Tuesday, July 9, 2013

The Supreme "Bait and Switch" From the Roberts Court

Supreme "Bait and Switch" Part One
 Prop 8 and DOMA

MeanMesa had a chance to see part of the Albuquerque Gay Pride Parade.  The atmosphere was jubilant.  The crowd was celebrating the Supreme Court decision on gay marriage.

Albuquerque Gay Pride 2013 (image: Mitch Tillison)
 However, there may have been either a subtle misinterpretation of the decision or, in MeanMesa's estimate at least, an overly optimistic presumption about the behavior of the stubbornly bigoted block of US states suffering the misfortune of being controlled by biblically zealous, "hybrid Republicans" jealously guarding political policies from the last century -- or, perhaps, the Third Century.

[All this contemporary "gay hating" clap trap had its origin well into the Dark Ages, not anywhere within the tenuous account of affairs in biblical times.]

Had the celebration been in California, that jubilation would have made much more sense.  In that particular State the Supreme Court ruling actually resulted -- almost immediately -- in gay couples being able to get legal marriage licenses.  The uglier but also quite "real" side of that decision actually had almost the opposite consequences in far too many other places.

This won't be the case in the backward states, however.  For them the Supreme ruling  just about completely legitimized a perpetual -- federally endorsed -- state of discrimination.  All those states have to do to receive their "full pass" from the Roberts Court is to repeatedly crank up their election machines any time a bill to do otherwise might survive long enough to actually land on a ballot.

Most Americans live under GOP control in their state government. (image source)


While the map [above] shows the dismal story which began with the 2010 mid-term election, for gays it paints and even darker future given the "bait and switch" ruling from the Supremes. We may assume that the states in magenta will never pass a gay marriage non-discrimination bill.  The recent Supreme Court decision made that not only possible, but supremely legal.

Once again, the Roberts Court ruling clearly says that perpetual discrimination in those states "perfectly okay with us."

The fascist bloc on the Court didn't simply step into an unnoticed "cow flower" while they were cooking up this deceptive ruling.  Any "thoughtful, judicial construction" this exquisitely complex and deceptive took plenty of conscious effort.  That effort was designed to produce precisely what this ruling will produce -- an agonizing opportunity for the nation's Leviticans to continue to drool, illiterate and comatose, just a little longer in their stifling Bronze Age, biblical bigotry.

Supreme "Bait and Switch" Part Two
ObamaCare is "Legal" If It's Paid For With Tax Money

Whoever owns the fascist majority on the Supreme Court obviously ordered their dutiful, Supreme, "judicial servants" to insert just the tiniest, most subtle "poison pill" in the decision to allow tax paying Americans to almost purchase the kind of health care they actually wanted.  Like the national response to the "bait and switch" considered in Part One [above], there was jubilation among the millions of citizens who had been "poorly used" by the rapacious insurance corporations and, in tragic irony, their "death panels" of bureaucrats.

If the overly genteel term, "poorly used," threw you off, just substitute "gang raped" for more clarity.

The "pivot point" in the Supreme analysis of the Affordable Care Act was the barely noticed provision that it was "judged" Constitutional based exclusively on the proposition that its revenue provisions had been instantly -- and, of course, "Supremely" --  retitled as a "tax."

All that seemed palatable enough as a tiny carbuncle amid the pages of a surprisingly conciliatory "Supreme" decision.  However, once the dust settled,  more and more "far less palatable" realities emerged in the daily talking points of a corporate media already suffering from heartbreaking "credibility scabs."

The "behind the scenes" directors of the anti-ObamaCare media onslaught which began the evening of the first day of "debate" in the Senate have spent an average of $1 Mn per week since then, year in and year out, to lethally sabotage the bill.

The reason for such a sanguine, obsessive interest?

The health insurance corporations have embedded themselves into the blood veins of the $6 Tn dollar per year "money flow" which is the annual price for medical care in the United States.  Feeding like a giant, Congressionally protected, interstate tapeworm, even the tiniest continuing swallows of such a monumental flow of cash can create corporate wealth beyond measure.

For these criminal beneficiaries it is, clearly, worth any effort to protect their parasitic "food supply."  For even the most feeble "Googler" the un-recused, brazenly public, outrageous conflicts of interest are no secret at all.

They are not even subtle.  There is no denial or shabby obfuscation.  For example, the tea bag wife of "Justice" Clarence Thomas is the head of the extremely skanky lobbying firm, Liberty Consultants, pole dancing in Washington D.C. in a manner which would make paid prostitutes blush. (Read more.)

When the Affordable Care Act not only survived all the attacks against it, but began to garner a growing appreciation among the voters, the  execution of the Supreme Court's desperate, doomsday, last ditch, "Hail Mary" tactic was inevitable.  There was, it turns out, no hideous creature in any horror movie more terrifying to the Republicans and their oligarch masters than a wildly popular alternative to their old "pain for pay" health insurance system.

Oooops.

The same billionaires who feed through the corrupt health insurance corporations and obviously own the fascist, corporate faction of the Supreme Court also happen to own vast clutches of sold out, tea bag, GOP House members -- you know, the illicit "minority-majority" in the same House of Representatives which establishes taxation policy for the country.  The health insurance billionaires keep all these GOP House hill billies in a constant servile frenzy with the threat of painlessly funding well financed primaries against them in their gerrymandered home districts.

Still, there had to be a token prize somewhere to "sweeten the cake" for all the Southerners now convinced, thanks to the oligarchs' massive media investments, that Satan himself had authored the health care reform.  While there would penalties to pay for states "opting out," the "escape clause" was still surgically inserted into the decision.

Just as the DOMA/Prop 8 ruling made perpetual discrimination against gays legal for the states which wanted it, the Affordable Care Act ruling made it just as legal to not participate in the Act's implementation which might ever provide access to care for anyone without a lobbyist.

Connecting the Dots

The only real problem with this complicated scheme for a "final solution" for the Affordable Care Act arose from the unavoidable visibility of the Congressional butchery. which would be required  Finally, in a rare cogent instant, even the billionaires remembered that there are still the problematic remnants of actual elections.

We see that both the gay marriage decision and the Affordable Care Act ruling slipped a tantalizing dollop of "red meat" to the crackers still understandably worshipping the "benefits" of lots of Supreme "states rights."  These folks were hanging onto the joys of their old, not so sweet, Jim Crow days with the same white knuckles that Ted Nugent was using to grip his $10,000 dollar shot gun.

At first this seemed to be an anomaly.  Why were the billionaires so interested in fanning the flames of the mortally gerrymandered, bright red, "Romney states?"

One clue is that these "Romney states" were generally morbid examples of massive over dependence on federal spending, suffering from horrible Republican economies, filled with hopeless, desperate citizens and led by embarrassingly "flap jawed" tea bag politicians with only one foot in their mouth only because they couldn't find their other one.

However, that "anomaly" reveals the inescapable desperation the owners of the Republican Party feel when they look at a map showing their sequence of defeats in election after election.  The entire existence of the "Grand Old Party"  thing is now hanging by a few quite frayed racist thread dangling forlornly under their now tiresome penchant for redistricting, disenfranchisement and their other rather greasy, ongoing, state level election crimes.

So, we have to add one final, Supreme dot before we begin connecting the ones we've already mentioned:  crushing the Voter Rights Act.

Recall that the House and Senate have re-authorized the Voters Right Act every time it came up to be reaffirmed.  Also remember that those votes were bipartisan, and that the bills were all passed with a strong majority.

Ask yourself.  You are stranded with the dwindling number of disgruntled, racist hill billies listening to the relentless, constantly incendiary corporate media on one side.  At your other side are clutches of "not very happy" billionaires such as  the Koch brothers, Simpson and Addelson.

Those hill billies continue to swill their beer and obediently belch out the media talking points, but they have become demoralized.  It had been repeatedly promised to them that if they would just "suffer through" a tiny bit more of the steaming wreckage of an economy that the "millions" of their new personal wealth would be found "just around the next corner."  We know now that this cynical deception was intended only to use them as a "breaking news" fodder to distract the rest of us until the looting rampage was complete.

It's nearly complete.

The billionaires, on the other hand, are feeling strangely plundered after dropping their "Romney billions" with FOX inebriated shysters like Karl Rove.  The "conservative masses" of zombie like voters who were supposed to rush forward once their heavily "over lubricated" right wing nut "leadership" was revealed were substantially less than what had been promised by the Super PAC glad handers to whom they so eagerly gave all those checks.

So, what's left for the angry old country club vultures who were dreaming that they would be pecking away the last morsels from the corpse of the American economy by now?


"Save the Queen!!" (image source)
It is, ironically, the precisely tattered tea bag/GOP desperately shouting "Save the Queen!  "Save the Queen!"

The "queen" to which these histrionic, 1960's style political gangsters are referring is their last bastion of possible hope to ever win another election before the ground completely evaporates beneath their feet -- the GOP's "election crimes" department.

The craven gerrymandering found so politically addictive by the oligarchs' "rural country side" servants, that is, by the red state governments with such a penchant for every kind of ballot mischief, represents the only remaining, functioning political mechanism for a Party with such a horrendous record, hideous candidates and terrifying policy.

The GOP needs states rights more than air and water right now.

The only way the GOP can sustain the heavily soiled, yet proverbially unreliable and frustratingly fickle, "loyalty" of the bigots in its base lies with the protection of the gerrymandered districts.  To accomplish this,  crackers from Alabama to Wisconsin must be paid off with a free pass to continue their anti-democracy, "GOP saving" rampage on fair elections.

The Voting Rights Act was, shall we say, "getting in the way."  The old Jim Crow gerrymandering worked, at first, amid a vocal bus load of outraged FOXites, but as the years passed, one after another, each one accompanied by another hopeless paralytic economic doldrum in the red states, the shine began to tarnish.  The Congressional districts are still gerrymandered, but the captive voters are now yawning instead of cheering.

The Supreme scheme was simple enough.

Hand the gays something to shut them up, but hand the old states rights crackers as "sweet little something," too.  Promise them that they can legally discriminate to their heart's content forever --  keeping North Carolina and Alabama locked in a museum-like conservancy reminiscent of the day before General Sherman reached Savannah.

Give millions of Americans the fleeting possibility of actual health care, but then turn it over to a tea bag Congress -- the one that has passed 40 bills destroying that same health care bill -- to "drown it in a bath tub" with a rat pack of corporate media cheer leaders "giving it their all" to keep the water muddy during the slaughter.

In the ensuing chaos stridently pronounce racism a "thing of the past."  Obliterate the Voting Rights Act and allow the same drooling Southerners to be elected and re-elected for another century.

See?  That's "states' rights," and the states with those new "states' rights" aren't any more racist than Antonin Scalia -- he told us this.

If you're wondering what can be done, this might cheer you up a bit.
http://www.meanmesa.com/2012/04/28th-amendment-death-by-legacy.html


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