Originalism ...

The actions of the esteemed Mitch McConnell, beginning with his not allowing Merrick Garland, a jurist respected on both sides of the asile, to appear before the senate based on his rabid hatred of Obama “One of my proudest moments was when I looked Barack Obama in the eye and I said, ‘Mr. President, you will not fill the Supreme Court vacancy.’ “ and ending with Amy Barrett being rapidly rammed through just days before the election without getting all the facts needed to learn more about this marginal person, says it all about Mitch, who should have been impeached and removed from office on the Merrick Garland fiasco but ... as my loyal readers know, this is not just about these issues but rather on why originalism fails on all counts regarding the Constitution and how it applies to law, is.

During her confirmation hearings, Amy Coney Barrett argued that the judicial philosophy known as “originalism” should guide judges in their interpretation and application of constitutional principles. Most famously associated with the late Justice Antonin Scalia (for whom Judge Barrett clerked), this idea sounds simple and sensible: In determining what the Constitution permits, a judge must first look to the plain meaning of the text, and if that isn’t clear, then apply what was in the minds of the 55 men who wrote it in 1787. Period. Anything else is “judicial lawmaking.”

In some cases, interpreting the Constitution with an originalist lens is pretty easy; for example, the Constitution says that the president must be at least 35 years old (“35” means, well, 35), that each state has two senators (not three and not one), and that Congress is authorized to establish and support an Army and a Navy. But wait a minute. What about the Air Force? Is it mentioned in the text? Nope. Is there any ambiguity in the text? Again, no. It doesn’t say “armed forces”; it explicitly says “Army” and “Navy.” Did the Framers have in mind the Air Force 115 years before the Wright brothers? Not likely.

And these are the easy cases. How about terms like due process? What does due mean? Is a process that locks you up for life without access to a lawyer “due”? How about an “unreasonable” search and seizure? Is wiretapping “unreasonable”? (We wonder what the Framers thought about wiretapping or cyber theft.) Does “freedom of speech” apply to corporations, which didn’t exist in their modern form in 1787?.

The intellectual dishonesty of many originalists is exposed by their reluctance to follow their own logic regarding certain landmark cases, now widely recognized as milestones in our national progress toward “a more perfect union.” The easiest examples are Brown v. Board of Education and Loving v. Virginia, the former concerning school integration, the latter, interracial marriage, illegal in Virginia until Loving in 1967. Both decisions explicitly fail the originalist test, yet Judge Barrett asserts they were correctly decided and endorses them as “super-precedents,” a convenient dodge that evades the troubling implications of her supposedly simple theory of constitutional interpretation.The real problem with the originalist theory is that it allows no room for ethical, moral, or political growth. If the Framers didn’t think it, it’s not allowed.

Thomas Jefferson, who wrote the Declaration of Independence and paid close attention to the drafting of the Constitution from his official post in France, understood this danger explicitly: “I am certainly not an advocate for frequent and untried changes in laws and constitutions,” he wrote in an 1816 letter addressing what he perceived to be weaknesses in the new government, “but … laws and institutions must go hand in hand with the progress of the human mind. As that becomes more developed, more enlightened, as new discoveries are made, new truths disclosed, and manners and opinions change with the change of circumstances, institutions must advance also, and keep pace with the times. We might as well require a man to wear still the coat which fitted him when a boy, as civilized society to remain ever under the regimen of their barbarous ancestors.”

In this writer's opinion, both originalism and Scalia's thought process are extremely marginal at best.

Going, Going, Gone ...

To make the images that appear in this story, the photographer Pelle Cass locked his camera onto a tripod for the duration of an event, capturing up to 1,000 photographs from one spot. The images were then layered and compiled into a single digital file to create a kind of time-lapse still photo.

Cornell versus Dartmouth, women’s lacrosse, October 2019

The special boost for recruited athletes, known as preferential admission, can be equivalent to hundreds of SAT points. According to The Washington Post, Harvard, which typically admits approximately 5 percent of its applicants, reports acceptance rates as high as 88 percent for athletes endorsed by its coaches. “Parents see the numbers,” says Luke Walton, an Olympic rower and the founder of Rower Academy, a San Diego–based recruiting consultancy for high-school crew athletes. “They see that if their child can get the backing of a coach, they are likely to get in. That’s a shiny object—a fishing lure for parents. They look at that and say: ‘That’s the answer. Sports is the answer.’ Along with the ability to pay 70-80K per year to get Harvey into Harvard.

This bucolic frenzy of the monied class pushing their kids to the max with emphasis on sports in order to get into highly rated colleges is slowly going away thanks to COVID-19, the ongoing 2020 great depression and the real possibility of economic collapse due to the harsh reality of fixed cost's and how they apply to virtually every business in America including higher ed. Consider that the nation is in the grip of the 2nd/3rd wave and the fact kids are not in school paying exorbitant tuitions shows how strongly fixed costs are embedded whereby you have to have 100% paying customers to cover fixed costs and make a profit. This is obviously not happening. End result, said colleges try to survive by lowering tuitions, which won't work, due to fixed costs, forget profits forever, or vastly increase the number of students, which also won't work because of the aforementioned fixed costs must keep pace with the larger enrollment which means finding more customers to cover costs and make a profit becomes a Wicked Problem. 

Here's another dose of realty ...

As the global tsunami of Wave 2 sweeps away the sandcastles of denial, fantasy and magical thinking, it's worth recalling that the Covid-19 virus has four features that make it difficult to control: 

1. It is highly contagious. 

2. Carriers with no symptoms can infect others. 

3. A significant percentage of older / compromised patients develop severe symptoms that require hospitalization. 

4. Once the healthcare system is overwhelmed, the system cannot provide care to everyone who needs it. As a result, the death rate rises the moment the healthcare system is overwhelmed / breaks down. 

And this.

The global economy was teetering on the edge of recession and financial implosion long before the pandemic appeared. Ending the pandemic cannot restore an illusion of "growth" that masked a hollowed out, fragile, brittle global economy. 

The Global Depression was baked in long before the pandemic. All the pandemic did was kick out the last rotten 2X4s holding up the fading facade of "growth." 

Unfortunately, central banks can't "print" experienced doctors or nurses. When the front line of healthcare workers is depleted by illness and burnout, there are no substitutes or Big Tech robots-to-the-rescue. The healthcare system we've optimized for "creating shareholder value" (i.e. unlimited greed pathologically pursued by any means available) will break down and that will be that. 

Central banks can't "print" creditworthy borrowers, solvent companies, real-world collateral, risk-free "investing," oil, jobs, trust in failed institutions, social cohesion or anything else of importance that is now scarce. 

The belief that central banks printing currency can "buy/fix" everything that's broken, lost or scarce is the ultimate in denial, fantasy and magical thinking. All that was unsustainably fragile, corrupt and brittle is unraveling, and thinking that ending the lockdowns, approving a vaccine, etc. will stave off causality is the supreme indulgence in denial, fantasy and magical thinking.  

The bloodbath begins ...as profits disappear.

Ohio Wesleyan University is eliminating 18 majors. The University of Florida’s trustees this month took the first steps toward letting the school furlough faculty. The University of California, Berkeley, has paused admissions to its Ph.D. programs in anthropology, sociology and art history.

As it resurges across the country, the coronavirus is forcing universities large and small to make deep and possibly lasting cuts to close widening budget shortfalls. By one estimate, the pandemic has cost colleges at least $120 billion, with even Harvard University, despite its $41.9 billion endowment, reporting a $10 million deficit that has prompted belt tightening.

Lastly ... remember,  COVID-19 is just the warmup for, you guessed it. Global Warming.

All the world's a stage

The image says it all. You can have it all, all you need is money even if reality tells you otherwise. Why is this so? It's because we MAKE NOTHING ANYMORE. After the impact of deregulation, courtesy Ronnie Reagan, where corporations were encouraged to offshore in order to gin evermore profits for corporate stockholders while creating modern China, the country became a shell of itself, cored out from the inside out. Which means we have no real money so the substitute  is ... be sold stuff you don't need with money you don't have. - George Carlin

All the staging is a means to an end, and everyone in America is nothing more than a means to an end: close the sale so the few can continue exploiting the many. 

You know how realtors stage a house to increase its marketability: first, they remove all evidence that people actually live there. (Of course a vacant house is ideal for staging because there's none of the messy real-life stuff to deal with.) 

All the clutter of everyday life must be moved elsewhere so the house can look like a bloodless furniture showroom. In other words, fake. 

Then various tricks /cues are employed to activate the sense of "home": induce the "smell of fresh bread" in the kitchen, adorn rooms with vases of fresh flowers, and have a few fake "family" photos set on bookshelves. 

It gets better ...

"Fake" is now itself fake as the meta-marketers seek to undermine the concept of fake to sell the idea that what we recognize as fake is actually real: we're told that it's the real thing that's been hidden from view that's fake. The photo on the shelf of the fake family is real, we're told; what's fake is the actual real photo of the messy real-world family who actually lives here. 

Given that everything is staged, trust has been completely destroyed. To trust anything being presented as a means to an end--i.e. a con, a scam, a sales pitch, a fake scent of fresh bread, etc.--is to be a chump. 

Staging is no substitute for reality. The frauds, cons and scams are failing to keep the simulacrum world glued together because no matter how expert the marketing and how great the desire to close the sale so the few can continue exploiting the many, reality intrudes right when the deal's about to close and the whole absurd contraption collapses in a heap. 

All the world’s a stage,

And all the men and women merely players;

They have their exits and their entrances;

And one man in his time plays many parts,

His acts being seven ages. At first the infant,

Mewling and puking in the nurse’s arms;

And then the whining school-boy, with his satchel

And shining morning face, creeping like snail

Unwillingly to school. And then the lover,

Sighing like furnace, with a woeful ballad

Made to his mistress’ eyebrow. Then a soldier,

Full of strange oaths, and bearded like the pard,

Jealous in honour, sudden and quick in quarrel,

Seeking the bubble reputation

Even in the cannon’s mouth. And then the justice,

In fair round belly with good capon lin’d,

With eyes severe and beard of formal cut,

Full of wise saws and modern instances;

And so he plays his part. The sixth age shifts

Into the lean and slipper’d pantaloon,

With spectacles on nose and pouch on side;

His youthful hose, well sav’d, a world too wide

For his shrunk shank; and his big manly voice,

Turning again toward childish treble, pipes

And whistles in his sound. Last scene of all,

That ends this strange eventful history,

Is second childishness and mere oblivion;

Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything.

As you like it - Shankespeare

 

Bombs Away :)

No words needed. :) 

Imploding in real time ...

President Donald Trump waves to the crowd at a campaign rally at Gastonia Municipal Airport, Wednesday, Oct. 21, 2020, in Gastonia, N.C. | AP Photo/Evan Vucci

Imploding in real time comes to mind as The Donald continues to flail in hopes of avoiding prison via the Court of the Southern District of NY. Deep down, Trump knows he's a failure and that he screwed the pooch regarding COCID-19. 

LAS VEGAS — Monday was a day of rage for Donald Trump.

He woke up at his Las Vegas hotel, a gold brick of glass on the edge of the Strip next to an abandoned lot, and was already in a foul mood. The previous day he had seen a TV ad that accused him of belittling American soldiers. “Losers. Suckers. Dopes. Babies,” the ad said. “That’s how Donald Trump describes our men and women in uniform.” He had railed about it at a rally in Carson City — “a horrible, vicious ad!” — and it was still infuriating him later that morning. After seeing the ad, he screamed, “I blew my stack!”

Any questions?

Addendum ... Trump did well on the final debate.

Separation of Church & State yet again.

Separation of church and state vs religiosity to the max, a question not only raging in France over the killing of a respected teacher by an extremist ... due to the fact he showed the Charlie Hebdo's cartoons of the blessed Mohammed in a classroom but also to what's happening in America with a combination of the ultra right believers putting christ into the equation in their pursuit to take over America. 

These two actions are truly dangerous, brought about by 

1. The flood of immigrants to Europe thanks to the destruction of Lybia by the US and ...
2. The elimination of the separation of church and state in America thanks to the Robert's supreme court. 

With this in mind both situations are liable to explode at any moment as modern civilization  is now under attack.

Last Friday, teacher Samuel Paty was beheaded in a terrorist attack in the northern Paris suburb of Éragny after displaying the controversial Charlie Hebdo cartoons to his students during a lesson, anti-terrorist prosecutor Jean-François Ricard said.

The 47-year-old's murder has now reignited the long-simmering conflict over secularism in France.

In early October, a matter of days before Paty's murder, French President Emmanuel Macron said: "There is in this radical Islamism, a methodical organization to contravene the laws of the Republic and create a parallel order, to erect other values." Macron was speaking in Les Mureaux, a north-western suburb of Paris where officials have been working with the Muslim community to combat Islamist extremism.

The question to ask here is, will laïcité survive in France?

Secularism -- known as "laïcité" in French -- is deeply ingrained in French culture, with many believing that nothing -- not even one's religion -- should come before national identity. Yet for those with a strong faith, this tenet is a complex one to hold.

"It's an activist secularism," Catherine Fieschi, director of the Global Policy Institute at London's Queen Mary University, told CNN.

"Laïcité is a tenet of the Republic, it's cross-party. This cuts across the spectrum -- leftist social democrats are just as against religion in the public realm as [those on the right.]"

Addendum ...

Pedestrians walk along Marseille's Old Port as the town hall is lit up in the French Tricolor to honor slain teacher Samuel Paty, Wednesday, Oct. 21, 2020. French history teacher Samuel Paty was beheaded in Conflans-Sainte-Honorine, northwest of Paris, by an 18-year-old Moscow-born Chechen refugee, who was later shot dead by police. (AP Photo/Daniel Cole)

Another reason why this fight for a secular France rings true ...

The slaying has prompted massive protests in France and prompted a swift crackdown on radical Islamic groups by authorities.

President Emmanuel Macron on Wednesday gave France’s highest civilian award, the Legion of Honor, to Paty during a solemn ceremony at the Sorbonne university in Paris, Agence France-Presse reported.

He said the educator was slain by “cowards” for representing the secular, democratic values of the French Republic — and vowed, “We will not give up cartoons.”

“He was killed because Islamists want our future,” Macron said. “They will never have it.”

America is now in the crosshairs. To be continued.

FUD

 Samantha Lee/Business Insider

FUD - Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt, the watchwords for the repugs, a concept writ large in QAnon, a far right theory perfectly tuned to rile up the stupid and uneducated to support both Trump and the rupugs using monosyllabic slogans and rants, also generates money to the two aforementioned parties from the ill informed supporters of this ridiculous theory. 

The 2 Minutes Hate comes to mind here without question. Love Orwell's play on words.

QAnon[a] (/ˌkjuːəˈnɒn/) is a far-right conspiracy theory.[b] It alleges that a cabal of Satan-worshiping pedophiles is running a global child sex-trafficking ring and plotting against President Donald Trump, who is battling against the cabal.[2] The theory also commonly asserts that Trump is planning a day of reckoning known as "The Storm", when thousands of members of the cabal will be arrested.[3][4] No part of the theory is based on fact.[5][6][7][8]

It gets better.

Sabal's willingness to indulge dark conspiracies drove him away from Bush, but the same tendency has delivered him into Trump's arms.

A woman passed by Sabal's tent and called out "I love Q!"

Sabal believes that the president knows about QAnon and secretly embeds messages in his speeches.

"When Trump talks at his rallies, he's talking to two different crowds," Sabal said. "He's talking to people who are, you know, just regular Trump supporters. And then he's talking to people who follow QAnon."

Any questions?

Rewild the world

In this unique feature documentary, titled David Attenborough: A Life On Our Planet, the celebrated naturalist reflects upon both the defining moments of his lifetime and the devastating changes he has seen. Coming to Netflix October 4 2020, the film addresses some of the biggest challenges facing life on our planet, providing a snapshot of global nature loss in a single lifetime. With it comes a powerful message of hope for future generations as Attenborough reveals the solutions to help save our planet from disaster. 

David Attenborough, 93 years young, has a truly innovative way to save planet earth, rewild the world as nature keeps us alive by keeping earth in balance through the complex interactions of life to itself and to  its relationship with water, sun and soil in ways to stagger the imagination. As seen in his documentary, the loss of wild has plummeted while the rise of habitat loss. resource depletion and pollution continues unabated, a process, if not reversed, promises the death of mankind by transforming earth into a hells-cape of unimaginable misery. His recommendations to change how we do business on planet earth includes ...

• Stop eating meat as this is totally unsustainable due to the fact 30% of all arable land is used to feed Leghorn T. Foghorn, Bessie and Porky.
• Expand no fishing zones to allow fish stocks and large predators to recoup. 
• Eliminate fossile fuels to stop CO2 production.
• Stop burning down rain forests.
• Reduce human population
• Go sustainable. Growth requires ever more plundering of earths resouces.