05/23/24

Good morning! It’s Thursday, May 23rd.

National Taffy Day.

Hey, do you like your teeth? No? Okay, great – enjoy your toffy day!

And now, the news.

Pennsylvania Shooting

-via CNN

We start how we start in America, with two dead and three more injured after a workplace shooting in Chester, Pennsylvania.

A suspect, an employee at the linen factory where the shooting took place, has been arrested.

Uvalde Settlement

-via CBS News

And because again, this is America… The victim’s families of the 2022 Uvalde school shooting reached a $2M settlement with the city. The group is also planning to file suits against dozens of Texas Department of Public Safety officers and Uvalde's school district.

The reason for the low number, it will be split among the families of the 17 children killed in the shooting, and two who survived, is because the group took the insurance settlement, rather than pushing the city into bankruptcy with a larger sum.

Because nothing, no dollar amount that has ever or will ever exist, can undo the horror that took place that terrible day. But perhaps, if they can brave the additional horror these suits must be, it will help push forward some sort of solution to the very American problem.

Second Case of Bird Flu

-via ABC News

A second person has been infected with the bird flu, this time in Michigan. The first case was in Texas. Michigan and Texas may not have much in common, but these two cases do – both cases were with workers who worked with sick cattle.

Can’t be clear enough about this: the CDC and Michigan Department of Health and Human Services both say the risk to the general public still remains low, with the USDA adding "there is no concern about the safety of the commercial milk supply or that this circumstance poses a risk to consumer health."

Another Alito Flag

-via NY Times and American Flags

Hey, you know how Maya Angelou, and also my mom, famously say: “When someone shows you who they are, believe them.” (Yes, my mom knows that’s Maya Angelou’s quote! She didn’t steal it! She just says it a lot.)

Anyway, the point is… “When someone shows you who they are, believe them.”

And for his many faults, of which there are almost too many to list and yet I would be happy to do so at any turn, what we can at least say about Justice Alito is that he really lets his freak flag fly.

I’m sorry, let me take that again. What we can at least say about Justice Alito is that he really lets his freaky flags fly.

As you may remember, from the news and also my rant, Justice Alito was found having an upside-down flag outside of his house in early January 2021. Right as insurrectionists were about to take that same upside-down flag and storm the Capitol.

And that’s bad.

Also he blamed it on his wife… also bad and lame. What an absolute loser.

Anyway, turns out… all that money he made leaking Supreme Court rulings (allegedly) apparently affords him quite the flag purchasing budget. Because last summer, at his vacation beachhouse in New Jersey (he is such a servant of the people), he displayed an “Appeal to Heaven” flag which was also an oft-seen flag on January 6th. Rioters carried the white flag, with a green tree and then the words “Appeal to Heaven” on top.

The flag was originally commissioned for military cruiser ships in 1775 and comes from a John Locke quote: "And where the Body of the People, or any single Man, is deprived of their Right, or is under the Exercise of a power without right, and have no Appeal on Earth, there they have a liberty to appeal to Heaven, whenever they judge the Cause of sufficient moment."

It is now been adopted by the Christian Nationalist movement.

But lest you think that Alito is on his own this this flag… Speaker Mike Johnson had it hanging in his office shortly after he became Speaker. Others have had it as well, but he is the highest-ranking elected official known to show the flag.

The resurrection of this particular flag all circles back to a guy named Dutch Sheets (do we think that’s his real name?) – Sheets is a prominent figure in a far-right evangelical movement who wrote in a book that he wants to make this flag the symbol of his ambitions to steep the country and the government in Christianity.

And Sheets has kind of always had his eye on the Court, and Alito. In fact, in 2015 after the Court ruled to allow same-sex marriage, Sheets said, “There’s no gate that has allowed more evil to enter our nation than that of the Supreme Court.”

But he believes Alito to be the hero of the Court.

And I don’t know how the Alitos came to own this flag, maybe they’re just super into flags and put up whatever hateful ones that are in scene. But this Sheets guy became well-known for giving out these flags. When Trump lost, Sheets and a team of others immediately formed a religious arm of the “Stop the Steal” campaign.

And no one knows for sure how long that flag was up, it was last documented in October, which was right around the same time that Sheets devoted a prayer session for the Court, because he was just so thankful that they’d overturned Roe. A prayer in which he said: “We have reached another phase in the process of shifting the Supreme Court.” Adding that, through the justices, “God’s intent for institutions of government can now be fulfilled.”

Let me tell you something… no one’s flying this flag without knowing exactly what it stands for these days.

Nikki Haley Suprises No One

-via AP News

“He’s not qualified to be the president of the United States.”

That’s a Nikki Haley quote from February, and she’s talking about Donald Trump. (literally. The whole thing is, "He showed that with that kind of disrespect for the military, he’s not qualified to be the president of the United States, because I don’t trust him to protect them.)

“He’s not qualified to be the president of the United States.”

And yet… now it’s May… and on Wednesday Nikki Haley said, “I will be voting for Trump.”

Not qualified – still voting for him.

What happens to you, what kind of re-programming do you go through, in Republican politics?

There is no way she’s happy for Trump! And yet…

And listen, there was no chance she was ever going to endorse Biden. (Although you could make the argument that she’s better off endorsing Biden because her time in politics is done and so hey why not spend a minute or two trying to save democracy?)

But she didn’t have to say she was voting for Trump. What she could have said… was nothing.

Unsurprising and nevertheless annoying… the Republican way!

And that’s it. That’s the news.

I’m not proud of Nikki Haley, that’s for sure!

I am proud of taffy though. Specifically the taffy at Turkeyville in Michigan.

But more than that… because you don’t melt in the sun… I’m proud of you.