Sat - Is It Illegal For Clarence To Have Sex With Ginni?

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Today's Worst Joke in the World

Electricians have to strip to make ends meet..
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Today's Worst Person in the World Nominees

6 Members of SCOTUS, Mitch McConnell, and Everyone Else Who Demolished US Democracy to Put Them There

There will be no other nominees today.
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Today's Best Person in the World Nominees

The West Coast Fights Back


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Invasions Have Consequences

Day 122

Fighting

Ukraine officials said troops in Severodonetsk have been ordered to withdraw as there is very little left to defend in the bombed-out eastern city, where hundreds of civilians remain trapped in a chemical plant.

Severodonetsk’s twin city of Lysychansk is set to become the next main focus of fighting. Pro-Russian leader says it would take another week and a half to secure full control of Lysychansk.

South of Severodonetsk, Ukrainian soldiers have retreated from the towns of Hirske and Zolote in the face of overwhelming Russian forces, said Oleksiy Arestovych, an adviser to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.

Ukraine’s foreign minister says retreating does not mean losing the war, notes Russia had wanted to occupy the eastern Donbas region by May 9.

Ukraine’s general staff said its troops had some success in the southern Kherson region, forcing the Russians back from defensive positions near the village of Olhine, the latest of several Ukrainian counterassaults.

Trials

Ukraine held a preliminary hearing in its first trial of a Russian soldier charged with raping a Ukrainian woman during Russia’s invasion, the first of what prosecutors say could be dozens of such cases.

Diplomacy

European Union leaders formally accepted Ukraine as a candidate to join the bloc, a bold geopolitical move triggered by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Russia says the candidacy decision amounted to the EU “enslaving” neighbouring countries.

Economy

The G7 rich democracies will seek to show long-term support for Ukraine at a summit starting on Sunday, even as the war’s growing effect on the world economy tests their resolve.

Kazakhstan’s Not On the Putin Train

President Tokayev publicly refused to recognise Moscow-backed separatist regions in Ukraine, but some say the move was designed to avoid Western sanctions.

Last Friday, Kassym-Jomart Tokayev appeared cornered as he sat next to his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, and Margarita Simonyan, head of the Kremlin-funded RT television network, which is sanctioned in the West.

The three were on the main stage of the International Economic Forum in St Petersburg, Russia’s former imperial capital and Putin’s hometown.

Simonyan asked the Kazakh leader about the “inevitability” and “legality” of what the Kremlin has dubbed a “special operation” in Ukraine – Europe’s largest armed conflict since World War II.

“There are different opinions about it,” Tokayev, Kazakhstan’s former foreign minister and the United Nations’ former deputy secretary-general, began diplomatically.

And then he said something that seemed to have shattered Kazakhstan’s post-Soviet “strategic partnership” with its former imperial master.

“That’s why we won’t recognise Taiwan, Kosovo, [the breakaway Georgian regions of] South Ossetia and Abkhazia,” Tokayev said with a faint smile.

“Apparently, the same principle will be applied to the quasi-state territories that are, in our view, Luhansk and Donetsk,” the two breakaway regions in southeastern Ukraine, he said.

Is There Life After Severdonetsk?

Like Severodonetsk, Lysychansk isn’t even strategically important to Ukraine. Russia would claim a propaganda victory in conquering Luhansk Oblast, but from a strategic standpoint, Ukraine’s defense of Slovyansk and Kramatorsk are most important—they are the gateway to the rest of the Donbas.

Unlike Severodonetsk, I do believe there’s a chance Ukraine can hold Lysychansk, but what’s most important is that Ukraine keep degrading Russian forces, whittling away at their combat power so that come August-September, there won’t be much left when Ukraine launches its promised counter-attack.

There are signs that Russia is already thinning itself to the point that it cannot hold much of its territory. Quite unexpectedly, perhaps even to Ukraine itself, the home team is rolling back Russian forces in southern Donbas.



Here’s the entire Donbas front, for context, with Lysychansk on the top right, and this newly liberated territory bottom center. It’s also a great way to get perspective to just how little Russia has advanced the past six weeks attempting to snip that tiny corner of Ukrainian-held territory around Severodonetsk.

From a land-mass perspective, Ukraine may have just gained as much land down there west of Donetsk, as Russia has gained north of Popasna.

Kherson

Something is brewing in Kherson, but there is an information blackout from Ukraine General Staff other than to say that they are “advancing.” Some sources claimed to have video of Ukrainian forces entering Kherson city, but that was ridiculous. Ukraine is still 10-15 kilometers away at the closest points, and the last confirmed progress I saw was further north, pushing Russians further back from Kryvyi Rih area. Here:



Ukraine Faces a Dilemma:  Do They Need a Win?

To some extent they want to push the narrative that they are not doing well, to support the claim that they need more weapons.

OTOH, they need to show some success to keep up morale and interest.  The West may not be interested in supporting a losing effort.  
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Bad Law Has Bad Consequences

Are They Going to Start Jailing Journalists in Mississippi?

What does it mean for a website to “encourage” abortion? New anti-abortion model legislation released last week by the National Right to Life Committee (NRLC) would force anyone who publishes work online to grapple with that question, putting journalists who cover abortion squarely into legal crosshairs. The model legislation—which NRLC hopes will be adopted by state legislatures around the country—would subject people to criminal and civil penalties for “aiding or abetting” an abortion, including “hosting or maintaining a website, or providing internet service, that encourages or facilitates efforts to obtain an illegal abortion.”

Unsurprisingly, the text offers no guidance on how broadly or narrowly the provision might be interpreted: Does it cover an article on how medication abortion is accessible by mail or reporting on the medical consensus that it’s safe? What about a story on the opening of a new abortion clinic, or one covering the work of abortion care clinicians, advocates, and doulas? Is it too “encouraging” for a website to simply remind readers that despite the leaked draft Supreme Court decision in Dobbs v. Whole Women’s Health, abortion remains legal, and people are free to keep their appointments?

If so, along with abortion providers and advocates who already face constant surveillance, harassment, and violence from the U.S. anti-abortion movement, journalists at trusted news organizations like Prism, DAME Magazine, Rewire News Group, Scalawag, and others could face legal jeopardy simply for doing our jobs: fighting misinformation, and providing readers with up-to-date, deeply reported, and fact-based information that reflects the state of the nation and helps them navigate their place within it.

With Sorrow They Dissent.  





This Ruling May Make It Illegal For Clarence to Have Sex With Ginni.  Maybe That's What He Wants.

Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas argued that same-sex marriages don't merit federal protection. His own marriage, however, could also be at risk.

The legal right not only to same-sex marriage but also to interracial marriage — which reaches even further back in American history — is now at risk with the U.S. Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe v. Wade and its profound upending of decades of basic rights, experts warn.

Vice President Kamala Harris, whose own marriage is interracial, said in remarks Friday that the decision “calls into question other rights that we thought were settled, such as the right to use birth control, the right to same-sex marriage, the right to interracial marriage.”

The possibility of the loss of the right to marry someone of another race was ominously raised when Sen. Mike Braun (R-Ind.) said in March that such a right should be left up to the states (as abortion is now). Following backlash, he retracted his statement, claiming he had misunderstood the question. Such a decision would mean that an interracial couple legally married in one state could be arrested while visiting another.

The Supreme Court’s decision Friday compared the Roe ruling to cases such as Obergefell v. Hodges, which guaranteed the right to marriage equality; Loving v. Virginia, which protected interracial marriage; Griswold v. Connecticut, which established the right for married couples to use contraception; and Lawrence v. Texas, which prohibited states from banning sexual relations between people of the same sex.

Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas suggested Friday in a solo concurring opinion that the court should reexamine other rights protected under the due process clause of the 14th Amendment.

“We should reconsider all of this Court’s substantive due process precedents, including Griswold, Lawrence, and Obergefell,” Thomas wrote. “Because any substantive due process decision is ‘demonstrably erroneous,’ we have a duty to ‘correct the error’ established in those precedents.”
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Jim Obergefell, the plaintiff behind the Supreme Court's landmark ruling on same-sex marriage, said Friday that Justice Clarence Thomas omitted Loving v. Virginia on his list of Supreme Court decisions to "reconsider" because it "affects him personally."

"That affects him personally, but he doesn't care about the LGBTQ+ community," Obergefell said on MSNBC's "The Reid Out."

In a 5-4 decision released Friday, the Supreme Court voted to overturn Roe v. Wade. The majority opinion argued that the 14th amendment, which prevents states from depriving citizens of "life, liberty, or property without the due process of law," does not protect the right to abortion.

In a concurring opinion following the ruling, Thomas wrote that "we should reconsider all of this Court's substantive due process precedents, including Griswold, Lawrence, and Obergefell."

These cases protect the right to contraceptive access, same-sex relationships, and same-sex marriage, respectively.

Loving v. Virginia, which protects the right to interracial marriage and also concerns the due process clause of the 14th amendment, was not a part of Thomas' list.

Thomas himself is in an interracial marriage with right-wing activist Ginni Thomas.

Do You Think You Are Safe in a Blue State?  Think Again.



An alarmed Rachel Maddow is convinced Republicans will now angle to bring a “fetal personhood” case before the Supreme Court in a bid to totally shut down abortion nationwide.

Such a case would aim to define a fetus as a human being, and an abortion as murder. Maddow warned the extremist fight is a long game, decades in the making, often enforced with violence, and that Republicans aren’t about to ease off now that the court has overturned Roe v. Wade.

“The anti-abortion political project of the Republican Party and the political right has been the central organizing principle for the right’s entire effort around the judiciary, one for which there is still no match or mirror on the left. It’s a big deal,” she said on MSNBC’s “Rachel Maddow Show” Friday.

This movement, 40 years in the making, “is just now hitting its stride, that is just coming into maturity,” she noted.

And they’re not stopping, she warned.

“There’s nothing in the reasoning of today’s opinion from these six justices that would stop them from accepting something like a fetal personhood case,” Maddow explained.

“A fetal personhood case ... would give this court a path to not just let individual states ban abortion, which is what they did today. ... A fetal personhood case could be their vehicle to impose a nationwide ban on abortion, on the order of the United States Supreme Court,” she said.

The Criminalization Of Pregnancy

The American College of Obstet­ri­cians and Gyneco­lo­gists defines the criminalization of pregnancy as “the punishing or penalizing of individuals for actions that are interpreted as harmful to their own pregnancies, including enforcement of laws that punish actions during pregnancy that would not otherwise be criminal or punishable.”

In recent years, there have been a large number of headline-making cases of women who were prosecuted in the U.S. after experiencing a miscarriage or stillbirth.

The NAPW’s data also includes instances of pregnant people being arrested or charged for things like falling down, being diagnosed with HIV or giving birth at home. Even in cases of healthy births, mothers have been prosecuted.

At least 38 states have fetal homicide laws, which were intended to protect vulnerable pregnant people from violence from others but are increasingly being used to punish pregnant people for their own behavior or pregnancy outcomes.

There Are No Consequences For The Unelected Politburo Ruling the Country.


If The QOP Wouldn't Support Impeaching Previous Guy, They Won't Support This.  But Putting Them on Trial Might Be Fun.



What Can We Do?


Apparently, Peaceful Protest is Illegal in Arizona

At about 11pm last night police at the AZ capitol building fired tear gas into a peaceful crowd protesting against the state's anti abortion trigger law.

There was no warning, no call for the crowd to disperse. As the tweet said, the fired canisters of tear gas were the warning.

And Protest is Dangerous in Iowa

A truck driver careened into a group of demonstrators in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, on Friday as they crossed the street during an otherwise peaceful protest of the overturning of Roe v. Wade.

The unidentified male driver of a Ford truck rammed into several protesters — all of them women — at the tail end of a procession, rolling over one woman’s ankle and sending her to the hospital, witnesses said.

“He tried to murder them,” said a local journalist and witness to the attack, Lyz Lenz. “These women see him coming and a bunch of people put their hands out to stop him. And he just keeps going.”

Multiple witnesses, including one of the victims, described the scene in interviews with HuffPost: The male driver was waiting behind several cars at a red light downtown as a throng of protesters crossed the street.

He became “impatient,” as several witnesses said, and hit the gas, maneuvering around several cars to ram protesters.



Molly Mank, a witness, told HuffPost that the man didn’t give any audible indication that he was anti-abortion, “but he did go out of his way to hit protesters in the street who had very visible, very clear signs that they were pro-choice.”

“It makes me feel like the pro-life movement is a completely lie if, in order to be against people who are protesting for abortion rights, you try to murder them in my street, in my neighborhood,” said Mank. “It makes me very, very sad, very hurt and very angry that this is what people think pro-life means.”

Are These Real SCOTUS Rulings?


What Can You Do?

For plenty of people, securing an appointment for an abortion with a real health care provider is difficult enough. On top of that, many do not live in places where abortion is accessible, and have to decide whether to pay for gas or pay for a flight, and possibly a hotel room for one or more nights. Many people seeking abortions have small children, so there is also the question of child care. Then there is the cost of the actual medical service, which averages upward of $500 for an in-clinic procedure in much of the country. Waiting means it will cost more.

When all of those costs added up appear daunting, an abortion fund can step in.

All over the country, abortion funds are staffed by people ready to help others figure out how to get an abortion, supplying grants in varying amounts to help cover the cost of the appointment as well as expenses like transportation, child care and shelter during recovery.

The funds make it possible for women, including many women of color, to secure an abortion either by medication (in the form of pills) or by a clinician in an office. Some travel hundreds or thousands of miles. Some have no insurance, while others are covered by Medicaid or private insurance.

If you want to contribute

I am also planning to donate to competitive Senate races in September.

Putin Hasn't Expressed An Opinion, But ...

World leaders and abortion rights advocates described the ruling as “horrific” and “appalling.” Crowds rallied in protest in cities including London, Paris and Edinburgh, Scotland.

“One of the darkest days for women’s rights in my lifetime,” Scottish leader Nicola Sturgeon wrote on Twitter just minutes after the decision came down.

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson noted that the decision “clearly has massive impacts on people’s thinking around the world,” adding that he saw the move as a “big step backwards.”

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau also called the news “horrific,” saying that “no government, politician, or man should tell a woman what she can and cannot do with her body.”

“Abortion is a fundamental right for all women. It must be protected,” French President Emmanuel Macron wrote on Twitter. “I express my solidarity with the women whose freedoms are today challenged by the Supreme Court of the United States of America.”


Will It Make a Difference in Elections?

Though the GOP is celebrating the U.S. Supreme Court ruling that overturned the nearly 50-year-old landmark decision Roe v. Wade that guaranteed abortion-rights for women across the country, some Republicans are concerned that it will affect them during the upcoming midterms and the 2024 presidential election.

Some Republican strategists noted that the Court's decision shouldn't have been made during a midterm election year when current multiple aspects were already working in favor of the GOP such as record-high inflation, Politico reported Saturday.

"This is not a conversation we want to have. We want to have a conversation about the economy. We want to have a conversation about Joe Biden, about pretty much anything else besides Roe...This is a losing issue for Republicans," GOP strategist John Thomas told the news outlet.

Echoing Thomas' remarks was Dave Portnoy, who is the founder of Barstool Sports, who tweeted Friday: "I honestly think the Republicans [were] gonna win the White House in a landslide cause of how pathetic the Biden administration is. But I do think this will bail the Dems out. It sucks for everybody."

For a Change, It Didn't Take Long For Merrick to Respond

On the heels of the Supreme Court decision that struck down the national right to abortion, Attorney General Merrick Garland issued a statement proclaiming that the Justice Department disagrees with the verdict. In addition to vowing to “work tirelessly to protect and advance reproductive freedom,” it indicated a potential avenue for the legal fight for abortion rights.

“[W]e stand ready to work with other arms of the federal government that seek to use their lawful authorities to protect and preserve access to reproductive care,” he said. “In particular, the FDA has approved the use of the medication Mifepristone. States may not ban Mifepristone based on disagreement with the FDA’s expert judgment about its safety and efficacy.”

Mifepristone has been approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for more than 20 years and is authorized for use during the first 10 weeks of pregnancy. It is taken in a regimen with the drug misoprostol and together the two drugs can safely induce an abortion. More than half of abortions in the U.S. are medication abortions.

Until recently, mifepristone had to be dispensed in person, but in December the FDA did away with the requirement, allowing the drug to be prescribed via telehealth and shipped by mail. While this change has expanded access to the drug, there has also been a push to reduce it. In September, for instance, Texas Governor Greg Abbott signed SB4, which banned abortion-inducing drugs after seven weeks and prohibited them from being mailed in the state. At least 19 states ban the use of telemedicine visits for medication abortion despite the FDA allowance, and many still require that a doctors prescribe the medication, even though the FDA does not.
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We Don't Even Have Zero Cases in My House.  But We Also Haven't Lost Billions of Dollars.

China has reported zero new COVID-19 infections in Shanghai for the first time since March, as the country’s latest outbreak subsides after months of lockdowns and other restrictions.

China is the last major economy committed to a zero-COVID strategy, stamping out all infections with a combination of targeted lockdowns, mass testing and long quarantine periods.

The economic hub of Shanghai was forced into a months-long lockdown during a COVID surge this spring driven by the fast-spreading Omicron variant, while the capital, Beijing, shuttered schools and offices for weeks over a separate outbreak.

But infections have slowed to a trickle in recent days, with Shanghai on Saturday reporting zero locally transmitted cases for the first time since before the outbreak in early March.

“There were no new domestic COVID-19 confirmed cases and no new domestic asymptomatic infections in Shanghai,” the city said in a statement.

The lockdown on Shanghai’s 25 million residents was mostly lifted in early June, but the metropolis has struggled to return to normal as individual neighbourhoods have reimposed restrictions over new infections.
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Here's Why the QOP Can Do All Those Evil Things.  Because of Guys Like This.

When Rusty Bowers took the stand in Tuesday’s Jan. 6 congressional hearing, he riveted millions with his testimony about Donald Trump’s planned election sabotage. Bowers, the Republican Arizona House speaker, described how Trump and Rudy Giuliani asked him to help appoint phony electors in 2020 — and how he turned them down flat. Bowers stressed that he’d never break the vow he took to uphold the Constitution. “For me to do that because somebody just asked me to is foreign to my very being,” he said. “I will not do it.”

Bowers fought back tears as he testified Tuesday about the threats of violence he and his family faced after he refused to aid in former President Trump 's efforts to overturn the 2020 election.

Yet the day before, in an interview with The Associated Press, Bowers threw a curveball. Despite bravely speaking out against Trump’s election interference, he insisted he’d still vote for him in 2024. “If he is the nominee, if he was up against Biden, I’d vote for him again,” Bowers said. “Simply because what he did the first time, before COVID, was so good for the country. In my view it was great.”

The QOP Doesn't Pay a Price at the Polls When They Do Things That Harm Americans.


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SCOTUS Isn't the Only Court Making Bad Decisions

A Connecticut woman who says she’s descended from slaves who are portrayed in widely published, historical photos owned by Harvard University can sue the school for emotional distress, Massachusetts’ highest court ruled Thursday.

The state’s Supreme Judicial Court partly vacated a lower court ruling that dismissed a complaint from Tamara Lanier over photos she says depict her enslaved ancestors. The images are considered some of the earliest that show enslaved people in the U.S.

The court concluded the Norwich resident and her family can plausibly make a case for suffering “negligent and indeed reckless infliction of emotional distress” from Harvard and remanded that part of their claim to the state Superior Court.

The judges said the university failed to contact Lanier when it used one of the images on a book cover and prominently featured it in materials for a campus conference — even after she’d reached out about her ancestral ties.

“In sum, despite its duty of care to her, Harvard cavalierly dismissed her ancestral claims and disregarded her requests, despite its own representations that it would keep her informed of further developments,” the ruling states.

But the high court upheld the lower court’s ruling that the photos are the property of the photographer who took them and not the subject themselves.

“A descendant of someone whose likeness is reproduced in a daguerreotype would not therefore inherit any property right to that daguerreotype,” the high court wrote in its ruling.

I'm Upset By SCOTUS.  Can I Sue Them for Emotional Distress?
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Just Wait For It

Rep. Jamie Raskin gave Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene a reminder of some of the things she’s been quoted as saying into microphones about how the Jan. 6 insurrection wasn’t an insurrection, but also, that if it had been an insurrection, that would have been all right.

Rep. Greene attempted to undercut the question by responding, “Oh, Mr. Raskins, [sic] I know it's early in the morning, but this is the Rules committee, this isn't your Trump-derangement committee—that you call the January 6 committee.”

Rep. “Raskins” corrected Mrs. Greene’s mispronunciation of his name and then explained to her that she was there as a witness in support of Second Amendment gun rights—which would allow everyone at all times to carry weapons, of all kinds, anywhere they please—including the Capitol building.

He then leaked a little bit of wisdom to Ms. Greene explaining that considering that on Jan. 6, while “lots of people were armed that day,” by her “logic” everybody could have had a weapon as they stormed the Capitol building, attacked law enforcement, and searched for members of the legislative branch and Vice President Pence.

Rep. Greene, in what has now become a trademarked posture for her, attempted and failed to clap back at Raskin by asking him what “evidence” he had that anyone was armed on Jan. 6, to which Rep. Raskin smiled and responded: “Oh, just wait for it. But when it comes out, presumably you’ll be supporting it, right?”

Greene then attempted to get to her singular talking point, the disembodied two-word “Trump-derangement” back into the conversation, which is hack even by MAGA standards. Raskin wasn’t having it, and reminded Ms. Greene that she doesn’t get to ask questions because she isn’t on the Rules committee.

MTG once again invoked Trump’s name, projecting that onto Raskin, who reminded her that he’s “never mentioned that name, you’ve brought him up.”


MTG Doesn't Favor Arming Fetuses.  School Children?  It's Not Clear.

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) admitted Friday that arming fetuses just wouldn’t work.

She was responding to a baiting remark by Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) as the two argued at a House Rules Committee meeting about the Second Amendment and private armed militias.

“Do you think the students should be armed?” Raskin asked her.

“I think children should be trained with firearms,” Greene replied. “I definitely do. I think that’s very important.”

“So they can repel someone who comes in” to a school? Raskin asked.

“I said I believe children should be trained with firearms so they understand how to use them and understand the safety,” Greene answered.

She then veered into a rant about abortion.

“Abortion kills babies!” she said. “We’re talking about kids being killed; abortion kills innocent children. They can’t protect themselves at all from this horrific procedure.”

“Sounds like you want to arm them,” Raskin cracked.

“That’s impossible,” she replied, completely seriously. “That’s impossible, Mr. Raskin.”
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How Pathetic That This is the Most Significant Gun Law.

Biden signs into law the most significant federal gun safety reform in decades

President Joe Biden on Saturday signed into law the gun safety package passed by Congress this week.
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