Today is Friday, May 20, 2022. Today there couldn’t be more evidence of “breathtaking corruption” on the part of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas’s wife, crazy insurrectionist Ginni Thomas, who, it has been revealed by The Washington Post yesterday morning, pressed two Arizona lawmakers to overturn the will of Arizona’s voters in the 2020 presidential election by choosing a “clean” slate of electors, representing her Golden Idol and not the legitimate winner of the election. In her email sent to those lawmakers, the paper disclosed that Thomas tried to turn the screws on them by writing, “Before you choose your state’s Electors . . . consider what will happen to the nation we all love if you don’t stand up and lead.” These bombshell allegations are contained in an online RawStory by David Badash entitled “‘Sordid, corrupt, lawless’: Experts call new Ginni Thomas revelations ‘breathtaking’ and ask ‘what did her husband know?'” These new disclosures are prompting legal experts to demand Clarence Thomas’s recusal while calling the combination of their actions “breathtaking corruption,” and noting the justice’s extraordinary hypocrisy. Which is not surprising since the entire authoritarian-leaning party of Trump is characterized by its “breathtaking” hypocrisy. Which should disgust anyone with any shred of integrity.

It is Ginni Thomas’s actions designed to overturn a legitimate election that have led Slate‘s legal expert Mark Joseph Stern to call her behavior illustrative of “breathtaking corruption.”

Stern states, “The conflict of interest between Ginni and Clarence Thomas has never been greater. While Clarence was applying the ‘independent state legislature doctrine’ from the bench, Ginni was using the exact same theory to try to overturn the 2020 election. Just breathtaking corruption.”

Former federal prosecutor Joyce Vance, now an NBC News/MSNBC legal analyst and law professor, issued a stern warning to the now-compromised Justice, saying, “Either Justice Thomas recuses in every case that comes to the Court where his wife is heavily involved in the action or the public’s confidence in the Court will be damaged beyond repair.” I believe it’s already been damaged during the reign of Dumpf and McConnell. It is now perceived as more partisan than ever before by most Americans.

With the sorry truth of this country veering into a moral decline due to the massive spread of disinformation sown by the POT (Party of Trump), our own high priest of infectious diseases, Dr. Anthony Fauci, came out today to issue a stark warning that society is in “decline” because of the spread of disinformation and propaganda.

Fauci spoke to graduates of Roger Williams University, in Rhode Island, yesterday and declared that the COVID-19 pandemic has laid bare the “normalization of untruths” and the “divisiveness” across this country. This disturbing analysis of where our society is right now is covered in an Independent article by Rachel Sharp entitled “Dr. Fauci warns society is in ‘decline’ because of spread of disinformation.”

The university’s guest speaker urged the audience to “reject the politicization of science” and the “outright lies” that pose a “danger” to the country.

Fauci went on to say that “It is our collective responsibility to not tacitly accept the normalization of untruths because, if we do, we invite dangers to ourselves, our families, our communities, and our country.” The 81-year-old infectious disease specialist went on, saying, “This is how a society declines into a way of life where veracity becomes subservient to propaganda rather than upheld as a guiding principle for creating and sustaining a just social order.”

As you recall, the good doctor, who has headed up the federal COVID-19 response under both presidents Dumpf and Biden, was asked to deliver the keynote address at the college’s commencement ceremony.

During his remote address, Fauci remarked how the seriousness of the issue had been “made painfully evident” to him during the pandemic. He talked about how a deepening divisiveness has troubled and saddened him. Fauci then went on to say how differences of opinion in this country are “sometimes propped up by deliberate distortions of reality to the point of fabrications, conspiracy theories, and outright lies.” Dr. Fauci added that “segments of our society have grown increasingly inured to such falsehoods, yet the outrage and descent against that alarming trend has been relatively muted and mild.” This patron saint of science further urged the graduates “to discern and challenge weak assertions and renounce pronouncements built on untruths.” He called on his young audience to “reject the politicization of science that denigrates evidence and facts.”

As you recall, the top doctor himself was forced to fight back against conspiracy theories ever since he was put into the highest position of being the COVID-19 czar, especially under his former boss, Donald J. Dumpf, who planted the seeds of doubt during his disastrous term in office because of the stark reality behind the growing perniciousness of the coronavirus that he couldn’t face.

In conclusion, Fauci talked about the graduates of the University being able to commit themselves to eliminating the root causes of health disparities laid bare during the pandemic in which communities of color were disproportionately affected by the ongoing health crisis. He exhorted graduates to stay focused on tackling this inequality, even though the country might be emerging from the worse effects of the pandemic. Noting that eradicating these disparities will take an inordinate amount of time, Fauci acknowledged, “It will take decades-long commitment for society to address these disparities. I strongly urge you to be part of that commitment.”

The future of this country would surely be in a sorry state if those young male and female graduates hearing the sagacious words of the leading infectious disease expert decided to ignore Fauci’s pearls of wisdom to listen instead to the nabobs of disinformation and misinformation like “Fucker” Carlson and other purveyors of bullshit like him. Let’s hope they will indeed have the maturity to reject such suppliers of untruth and disinformation to blaze their own path to the truth. If not, we will surely be irretrievably lost as a nation.

Today was marked by one of the top architects of the major fraud perpetrated on the American public during the 2020 election, Rudy Giuliani, meeting with the January 6 committee for more than 9 hours of testimony. Who believes he would actually “spill the beans” during those long hours of testimony? It would probably be expected that Giuliani would invoke the Fifth Amendment many times during his questioning, but no one really knows until those public hearings are finally held. It is somewhat curious that this clown voluntarily agreed to offer testimony unlike other coconspirators like him such as Mark Meadows et al. who have still refused to appear of their own free will. So time will tell, as they say.

Anyway, it’s getting late here and the news here just depresses me to no end. I really should turn off the news and just watch a movie.

Let’s see if we have summer over the weekend. Today turned out to be not so nice, with drizzle and fog creeping into the corners of the afternoon. As a result, Elliot and I decided to see separate films at the Kew Gardens Cinema at 2. He went to see a fairly new film, Everything Everywhere All at Once, whereas I preferred to see the new Doctor Strange entry in the Marvel Studios oeuvre called Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness which certainly had its CGI moments and oodles of action sequences. I enjoyed the cameos by Patrick Stewart as Professor Xavier of the X-Men and John Krasinski as Reed Richards of the Fantastic Four. There was also a small appearance by Bruce Campbell, who was Ash Williams in the Evil Dead franchise, and in this blockbuster film directed by Sam Raimi, he is an obnoxious food cart vendor. The film has already grossed a bundle since it debuted two weeks ago. Benedict Cumberbatch portrayed the title character with equal measure of cool reserve and warmth as he does battle against Scarlet Witch, here played by Elizabeth Olson. I wasn’t familiar with this character from WandaVision, which is a series on Disney+, a streaming service that I don’t have. But I used to collect the comic book Doctor Strange decades ago, so I was somewhat familiar with the principal character from the comics and from the 2016 Doctor Strange film that I managed to see when it first came out.

Have a good weekend. Stay cool.

Stay safe and be well.