A fine week for total insanity

Indeed it is! If it's Thursday, I think Morford held off a day before expounding on the events of the week and the week's not over. Many links.

Then come those days when progress and humanity seem to lurch and stumble around like confused animals, where, if you have any sort of progressive inclination whatsoever, you are left feeling like you’ve been both kissed and mauled, flattered and mugged, bitch-slapped and proposed to, all while riding a burning roller coaster, on a Wednesday, drunk.

So it is that this generation’s nastiest, least compassionate Supreme Court, rigged like a poison grenade with the likes of Antonin Scalia, Sam Alito and Clarence Thomas, first slapped civil rights back a generation by invalidating a vital part of the Voting Rights Act this week, a hugely successful piece of legislation that protected minorities and the poor from getting screwed over at the polls by rich white southerners.

BTW, the acronym for Roberts, Alito, Thomas, and Scalia is RATS. Fits this court to a T.

This much we know: Any racially charged decision from SCOTUS that is both endorsed by all the conservative judges and “cheered by the South” is very bad news indeed for the American experiment going forward.

Yes, yes it is.

The good news: DOMA is dead, and Prop 8 was slapped aside, thus allowing gay marriage to resume in California – but alas, nowhere else, as the mealy-mouthed court completely sidestepped the larger issue of the overall unconstitutionality of state bans on gay marriage. Wimps.

Wimps indeed, but it's OK for now. The door to equality is now open a crack.

Already, Gov. Jerry Brown, who is proving to be all kinds of calmly fantastic for California all over again, has directed CA county clerks to start issuing marriage licenses to gay couples ASAP. Florists statewide are giddy. Wedding planners are all asqueal. Of course, fundamentalists and ultraconservatives are freaking out, endless hellfire surely awaits, but what fun we shall have on the way down, no?

¡O Si!

At last we arrive at the ultimate question: Do you feel any better? Are you (tentatively, awkwardly) celebrating any of this news? Or do you sort of feel like you’ve been mauled by a pack of friendly dogs in heat, like your wallet was just stolen while you were having sex in a dark room, like someone roofied your artisan whisky cocktail, but you don’t really mind?

I know just how you feel. So it goes with American politics, particularly when this coldly divided SCOTUS is involved: Always a little painful, always a little bit bloody, always with a razor blade or two in the apple pie.

Please, please read the rest. It's been an inspirational week in many ways. We can shit nails from the razor blades.