My 18-year-old cat got mauled by a dog on Monday, so I don’t want to be d–king around too much this week. She’s going to be okay they tell me, eventually, but I’m going to try my best to cut through the crap of important/not-so-important news, because life is short. Especially for a cat.
And I’m still pretty pissed off. She will be fine, though. But what can you say about the rest of us?
The debt ceiling talks in the U.S. are getting dangerously close to not raising the roof before the June 1st deadline, even though Janet Yellen magically bumped the deadline back a few days, somehow. So, what does that mean in reality? Survey says: Legislative terrorism.
You got America by the balls when you become an elected U.S. lawmaker, and the less the scales tip to either side, the more your (oftentimes) idiotic voice matters on the Capitol floor. Right-leaning legislators are (without conscience, frankly) considering holding American folks’ jobs (some 8 million) and retired-folks’ money hostage because they’re making demands that have nothing to do with raising a debt ceiling. Legislative terrorism. Or that’s sure what it seems like.
They’re like me in the third grade when I had to read a book report in front of class. You make every excuse in the world, even try to pass the blame onto someone else, but complaining about your seat, your locker assignment, saying you have fetal alcohol syndrome or getting that kid with the lazy eye to stop staring at you has nothing to do with reading a book report in front of class. You get what I’m saying? It’s a sign you don’t understand the rules. Or just don’t give a s— about your education. Or your job.
Or maybe it says that you’re an eight-year-old child. Or just act and think like one.
You want the federal government to cut back on spending? Negotiate that on your own time, palooka. And stop being a legislative terrorist.
And speaking of terrorists-too-dumb-to-realize-they’re-terrorists, members of the far-right Oath Keepers, America’s “guardians of the republic” (can’t get that out without at least one chuckle/vomit choke), were sentenced to multiple years in prison this week—18 for their leader Stewart Rhodes, whose charge of “seditious conspiracy” prosecutors got to stick—for their part in the Great Transgression of January 6th, 2021. First time in 28 years, it’s reported. And back then—1995—it was a group of jihadists looking to attack strategic government and civic targets in New York City. How you like them apples, oh ye of little sense enough not to storm the U.S. Capitol to no avail? Great company to keep, there.
And speaking further of holding freedom hostage, like the right to not have a–holes dump whatever they want into the surface and groundwater you drink, the Supreme Court ruled on a case wherein they changed the definition of “wetlands”. So what? you ask. Who cares? I got this metaphorical book report due in front of metaphorical class tomorrow and I gotta figure out ways to get out of it.
As I always say, if the rulings of Supreme Courts of yesteryear were incorrect, erroneous, foolhardy or so straight up bad that they need contemporary demolishing or outright eradicating, then what that says about the decisions they’re making now? You get what I’m saying? Survey says: You don’t respect the established law. You respect your own, single-minded belief system above all else. And you’re in a position to modify or codify a law that impacts the health of thousands and thousands of people negatively. The law had been in place for fifty years in this case, and was passed to protect clean waterways, because why? Because of what had already transpired to make them unclean, and then what’s going to, all over again.
It’s a modified Einstein Insanity: making a decision that leads to an outcome that’s already been established and shown to repeatedly fail. And knowing that your decision will very likely lead to that same outcome. And doing it anyway.
Way to go, highest judicial body in America. Way to be like my ADHD second cousin Louie with the gambling addiction and six restraining orders against him. Way to be just like that.
And speaking of an institution in which people in America are rapidly losing faith, police officers in Mississippi were caught on their own body cameras joking about an innocent man they just stunned and cuffed to death, tossed into the back of a patrol car and didn’t call any paramedics for in the subsequent 45 minutes. Survey says: That one pretty much speaks for itself. And you wonder why anyone would possibly say anything bad about urban or municipal police forces in America.
Or the Catholic Church. Or corporate America and the government, and their all-too-often scandalous and bedfellowed relationship.
It was revealed the archdiocese of Chicago this week was far, far guiltier of abusing little kids over the last seventy years than they wanted anyone to know. Survey says: Holy wall of silence. They don’t want to, don’t care to, hesitate for decades to or in many cases are legally exempt from having to report damning sexual abuse by members of their own clergy to anyone outside the robes up top who first get the news, and then decide to bury it. Like so many dead-people parts under your favorite vacation spots in Europe’s biggest cities.
And, finally, it was revealed, likely thanks to just one gentleman by the name of Louis Milione—and then three heads of organization, starting with the current one—that opioid manufacturer Morris & Dickson Co. did not get its license to dish out controlled substances revoked after a judge looked the company over four years ago and saw some seriously dubious and questionable distribution patterns—i.e. giving out drugs to pharmacist skimmers—and then strongly recommended that the DEA revoke it. Milione “got to know” the suits at Morris & Dickson while first working for the agency in his capacity as department official, then went to work for the company itself as a “consultant” upon retiring, and then un-retired and went back to the DEA as “principal deputy administrator”, four years later. Survey says: It’s the revolving door, people. And it’s as real as all the dead-people parts under your favorite European cities.
