Month: September 2020

 

From Frances Langum:

Florida has NO IDEA how much any of the 58,000 ex-felons who’ve applied to vote, owe in court costs. So the state is SITTING on ALL the applications. ALL of them.

You may recall that Florida Republicans circumvented the will of their people, who voted in 2018 to allow ex-felons (except murderers and sex-offenders) to vote once they were released from prison.

The Republican legislature and governor found a loophole: those ex-felons also had to pay their court costs and fines in order to be eligible for voting.

But Florida has no database or billing structure in place to tell ex-felons what they owe, and finding out may take years of “research.”

As a result, Florida is sitting on the 58,000 requests they have received from ex-felons for voting rights. ALL of them.

Any effort by a billionaire to “pay off the fines” so those affected can vote this year? What if no one in the state can tell Michael Bloomberg what the final bill is?

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From North Carolina pastor John Pavlovitz:

Since then, it’s been sobering and sad to see just how many of them and people like them are similarly afflicted with this viral, collective mental illness; otherwise normal human beings who’ve fully taken leave of their senses and amplified the kinds of baseless, fantastical fiction they’d have laughed at a few short years ago—all to ironically justify their political affiliation with a predator by substituting the disturbing reality in front of them that is true—for the greater conspiracy they need to be true.

And it would all be a laughable farce if these people weren’t so dangerous: if their fringe conspiracies hadn’t gone mainstream in political races and churches; if their self-righteous autobiographies weren’t making them so willing to ratify violence and to place so many innocent people in danger; if their vile, irresponsible myths weren’t driving people to behavior that can only be described as unstable and criminal.

That’s the thing about self-delusion: it’s a gateway drug to full-blown psychosis. When you’ve convinced yourself that you’re saving trafficked children, you’ll excuse and justify just about anything and you’ll believe just about everything. Combine this fear-fueled brainwashing with gun-loving bravado, Bible-thumping fervor, and a president who understands the power of weaponized lies—and we’re at the precipice of an irreparable collective break from reality. These people are becoming untethered from the world as it is.

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From Ted McLaughlin at jobsanger:

Ginsburg had been dead only a few hours when McConnell said a Trump pick would get a vote in the Senate — and other Republicans are following McConnell’s lead and breaking their promise. They will try to put another right-winger on the Court before January (when it is likely a new president will be inaugurated).

Honesty, morality, and ethnics mean nothing to these Senate Republicans. They only care about trying to hold on to power, and assuring a court to make sure rich white men and corporations are protected.

I doubt they’ll do it before the election, since some GOP senators would be hard pressed to explain that to the voters. But in the two months after the election (and before the new Congress is seated), they will have their chance — and they will seat a new Trump justice (giving right-wingers a 6 to 3 advantage on the court).

Republicans don’t care about women’s rights (including Roe vs. Wade), minority rights, voting rights, or the environment. A 6 to 3 majority of right-wingers on the court would endanger all of those. It could set this country back 50 years — and insure the changes last for a generation.

What are Democrats to do? They may be left with only one option.

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Sarah Cooper Explains
 
From The Borowitz Report:

According to White House sources, Trump has already drawn up a short list of potential nominees, including Amy Coney Barrett, the Canon Sure Shot Z115, and the Samsung Q900TS QLED 8K UHD HDR Smart TV.

The uproar engulfing Trump’s plan to nominate a Supreme Court Justice before the election only grew louder with the revelation that he was considering an inanimate object for the job.

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From Michael A. LaFerrara:

Here’s how the baby bonds plan would work:

Under the plan, New Jersey would provide a one-time investment of $1,000 for every 2021 baby whose family’s income is no more than five times the federal poverty level. For a family of four, the income cutoff would be $131,000, Murphy said Tuesday during his budget address at Rutgers University’s football stadium in Piscataway.

Murphy said the plan would benefit three out of every four children born in New Jersey, calling it the first statewide program of its kind. The governor did not say whether the plan would continue in future years.

“As this child grows, so, too, will the value of this bond — to help pay for college, to help make a down payment on a home, or to help start a small business,” the Democratic governor said.

On the face of it, this is just another entitlement. But this new entitlement is no ordinary welfare program.

Think about this. A run-of-the-mill welfare entitlement is geared toward the economic status of the recipient.

Not so with Murphy’s scheme.

Every child comes into this world having never earned a single dollar. Every child is born broke. So fairness would dictate that every single child get the baby bond. After all, a newborn child has no control over his parents’ earning power, no claim on his parents’ income or wealth once he reaches the age of 18, no guarantee he will be given anything by his parents, and no capacity to launch a remunerative career. Yet this child will be handed a nest egg, or not, based on something he has no control over–his parents’ economic status.

Being judged by something beyond one’s control. Sound familiar?

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From Letters from an American:

In 1972, Ginsburg won the case of Moritz v. Commissioner. She argued that a law preventing a bachelor, Charles Moritz, from claiming a tax deduction for the care of his aged mother because the deduction could be claimed only by women, or by widowed or divorced men, was discriminatory. The United States Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit agreed, citing Reed v. Reed when it decided that discrimination on the basis of sex violated the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution.

In that year, Ginsburg founded the Women’s Rights Project at the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU). Between 1973 and 1976, she argued six gender discrimination cases before the Supreme Court. She won five. The first time she appeared before the court, she quoted nineteenth-century abolitionist and women’s rights activist Sarah Grimke: “I ask no favor for my sex. All I ask of our brethren is that they take their feet off our necks.”

Nominated to the bench by President Bill Clinton in 1993, she was confirmed by a vote of 96 to 3. Clinton called her “the Thurgood Marshall of gender-equality law.”

In her 27 years on the Supreme Court, Ginsburg championed equal rights both from the majority and in dissent (which she would mark by wearing a sequined collar), including her angry dissent in 2006 in Ledbetter v. Goodyear Tire & Rubber when the plaintiff, Lilly Ledbetter, was denied decades of missing wages because the statute of limitations had already passed when she discovered she had been paid far less than the men with whom she worked. “The court does not comprehend or is indifferent to the insidious way in which women can be victims of pay discrimination,” Ginsburg wrote. Congress went on to change the law, and the first bill President Barack Obama signed was the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act.

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From Hackwhackers:

The efforts by Trumpist lackey and straw voter crook Postmaster General Louis “Delay” DeJoy to hamstring vote by mail / absentee balloting this fall to benefit career con man and cheater Donald “COVID Donnie” Trump are well documented. From removing post boxes from thousands of neighborhoods, to dismantling rapid mail sorting equipment to slow the sorting and delivery of ballots, DeJoy has done Dear Leader’s bidding to rig the election.

Beyond removing equipment, new reporting indicates that the postal workers themselves have been denied COVID testing and temperature checks while they work in overwhelming, stressful conditions to keep the mail flowing. The result was predictable…

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From conservative Darrell Michaels at Unabashedly American:

It is a shame to poke holes in your poem, Mr. Dubya, considering you obviously worked so hard at it, but the truth must be heard with the questions your poem asks.

“Fake news is the enemy of the people”

Yes, if it is not truthful, then it absolutely is the enemy of the people. It misinforms and tells lies to propagate a dangerous socialist agenda. It ignores the wrongs of the left and characterizes rioters as “mostly peaceful protesters”. It questions President Trump’s mental condition and ignores the fact that Joe Biden cannot even hold a press conference without having answers written for him on a teleprompter. It seeks to destroy one side and not inform, as journalism is supposed to do.

“Global warming is a hoax”

No. ANTHROPOGENIC global warming is not proven science. It is a means to further a Marxist agenda by the left. I give you the green new deal as evidence of this.

“We don’t want everybody to vote”

I do NOT want everybody to vote. I want only registered American voters to vote. I don’t want illegal aliens or felons to vote. I know that cuts into the left’s voter block though. I’d prefer that voters also are educated on the candidates and the issues, but if they are registered American voters, even the ignorant have a right to vote.

“Tax cuts for the rich are what we need”

First, while I have never had a poor man offer me a job, that is also false propaganda. Bush’s and Trump’s tax cuts helped middle class families immensely, especially with child tax cut credits. The problem is that the bottom 50% of American tax payers account for less than 5% of the national tax burden. The leftists in congress describe anyone with an above-minimum-wage job as rich evidently. Further, Trump’s tax cuts were a significant reason as to why the American economy grew so strongly before the Covid nightmare.

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• At The Moderate Voice, Jonathan Entin mourns the loss yesterday of Ruth Bader Ginsburg, and points to a distinguished career that began well before her time on the Supreme Court.
   
• tengrain at Mock Paper Scissors has the shortest post on Ruth Bader Ginsburg. It speaks to me.
   
• nojo seems to have enjoyed one of Bill Murray’s better movies. Me too. I’ve watched Groundhog Day a few times. nojo applies the script to the Trump presidency.
   
• Jonathan Bernstein watches political town hall programs. No accounting for taste. Voters at these events aren’t much for gotcha questions or dialogue about process. No tricks. Mostly basic questions about practical policies. Predictable. Easy to breeze through. Both candidates had their chance. Biden cleared the basics with ease. So why did Trump have trouble?
   
• In Letters from an American, Heather Cox Richardson explores my president’s venture outside the Fox cocoon, as he submits to questions from ordinary, non-screened, voters. No, he doesn’t implode, but it goes surprisingly unwell.
   
• How could this have happened? Andy Borowitz reports as Trump accuses Biden of using performance enhancing books.

Continue reading “RBG, Groundhog Term, Town Hall, Blame Biden, Herds, Disgruntles”

 

From Cato Institute:

Contact tracing was among the many solutions presented to slow the spread of the coronavirus. Many problems with the plans rolled out by states emerged almost immediately. Julian Sanchez and Matthew Feeney discuss their chapter in the new Pandemics and Policy report.

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