I can’t stop watching that one…
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And your point is? A divorced couple in Virginia is arguing over custody of frozen embryos. Judge Uses a Slavery Law to Rule Frozen Embryos Are Property Frozen human embryos can legally be considered property, or “chattel,” a Virginia judge has ruled, basing his decision in part on a 19th century law governing the treatment of slaves. The preliminary opinion by Fairfax County Circuit Court Judge Richard Gardiner – delivered in a long-running dispute between a divorced husband and wife – is being criticized by some for wrongly and unnecessarily delving into a time in Virginia history when it was legally permissible to own human beings. “It’s repulsive and it’s morally repugnant,” said Susan Crockin, a lawyer and scholar at Georgetown University’s Kennedy Institute of Ethics and an expert in reproductive technology law. And her point is? This is your America on Trumpism, and oh so great again. “I would like to think that the bench and the bar would be seeking more modern precedent,” said Solomon Ashby, president of the Old Dominion Bar Association. The group is primarily African American attorneys.
Murdoch has made a market and he’s selling to it. That’s all there is. I have always been skeptical of the economic deterministic view that you can reduce all human motivation to money. People are complicated and are motivated by many things, including ego, fear, love, status, etc. Economic motives are certainly part of the equation but I’ve never bought the idea that you can always explain everything if you just “follow the money.” Businesses, however, can usually be put in the “money is everything” category and many make the argument that that’s how it should be, fiduciary duty and all that. There are certain wealthy actors who are motivated by both ideology and money. These are people who use their power and their businesses to advance personal causes while also chasing a profit. The right-wingers among them (the majority of the bunch) have the felicitous advantage of their ideology working to their economic imperative so no doubt some of their alleged ideals are simply in service of that goal. Over the years it’s been assumed that Rupert Murdoch has been one of those businessmen.
What people “hate even more is to be patronized” Andrew L Seidel (“The Founding Myth: Why Christian Nationalism Is Un-American“) notes that the framers of the U.S. Constitution were for the most part not religious men. At least, not in the evangelicals’ sense. Where they referenced morality and religion as necessary to an orderly society, the two were separate things. For men such as themselves, morality was the product of their elite educations and deep inquiry. For the masses, religion was a pale substitute and ripe for abuse and exploitation by the unscrupulous.* To guard against the latter, the framers revered almost as secular saints were elitists in a groundbreaking way by wisely separating church and state. Thus, they wrote “no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States” into the U.S. Constitution even before the First Amendment was added. On that note, Tom Nichols in his The Atlantic newsletter addresses the very different elitism of Fox personalities.
Oy vey. This is just brutal I’ll be live-tweeting this morning’s portion of the House “weaponization” hearing featuring testimony from Matt Taibbi Rep. Plaskett begins by asking Jim Jordan if he plans to use information during today's hearing that Democrats have not had a chance to review. Jordan indicates that yes, he plans to do that. Plaskett refers to Taibbi and Shellenberger as "two of Elon Musk's public scribes" who "release cherry-picked, out of context emails and screenshots designed to promote his chosen narrative, Elon Musk's chosen narrative, that is now being parroted by the Republicans." Plaskett to Jim Jordan: "Americans can see through this. Musk is helping you out politically, and you're going out of your way to promote and protect him and to praise him." She then adds, "there are many legitimate questions about where Musk got the financing to buy Twitter." Wow. Plaskett is not messing around at all and Republicans are getting mad about it. LOL — Jim Jordan claims that Matt Taibbi is Democrat so he's not actually there to help Republicans !!!
That’s the title of my latest piece in Inside Story, expanding on this recent post. More over the fold Looking at recent news on global heating, it’s easy to give way to despair. After a brief slowdown during the lockdown phase of the Covid pandemic emissions of greenhouse gases have continued to rise. Even coal, […]
That’s the headline for my latest piece in Independent Australia, responding to some appalling warmongering from the Nine papers. The main point is that a seaborne invasion of Taiwan would be doomed to failure. Everyone knows this, but all the important players have good reason to deny it.
Hookay…. Will his homophobic constituents buy this? Probably. They all voted for Trump didn’t they? Shamelessness is their superpower. This is yet another data point among millions, that many these anti-LGBTQ zealots have secret lives that they are hiding. In the larger sense it’s incredibly sad that so many people can’t find the courage to live their lives honestly, even in this more tolerant world. But the fact that they actually use their power to degrade and discriminate against the people who are doing that is unforgiveable.
From an email friend: Those of us of a certain age will remember the attached photo depicting the summary execution of a Viet Cong officer, Nguyen Van Lem, by Saigon’s chief of police. Eddie Adams, the photographer who took the photo (for which he won a Pulitzer), subsequently investigated the story behind it. It seems that Lem had killed an ARVN colonel along with his wife and six children. But it turns out that there was a seventh child, a nine-year old son, who escaped the massacre and lay clinging to his mother’s body for two hours until he was found. This son, named Huan Nguyen, fled to the US after the fall of Saigon, joined the Navy, and was yesterday promoted to the rank of admiral. https://www.corriere.it/esteri/23_marzo_09/foto-saigon-execution-55-anni-fa-bambino-vietnamita-superstite-strage-diventato-ammiraglio-marina-americana-1302baca-be71-11ed-b743-21e74a13bd9b.shtml?intcmp=emailNLcor_americacina_9marzo2023 Wow…
Nobody knows how the company is doing right now It appears that Trump is getting shady financing from some rich guy in San Diego who owns an online bank. I’m sure he won’t need anything in return should Trump become president again so this is all perfectly fine. The Trump Organization says it ended a tumultuous 2022 without telling anyone outside the company how business is doing—a claim that, if believed, could be an indication of its looming financial difficulties in the face of a tsunami of legal trouble. In practical terms, however, the claim also keeps New York state investigators from getting a clear picture of whether the real estate firm has continued lying to banks about its property values, even as investigators barrel toward a trial that could kill off the Trump Organization. The disclosure about how the Trumps haven’t made any financial statements to banks or accounting firms was made in a Feb. 3 letter written by a retired judge tasked with babysitting the Trumps’ real estate empire, in a document that was made public in court filings last week.