Your Life Depends On It

Vote as though your life and that of your loved ones depends on it. It does.

Four of the Supreme Court justices are over the age of 70 and only one of them is a tea partying, right wing, anti-woman, anti-workers' rights, anti-planet, will-circumvent-law/constitution/common-sense/decency/humanity-for-fun shitstain. The other three geezers can be relied on to judge wisely most of the time.

Stephen Breyer is 74, Anthony Kennedy and Antonin Scalia are 76. Ruth Bader Ginsburg is 79.

Bader Ginsburg, Breyer, Sotomayer, Kagan and sometimes Kennedy, are all that stand between sane justice and the fired up, subjugation of women, people of color and the not so one percenter-y rich.

If the House stays in the hands of the Do Nothing/Know Nothing/ Obstructionist Party things are gonna get worse, not better.

This is about more than that blow job to the religious "right" AKA  the Hobby Lobby/Conestoga decision — Burwell v. Hobby Lobby. This is also about the Corporatist Asshole Five's chipping away at the ability of workers to organize. Yeah...unions.

Abood v. Detroit Board of Education was a 1977 Supreme Court decision which allowed public sector unions to pass some costs on to nonmembers who are covered by the union's representation, as long as those fees did not go toward political causes.

Now? After Harris v. Quinn? You can reap the joys that the unions snag for you, you, you but you don't have to contribute money — just rake in those lovely union bennies...while they last. 

Dismantle, defund unions and watch how fast those hard won civilized rules and laws disappear. You think corporations have your best interests, YOUR needs in their shriveled hearts and minds? Think again my sweet friends. If not for unions there would be no:

1. Weekends
2. Breaks at work, including your lunch breaks
3. Paid vacation
4. Family & Medical Leave Act (FMLA)
5. Sick leave
6. Social Security
7. Minimum wage
8. Civil Rights Act/Title VII — prohibits employer discrimination
9. Eight hour work day
10. Overtime pay
11. Child labor laws
12. Occupational Safety & Health Act (OSHA)
13. 40 hour work week
14. Workers’ compensation (workers’ comp)
15. Unemployment insurance
16. Pensions
17. Workplace safety standards and regulations
18. Employer health care insurance
19. Collective bargaining rights for employees
20. Wrongful termination laws
21. Age Discrimination in Employment Act of 1967 (ADEA)
22. Whistleblower protection laws
23. Employee Polygraph Protection Act (EPPA) — prohibits employers from using a lie detector test on an employee
24. Veteran's Employment and Training Services (VETS)
25. Compensation increases and evaluations (i.e. raises)
26. Sexual harassment laws
27. Americans With Disabilities Act (ADA)
28. Holiday pay
29. Employer dental, life, and vision insurance
30. Privacy rights
31. Pregnancy and parental leave
32. Military leave
33. The right to strike
34. Public education for children
35. Equal Pay Acts of 1963 & 2011— requires employers pay men and women equally for the same amount of work
36. Laws ending sweatshops in the United States

This is America where, apparently, Slave Driving 101 is the MUST excel at class in every MBA program. Hello Walmart!

I don't want my grands to inherit a country where inequality is written into law. Where, unless they hit it rich, they’re at the not so tender mercies of corporatist courts and laws written for and by the one percenters. I want my strong, sweet, wonderful girls to have legal, protected ownership of their own bodies and minds, the ability to make the right, best choices for themselves and so much more. I don't want their lives, their paths dictated by a bunch of supremely wealthy corporations and their Renfieldian rich, white, male, pet "justices."

Back to that disgusting Burwell v. Hobby Lobby decision — from Digby at Hullabaloo:

Alito:

"According to their religious beliefs the four contraceptive methods at issue are abortifacients."

Fascinating. They aren't "abortifacients." That is simple scientific fact. But they say they believe they are and their "belief" trumps objective reality.

Abortifacient
əˌbôrtəˈfāSHənt/

Medicine

adjective: abortifacient
1. 
(chiefly of a drug) causing abortion.

Hobby Lobby’s suit was supposedly about, for them, birth control pills, IUDs and Plan B — ALL of which prevent fertilization. They do NOT fuck with an egg that’s already gettin’ it on with some handsome sperm, implanted on some cozy section of uterine wall. No. They do not. Nope.
 You can think and believe that they do but that doesn't make it true.

Still think there's no real difference between Republicans and Democrats? Think again. Read MORE and imagine what life is like for folks who are something other than white, male and financially comfortable or Richie Rich.

From Thers at Whiskey Fire:

Perhaps they  (the fuckwadded 5 supreme court ass-wipes responsible for this obscene miscarriage of real, true justice) should take a look at what's happening in Iraq for a clue as to what happens when government takes sides in religious disputes.

uh...yeah.

And finally, a tremendously smart directive from Mister Charles Pierce:

If you live in a state that has restricted the franchise, and that has erected hoops through which you have to jump, then learn how to jump through the hoops and break down those barriers by flooding the polls. If you don't live in a state where it has been made more difficult to vote, then get off your sorry ass.

Yeah, what he said. Our children deserve better. We deserve justice.