This isn’t smoke rising from the smokestacks, it’s FREEDOM!
Last weekend, Antonin Scalia, one of the nine Supreme Court Justices, had unexpectedly died at age 79, leaving the Supreme Court divided 4-4 between liberal and conservative justices. Republicans politicians insist that president Obama shouldn’t nominate anyone to replace Scalia until the new president is elected, which would keep the court completely deadlocked for at least a year. However, the Supreme Court is our last bastion of constitutional freedoms, and leaving it paralyzed would be devastating. Just to give one example of how important the Supreme Court is: in its last decision before Scalia’s death, the court blocked Obama administration’s regulations restricting air pollution from power plants. And here are 10 reasons why the Court’s decision to not regulate air pollution was so vital.
1) Thick smog around the house is one of the very few privacy protections American citizens still have left.
2) By blocking ultraviolet solar radiation, smog can prevent thousands of cases of skin cancer.
3) Also, in case there really is global warming, blocking the sunlight would the most effective way to cool down the planet and reverse the warming.
4) Banning air pollution will make it impossible for police departments to use tear gas whenever they like.
5) Smog provides natural defensive camouflage that makes it impossible for American enemies to locate and bomb American cities from above.
6) Smog creates jobs – if smog is banned, thousands of doctors specializing in respiratory system, and manufacturers of respirators and air filters would lose their jobs.
7) If the smog is toxic enough, it make us all healthier by killing all the Ebola and Zika viruses in the air.
8) Banning smog is tantamount to taking away the freedom of Americans to breathe whatever they like.
9) Clean air is overrated. How can you possibly appreciate something you can’t even see?
Note: this list contains only 9 items, since I guess I’m not supposed to add the last item because it’s an election year and a new president hasn’t been elected.
List of X 
That Note is priceless. Perfect.
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Sorry, I just couldn’t overcome the Republican obstruction. Hopefully, I would be able to fill the list’s vacancy by 2020.
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Don’t you worry your pretty little head off. President Trump will unclog this sink. I think He’s mentioned Howard Stern for that open Supreme Court slot. Either him or Sarah Louise Palin.
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I just lost my breakfast. Thanks.
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My pleasure.
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See – and if it weren’t for the Supreme Court, you could be fined or jailed for polluting the environment!
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I just lost mine as well, Elyse.
Great post, X. Loved #1. It’s all about the spin.
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It’s probably only a matter of time until the Clean Coal lobby starts using this line.
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She’s Louise?
But I think that President Trump will be such a strong leader, that he won’t even need the Supreme Court, because he will be making all the decisions.
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Trump and Putin can compete in an Iron Man competition. How cool would that be?
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That would be really cool, especially if that means that they would have to quit their day jobs.
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Excellent. I will have more opportunity to use the word “miasma,” which is such a great word.
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I don’t think I actually used the word “miasma”. It must be something in the air.
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Yeah! If you can’t see it, you don’t need it. Every day I wake up and think, man, I sure could use more smog in my life.
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I’m sure that in the area where you live there is such scarcity of smog that this place might not even be fit for human habitation.
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“Tantamount” – you speak legalese, too?
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I cannot confirm nor deny it.
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Reblogged this on It Is What It Is and commented:
Hey … I knew there was an “upside” to this SCOTUS debacle!! ….. Not!
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I think the obvious upside is that more coal smoke would be going up.
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Number 10 was proposed by President Obama, but since he is black, it was rejected by the Senate.
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Actually, if Obama is trying to replace Scalia, he would be proposing number 9.
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Yuk yuk yuk.
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It would really be “yuk yuk yuk” if Obama replaces Antonin Scalia with the exact clone of Antonin Scalia.
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No sense worrying about Chinese smog. Trump’s wall, the Great Wall of America, will be so INCREDIBLY high that it will keep the Chinese smog out. And, in making America Great Again, Trump will restore American smog to its former glory.
Now I’m going to upchuck with Elyse and Carrie.
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And Mexico will pay for Trump’s Great Wall as Donald Trump has promised, to keep the American smog out.
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Actually #3 is high on the truthiness index. There is a plan to ameliorate short term the effects of climate change by injecting sulfur oxides into the stratosphere to deflect a bit more sunlight. The elimination of said pollutants in the lower atmosphere has contributed to greater insolation. I suspect the GOP will prefer #8, along with incandescent light bulbs, etc. Freedom!
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And because coal-powered plants are an important source of sulfur oxides in the atmosphere, the Big Coal can finally drop it’s climate change denial and switch their motto to fighting the global warming without changing anything in the production cycle.
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10. Since we’re failing to keep up with China in almost every other metric, maybe we can beat them in air pollution.
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That’s a good one, but I don’t know if we could get it confirmed in the Senate.
By the way, we have more people in jail than China, and we spend more on the military than China. So we’re not total losers compared to them.
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We’re #1! We’re #1!
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90% of smog is made up of hot air, gas, noxious emotions and whatever else politicians spew out. Banning smog will be limiting politicians from carrying out the only work many of them know. That would not be legal.
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Then there’s also no hope for us for stopping the smog. We can’t remove the politicians from the office, all we can is exchange one for another.
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Things are so weird your way I’m not even sure what’s funny anymore. (This is.)
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I think this is only funny when you live across the border.
Although, while the border may stop our politics from getting to you, it won’t stop our smog.
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I thought it all went the other way. Weren’t you guys blaming us for that polar vortex a couple of years ago? Oh, yes, we remember!
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Oh yeah, I forgot about that.
I think if we had a polar vortex this winter, Donald Trump would be promising that he’ll build a wall on the Canadian border instead.
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You make such a good case that I will now go against all my Berkeley liberal upbringing instincts and buy a Hummer and drive more, stop recycling, randomly cut down trees, even if I don’t need them to make tikis, leave all the lights on all the time, and vote strictly republican from now on!
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You don’t have to completely forget your Berkeley upbringing – you can also create the anti-global-warming smog by smoking stuff.
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oh yeah
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For me, this was the bookend list because #1 and the Note were the kingpins.
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I think in bowling lingo, this would be “the worst possible case”, right? 🙂
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Clean lungs are overrated anyway…
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As an asthmatic, I get sick often enough already that the insurance company that covers me has to have about 20 healthy people paying in order to break even. I was in the hospital once for pneumonia – wrote lots of posts while on fever and drugs – and the thing they charged the most for was the guy who gave me nebulizer treatments. It’s an over-glorified air pump that pumps out albuterol (which costs like four dollars for three boxes of the stuff). So naturally it cost like 2,000 dollars for the treatments in the hospital. Luckily, the university I work for has pretty good insurance. Which will be great until the Donald defunds all universities, or worse, makes us all work for Trump University.
Note: The spellcheck tells me that albuterol should be spelled butterball.
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It’s obvious that the spellcheck went to Trump University.
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