Ron Paul is the ONLY politician I have EVER trusted.
Beautiful human being.
Back in the'80 and '90 he was warning US admin. about UN treaties that would enable China to deploy their army on the US soil (and all over the world), and, of course, they've turned a blind eye on it.
He is the only man who could save/have saved the US, but If he ever got to that position, he would have been Clintonized.
Excellent. Through Tucker's platform he will have much bigger reach.
I don't know about going so far as to say "Trust", but I agree. With Paul you know that the result comes from principles, not scoring temporary political points -- and he'll be happy to walk you through the process if you want to listen........
It is written, "You shall know them by their fruits", and his worlds and actions have always been consistent with his principals, which are (at least from my point of view) sane, logic and with an insight in the future. That's why I trust him.
Especially when I found out (6-7 years ago) how many decades ago he was warning about UN treaties that will enable the rise of China and land Chinese troops on the US soil.
I can't find it anymore on Google (already erased), but it would be really good if someone could ask him about it, because people need to know for we are living it.
Than, why would you put him side by side with the man who during his political career was fighting evil that we're living in today, and to which Kucinich (most likely) helped progress?!
Because of his openness about his nonethical stances?!
She doesn’t know what a woman is because she isn’t a biologist, so not being a Founding Father, how could she know what the 1st amendment really means!
Nicely played. How could you possibly have an expectation about judicial competence without being an educator, like she cannot define a woman unless she's a biologist.
Yeah, the government and Big Tech did a great job keeping us "safe" by promoting Covid "vaccines" and censoring anyone (including experts) who spoke out against the dangers of these "vaccines." Kentaji Brown-Jackson saying the 1st amendment "hamstrings" government's ability to protect the American people was one of the most absurd statements I've ever heard come out of someone's mouth.
And people who were speaking out were OVERWHELMINGLY simply repeating the data from Pfizer trials or the real world showing the jab doesn't stop transmission and therefore any protection gained was purely personal.
Kentaji Brown-Jackson is a 15 watt bulb. Her IQ is probably 105 tops. All of the Biden/Obama justices are intellectual lightweights. It is criminal they were all nominated much less confirmed.
And we can thank our Senate for providing that conformation... btw... correct me if I'm mistaken, but wasn't it the very same Ketanji Brown Jackson who during her conformation hearing refused to define what a "woman" is, deferring instead to scientific experts?
And we wonder at her lack of acumen in the arena of Constitutional law???
I've watched several of these Biden nominee confirmation hearings. You'd be aghast at the things these nominees have said and done, posted on social media, etc and they are absolute PROS at not answering questions. This is litrlerally a job interview, how do they get away with that??? But, low and behold, go back and check, and they STILL GET CONFIRMED!!😡😡
"That's such a great question, but before I answer it, I want to derail the entire conversation in the hopes you don't realize I don't actually answer the question........"
It's almost like they're all working together in a well scripted and choreographed dance routine for the entertainment of the public... Never mind... No Fk'n Way... that couldn't be true.
I'm the B+/A- student in the gifted programs my entire life...so I always felt like the paste-eater in my classes. Didn't care because I was more interested in sports, partying, girls...typical teenage kid. So, my hunch is most of the people I grew up with, in the 'gifted and talented education (GATE)' program had IQs 110 and up.
Most of the people I have been around my entire life--I spent 25 years in military intelligence in the Army, and most of that was in communities who learned a foreign language at DLI--bright, bright young men and women, likely the brightest we have in the military. You get used to talking about an article in the Economist or Realpolitik or great writers or you name it --except professional sports or entertainment.
When I had to leave the intelligence community to work at state HQ with 'the rest of the population', I was shocked by how dumb most people are--and this is in a career that less than 1 in 4 high school students can enter.
I do not suffer fools well at all, and I cannot imagine what I must be like for someone like Sam Alito or Clarence Thomas or Antonin Scalia (God rest his soul) to be forced to work with the likes of a Sotomayor or Kagan or Brown-Jackson.
The must want to ground their teeth to powder.
Long response to you may be right, but I was trying to give her enough credit to at least pass the Bar.
You and I have much school background in common. I could, however, fit in with the "regular" kids. It's easy to do and you learn lots of things you can't learn from the "smart" kids. Things they're not interested in pursuing, like hot rods, racing, sports, rock-n-roll, dancing, acting silly, etc... It's the best of both worlds, until you graduate and work with mostly smart people. Once you get used to them you learn to enjoy them, but they usually aren't as much fun. When you're back among the regular people, it's harder to enjoy and you notice their lack of "smarts." It's hard to let down your guard.
I'm retired now. I don't have to be the smart one all the time anymore. I can enjoy the back and forth between different types of people again. It's such a relief.
'fortunately' I was living on the other side of the tracks. We rented where everyone bought. Played sports and partied with the normies--it was only in class that I was segregated.
I agree 100% that the most important lessons are outside of the classroom. How to get along with others, how to be good teammate, battle buddy, etc.
I wasn't very clear--I don't mean people outside of the GATE programs are dumb--but that there are actually a lot of dumb people. If 100 IQ is the mean...that means half are below.
If one has higher education, it is likely you will NEVER encounter people with an 75-99 IQ, but they are everywhere--sadly, now on the Supreme Court.
I never agreed with the 'dumb jock' attitude either. Different types of intelligence for sure, but playing a sport well is not for the dumb.
I was on the same side of the tracks as you. We were both lucky. I wouldn't give up my normal people friends for all the tea in Chiiii-na 😉. I'm not one to act my IQ, so many smart people think I'm beneath them......until I start telling them why they're wrong about reporting a test in an erroneous way. (Fraudulent.) Then they get the surprise of their lives. It's kinda fun.
I was at an MI school at Ft Huachuca. The upper echelon Sergeant Major (HUGE black dude with arms like my thighs) starts out the brief (everyone is an intelligence soldier here--different types, HUMINT, SIGINT, IMINT--but mostly a pretty bright group of folks.
This CSM starts by saying, "When I learned military intelligence was part of our command, I said 'isn't that an OXY-MORGON?!?!"
He was serious. He didn't know how to pronounce the word.
So I shouted, "Sperm Whale!"
He viciously turned his head, and ran right up to me. (I had to pop out of my seat and go to Parade Rest).
'Did you say that Sergeant?' he asked barely in control. He wanted to pop my head like a grape.
Me: 'Yes Sergeant Major.' Oxymoron. Sperm Whale. Itty bitty fish and a big fish..."
"right right right right' he says walking away, "Like I said, MI is an OxyMORGON!"
I have a very good friend that is very bright. She should have gone to college, but wasn't interested in that. 🤨 She pronounces Cauliflower, Caul Di flower. Gets that D in there everytime. It sets my teeth on edge. I haven't corrected her yet. Yet.
Well, it's a funny thing, but I can remember far enough back when Christian conservatives were getting all hysterical about musical forms they didn't like poisoning the minds of our children etc. etc. etc. and demanding all sorts of controls and limits and censorship and guvmint getting involved in what people could listen to. Etc. etc. And pairing up with poor old Tipper Gore--who had really bad taste in men--to show the grand bipartisan partnership to crush evil thingies crawling through popular culture.
Reagan did this. He made those morons strong enough to eat the Republican party and now we're reliant on the gormless idiot Republican attorneys arguing a life-shatteringly crucial case before the Supreme Court and hoping they've got enough wits to save us.
I'm old enough to remember when not all Republicans were hopeless losers and not all Democrats were deranged. Can someone rediscover the secret formula before it's too late?
The battle for free speech is ongoing. Lincoln killed habeas corpus because of an emergency. The "fire in a crowded theater" case was actually about handing out anti-war leaflets, etc etc etc.
I do have fond memories of telling Tipper Gore exactly what she could do with her ideas.
It is really dangerous I think to underestimate many of these people. She was not stupid to refuse to define "woman." Morally bankrupt in prostituting herself to the lunatic extreme, yes. But not stupid.
That was my exact thought...well, that is only if she can read...
So damn sad that we are talking about one of the our Justices with such utter disdain and disrespect. Biden's admin continue to make a mockery of our nation.
I was pretty shocked to not too long ago learn the origins of that phrase.
This fight is the burden of every generation, without any time off. I mean, gosh. The most surprising people show up on comments threads telling proprietors of Substack parlors to "shut up" when the viewpoints don't suit their tastes. Imagine how that surprised me.
It was used here by all and sundry to point out the dangers of censorship. Which was a hoot as back then we had a state monopoly on TV and radio and state censorship of movies, including VHS.
Oh they came after music. At various times "pressure" and threats were common: FCC threatened radio stations with license revocation if they did not comply with "voluntary" standards. The TV and motion picture industry didn't self-censor because they care about your kids, it was in response to clear threats from federal agencies.
Remember Larry Flynt? A lower form of life surely is hard to find, but in a wicked twist of integrity as believers in free speech we had to defend him. Jailed for sending pornographic content via the mail, the unavoidable observation was that the content sent wasn't deemed "pornographic" until Flynt used his "asshole of the month" column to target politicians. The full page spread of female nakedness wasn't pornographic before, but when the magazine became a platform for Flynt's anti-government views, it was.
Oh I know they tried to censor music in the US, even held hearings with some bands (Twisted Sister among others I think) to establish their nefarious influence. And wasn't there a Zappa-album that Tippex Gore said had an offensive cover - when the cover was a picture of his face?
I meant here in Sweden; our authorities had de facto state censorship of print media, and de jure of TV, radion, VHS and film.
But not music. The reason for this was music counted as an art-form and art may not be censored, whereas TV et c counted as information which was legal (even mandated) to censor.
The censorship-laws were a hold-over from WW2, mainly, and weren't intended for what they became used for. With satellite-dishes, cheap VHS-players and then CDs, and cheaper computerised printing and finally internet, the censorship laws were repealed. Instead, the "lefties" and the state have started using "hate-speech" laws and defamation/libel/slander-laws to try and stifle debate and quiet political diversity.
Must be, it's profitable. Panic that is. "Getcher rosaries/pomanders/amulets against evil hyeah!"
From Aristofanes and Sokrates to Göthe to jazz to RPGs and now computer games, it's very profitable to become the face of "the rational, measured response that thinks of the children".
Over here during the actual "Satanic Panic", a couple of people wrote a book about how video/computer games, heavy metal and RPGs/miniature and board games were training the young to become Sturmsoldaten of a coming white power fascist regime.
Reason being, we don't have evangelical christians of the kind you do in the US, so that vector don't work. Racism and fascism does.
The book had the opposite effect: it was so badly put together it came to be used at some universities as sort of text-book on how /not/ to conduct research.
We just can't get away from the eternal driving factors of human nature, can we? One of the less savory things one learns about oneself during the parenting adventure is how great it feels to have little people to rule. You gotta fight against that lust for power every single day.
And if you ain't got kids, you can turn your unfortunate pets into neurotic abominations as you try to obliterate their true natures. My friend who's the concierge for a constantly-replenishing cycle of feral cats who semi-domesticate to enjoy the pleasures of the inside world is always a llttle frustrated by how they still insist on going out at night, and she hates when I remark that no matter how well-fed they are, they still need to do a little murdering on their own behalf.
My friend who's the concierge for a constantly-replenishing cycle of feral cats who semi-domesticate to enjoy the pleasures of the inside world is always a llttle frustrated by how they still insist on going out at night, and she hates when I remark that no matter how well-fed they are, they still need to do a little murdering on their own behalf.
I was taught that power equals responsibility, both moral and legal. I think we as a civilisation and kultur stopped teaching that somewhen during the 1960s and 1970s, and made it "evil" to do so from the 1990s on.
I'm very grateful for having been raised partly by my grandparents - the 1910s and 1920s generations.
I have remarked before that I would've been taught more useful life lessons had I actually been raised by wolves. Never mind; I made up for that myself.
I'm old enough to be a kid/teenager when all the 'back-masking devil music' was 'hidden' in all the rock LPs.
Had a paper route since the 5th grade, so I bought myself a nice stereo for my room--back in 81 everyone turn-tables.
So one day, my kid brother and I tried to play some of my albums backwards. You moved the needle to the end of the song, and turned it with the eraser end of a pencil backwards.
NO SHIT. Queen's 'we are the champions' (I could be wrong on the exact song, but it was Queen for sure) had 'I like to smoke marijuana' over and over and over again.
We couldn't believe it! It was so funny! Then, we taped it onto a cassette tape to show other people.
I never did figure out how something played backwards had any way of communicating that to anyone when the songs were played forward...
It's all subliminal. I've hidden secret messages in every record I ever made and every article I've ever written. Hidden so well I didn't even know they were there ;-0)
LOL
The real fun is having people explain what you meant.
YES!!! YES!!! You're right!!! That is so funny that you heard it as well. The first time we heard it I nearly crapped my pants! I COULDN'T BELIEVE that anyone would actually do that! And we felt like Encyclopedia Brown! We caught 'em! It was thrilling as well--like the world was more than it appeared.
I thought that these attempts were all aimed at minors and what minors could purchase/listen to? A little different than determining what adults are allowed to discuss online, no? I admit, I barely recall the efforts, except I remember they were aimed at minors.
“The first amendment hamstringing the government” Uh, yes, exactly, that is the actual purpose of the First Amendment to the United States Constitution (and most of the first 10). Explicitly for the purpose of limiting the governments power to suppress discourse.
That you expect this argument from a first year law student is disturbing (and probably true - sad reflection on the state of law schools). I knew that by 8th grade. I'd read the words. I'd read what Washington, Jefferson, et al had said about those words. That was then. The constitution was taught: the text contained in our textbooks, and we were told to read it. Things have sadly changed. A kid wanting to read the constitution is likely to be punished. Discussing it in class is limited to regurgitating the "interpretation" from the text book - one conveniently inconsistent wit the actual words.
Justice Jackson knows better. This sounds like a rehearsed response. Of course she hits on the key “conditioning” points that it is the government’s duty to protect you from yourself. It must protect the children from harmful content. The end justifies the means!
Of course this is wrong. Completely wrong. There is no grey area, no slippery slope: there is right and wrong. Free speech is not free - a lot of blood was spent to achieve and protect it. Jackson disrespects herself, every soldier, ever civil rights leader, very human who has fought to protect these simple ideals. She must - it's the deal she made to get the seat - and she knows what she's doing, I'm sure.
When Musk began his takeover of Twitter many of these once-liberal (really) folks who are now grey haired establishment party-liners came out into the daylight to decree that free speech was dangerous. The very same celebrities and experts who assembled to protest government censorship once, were now demanding it. It was entertaining at first. Hypocrisy and irony. I am no longer amused.
It's all fun and games until it's happening on the Supreme Court.
Logical. Primary sources have been spurned, scorned and besmirched by academia for decades now.
When I had my students read an actual primary source (and this was in english literature, mind) instead of someone's curated summary, I was told I was acting in a suspicious manner. The reason I was given was, if the material isn't curated, the students may be exposed to the wrong kind of ideas.
As our guest-teachers from Romania, Iran and Russia pointed out: "Reminds me of home".
EXACTLY. And now the media is literally refusing to show speeches from a leading candidate for president, telling you that they will summarize what he said instead.
They’re demanding it now because they correctly perceive that their political party controls all the levers of government necessary to ensure that they’re the only ones who get free speech.
I had never read that before. That describes some of my ex-friends. They became nearly ex-friends during covid. But one of them suggested we go to an art exhibit and meet at her house before for snacks & wine. When we assembled she proposed a toast to the newly appointed Justice Jackson. That pretty much solidified my divorce from that group.
I hope y'all are right and I'm wrong. I don't think she's an idiot. I think she is a loyal trooper doing what she has agreed to do in order to get the seat. I fear that she is a competent actor who will alter the present and future of the court, finally deprecating for good the role of the court as oversight and cement it's role as party policy arm.
Because Kamala's inferior intelligence and inappropriate cackling has been on display for all to see for the past three years. She's a "known quantity." Biden & co. were able to slip Brown in because she "looked good on paper" (Harvard, DC court judge), was unknown to most Americans, and any objection could be dismissed as "racism," despite her absurd statement that she couldn't define a woman because she's "not a biologist."
We enjoy a not insignificant Moldavian, Ukrainian, Russian expat community where I live. I have become 'loose-tie' friends with them by speaking Russian in the sauna. (Went to DLI for Russian in 91, and the military way of educating/training has a way of making things stick...)
One of the gents and I have been cold plunging together many of the Sundays of 2024 and have become even closer friends. He's a truck driver. From a village of maybe 1000 people in Moldavia. He was telling me about growing up there. Everyone, and I mean everyone had a small farm where they grew potatoes, totmatoes, onions, lettuce, basically all veggies as well as chickens, goats, sheep, and maybe a cow or two.
As a child, he was the only son, he was expected to learn how to farm. He did. He said, "People tell me that it is sad, children should have fun. I don't think so, I liked learning how to take care of everything..." His English is far from perfect, but better than my Russian at this point. He worked a shit-load of chores growing up--and he's glad he did it.
So now, he's living in here in the USA. He drives truck, which is a good job, but not the most cognitively challenging of careers. His English has improved dramatically since we first met 5-6 years ago, we speak mostly in English these days.
I drove by his house this weekend, unexpectedly finding him working on a car. He has a beautiful home, two daughters(wife stays at home--most Eastern European people I've met are what we would call 'TRADCON').
He showed me the driveway he extended with bricks/stones--looks professionally done. He pointed in his backyard to a 1950s car he plans to restore. He was working on his daughter's car with YouTube and tools.
My point?
He knows how to do shit with his hands. He knows how to learn if he doesn't know how to do something. He's not afraid of not knowing.
He and his wife and daughters are the immigrants who built this great country of our over the past 200+ years.
Oleg is not terminally stupid. Far from it.
AND YOU KNOW WHAT?!?! All of the immigrant families I have met in the sauna at the Y are all still married, all go to church, all have 2-4 kids, all wives have traditional stay-at-home roles--and they all seem much happier than most native Americans I know.
Grandad often said, "When something is so badly broken that it can not be fixed, its time to take it apart, salvage any usable pieces, and build a new one - that works better."
Grandad was talking about haying equipment, but I suspect the same approach applies to governments.
There's two sorts of folks. Them's that fix and them's that replace.
Example: the desk I built for my office is counter-height rather than conventional desk height. I have a lab stool as a chair that is the right height but not very comfortable for all-day sitting. I have an office chair that is very comfortable for all day sitting, but not high enough.
My wife's solution: go online, find a much nicer lab-stool height chair with all the luxurious features of the office chair, and throw out the two inadequate chairs.
My solution: take both chairs to the shop, enlist the help of a master fabricator, using the parts of each that work, fabricate what is needed to join them functionally and carry on.
Her solution is more economical. My solution is....my solution.
We shall see who prevails. The difference is that with the chair problem, I can do it her way without bloodshed (in deed, this is the likely path to avoid bloodshed). When it comes to taking apart government, well, that is harder to do without serious ugly bits like death and destruction.
Guess I'm very much in the "fix" contingent. Raised on a ranch. When its broke, you fix it. Or, (per Grandad), salvage the parts to fix something else. Rube Goldberg had nothing on us!
And I'm not sure, anymore, if we CAN fix what's left of our government. I sort of visualize the kleptocracy as a bunch of scavengers, buzzards and coyotes, snarling and screeching, fighting over the corpse of a dead calf.
100. that's exactly what we must do. And it's gonna be up to us, the regular people, no heroes are coming. We need to build the systems we actually deserve. Take our tools to an entirely new sandbox.
We will soon know if the high court still exists in any form remotely defined by the constitution.
The duty is clear in this case. The prohibition on government restrictions is clear. The facts of the case show that government entities determined what content was allowed and what was disallowed. There is no ambiguity in the constitution, the intent of the constitution, nor in the extension of that prohibition to states and administrative agencies (and the Whitehouse).
If the court abides by the law there is a clear outcome. If the court votes party over constitution, this too will be clear. In the later case, the court is no longer serving as designed and the last possible obstacle to elimination of any and all civilian rights is gone.
The seeds of this (inevitable?) conversion of the court were sown decades ago. When a justice who quotes the constitution and suggests the words mean what the words mean is "conservative", "originalist" or "constructionist", intellectual dishonesty has prevailed. These words signal acceptance of the court as an arm of political parties. The correct words for a justice or judge that applies the words of the constitution as written to limit the power of governments is "honest" and "doing the duty as defined by the constitution". We should never have accepted any argument that suggests any other role for the court.
As I began to read your post, my first thought was, the WHOLE POINT of the Constitution IS to restrain the government. I learned this in, I think, 5th grade history. How does a Supreme Court justice not know this?!
This sounds an awful lot like Obama's comment about the Constitution having negative rights.
"Obama characterizes the Constitution as “a charter of negative liberties,” which “says what the states can’t do to you (and) what the Federal government can’t do to you, but doesn’t say what the Federal government or State government must do on your behalf.” Forbes, Sep 23, 2012
I never thought that I would see the day when the Supreme Court of the United States of America would be deciding if it was ok for the US Government to censor the political opinions of the American people……
And that the Court may actually rule against its citizens….
As an older guy, I always have to compare today's platforms with news print. I don't seem to remember the government having meltdowns about letters to the editor. Letters to the editor were pretty much the same as someone posting their opinion online. Typically the letters were vetted before they were published, but I have read and published numerous opinions on a myriad of subjects over the years and whether those opinions were "correct" or not people weren't threatened because of them. Letters to the editor were the "comment section" of newspapers and they influenced millions of people over the years, including years where there were wars, political strife, and yes, even "pandemics" and "vaccines". Why is it that "covid" suddenly made it taboo to express our opinions about things? This only reinforces my opinion that the whole "covid" debacle was about much much more than a scary "virus"...
In compulsory school when we did Social Science (what we call Civics here), our teacher once brought along copies of a newspaper she had gotten some letters to the editor published in.
Not to brag but to show how journalists work.
You see, her letters had been edited. Parts had been cut out "for reasons of space", only it was key parts that changed the tone from reasonable to unhinged, as her letters were counter to the paper's political stance. Also, for one of the letters the parapgraphs had been inserted in a different order than in her letter.
For a bunch of 15-year olds, it was both an eye-opener and a reinforcement of our age-typical know-it-all sneaking cynical suspicions we already had about adults.
Our propaganda rag, the Santa Fe New Mexican, used to publish many of my letters. After covid when I became a questioner of the narrative, the woman in charge, called me and said they couldn't publish my letters anymore because they were misinformation.
Off-topic: Ron Paul's interview with Tucker (teased last week) has finally dropped!
15 minute version:
https://twitter.com/TuckerCarlson/status/1770208399059206344
Full version (paid for now):
https://tuckercarlson.com/the-tucker-carlson-encounter-ron-paul/
Bonus! Tucker talks to Rand Paul about TikTok ban:
https://tuckercarlson.com/uncensored-the-tiktok-ban/
One last edit! Glenn Greenwald talks about the Supreme Court case - and with Matt Taibbi!
https://rumble.com/v4k1wsb-system-update-243.html
My man! Good for Tucker bringing him back into the public sphere.
Ron Paul is the ONLY politician I have EVER trusted.
Beautiful human being.
Back in the'80 and '90 he was warning US admin. about UN treaties that would enable China to deploy their army on the US soil (and all over the world), and, of course, they've turned a blind eye on it.
He is the only man who could save/have saved the US, but If he ever got to that position, he would have been Clintonized.
Excellent. Through Tucker's platform he will have much bigger reach.
I don't know about going so far as to say "Trust", but I agree. With Paul you know that the result comes from principles, not scoring temporary political points -- and he'll be happy to walk you through the process if you want to listen........
It is written, "You shall know them by their fruits", and his worlds and actions have always been consistent with his principals, which are (at least from my point of view) sane, logic and with an insight in the future. That's why I trust him.
Especially when I found out (6-7 years ago) how many decades ago he was warning about UN treaties that will enable the rise of China and land Chinese troops on the US soil.
I can't find it anymore on Google (already erased), but it would be really good if someone could ask him about it, because people need to know for we are living it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ArUoyuDd74
("You'll own nothing and you'll be happy")
https://www.lewrockwell.com/2003/03/ron-paul/bush-has-wrecked-the-un/
https://www.govtrack.us/congress/bills/111/hr1146/text
https://allnewspipeline.com/International_State_Of_Emergency_Worldwide.php
https://www.canada.ca/en/department-national-defence/corporate/reports-publications/proactive-disclosure/secd-state-of-caf-19-april-2021/reference-material/military-exercises-with-people-liberation-army.html
https://theblogginghounds.com/2020/10/08/arm-yourselves-and-prepare-china-massing-tens-of-thousands-of-troops-in-prince-rupert-and-vancouver-canada-invade-usa/
- - Ron Paul is the ONLY politician I have EVER trusted.
I add Rand Paul and Denis Kucinich to that list.
(Denis Kucinich) It depends on his stance about Palestine, "vaxx", "climate change", "smart cities" and woke lunacy.
I find that he actually believes what he says I admire that quality. I disagree with quite a few of his positions.
Than, why would you put him side by side with the man who during his political career was fighting evil that we're living in today, and to which Kucinich (most likely) helped progress?!
Because of his openness about his nonethical stances?!
in all reality, we reached terminal stupidity when the 2020 election was allowed to stand.
Crazy how much comes back to that.....
Oh, but I'd say the stupidity doubled down. Iow, we might still have yet to reach *terminal*.
Yikes! I freak myself out...
So she got about halfway into the preamble and then skimmed through the rest, what is she supposed to be some kind of legal scholar or something?
"Is this going to be on the test?"
She doesn’t know what a woman is because she isn’t a biologist, so not being a Founding Father, how could she know what the 1st amendment really means!
I don’t know, as I’m not an educator.
Nicely played. How could you possibly have an expectation about judicial competence without being an educator, like she cannot define a woman unless she's a biologist.
bsn
Scholar? Her?
Or something!
Yeah, the government and Big Tech did a great job keeping us "safe" by promoting Covid "vaccines" and censoring anyone (including experts) who spoke out against the dangers of these "vaccines." Kentaji Brown-Jackson saying the 1st amendment "hamstrings" government's ability to protect the American people was one of the most absurd statements I've ever heard come out of someone's mouth.
And people who were speaking out were OVERWHELMINGLY simply repeating the data from Pfizer trials or the real world showing the jab doesn't stop transmission and therefore any protection gained was purely personal.
Yep
Kentaji Brown-Jackson is a 15 watt bulb. Her IQ is probably 105 tops. All of the Biden/Obama justices are intellectual lightweights. It is criminal they were all nominated much less confirmed.
bsn
And we can thank our Senate for providing that conformation... btw... correct me if I'm mistaken, but wasn't it the very same Ketanji Brown Jackson who during her conformation hearing refused to define what a "woman" is, deferring instead to scientific experts?
And we wonder at her lack of acumen in the arena of Constitutional law???
It is indeed.
Yes, she answered that she is not a biologist. INSANE. Thanks Mitch.
bsn
Apparently she's not a constitutionalist either. Or a human.
I've watched several of these Biden nominee confirmation hearings. You'd be aghast at the things these nominees have said and done, posted on social media, etc and they are absolute PROS at not answering questions. This is litrlerally a job interview, how do they get away with that??? But, low and behold, go back and check, and they STILL GET CONFIRMED!!😡😡
"That's such a great question, but before I answer it, I want to derail the entire conversation in the hopes you don't realize I don't actually answer the question........"
LOL!!!~
It's almost like they're all working together in a well scripted and choreographed dance routine for the entertainment of the public... Never mind... No Fk'n Way... that couldn't be true.
You're too kind.
I would call her 1 watt.
And 95 IQ more likely.
You, Bandit, and Taylor all hit me with the same point.
bsn
105? Really? You’re being quite generous. I wouldn’t guess more than 70.
You are about 15 IQ points too high on your estimate.
Funny! I actually thought about it for a second.
I'm the B+/A- student in the gifted programs my entire life...so I always felt like the paste-eater in my classes. Didn't care because I was more interested in sports, partying, girls...typical teenage kid. So, my hunch is most of the people I grew up with, in the 'gifted and talented education (GATE)' program had IQs 110 and up.
Most of the people I have been around my entire life--I spent 25 years in military intelligence in the Army, and most of that was in communities who learned a foreign language at DLI--bright, bright young men and women, likely the brightest we have in the military. You get used to talking about an article in the Economist or Realpolitik or great writers or you name it --except professional sports or entertainment.
When I had to leave the intelligence community to work at state HQ with 'the rest of the population', I was shocked by how dumb most people are--and this is in a career that less than 1 in 4 high school students can enter.
I do not suffer fools well at all, and I cannot imagine what I must be like for someone like Sam Alito or Clarence Thomas or Antonin Scalia (God rest his soul) to be forced to work with the likes of a Sotomayor or Kagan or Brown-Jackson.
The must want to ground their teeth to powder.
Long response to you may be right, but I was trying to give her enough credit to at least pass the Bar.
bsn
You and I have much school background in common. I could, however, fit in with the "regular" kids. It's easy to do and you learn lots of things you can't learn from the "smart" kids. Things they're not interested in pursuing, like hot rods, racing, sports, rock-n-roll, dancing, acting silly, etc... It's the best of both worlds, until you graduate and work with mostly smart people. Once you get used to them you learn to enjoy them, but they usually aren't as much fun. When you're back among the regular people, it's harder to enjoy and you notice their lack of "smarts." It's hard to let down your guard.
I'm retired now. I don't have to be the smart one all the time anymore. I can enjoy the back and forth between different types of people again. It's such a relief.
Sounds like my childhood :)
Acting a fool is so much fun. 😉😊😋
Mine too. And that's not taking into account the dysfunctional family I was born into either. Didn't help a bit.
'fortunately' I was living on the other side of the tracks. We rented where everyone bought. Played sports and partied with the normies--it was only in class that I was segregated.
I agree 100% that the most important lessons are outside of the classroom. How to get along with others, how to be good teammate, battle buddy, etc.
I wasn't very clear--I don't mean people outside of the GATE programs are dumb--but that there are actually a lot of dumb people. If 100 IQ is the mean...that means half are below.
If one has higher education, it is likely you will NEVER encounter people with an 75-99 IQ, but they are everywhere--sadly, now on the Supreme Court.
I never agreed with the 'dumb jock' attitude either. Different types of intelligence for sure, but playing a sport well is not for the dumb.
bsn
I was on the same side of the tracks as you. We were both lucky. I wouldn't give up my normal people friends for all the tea in Chiiii-na 😉. I'm not one to act my IQ, so many smart people think I'm beneath them......until I start telling them why they're wrong about reporting a test in an erroneous way. (Fraudulent.) Then they get the surprise of their lives. It's kinda fun.
Don't ever forget, "military intelligence" is an oxymoron. 😉😊😋
True story.
I was at an MI school at Ft Huachuca. The upper echelon Sergeant Major (HUGE black dude with arms like my thighs) starts out the brief (everyone is an intelligence soldier here--different types, HUMINT, SIGINT, IMINT--but mostly a pretty bright group of folks.
This CSM starts by saying, "When I learned military intelligence was part of our command, I said 'isn't that an OXY-MORGON?!?!"
He was serious. He didn't know how to pronounce the word.
So I shouted, "Sperm Whale!"
He viciously turned his head, and ran right up to me. (I had to pop out of my seat and go to Parade Rest).
'Did you say that Sergeant?' he asked barely in control. He wanted to pop my head like a grape.
Me: 'Yes Sergeant Major.' Oxymoron. Sperm Whale. Itty bitty fish and a big fish..."
"right right right right' he says walking away, "Like I said, MI is an OxyMORGON!"
🙄
bsn
😂🤣
I have a very good friend that is very bright. She should have gone to college, but wasn't interested in that. 🤨 She pronounces Cauliflower, Caul Di flower. Gets that D in there everytime. It sets my teeth on edge. I haven't corrected her yet. Yet.
🤣
We've had a President who said 'nucular' you know... had a military background I understand.
Other than her not knowing what a woman is Blair
Very true, Cindi!
😂
Peak Democrat
Well, it's a funny thing, but I can remember far enough back when Christian conservatives were getting all hysterical about musical forms they didn't like poisoning the minds of our children etc. etc. etc. and demanding all sorts of controls and limits and censorship and guvmint getting involved in what people could listen to. Etc. etc. And pairing up with poor old Tipper Gore--who had really bad taste in men--to show the grand bipartisan partnership to crush evil thingies crawling through popular culture.
Reagan did this. He made those morons strong enough to eat the Republican party and now we're reliant on the gormless idiot Republican attorneys arguing a life-shatteringly crucial case before the Supreme Court and hoping they've got enough wits to save us.
I'm old enough to remember when not all Republicans were hopeless losers and not all Democrats were deranged. Can someone rediscover the secret formula before it's too late?
The battle for free speech is ongoing. Lincoln killed habeas corpus because of an emergency. The "fire in a crowded theater" case was actually about handing out anti-war leaflets, etc etc etc.
I do have fond memories of telling Tipper Gore exactly what she could do with her ideas.
Yep. KB-J fails to grasp the obvious: the 1st Amendment was made for the people--not the government.
Man is she going to freak when she gets around to reading the 2nd.......
You keep assuming she can (or will) read.
In spite of evidence to the contrary.
It is really dangerous I think to underestimate many of these people. She was not stupid to refuse to define "woman." Morally bankrupt in prostituting herself to the lunatic extreme, yes. But not stupid.
She didn't want to get the treatment Biden got when he dared say "illegal."
That was my exact thought...well, that is only if she can read...
So damn sad that we are talking about one of the our Justices with such utter disdain and disrespect. Biden's admin continue to make a mockery of our nation.
bsn
I was pretty shocked to not too long ago learn the origins of that phrase.
This fight is the burden of every generation, without any time off. I mean, gosh. The most surprising people show up on comments threads telling proprietors of Substack parlors to "shut up" when the viewpoints don't suit their tastes. Imagine how that surprised me.
To her face? If so, I want to hear this story.
Oh no, I was just a young punk teenager listening to the music she wanted to ban while ALSO taking US history ;)
While at the time I was probably making some of the music she wanted to ban.
Witnessed a book burning once. Watched them toss vinyl records onto the pile. It wasn't Mississippi in the 60s, it was California in the 70s.
Go right far enough and you get left. Go left far enough and you get right. True especially when both are wrong.
Authoritarianism is always popular, only the justifications for it differ.
Usually popular only with the people he get to be the "authority". Not so much for the rest.
Listening to The Tubes on vinyl --- actually being a White Punk on Dope
Those are my people :-).
Ahh, "the Satanic Panic"!
It was used here by all and sundry to point out the dangers of censorship. Which was a hoot as back then we had a state monopoly on TV and radio and state censorship of movies, including VHS.
Music was the one thing they /didn't/ censor.
Oh they came after music. At various times "pressure" and threats were common: FCC threatened radio stations with license revocation if they did not comply with "voluntary" standards. The TV and motion picture industry didn't self-censor because they care about your kids, it was in response to clear threats from federal agencies.
Remember Larry Flynt? A lower form of life surely is hard to find, but in a wicked twist of integrity as believers in free speech we had to defend him. Jailed for sending pornographic content via the mail, the unavoidable observation was that the content sent wasn't deemed "pornographic" until Flynt used his "asshole of the month" column to target politicians. The full page spread of female nakedness wasn't pornographic before, but when the magazine became a platform for Flynt's anti-government views, it was.
Oh I know they tried to censor music in the US, even held hearings with some bands (Twisted Sister among others I think) to establish their nefarious influence. And wasn't there a Zappa-album that Tippex Gore said had an offensive cover - when the cover was a picture of his face?
I meant here in Sweden; our authorities had de facto state censorship of print media, and de jure of TV, radion, VHS and film.
But not music. The reason for this was music counted as an art-form and art may not be censored, whereas TV et c counted as information which was legal (even mandated) to censor.
The censorship-laws were a hold-over from WW2, mainly, and weren't intended for what they became used for. With satellite-dishes, cheap VHS-players and then CDs, and cheaper computerised printing and finally internet, the censorship laws were repealed. Instead, the "lefties" and the state have started using "hate-speech" laws and defamation/libel/slander-laws to try and stifle debate and quiet political diversity.
There's always going to be a Satanic Panic about something, ain't there?
They freaked out over Pokemon :/
I always thought Cabbage Patch Kids were a little unsavory, myself.
Must be, it's profitable. Panic that is. "Getcher rosaries/pomanders/amulets against evil hyeah!"
From Aristofanes and Sokrates to Göthe to jazz to RPGs and now computer games, it's very profitable to become the face of "the rational, measured response that thinks of the children".
Over here during the actual "Satanic Panic", a couple of people wrote a book about how video/computer games, heavy metal and RPGs/miniature and board games were training the young to become Sturmsoldaten of a coming white power fascist regime.
Reason being, we don't have evangelical christians of the kind you do in the US, so that vector don't work. Racism and fascism does.
The book had the opposite effect: it was so badly put together it came to be used at some universities as sort of text-book on how /not/ to conduct research.
We just can't get away from the eternal driving factors of human nature, can we? One of the less savory things one learns about oneself during the parenting adventure is how great it feels to have little people to rule. You gotta fight against that lust for power every single day.
And if you ain't got kids, you can turn your unfortunate pets into neurotic abominations as you try to obliterate their true natures. My friend who's the concierge for a constantly-replenishing cycle of feral cats who semi-domesticate to enjoy the pleasures of the inside world is always a llttle frustrated by how they still insist on going out at night, and she hates when I remark that no matter how well-fed they are, they still need to do a little murdering on their own behalf.
My friend who's the concierge for a constantly-replenishing cycle of feral cats who semi-domesticate to enjoy the pleasures of the inside world is always a llttle frustrated by how they still insist on going out at night, and she hates when I remark that no matter how well-fed they are, they still need to do a little murdering on their own behalf.
-------
Bonnie approves of this remark, as does Gangster.
I should hope so! I was thinking of them too when I wrote.
Your friend been tested for Toxoplasmosis lately? Goes right to the brain it does.
I was taught that power equals responsibility, both moral and legal. I think we as a civilisation and kultur stopped teaching that somewhen during the 1960s and 1970s, and made it "evil" to do so from the 1990s on.
I'm very grateful for having been raised partly by my grandparents - the 1910s and 1920s generations.
I have remarked before that I would've been taught more useful life lessons had I actually been raised by wolves. Never mind; I made up for that myself.
That's why they're eternal ;)
We need tee shirts screaming "Not New! Just Now!"
SCA,
I'm old enough to be a kid/teenager when all the 'back-masking devil music' was 'hidden' in all the rock LPs.
Had a paper route since the 5th grade, so I bought myself a nice stereo for my room--back in 81 everyone turn-tables.
So one day, my kid brother and I tried to play some of my albums backwards. You moved the needle to the end of the song, and turned it with the eraser end of a pencil backwards.
NO SHIT. Queen's 'we are the champions' (I could be wrong on the exact song, but it was Queen for sure) had 'I like to smoke marijuana' over and over and over again.
We couldn't believe it! It was so funny! Then, we taped it onto a cassette tape to show other people.
I never did figure out how something played backwards had any way of communicating that to anyone when the songs were played forward...
bsn
Show me a group that doesn't believe secret messages are in someone else's media, lurking to seduce the young.
*trying to decipher the secret meaning of this post*
I hid it too well.
Maybe I should start over after smoking a blunt...I might find it then.
bsn
A strategy I can get behind!
My people specialize in hidden meanings. Everybody else is just amateurs.
It's all subliminal. I've hidden secret messages in every record I ever made and every article I've ever written. Hidden so well I didn't even know they were there ;-0)
LOL
The real fun is having people explain what you meant.
It is a know fact that if you play black sabbath backwards at 78 speed it screws up your needle. (paraphrasing George Carlin).
I believe it was “Another one bites the dust”. But I also remember hearing it.
YES!!! YES!!! You're right!!! That is so funny that you heard it as well. The first time we heard it I nearly crapped my pants! I COULDN'T BELIEVE that anyone would actually do that! And we felt like Encyclopedia Brown! We caught 'em! It was thrilling as well--like the world was more than it appeared.
bsn
It is a known fact that if you listen to "We are the Champions" forward at revular speed, you are 98.9765% more likely to smile than if you don't.
Sums it up nicely...well accurately.
I thought that these attempts were all aimed at minors and what minors could purchase/listen to? A little different than determining what adults are allowed to discuss online, no? I admit, I barely recall the efforts, except I remember they were aimed at minors.
You make cracks in the wall, the deluge gets in eventually.
“The first amendment hamstringing the government” Uh, yes, exactly, that is the actual purpose of the First Amendment to the United States Constitution (and most of the first 10). Explicitly for the purpose of limiting the governments power to suppress discourse.
That you expect this argument from a first year law student is disturbing (and probably true - sad reflection on the state of law schools). I knew that by 8th grade. I'd read the words. I'd read what Washington, Jefferson, et al had said about those words. That was then. The constitution was taught: the text contained in our textbooks, and we were told to read it. Things have sadly changed. A kid wanting to read the constitution is likely to be punished. Discussing it in class is limited to regurgitating the "interpretation" from the text book - one conveniently inconsistent wit the actual words.
Justice Jackson knows better. This sounds like a rehearsed response. Of course she hits on the key “conditioning” points that it is the government’s duty to protect you from yourself. It must protect the children from harmful content. The end justifies the means!
Of course this is wrong. Completely wrong. There is no grey area, no slippery slope: there is right and wrong. Free speech is not free - a lot of blood was spent to achieve and protect it. Jackson disrespects herself, every soldier, ever civil rights leader, very human who has fought to protect these simple ideals. She must - it's the deal she made to get the seat - and she knows what she's doing, I'm sure.
When Musk began his takeover of Twitter many of these once-liberal (really) folks who are now grey haired establishment party-liners came out into the daylight to decree that free speech was dangerous. The very same celebrities and experts who assembled to protest government censorship once, were now demanding it. It was entertaining at first. Hypocrisy and irony. I am no longer amused.
It's all fun and games until it's happening on the Supreme Court.
Ironically, reading primary documents these days is frowned upon. Just let MSNBC tell you what to think!
https://thefederalist.com/2024/03/07/ai-censorship-targets-people-who-read-primary-sources-to-fact-check-the-news/
AI Censorship Targets People Who Read Primary Sources
Artificial intelligence censorship tools are making sure you never read this article or share it with anyone it might persuade.
Logical. Primary sources have been spurned, scorned and besmirched by academia for decades now.
When I had my students read an actual primary source (and this was in english literature, mind) instead of someone's curated summary, I was told I was acting in a suspicious manner. The reason I was given was, if the material isn't curated, the students may be exposed to the wrong kind of ideas.
As our guest-teachers from Romania, Iran and Russia pointed out: "Reminds me of home".
EXACTLY. And now the media is literally refusing to show speeches from a leading candidate for president, telling you that they will summarize what he said instead.
This is NOT the way.
Newsguard is an existential threat to our country. Who runs it, funds it, props it up legislatively or administratively in the Fed govt?
Matt Taibbi and his team have done excellent work in this area tracking down all the players and charting them out.
They’re demanding it now because they correctly perceive that their political party controls all the levers of government necessary to ensure that they’re the only ones who get free speech.
BOOM. So well said. Kudos
The Theory of Stupidity - Bonhoeffer
‘Stupidity is a more dangerous enemy of the good than malice. One may protest against evil;
it can be exposed and, if need be, prevented by use of force. Evil always carries within itself
the germ of its own subversion in that it leaves behind in human beings at least a sense of
unease. Against stupidity we are defenseless. Neither protests nor the use of force accomplish
anything here; reasons fall on deaf ears; facts that contradict one’s prejudgment simply need
not be believed — in such moments the stupid person even becomes critical — and when facts
are irrefutable they are just pushed aside as inconsequential, as incidental. In all this the
stupid person, in contrast to the malicious one, is utterly self-satisfied and, being easily
irritated, becomes dangerous by going on the attack. For that reason, greater caution is called
for than with a malicious one. Never again will we try to persuade the stupid person with
reasons, for it is senseless and dangerous.
This is the problem. Are we doomed to Idiocracy?
Perhaps "Idiocracy" is a phase all cultures must endure as they collapse into the chaos preceding totalitarianism.
Not as long as we are alive. After that, who knows?
After that, I'll care as much about the country as much as I did before I was born ;)
So what is the difference between idiocy and party loyalty?
Idiocy can be remedied.
Afraid so. Stock up on SBUX gift cards now!
Ug. I don't have time for a hand job right now.....
That was the best part of getting a driver's license !
Learning to drive stick is a skill, for sure.
@that age, my "stick" was practically " Automatic"
I had never read that before. That describes some of my ex-friends. They became nearly ex-friends during covid. But one of them suggested we go to an art exhibit and meet at her house before for snacks & wine. When we assembled she proposed a toast to the newly appointed Justice Jackson. That pretty much solidified my divorce from that group.
I wonder what she's thinking today.......
I don't think she's even asking for amnesty as far as I can tell. We're both on Santa Fe Foodies Facebook page. Same ole.
Ug,
Justice Jackson could'nt define a woman. She's the epitome of a diversity hire.
It certainly makes the whole 'diversity' quest look like a fool's errand.
I hope y'all are right and I'm wrong. I don't think she's an idiot. I think she is a loyal trooper doing what she has agreed to do in order to get the seat. I fear that she is a competent actor who will alter the present and future of the court, finally deprecating for good the role of the court as oversight and cement it's role as party policy arm.
The theater kids are taking over as elected officials, they might as well be on the court, too!
Precisely. Or that was the plan, anyway. Funny how sometimes the best-laid plans etc. etc. though.
Maybe the dumbest thing done recently was getting Letitia James elected. Boomerangs are--well, you know.
Just wait until they promise Kneepads Harris a lifetime appt on SC to get her off the ticket
They will promise her something but they won't go that far. Maybe the Presidency of Harvard would be a better fit?
🤷♀️
Curious Kathleen, what makes you think they wouldn’t go that far? They’ve already done as bad & worse just in past 4 years & don’t hide it
Because Kamala's inferior intelligence and inappropriate cackling has been on display for all to see for the past three years. She's a "known quantity." Biden & co. were able to slip Brown in because she "looked good on paper" (Harvard, DC court judge), was unknown to most Americans, and any objection could be dismissed as "racism," despite her absurd statement that she couldn't define a woman because she's "not a biologist."
You need to switch brands Lass. Whatever you're drinking now is giving you nightmares.
?
Figured "Kneepads Harris a lifetime appt SC" MUST be a nightmare.
Have we reached Terminal Stupidity?
Yes. Yes we have.
We enjoy a not insignificant Moldavian, Ukrainian, Russian expat community where I live. I have become 'loose-tie' friends with them by speaking Russian in the sauna. (Went to DLI for Russian in 91, and the military way of educating/training has a way of making things stick...)
One of the gents and I have been cold plunging together many of the Sundays of 2024 and have become even closer friends. He's a truck driver. From a village of maybe 1000 people in Moldavia. He was telling me about growing up there. Everyone, and I mean everyone had a small farm where they grew potatoes, totmatoes, onions, lettuce, basically all veggies as well as chickens, goats, sheep, and maybe a cow or two.
As a child, he was the only son, he was expected to learn how to farm. He did. He said, "People tell me that it is sad, children should have fun. I don't think so, I liked learning how to take care of everything..." His English is far from perfect, but better than my Russian at this point. He worked a shit-load of chores growing up--and he's glad he did it.
So now, he's living in here in the USA. He drives truck, which is a good job, but not the most cognitively challenging of careers. His English has improved dramatically since we first met 5-6 years ago, we speak mostly in English these days.
I drove by his house this weekend, unexpectedly finding him working on a car. He has a beautiful home, two daughters(wife stays at home--most Eastern European people I've met are what we would call 'TRADCON').
He showed me the driveway he extended with bricks/stones--looks professionally done. He pointed in his backyard to a 1950s car he plans to restore. He was working on his daughter's car with YouTube and tools.
My point?
He knows how to do shit with his hands. He knows how to learn if he doesn't know how to do something. He's not afraid of not knowing.
He and his wife and daughters are the immigrants who built this great country of our over the past 200+ years.
Oleg is not terminally stupid. Far from it.
AND YOU KNOW WHAT?!?! All of the immigrant families I have met in the sauna at the Y are all still married, all go to church, all have 2-4 kids, all wives have traditional stay-at-home roles--and they all seem much happier than most native Americans I know.
bsn
I'm actually a little worried about what SCotUS will do. It doesn't sound promising from everything I've been reading.
I'm sort of starting to fall into the "burn it *all* down" camp these days.
They failed us spectacularly when it came to covid -- and I don't like having my freedoms hanging on the whims of government officials.
And that is exactly what is at stake in this case.
Nothing less.
They didn’t do us any favors, or even their jobs, regarding the 2020 (s)election either…..
Another reason I was pleasantly surprised they issued the 9-0 smackdown on Colorado.
Grandad often said, "When something is so badly broken that it can not be fixed, its time to take it apart, salvage any usable pieces, and build a new one - that works better."
Grandad was talking about haying equipment, but I suspect the same approach applies to governments.
I'm pretty sure I read something that sounds similar in one of our founding documents.....
Funny thing - that's reference Grandad used.
There's two sorts of folks. Them's that fix and them's that replace.
Example: the desk I built for my office is counter-height rather than conventional desk height. I have a lab stool as a chair that is the right height but not very comfortable for all-day sitting. I have an office chair that is very comfortable for all day sitting, but not high enough.
My wife's solution: go online, find a much nicer lab-stool height chair with all the luxurious features of the office chair, and throw out the two inadequate chairs.
My solution: take both chairs to the shop, enlist the help of a master fabricator, using the parts of each that work, fabricate what is needed to join them functionally and carry on.
Her solution is more economical. My solution is....my solution.
We shall see who prevails. The difference is that with the chair problem, I can do it her way without bloodshed (in deed, this is the likely path to avoid bloodshed). When it comes to taking apart government, well, that is harder to do without serious ugly bits like death and destruction.
Guess I'm very much in the "fix" contingent. Raised on a ranch. When its broke, you fix it. Or, (per Grandad), salvage the parts to fix something else. Rube Goldberg had nothing on us!
And I'm not sure, anymore, if we CAN fix what's left of our government. I sort of visualize the kleptocracy as a bunch of scavengers, buzzards and coyotes, snarling and screeching, fighting over the corpse of a dead calf.
100. that's exactly what we must do. And it's gonna be up to us, the regular people, no heroes are coming. We need to build the systems we actually deserve. Take our tools to an entirely new sandbox.
https://simulationcommander.substack.com/p/surprise-nobodys-coming-to-save-us
Surprise! Nobody’s Coming to Save Us!
Why would we expect anything different?
👏 exactly.
We will soon know if the high court still exists in any form remotely defined by the constitution.
The duty is clear in this case. The prohibition on government restrictions is clear. The facts of the case show that government entities determined what content was allowed and what was disallowed. There is no ambiguity in the constitution, the intent of the constitution, nor in the extension of that prohibition to states and administrative agencies (and the Whitehouse).
If the court abides by the law there is a clear outcome. If the court votes party over constitution, this too will be clear. In the later case, the court is no longer serving as designed and the last possible obstacle to elimination of any and all civilian rights is gone.
The seeds of this (inevitable?) conversion of the court were sown decades ago. When a justice who quotes the constitution and suggests the words mean what the words mean is "conservative", "originalist" or "constructionist", intellectual dishonesty has prevailed. These words signal acceptance of the court as an arm of political parties. The correct words for a justice or judge that applies the words of the constitution as written to limit the power of governments is "honest" and "doing the duty as defined by the constitution". We should never have accepted any argument that suggests any other role for the court.
Does she even Constitution?
Not even once.
We are so screwed
At least we're in good company!
“We must, indeed, all be screwed together or, most assuredly, we shall all be screwed separately.”
— Benjamin Screwklin
lol
(for the moment)
Franklin would totally say that, probably to convince women to join him in an orgy. He was quite the old goat.
one may also interpret ’screwed’ in different senses in the respective clauses, just as Franklin had two different senses of ‘hang’
i count three
As I began to read your post, my first thought was, the WHOLE POINT of the Constitution IS to restrain the government. I learned this in, I think, 5th grade history. How does a Supreme Court justice not know this?!
This sounds an awful lot like Obama's comment about the Constitution having negative rights.
"Obama characterizes the Constitution as “a charter of negative liberties,” which “says what the states can’t do to you (and) what the Federal government can’t do to you, but doesn’t say what the Federal government or State government must do on your behalf.” Forbes, Sep 23, 2012
Mrs. "the Knife"
Hey there was talk not long ago about appointing BHO hisself to the SCOTUS.
Could still happen you know.
I never thought that I would see the day when the Supreme Court of the United States of America would be deciding if it was ok for the US Government to censor the political opinions of the American people……
And that the Court may actually rule against its citizens….
WTF ???
Looks like the long march through the institutions is almost complete.....
I think we’ve seen this movie before, but not in this country.
It never turns out well…but maybe this time will be different. /sarc
Yes, I used to read books about places where it happened.
"Good thing that can't happen here!"
I literally feel ill over this… It's all we needed to know about where we are going.
It took everything I had not to ruin the Monday pawsitivity by posting yesterday.
As an older guy, I always have to compare today's platforms with news print. I don't seem to remember the government having meltdowns about letters to the editor. Letters to the editor were pretty much the same as someone posting their opinion online. Typically the letters were vetted before they were published, but I have read and published numerous opinions on a myriad of subjects over the years and whether those opinions were "correct" or not people weren't threatened because of them. Letters to the editor were the "comment section" of newspapers and they influenced millions of people over the years, including years where there were wars, political strife, and yes, even "pandemics" and "vaccines". Why is it that "covid" suddenly made it taboo to express our opinions about things? This only reinforces my opinion that the whole "covid" debacle was about much much more than a scary "virus"...
In compulsory school when we did Social Science (what we call Civics here), our teacher once brought along copies of a newspaper she had gotten some letters to the editor published in.
Not to brag but to show how journalists work.
You see, her letters had been edited. Parts had been cut out "for reasons of space", only it was key parts that changed the tone from reasonable to unhinged, as her letters were counter to the paper's political stance. Also, for one of the letters the parapgraphs had been inserted in a different order than in her letter.
For a bunch of 15-year olds, it was both an eye-opener and a reinforcement of our age-typical know-it-all sneaking cynical suspicions we already had about adults.
Our propaganda rag, the Santa Fe New Mexican, used to publish many of my letters. After covid when I became a questioner of the narrative, the woman in charge, called me and said they couldn't publish my letters anymore because they were misinformation.
Wonder how much 'grant money' the SFNM got during that timeframe.....
They must still be getting it because they still push whatever crazed Dem narrative is current.