An Alex Jones InfoWars fan helps me find organic potatoes

An Alex Jones InfoWars fan helps me find organic potatoes

by Hal Brown

Here's a story I guarantee you won't see reported anywhere else:

I was headed to our local big grocery store, Fred Meyers, to buy some organic vegetables, and saw a big pick-up truck flying a large American flag and a Don't Tread on Me flag from the back. I didn't have time to take a photo but then thought, while this is not typical in our liberal community, it isn't rare. I thought no big deal.

In particular I wanted to buy some Russet baking potatoes and was disappointed to see that there weren't any in the loose potatoes bin. I asked a clerk it they had any in the back because on another occasion they did. 

Another customer overheard me and showed me that on the other side of the aisle there had lots of bagged Russets. 

Pretty mundane story, you say?

Not really.

A the friendly man who told me about the potatoes...

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Hmm, I thought, this must be a super-patriotic MAGA-man. He's a free American, but then again so am I. Presumably unless you are currently incarcerated, you are also a free American.

 Then he turned around so I could read the back. It was even worse. Not only was he a free American but he was a fan of a raving lunatic.

He was wearing an Alex Jones InfoWars t-shirt.

If by chance you don't know who Alex Jones ....

Click above to read article

I thought it was worth having an unpleasant verbal confrontation, or worse, to take a few photos. Go ahead, pat me on the back for my courage for the cause of keeping loyal readers of my blog informed and sometimes even entertained.

If push came to shove, I'm not sure that my snarky sharp wit would have served me well. Who knows. This is Portland, which despite the interloping Proud Boys, is known to be peaceful and neighbors with diametrically opposed political views often live next to or across the street from each other. 

This is in Milwaukie not too far from my place.

These houses are across the street from each other in Aurora

Alex Jones has been in the news lately (read stories) over his loss in the Sandy Hook parents lawsuit leading to his having to declare bankruptcy, and his maniacal rants about what he considers an outrage.

I tried to find the exact version he was wearing online but couldn't. Here are some others from ETSY:

I wouldn't expect an Alex Jones fan to also be an organic vegetable eater but this man was only buying organic veggies:

No links below, just some screen shots. Jones made millions from selling this crap.

Text:

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The far right Supreme Court: As if we don't have enough to worry about

The far right Supreme Court: As if we don't have enough to worry about

By Hal Brown

Unrelated stories that piqued my interest will be at the bottom of this page. Special bonus on bottom of page, an exclusive photo essay you won't see anywhere else.

There have been several articles in the past few days that reminded me that between all the things happening to the country from turning us into a fascist far-right dominated banana republic, the Supreme Court is will begin its next session next on Monday week. 

Here's are the cases likely to be ruled on:

Here are a few more stories, with more to follow if they are published through the day. Let's start with The Nation since they have the best illustration:

The Supreme Court Returns on Monday, Stronger and More Terrible Than Ever by Elie Mystal

This term, the high court will cement its grip on political life in America, overturning affirmative action and other critical protections along the way.

Excerpt

While we don’t yet know what election-specific cases will make their way to the Supreme Court, it may be that the court itself doesn’t have to dirty its hands by ending democratic self-government this term the way it ended equality for women last term. The court could just let Republican-controlled state legislatures do it themselves. The most important case on the upcoming docket is one that tests the “independent state legislature” theory, which is a fancy way of saying that state legislatures, not the voters, get to choose the state’s representatives in Congress.

I can’t predict how the court will assert its political dominance over our country, but what I do know is that it will continue to wage war on the forces of tolerance and fairness. This term will see the end of affirmative action, a particularly bitter pill given that it will be the first term for Ketanji Brown Jackson, the first Black woman to serve as a Supreme Court justice. This term will also see renewed attacks on LGBTQ rights, tribal sovereignty, and, of course, any programs to address climate change or the destruction of the environment.

This isn’t how things are supposed to work in a constitutional republic. The people are supposed to elect representatives, and those representatives are supposed to pass laws within constitutional bounds as interpreted by impartial arbiters. If the arbiters are not impartial, they should be able to be recalled, and if the representatives don’t do what the people want, they should be able to be fired. That would be healthy. That would be self-government.

While there are high profile case you have heard of, there are others your probably haven't been aware of, for example:

NATIONAL PORK PRODUCERS COUNCIL V. ROSS

DATE OF HEARING: OCTOBER 11

First and foremost, this case is about the pork industry’s cruelty to animals for no reason other than to maximize profits. There are important and nuanced legal issues here, but we can’t lose sight of the literal animal torture at the heart of this case.

The pork industry uses something called “gestation crates” to confine pregnant pigs. These contraptions are actually 2-by-7-foot metal cages that aren’t big enough to allow the 400-to-500-pound animal to move or turn around. The sows are kept in the cages until they give birth; the piglets are taken and, when they get to be five or six months old, killed; and then the sows are reimpregnated and the torturous process resumes.

Here's another article:

Then there's this guest opinion essay from  The New York Times:

The author, Jeff Shesol begins:

In a recent speech at Independence Hall, President Biden called on Americans to stand against an assault on democracy — the ongoing assault waged by insurrectionists and would-be patriots, by election deniers and other extremists. “We are not powerless in the face of these threats,” he insisted. “We are not bystanders.”

Yet that role — bystander — is exactly the one Mr. Biden seems to have assigned himself when it comes to the Supreme Court, which is posing a more profound challenge to the American system of self-government than any violent mob has managed. The court’s conservative justices have issued a run of rulings that make it harder for many Americans, particularly citizens of color, to vote; make it easier for partisans to grab power by distorting the shape of legislative districts; and make it nearly impossible to counter the corrupting influence of money in politics. This is only a partial list — and is, most likely, only the beginning. In the term that starts on Oct. 3, the conservative bloc, six justices strong and feeling its oats, will decide whether an

 Alabama congressional map discriminates against Black voters and will consider a novel theory that state legislatures should have a free hand, unconstrained by state courts, in setting rules for federal elections.

He goes on:

In Philadelphia and on the hustings, Mr. Biden has begun to acknowledge the tribal warfare that consumes this country. Yet the Roberts court is both a product and a sponsor of that conflict, and the president should say so. He needs to “take the country to school,” as Felix Frankfurter, who would later become a Supreme Court justice himself, urged Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1937, when another ideologically driven court had put democracy on the docket.

Down the page we have this illustration. I enlarged a portion so you can see who is depicted.

The conclusion:

“No matter how long the road,” Mr. Biden promised in Philadelphia, “progress does come.” Yet it will not come unless every American of conscience — including the one in the White House — steps off the sidelines. Until then, the assault on democracy he described will continue. It will be waged in state legislatures and in Congress, and on the first Monday of October it will recommence in the conference room of the Supreme Court.

Here's one from the (subscription) Washington Post by Ruth Marcus:

Marcus begins:

The cataclysmic Supreme Court term that included the unprecedented leak of a draft opinion and the end of constitutional protection for abortion would, in the normal ebb and flow, be followed by a period of quiet, to let internal wounds heal and public opinion settle.

That doesn’t appear likely in the term set to start Monday. Nothing in the behavior of the court’s emboldened majority suggests any inclination to pull back on the throttle. The Supreme Court is master of its docket, which means that it controls what cases it will hear, subject to the agreement of four justices. Already, with its calendar only partly filled, the justices have once again piled onto their agenda cases that embroil the court in some of the most inflammatory issues confronting the nation — and more are on the way.

Last term, in addition to overruling Roe v. Wade, the conservative majority expanded gun rights, imposed severe new constraints on the power of regulatory agencies and further dismantled the wall of separation between church and state.

She concludes:

“When the court gets involved in things that it doesn’t have to, especially if those things are very contested in the society, it just looks like it’s just spoiling for trouble,” Kagan said in an appearance at Northwestern Law School. “That makes people, again, rightly suspicious that the court is doing something not particularly court-like and law-like.”

Which brings me back to Baude’s* description of this majority: fearless. I would choose a different word: heedless. Heedless of any constraints on its power or the effects on the judiciary. Heedless of the real-world consequences of its actions — on women, on minorities, on public safety and, most worrisome, on democracy itself.

As October Term 2022 gets underway, I search in vain for signs of this heedlessness abating. Seeing few, I worry, for the court and for the country whose future it will shape.

She concludes:

“When the court gets involved in things that it doesn’t have to, especially if those things are very contested in the society, it just looks like it’s just spoiling for trouble,” Kagan said in an appearance at Northwestern Law School. “That makes people, again, rightly suspicious that the court is doing something not particularly court-like and law-like.”

Which brings me back to Baude’s* description of this majority: fearless. I would choose a different word: heedless. Heedless of any constraints on its power or the effects on the judiciary. Heedless of the real-world consequences of its actions — on women, on minorities, on public safety and, most worrisome, on democracy itself.

As October Term 2022 gets underway, I search in vain for signs of this heedlessness abating. Seeing few, I worry, for the court and for the country whose future it will shape.

* University of Chicago law professor William Baude 

File the next two stories under from the sublime to the ridiculous. 

The sublime:

The ridiculous:

 

And then of course there's Ginni Thomas who is making the news all over the place because she testified before the Jan. 6th Committee yesterdays. Gene Robinson on Morning Joe called her demented.

Not exactly a hausfrau she is the wife of arguably one of the, dare I suggest, strangest Supreme Court justices in modern history. Lest we forget, here's am excerpt from an article in Grunge titled The Untold Truth of Clarence Thomas:

In the documentary "Created Equal," Thomas recalled that Biden had questioned him about the role of Natural Law in his interpretation of the Constitution. Thomas claimed later that he had no idea what Biden was talking about, but sat there pretending to listen because he had to. According to Reason, Thomas had allegedly endorsed two contradictory views on judicial activism in relation to the Constitution. As it turned out, Biden had omitted Thomas' explanation that only endorsed one view — the one that condemned judicial activism.

This small incident, however, was dwarfed by charges toward the end of the hearings. A colleague named Anita Hill (via PBS NewsHour) accused Thomas of making graphic and sexually inappropriate remarks to her. He denied all accusations, calling the incident a "high-tech lynching" targeted against him because he was an independently-minded Black man. Anita Hill, meanwhile, has become a Brandeis professor and per ABC, has stood by her claims, referring to herself as a "crusader" for the victims of sexual harassment and assault. Biden later apologized to Anita Hill for "the treatment she received" from the Senate, but she did not accept the apology.

It is being reported that 

Ginni Thomas denied discussing election subversion efforts with her husband.

We don't know whether or not she is lying. It is difficult to believe hubby didn't know wifey's views on this. 

We don't now whether or not Clarence shared Ginni's view that Biden stole the election from Trump through some kind of nefarious, highly complex, and ultimately successful scheme, and if he did whether this effected his refusing to recuse himself from any matters involving the Jan. 6th resurrection. We know that Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez called for Justice Clarence Thomas to resign because he refused to do this.

News that piqued my interest

 The New York Times reported:

As a freshman congressman in 2013, Ron DeSantis was unambiguous: A federal bailout for the New York region after Hurricane Sandy was an irresponsible boondoggle, a symbol of the “put it on the credit card mentality” he had come to Washington to oppose. “I sympathize with the victims,” he said. But his answer was no.

As the Times’ report noted, the far-right Floridian is now offering the public “tonal whiplash,” insisting that the kind of disaster aid he used to vote against is the same kind of disaster aid the people of Florida now need. Reference

I wrote about DeSantis, aka DeSatan, yesterday.

 

Then, in another court:

So you don't have to click on Truth Social, clicking below will just enlarge the image but not go to the link.

What, one might ask, is a self appointed head case? Poor Donnie and his little putter trying to fight trouble making creeps like Maggie, and all the rest! I am waiting for him to notice me. 

I resisted adding any of Stormy Daniel's observations about Trump's body parts.

Above notes, a little blurred.

Excerpt:

But perhaps the most revealing aspect of the book, to be published next week, is that Trump gave Maggie, a Times reporter since 2015, three interviews for it. This is the same Trump who vilified her on Twitter, called her names and cast her as the personification of “fake news.” Maggie just pressed on, asking the right questions, getting the right people to answer them and seemingly trusting on some level that Trump would never wholly cut her off. She can recognize a performance when she sees one. And she can hear in a narcissist’s self-regarding soliloquies the aching need to babble on.

Their relationship says so much about Trump — some of it long obvious, some of it less so. It proves his awareness of the lies he tells: If he really believed, as he publicly claimed, that Maggie was a fabulist, he’d deem it pointless and potentially ruinous to talk with her. He’d stop. But he clearly respected her, even as he trashed her, the ugly act of which confirms the void where a moral person’s conscience resides.

He’ll do anything to survive. And he’ll do anything for an audience. Maggie (a friend of mine) and the other journalists whom he publicly insulted but privately indulged were, to him, reserves of precious attention, their discerning gazes trained on him, their busy thoughts dedicated to the puzzle of him, their notepads and audio recordings and television cameras a conduit to ever greater fame. There was danger in letting them in, peril in having them around, but the alternative was worse. They might give prime real estate on the evening’s newscast to some other circus act. They might write books about a lesser clown.

Conclusion:

But it does at least suggest the kind of discipline that Trump lacks. It also demonstrates that Biden’s vanity, unlike Trump’s, has limits.

To Trump, all of us in the news business and all of the people at his rallies are mirrors, assembled into a fun house where every room, every wall, every corner shows him the visage that he relishes more than any other: his own.

 

Interview with satirist Andy Borowitz with my illustration insert showing the tiny handed small mouthed barbarian who in some inexplicable way some women find attractive.

Samples:

Are you suggesting that Donald Trump didn't bring home 11,000 documents to Mar-a-Lago because he wanted to read them? That's not why he had those documents there?

This shows you how bad I am at predicting events. I never thought that, of all the things Donald Trump would steal from the White House, reading material would be among them. Never. I mean, silverware, yes. Maybe some extra bottles of ketchup, I don't know. Reading material, never in a million years. 

We've always had dumb politicians, but in the last 50 years, ignorance has really reached critical mass.

They were begging him to read stuff when he was there. One trick they used with Donald Trump, and this isn't made up — nothing in the book is made up — but one trick that the National Security Council would use, whenever they had a really important memo they wanted him to read, they would put the word "Trump" in as many paragraphs as possible, hoping that would catch his eye. He really likes that word. I don't think it succeeded, but it was worth a try.

Finally, you get to the celebration phase, and this is something. The celebration of idiocy and how dangerous it is. Donald Trump ushered in that celebration.

Donald Trump actually doesn't have to make much of an effort. He is one of the most deeply ignorant presidents, probably the most ignorant, in our history. On the internet, especially on Twitter, it's so easy to call somebody an idiot or a moron. I'm sure you and I have been called that many, many times — today already. But I really prefer the term "ignoramus" because ignoramus literally means somebody who doesn't know things. And Donald Trump does not know any school subject well, even the areas of his so-called expertise, like business and construction and renovation. He doesn't know about that either. I have a lot of quotes from people who worked for him who said he was completely at sea when it came to that stuff.

But what's really horrifying about this stage — there are two kinds of ignorant politicians we're dealing with now. We have Marjorie Taylor Greene, who comes by ignorance very naturally. I mean, she's the one who says that I personally have a space laser — which I wish I had! I wish I could operate a space laser. That is such a flattering assessment of me, to think that I could operate such machinery. I barely can get on Zoom, and she thinks I can do a space laser. So she comes by it naturally. Lauren Boebert comes by it very naturally. Louie Gohmert, people like that. 

But then there are these super-educated guys like Ted Cruz, Princeton grad, Ron DeSantis, Josh Hawley. These guys know better, and yet they're making really dumb decisions because it appeals to this populist sense that we don't want smart people running the show. To me, the celebration phase is the most heinous phase, because we have people who really know better who are acting like dopes, and it's hurting us. It's endangering us.

Here's a story I guarantee you won't see anywhere else:

I was headed to our local big grocery store, Fred Meyers to buy some organic vegetables, and saw a big pick-up truck flying a large American flag and a Don't Tread on Me flag from the back. I didn't have time to take a photo but then thought while this is not typical in our liberal community it isn't rare. I thought no big deal.

In particular I wanted to buy some Russet baking potatoes and was disappointed to see that there weren't any in the loose potatoes bin. I asked a clerk it hey had any in the back because on another occasion they did. 

Another customer overheard me and showed me that on the other side of the aisle there had lots of bagged Russets. 

Pretty mundane story, you say?

Not really.

Here's the friendly man who told me about the potatoes:

Hmm, I thought, this must be a super-patriotic MAGA-man. Then he turned around it is was even worse. 

He was wearing an Alex Jones InfoWars t-shirt. 

Alex Jones has been in the news lately (read stories) over his loss in the Sandy Hook parents lawsuit leading to his having to declare bankruptcy, and his maniacal rants about what he considers an outrage.

I tried to find the exact version he was wearing online but couldn't. Here are some others from ETSY:

I wouldn't expect an Alex Jones fan to also be an organic vegetable eater but this man was only buying organic veggies:

False Equivalence: Biden and DeSantis have put aside being nasty to each other

False Equivalence: "Biden and DeSantis have put aside being nasty to each other"

Really?

For President Biden it is sincere, for Gov. DeSantis it's all about optics.

By Hal Brown

Scroll down to read stories that piqued my interest today

Someone on MSNBC was describing President Biden and Gov. DeSantis talking on the phone about the devastation of the hurricane and the need for federal assistance showed that people can put aside their nastiness basically for the common good. 

It is a sign of the times that we have stories like this:

Biden, DeSantis put politics aside with Hurricane Ian bearing down

EXCERPT: After talking to Biden, the governor went on air with Fox News’s Sean Hannity and lauded the administration’s response to the hurricane so far.

“When people’s lives and their property are at risk like this, we all need to work together regardless of party lines,” DeSantis said. “It’s my sense that the administration wants to help.” 

Oh come one! Of course when there's a disaster presidents and governors of opposing parties work together even if the are worse than rivals, even when one of them has an easy going personality and is slow to anger and the other has a nasty streak as wide as the white stripe on a skunk and is just as eager to spray his stink on anyone or any group that he wants to hurt.

Click image to enlarge:

DeSantis wants to keep Florida free, free from migrants, LGBT+ people, anyone he considers "woke", librarians and teachers who tell the truth, basically anyone who disagrees with him on anything. Of course when it comes to federal aide, he'll readily take it and claim as much credit as he can for helping Floridians put their lives back together.

It is breaking news when President Biden expresses anger, for example: 

Angry Biden Screams: ‘I Don’t Want to Hear Any More of These Lies About Reckless Spending!’

It stuck me that Biden and DeSantis would eschew being nasty to each other because of the devastation of hurricane Ian was an outrageous false equivalence. 

From Wikipedia:

False equivalence is an informal fallacy in which an equivalence is drawn between two subjects based on flawed or false reasoning. This fallacy is categorized as a fallacy of inconsistency. Colloquially, a false equivalence is often called "comparing apples and oranges." This fallacy is committed when one shared trait between two subjects is assumed to show equivalence, especially in order of magnitude, when equivalence is not necessarily the logical result. False equivalence is a common result when an anecdotal similarity is pointed out as equal, but the claim of equivalence does not bear scrutiny because the similarity is based on oversimplification or ignorance of additional factors.

Biden has been excoriated by Republicans but it's never been for being a nasty man. DeSantis... well his stock in trade is being nasty to the core.

This is the last time Biden and DeSantis were pictured meeting together. It was following another catastrophe.

From the article:

3. Shaky relationship for DeSantis and Biden

DeSantis and Biden have had a contentious relationship. Just a week into the new president's term, DeSantis called "disingenuous" White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki’s claim that Florida had not doled out more than 50% of its vaccine supply. A month later, DeSantis called "absurd" and "unconstitutional" reports that the White House was mulling domestic restrictions for states, like Florida, where there was, at the time, a rise in COVID cases.

4. Allies after Surfside?

Since the Surfside building disaster, the Biden-DeSantis relationship has been publicly cordial and all business. The two men spoke the day after the structure's collapse and discussed the "heroic" efforts of emergency workers. That discussion followed the Biden administration's issuing an emergency declaration for Miami-Dade County. DeSantis has also been holding daily joint briefings in Surfside with a Biden ally in Miami-Dade County, Democratic Mayor Daniella Levine Cava.

The USA article reminds us of the last time a Democratic President hugged a Republican governor during a crisis.

Bipartisanship aside, don't expect a Biden-DeSantis embrace. A hug is the lasting image of the last time a Democratic U.S. president was greeted in the state by a Republican Florida governor during an emergency. That is when then-President Barack Obama and then-Gov. Charlie Crist met in Fort Myers in 2009. Democrat Obama came to Florida to pitch a $787 billion stimulus plan. Crist, the state's Republican governor at the time, greeted Obama in a spirit of bipartisanship.

According to Crist, the two shook hands and then Obama leaned in to give him a hug that Crist later said wasn't anything "special." In 2014, Crist, then running for governor as a Democrat, wrote a first-person account of the encounter for Time magazine in which he said: "I didn’t know it yet. But that high-spirited day in Fort Myers—meeting Obama (bad enough) and greeting him with a hug (even worse) — ended my viable life as a Republican politician. I would never have a future in my old party again. My bipartisan hopes and dreams, I would discover soon enough to my shock and disappointment, were vastly overstated and hopelessly out of date."

No-brainer: 

President Biden will go to Florida. He will meet with Gov. DeSantis and there will be photos of them both looking concerned and all business.

There will be no hugs.

Related:

I won't even click on this or provide you with a link to right-winger Thiessen's Washington Post column.

All DeSantis is showing is that he can play act a being presidential, or in this case acting like a governor ought to act in a disaster. In between tormenting and traumatizing migrants and demonizing the LGBT+ community of Florida he can put aside the persona that has rightfully earned him the Twitter hashtag of DeSatan.

-----------

Related: On Twitter

Other news that piqued my interest today.

The Supreme Court Returns on Monday, Stronger and More Terrible Than Ever

This term, the high court will cement its grip on political life in America, overturning affirmative action and other critical protections along the way.

Obviously this isn't the biggest news story of the day but I'd be a liar if I said I wasn't pleased to read this. I doubt we'll hear the real reasons for this anytime soon.

There's not much available online about husband Perry Greene. This is what I could find from this website:

Speaking of Perry Greene’s academics, he went to the University of Georgia’s Terry College of Business. He graduated with a bachelor’s degree in accounting from there back in 1996.

Net Worth and Career Details of Marjorie husband, Perry Greene

The 48-years-old, Perry Greene is estimated to hold an impressive net worth of $2 million as of 2020. Indeed, he is a millionaire; however, not only him but his better-half, Marjorie also hold that tagline. It is believed that her fortune touches $4 million.