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The Golden Age arrives!
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 The Golden Age arrives!Isn't it great? Your new 'Law and Order' President has granted pardon to 1,500 prisoners convicted of violent offences of various kinds, including assaulting police. Isn't it good to know violent crime is being stamped out starting from Day One? I also hear that various Trump supporters thing it is a betrayal of Due Process that Biden has granted pardons to a roll-call of people who have committed no crimes, to protect them from 'weaponised Department of Justice'. Donald would never do that! Let's face it guys; the only hope America has is the 'Deep State' (i.e., all those who take their oath to defend the Constitution seriously enough to obey only so far as is lawful). Most critical in this is the SCOTUS. It was fine, so long as there was room for 'interpretation'; but what will they do when they are asked to accept an 'interpretation' that directly contradicts the specific wording of the Constitution? Those of you who are historically-aware, you might know that the Soviet Union had a marvelous Constitution which guaranteed all sorts of rights; except that without being backed by a deep culture that respected human rights and natural justice, mere words on paper will not stand against the power of those who are prepared to ignore them. They need to be backed by The People. Ultimately, the only protection the citizens of any country have is the willingness of the citizens themselves to protect those rights. The Ratbag Right who arm themselves against the 'radical Left' at least understand that much. The radical Left also understand this; as Mao said, 'political power grows out of the barrel of a gun'. The complacent 'Moderate' demographic, although 75% of the general population, just assume it will happen by itself and therefore feel free to choose between the lesser of two evils. Except that there is the faint, remote, quixotic hope that perhaps the comfortable 'Moderate' band between them might actually take their focus away from their next new car or their investments for long enough to think about their children's future. If this happens, then this might well be the start of an American 'Golden Age'. An age in which America re-discovers its foundational genius. Alternatively, it might be their empty death boast. He who has ears... |
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jonheck 21-Jan-25, 04:34 |
bob SCOTUS! They make no bones about it, they are conservative judges, and the current score is 6 to 3. Some of them are radically conservative, but thankfully not all 6 of them. They inclined to take the Conservative interpretation route. We have had conservative courts before. They caused little more damage than slowing down progress, and constraining rational thought a bit. A scarier side to the SCOTUS is evidence that trumps presidency might encourage some of the more radical conservative judges to try out some really far out decisions. |
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Apatzer www.google.com I have some favorites. |
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A Jew’s Take on Yesterday He covers so many great points. |
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mo-one |
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Jon 4:34 I tend to prefer conservative judges rather than 'progressive' ones, myself. It's the legal equivalent of a doctor's 'I shall do no harm', or an engineer's 'Did the prototype perform as designed?' Changes should not be made without serious, genuine examination, and even then the changes should be staged rather than packaged. But some on SCOTUS today are not genuinely conservative judges. The Conservative Principle says 'Precedents should stand until clarified by legislation'. That's NOT what happened in Roe v. Wade, nor in their Presidential Immunity decision. Genuinely conservative judges would have maintained Roe v. Wade; I even recall Amy Barrett being asked during her confirmation hearing what she thought of this case, and replying 'It's the law of the land'. An honest conservative would have answered the question without evasion. The current SCOTUS is NOT conservative, legally speaking; it has a social agenda just as radical as anything that RGB would have said. But it is much more dishonest about stating it. |
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Citizenship Decree When Democrats challenge it before SCOTUS, that will just prove to Trump's base that only Trump will fight to keep America safe from those vermin. The fact that it's unconstitutional doesn't matter to a Trumpist; to them, the 'Sanctity of the Constitution' is a cloak of righteousness when it suits them, but 'needs to be set aside' (as Trump himself has said) when it gets in the way. This is a battle Trump WANTS to lose, so he can claim that 'The System', or the 'Deep State', or whatever other villain is thwarting the will of the people. But look on the bright side. Only four more years. Perhaps less, if enough members of the GOP start thinking about what will happen after Trump goes. Here's hoping that America still exists by then. If it does, I expect it to be much sadder but wiser than it is today. |
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Brown Shirts Grim. |
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Gulf of America The reason he did not place his hand on the Bible while taking the oath? After changing the venue indoors the fire marshal wouldn't allow it. |
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jonheck 22-Jan-25, 00:21 |
bobspringette <The current SCOTUS is not Conservative>. Yes it is, but with the help of some extremist conservative judges, in the worse way! Add that to the inclination of some of them to walk on the kookie side of the street and you have a serious and dangerous problem that needs an injection of liberalism and sanity. |
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Jon 00:21 Which is why I don't consider them 'conservative'. Perhaps I need to explain that 'conservative' usually means 'preferring to 'NOT change anything unless necessary'. But these guys have overthrown Roe v Wade and approved some degree of 'Presidential Immunity'. The first is a substantial departure from a fifty-year precedent and the second is a denial of the traditional understanding that EVERYONE is subject to the law of the land. The current SCOTUS might be politically conservative (even hyper-conservative) in their social outlook, but they are radical revolutionaries when it comes to Constitutional Law. Whatever happened to the Right-wing complaints about 'activist judges'? |
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jonheck 22-Jan-25, 03:11 |
bobspringette The term Conservative judge can be narrowly defined as a judge who is inclined to interpret the constitution literally, and should not be confused with the wide open meanings of politically conservative, and more so for the door less cauldron of meanings that can be found in modern US so called conservative politics. There are those who, presuming that green grass is only to be found on the conservative side, would interpret “radical revolutionaries” as them liberal socialist commies, rather than their blindly favored concept of “good church going” conservative judge. Some of these judges are indeed radical revolutionaries, some can be categorized as kooks, but irregardless of other appropriate titles, these judges are clearly, (also), conservative judges. Unlike the brainwashed MEGA crowd I am confident that you know that, so perhaps you might take care to clarify that whom/what you intended to present as radical revolutionaries. Among the SCOTUS there are indeed “radical revolutionary conservative judges”, some of whom lean dangeriously toward the kooky side. |
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jonheck 22-Jan-25, 04:20 |
bobspringette |
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Jon A political conservative will be reluctant to accept changes in law. A legal conservative will be reluctant to change the MEANING of an unchanged law. I said this when I posted that a conservative judge will follow precedent. Whether he agrees with it or not, that is the law of the land. Changing interpretation because of personal preference is NOT 'conservative law'. A conservative judge will probably comment that the law should be 'clarified' (i.e., amended), but until it is amended the precedent will stand. Also, apologies for the typo in my 13:38 post. I just noticed that I typed 'RGB' instead of 'RBG'. My respects to that lady. |
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Judicial Conservatism The conservatives of yore were serious about fiscal responsibility. Not the new breed, who never saw a tax cut targeting corporations and the uber rich they didn’t love beyond all reason. |
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Shiva 20:28 To my mind, Trumpists are NOT politically conservative. What America has seen in the last decade is a formerly conservative party being taken over by populists. First, the distinction. 'Conservative' means treasuring and preserving traditional perspectives, practices and values, whether they be social, economic or cultural (e.g., heterosexual marriage, Capitalism, religion). 'Populism' means following the fashion of the day, often driven by emotion rather than thought, and usually full of mutually contradictory impulses. Populist movements stubbornly refuse to think about these contradictions, because they have no genuinely coherent paradigm that will permit their interactions; thus logical argument completely misses them. Nazis saw Jews as both 'sub-human' as well as evil geniuses, which was never a problem to them; they just picked moment-by-moment whichever image suited the immediate purpose, just as Trump can skip between claiming that COVID was engineered to destroy America one day and dismiss it as 'no worse than the flu' the next. As you might expect, Populism is very good at overthrowing poor government. It happened to England in the reign of Charles I, the French monarchy in 1789 and the Czar in 1917. But overthrowing the bad is not in itself sufficient; it is also necessary to provide a functioning alternative. The Parliamentarians in England were already an effective government, so the execution of the King was no disaster (except for the King).This didn't happen in France, ending in the dictatorship of Napoleon. It sorta-worked in Russia; the Bolsheviks were competent enough to form a durable government, but at what a cost! We will now see if Trumpists can form a workable government in the United States. My guess is that American Institutions are strong enough to ameliorate the worst excesses of Trump's instinctive populism, and America will come out the other end with bruises but no terminal damage. I hope and pray that the conservatives can make a comeback and a new Conservative Faction will pull itself together and attract sufficient corporate support to overwhelm the populists. |
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Agreed As for terminal damage, I was not sure we could survive the first go-around. I have far less confidence this time. |
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Shiva 00:56 Musk's gesture was certainly explicable as a 'Roman salute'. But is Musk such a devotee to classical history that it would be an instinctive gesture? More importantly, given that all these events are scripted and choreographed, how was it intended to be interpreted by those watching? Were all those rally attendees aware of Roman practices? It was a dog-whistle at best. <As for terminal damage, I was not sure we could survive the first go-around. I have far less confidence this time.> Perhaps, perhaps not. But I suggest that there is a greater chance of survival in any situation if you expect to survive, and tell your colleagues that you WILL survive. Think positive! To my mind, which I confess is more focused on structures than details, I hope this will trigger a serious re-think by BOTH sides of how America does politics. The existing system is virtually designed to create division and civil unrest, but can be fixed so easily by a few simple tweaks that would strengthen the moderates on both sides. |
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jonheck 23-Jan-25, 02:06 |
lord_shiva. |
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Jon 02:06 |
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jonheck 23-Jan-25, 02:54 |
bobspringette |
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jonheck 23-Jan-25, 03:34 |
bobspringette |
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Hate They do love Bibles. And embryos. And semiautomatic assault weapons. Ivermectin. Bitcoin. Confederate flags and monuments. And Nazi salutes. “Very fine people.” |
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jonheck 23-Jan-25, 13:30 |
lord_shiva |
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dmaestro 24-Jan-25, 23:21 |
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Eliminating Ethics Now it is “no ethics allowed.” |
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Link Forgot the l8nk. |
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dmaestro 26-Jan-25, 22:27 |
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