Going Nuclear

Imagine this:

A guy has super top secret information about the United States’ nuclear capabilities in his closet, the most top secret you can have, and refuses to give it back.

Well actually, at first he denies having it at all.

Perhaps a more accurate depiction of events

That is his response to the US government when they ask for its return, along with his surrender of other items and information that are merely dubbed secret.

So finally the government gets a court order to search his house for that and other stuff he’s not supposed to have in his closet, many boxes full, and they are all taken away from him.

See the guy hasn’t had super top secret or ever secret security clearance for almost two years and, even if he did, he could only possess or even look at said information in a governmentally secure and much more pristine facility than his…closet.

That’s how uber super duper national security TOP SECRET or SECRET all of this stuff is.

Does this make us moose and squirrel?

Oh and side note: This guy also hangs out with some of the BIGGEST power brokers in Russia and the Middle East, two countries that would do and offer quite a lot AND MORE to learn anything at all of our secrets OF ANY KIND on any level.

Now I’m not saying THAT is relevant to our guy several weeks ago hosting a bunch of those wise guys at a golf tournament he sponsored in New Jersey at another one of his closet-containing properties, where lots of games and conversations were played and had.

On the other hand, I’m NOT saying it is irrelevant; nor is more than half of the country.

This ain’t advanced calculus!

Anyway, now that we have our stuff back, stuff our guy has had for 18 months plus and, really, could have given to anyone at any time for any price or just for fun and/or frolic or bragging rights, what do we do with him, this guy, our guy????

Well, I’ll tell you what we do – we invite him to be the next president of the US and, in fact, we beg him to run. 

Yes folks, this is the belief of at least HALF of the voters in his political party, one of two major political parties in the perhaps now nuclear vulnerable, thanks to our guy, U.S.

And no, there is no hyperbole here.

Nor is this!

At NOTES FROM A CHAIR, we just report the FACTS when we reference stories about US nuclear power and the GUY, or even former guy, ultimately in control of the arsenal and strategies that enable and disable it.

Okay, here’s the truth of all of my above wordsmith-ness:

I don’t like to reference our 45th president’s name because, really, the mere click of the letters and/or the thought of them (and him) make me either physically nauseous or psychically angry. 

Or is it physically angry AND psychically nauseous?

Either way, someone get me a bag

Well, either is true in any moment where it is not a potent combination of all four.

So, aware of how his mere presence, image or existence gets to me, I instead try to analyze his newsworthy escapades, of which there are few despite the massive coverage he gets, in a separate, more potentially objective, third person scenario.

By calling him our guy (Note: Which technically he was since in 2016 he was legally elected {Note 2: As far as we now know} and this is still the UNITED States) it kind of evens the playing field a little bit more towards objectivity for people like me.

Of which there are also MANY

“Our guy”

We gain an opportunity to look at events, actions and facts without a Pavlovian instant response of near vomitus sickness or explosive, stroke-provoking rage.

In other words, it begs the question of who he is and allows us to focus on what that nameless individual whose name we dare not speak or see, has done. 

Or not done.

What do you do with an individual, a mere citizen (which he is now) who has indulged the actions, or inactions, he has? 

This seems right

How should THE LAW treat such a person, and what do we, his fellow individual citizens, think about the WAYS in which such a person behaves?

Here is a NY Times opinion piece this weekend that uses the real names:

I suggest you answer the questions raised in my scenarios first before you attempt to read it, then decide what you think.

But maybe not before reading this, which talks more about the possible wide berth of risks for nuclear secrets of any kind leaking, with one of our foremost experts.

I educated myself with those and many other sets of articles. 

Think Chip and Joanna Gaines can fix up my bomb shelter? #nuclearshiplap

Yet in the final analysis they caused me to conclude that, well, the best summary, and certainly the most succinct and entertaining, of all of the above comes from Randy Rainbow.

Yes, that’s his real name.

It fully encapsulates everything super informed me has to say on the subject so please have a listen in your safe space.

Mine’s an imaginary (Note: Or is it?) bomb shelter.

Randy Rainbow – “Lock Him Up, YESTERDAY”

F THE COURT

Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas and the four other Supreme Court judges who voted to take away a woman’s right to choose on Friday can go f-ck themselves.

And kiss my gay ass.

So can anyone who wouldn’t vote for Hillary in 2016 because she wasn’t progressive enough or who just didn’t like or trust her.

As for those who cast their vote for Trump, I hope hell does exist so you can spend eternity there with him.   You will see what an immoral, lying prick he always was up close as you both burn in perpetuity/forever. 

This x 1000

Yeah, I’m pissed off.

In overturning the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision that allowed women the freedom of choice over whether to terminate their own pregnancies, the Supreme Court has ruled the majority of the population does not have equal protection under the law.

That right is guaranteed under the 14th amendment to the U.S. Constitution.  The amendment was enacted in 1868 and is credited in great part for ending slavery.  Its primary text is pretty simple.  It states:

No state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any state deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.

well… except women

Justice Alito wrote the majority opinion overturning Roe based on his view as a constitutional originalist.  What this means is that he strictly wants to adhere to the literal text of 150 years ago AND what HE interprets as its intent.

In this case, Alito reasons the amendment only protects rights that he claims were already understood to exist in 1868Since numerous states banned abortion 150 years ago, Alito claims the reasoning behind the 1973 Roe case encompassing the right to an abortion is wrong.

He neglects to also mention that in 1868 no woman had the right to vote in the U.S.  Anywhere.  And certainly not one to serve on any court in charge of making laws.

Time to buy winter coats

Or that in citing logic from 17th century judge Sir Matthew Hale in his Roe ripping decision, he is quoting a man who sentenced women to death as witches; and a man who originated the legal notion that husbands can’t be prosecuted for raping their wives.

Go f-k yourself, Sam.  Again.

Here’s an interesting fact amid this insanity.

Judge Alito is a 1972 graduate of Princeton University.  Princeton was an all male school until 1969, when its board finally agreed to admit women for the first time in its 150-year history.  This was a few months after Yale University did the same and was the beginning of a nationwide trend giving women equal opportunities under the law.

But this evolution of social mores made a small but very vocal minority of Princeton graduates real angry.  So they formed an organization called Concerned Alumni of Princeton (CAP) in 1972 in opposition to that and other evolving…um…changes.

Can you guess who was among that small group of concerned men in CAP?  If you guessed Alito, that doctrinaire originalist, you would be correct.

Look who’s at it again

This, of course, is not the most interesting part of the story.  More fascinating is that there have since been many female graduates of Princeton University.  Among them is a brilliant African American activist.  Her name is Alexis McGill Johnson. 

Ms. McGill Johnson graduated Princeton in 1993 with a degree in political science, 20 some years after Alito did with a similar major, despite his best efforts to thwart any female’s attempts to do so.  She also went on to receive her M.A. from Yale in 1995 in that same subject. 

And this was exactly 20 years to the date after what happened?  Anyone?  Well, Judge Alito also graduating from Yale with a Juris Doctor, of course!

Thankfully, that is where the similarity ends.  While Judge Alito became a lifelong originalist, refusing to bend his views towards anyone or anything happening around him, Ms. McGill Johnson has used her education to help poor and minority communities.  This culminated with her becoming president and CEO of Planned Parenthood in 2019. 

Worth a follow!

So let’s hear her take on how to fight her fellow Princeton and Yale alum’s decision to dump Roe v. Wade and take away a woman’s right to choose:

…We are not going back and we are not going to back down.  We are going to take this fight STATE to STATE.  Every single person who is running for anything is going to EAT. THIS.  DECISION. FOR. BREAKFAST. 

And you wonder why I like her?

I happened to hear this quote on a segment Katy Tur was hosting on MSNBC and it intrigued me to see that Katy was a bit taken aback by the colorfully blunt imagery Ms. McGill Johnson used to categorize the path going forward.  It was unlike the forceful  but more politely intellectual jargon most guests on news programs use these days and it took Katy everything she had to restrain herself from asking if this was her best course of action. 

This is the vibe we need

But, well, how else DO you react on the DAY of this decision?  Do you bring a knife to a gunfight, to quote Chicago cop Jim Malone (as played Sean Connery) as he tried to take down organized crime mobster Al Capone and his gang in the 1987 film The Untouchables?  (Note: A reference I hesitate to make as it was thought up by The Untouchables screenwriter David Mamet, a very talented guy I once admired who has since become a right wing crazy).

Well, I say you can’t.  Bring a knife to a gunfight, that is. 

Not when the concurrent nauseating opinion striking down Roe this week was written by the even more conservative and much more morally questionable Judge Clarence Thomas, wife of conspiracy theorist and 2020 election denier Ginni Thomas.

In his support for Judge Alito’s POV, Judge Thomas writes:

In future cases, we should reconsider ALL of this Court’s substantive due process precedents, specifically citing Griswold v. Connecticut (contraception), Lawrence (same-sex marriage), and Obergefell  (same-sex marriage). Because any substantive due process decision is ‘DEMONSTRABLY ERRONEOUS, “’ we have a duty to ‘CORRECT THE ERROR’ established in those precedents.”

This is only the start

In simpler language this means he is itching to repeal laws that allow you to obtain birth control, enter into a same sex marriage or to have whatever kind of sex you like with another consenting adult behind closed doors.  Aside from, I assume, the missionary position (Note: No offense to that well worn sexual preference but I’m not sure there was much more you could do, at least legally, back in 1868).

Curiously enough, Judge Thomas made zero mention mention of the landmark 1967 Loving vs. Virginia decision, which banned laws against interracial marriage.  That decision was won by citing the same due process/equal protection precedents that enabled the passage of Roe, same sex marriage, et al.

Or course, it is up to you to decide if the marriage between Judge Thomas, a Black man, and his wife Ginni, a white woman, had anything to do with that, um, omission.  But here’s 2022’s honorary Oscar winning Black actor Samuel L. Jackson on the subject the day Thomas’ viewpoint was released:

The gang of right wing activist hypocrites now sitting on the Court might feel, to some of us, unrepresentative of a representative democracy that overwhelmingly believes in a women’s right to choose.

Until you think about our  representatives and we, the people, who voted them in.

Maine senator Susan Collins is very concerned that Roe repealing judges Kavanaugh and Gorsuch lied to her in their confirmation hearings when they privately told her Roe was precedent and that they would not be inclined to repeal it.

Really???  Or did she choose to believe a word dodge for her own political survival, or at least expediency.  I, for one, don’t think Collins was dumb enough to believe them.  Despite my disdain for her morally.

What say you, Senator Collins?

It is also worth noting that justice Thomas was appointed by George HW Bush, Justice Alito was anointed by George W. Bush, and Judges Gorsuch, Kavanaugh and Coney Barrett were Trump appointees.

Those of you who voted for those presidents because of your pocketbooks, or sat out those races because you didn’t like or wanna hang out with Hillary, Gore or Dukakis, what the f-ck did you think was going to happen????

It bears repeating!!!!

Democracy is a very imperfect form of government but unfortunately just about every other form of government pales in comparison.   As they say.  Or someone once said.

You never get everything you want.  But if you choose not to enthusiastically participate for some of the things you prefer, you run the risk of receiving everything you hate, and then some.

We can only rag on these mother f-ckng judges and Trump for so long.

If we don’t learn from our mistakes and adjust accordingly, f-ck us.  Because we will be f-cked.   For good.  In a very bad way.

Olivia Rodrigo – “F*** You” (feat. Lily Allen)