The Environmental Powerlessness Agency
The Environmental Powerlessness Agency
No sanctions yay 🙂
As expected, the theocrats, rapists, and Stepford wives of the Republican Supreme Court majority ruled this morning that the Environmental Protection Agency does not have the authority to protect the environment. In the official Democratic Party response, 82 year old Vermont Senator Patrick Leahy fell down and broke his hip.
Somewhere in the middle of a rambling anecdote about his teenage pals Applejack and Jeffy Be-Bop, Grandpa President Joe Biden said: “Gee I wish those fellas hadn’t’a done that! They’re good boys though, got their whole lives ahead of them.” It is unclear who or what he was referring to. The White House issued a separate statement expressing the administration’s firm resolve that “someone else should do something about all this” but hailing a great victory in the Court’s grudging allowance that the administration does have the authority to reverse a Trump immigration order, “we guess 🙄.” EPA founder Richard Nixon said “wow that seems pretty extreme, what are you people doing up there?” when reached for comment at his current residence, in hell.
Vice’s Matthew Gault posted a preview of our future in the form of an archive of photos taken when the EPA was first created, showing the smog, trash, and poison which the goblins of the Supreme Court majority are so horny to bring back that they took on a case about an Obama EPA rule that never went into effect before it was superseded by a Trump EPA rule that also never went into effect. Meanwhile the figurative dumpster fire in Washington D.C. was joined by a literal dumpster fire in Washington D.C., because the universe has a sense of humor and it isn’t subtle.
Today in Tomorrow’s Fresh Hell: Amid the horrors of the Court’s last two weeks gutting abortion rights, gun control, Native American sovereignty and now any hope of fighting climate change, you may have missed that they also agreed to hear North Carolina redistricting case Moore v. Harper, the core of which is “independent state legislature theory.” According to Helen White in Just Security:
That theory claims that the federal Constitution gives state legislatures the power to regulate federal elections without checks from other state officials or constraints from the state’s constitution. Though Moore concerns congressional redistricting, the ISL theory reaches far further and would have sweeping and dangerous implications for most aspects of federal elections.
“Independent state legislature theory” is ahistorical and wildly anti-democratic bullshit which is approximately as legitimate as the “doctrine of no-take-backsies,” so this court will certainly enshrine it as the bedrock of our new electoral landscape just in time for 2024.
Beginning yesterday morning, a Canadian radio station played Rage Against the Machine’s “Killing in the Name” on a loop for over twenty four hours in what delighted listeners hoped was a wildcat protest against the firing of a popular morning show team, but turned out to be a stunt before the station’s format change to alternative rock, much like Joe Biden’s tough-talking campaign turned out to be a stunt before the nation’s format change to fascism. Our Regrettable Platform Substack decided on a format change to a company that employs fourteen percent fewer staff, but will remain a company that was valued at 72x revenue in its last funding round. And after Keith’s combination book launch party / superspreader event, the Gould-Gessen apartment hunt has decided on a format change to “fine, let’s see YOU find us an apartment!”
I also liked Nygel’s formulation of our basic problem once I told him how much money we made and he said that it was too much to qualify for the HFDC. “You’re too rich to be poor,” said Nygel, “but you’re too poor to be rich.”
Nygel is our new Dickens.
“Anchovies are reportedly raining from the sky across San Francisco.” Seems normal. New Brunswick “loose snakes” mystery solved. Turns out they were loose eels. Singaporean beer NEWBrew is “Made From Recycled Toilet Water,” reports Bloomberg’s Sing Yee Ong. If you think that sounds gross, I have bad news about what all water is. Liz Lopatto blogged the North Korea crypto crash story from yesterday, and added the tale of Virgil Griffith…
…who once worked for the Ethereum Foundation [and] traveled to North Korea for a cryptocurrency conference, where he explained how to use cryptocurrency to engage in sanctions evasion. Photos from this visit showed Griffith standing in front of a whiteboard. On the whiteboard: a smiley face with “No sanctions yay.” Griffith was eventually sentenced to more than five years for sanctions violations.
Someone please ask the founders of the Peter Thiel funded Praxis Society what the age of consent will be in their “affinity city.” Kiwi Korner / Antifa Crossover: “New Zealand's government classifies the Proud Boys as a terrorist organization.” May it be the first of many.
And Finally: If you need something to read that isn’t about *gestures at the dumpster fire* all this, or you still have “Smooth Criminal” stuck in your head from yesterday, Mel Magazine’s Tim Grierson answered all your questions about it a couple years ago including “who is the dancing kid and where is he now.”
Today’s Song: Rage Against the Machine, “Killing in the Name”
~ I will be as harsh as tabs, and as uncompromising as justice ~
What a year this week has been. Remember to rest and take care of yourself! This isn’t a sprint, it’s a death march to perdition. March with me @fka_tabs (or @TodayInTabs if you don’t want to ride sidecar on my slow decline into gibbering delirium and mixed metaphor). The Season 6 playlist is on Spotify, as is Season 5 and Season 4. That’s more than sixteen hours of good music. Too much music, really. If you subscribe I’ll send you something tomorrow. What it will be is a mystery to us both. If you don’t subscribe, I’ll let you know what happened on Monday.
This is unfortunately not a joke, and if Leahy ends up resigning, Vermont’s Republican Governor Phil Scott can appoint an interim replacement for up to six months before a special election must be held, likely ending the Democrats barely-used Senate majority. But 82 year olds usually recover quickly from broken hips… right?