Shannon Larratt is Zentastic

Here's a very quick and incomplete summary on the history on John Roberts (info in this entry from that link) who Bush has nominated for the Supreme Court. America's future just got a little darker and a step closer to replacing its C with three K's.

• Argued not only that federally funded doctors should not have the right to discuss abortion, but that abortion should be illegal in the first place.
• Argued that environmental protections are wrong, has represented polluters in court to fight environmental laws, and argued that private citizens should have no right to sue the government over environmental violations.
• Fought against the Voting Rights Act.
• Fought to allow public schools to include Christian ceremonies as a part of graduation.
• Strongly pro-corporate.

Oh, and his public net worth is $3.7 million.

When I was leaving Mexico for this current trip, I took the bus from our place in La Paz to the airport in Cabo. At the bus station is a (very talented) old blind woman who plays guitar and sings for change. I had to wait for a while, so I watched who gave her change and who didn't… Not a single person who looked “well off” gave her anything — the only people besides myself who threw some applause in her cup for the singing were indigenous people, from probably the poorest income bracket in Mexico.

As a generality, people help those they understand and relate to. The rich will rarely help the poor. Strangely though, poor people in America (and around the world) keep voting for the rich — but with thousands of years of slavery, one has to ask oneself: if a bloodline includes millenia of servitude, at what point does their fate become self-fulfilling genetic destiny?