Monitoring Biden and other Contemporary Events

That's certainly how I see it, Mame.

I appreciate your point, Bill. But the SC has become, very much on purpose and by design, a reactionary political instrument. We have no reason to imagine that it will function as a pro-democracy institution of governance and law. The best we can hope for is some small degree of temperance from them such that their neighborhoods and dinner parties aren't at risk. As to expanding the court, I'm not well enough informed to properly understand the barriers and possible outcomes but I do hope it happens.

There is no "But", The SC has become.

The question is, will it act responsibly in this case. Today, I have to wholeheartedly agree with you, "We have no reason to imagine that it will function as a pro-democracy institution of governance and law."

There isn't a hair of difference in our position! As to expanding the court and getting new members on the court before 2024 (regardless of what happens in 2022); won't happen!

With respect to the polarization and "crisis" now afoot in the world. it is very interesting (to me at least) to note the similarity of the accusations being hurled by each side against the other. Both (at least in this country) accuse the other of authoritarianism (as Blatham has done in his post). Which is correct? I suspect the core issue here and in other like cases is something that attends the ongoing struggle for political power.

The "authority" in question is to some degree merely the leadership of the opposing party, and there is ample evidence of this on both sides. There is , in this matter an underlying objective difference, which I believe gets to the heart of the matter.

Progressives and Democrats strongly favor government-directed and imposed "solutions" to social issues large and small, while their Republican opponents, with equal intensity, favor individual freedom & private initiatives, local government, and preservations of the constitutional limitations on the reach of our Federal government. ( I use quotes to note the evident fact that most such things like yield the opposite of the intended outcome, but a permanent extension of government bureaucracy and control. Think of government subsidized student loans and mortgages together with government directed priorities for recipients )

The word authoritarianism can be applied to any person or organization, but in a political context it generally applies to the character of government and the reach it claims regarding its powers. The term "totalitarian" applies to governments that claims authority over every aspect of life: Communism and Fascism were the prime examples of such systems in recent history, and both yielded only poverty, tyranny and mass suffering. It is a simple and observable fact that contemporary Democrats favor far greater government control over our lives than do their Republican opponents . Are they therefore the "authoritarian" or totalitarian actors in this struggle? I believe so, but others (oddly it seems to me) disagree.

In a similar vein the term "democracy is being hurled about in often self-serving ways by both antagonists. democratic processes in governance are indeed a good and critical thing, but it is the reality, not merely the form of the thing, that is important. The government of the Soviet Union had many democratic formalisms. but in the context of a single parity system, ruled by thuggish autocrats they meant little and there was, in fact, no rule of the people. It appears to me that the contemporary Democrat-run leadership in our Congress have been advancing its prefabricated legislative programs without any dialogue with the opposing parity, conceding points only when faced with obvious public and procedural failure. (failures that, happily for us all, are accumulating rapidly).

I wouldn't characterize it as favoring "government control over my life". I believe that business regulation, environmental laws, and public health measures (among many government functions) can be effected without imposing any burdensome or repressive control over individuals. These measures, with periodic ebb and flow, have been in place for decades. I really hesitate to label them "authoritarian". Most of them were enacted to address problems caused by conflicts between different interests in our society with laws seeking to level the playing field.

Really difficult to comprehend this level of moral and intellectual failure.

Can't they sit her somewhere else? Or him?

If you were her, if you had that condition would you risk having idiot burst into your private space?

He coesn't sound like someone who respects boundaries.

Sounds insane, doesn't it?

Is it your belief, george, that the last election was stolen and that Trump was the real winner?

Justice Gorsuch should sit alone since he is the one being reckless about health. It is grossly negligent to ask a person with health issues to trust your medical instincts since you have no medical training. Gorsuch is a massive putz.

Seating is established by seniority.

Various rationalizations for such regulation of business, environment and public health can indeed be helpful. However such government run programs can quickly become tyrannical; achieve exactly the opposite of their intended outcomes ; and indeed lead to unnecessary and harmful overreach and control of peoples lives and liberty.

Biden's misguided efforts to control the distribution of at home COVID tests and drugs used in treatment has actually slowed that distribution - something already being done far more efficiently by existing medical and commercial practices. His idiotic authoritarian (and unconstitutional) mandates and hectoring of the American people over vaccines foolishly ignored relevant changes in the evolution of the endemic (and the science attendant to them) and achieved exactly the opposite of the effects he sought.

Government managed social welfare programs, ranging from student loans to subsidized mortgages, COVID emergency services quickly become subject to bureaucratic and administrative priorities which in many cases violate longstanding laws prohibiting the very discrimation they often involve. People are not stupid (as many "progressives" appear to believe). They can and do think for themselves, and as Americans are properly jealous of their freedoms and liberty.

The arbitrary decision of EPA bureaucrats (anxious to extend their power) that the legislated applicability of clean water rules only to the "waters of the United States" ( a well established legal term that included only navigable rivers & streams) , really applies to any standing or flowing body of water, however small, has directly led to literally hundreds of cases of farmers who, after period of heavy rains left standing water in low lying sections of their fields, found EPA inspectors classifying as "wetlands" and somehow subject to their governance under their (incorrect) interpretations of environmental law (never mind the scientific irrelevance of the physical situation at hand). Many were deprived of the lawful use of their property for extended periods of time. This, of course is bureaucratic tyranny - an increasingly common phenomenon in recent times.

Experience has taught me that;

=> bureaucrats are generally motivated by the desire to expand their powers and, at the same time, to escape accountability for their actions;

=> Progressives politicians tend to believe that they alone know what is good for everyone else, while, at the same time believing that they should be judged on the supposed virtues of their intentions, as opposed to the results they actually achieve.

Too much infestation with either is bad for any government and both together are far worse.

That, sadly,appears to be an accurate description of our current Democrat Administration and trends that have been developing in this country for well over a decade.

Tsk! Tsk! Tsk!

Clearly you are trying to bait me with one of your prefabricated judgements.

The answer is that I don't claim to know, but I am aware of the long-standing behaviors of Democrat political machines, from Tammany Hall in New York to the Dailey machine in Chicago, and many others of the same ilk (some which , as a boy, I directly observed in Michigan electoral politics i.e. ballot box stuffing, votes collected from dead people or others, previously registered who had moved out of the state, and gross miscounting of ballots - and occasional destruction of those from opposition voters.

Trump's claims likely involve a good deal of self-righteous denial. The assertions of Democrats that their ardently sought reforms seek only greater election integrity tend to peg my phonyometer


There were well-identified swing states in the last election, and enough suspicious activity there to suggest that some malfeasance was occurring. Whether it was decisive or not I don't know.

I'm not sure I can cut through your hyperbole here. Yes, a hostile Supreme Court found the OSHA mandate unconstitutional – which inconveniently gives the lie to your accusation of "authoritarian". Nor is it "idiotic" to try to counter the steady beat of misinformation coming from the antivaccination crowd. "Ineffective" would be a better description, given the forces arrayed against this simple protective measure from the GOP and its media enablers. And you do realize that Biden isn't a scientist – that even real scientists at the CDC are learning new things about the virus every day and having to walk back various announcements they've made.

And there really are reasons to treat areas of standing water as wetlands as they serve an ecological purpose, albeit only seasonally. It's not "bureaucratic", or any other kind, of "tyranny".

Experience has taught me that:

=> conservatives are generally motivated to protect their wealth and privilege at the expense of everyone else.

=> Conservative politicians aren't interested in governing, only in controlling the apparatus of government to protect their wealth and privilege at the expense of everyone else, secure in the knowledge that a sufficient portion of the population is readily cowed by fear and will obey their populist manipulators and parrot their propaganda.

This initially surprised me. Not because of any opinion I have about his jurisprudence but rather as regards how he imagines this to be received in the public eye and why or why not that might matter. SC members are, the story goes, profoundly concerned with the reputation of the court in the public eye. And of course it is no great personal burden to put on a mask as the others have done. He has worn masks before in public settings.

So this looks pretty clearly to be some sort of political statement. And if that is so, he is revealing that, to him, the reputation of the court isn't of much importance. Let them eat covid.

There is an arrogance here that shouldn't be missed. It's the arrogance of power when it looks, to those in power, that they are relatively secure in their position and that they deserve, more than all others, to maintain and utilize their power to ideological ends. Prior gestures towards objectivity or fair-mindedness are dropped.

And this arrogance can be seen far more broadly across the modern right wing universe. Consider, as just one example, Navarro's recent admissions regarding the long-planned attempt to rig a coup to overturn the last election and keep Trump in power. Or consider the blatant attempts across Republican states to suppress voting through state legislation and through stopping any federal legislation to facilitate voting.

This arrogance, I'm afraid, has come out of a growing sense on the modern right that they can get away with such moves because they have managed to build up strategies and institutions which backstop everything they are setting out to do. They recognize they are very close to effective one party rule.

No, not bait. I'm trying to get you to deal with specifics of our present situation.

You reach back to Tammany Hall and claims of malfeasance somewhat later in aid of "everyone does it" so any modern example can be tossed aside as mere partisan complaint. It's an avoidance.


Are you really not aware that more than 60 cases brought before the courts, including courts with Republican appointed judges, even Trump appointed judges, where the claim you've just made were heard and not a single one was upheld as having merit? Not one, george. Not one.

No, I wouldn't, however, his behaviour should be accommodated. Put him at the back of the room on a stool, facing the wall and wearing a dunce hat. His behaviour shouldn't prevent her from attending in person.

Of course that wouldn't happen, but it's what should happen.

As an aside, izzy - remember that friend I told you about that wouldn't get vaccinated? Well, she has Covid and still won't get a jab.

Well, they could accommodate one of them, surely. Put an acrylic box around him, at least.