The black-robed Inquisition known as the Supreme Court has blessed the anti-union union and officiated at the baptism.
There shalt not be any Obamacare-subsidized birth control for you, ladies, and guaranteed living wage, benefits and union rights just got a swift kick in the ass for good measure. And Goddess help you if you happen to work as a home health aide in a Christian family-owned agency in the Land of Lincoln, the Great Emancipator. You will not only have to continue working as a drudge in the New Servant Economy till you die, but you will have to risk pregnancy while doing so. And since your collective bargaining powers are kaput, there's even a chance you'll have to be working, pregnant and barefoot. Shoes for the kids will trump shoes for yourselves.
And if you're taking it into your pretty little heads to do an end run around the court ruling, and traipse on over to one of the Planned Parenthood clinics still standing in order to score yourselves some cheap contraception, think again. Those people with their anti-abortion signs are watching you, too.... from inches away, thanks to a unanimous ruling by both liberal and conservative justices on the court.
Since contraception has, essentially, now been equated with abortion in many an ignorant, narrow Unhobbled Lobby of a little mind, the Inquisitors-for-Life have duly decreed that an egg not ovulated is an egg condemned.
And whoever said that conservatives don't believe in immigration reform is nuts. Tear down that contraceptive wall between ovary and uterus! Give every egg that is willing to work hard and play by the rules a free fallopian tube pathway to full American citizenship. The waiting period is only nine months -- and from then on, the survivors will enjoy a lifetime of low-wage non-union jobs, or a one-way school-to-private prison pipeline, leaking oil and gas pipelines, an opportunity to serve in the forever wars.... oh, and the freedom not to be insured for birth control themselves.
And lucky you: if ever the cops stop you in your travels to hell and back, they still won't be able to search your cell phones without a warrant. The Supremes may be immune from protesters, thanks to their own buffer zones, but they do have cell phones, apparently. They also get paid enough to afford cable TV, since they just ruled against against that much more affordable Aereo cloud service provider. They must have figured that if a TV network can't double-charge consumers via forced ad-watching and cable fees, it amounts to a slap in the face of the Market God (and the Market God, remember, has just been decreed a person with religious rights.)
But there is actually some good news on the horizon if you are a non-corporate person living in the Feudal States of America. That whole three-part balance of powers edifice has become so top-heavy with One Percent influence that it's beginning to crumble from the cracks of populist outrage. The American Way of Government is losing its legitimacy. The American People are becoming apostates and losing their faith in all three branches of the Unholy Trinity!!!
From a Gallup poll released simultaneously with today's Supreme Auto-da-fé:
Americans' confidence in all three branches of the U.S. government has fallen, reaching record lows for the Supreme Court (30%) and Congress (7%), and a six-year low for the presidency (29%). The presidency had the largest drop of the three branches this year, down seven percentage points from its previous rating of 36%.
It's only when governments begin to lose their legitimacy, when the whole edifice starts to crack, that populist movements can take hold in order to effect change. The unanswered question is whether Crumble-vania will veer even further right and slide off the fascist cliff, or whether the Left can awaken as it did during the previous social upheavals of the 30s (New Deal) and 60s (Great Society.)
Let us pray for the latter scenario. And let us hope that this constant chipping-away at Obamacare will, ironically, create a new pathway to true universal health care. The apostates at the gate are demanding it.