Update no.965

Update from the Sunland

No.965

6.7.20 – 12.7.20

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

            To all,

            The epic aerial Battle of Britain began this week, 80 years ago.  The grotesquely outnumbered Royal Air Force Fighter Command fought desperately every day, several times a day, for the next three months, and those “Few” fighter pilots stopped the threatened and pending German invasion of Great Britain.  For the next year, the British stood alone against the German juggernaut.  Air superiority over the English Channel and Southeast England was a prerequisite for the German cross-Channel invasion; they failed to gain the necessary dominance of the air space.  Yet, history records that the Germans had ground down Fighter Command to such an extent that the British air defense system was literally within days of collapse.  Fortunately for the British and for freedom, German intelligence failed to detect the terrible state of Fighter Command, and then Hitler turned their aerial wrath upon London and other British cities.  Fighter Command was never so exhausted and spent ever again.  God bless all those who served the cause of freedom.

            The follow-up news items:

-- Once again, the Bully-in-Chief (BIC) flipped his middle finger to the world.  The BIC commuted the sentence of his good buddy and self-professed dirty tricks hitman Roger Stone [931].  The message is quite clear.  If you lie for the BIC, you get a pass.  If you remain loyal to the BIC, you get a pass; the BIC will protect you.  Senator Romney of Utah is quite correct: this is the most corrupt and unrepentant president in generations, if not all of history.

-- Well, wonder of wonders!  The BIC finally mustered up sufficient respect for wounded warriors and the medical staff that treat them for their wounds to wear a mask.  For the good that small gesture did, we have the plethora of other times where he demonstrated no respect for other people and thumbed his nose at rules from his own government intended to be guidelines for the reduction in the transmission of the virus.

            The BIC repeatedly and publicly proclaimed, “Because we’re doing more testing, we have more cases.”  NO! You freakin’ idiot.  We have cases because of infections regardless of whether you did any testing.  The only thing testing does is give us all some insight regarding the magnitude and location of infections that have already occurred.  Further, the quantity of COVID19 tests is irrelevant and has NO scientific meaning, which probably explains why the BIC keeps harping on the quantity of our testing.

            And, a lot of people who have swallowed this man’s damnable worthless snake-oil elixir question my patriotism, my commitment to this Grand Republic, and my judgment.  I prefer knowledge to ignorance, which is exactly and precisely opposite from the BIC’s nonsensical ignorance fueled by his rampant malignant narcissism.  He is so desperate that one day soon he will try to tell us the sun will not rise tomorrow.

            The COVID19 crisis did not cause the societal problems we face in the United States of America, but it sure as hell amplified, accentuated and brightly illuminated the corrosive crevasses that have grown in this once Grand Republic in the last few decades.  The virus has also shown a brilliant light on the void of anything even remotely called leadership at the ultimate level of this country.  The man has proven himself incapable to even a smidgen of leadership.  He is what he is.  We, the People, must endure his incompetence until he is gone.

            Two BIC-related Supreme Court decisions were released this week—Trump vs. Vance [591 U. S. ____ (2020); No. 19–635] and Trump vs. Mazars [591 U. S. ____ (2020); Nos. 19–715 and 19–760].  I started to write my review of each ruling as I read them.  Completing both, I abandoned my usual review.  Why, you may ask?  At the bottom line, the Court sent both cases back to the lower courts for further action consistent with the rulings; the consequence being, the BIC’s tax returns will probably not see the light of day until well after the election, which in turn means We, the People, will probably not know how much of a fake the nation’s top snake-oil salesmen really is in life.  C’est la guerre!  In short, the Mazars decision criticized the lower courts’ failure to assess the significant separation of powers questions in the congressional subpoenas for his tax records.  In Vance, the justices unanimously agreed (all nine of them) that the president does not possess absolute immunity, regardless of what the BIC erroneously claims.  The majority (7-2) decided the New York County district attorney has the authority and right to see the BIC’s tax returns for his criminal investigation.  However, the lower courts must establish that it is an appropriate and necessary action that respects the unique position of the president.  We have had three equal branches in the United States system of governance since 1787.  The power of the Legislature is vested in 535 members of Congress.  Nine justices of the Supreme Court hold the power of the Judiciary Branch.  The power of the Executive Branch rests with one person—the president, which emphasizes the vital importance of choosing a president wisely.  These two decisions were Pyrrhic victories for those agencies seeking to hold the BIC accountable for his alleged multiple crimes.  Both decisions directed the cases to be remanded back to lower courts for further considerations consistent with the Supreme Court’s rulings.  The result is likely that no one will see the BIC’s tax returns until well after the pending election.  So, there we go; yet one more time, the BIC gets to dodge accountability.  On the positive side, the Supremes’ unanimous statement that the president does NOT possess absolute immunity opens a crack in the BIC’s sense of invulnerability and perhaps invincibility.  Needless to say, the BIC was not a happy camper this week.

            This is what the BIC has brought to us with his terrible malignant narcissism affliction.  His conduct (no one else’s) has brought us one constitutional crisis after another.  And now, we have the Supreme Court expounding upon presidential immunity, vulnerability and prosecution.  There are very real reasons our precedents for high office have evolved the way they have.  The BIC has thumbed his nose at all of them and defied virtually every one of those precedents including the Constitution of the United States of America.  And yet, there is sits; he is still the duly elected president.  And the Senate proved incapable of removing him from office, so he continues to abuse the power vested in the office he temporarily holds.  I would like to be idealistic about the prospects of him being prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law once he leaves office, but my normally optimistic nature has been sorely shaken by the misdeeds of that despicable human being.  Let this era stand for what it really is, a prime, if not ultimate, example of what happens when We, the People, elect a man who is afflicted with malignant narcissism.  This is exactly why character matters.  We simply cannot make this mistake again.

            On a separate but distantly related side note, I read with particular interest Justice Thomas’ dissent in Mazars.  He quoted, “the supreme, absolute, and uncontrollable authority, remains with the people.”  Thomas has routinely asserted that privacy does not exist in or under the Constitution (in that, he is of course correct; privacy is not mentioned in the Constitution or any of the founding documents).  Although Thomas fails to articulate what absolute authority means exactly, I will argue that by virtue of that undefined absolute authority beyond the Constitution, every citizen’s fundamental right to privacy resides.  The 10^th Amendment states: “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.”  I will argue that like it was illuminated in McGirt (see below), “the magnitude of a legal wrong is no reason to perpetuate it.”  We have allowed the moral projectionists to use federal law to intrude upon our private lives and dictate how we are to live our lives, thus denying us freedom of choice.  I do not expect Justice Thomas or any other justice to endorse a citizen’s fundamental right to privacy, since it opens an uncontrollable Pandora’s Box for the Supremes.  Yet, that is exactly what they have done in McGirt.  Perhaps there is hope we might actually get this right someday.

            Just when we thought we had seen sufficient linguistic and legal gymnastics from this session of the Supreme Court, the hits just keep coming.  In addition to the cases noted above, the Court also rendered their 5-4 judgment in the case of McGirt v. Oklahoma [591 U. S. ____ (2020); No. 18–9526].  In 1997, Jimcy McGirt, the petitioner in the case, was charged, tried, convicted, and sentenced by the State of Oklahoma for molesting, raping, and forcibly sodomizing his wife’s four-year-old granddaughter. He was sentenced to 1,000 years plus life in prison.  At issue in the McGirt case 23 years later is jurisdiction.  The Court decided in this narrow decision that the State of Oklahoma did not have judicial jurisdiction to try McGirt.  Beyond the unusual character of the McGirt case sits the history of it all.  This story begins when President Andrew Jackson signed into law the Indian Removal Act of 1830 [PL 21-I-148; 4 Stat. 411; 28.May.1830] [509, 583].  The so-called “Five Civilized Tribes”—the Cherokees, Chickasaws, Choctaws, Creeks, and Seminoles—were forcibly relocated from their traditional homelands in the Southeast United States to newly established reservations of the Indian Territory—the eastern half of the Oklahoma Territory. The process became known as the infamous Trail of Tears (a whole history thread in itself).  This part of the story took an important turn when Congress passed an Indian appropriations act [PL 48-341; 23 Stat. 362] that was signed into law by President Chester Arthur on the day before the inauguration of his successor.  Most notable in that law was the last section (§9 [23 Stat. 385]) that became known as the Major Crimes Act (MCA).  Associate Justice Gorsuch wrote the Court’s opinion that McGirt’s crimes were under the MCA and the State of Oklahoma did not have jurisdiction and reversed the ruling Court of Criminal Appeals of Oklahoma.  Chief Justice Roberts wrote the dissenting opinion to which Alito, Kavanaugh, and Thomas joined.  He articulated a variety of objections not least of which was his contention that the Creek Reservation ceased to exist when Oklahoma became a state [16.November.1907], and the MCA no longer applied to McGirt’s crimes.  He did not convince his colleagues.  Lastly, the Court did not define what happens next and perhaps more importantly how.  According to the majority opinion, the Tribe and federal government hold part of jurisdiction, but it was not clear what exactly will happen with respect to Jimcy McGirt.  The history aside, the knock-on effects of this ruling are yet to be determined.

            Comments and contributions from Update no.964:

Comment to the Blog:

“‘Normality’ doesn’t yield easily to definition or description.  Let’s seek a more peaceful, caring, and sane future.

“The current Supreme Court, as exemplified by Chief Justice Roberts, shows a consistent pattern.  Social justice issues are decided with some leeway for decency to people.  Anything affecting capitalists or the other oligarchs is going in their favor.”

My response to the Blog:

            Quite true!  Normality depends upon a metric that easily changes from person to person, country to country.  Yet, I think most of us, if not all of us, would say the daily routines of our lives have been affected, perhaps adversely so, by the COVID19 crisis.  We will come out on the other side, of that I am certain.  However, what is in doubt and questionable is how much pain we must suffer on the journey.  In the county where I live, hospital ICU bed occupancy is over 96% and headed inexorably toward saturation.  This is the fear that has held me since the beginning of this crisis, not the virus.  God help me if I have a heart attack or a stroke, something serious that needs ICU treatment to survive.  Our ICU occupancy was comparatively low until Memorial Day (when the governor ordered the state to open for business (under pressure from the BIC).  Today, just four weeks later, we are at a critical level.  So from my perspective alone, there is very little that can even be remotely called normal since the beginning of the year.

            As I have written in my long running debate with the strict constructionists with respect to the interpretation of the Constitution and the law, the law can be, and I respectfully submit should be, seen as We, the People, rather than federalist authority.  Many of these controversial cases raise that focus or perspective. The June Medical Services ruling is the most glaring of the recent bunch of decisions.  There is a famous line from Aaron Sorkin’s writing for the series “The West Wing”—"In the 20s and 30s, it was the role of government; 50s and 60s, it was civil rights, the next two decades are going to be privacy.”  A citizen’s fundamental right to privacy (above the Constitution) is the one essential element supporting our freedom of choice.  Without privacy, we have no freedom of choice.

 . . . Round two:

“I’ve been harping about the specifics of the response long enough to be tired of my own voice.  I’m not paying close attention to the virus news, either.  I’m curious if the Chump’s rally in Tulsa two weeks prior to July 4 has produced a rise in cases there.  That’s a near-perfect event to test whether distancing and masking are as effective as the governors are hoping.

“‘We the People’ is not a concrete term.  How would you have power distributed and how would you get that done?  Also, note the different results in civil liberties cases (e.g., marriage) as opposed to issues affecting corporations and high finance.”

 . . . my response to round two:

            Good Q.  The rally occurred on 20.June.2020.  As I look at the data, the Oklahoma infection rate took a drastic turn in early June, which suggests Memorial Day as the culprit.  There is a further increase after 20.June.  Kansas is similar.  Arkansas is not quite so precipitous.  I’ve not seen any reporting that attempts to make a more direct correlation.

            We, the People, is pretty concrete to me.  I am not quite sure what you are pointing at with your queries.  However, I will make a stab at it.  To me, the difference is a mindset shift away for dicta regarding how people should live their lives, i.e., freedom of choice.  The purpose of all levels of government is to regulate the public domain for the common good.  Government, at any level, has no right to intrude upon the private lives of citizens except when injury or potential injury to another human being is present.  There are far too many laws that intrude directly into our private lives and our freedom of choice.  Most of us say so what, does not affect me, e.g., drug consumption, prostitution.  To me, the key is withdrawing government from our private lives and choices.

 . . . Round three:

“We share that dislike and disapproval of the government meddling in private morality, but the question is what you want to do about it.”

 . . . my response to round three:

            There are only two tools in my kit regarding this question.  1.) write and talk about the issue at every opportunity to convince others of the need for realignment.  2.) vote only for candidates who are willing to change the laws to remove the government from our private lives.

Another contribution:

“I know you have been strong in the past on condemning the leaking of classified information.  In these days of presidential abuse of power, I’m wondering if you are having second thoughts about it.  I’m thinking that if information damaging to the administration can be classified/redacted it may just be in the best interest of the republic to leak it.”

My reply:

            No, my opinion regarding classified material has not changed.  The current occupant of the Oval Office is temporary; he will pass hopefully sooner rather than later.  We must vote.  There are processes to deal with rogue presidents like we have now, hiding damning or derogatory material behind classification—the whistleblower system.  It’s not perfect, but it’s better than unilateral leaking of sensitive material.

A different contribution:

“https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-53353953

“Cap, when reading the current news items, I despair and am amazed how you can stay on an even keel with your blog.

“We hear the CV virus is still rampant and yet there seems to be very little effort made nationally to curb this dreadful illness.

“And now Cap I read of your BIC’s latest assertion to notoriety. Am I being damned disrespectful by suggesting that you need to replace that man now, not in 2021 but now.”

My response:

            No, no!  You’ve definitely not overstepped.  I’m just saturated reading more Supreme Court cases—two regarding the BIC’s infamous tax returns.  You were NOT over the top on yesterday’s contribution; I was just slow on the uptake.

            It really gets to us over here as well.  We inflicted this idiot on the whole world.  That is extraordinarily sad and regrettable; our friends must suffer for what we’ve done.  He has so badly botched the pandemic response non-effort that 133,000 people died needlessly because of his ineptitude, and I dare say we (Americans) have set the worst, i.e., the greatest negative, example for the entire world.  Brazil is striving mightily with their own inept version of the BIC to surpass the United States in infamy.  This man is embarrassing, despicable, disgusting, and otherwise contemptible.

            For 70 days he denied there was a problem.  Then, when the physical infection data became undeniable, he declared a national emergency and himself a wartime president, and worse, in the middle of the mortal battle, he up and declared victory, everything is over, nothing to see here folks, everybody go back to work.  Of course, regardless of whatever the cretin says, with such idiocy, what happens?  The infections skyrocket worse than at any time since the beginning of the pandemic.  Sadly, the folks that have swallow the man’s worthless snake-oil are trying to deny the pandemic even exists . . . as droves of citizens die from acute respiratory failure.

            The viral infection is bad, really bad, but to me, what is far worse is the outright insanity of the man chosen to lead us in dangerous times.  He has graphically demonstrated his incompetence, e.g., injecting disinfectant, slow down testing, testing makes our infection rate go up, no problems . . . kids go back to school, ad infinitum ad nauseum.  This whole predicament is so far beyond reprehensible that there is no word to describe our dreadful state.

            My worst personal fears have come to fruition as a consequence of the above.  Our ICU treatment capacity in Phoenix is saturated.  We (Jeanne and I) have been successful in defending ourselves from the virus.  Now, we must pray nothing serious happens to us during the pandemic until we can make it out the other side of this situation—one way or the other.

            I’ve read one of the tax rulings regarding the BIC and working on the other.  I hope to have them done for this week’s Update edition.  The BBC accurately reported on the rulings and the BIC’s response.  Yet, the question remains, will he suffer the consequences?  That point remains open for debate.

            No, you are definitely not being disrespectful.  You are being honest and forthright.  I wish we could be rid of him today, but alas that is not going to happen.  His malignant narcissism will not allow him to admit defeat like Nixon had the bollocks to do 46 years ago.  The BIC will force us to ride this out to the end however and whenever that comes.

 . . . follow-up comment:

“I was going to say jump on a jet plane flying NE, we’ll collect you from Heathrow.  Our village is clear, our hospital is running quite normally, our glorious county hasn’t lost a solitary individual for weeks.  But we take all the precautions required. Tomorrow we have a 90-year-old friend staying for a hot chocolate.  We sit outside with no hugging or hand shaking but we meet!  She was a WW2 youngster in London so we have plenty to discuss.

“My comments of yesterday-well I do feel that as a Brit I have no right to make such disrespectful remarks about your leader, so I’m very pleased to hear I haven’t disrupted our empathy.

“Pack your bags!”

 . . . my follow-up response:

            What a delightful suggestion.  It would be a welcome break from the nonsense we have to deal with here in the colonies.  We clearly have a significant segment of our communities who refuse to take precautions . . . and the result is, an exploding infection rate.  Surprise, surprise!

            Your visitor was old enough to be quite aware of what was happening around her.  She may have been shipped off to the countryside as part of Operation PIED PIPER.  I’ll bet she has plenty of stories.  She may have been aware of the contrails above her head during the day, The Blitz, the build-up of Allied forces (Operation BOLERO), the V-1 & V-2 attacks, and of course VE Day when she was 15yo.  Enjoy the visit, my friend.

            Quite the contrary, you have every right.  What this buffoon is doing affects so many people, perhaps not directly for you and your countrymen, but indirectly at the very least.  He is the modern-day Nero playing away on his fiddle while Rome burns.  I have always and will continue to encourage your comments as you see them.

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

Cheers,

Cap                  :-)