A "surly curmudgeon[], suspicious and lacking in altruism." (Robert A. Heinlein)
If this is the way it’s going to be, it’s clearly over, and clearly never meant a damn thing other than turning us all into dutiful little slaves of the state. (But we already knew that.)
Fuck you, Eric Holcomb. I hope the good citizens of the State of Indiana see fit to award you the Order of the Boot on November 3.
TRUMP/RAINWATER FOR INDIANA 2020!
Boston University exempts Black Lives Matter events from COVID size limits
I keep having this recurring thought that the existing Supreme Court could simply refuse to seat extraneous justices (i.e., >9) due to budget and space restrictions. Given that the Supreme Court is an independent Constitutional body, co-equal with the Executive and Legislative branches, I’m not sure Congress can actually legislate new Justice positions, or that the President can actually force them to increase their number simply by nominating extra Justices. What would the Congress say if the Supreme Court told them they had to double the number of Representatives or Senators? Or what would the President say if the Supreme Court told him he had to give the Vice President more to do, and make him a co-president rather than a subordinate? Yet this is precisely what the Democrats think Congress and/or the President can do to the Supreme Court.
That being said, the original reason for there being seven Justices on the original Supreme Court was that each of them was the Chief Judge of one of the seven circuits — and they were theoretically required to ride their circuit when the Supreme Court wasn’t in session. So if we went back to the Framers’ vision, there should be 13 justices today. (12 regional circuit courts plus the Federal Circuit.)
I could see increasing the number of Supreme Court Justices to 13, but then making them each directly responsible for one of the circuits (i.e., as per the original plan, each Justice is Chief Judge of their assigned circuit) and making them literally sit on that circuit when it is in session. Can you imagine — a circuit court of appeals getting ready to issue a stupid ruling, when the Chief Judge of the Circuit comes down and says, calmly, “You know that opinion will never fly when we hear it in the Supreme Court. And that’s not an ‘if’ — it’s a ‘when’.”
It would also make sense under such a system to appoint successor Justices based on geography; for instance, if the Justice who serves as Chief Judge for the Ninth Circuit dies or retires, the President is obligated to choose a nominee from the geographical area served by the Ninth Circuit. Which I suspect would help cut back on the number of Yale and Harvard graduates serving on the Court, and would also create balance rather than perpetuate the “clubby” nature of the existing Supreme Court.
The overriding need, however, is for the country to stop looking at the Supreme Court to protect us from our stupid mistakes in choosing incompetent legislators. The justices have made it clear for years that they do not want to serve as a “super-legislature” set in place to fix vague and contradictory law made in Congress. Either Scalia or Alito (I think) said at one point not many years ago that they would prefer the American people simply sent better people to Congress who would write unambiguous law that didn’t leave 90% of its interpretation to the permanent bureaucracy. Or something along those lines. The problem is, the Democrats can’t get what they want in Congress, so they’re pushing for the Supreme Court to act as that “super-legislature” in order to interpret the law to say what they want it to say. But thus has it ever been; it’s no historical secret that FDR wanted to pack the Court for precisely that reason.
ADDENDUM, 14 Oct 2020: As I have mulled this thing over, I also keep coming back to the idea that the number of justices on the Court shouldn’t be within the purview of either the President or the Congress. The number of justices on the court should be determined by the Court itself, as a function of workload. The original Judiciary Act set the number at six in 1789. In 1807, Congress increased the number to seven (probably to prevent ties). In 1837 it was raised to 9, and in 1863 it was raised to 10. The Judicial Circuits Act of 1866 was passed by the Radical Republicans to lower the number of justices to 7, and deny Andrew Johnson any nominees to the Court. In 1869, with Johnson gone and U.S. Grant firmly ensconced at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, Congress raised the number back to 9, and it has been 9 ever since, despite the attempted depredations threatened by the traitor FDR. I would think at this point that a 151-year tradition is set in stare decisis stone, and any changes to the makeup of the Supreme Court ought to be at the request of the Court, not instituted by whim of the President or the Congress…but then, I’m an originalist and think we need to be paying more attention to following the Constitution rather than packing the Court to change its Constitutional function into a sort of mini-House of Lords. I would therefore propose an Amendment to the Constitution whereby the number of Supreme Court Justices would be set permanently at 9, and could be increased (or decreased) only by the Court itself.
The bottom line is that you don’t see Congress thinking its numbers ought to be increased — no, they’re traditionally jealous of their privileges, and would argue the current numbers are historical precedent, and can only be changed if states are added to the Union (and they wouldn’t even do that when Alaska and Hawaii were admitted back in the ’50s). Whereas one of the few suggestions Jonah Goldberg has made over the years that are actually worth serious consideration is the one he made back in ’09 to increase the House to around 5,000 members. And even he admitted that would be a hard sell in Congress.
“The new normal” and “the future of” are two phrases being overused to the max, lately.
The plain fact is, at some point we are going to have to go back to the way things have always been done — not wearing masks, acknowledging that about three feet is plenty of personal space (and if you’ve ever been to any kind of “show” — gun show, flea market, state fair exhibit, national museum of whatever — you know it’s even less than that, though it makes us standoffish Americans kind of nervous), eating in restaurants, going to lodge meetings, going to school…and not being afraid.
There is nothing about this current “gonna kill us all” pandemic that we haven’t faced in past history. But nobody’s come up with the idea that we have to shut down our economy and force people to wear masks and close or cancel all public functions for months on end, before.
Not until Democrats, desperate to get rid of a Republican president (and don’t kid yourself — it could have been any Republican, not just Donald Trump) who was actually succeeding where their Sun God Barack Obama had failed. The economy was roaring, unemployment was at historic lows across the spectrum, we were dumping two (or more) stupid regulations for every new one approved, China was getting its ass stomped over trade.
The Democrats went fucking nuts over a nothingburger virus.
And, I won’t argue that it didn’t kill a lot of people, because it did kill a lot of people. Mostly elderly people with pre-existing conditions that were exacerbated by what the virus did to the adult immune system. But it was figured out pretty quickly, mostly because of the research that had already been done on SARS and MERS, that there were certain drug cocktails that would solve that problem for most people, if they were administered early enough.
Of course, because President Trump said they worked and should be fast-tracked and used under special FDA contingency programs, the Democrats went fucking nuts and their pet medical “experts” said these things couldn’t work. Didn’t work. Would never work. Despite years of post-SARS research and doctors overseas saying, in fact, we’ve been using these cocktails (e.g., hydrochloroquine + azithromycin + zinc), and in fact, they ARE alleviating these problems for many, many people.
Comes now an article written by a doctor in Finland, a cabinet officer in that country’s Ministry of Social Affairs and Health, regarding an in-depth Israeli study done on the relationship between vitamin D deficiency and COVID-19. He also notes, in passing, the following tidbit that (among other foibles) ought to have Anthony Fauci run out of the NIH on a rail:
I have never taken any vitamin supplements in my life and have always overlooked modern snake oil entrepreneurs’ promotions. But after reading the current evidence of how vitamin D levels protect people from COVID-19 and other respiratory infections, I have started two weeks ago to take 100 micrograms of vitamin D daily.
I also take note that the US COVID-19 tsar Dr Anthony Fauci finally admitted – after being silent for eight months since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic – that he takes 150 micrograms of vitamin D daily! The World owes a lot to a British doctor named John Campbell, who has been active in disseminating in his popular YouTube podcasts the good news related to vitamin D and COVID-19 for months. He also recently revealed to the world Dr Fauci’s daily dose of vitamin D.
Huh. For reference, 150 micrograms is 6,000 international units (i.u.). I’ve been taking an over-the-counter D3 supplement for several years (for other reasons) that’s 125 micrograms (5000 i.u.). The dose the Finnish doctor is taking is 100 micrograms, or 4000 i.u. Recommendations for a minimum daily requirement are all over the map, but here’s a table from the NIH that sort of sums it all up:
| Life Stage | Recommended Amount |
| Birth to 12 months | 10 mcg (400 IU) |
| Children 1–13 years | 15 mcg (600 IU) |
| Teens 14–18 years | 15 mcg (600 IU) |
| Adults 19–70 years | 15 mcg (600 IU) |
| Adults 71 years and older | 20 mcg (800 IU) |
| Pregnant and breastfeeding women | 15 mcg (600 IU) |
But these are the recommended amounts. Other research seems to indicate that to get to a healthy serum level of vitamin D, and then maintain it, you need to take more. One web page I saw says
All things considered, a daily vitamin D intake of 1000–4000 IU, or 25–100 micrograms, should be enough to ensure optimal blood levels in most people.
4000 IU is the safe upper limit according to the Institute of Medicine (IOM). Make sure not to take more than that without consulting with a health professional.
https://www.healthline.com/nutrition/how-much-vitamin-d-to-take#How-Much-Vitamin-D-Should-You-Take?
Clearly, people like Dr. Fauci are taking considerably more than 4000 i.u. daily, so I feel fairly safe in taking 5000, especially since the article I read about vitamin D deficiency and migraine was suggesting 5000 i.u. daily. (I wish I could find the specific article, but my references to it seem to be lost in time.) Plus, my doctor didn’t have a problem with it when I told him.
Dr. Paunio (the Finnish doctor) points out:
It is notable now that e.g. in Iran the COVID-19 pandemic has hit the country hard for over seven months without any sign of relief and after seven months and now things are getting even worse there. Opposition forces in the country have recently claimed that the true number of COVID-19 deaths is four times greater than the official government statistics, health care workers are losing their peers in large numbers and patient load has been and will be overwhelming in the foreseeable future in hospitals. In the Iranian population, vitamin D levels are low both in men and women but lower among women than among men and almost all elderly people suffer from very low D vitamin levels. The reason for this is the same as in Israel, namely individuals with low vitamin D levels tend to wear a traditional (gender-specific) attire, with more body surface covered than the general population. This affects the ability of the body to absorb sunlight and produce vitamin D.
It is now highly likely that sustained high SARS-CoV-2 transmission and fairly high death rates in Iran owe a lot to low population vitamin D levels.
Again, huh.
The Israeli paper states (and Dr. Paunio says that the information above should be adduced to the paragraph containing this line for broader context)
Conversely, individuals living in communities with a low rate of severe vitamin D deficiency seem to benefit from a herd immunity effect, probably because their neighbours are less likely to spread the virus to them.
How about that.
And Dr. Fauci has not said a word about the benefits of vitamin D for months, until he was caught out by another doctor.
So, read the article; it’s a good one, makes a lot of sense, and for those who bitch that there are too many self-taught Google experts out there, this guy is actually a doctor, and not only is he a doctor, he works for the ministry of health in Finland. If that’s not good enough for you, well, you’re unreachable.
The point of this post, though, is not to argue about vitamin D, unless it is. But there are two things that have to be said, right off.
“The new normal” is not normal. It needs to be discarded as quickly as possible, as quickly as the stupid ineffective masks people are wearing that hundreds of medical doctors and other actual experts have already made clear do nothing to prevent the spread of the virus.
“The future of” just about everything in this country actually depends on whether or not we, as a people, are willing to do a few things that we should have been doing all along.
Because we’re a fat, lazy, bunch of couch potatoes. Myself included.
Obesity is at the root of our problems. Obesity makes so many other problems worse, particularly hypertension and type 2 diabetes, but also anything else that a runaway immune reaction can grab onto and make worse. Here’s a list from the CDC of comorbidities that are known to increase risk from a COVID-19 infection:
And they add that the following might also increase risk, but I think most of them have been found to definitely increase risk:
Note that both lists include obesity (at different levels). How many Americans are obese? CDC says 42.4% in 2017-2018.
I’m going to go out on a limb and theorize that most Americans who really ought to be worried about COVID-19 are a) fat and b) vitamin D deficient. Say what you will, I may be a) but I’m not b) and I haven’t been for quite some time.
So — WHAT’S OBVIOUS, DOC?
If, in “the future of”, we want to go back to the way things were, we need to get our asses back into shape.
Lose weight. Doesn’t matter how. Keto, vegan (good way not only to lose weight but to kill yourself, but eh, never mind). Atkins, Weight Watchers (though they call themselves WW now), South Beach, I don’t give a shit. Try phentermine. It’s at least got my weight stable.
Exercise. Not only will this help you lose weight, it will do your body systems good. Your muscles will become stronger, your endurance will rise, your mental faculties will benefit. Your body was built to run across the African savannah with lions chasing you. And while that may have been half a million years ago, your body hasn’t changed that much. And to tell the truth, I’m tired of getting out of breath walking to the mailbox and pulling a muscle petting the cat.
Eat right. Not the crap you’re probably eating now. Cook a meal once in a while. Don’t follow the USDA food pyramid, it’s upside down. Concentrate on proteins and minimize the processed shit. If you eat bread, eat whole grains. Take a multivitamin, especially if you’re over 50 (look for the “over 50″ multivitamins). If you don’t spend much time in the sun, take a D3 supplement. (The multivitamin will probably take care of your zinc needs.)
Look at what the average American adult looked like back in the 1960’s. He or she may not have been massively athletic, but they were, by and large, trim and healthy. I have a picture of my Dad in the 1980s, at around 55, when he puffed up a little bit and got chunky. He stopped eating so much and ended up working as a tradesman again around that time, and lost the 20 pounds or so he’d gained sitting in an office in nothing flat. Before he got sick in 2001, he weighed around 160-165 pounds at 5’8” in height, very little of it being fat. I’d be happy if I could get back to 180, which is about what I weighed the summer I graduated from high school.
And I’ll be frank with you (even though my name is not Frank): Right now, I need to lose about a hundred pounds to get back to 180. Closest I’ve been is 213 when I was still in my 40’s, but I lost 41 pounds to get to that.
But that’s how we get to “the future of”. Every citizen should accept as a duty of citizenship to get in shape, live a healthy lifestyle, and stay that way. If we were healthy and resistant to China viruses in the first place, then future China viruses (and you know there will be future China viruses) wouldn’t give the Democrats an excuse to close down the country and then dither around about whether or not it should be opened back up.
If you’re a fat slob lounging around on your davenport watching TV and snacking high on the food chain, maybe you ought to get off your ass and act like a lion’s chasing you. Because the next lion might get you. Just sayin’.
To all my peeps who are saying Nancy Poo-losi is trying to do something unconstitutional (I mean, like what else would be new): Before making fools of yourselves, please look carefully at Section 4 of the 25th Amendment.
Whenever the Vice President and a majority of either the principal officers of the executive departments or of such other body as Congress may by law provide, transmit to the President pro tempore of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives their written declaration that the President is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office, the Vice President shall immediately assume the powers and duties of the office as Acting President.
She’s hanging her fortunes on that highlighted bit. And she’s entirely within her rights to do so.
Of course, it has to pass the House — which may not be a given, because it’s so blatant even a lot of the House Dems may not go for it. Then, she has to get it past the Senate…and either get the President to sign it, or both Houses have to override his veto. As if that’s going to happen. And even if it passes, they’d have to get the Vice President to agree with them — and Pence is not going to sucker-punch his boss. That’s not how Race Bannon operates.
So we can all take comfort — sort of: Because it’s not really about Trump. It’s about preparing the ground to get rid of Biden if the country actually rears up and elects a senile old child molester, so Kamala-lala can be president instead, and the civil war that’s heating up can really get started. (Did someone say, “Boog?”)
Wheels within wheels, folks. It’s how the Democrats operate. Just like the Communists. Because that’s what they are.
Just don’t expect the Supreme Court to come riding to our rescue. Because they’ll take one look, shrug, and say, “why should we grant cert to a case opposing something that’s clearly allowed by the Constitution, even if it’s never been acted on in the past?” And they’ll be right. Damn it.
Someone tried to make this point over on Fecesbook, on a friend’s post:
Footnote: If [the Left] truly want a total separation of church and state, we have to end tax deductions for charity donations since this is a subsidy to the church. Next, since our basic laws are a direct reflection of our basic 10 Commandments, we need to entirely re-write our system of jurisprudence to express the morals (or lack thereof) in whatever new system the left seems to want.
I think this person may have been trying to act as advocatus diaboli, but whatever; let’s address the idiocy of requiring religious institutions to pay income tax and/or no longer be able to accept tax-exempt donations. (With regard to the second half of his statement, nobody is going to rewrite the basic law because — in my opinion — it can’t be done at this late date, and frankly, without at least a nod to Deity, there is no basis for the basic law, since much of the law does in fact have a moral base — it is morally wrong to steal, to lie (perjury), cheat (defraud), commit adultery, and frankly to fornicate with animals and members of one’s own sex (although this last seems to have fallen by the wayside in our degenerate days. Without a moral component, your argument that it should be illegal to steal falls apart, because “why?” “Because I said so” is not sufficient; I don’t care what you think, but I do in fact care what G-d thinks, and they were His Commandments.)
So. Read Jefferson’s letter to the Danbury Baptists some time. He mentions a “wall of separation”, but what he means by it isn’t what the left means by it. Jefferson’s wall of separation is set in place to prohibit the federal government from interfering with the religious beliefs and practices of ALL religions, denominations, and sects, and (though Jefferson doesn’t say so in so many words) from establishing a state church or religion.*
But the concept of a “wall of separation” exists nowhere in the Constitution or the Bill of Rights. It simply says that Congress cannot legislate the establishment of religion, or prohibit its free exercise.
The idea that a church should be established for non-profit purposes and therefore be tax-exempt grows out of the idea that the church (or whatever you call the congregation, depending on religion/denomination/sect) gives more back to the community than it would ever pay in taxes and that it is a force for good in society that should be supported, if only indirectly, by virtue of the government leaving it alone. It’s harder to see this in our day and age of welfare, Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and all the other social safety nets we erected starting in the 1930’s to take the place of social safety nets for which the religious community (including fraternal organizations and suchlike) was typically responsible before the Great Depression.
But never mind all that. The plain fact is, a simple reading of the First Amendment clearly states that Congress shall not legislate to prohibit the free exercise of religion. Forcing churches to pay corporate income tax on their donations and tithes and membership dues (and also ending the tax-deductible nature of such donations from individuals) would be such a prohibition, or at the very least would stifle the maintenance and growth of religion. On the other hand, this is why the IRS has such a high bar to cross in determining who is eligible for 501(c)(3) tax-exempt status. (I’ve applied successfully on behalf of a couple of organizations for 501(c)(4) status in the past, and that’s a pain, but it’s nothing compared to what you have to do to get and maintain 501(c)(3) status.)
And the left definitely wants to stifle traditional religion, so it bangs the drum for a supposed “wall of separation” that never existed other than in the fertile mind of Thomas Jefferson (who was NOT present at the Constitutional Convention, or at the convention where the Bill of Rights was written and adopted), who invented the term but clearly (at least in my read of his Letter to the Danbury Baptists) didn’t mean it the way the modern left has chosen to interpret it.
That being said, ALL institutions are suffering unduly under what I firmly believe are unconstitutional orders put in place ostensibly to prevent the spread of disease. It would make a great deal of sense if everyone could come together and point out that the government may not restrict the right to assemble in the first place, regardless whether such assembly occurs at a church, at a fraternal hall, in a school, in a restaurant, in a theatre, in a park, or on a beach, or in any other place where people normally congregate. The First Amendment was incorporated to apply to the states long ago, so all these state and local orders cannot be, prima facie, anything but unconstitutional.
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* Note that it did not prevent the states from continuing to promote state religion. Maryland, for instance, was very Catholic, and if you weren’t a Catholic, typically you had a hard time getting ahead. Other states had similar restrictive and preferential traditions tied to religion and benefits for those who hewed to the state’s preference, if not indeed laws on the books ditto. Incorporation changed a lot of that, though the vestiges continue to hang on today in many places.
It is clear that our current system of electing the president of the Republic does not work properly anymore. Too many people are involved and the country is too evenly split. Therefore I have a modest proposal for electing our future presidents.
I want the candidates to participate in a WWE pay-per-view event.
This event would take the place of primary elections, campaigning, debates, and the general election for president. It could be done in one fell swoop, without appeal to the courts, and without having to go to the polls.
It would be a cage death match. All candidates go in, one candidate comes out. For added excitement, throw in two rabid dire wolves. There can be only one. If one of the wolves wins, it’s the president for the next four years. If everyone dies, “none of the above is acceptable” wins.
The only problem with this is Judge Mills Lane isn’t able to referee anymore.
Anyway, rather than have a fake debate between the two major party candidates, everybody goes in the cage. Republican, Democrat, Libertarian, Green, Democrat-Farmer-Labor, Conservative, Liberal, I don’t care what party you represent or how minor it is. If you’re the presidential candidate of the 420 Party, and you can stay off the weed long enough to be able to fight, you’re in.
The winner would be the best candidate for the job: Wily, fearless, no-nonsense, willing to go to the mat — literally — for the American people.
But of course, the main reason I’d like to see this would be to watch Trump pound Biden over the head with a folding chair.
When can we start? Now? Why bother with the last two debates? My cat already has the popcorn ready.
The difference between intelligent people and progressives is that intelligent people recognize institutions naturally will ebb and flow between center-left and center-right positions over time. We see this constantly in the Executive and Legislative branches (except for the 40+ year period when the Democrats held Congress after WWII, which was to my mind an anomaly), but not so much in the Judiciary because so many federal judges have lifetime appointments. So the Judiciary changes only gradually, one seat at a time if that, while Congress and the Executive oscillate wildly by comparison.
Progressives, by contrast, believe that every tilt to the left is (or should be) permanent, as a clear vindication of their slow march through the institutions. This explains things like Reid’s nuclear option in blowing up the filibuster in 2013, and the general leftist conniption fit when the House flipped in 2010, and the Senate went back to the GOP in 2014 (both as a direct result of Congress forcing Obamacare on the public in 2010). Of course progressives think they will never lose the House again after they won it two years ago on the back of lies, deceits, and vote fraud. And their absolute snit over Trump’s appointment of a conservative to replace the liberal Ruth Bader Ginsburg on the Supreme Court is yet another example of progressive inability to see that, like the tides, political fortunes of the two parties ebb and flow, and have done throughout history.
This may also have something to do with progressive assurances that the seas will rise if we do nothing about climate change. They simply cannot believe in anything that doesn’t fit their narrative.
When your governor is too stupid to realize why his polling numbers are dropping like a stone, only six weeks out from the election:
of course he extends the useless, illegal, and unconstitutional mask mandate once again. (Chart from Wikipedia.)
I keep hearing that outside of Indianapolis, stores are removing the directional arrows, opening closed entrances, and aren’t stopping people without masks from entering. Sooner or later, everyone in Indianapolis will be ignoring the governor, too. And looking to vote for one of his two opponents.
I will not cast a vote for this clown again. He will not be missed. And who knows, we might end up with a Libertarian governor. Rainwater is trending up faster than Myers is. I think we’ve got ourselves a real three-way contest, for once, and all because our sitting governor is a statist moron.
You would think the state GOP would have warned him off doing this. But they’re morons, too.
It’s being pointed out elsewhere, and has been ever since last Friday, but there is a plain and simple fact that the Democrats choose to ignore:
Ginsburg could have retired under Obama prior to the 2014 election, and easily been replaced by a young Progressive female jurist who could have served 30-40 years.
Her hubris was such — and so was that of the Democrats — that all she had to do was hang in till Hillary was elected in 2016, then retire, etc. Because even after the GOP took the Senate back in 2014, history suggests they would have approved an Obama appointee without a whole lot of fuss after a Democrat won in 2016. He might have had to appoint someone a little less progressive than he would have liked, and they would have had to wait until the smoke cleared from the election, but overall, he could have locked that seat in for a couple of generations at minimum. (There’s precedent to approve a presidential nomination after that president goes out of office, so his nominee could potentially have been approved under a Hillary Clinton presidency, even if actual history shows McConnell felt it was important to wait and not hold hearings on Merrick Garland until after the 2016 election because a) Obama was a lame duck, and b) his party did not hold the Senate, which two items in combination have never resulted in a Supreme Court nomination by the lame duck president being approved.)
Moreover, her hubris was such that she believed she could roll the dice one more time on her cancer and beat it until after the 2020 election, while in the meantime doing the American public a disservice by remaining in office when she was unable to fulfill her duties.
Her nemesis was Donald Trump. And even without Trump, as soon as Hillary became the nominee, there was no way in hell Mitch McConnell was going to let Obama and Hillary have their way on a Supreme Court nomination before the election. And holding the Senate majority made that possible, and not only possible, but historically inevitable.
In addition, Trump holds a position Obama did not — he’s not a lame duck, and his party controls the Senate. And because Harry Reid destroyed the filibuster in 2013 — something Mitch McConnell warned him would come back around and bite the Democrats in the ass — seven short years later, Trump is going to get another Supreme Court appointment whether he gets re-elected or not. Because if you don’t think the GOP majority in the Senate is not being kept closely apprised of the debate over who will eventually be nominated, and won’t be willing to hold perfunctory hearings and rubber-stamp whoever Trump ends up nominating, you have another think coming. Because if I were Trump (and I think he’s smarter than me when it comes to this sort of thing), I’d be on the phone to McConnell two or three times a day discussing how this is going to work.
Collusion? You bet your ass. But all-American collusion, the kind Barry and Hills don’t know how to do because they’re too busy chumming up to international socialists and plotting how to take America down a notch or twenty.
In the end, this really shouldn’t even be a question of politics. The Supreme Court has become far too important, which threatens the stability of the three-cornered government the Framers created, in which three co-equal branches did their assigned thing and cooperated in order to maintain the stability and well-being of the Republic. You could make the case that Marbury vs. Madison threw that out the window only 14 years after the Constitution was ratified, when John Marshall his own bad self decided that the Court had the power of review over what the other two branches do. In retrospect, John Marshall probably should have been taken out and hanged from the nearest convenient lamppost along with his concurring brethren, because that supposed power appears nowhere in the Constitution and was created entirely out of whole cloth by Marshall. And it turned the Court into a political wrecking ball, which has only gotten bigger and heavier and worse ever since, what with justices and even judges in inferior courts legislating from the bench in a manner that was never envisioned by the Framers.
If not for the tension between the Executive and the Legislature that has existed for more years than I like to think about, the Court would not be important, and wouldn’t be something that could be put in play as it has been at least since Reagan nominated Robert Bork — a massively-qualified legal mind beaten to death by Ted Kennedy, Joe Biden, and the rest of the Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee. (Although it may have been just as well — some of his statements toward the end of his life suggested to me that he might have become a squish like Anthony Kennedy.)
In the end, though, it comes down to the fact that Ginsburg lacked sufficient humility to understand that in politics, nothing is either permanent or certain, and that she should have had the grace and sense to retire at a reasonable point after her first pancreatic cancer diagnosis in 2009, and let Obama replace her with a Democrat while he had the ability and his party held the majority in the Senate to do that.
That she followed whence her hubris led her, well, sucks to be the Democrats, right now. As Omar Khayyám memorably put it,
“The Moving Finger writes; and, having writ,
Moves on: nor all thy Piety nor Wit
Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line,
Nor all thy Tears wash out a Word of it.”
History is history, bitches. You can’t change it. Not a moment of it. And nobody can predict the future.
Democrats, socialists, communists, and progressives (but I repeat myself repeatedly) are now screaming, in the wake of the RBG…er…RPG that’s been fired into their ranks, that the Senate must not consider any Supreme Court nomination before the election. They base this off Cocaine Mitch’s refusal to consider Barack Obama’s last attempt to nominate a Supreme Court justice just prior to Obama going out of office in January 2017. But the situation is completely different.
Quite frankly, if Trump is re-elected and doesn’t invoke the Insurrection Act immediately after, I’m going to be sorely disappointed. But that’s another story and a post for another time.