Brown Bunny?

@jaycubed: Interesting you say that in light of the attitude toward where the money for political spending by unions comes from.