DL Open Thread Sunday, June 27, 2021

It’s been six years since the Supreme Court ruled that laws forbidding same-sex marriages were unconstitutional, and the warnings that it would destroy marriage seem to have melted into nothingness, just like most right-wing boogeymen. While some LGBTQ activists are disappointed that the ruling didn’t improve much else where rights are concerned, the just-completed census found that of the nearly 1 million same-sex couples living together, more than half are married.

The U.S. Catholic bishops have backed down from their threat to deny communion to abortion-supporting politicians such as President Biden. So they’re cowards in addition to holding leadership roles in a criminal organization.

Of all the special interests that need hobbling, none tops Big Pharma. First taxpayers give money to universities to do basic research, and they fund government research facilities too. This research is in turn given to private enterprise, which then gouges the same taxpayers without whose contributions they wouldn’t have the pharmaceutical in the first place. Theoretically, because there’s a rule allowing this, government can step in when the price-gouge consumers. Though it’s never been used successfully, it’s on the books, but the Fascist regime put the rule on the road to oblivion, and the Biden administration was only recently alerted about it.

Why aren’t the Previous Guy and his minions in prison (yet)? Good question, and one Salon’s Chauncey DeVega attempts to answer by talking with author Richard Painter.

Good news on the killer cop front — all it takes is full videotape and prosecutors who do their jobs to convict murderous cops. In the case of Derek Chauvin, murderer of George Floyd, it resulted in a 22+ year prison sentence, but it hasn’t actually solved anything.

The cops think they are a law unto themselves, so they won’t change their ways until we disband police forces and reconstitute them without the sociopaths, and good luck with that. Remember when some cops in South Florida took a knee in front of protesters? Solidarity my ass — they were, at the same time, running video of peaceful crowds through facial recognition software, in obvious violation of the Fourth Amendment.

Beach erosion and subsistence have been speculative reasons for the Miami Beach condo collapse, but a more proximate cause has emerged — a 2018 engineering report found major structural damage to the building’s pool deck because of improper installation, plus other problems with decaying concrete. Residents were warned at the time, but the repairs would have cost each of the building’s units between $70,000 and $200,000 to fix, roughly 10% of each unit’s value. Apparently this is a problem in condominium buildings — residents who can’t foot such major bills vote to kick the can down the road.

On the radio show we used to say “You can’t have sports without Dick’s,” despite the fact that Dick’s sporting goods wasn’t a sponsor. A couple of stories demonstrate. First, the initial stage of the Tour de France bicycle race was thrown into chaos when a dipshit with a cardboard sign jumped into the road to mug for the TV cameras — and bumped a rider, who went down and took most of the field with him. Meanwhile, at the College World Series, the North Carolina State team was eliminated not in game action, but because a couple of dipshits on the team didn’t get vaccinated and caught Covid-19. Their coach proved himself a true paragon of responsibility, saying, “I don’t try to indoctrinate the kids with my values or my opinions. Obviously we talk about a lot of things. But these are young men who can make their own decisions and that’s what they did.”

The floor is yours.