The Erickson Report, Page 4: Two Weeks of Stupid: Clowns and Outrages [the Outrages]

The Erickson Report, Page 4: Two Weeks of Stupid: Clowns and Outrages [the Outrages]

Now for the Outrages and we certainly had enough to choose from.

We had Tucks Carlson capping Faux News months-long attacks on the homeless with his own week-long diatribe against San Francisco and the homeless problem there under the claim that it's all because of "liberalism" - because, as is well known, the way you make people homeless is by caring about them.

We had examples of the Tweetie-pie gang just openly ignoring a court order not to deport someone who was challenging their deportation order - and worse, getting away with it because the court was too cowardly use its contempt powers.

We had that same gang finalizing a rule to roll back clean water protections for streams and wetlands, affecting not only areas protected by a 2015 rule but even some covered by the original Clean Water Act of 1972, overturning pollution controls that have stood for nearly 50 years.

However, our runner-up is an outrage I'm not going to talk about. It's one I was going to talk it about even though it technically hasn't happened yet: It's Tweetie-pie's so-called "Deal of the Century" for Israel and supposedly for Palestinians although from what's known of it certainly doesn't look that way. I was going to go over it based on what it was expected to include but as it develops it is being released almost literally the same moment I am recording this so I will hold off until next time when we can look at it more closely if only because with Tweetie-pie, the actuality is almost always worse than the prediction.

What we can say now is that based on what's known and expected, it is indeed the "Deal of the Century" for Israel - if the century is the 16th or 17th, full of colonialism, expansionism, oppression, and might makes right.

But if you really want an outrage, you have to go to the source, the real source of too many outrages. You have to go to Washington, DC. No, not the White House: Many of those outrages can be undone by a new administration. No, you have to leave the White House and go past the other end of the National Mall - to the Supreme Court.

You may recall that back in October I noted a proposal to greatly expand the definition of a "public charge" under immigration law and so also greatly restrict the number of people who could get green cards, cutting legal immigration by an estimated two-thirds.

There long had been an understanding that the term "public charge," which had no specific definition in law, referred to people who as immigrants would be primarily dependent on cash benefits from the government - more simply, they would be mostly on welfare.

Supreme Clown

The Whitest House wants to dramatically expand that definition to include noncash benefits such as Medicaid, supplemental nutrition aid - that is, SNAP, still often called Food Stamps - and federal housing assistance. Even using subsidies under the Affordable Care Act to purchase health insurance on an exchange could be affected. Anyone predicted to use any such benefits for more than 12 months out of any three year period would be denied a green card and note that is a standard that millions, even tens of millions, of our fellow citizens could not meet.

The proposal has been under legal challenge in multiple jurisdictions with mixed results. The Second Circuit Court of Appeals had issued a nationwide injunction, barring the change from being enforced while those suits worked their way through the courts.

But on January 27, the Supreme Court overturned that injunction, freeing Tweetie-pie's thugs to start turning away anyone they think is not rich enough - or white enough - to merit their imperial favor.

It's hard to grasp the moral depravity of this decision. Injunctions are supposed to consider the idea of "irreparable harm." Where is the irreparable harm to the administration, to anyone at all, in letting "public charge" continue to be understood the same way it has been all along while the suits work their way through the courts? None that I can find. On the other hand, the irreparable harm to the hundreds of thousands of immigrants who will be denied entry across that same time is manifest and undeniable.

There is just as clearly no denying that people, people denied the chance to flee the crime, the violence, the oppression, the hunger, that drives them to seek refuge in a foreign country, that people will die because of this decision. That a majority of the Supreme Court just doesn't care is an affront to basic human decency. It is indeed an Outrage.