Update no.964

Update from the Sunland

No.964

29.6.20 – 5.7.20

Blog version:  http://heartlandupdate.blogspot.com/

            To all,

            Independence Day occurred on Saturday this year.  History records 1816 as the year without summer after the cataclysmic eruption of Mount Tambora in the Dutch East Indies (Indonesia) [10.4.1815].  We are living history as it seems certain history will record 2020 as the lost year, the year of COVID19, and a year worldwide without normality.  As we have done for decades, we read the Declaration of Independence—lest we ever forget.  This year it was my turn to read our founding document.  I have no idea how many times I have read the document in toto, word-for-word, and yet it never fails to bring tears to my eyes and choke me up.  Oh my . . . those glorious words.  It was only me reading to Jeanne and the dogs, but they were a worthy, attentive, and respectful audience.  We cooked up some amazingly delightful ribs for dinner—yum yum.  For the first time in my lifetime (excluding years when I was outside of the country on the day), we had no local fireworks to celebrate that special day 244 years ago, when we were compelled to “dissolve the Political Bands which have connected” us to our Motherland.

            On Thursday morning, after we took the dogs for a walky-walk, I was floating in the pool cooling off and relaxing when the distinct sound of something big caused me to stand up.  There overhead was a B-17 Flying Fortress followed by a B-25 Mitchell bomber.  My imagination immediately went to what it must have been like as hundreds of the aircraft just like those flew away from England toward targets in Germany, nearly 80 years ago.  The two aircraft are based at Falcon Field, Mesa, Arizona, as part of the Commemorative Air Force collection.  I do not know but I surmise they were headed off to some Independence Day weekend air show or aviation event.  They are magnificent flying machines with a melodious sound.

            The follow-up news items:

-- The European Union (EU) will be opening its borders as they have the COVID19 crisis [946] under control.  They are restricting access to those countries that meet the EU requirements:

1. number of new COVID-19 cases over the last 14 days and per 100,000 inhabitants close to or below the EU average,

2.  stable or decreasing trend of new cases over the previous 14 days, and

3. overall response to COVID-19 situation taking into account the available information, including as testing, surveillance, contact tracing, containment, treatment and reporting, as well as the reliability of the information and, if needed, the total average score for International Health Regulations (IHR).

The EU published that 15 nations qualified to their requirements; the United States is not on the approved list, having failed on all three requirements.  The PRC is on the list (with the proviso of reciprocity, not yet agreed to with the EU).

-- In his ruling late Tuesday [30.6.2020] in the case known as CAIR Coalition et al. v. Trump, U.S. District Judge Timothy Kelly of Washington, D.C., ruled that the asylum ban [859] violated the Immigration and Nationality Act, with governs the nation's immigration system.  The Bully-in Chief (BIC) is incapable of learning any lesson, so this case will undoubtedly be heading to the Circuit Court of Appeals and ultimately the Supreme Court, although pending cases on the BIC’s financial records may offer illumination as the potential outcome of this appeal.

            Moves are afoot in Congress to amend the pending national defense authorization act for FY2021 to remove anything remotely associated with the Confederacy from Defense Department buildings, properties, personnel, and organizations.  Further, military.com reported that Senator Warren intends to offer an amendment (I could not independently verify yet) to the bill revoking the medals of honor awarded to soldiers of the 7^th Cavalry for combat valor during the Battle of Wounded Knee (AKA the Wounded Knee Massacre).  If true, the effort is outright wrong, period, full stop!  If Warren wants to condemn someone for what happened at Wounded Knee, South Dakota, on 29.December.1890, go after the politicians who sent those troops into combat.  Those soldiers are not the culprits.  Stop punishing and insulting the military for what the politicians did.  Basta!  Enough already!

            We have begun to see a segment of our society accuse the Black Lives Matter (BLM) Movement of being infiltrated and dominated by Marxists, Communists, of being associated with Antifa, of being a terrorist organization, and any other moniker commonly used by the right-wing, social conservative tribe in our society.  In many related discussions, I usually say, so what.  Is our democracy so fragile that we cannot tolerate or embrace contrarian voices? But, that is not the point of this paragraph.  One question has become recurrent in percolating into my consciousness.  Is there or can there be reverse racism?  Can American citizens with dark skin pigmentation have racist thoughts or act in racist ways?

            Racism is often or usually defined as “prejudice, discrimination, or antagonism directed against a person or people on the basis of their membership of a particular racial or ethnic group, typically one that is a minority or marginalized.”  That definition should be sufficient for this topic and discussion.  Each of us has a right under our freedom of choice to utilize any one or combination of the social factors as relevant in our private lives.  As a reminder, I define the social factors as: age, gender, race, skin pigmentation, religion, ethnicity, national origin, sexual orientation, economic status, education, political affiliation, marital status (provided that the applicant has the capacity to enter into a binding contract), or disability.  What far too many citizens fail to remember, acknowledge, or apply is the social factors have no place in the public domain or in public conduct.  Discrimination on the basis of race or skin pigmentation in the public domain is wrong.  It has been since the creation of this Grand Republic, although it took us 100 years and a bloody Civil War to recognize that reality, and another 100 years to enforce it within the jurisdiction of the United States.

            The BIC suffered yet another setback from the Judicial Branch, this particular time at the hands of the 9^th Circuit Court of Appeals—Sierra Club v. Trump [9CCA Nos. 19-16102 19-16300 (2020); D.C. No. 4:19-cv-00892- HSG].  The court decided the Appellants would likely suffer irreparable harm if the USG’s border wall proceeded and thus had standing in the case.  The arguments provided by the court are really thin.  The three-judge panel decided 2-1 that the BIC could not transfer Defense Department funds for building his bloody border wall.  Assuming this case will be appealed to the Supreme Court, I suspect the Supremes will likely reject the injury claims as insufficient to override the USG’s national security and immigration control objectives for the common good.  I have no idea why the BIC is playing games with the separation of powers principles when he told us emphatically that Mexico was going to pay for his wall.  He promised us.  What happened to his promise?

            The legal gymnastics continue this week when the Supreme Court issued yet another controversial ruling.  ‘Tis the season!  This latest ruling dealt with another third-rail issue—abortion.  The ruling is simply the latest in a long running sequence of judicial rulings since Louisiana passed Act 620 in 2014, requiring admitting privileges at a local hospital less than 30 minutes from their clinic.  The latest ruling in this string is June Medical Services v. Russo [591 U.S. ___ (2020); No. 18–1323].  The Court decided 5-4 to declare the Louisiana law was unconstitutional.  The judicial argument in this case hung upon the interpretation of Article III standing, jurisdiction, interpretation of “promoting women’s health and safety,” among other judicial process issues.  Beyond the legal machinations, the essence of the challenge, as it did in a nearly identical Texas case—Whole Woman’s Health v. Hellerstedt [579 U.S. ___ (2016)]—hangs upon the assessment that admitting privileges may be appropriate, but there was not a good faith effort to utilize that regulation tool.  Some hospitals in Louisiana prohibited issuing admitting privileges to abortion providers.  Some refused to recognize qualified physicians.  The chief justice delivered the deciding vote in the 5-4 decision with the heart of his “concurring in the judgment” separate opinion based on his invocation of stare decisis (“to stand by things decided”), a principle of the law that dates back to 1765 (Blackstone Commentaries §3-69) and Black’s Law Dictionary (1891; 4^th ed., p.1577 [1968]).  Oddly, Roberts dissented in Whole Woman’s Health but chose to join with Breyer, Ginsburg, Sotomayor, and Kagan to produce the plurality decision.  Thomas, Alito, Gorsuch, and Kavanaugh each wrote a dissenting opinion with the dissenters only joining in Alito’s dissenting opinion.  The most disquieting opinion came from Justice Thomas.  He observed, “This Court created the right to abortion based on an amorphous, unwritten right to privacy, which it grounded in the ‘legal fiction’ of substantive due process, McDonald v. Chicago [561 U. S. 742, 811 (2010)] (THOMAS, J., concurring in part and concurring in judgment).”  In simple terms, he argues that neither the word nor the principle of “abortion” or “privacy” appear anywhere in the Constitution or the supporting documents, and thus are beyond federal judicial jurisdiction.  Thomas quoted Justice Black’s dissent, “[T]his general ‘right of privacy’ was never before considered a constitutional guarantee protecting citizens from governmental intrusion”—Griswold v. Connecticut [381 U.S. 479 (1965)] [166, 189, 323].  Justice Thomas is, of course, correct in that the words “abortion” and “privacy” do not appear in the Constitution.  He wants us to believe that the notion of a citizen’s right to privacy is a comparatively new judicial creation stemming from Griswold and used as the central pillar in Roe v. Wade [410 U.S. 113 (1973)] [319]—thus, his point of attack.

            I have long argued that these abortion decisions transcend and exceed the prima facie matter.  Abortion is simply the catalyst for a chemical (emotional) reaction.  When you distill rulings like June, you see the fundamental and perhaps diametric perspectives of the law.  One comes at the law as a federalist instrument, while the other approaches the law from the people perspective—We, the People.  The restrictions upon providers of women’s services are yet one more mighty effort at moral projection by conservative forces within our society.  If there was no demand, there would be no abortions.  Instead of focusing on the underlying causal factors, the moral projectionists attack the most vulnerable locus in the entire process.  They seek to impose their will to deny safe, regulated, and efficient providing of services under demand.  By their standing arguments, the dissent seeks to expose the private lives and choices of women to the rigors of judicial and public scrutiny, using yet another form of societal intimidation to discourage any woman from seeking abortion services.  Requiring doctors to have admitting privileges is a higher standard.  The Court seems to accept that requiring admitting privileges is appropriate.  The question I ask is, do other doctors—general practitioners, dermatologists, gastroenterologists, et al—have to maintain admitting privileges?  If not, why are physicians who provide women’s services required to have them?  The state appears to have abdicated its responsibility to the less scrutinized private sector to thwart providers of women’s health services.  Put into more narrative terms, the state seeks to pass regulation responsibility to the private sector, i.e., hospital admitting privileges, and then when hospitals refuse to issue those admitting privileges for political reasons, the state throws up its hands and says oh well, not our problem; we did our job.  I have felt this admitting privileges approach was highly suspect from the get-go.

            The privacy element is far more impactful to all of goes far beyond the abortion question.  The root of the matter is every citizen’s privacy.  Breaking down a citizen’s fundamental to privacy is the foundational corner stone to all of the moral projection laws that the social conservatives love to impose on everyone.  Without privacy, there is no bulwark against the intrusion of government in our private lives.  It would have been nice and exceptionally useful if the Founders/Framers had at least expounded in a Federalist paper or some other expository document what they believed about privacy.  If we listen to Justice Thomas, there is no such thing as privacy under the Constitution or the founding documents.  Therefore, privacy is not an issue within the jurisdiction of the U.S. Supreme Court.  He has never (to my knowledge) expounded upon whether he believes privacy exists, and if so, where does it exist.  However, privacy was a rather distant concept in the late 18^th Century.  There are obtuse hints like Blackstone’s Commentaries [e.g., individual private rights (1-1-139 [176]); every man’s house is his castle (3-19-288 [236], 4-16-223 [579]) {1765-69}].  The first reference to a citizen’s right to privacy appears in the Supreme Court’s ruling in Union Pacific Railway Co. v. Botsford[141 U.S. 250 (1891); 25.May.1891][507].  Samuel Dennis Warren and Louis Dembitz Brandeis articulated the privacy concept in their article titled: “The Right to Privacy” 4 Harvard Law Review, p.193, 15.December.1890.  Without a citizen’s fundamental right to privacy, there is no limit to what any government entity is capable of imposing upon our private lives and freedom of choice.  Every citizen, whether they know it or not, should be deeply concerned about the court’s view and treatment of our privacy.

            The Supreme Court made the correct and proper decision in June Medical Services.  Louisiana’s Act 620 is unconstitutional and deserved to be struck down.  None of us should be under any illusion that this matter is done and settled.  The moral projectionists are a relentless bunch, who are intent upon imposing their choices on every single citizen.  Thomas was the only justice who raised the privacy aspect in June Medical Services, but the consequences of the four dissenters is the same.  We must remain vigilant and resolute.

            Comments and contributions from Update no.963:

Comment to the Blog:

“I understand that you’re permanently offended with Agent Orange.  Many of us share that.  My phrase for this week’s trait we both find so offensive is “aggressively ignorant.”  However, it’s no surprise.

“I have no desire to erect or keep statues of military or government figures defeated by the United States military.  We teach in schools and museums about many of them, from John Burgoyne to Tojo, but we do not create monuments to any of them.  We should also strongly discourage any of their followers remaining from ever imagining they could rise again.

“About our discussion last week of the Southwest: my first choice of places to live there would be Tucson, Arizona, and second would be Las Cruces, New Mexico.  Both of those and many other cities are currently affected by wildfire smoke.  Hence, my concern about my lungs if I lived in one of those areas.  Sad to say, that’s not unusual.”

My response to the Blog:

            Aggressively ignorant . . . seems quite apropos.  Agent Orange was aggressively ignorant in the wallow of his malignant narcissism.  Indeed, no surprise and quite predictable given the nature of his affliction.

            So, on this bent to obliterate history, how far back do we go?  There are sins against humanity going back millennia, as far back as the beginning of recorded history.  How far back do we go to erase history?  I guess I’m just on the wrong side of this issue.

            I would encourage you to be not so hard on the Southwest.  Wildfires and smoke from wildfires are not as common as it may seem.  You must make decisions that are best for you.  Good luck.

 . . . Round two:

“Nobody proposes to ‘obliterate history.’  We still teach all of that.  We just don't honor those who attacked us.  There's a difference.

“It doesn't take much smoke (or other particulate air pollution) to trigger my lungs.  I watch weather sources, and they present maps of the smoke and the fires.  My statement stands.  I loved Tucson in the two months I lived there, but I still have to take reasonable precautions about my health and well-being.”

 . . . my response to round two:

            Perhaps not, but that is how is seems to me.  To be frank, I learned more about Woodrow Wilson than I knew prior to this dust-up.  His racism was more overt than most history books record.  I have known about Churchill’s racist thoughts for decades and written about them, but his public display was far less overt.

            Absolutely, you must do what is best for you.  I’m just saying that we lived in Arizona for 10 years the first time plus two more years this time, so far; we have yet to detect any smoke around us . . . dust a few times . . . but no smoke.  During the Bush fire (which has been extinguished), we could see the smoke, but it never affected us.  I’m just sayin’.

Another contribution:

“My God- the news coming from your side is depressing-the effects of this damned virus and your least favourite individual become worse by the day. We see a lot of these in the ‘excerpts’ published from newspapers, there is never a good word, as a consequence your BIC has few friends this side.”

My reply:

            Yes, the situation with our vaunted Oh So Great Orange One continues to worsen.  I am afraid it will continue to do so until he is relegated to the dustbin of history.  I’m amazed he has any friends across the pond.  The BIC has not treated our long-time friends with respect, dignity, or honor.  He is a despicable human being.  On the positive side, he is a temporary occupant of the Oval Office; he will be gone one day (hopefully, he will go in January).

            My very best wishes to all.  Take care of yourselves and each other.

Cheers,

Cap                  :-)