National Stew

  SCOTUS Nixes Trump Tariffs! The most important part of this ruling is the clear understanding that tariffs are taxes on the US population. It is only a short trip from there to the understanding that it was unconstitutional for Congress to delegate this authority to the executive. The hard part is helping them find the backbone to act on that knowledge.

No ICE at the Polls!  Voting is the democratic part of Democracy! It is the work we do to choose the representatives in our representative Republic! Dill Buckley called it: Our Civic Sacrament."  Attitudes and rules for voting evolved from the Time of our Great Declaration to the present. Our nation was not born fully grown and having an adult understanding. Like all infants, it had to grow into adulthood slowly and often, erratically.  At the start, most of the founders believed that only white adult male property owners would have the right to cast a ballot, though by the end of the revolution, people came to realize that the war itself was won by mostly young males who owned little to no property.  After the Declaration, each colony wrote a constitution. All but Pennsylvania included property ownership as a requirement for the right to vote. Franklin was asked why he did not include that requirement in the document. He explained that if a man owns a jackass, he ca...

 Grievances against the King of England and Donald Trump The list of grievances against the King of England, as it appears in the Declaration of Independence: “The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world. He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good. He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them. He has refused to pass other Laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of Representation in the Legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only. He has called together legislative bodies at place...

  Do we wait for perfect people? There are not now, nor have there ever been, perfect people, except one, and if you believe that story, we crucified him! Is perfection attainable? Human history and daily practice say no. Should we let that stand in the way of progress?  A historian I trust said that one of our founders was a horrible man. I have no argument against that theory. The question then: “Is the product of his intellect invalid?" If the product of the minds of our founders is deemed incorrect and inoperable because they were severely flawed men, we also have no right to take on the trials of our own day! We are as flawed as they, in ways we can not yet grasp! Do we wait for perfect documents? Our founders were flawed, as we have noted. We live and work in a system they created. Is that system inherently wrong as a result? Shall we wait for perfect people to produce perfect governing documents? If so, we would not to this day have attended the greatest evil of their t...

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Ending TPP  Ending JCPOA Ending NAFTA  Ending Affiliation with WTO    TPP  The Trans-Pacific Partnership, which Trump obviously did not understand was the biggest boon to China in this century! Under the agreement, we would have an economic and democracy-boosting agreement with the Pacific Rim nations that would have rivaled China and provided security and economic and military leverage against them!  JCPOA  The Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action was intended to prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons and improve regional and global security. Iran accepted restrictions on its nuclear program and underwent regular inspections by the International Atomic Energy Agency. Our removal from the program resulted in our blindness to the Iranian nuclear progress, which is now just short of weapons production!  NAFTA  The North American Free Trade Agreement was ended by the Trump administration and the new agreement brokered by them led to higher U...

That is the headline I expect to see post-election  It's too early to see the full effect of the debate, but the most morose of the Commentary I have seen came from Democrats early after the event. It was that on which the pundit class based its commentary!  It seems the only way media on either side of politics comments is Democratic self-loathing! The first ten things I read from the right this morning were the whimpering comments from the left about how they lost and needed to change course! Their self-deprecating made it as bad as they perceived!  Tragically the debate was bad but not as bad as the dems made it out to be. It was one tiny data point in the face of a megalomaniacal cartoon-style villain, a felon with 34 felonies and multiple remaining felony indictments who incited an election overthrow to dispossess the votes of 81 million voters!

If the court rules that individual states can not determine eligibility the door would be open to all third parties for ballot access challenges. The court would have to set up or help to establish federal rules to determine eligibility requirements or face a flood of challenges for all 50 states. That seems to be a nail in the coffin of Federalism. A Trump victory in SCOTUS would set up a 50 state rush of indie candidates who would take eligibility questions to the high court. To avoid that they would have to legislate from the bench or convince Congress to legislate an end to Federalism!

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  After reading the report: 1. Did not exonerate Trump. 1. Did not exonerate Trump. 2. Made no suggestion for criminal charges beyond the ones made in an earlier iteration and noted below. 3. Durham found no reason for opening a full investigation into Trump/Russian collaboration at that time. 4. Suggested that the FBI should have opened a preliminary investigation. The implication being that a preliminary investigation would have led to a full investigation. 5. Durham said that it was possible that the FBI needed to put some reforms in place. In addition, the investigation as a whole did see an earlier iteration that made 3 criminal charges: One plead guilty, the 2 others were tried and acquitted. I am awaiting the Durham appearance before congress to do a full report. I have an inescapable sense that there is something else going on here. Similarities between this report and the Müller report like something is being left out of the story by both. Somewhere in my reading, I ran ac...

  There was a period of reverse immigration! That is, more people headed south than north, between 2008 and 2016. The Republicans began running on border security in spite of this fact. What do you think happened? The “Quick, let's get in before the opportunity closes!” idea kicked in! We saw a resurgence of immigration not seen in decades! It goes like this: Before Trump: reverse immigration.  Trump lies and threats: massive migration.  Trump regulations: Four years of border backup.  I t's Biden's fault  Today: Biden resets after ending Trump regulation: System working legally and properly with backup gone and new people processed by sending those with no credible claim home and the 1 to 2 percent of credible claims through!  Republicans: But, but, but, where's Hunter? Inflation We all agree that too much money chasing too few goods caused inflation, so what is the solution? Raising interest is not it! Producing more goods is! Why do we have a shortage o...

  In this case take her Literarily, not Literally.  That is my editorial paraphrase of what the judge said in an exchange in the E. Jean Carroll case as seen below: Take Her Literarily, Not Literally

  Carlson’s Firing: Was it Over Liability or Money? Like a rousing game of Pong, the Tucker Carlson saga continues to amuse.  In this case I run up against two of my favorite concepts for making judgments. The law of parsimony, and the principle of “follow the money” There may be others involved but these are, for the reason mentioned already, the most obvious: Parsimony: The simplest answer is almost always the right answer! That is Parsimony, also often called Occam's Razor, named for the hometown of Willam of Ockham.  Liability Carlson was fired because he was a legally indefensible liability to Fox particularly after several liable trials including the last one with Dominion voting systems.  If this is the case, a couple of other questions come to mind: Will Carlson's firing mitigate the legal case involving future legal action involving Carlson which occured before his termination? Will Carlson be on his own in any such future legal battles? Follow the money: At...

   Socialism and Economic Nationalism are just the two wings of the same scavenging Collectivist bird! Socialism By the normal definitions of socialism as it has been since its inception, socialism is an economic system based on collectivist ideas of equality of outcomes by government ownership of the means of production. Its political system is usually Communism. National Socialism and Fascism It is very much like its collectivist twin brother National Socialism, a term used by several different groups and based in the collective ideology of Fascism. In economic terms, Fascism incorporates elements of capitalism and socialism. Fascist economists favor self-sufficiency and private profit, but seek government subsidies of corporations and industrial policy.  It is really not Socialism by the definition given above but a form of Populist Nationalism similar to what we see today inside the American right. It seeks to control the outcome and output of private owners, via indu...

  Congress passes off more of its power to the administrative state! Congress delegates more of its non-delegatable authority to unelected officials. See if this makes sense to you. Endowing the Secretary of Commerce with: Power to "...determine what is an “undue or unacceptable risk...” Power of “...sole and unreviewable discretion...”  Power to “...otherwise mitigate...” Think about this, the unelected official is given the authority to determine what problems exist, and has no one to challeng him and can have no challenges, and has the power to do whatever he thinks best to deal with these issues! This is the best description of a monarchy I have ever seen! The bill is properly named. It is intended to RESTRICT anything the Secretary of Commerce thinks is an issue, and do anything about it he wishes to do, all with congressional approval! Text of t he Restrict Act

  Patterns of Silliness, Nothingberders and Coveffee! Patterns, we start to see them if we observe. Some of them are simple and we catch on quickly. Some are not and it takes more time or distance.  Chaos theory is a good example of those patterns. If we were distant enough in time and/or space and continued to observe, we would see these patterns emerge, and know that nothing happens without cause and effect.  The pattern Every day Red State sling some gibberish onto a page and it passes unnoticed except by the most calcified of trumpist minds.  Then about one day a week they will post something by a little known but not yet totally rejected writer, covering a story from an opinion piece from some other writer of some notoriety on the fake right, proclaiming that irrefutable evidence has proven that something the other side says or does has been destroyed and the whole movement is about to fall and then Republican Nirvana will be revealed!  Every week this happ...