DL Open Thread Thursday, Sept. 2, 2021
Today’s media freak-out is over the Committee of GileadU.S. Supreme Court upholding a Texas abortion ban by a 5-4 vote. The real test will be when it’s put into practice, because the state won’t enforce it — it’s relying on private citizens to file lawsuits against providers and patients, and SCOTUS acknowledged it’s constitutionally questionable. I truly don’t understand how such people can show standing, but hey, Texas. I have a feeling this isn’t going to work out as planned, because I don’t think it’s been planned at all.
For example, some Gilead-humpers set up a snitch line so people could rat out their suspected abortion-receiving neighbors anonymously. It didn’t take long for the American public to swing into action, rendering the site useless by inundating it with Shrek memes. Would have gotten away with it if it weren’t for those pesky kids.
Someday in the future, assuming there is a future, people are going to wonder how the media became fascinated by a crackhead-turned-Jesus-freak pillow salesman and his delusions about history’s greatest villain, Donald Trump. They’ll say, “Jesus, he wouldn’t quit even when he had to sell his private plane to fund his legal defense,” all for a libel suit he wouldn’t be in if he had just shut the fuck up about things he knows nothing about. Then again, if conservatives shut the fuck up about things they know nothing about they’d never get to speak.
You thought Trump was a half-assed mob wannabe? (Well, more like double-assed, but you know what I mean.) Kevin McCarthy made him look almost competent by comparison when he threatened telecoms not to comply with Jan. 6 committee subpoenas. Yeah, that makes you look real innocent there, sport, and you might have broken the law besides. What else ya got?
This article asks whether the Afghanistan cock-up will finally bring an end to our imperial war machine. Yeah, right. Sure it will. And the lion shall lie down with the lamb, but I wouldn’t count on the lamb getting any sleep.
The floor’s yours.
Endless war, war for profit and war to make a certain group feel good will eventually end. The majority of Americans are sick of this stupid game, suspect the current stench of war will remain in American nostril for quite awhile. The real end of the game comes when the next blow hard in Washington, Lindsey Graham comes to mind, tries to start another war and is attacked with prejudice. Hope to live to see it happen.
93 year old Reagan-appointed judge shuts down Locast service
I use Locast, but it this morning it went dark. Locast is a app that provides local TV channels over the internet for $5/month. If you can’t get local TV over the air, (and many people can’t, including myself), your only option now is cable TV or expensive internet TV packages.
From the Ars Technica article:
Radical capitalism at its finest.
I kinda used it (I have decent antenna coverage) and the pop-up every 30 minutes or so was annoying, so I only used it to get channels that don’t come in very well for me. Odd thing about Arizona, it’s easier to receive most Tucson area stations than Phoenix stations (mountains). It’s going to be interesting to see it that effects Sling TV (they marketed Locast as the solution to getting OTA stations)
The state relying on private citizens to enforce a law by filing lawsuits against providers and patients is a particularly dystopian innovation.
Texas is so fucked up.