That we’ve reached “peak stupidity”. I know the question is sort of rhetorical…that means it’s meant to make a point rather than solicit an answer for those of you wondering…but work with me here. 

I know it’s only the 8th of January…and people being who they are and this being an election year…there’s bound to be a whole lot more stupidity but Ima just gonna say the the remaining 357 days of the year have an awfully high bar to meet to outdo this one.

And I know that abortion and the right to it or not and all that constitutional rights or not jazz is involved…but trust me…no matter what your position on this issue might be the abortion issue is actually irrelevant to the stupidity involved.

Here…is the Newsweek article that prompted this post. You can go read it but I’ll do my best to accurately report what it says.

There’s this person…obviously an abortion supporter (but again the issue involved is irrelevant to his idiocy)…named Mac Truing who resides in and is a citizen of the state of NJ (this will be important later). The case involved is Max the  vs. Abbott, a case filed by Mr. Truong sometime after the Dobbs vs Jackson Women’s Health Organization case which was decided back in 2022 by the SCOTUS. As an aside…this case *did not* outlaw abortion in the USA…it merely overturned the previous decision in Roe vs. Wade from the 70s that determined that abortion was a constitutional right…and thus according to the constitution returned the issue to the individual states to decide (but still irrelevant).

As a result of Dobbs…Texas passed the Texas Heartbeat Act which essentially outlawed abortion after a fetal heartbeat was detected. So…Mr. Truong decided to sue over the issue…and filed a suit with a whole list of defendants…the six justices who voted for Dobbs, Texas governor Abbott, Lieutenant Governor Patrick, Texas Speaker of the House Phelan, and former President Trump. His suit alleges that the defendants “were involved in either passing, enacting or upholding the THA because he believes the Dobbs decision was incorrectly decided and thus, Roe v. Wade is still law.” 

Now remember…Mr. Truong is a citizen of and resident of NJ…which for anybody not paying attention is specifically not the same state as TX, and he filed his suit in Texas. Given the facts as noted…the trial court dismissed his suit because Mr. Truong…not being a resident of Texas…has no standing to sue in the state of Texas. He appealed to the 5th Circuit…and the appeal was heard by a 3 judge panel of that court (two of which were appointed by Democratic Presidents)…and lo and behold the vote was 3-0 that he had no standing and the case was rightfully, properly, and legally dismissed.

Mr. Truong…and his lawyer (who by the way should be hauled up by whatever bar association approved his membership and after appropriate due process be disbarred because no lawyer this stupid should be allowed to practice law)…decided to appeal to the SCOTUS.

So…let’s review the bidding here.

• Mr. Truong who is apparently not himself a lawyer decided that the SCOTUS decided Dobbs wrongly…and thus Roe vs. Wade was still the law of the land. The first issue here is that SCOTUS…by definition…simply cannot decide an issue wrongly. They are the ultimate arbiter of law in the country…and while occasionally they overturn precedent whatever they say the law is…is…well…the law, ya know.
• Mr. Truong included in his list of defendants the six justices who affirmed Dobbs…and with all the hullaballoo about the court needing an ethics policy…they instituted one a month or three back…and the other federal justices ethics code says that if a judge is a party to a suit they must recuse themselves. So…under their policy…the six justices who were the defendants in the suit recused themselves from consideration of the case.

Now…under their rules…the SCOTUS must have a quorum of at least six justices to even consider taking a case. With the six recusals…this left only 3 remaining. And since 3 is obviously less than 6…the court was unable to decide to take the case for review…and thus the judgement of the 5th circuit (which dismissed the suit unanimously) prevailed and is now law. This means that the suit is dead…like in as a door nail.

I simply cannot understand how Mr. Truong and his lawyer, who must have gotten his law degree from a Cracker Jack box or something…failed to think their cunning plan through.

It is also noted in the article that Mr. Truong (and presumably the same really outstanding lawyer) have additional pending cases involving the same issue. The only one mentioned is the suit filed in the Peoples Republic of California with defendants including “Planned Parenthood Federation of America, Senators Elizabeth Warren and Amy Klobuchar, Cory Booker and Bernie Sanders, Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, President Joe Biden, California Governor Gavin Newsom, actors George Clooney, Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie, Tesla Founder Elon Musk, singer Britney Spears and media expert Norah O’Donnell.”

Now since the PRC has pretty much an unlimited right to abortion after Dobbs…I again have no clue why Mr. Truong has a suit against the state of CA as well…but then he clearly is a legal genius so I dunno.

Ya know…you really have to wonder about a lawyer who agrees to take a case where his client alleges that the SCOTUS decided a case wrongly. Sure…this is a contentious issue and the opinions on it, abortion, and all related stuff are all over the spectrum…but really…any moron that actually reads the constitution should understand that the SCOTUS is the ultimate arbiter and thus…cannot decide something wrongly. They can make decisions you personally don’t agree with…but under the law they are not wrong.

In other news…I guess you saw the articles about the Alaska Airlines Boeing 737 Max 9 that had the plug blow out. Now the fuselage is manufactured by a sub contractor who cuts an opening for an extra entry door then installs a plug in it so there’s not a door there. The door may become necessary given certain seating configurations in the aircraft but is normally sealed. The sub then sends the fuselage to the main Boeing plant which removes the partially installed plug and uses the opening to get inside to install seats, overhead bins, and all the other inside the airplane pieces…then Boeing reinstalls the plug completely. The plug is simply a mechanical piece that bolts over the hole…nothing more, nothing less.

So…apparently Boeing reinstalled the plug incorrectly and it blew out at 16,000 feet after the aircraft took off from Portland. It landed safely and there were no serious injuries…so that’s good.

But now…the recriminations start. And I’m not talking about between Boeing and the fuselage making subcontractor…I’m talking about the hyperbole in the news.

For instance…I read 3 articles today that discussed that the aircraft in question had …three separate instances of aircraft pressurization system warning lights since October when it was delivered to the airline…and that it was restricted from flying over water for long distances. All 3 articles pointed out that this was an obvious flaw in procedures and that the plane should have been already taken out of service.

But…the rest of the story as Paul Harvey used to say…

Remember…the aircraft pressurization system knows nothing…zip, zero, nada…about the existence of or status of the plug…any more than it knows about the windows. The three previous pressurization system warning lights were all worked on by maintenance and were determined to be bad sensors, alignment problems in the system, or other factors completely unrelated to the bolts holding the plug in place. Nonetheless…this is clearly a problem of great intensity and shows that Boeing is incompetent or worse.

And that whole flying over water thing…not required by the FAA but Alaska Airlines has an internal policy that after 3 warnings on the same subsystem on the plane regardless of the fact that they were fixed…in the interests of safety just in case the airline doesn’t fly the plane long distances over water until verified that the issues are not recurring…so that its never too far from an airport.

As you can see…much ado about nothing. As investigations continue…loose bolts have been found on some number of other plugs on different aircraft so obviously Boeing has an installation procedure issue they need to resolve.

And in the line of “no good deed goes unpunished”…there’s

this about the police in Toronto. Now again…this tangentially involves protests about the ongoing situation in Gaza between Israel and Hamas…but once again that issue is irrelevant to the stupidity.  This past Saturday there was a protest in Toronto in support of the Palestinians…which is perfectly legal under Canuckistan law…and the protesters were up on an overpass over a highway. Police were on hand to control traffic, monitor the situation, and general police things…and were not allowing (apparently again according to their laws) anyone else to go up on the overpass. At some point…some other unnamed people showed up to support the protestors…and brought them a take out box of coffee and presumably pastries from presumably Tim Hortons (that’s the Starbucks of Canuckistan and there’s one on every corner…their coffee is decent but the pastries are really outstanding). Anyways…since nobody was being allowed on the bridge…and since Canadians are almost universally polite…the on scent police took the coffee and carried it up to deliver it to the protestors. Seems like a neighborly thing to do and not out of line at all…Canadian politeness being what it is. 

Unfortunately…some of the media took outraged offense at this…and the chief of police ended up apologizing for his officers ‘supporting’ the protestors…seems like an overdose of both idiocy on the media’s part and an unneeded bow to political correctness on the chief’s part…but what do I know.

And I guess you heard about the SecDef…and his episode of “what was he thinking”. Apparently back on Dec 22 he had some sort of elective surgery which he as of today is still providing no details for as it is his private medical information. Nobody has…or should have…any issue with that at all…and his deputy was still available to handle anything needing SecDef vote on. But then on New Year’s Eve he woke up with intense pain from the unknown medical procedure, went to the emergency room, and was admitted to intensive care to take care of it. But…nobody from his staff ever told the President his SecDef was in the hospital…which is pretty bad form. If you’re a cabinet level official…one would think you’re smart enough to have somebody tell your boss when you go into the hospital. Naturally the other political side is all up in arms because “you never know what might have happened…national security was at stake here”…and the administration is saying “no big deal, he should have notified us but his deputy was handling things”. In this particular case…just like in the brouhaha last month about military promotions being held up by a Senator…no, national security was not at stake. In this case…the deputy would have handled things and unless SecDef was being given serious pain killers he could have been consulted if necessary…just as in the promotion hassle last month the deputy who was getting promoted was the acting whatever until the promotion was approved…but he/she was still acting and doing the job and I’m pretty sure that whether you have 2 or 3 stars on your shoulders (or 3 or 4 depending on the job) has little to do with you actually doing the job.

And finally…in the dumb thing category…there’s a lawsuit filed over in Norway by mass murderer Anders Behring Breivik who you might remember massacred 77 people back in 2011 and is serving a long sentence after being convicted. Now remember…Norway believes in rehabilitation in prison and not punishment…so he resides in a multi level section in prison that is just for him…it includes a training room, a kitchen, a TV room and a bathroom, pictures from a visit last month by news agency NTB showed…and he e is allowed to keep three budgerigars as pets and let them fly freely in the area. 

But…he is essentially in isolated confinement and not mixed in with other prisoners. And he’s suing the government for violating his human rights…despite that he has contact with guards, a priest, health professionals, and an outside volunteer…because he’s “isolated”. Bah…he should have been executed for his crimes post haste after conviction and appeals.

Interesting things found on the net…but only one today. 

Neil has found out his ultimate present just in case anybody out there wants to buy it for him.
This is it…a chocolate 3d printer…it prints 3D objects made from chocolate. Clearly the thing every chocaholic needs.

Cyas.