Corporate Media Downplays Fascist Corruption.

Corporate media downplays fascist corruption.

Anyway, I don’t just bring this up when I talk about Twilight, but I do bring it up every time I talk about Twilight:

Reminder that the Quileute tribe, whose sacred stories made author Stephanie Meyer a multi-millionaire, never received any money from the enormous success of the Twilight books or films.

Their entire community is located in a Tsunami disaster zone, in a region where a world-changing earthquake and tsunami are expected to hit perhaps within our lifetimes.

They should be set for life financially based on the use of their stories in Twilight. Instead, they have to publicly raise funds to move to higher ground and have been raising the same funds for years.

Anyone is encouraged to donate, but if you have personally purchased a physical or digital copy of any Twilight media or Twilight merchandise, I recommend matching the purchase with an equal donation to the Quileute People.

Recently, they successfully moved their school to higher ground! It was a major accomplishment to ensure Quileute children can learn in a safe environment! But there is still much to be done .

Statement from the Tribe (link to the source):

“Living in a tsunami zone at the edge of the Pacific Ocean, a catastrophic earthquake can wipe out our community in less than 10 minutes – an entire generation of the Quileute people will cease to exist.”

You can even set up a monthly donation. I don’t have much, but I’ve had a small monthly donation coming out of my PayPal for a few years now.

Many people don’t realize that the tribe didn’t profit off of Twilight, so I mention it whenever I bring up the series!

If you want to read more about how Twilight impacted the Quileute People, check out “The Truth vs. Twilight.”

The Federalist Society is one of those things that sounds exaggerated, or even fictional, until you see it in action. They recruit conservative law students with promises of eventual judicial appointments, or at least the satisfaction of seeing their desired judicial agenda enacted. Even at "progressive" law schools, where plenty of students are going into public or non-profit positions, FedSoc is a haven for reactionaries. These kids are weird—weird in a way I didn't know how to talk about, really, until J. D. Vance. They're smart. They believe in meritocracy, as long as they're the most meritorious, and in the rule of law, as long as it comes out their way. They think women should be judges and law partners, and that they should stay culturally subservient to men. They're superficially good debaters.

But they don't believe in the principles of equality, and they cannot stand to be told no. Give them any scrap of power, and they see any challenge to it as a personal attack and an act of oppression. And then, a few decades later, they metamorphose into the next Brett Kavanaugh.

weekendreading.net

Politicians in Robes: Part I

The Roberts Majority: Dictators Since Day One

The Supreme Court began another term this week. Most court watchers and other analysts have been reluctant to accept the truth of something I’ve long argued: that the Roberts Court is as agenda-driven as the House or Senate Republican caucuses. They have already put their thumbs on the scale in this election and are poised to intervene again if the results don’t suit them. 

We are at least a decade past the point when we should be convinced of what Abraham Lincoln stated in his first inaugural address: 

"The candid citizen must confess that if the policy of the Government upon the vital questions affecting the whole people is to be irrevocably fixed by the decisions of the Supreme Court . . . the people will have ceased to be their own rulers.1 " [emphasis added]

[...] The interests behind the Federalist Society (FedSoc) – in particular the Kochs, Leonard Leo, and other plutocrats and theocrats – are the same interests who have spent the 21st century funding and organizing the MAGA takeover of the Republican Party. I’ve coined the portmanteau “plutotheocratic” as a compact way of describing this coalition of interests. (See the Appendix for a brief overview of the history and major players in the plutotheocratic coalition.)  The six FedSoc justices are properly understood not as “umpires” scrupulously “calling balls and strikes,” but as politicians in robes. However, it’s important to recognize what kinds of politicians we are dealing with. The FedSoc Six are first and foremost Federalist Society operatives. That means that they usually act in the interests of the Republican Party – except when the partisan agenda of the day conflicts with the long-term plutotheocratic agenda.  [...]

Creating a Death Spiral for Democracy 

For about 40 years, we saw a fairly predictable ebb and flow in the federal commitment to advancing greater freedom and equality and to constraining corporate threats to consumers, working people, and the environment. Under Republicans, this commitment would ebb; under Democrats, it would flow. But beginning in 2010 with the Citizens United decision, if not a bit earlier, Roberts’s agenda-driven majority turned that ebb and flow into a death spiral for American democracy. 

Decision after decision shifted more and more electoral power to the FedSoc Six’s plutotheocratic sponsors – who in turn used that power to take greater control of Red state governments and purge Republican congressional caucuses of RINOs – which in turn was used to place more and more Federalist Society true believers on the Federal bench, and eventually the Supreme Court. 

[See more excerpts below the cut.]

[...] The Supreme Court has, of course, made many rulings that overturned previous major precedents or led to significant social change. But consider:

Brown v. Board of Education - Earl Warren and the other eight justices joining him did not owe their positions to a cabal of civil rights activists who had contributed billions of dollars to law schools, foundations, think tanks and political campaigns.

Roe v. Wade - Harry Blackmun and the six justices joining him on Roe v. Wade did not owe their positions to a cabal of pro-choice activists who had contributed billions of dollars to law schools, foundations, think tanks and political campaigns. 

Gideon v. Wainwright - Hugo Black and the eight other justices joining him did not owe their positions to a cabal of indigent prison inmates who had contributed billions of dollars to law schools, foundations, think tanks and political campaigns.  

But the members of the Roberts majority do owe their positions to a cabal of plutocrats, who directly benefited from rulings like Citizens United and Loper Bright, and theocrats, who have a fierce ideological commitment to outcomes like Dobbs and Hobby Lobby, who together have contributed billions of dollars to law schools, foundations, think tanks and political campaigns. Again, per Lincoln, we have ceased to be our own rulers.

The Federalist Society literally planned and executed an unprecedented transfer of unchecked political power to their own loyalists.5 They brag about this in unguarded moments and in their “safe spaces.”

Women in the USA vote for Kamala

There have been so many “jd vance says something incredibly creepy about women” clips surfacing I’ve genuinely lost count