“The new order, which will be in effect until at least Dec. 20, advises residents to stay at  home as much as possible, always wear a covering outside the home, and prohibits all public and private gatherings except for constitutionally-protected church services and protests.

https://cbsloc.al/37bT7o4

What, are they going to pray the virus away?

You’ve got to listen to this podcast, it’s positively riveting:

“The Myth of the Supreme Court”: https://bit.ly/3fI52xs

The host can be a bit of a bozo, great at reading scripts, but not so great at an intellectual convo with the eloquent and highly listenable guest, Eric J. Segall, a constitutional law professor at Georgia State. Yes, not every jurist has to be from an Ivy League school. God, I wish I had Segall as a professor, he makes the subject INTERESTING!

And what Segall says is the Supreme Court is political, plain and simple, and always has been. And yesterday, our latest Supreme Court slapped Andrew Cuomo down for disallowing worship, religious gatherings in masses, and it’s not all just Evangelical Christians, it’s Orthodox Jews too.

INSANE!

Segall also says the Court is self-correcting. If it gets too far ahead or behind the public, it changes. Which is why Roberts refused to eliminate the Affordable Care Act, aka “Obamacare,” and was in the minority in Wednesday night’s ruling.

Now I guess the Supreme Court is aligned with the 74 million who voted for Trump, but what about the 80 million who voted for Biden?

And while I’m giving instructions, let me whip out another one for you, watch this:

“New Rule: The Great Disappointment”: https://bit.ly/37lc3km

Bottom line, Bill Maher says we need CATHERINE OXENBERG to bring the Trump voters back to reality.

Yes, Oxenberg got her daughter out of NXIVM, a cult, with its own beliefs, go against Keith Raniere and you’re going to be buried in legal paper by the deep pockets of his Bronfman adherents. Right has no chance against money in litigation. Trumpers are members of a cult, and Bill says instead of excoriating them, we need to have sympathy for them, we need to deprogram them. And let’s not forget, if you’re an elected official on the right and you try to be reasonable, go against Trumpism, you’re primaried out of office. So, no one stood up to Trump’s inane claim that he won the election and his refusal to concede. As for his speech yesterday about agreeing to step down if the Electoral College says so…that’s a big if in Trumpland, and if he didn’t believe he could overturn the result, he just would have conceded there and then. Unlike a talented authoritarian, Trump didn’t fix the election before it took place, even though he and his party apparatchiks tried to, by suppressing the vote, by campaigning against the legality of mail-in ballots, but that does not mean he’s played his last card. Once again, don’t look to the system. Trump certainly hasn’t. Rules are made to be broken, laws too. And if you think Trump is just gonna throw his hands in the air and say he’s gonna go…you probably think Michael Flynn needed to be pardoned.

And if you do, you’re part of the cult. Not that I expect you to recognize this.

I thought our long national nightmare was over. Biden won. And sure, down the line Democrats did poorly, and I’m fearful about 2022, never mind 2024, but there’s a lot you can do with executive orders. As for the Georgia elections… There was a huge gap between Republicans and Democrats in the November 3rd contests, I’m not saying it’s impossible for the two Democrats to win, I’m just saying it’s improbable. Maybe we need more pessimism on the left, so we will be convinced to take drastic action. As for the foibles of the two Republican candidates…don’t you get it, most of the Trump cult will never vote for a Democrat, never ever. Hell, Trump claimed he could shoot someone in broad daylight and get away with it, when are you going to start believing what this guy says?

So, the news hasn’t had the same attraction since election week. I don’t have to check in with all the news podcasts, I can relax and have a life, and then this Supreme Court decision comes along. Hell, what did you expect, Amy Coney Barrett is a religious fanatic, but the Democrats were afraid to bring up her religion for fear of…exactly what? The ire of people who weren’t going to vote Democrat anyway?

This is simple, but can’t be executed in today’s America. You test and trace, and keep doing so until everybody is vaccinated. But NO!, as John Belushi, subject of a new documentary would say, you’ve got to let people pray, even though the atheists rule in this country…well, in numbers, if not power.

The news is rife with mass gatherings causing infections. From Trump rallies to Sturgis (although they may be the same thing), from religious gatherings to that wedding in Maine. I mean have you been to Maine? If any place feels safe. Then again, don’t the Dakotas qualify for this, there’s barely anybody there!

But that’s not how science works. But if you’re educated and worldly, can parse the truth, you’re a pariah to many Americans, to be shunned and ignored.

Which brings me to a third piece of work that I don’t recommend as highly as the two above, but it tries to pierce the self-flagellating veil on the left and discern exactly…

“Why Did So Many Americans Vote for Trump? To the dismay of Democrats, the president’s strategy of ignoring the pandemic mostly worked for Republicans”: https://nyti.ms/3le8tNC

The “New York Times”…it sets the agenda for America. And if you don’t know this, you’re uninformed. Just watch Fox or MSNBC, they don’t stop quoting and reacting to the “Times.” The “Times” gathers the news, to a depth no other journalistic operation does. And it’s only getting more powerful, recently the “Times” announced it had 6.5 million subscribers, 5.7 million of which are digital. Hell, the “Times” has benefited greatly from the internet, in the old days its weekday subscription numbers barely broke one million. That’s right, the big get bigger and if you’re bitching about change you’re gonna lose your seat at the table. Kind of like Ezra Klein, who followed Ben Smith and Kara Swisher to the “Times” from BuzzFeed and Recode/WSJ respectively. Klein said Vox would be the home of the explanation, the place for those not addicted to the news to catch up. But it turns out not that many people wanted the history, the bite-sized version. And wanting to reach as many people as possible, Klein decamped to the “Times.”

There is a need for local news, but the old model does not work. To protect its profit margins the “Los Angeles Times” delivers so little news that if you depend on it for information you’re almost as uninformed as those getting their news from Facebook, if not more.

I don’t want to be the bearer of bad news, but unless we admit there’s bad news there’s no way out of this mess, said not only by the joker to the thief, but from me to you.

STOP arguing with your right wing friends…IGNORE THEM! You’re just wasting your time and getting their heels dug in deeper. No, this is a systematic problem that must be fought on many fronts over years. It starts with education, the ability to analyze the news. But even before that comes income inequality. I don’t care who’s got the money, those at the other end of the spectrum, if they’re not playing the lottery, literally or metaphorically, hate them. Sure, you can make it as an entertainer or an athlete, but very few do! Isn’t this what internet blowback is all about, everybody now has a megaphone, they’re angry and they want to be heard, don’t ignore the herd. And we need more fulfilling, better paying jobs. Want to work in an Amazon warehouse, which is akin to Maggie’s Farm, but with technology tracing all your steps, with insane production goals that if you meet are just increased?

And California can’t even distribute relief funds, did you read that article about hundreds of millions of dollars were sent out in the names of inmates at the Golden State’s correctional facilities? The rest of the world is laughing at us. Forty years of selfish economic policy has come back to haunt us, with a dose of internet gone wild thrown in. We didn’t put bankers in jail and we haven’t put Mark Zuckerberg and his minions in jail. Why don’t we start there. He’s got plenty of money to clean up Facebook, he just doesn’t have an INCENTIVE! But everybody rich and powerful skates in America, the president is caught red-handed, admits to illegality, and isn’t even convicted. But if you smoke a joint… And good luck getting an abortion in most states, those are only for the rich.

We need new blood. We have to let the millennials and Gen-Z in. The boomers refuse to give up the reins, and it’s hurting our entire nation. AOC is hated by both the left and the right because SHE SPEAKS ENGLISH, which her age group understands. You work like a dog and can’t pay the bills, meanwhile your college debt will follow you to the grave.

It was a bizarre holiday. I stayed home alone, but the Mayor of Denver didn’t, and there were more people flying than there have been since the pandemic began. So, what chance does a stay at home order have? Not much, because everybody thinks the rules don’t apply to them, that they’re special, that they won’t be caught by the net, in this case Covid-19. And if perhaps they are? They’ll be lucky to get a tear from their loved ones who can’t even hold a proper funeral as the rest of the self-centered culture ignores them. Yes, if it doesn’t happen to you, to people you know, in America it doesn’t exist. But I’ve got to ask you punk, do you feel lucky, do you think the coronavirus won’t find you? I don’t.