Trump shows his fascism

Donald Trump cannot make solid arguments so he just bullies and blusters and butts in and talks over opponents.

It is I believe the methodology of fascists and Nazis. There is no defined structure of power, rather the most able bully takes charge, through bluff and projected strength.

The big loser I thought in Tuesday night’s debate between President Trump and candidate Joe Biden was moderator Chris Wallace. He was not able to control things.

It may not have been his fault. Whoever thought a debate format with no structure was a good idea must have been under the influence.

I was able to listen to most of the fiasco, not all, due to work. The chaotic affair made me sad for our nation. We have come to this.

At the least, the microphone of whoever’s turn it is not should be shut off.

It of course was not an actual debate with presentation and rebuttal and civility, strictly monitored.

It was crosstalk and no substance.

It’s too bad a minority who support fascist government can make the rest of us suffer.

Trump can only be re-elected via the Electoral College.

That institution seems only to offer minority rule. Let’s rethink it.

In the meantime, let’s vote.

Trump’s ability to dodge his tax obligations cast as much shame on our system as on him…

Donald Trump should be no more admirable as a businessman than the infamous ponzi schemer Bernie Madoff.

I’m not sure who took in more billions of dollars but both did it illegally or in Trump’s case unethically, but probably illegally too, as a tax cheat. They are charlatans. Both have left suckers holding the bag. Madoff had his ponzi scheme, Trump his hucksterism and use of bankruptcy courts.

Madoff is in prison. Trump should be if New York Times reports are accurate.

Trump should also be voted out of office if for no other reason than the likely fact he is compromised to foreign powers or those connected with them.

It is reported that he is heavily in debt, and there is substantial debt coming due soon. This could explain his reticence to criticize Russia’s Vladimir Putin and the ruthless Saudis. He may owe them money or they may be a source of new money.

Trump also has apparently mixed his own business with foreign policy. If countries do business with Trump they get better treatment from the U.S.

But most people already realized Trump was unethical and highly dishonest.

I heard one supporter, a GOP office holder I think, opine that Trump’s non payment of income taxes for 10 years and his extremely low payments other years, $750 in 2016 and again in 2017, on millions in income, was laudable, it showed his business acumen.

No, I think it more likely shows his dishonesty and disrespect for his country. He was willing to let others die in his place by being a Vietnam War draft dodger, his rich father buying off a doctor to classify him as medically unfit. Apparently he can only play golf.

Trump also has apparently not lived up to his obligations as someone with money to support the operations of government that serves the needs of the populace.

But again, we all knew this pretty much already. The Times report gives more detail and shows the scope of the leader’s con over his fellow citizens.

Worse, it emphasizes something we peons have always had to just endure, the rich in general pay less taxes or none at all, while everyone else is required to render onto Caesar. And in perhaps most cases what the rich do is quite legal. The tax laws were written primarily for them.

Trump gets an A grade for being a con man and an F as a businessman.

The record suggests he is a failure in most business ventures but a winner for using losses as tax deductions.

Shame on him, but shame on his enablers and our totally unfair tax laws.

Funding our government should be an equally shared burden.

It is not.

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The Wall Street Journal opinion folks say the NY Times story does not claim any actual law breaking by Trump, except one minor thing that rich people have to contend with all the time:

The IRS presumably signed off on the Trump returns, except in one case in which it is disputing a $72.9 million deduction claimed by Mr. Trump. This is a fight rich people have with the IRS all the time, often ending in Tax Court.

Ta, ta…

Liberals might be forced to go to the voters, rather than the court…

Been reading about judge Amy Coney Barrett, President Trump’s nominee to fill the seat left open by the death of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

So, the obvious: Ms. Barrett is relatively young and deeply conservative. With her, the court would make a sharp right turn, with a solid majority created for the conservatives.

Her credentials, all report, are impeccable.

The president has the votes in the senate, as far as we know, and the clear right to push the nomination through, even prior to the presidential election.

But I guess he could do it after the election even if he loses but is still in office till January as a lame duck.

Oh sure it’s hypocritical when the Republicans refused to even give President Obama’s last nominee a hearing. But that is politics. They held the senate then, and do now. Elections have consequences.

If Democrat Joe Biden wins the election and if his party can take back the senate, he could try to pack the court by pushing through legislation to expand its membership. Not sure he would want to do that. Franklin Roosevelt tried and failed and paid somewhat politically, even if he did win four elections as president.

But stability in the court might not be so bad. Let’s just hope those conservatives stick to law and not doing their own legislation. The only thing worse than liberal activism is conservative activism.

My idea is that a liberal justice might see a right that was not always apparent, while a conservative might take away a right that heretofore seemed apparent.

But, regardless, if liberals or progressives or Democrats lose hope in the Supreme Court, they will just have to work even harder voting in legislators and governors and a president.

Elections have consequences. Trump proved that.

When the high court is unpredictable on the law due to swings between right and left ideology maybe that promotes a disrespect for the law and the court.

We’d like to think Supreme Court justices don’t make decisions based on politics. But we do know that they must have their own ideologies, and that is closely tied to politics.

Judge Barrett is a conservative Catholic, not to be confused with liberal Catholics. You cannot tell me her beliefs in that regard will not weigh on her legal reasoning, even though she may well recognize in some cases her duty to the law and Constitution overrides her faith. I read that she once suggested she might have to recuse herself in some death penalty cases because capital punishment violates her religious beliefs.

Not sure how that would logically put her in abortion cases.

But, anyway, with a solidly conservative majority on the court at least progressives and liberals would be forced to go for public opinion rather than that of nine people who live in a far different world and who would do better to rule on law. That of course requires professional interpretation. The problem comes when such interpretation expands to policy making or even administration, which are the jobs of the legislative and administrative branches, not the judicial branch, in our system of checks and balances.

I feel that I should add that there is the doctrine or idea that the minority needs at times to be protected from the majority. I think most of that is taken care of in our Bill of Rights, good conservatives surely know that.

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Below is an abstract from a law journal paper co-authored by Judge Amy Barrett:

Abstract

The Catholic Church’s opposition to the death penalty places Catholic judges in a moral and legal bind. While these judges are obliged by oath, professional commitment, and the demands of citizenship to enforce the death penalty, they are also obliged to adhere to their church’s teaching on moral matters. Although the legal system has a solution for this dilemma by allowing the recusal of judges whose convictions keep them from doing their job, Catholic judges will want to sit whenever possible without acting immorally. However, litigants and the general public are entitled to impartial justice, which may be something a judge who is heedful of ecclesiastical pronouncements cannot dispense. Therefore, the authors argue, we need to know whether judges are legally disqualified from hearing cases that their consciences would let them decide. While mere identification of a judge as Catholic is not sufficient reason for recusal under federal law, the authors suggest that the moral impossibility of enforcing capital punishment in such cases as sentencing, enforcing jury recommendations, and affirming are in fact reasons for not participating.

A woman murdered by cops: just what was the need for officers to go barging in on Brionna Taylor’s home?

Have you ever, I mean ever, had some association with someone who has been in trouble with the law?

Well 26-year-old Breonna Taylor of Louisville, Ky did. She paid for that with her life this past March 13th.

(And was it more than just an association of some sort? I don’t know, even if some stories indicate that — it’s all hearesay and in the circumstances of her death is really irrelevant).

This post is not just about the Breonna Taylor trajedy, it is about the policy that leads police to shoot innocent people and endanger the public, something that seems to happen quite frequently, and more often than not black people are the victims, although all the public faces danger.

Think about it. You live in an apartment. One night the cops go barging in on a nextdoor neighbor, using a battering ram, under the authority of a “no-knock” warrant. They are not required to identify themselves.

Like I say, this is about all such incidents. I read now that originally the police had a no-knock warrant for Taylor’s apartment but it was changed to a normal one where they would be required to identify themsevles. The police say they did, and reportedly at least one witness says they did, but the survivor of the incident and neighbors say otherwise.

Given the circumstances of this case, I’m not sure how much difference that makes. They came in the middle of the night. You hear a commotion in the middle of the night you might not be able to make sense of it all.

Oops, they shoot and kill and innocent person and bullets fly into other apartments, endangering other innocent folks.

And why did they feel it necessary to do all this?

Gotta fight those drug dealers.

So putting the lives of innocent civilians on the line makes it ok. Gotta fight those drug dealers.

In general I support the police, that is I support a civil society and those who are assigned to protect us all.

But I think it is preposterous that in the zeal to go after criminals that the idea of barging into people’s houses, especially without announcing intentions or in the middle of the night, is a good idea, in most cases.

Sometimes officers feel such tactics are necessary for the element of surprise. But I say the worst that could happen if the bad guy or guys stay one step ahead, or flush the evidence down the toilet, is that they will just have to be caught another time. Killing or even wounding innocent people should never be an option. I’d rather that drug dealers go free than innocent people be killed.

And as we all have read, there have been many instances that even with normal warrants officers have gone to the wrong place and shot and killed innocent people.

In the Breonna Taylor incident, the story is that she was asleep on her couch and her boyfriend heard the commotion and when the cops burst in (I think they were plain clothes detectives) he thought it was a home invasion and began firing at them with his own legally-registered gun.

In the exhange between her boyfriend and the cops, Ms. Taylor was struck five or six times, according to reports, and bled to death at the scene.

(Ms. Taylor had a previous boyfriend who had troubles with the law, the one that night was not him.)

The police were not wearing body cameras and the facts are still murky and may always be.

And, by the way, the suspect they were looking for was not there and neither were illicit drugs found.

The whole incident was kept under wraps by authorities for weeks until people sued the city for the reckless actions of the police.

The result so far is that one of the cops has been charged with a crime less than murder and has been fired and faces at least five years in prison if convicted. The other officers, two I believe, have not been charged and remain employed as far as I have read.

I blame the policy more than the officers. Bad policies needlessly force officers into dangerous positions, both for themselves and the public at large.

Accidents can always happen. But we don’t need to help that along.

p.s.

Ms. Taylor was an emergency room technician, reportedly with aspirations of becoming a nurse. She had just completed four overnight shifts at a hospital prior to her death.

The City of Louisville has agreed to a $12-million settlement in a civil case over the Breonna Taylor incident.

The U.S. should export peace, not war…

As has been the case in so many of the presidential elections I have voted in, my first being the Nixon vs McGovern fiasco of 1972, I wished there was a viable third choice. There is not, never has been, well, that is, not in my lifetime. We are pretty much stuck with two candidates, one each from our two main political parties, who have a monopoly on our politics — due mostly to our federal system with an executive elected by the people, rather than by getting the most votes by a legislature or parliament.

Here in the good ol’ USA, you are either Republian or Democrat or you don’t count.

In the parliamentary system minority parties often have a say because a majority party candidate for prime minister may need the votes — he or she may be forced to oversee a coalition government, rather than one ruled by one party. A more diverse view of politics and policy gets attention.

But why do I wish there was a viable third choice now? I mean there is no way in hell that I would vote for Trump. I see him as dangerous and as a national embarrassment with his actions and his ignorance and his crude and rude behavior, which is not to say some good things have not happened under his watch — I mean that may well have been despite him being president, but if it can be proven otherwise I would be willing to give him his due — I’ll let history judge on that I guess. OK, he gets credit for a booming economy (right up till Covid-19 let the air out of things). I’ve never been convinced it was due to anything in particular Trump did (tax policy maybe) but more from the feeling among the business sector that they had a friend in the White House who would be less likely to push for bothersome things like dealing with climate change, health and safety for workers, overall environmental protection and so forth, so the climate seemed good for expansion.

So we have a choice: we can vote for Joe Biden. And that is probably a good choice among two old men. Too bad we don’t have a younger face in the race. Well we do have Kamala Harris. I mean I think she is actually running for president on the Democratic ticket rather than vice president — she slipped up recently and spoke of what a “Harris administration” would do. What with Biden’s advanced age he might not make it through the first term or might not choose to run for a second.

Would Harris make a good president? I don’t have the slightest idea. She is somewhat of a slick opportunist who knows how to meet and get what she can from the right people — so I am accusing her of being a good politician. She is progressive but I think I am correct in saying not super liberal in her career so far. And I imagine that might be because she was smart enough to realize far better not to turn off possible middle of the road to slightly conservative voters. Votes are what keep you in office and let you climb the ladder. Without knowing how she would really handle things, I feel that I would certainly be more comfortable with Harris in the White House than Trump.

But it’s Trump vs Biden.

Well, let’s see, on domestic policy we have President Trump who has tried to battle the Covid-19 pandemic by way of denial and denouncing modern science. Except in rare circumstances he refuses to wear a face mask and encourages others not to. I don’t even know what that is all about. Granted, even in the medical/scientific community questions abound on how to fight Covid-19 or how it actually spreads — however it seems to be understood and proven that wearing face masks and social distancing have a positive effect in the fight.

I have to admit, though, after reading about the so-called Spanish flu of the 1918 pandemic, in the end it seems the final victory will likely come, to put it somewhat crudely, by herd immunity. Eventually Covid-19 will run its course, perhaps millions will have died, and the survivors will have built up a resistance. Even with all of that, there is no logical nor humane reason not to save as many people as we can with the help of modern science and new knowledge. The life you save may be your own, as they use to say about safe driving. Or it may be your children or your grandparents, I should add.

But here is a biggie on domestic policy: lawlessness disguised as legal political demonstrations. There can be no defense against rioting and burning and looting private property. And resisting arrest is resisting arrest, and if police do not have the authority to detain people they cannot do their job.

I have read that the concept of defunding the police is misunderstood, sometimes it is written that “defund the police” is just poor wording to describe the concept of putting more money into social work and lessening the burden of police out on the street, who too often have to deal with domestic distrubances (always a dangerous call) and problems among the homeless and matters of mental illness. Well, I would agree it certainly must be misunderstood because defunding the police to me sounds like dismantling our protection against crime.

No, I think those who chose that mantra, “defund the police”, chose it specifically as a threat to create leverage — support our super-liberal candidates or we will disband the police. The policies of those candidates would go far beyond fighting bad cops.

I fear that if Trump was re-elected (a bad thing in my book) it might well be the result of his posturing himself in support of law and order.

Not the best or most accurate analogy, perhaps, but I think that Trump’s behavior and politics and attitude resemble closely that of Adolph Hitler. Also he struts and makes gestures resembling Benito Mussolini, those two guys of course being fellow dictators in the fascist/ Nazi, uber nationalist, militaristic movement during World War II, which thankfully was defeated by free world forces. They sold their politics to their respective citizens under the guise of maintaining law and order and protection from those of a wrong race or nationality or religion. And, having communist agitators in the streets (which in politics is labled as part of the far left or liberal movement — it’s a bit confusing) helped the cause of the dictators who positioned themselves as protectors of the people and their security.

So, anyway, back to Trump. There were reports and some evidence that he sent out what amounted to secret police (somehting used by dictators), non-uniformed agents in unmarked vehicles, to pick up lawful demonstrators (probably along with actual domestic terrorists) who became mixed in with rioters and looters, or maybe who had not.

That all should be sorted out eventually through the legal system.

What cannot be accepted is the destruction to private property and the threat to normal every-day citizens.

On environmentalism and climate change. I am clearly interested in both cleaning up and saving our planet. I am clearly against the prevailing Republican attitude of climate change denial and make a buck today and to heck with tomorrow.

At the same time, although I admittedly write with neither direct experience nor authority on the matter, I am also against too much bureaucratic red tape that serves more for job security of those who administer the red tape than what they are supposely trying to protect.

Like I say, I have no direct experience. But I once did work as a reporter and often covered public meetings where the talk was of some development project held up by envirommental reports. No one could ever explain why said reports took years.

I read a story the other day that a mountain commuity in California had sought to lessen fire danger before this current plague of super wildfires only to be held up by environmental regulations.

The problem with environmental and social causes is that whole industries of professionals and activists are built up — their objective may become as much or¹ more to fatten their own pocketbooks than help the populace. And, yet, we still need such people. The work does not get done by itself. There just has to be objective reasoning in public policy.

On foreign policy. First I offer this excerpt from the news site Vox:

By Alex Ward@AlexWardVoxalex.ward@vox.com  

Since the end of World War II, Democrats and Republicans have pursued largely similar approaches to US foreign policy. Presidents from both parties have used US power to underwrite and maintain what’s called the “liberal international order,” which basically means a set of economic and political rules and values that major democratic powers believe help the world function.

The US never did this out of the goodness of its heart. Promoting free trade and liberal democracy was meant to provide America with markets to sell goods to and countries with which to build alliances against adversaries. It was never a perfect system, and the US made many, many errors along the way. But overall, that grand strategy helped the US maintain its position as the world’s preeminent power…

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Back to my own words:

I want the United States to be what it has been most of my life but is losing its position as, that is the leader of the free world.

But we neither are nor should be the ultimate boss of the world. We need to keep our alliances, especially with democracies (and please far-right-wingers save that we-are-not-a-democracy-but-a-republic retort, you know what I mean).

If I could give Trump positive credit for anything, it would be his move to pull back from our conflicts in the Middle East. But the way he cozies up to the ruthless dictatorship that is Saudi Arabia concerns me. And his channeling arms into the area that winds up killing innocent civilians, in places such as Yeman, does not set well with me either.

What would Joe Biden do? Well he has a long history of being at he helm of our foreign policy both as a senator, three decades on the foreign relations committe, and as vice president. History speaks for itself.

(I am not blaming any or at least all of the American foreign policy blunders on Biden, even so.)

I am not for exporting war all over the planet in the name of fighting for democracy.

In reality people of individual nations have to do their own fighting for freedom and democracy or they just don’t want it bad enough.

The United States bit off more than it could chew in Vietnam and the Middle East.

We lost Vietnam and too much of the youth of a whole generation, mine, in doing so — for what?

We have now been forced to negotiate with the ruthless Taliban in Afghanistan, who supported Osama Bin Laden and his 9/11 attack on the U.S. and who would subjugate women.

Instead of exporting war we would do well to export peace, such as the Peace Corps.

If you don’t know about it, read up on it.

I’ll never forget the comment an agricultural official from the tiny African kingdom of Lesotho made to me. He and some of his colleagues were visiting here in the U.S. to get tips on and see demonstrations of modern irrigation methods. I was doing a story for the local newspaper.

I don’t have his exact words but the message was simple, yet powerful, and the following paraphrase captures it:

The best thing the United States ever did was send out the Peace Corps. People in countries like mine really appreciate it. It does a lot of good. It creates a lot of good will.

Gig economy conundrum: when employers don’t provide sufficient wages and benefits, taxpayers are on the line…

Do Uber and Lyft drivers and other app-based workers, such as those with Door Dash, want to have the freedom to work when they want with a super flexible schedule but forgo benefits comon to what full-time workers have, often by law?

(App-based: you just get an app on your phone and you are in business for yourself — log on, you are on duty, log off, you are off duty, at your own choosing — my understanding of how it works.)

There is a measure on California’s ballot in November that would make exemptions to a new state law that classifies ride share and other app-based workers as regular employees, with attendant requirements — and this argument or issue is playing out nationwide. Often what California does has implications throughout the nation.

The ballot measure is Prop. 22. It does contain language that would somewhat offset the lack of benefits and requirements concerning app-based workers by offering its own provisions for protections. I have included a link at the bottom of this post that I hope covers the details of all of this. Had some problem getting the correct link. If it does not work, I suggest going to Google and putting in Prop. 22, Ballotpedia, then looking for the overview as opposed to argument for or against. I offer some of my general thoughts on the issue in the post itself.

(I think that the issue goes beyond just app-based workers but I’ll stick to app-based for this post. It’s all about a new California labor law that is tied up in the court system. See the attached details at the bottom.)

I have no dog in this fight, but at one time I briefly considered being a ride share driver but only for the flexibility.

Uber and Lyft and other such operations — like all those app-based delivery services that have become so ubiquitous in this time of Covid-19 — make no sense if they simply hire regular employees. The overhead would be too much and thus there goes everyone’s gig. You know, it’s called the gig economy. When you are desperate for work or if you require flexibility or would just rather work on your own schedule, you can go to the gig economy. It’s both an opportunity and a lifeline. I’m not trying to sell it — I know there are big downsides to all of this. I’m just observing.

But without getting into all the arguments it seems to me it all boils down to the fact that it is in the interests of some businesses, because of their very nature, not to be nailed down by all types of worker requirements — in other words their whole business model does not work or not work well without flexibility. The same goes for some workers, be they retirees or students or people with other regular jobs who want work on the side.

The problem in all of this is that the way life goes, what with the scarcity of good, well paying jobs (as opposed to anything one can get), vast numbers of people find themselves having to do work that is really meant for people who do not need more regular work or do not have time for a normal job. But they still need or could use the protections and benefits of full-time jobs.

And there is always an element in the business sector that would just as soon that all jobs were classified as part-time or independent contracting so that they could keep employee overhead down.

And too, here’s the deal: in an economy where a large number of people are forced to work for substandard wages, legally or otherwise, the government finds itself forced to step in and subsidize that low-wage segment (the businesses themselves really) by providing various forms of taxpayer-financed assistance, such as for health care and food help (food stamps or whatever they are called now).

One large well-known retailer was infamous for advising new employees to apply for public assistance. Employers tend to oppose taxpayer giveaways unless it is for themselves, such as in the current Covid-19 crisis.

Like I say, I don’t have a dog in this fight. Had I gone to Uber I might well resent the state coming along and telling me that I cannot be an independent contractor. But I know the main forces trying to pereserve independent contractors are businesses who gain if they are not required to provide benefits or pay at least minimum wage.

I’m currently getting mailers every few days proclaiming things such as “By 4- to 1, app-based drivers want to be independent contractors…” While I would not take the word provided by a piece of campaign propaganda, I would not be surprised if that were true. I mean the whole concept of flexibility and providing jobs where there otherwise would be none goes out the window if all app-based workers are simply classified as regular workers with all the government requirements that come with it.

I’m not sure the gig economy is a good thing, though, especially if large numbers of people find themsevles forced into it.

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The details:

Standby, didn’t work. I’ll try something else..

https://ballotpedia.org/California_Proposition_22,_App-Based_Drivers_as_Contractors_and_Labor_Policies_Initiative_(2020)

Justice: on the federal level for the most part is all about politics…

Liberal stalwart Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg at age 87 has died and the political struggle is on.

Senate majority leader and Republican Mitch McConnel is ready to break his own rule and allow the president to select a replacement on the high court just before the presidential election, because this time around it is his guy who would be doing the selecting. Last time around, a Democratic president would have been able to select a replacement, but McConnel, back then, citing the closeness of the presidential election, declared that the people should decide, and refused to even hold the necessary senate confirmation hearing. That was then. Why not now? Well because the tables have been turned.

And let’s drop the righteousness about how justice is blind when it comes to the Supreme Court.

I mean that we might as well discard the notion that justice is politically blind and is only guided by what is right and fair, which is not to say in the end there is some amount of equity when it all washes out.

But, Judges are political. They are elected by the people on the local level, and federal justices are appointed by the president and confirmed by the senate on the federal level. Yes, in theory, they should posses the ability to apply and interpret the law in a fair and just and non-political way, and perhaps, especially on the local level, they often do — and even on the federal level. But everyone is guided by some form of ideology, and jurists are not always immune from political pressure or persuasion.

I mean one has to organize his or her own thoughts in order to make a decision and that organization is guided by how one’s own brain has been affected by ideology, which itself is a construct for organizing thoughts in some coherent manner.

Answers to questions of law are usually not cut and dry.

Often times you can no more literally interpret the Constitution than one can the Holy Bible. Both say different things to different people.

If you could literally interpret both you would need neither Supreme Court justices nor clergy, everyhing would be just plain on its face.

I’ll be in this over my head if I go too far here, but I will go this far: in the case of the Bible, few things are actually set forth in a straitforward manner. There are the Ten Commandments, that do seem to be rather unambigouous, but most of the rules for living proclaimed by Christian leaders are derived from various forms of metaphor and parables open to widely different interpretations, otherwise why would there be so many different demominations of the Christian religion or branches of Islam? As for other religions I know all of their members don’t necesarily interpret things the same — I was just giving examples, not trying to single out any religion or for that matter leave out Judaism — and are there not orthodox and non-orthodox? (I knew I was getting too far into this).

The Constitution must be difficult too, otherwise how come the millions of words in all those legal briefs and decisions handed down over the years?

And once again, there is talk among some about trying a trick President Franklin Deleno Roosevelt tried: that is pack the high court — expand it in order to get more justices friendly to a more liberal point of view. FDR was unsuccessful in that move, but apparently under the Constitution it could be done. The constitution only provides that there be a high court, not how many justices there should be. Some think that if Biden wins and if Trump has already appointed a far-right justice, Biden should try court packing.

Somehow I doubt it would go through or even be a good idea.

Personnally, I prefer the present set up with nine justices. You have the possibility of a tie breaker in matters that are a contest between the political extremes of liberal and conservative, left and right. And it’s interesting how through the years presidents have appointed justices who they were hopeful would rule the way they would prefer only to find that once on the bench, and safe with that lifetime apointment, they ruled a different way — surprise!

Can you say Earl Warren? Can you say Anthony Kennedy? Can you say Cheif Justice John Roberts?

President Eisenhower appointed Warren proclaiming that he would be the kind of conservative justice he preferred. Warren went on to preside over a liberal activist court, most famous for Brown vs the Board of Education, which desegregated schools — which only seems fair — and eventually saw the federal courts overseeing forced school busing — which to me is a bit of an overreach for the judical branch which is supposed to decide on matters of law, not create law — gee I sound conservative on that one. No, just middle of the road.

More recently, the conservatives pinned their hopes on Justice Roberts, only to see him side with liberals in several cases.

I think the best way to get better laws and policy in our government is to concentrate on the legislative and administrative branches and stick with the nine-justice court system and hope that the justices do concentrate more on legal concepts and a little less on ideological and political concepts, although perhaps neither can ever be totally separated from the mix.

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Another example of liberal activism on the high court and probably of most concern now among both the left and right is Roe vs Wade, which saw the high court legalize most abortions. A conservative majority might well overturn that. Abortion is a sad and difficult issue I think. But it is certainly one of a woman’s right over her own body.

But one activist court can giveth and another can taketh away.

In the final analysis, rightly or wrongly, politics decides.

Opinion writers who support Trump sometimes contort themselves to do so…

Thinking people who at least tacitly support President Trump have to do intellectual somersaults in their writing, it seems to me. I note this particularly in Wall Street Journal opinion pieces. I don’t read them all but when I do I always get the impression that the writers are not Trump fans but they feel compelled to favor him over anyone the Democrats put up — well I think they may imply sometimes that they would be Ok with Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden but fear he will bend to the pressure from the anti-estblishment anti-big business left (I think secretly they can only hope for Biden).

The Business World column in the WSJ by Holman W. Jenkins Jr. suggests that the revelation by author and famous Watergate reporter Bob Woodward that Trump received expert advice early on about how deadly Covid-19 really is and yet peddled it all as essentially no worse than the common flu (this on tape from personal interviews with the president) is no big deal.

I read this piece over two times and still could not quite get his point (I know maybe that just reflects on me).

Jenkins suggests I think that because the information from other expert sources said that it was far more dangerous than the flu, and that such information was widely available to everyone (that is everyone who makes a habit of being well informed) and since Trump really knows little about much of anything when it comes to being president of the United States, and everyone knows it, so what?

Jenkins refers to Trump as: “…our dilettante president…”

I think I see that term used mostly in referring to people who pretend to know a lot about the arts but do not — in this case I guess Trump pretending to know about or understand matters of health and science.

I have to ask: so why are you and your colleagues supporting him?

And why is such an ignorant person president?

At the bottom of this post I will try to include a link to the article I am describing so you can judge for yourself.

Jenkins does bring up an interesting point in his conclusion, though (and this is word-for-word from his article — I lifted it):

—

I will get emails suggesting, as usual, that any claims and facts must be interpreted to the greatest disadvantage of Mr. Trump or else I’m a Trump supporter. Readers could save both of us trouble by searching on the internet the words “splitting” and “borderline personality disorder.” Pay special attention to the explanation of how humans seek emotional security by reducing a difficult, interesting world to simplified rigid, all-or-nothing categories.

—

And now me again:

I agree that too many people see all issues in simplictic terms, all or nothing, right or wrong. But in trying to be objective and balanced on an issue I think the writer in this case somersaults into oblivion or something by simply writing off the dangerous lies by the most powerful man in the world by simply saying we know he lies and that he is not all that up on things.

The link:

https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-media-overestimates-trump-11600210915

p.s.

I realize that the writer did not explicitly support Trump here. It just sounds like explaining things away somehow.

Following science in fighting fires and Covid-19 is not an either or…

Seeing the president of the United States on national television saying something inane: “I don’t think science knows”, concerning the cause of the infernos that have hit the forests and wildlands of the West and have killed many people and displaced thousands and destroyed millions of dollars of property, disrupting our lives during a ongoing pandemic, is almost imcomprehensible for a supposed leader.

No, scientists or persons following science may not have all the answers, but somehow I have to put my trust in their judgment over a science denier. I thought science denying went out of fashion after the Middle Ages — with the exeption of some religious sects.

I think most of us realize that climate change alone is not the cause of these super fires, but we know it exacerbates the problem.

Our president is touting forest mangement or the lack thereof as the problem.

Now I know little to nothing about the finer points of forest management, except I have heard the term used all my adult life, which has been spent almost exclusively in the Western United States in areas close to or surrouded by forests.

It seems to mean different things to different people.

People with an eye more toward the total human enviroment, the eco-system if you will, see it as meaning sustaining our forests and wildlands so they can do their natural wonders, while serving as a productive resource for human endeavors — how you do that is probably always open for debate.

Others, looking more toward the here and now, see it as managing lands so that they can provide resources for immediate financial gain, timber and rangeland for livestock, being the biggies I guess. I think they see clearing out brush that provides fuel for wildfires as a byproduct of all of that.

I know for much of my life I have heard people in my home territory, especially ones who consider themselves close to or dependant on the logging industry, grouse that if they would just let us in there to cut trees, and in the process clear brush, that would control fires.

Others will tell you that the native Americans used to actually set fires to clear out the brush. I guess hunting deer and other wild animals they had reason to preserve the forests.

And I have heard people say that if you would just stand back and let nature take its course it would effectively burn out the underbrush. I think in relatively recent years the U.S. Forest Service tried the let-it-burn approach to some degree but it all got out of hand.

And the problem is that man has encroached too much into the forests, developing housing tracts or big homes through our vast forest lands. So fires cannot be allowed to just burn, lest they destory lives and property.

I won’t even get into the Spotted Owl controversy, except that it gave environmentalism a bad name in that logging in whole sections of forests was shut down in an effort to save a species, thus putting thousands of people out of work. I mean I heard it said that old-growth timber, supposedly the breeding ground for the creatures, was put off limits only to find that they thrived in newer growth too. Just seems there needs to be some balance there. I mean you can shut down our own national timber industry but then lumber comes from somewhere else. So you are not really helping the world environment. And we have not stopped using lumber.

The president has shown by all of his actions, such as knowingly ignoring warnings of Corona Virus, that he says things only for his own immediate personal political gain, hoping to at least maintain the support of a base that is single-minded and often willfully ignorant (and that is the worst kind of ignorance).

In Sacramento Monday (9-14-20) the president challenged experts indicating that climate change was not a factor. “It’s going to get cooler” is one thing he said. He also made his I-don’t-think- science-knows remark. So he knows, while scientists know nothing. Somehow I doubt that.

I don’t think it has to be an either or. We have to follow science for our own survival, and that goes for fighting Covid-19. But even using science, all is not known (science is a logical process not the answer). And there is some logic in not wanting to shut down human endeavor in the name of saving ourselves — we don’t want to throw the baby out with the bath water.

But going back to the Middle Ages when anything resembling modern science was seen as witchcraft is not the way to go either.

Fires and devastation and pestilence rage around me, yet I am allowed to go on…

Talk about disconnect. I feel so furtunate. Fires raging all around me — death and destruction from infernos on a scale I have never seen in my 71 years.

So many out of work due to the Covid-19 pandemic (as bad or worse than the Great Depression my folks talked about).

And me, many years now past retirement age, and with a dormant but underlying cancer (but no sign of Covid-19) still working at a job that for the past 25 years seems almost immune from economic downturns (almost I emphasize — there have been some slow spells), truck driving.

I got into truck driving relatively late in my working career. On my 46th birthday I was on my first run, hauling wine from California to Sommersville, New Jersey. These days I just go up and down the west coast. Interstate 5 is my lifeline (of course I am on other routes too).

But to show the disconnect I offer a day in the life of this past week:

The blazes were in progress or breaking out all up and down the west coast.

I awoke in Oregon to smoke-filled skies. I had been breathing in smoky air all night in my truck sleeper. I made my way to a place in the countryside of Gresham, Or., just east of Potland. On the way I kept getting alerts on my phone — evacuate! Now! But from where? I was driving and could not read the phone. I did have the phone propped up where I could see it (not in my hands, which were securely on the steering wheel), so I could see my Google directions and listen to that helpful and pleasant female voice tell me where to turn and so on. I went through some areas of light but mostly dark, even though the sun was already up. Finally, after Google leading me on a circuitous route that included sharp turns and narrow rural roads that were not ideal for a semi-truck, I came upon my destination.

A man there said something like: Good, you’re here. I see you took the hard way in (thanks Google, I was thinking).

But all was sunny there. No hint of the devastation and terror nearby. They loaded me with fresh berries destined for Watsonville, Ca. (kind of like hauling coals to Newcastle as they used to say, but it happens in this business).

I headed back toward I-5 but this time I took a somewhat easier route, based partly on the advice of the shipper, partly from Google, and partly from my own instinct that said if I see anything about an interstate highway ahead go for it.

I actually talked to my Google voice who wanted me to continue on country roads: “thanks for the advice sister, but I’m taking over now”.

Once I reached a point near where I began the day, about 30 miles south of Portland, along I-5, I was in a darkness like midnight, and it was about 10 am. And the evacuation alerts kept coming. And those alerts were for areas extremely close to where I was driving. I stopped and looked this time.

I spent several hours traveling south through thick smoke, the worst I had ever experienced. My air conditioning, which in the past seemed to filter out much of the smoke (I mean there are fires every year), was not able to do it this time. My eyes and throat burned. I tried wearing my bandana, but found it hard to breathe and very uncomfortable. I kept hoping the smoke would abate or disappear just over the next hill.

As a weird fate would have it, it finally did abate and I saw sunshine, somewhere after Grants Pass, Or. But in the glorious sunlight and cleaner air (at the time) I saw my first sign of fire-caused desolation. Burned out homes and trailer parks and burnt-out cars. This in the Talent and Ashland areas along I-5, south of Medford.

But I kept driving. I went through some clen air followed by dirty air.

In Watsonville the next day it was clear but then just down the road in Salinas the smoke made for a gray sky. The next morning I awoke to smoke and fog and that acrid stench, mixed with maybe a sweet hint of ocean air.

Back home in Redding, Ca, today I have my blinds to my back glass slider closed. It is usually a beautiful view out back but now it looks like LA smog I saw and that burned my eyes and throat back in 1956 or so when I visited there with my folks and siblings.

I have not suffered physically from Covid-19, I am not out of work, and the fires have not caused me direct harm (yet).

Yes, I feel fortunate.

Some would say I need to thank God.

I say if I need to offer thanks to anyone or any being, I hereby offer it sincerely. And my condolences and best wishes to those not so well situated.

We’re all in it together on this spinning planet, that, taking into account our current political situation, almost seems to be spinning out of control.