America's Greatest Thinkers
In our last thrilling episode of Stupid Shit Supreme Court Justices Get Up To Justice Clarence Thomas was in hot water for taking gifts from billionaire Harlan Crowe.
And while we’re at it let’s not forget Justice Neil Gorsuch sold some property to the head of a big Washington law firm and failed to disclose the buyer, Justice John Roberts inaccurately described his wife’s income and Justice Sonia Sotomayor didn’t recuse herself when her book publisher had a case in front of the court, which – if you’ve been keeping count – is four out of nine judges so you just need one more ethically-challenged Supreme Court Justice for a majority.
And then Justice Samuel Alito got caught with his hand in GOP donor Paul Singer’s cookie jar.
Justice Alito took a free trip on a private jet to Alaska and stayed in a $1,000 a night “luxury cabin” which are two words that don’t seem to go together (like “jumbo shrimp” or “military intelligence” or “Donald and Melania”) which was paid for by another Rich Conservative Donor whose name I’ve either forgotten or the article I read failed to mention and either way at these prices I’m not going back to look it up.
For $1,000 a night they ought to leave a U.S. mint on your pillow and I hope you enjoyed that joke, but I’m aware it’s not a very good one so let’s move on and see if I can do any better in subsequent paragraphs.
Alito didn’t mention any of this in financial disclosure forms and didn’t recuse himself when Singer’s hedge fund had cases before the court and once he knew ProPublica – an online news source – was about reveal his vacation shenanigans, Alito went to the Wall Street Journal and got them to publish what he hoped was a pre-emptive strike.
Alito wrote a column and argued that he didn’t have to report “personal hospitality” so remember that next time you go to a massage parlor and get a “happy ending” which makes me wonder if there’s such a thing as a “sad ending” and I’m guessing if you’re a masseuse working in a sketchy massage parlor located in a strip mall, the answer is a definite yes.
Anyway…
If a Supreme Court Justice feels no responsibility to report “personal hospitality” I don’t think you should either so feel free to skip the whole massage-parlor experience when you get asked where you’ve been, why you seem overly-relaxed and smell like Jergens Hand Lotion.
Alito also argued that if he hadn’t accepted the seat on Singer’s private plane it “would otherwise have been vacant” and if the empty seat didn’t cost Singer anything it obviously had no value so Alito didn’t need to report that either.
That’s Top-Notch Supreme Court Logic so why don’t you give that argument a try next time you go to the airport: if an airline has empty seats on a jet, those seats obviously have no value and you should get to fly for free.
Try that at American Airlines and they’ll tell you’re out of your goddamn mind and have security escort you out of the airport and if you try that at Southwest Airlines there’s a 50-50 chance they’ll tell you your flight’s been cancelled.
Alito’s twisted and tortured logic to justify his unethical bullshit also explains how we’ve gotten so many outstanding Supreme Court decisions lately; decisions that turn back the clock on a woman’s right to choose and affirmative action and gay rights.
Remember: these are the same people who don’t believe they need an Ethics Code and they’re applying that same impeccable logic to the problems the rest of us face.
https://www.msnbc.com/opinion/msnbc-opinion/alito-supreme-court-ethics-scandal-vacation-rcna90819
The cartoon above this paragraph was inspired by an Associated Press article that said economists have been warning about a recession for more than a year, but the recession has been acting like a dick and didn’t show up when the economists said it would so now economists are scrambling and saying maybe the recession – which is identified by a falling Gross Domestic Product in two consecutive quarters and a half-court shot attempt right before halftime – is actually a “rolling” recession in which some industries shrink while the overall economy remains above water and the main thing I get out of that description is the Associated Press doesn’t give a rat’s ass if their writers mix metaphors which makes me wonder just when they’ll offer me a job.
Other economist think it’s a “richcession” in which the only best-paid people like IT workers lose their jobs and I think we should reject that idea immediately because otherwise economists are going to think it’s OK to make up new Cool Economist Terms and the next thing you know we’ll be reading about Economist Ultimate Zone Rating and Economist Wins Above Replacement and Economist Range Factor and this stuff is hard enough to understand without a bunch of Number Nerds inventing new terminology in an effort to prove how smart they are.
Basically, economists have a long history of disagreeing and being wrong and political cartoonists have a long history of making fun of them for that and I feel like we both held up our end of the arrangement.
Just in case you hadn’t thought of it (and I hadn’t) when something goes wrong like a submersible disappearing, search and rescue teams have to haul ass to remote locations like the North Atlantic and all that manpower and equipment costs money so when the smoke clears and the search is over, who pays for it?
When millionaire Steve Fossett’s plane went missing in 2007 they went looking for him and Fossett had already been the subject of two previous emergency rescue operations like when Fossett and Richard Branson’s hot air balloon dropped into the ocean near Hawaii which caught everybody by surprise because with Richard Branson aboard you’d think they’d never run out of hot air.
When it was suggested Fossett should maybe pay some of the costs of looking for him, he declined. Apparently Branson said he’d chip in if someone asked him to and nobody asked, so he didn’t.
It’s – and here let’s go with “interesting” – that rich people hate paying their taxes and want government to stay out of their lives and talk about government regulations holding them back when they want to visit the Titanic or float around the world in a hot air balloon, but when they find themselves up Shit Creek Without A Paddle expect government to bail them out.
The above cartoon occurred to me when I read the following article about wealthy risk-takers who cost the rest of us money when their hot air balloons fall from the sky or their submersibles implode and if you think I’m being unfair; first — join the club — and second, ask yourself who pays for it when you have some kind of an emergency that requires a ride in an ambulance.
According to the ever-infallible internet, an ambulance ride costs an average of $950 and around $1,300 if you require “advanced life support” and I’m not exactly sure what that includes, but I’m assuming an “advanced life” requires the counseling of a Tibetan monk who calls you “Grasshopper” and speaks in riddles or two pole dancers from a local strip who will immediately lose interest in you when they find out you can’t afford your ambulance ride.
After the submersible implosion I read a couple stories about rich people who had considered making the same trip and are now glad they didn’t and it made me think maybe some of them would realize being disgustingly wealthy might mean you don’t have to follow the Rules of Society and can get away with pretty much anything when it comes to people and laws, but Nature doesn’t give a shit about your money and will drown you or freeze you or have a lion eat your ass when it’s hungry and having an American Express Black Card won’t prevent any of that.
Which made me wonder if tourism businesses that cater to the Super Rich are going to suffer and since I don’t plan on letting Jeff Bezos strap me to a rocket that looks way too much like a penis and shoot me into space, I’d be OK with that.
And now that we’ve made fun of rich people, turns out, the rest of us can be pretty stupid, too
Taking a shot at the wealthy is a popular move because most of us aren’t rich (although really poor people might disagree with that) so we feel no sympathy for the Overly-Affluent, but it turns out Regular Old People can also be dumbbells and apparently the pandemic convinced a bunch of us to go enjoy the Great Outdoors because the Great Indoors was killing us.
With so many inexperienced hikers deciding to see what Nature looked like up close and personal, a number of those poorly-prepared hikers had to be rescued when they underestimated what triple digit temperatures could do to you and just in case you didn’t click on the above link, my favorite story was the vacationing lawyer who underestimated how much effort it would take to hike out of the Grand Canyon after he hiked down and called a park ranger and requested a helicopter rescue because the lawyer had an “important” meeting the next day.
The ranger in question declined, possibly because you just can’t have too many lawyers stuck at the bottom of the Grand Canyon.
Happy Fourth of July
It has come to my attention that it’s the Fourth of July mostly because my neighbors bought enough fireworks to celebrate the Third of July starting last night at about 10 PM.
Which reminds me of the time we took our kids to St. Joseph, Missouri to see a 4th of July baseball doubleheader played by teams in the Jayhawk League (it was set up to give college players a place to play during the summer) and between games they were going to set off fireworks and halfway through the fireworks show, the display stand fell over and shot fireworks about a foot-and-a-half off the ground through the parking lot.
Nothing says “America” like baseball and fireworks combined with incompetence.
Since nobody got hurt it remains the best fireworks show I’ve ever seen and if they’d do it every 4th of July I’d be there every year, but they don’t so I’ll celebrate Independence Day the way I do most years, chained to my TV set watching ballgames and it would be a perfect way to spend the holiday if I only had a luxury cabin to do it in.
Happy Fourth of July, everybody.
Laughing in the face of a sad reality this and other columns bring to mind several lines from “Blazing Saddles “ which I will not forget or have to repeat
Last year as we were getting ready to shlep somewhere to see fireworks, I missed a step down the stairs and (fortunately only) sprained an ankle. So this year we're going to try again... I would much rather be watching ballgames or possibly an episode of Columbo.