Update no.989

 Update from the Sunland

No.989

21.12.20 – 27.12.20

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

 

            To all,

 

Jeanne and I had a crystal clear night sky and a good view of the Great Conjunction (Jupiter and Saturn) on the winter solstice.  Binoculars helped, but they were no match for a good telescope.  The astronomers tell us the last time this occurred was 400 years ago.  I was not around then.  I’m just sayin’.

 

The Bully-in-Chief (BIC) suffered yet another judicial defeat.  This one was pointed at his administration as POTUS and was softened about as much as a court can soften against the POTUS and his administration.  On 21.July.2020, the BIC issued a memorandum to the secretary of Commerce titled: “Excluding Illegal Aliens From the Apportionment Base Following the 2020 Census.”  The notion seems like a reasonable idea prima facie, except for one itsy-witsy tiny little thing—the U.S. Constitution.

Article I, §2, clause 3

Representatives and direct taxes shall be apportioned among the several states which may be included within this union, according to their respective numbers, which shall be determined by adding to the whole number of free persons, including those bound to service for a term of years, and excluding Indians not taxed, three fifths of all other Persons.

Amendment 14, Section 2

Representatives shall be apportioned among the several States according to their respective numbers, counting the whole number of persons in each State, excluding Indians not taxed.

Since 1787 and the Framers very words, they chose to use the word “persons,” not citizens or legal residents, or any other word, just persons.  As an intellectual discussion, we could argue either way—why it should be or why it is not?  But, the words are the words.  Now, you would think the strict constructionists on the SCOTUS would settle this debate in very short order, but surprise, surprise, they did not.

The Per Curiam ruling in Trump v. New York [592 U. S. ____ (2020); No. 20–366] took the soft path.  The Court decided the case was not ripe, or perhaps ripe enough, for their judgment, so they vacated the district court decision and remanded for dismissal for lack of jurisdiction.  While three justices (Breyer, Sotomayer & Kagan) were part of the unanimous judgment, they agreed upon Justice Breyer’s dissenting opinion that the Court did not go far enough and would have affirmed the lower court findings.

 

After Congress finally passed a COVID19 relief bill with overwhelming bipartisan majorities in both chambers, the BIC decided it was not enough.  [At this point, I would normally cite the relevant legislative data here, but alas, as this edition of the Update draws to a close, I do not have access to the information through my normal sources.]  The bill included a US$600 direct distribution, the BIC decided that was not enough.  He publicly stated he wants US$2,000 per person.  Just to put that in perspective, we have roughly 260M adult (>18 years old) people.  At US$600, that translated into US$156B, while US2K equates to US$0.520T.  Don’t misinterpret my words, many in this country desperately need that money and much more, actually.  The real question is not how much more money do we borrow from the future?  No, the salient question is, where was the BIC, the self-proclaimed master of the deal, during the months of negotiations between Congress and his faithful minions for the last six months?  He has been an AWOL president since the election last month.  Why now?  What on earth inspired him to get his fat butt off his golf cart seat and put his thumb on the scale now?

P.S.: late Sunday evening, before this edition of the Update could hit the wire, the BIC reportedly signed the bill into law [not yet confirmed].  I have no clue why the BIC chose his antics and caused so much distress to citizens in need during these difficult times; but, there you have it.

 

I watched and listened to President-elect Biden’s speech and news conference on Tuesday, 22.December.2020.  I liked the tone and content of his message.  He is trying hard to convey a message of unity.  He repeatedly refused to condemn Republicans, and in fact, he reached out to Republicans to reject the divisions of the BIC.  So far, Biden is saying and doing all the correct things to move us back together.  He also handled questions from the Press in admirable form, refusing to take the bait.  This is a refreshing change from what we had to deal with for the last four years.  There is hope, but we are not out of the tunnel, just yet.

 

For a political party that claims to be staunch supporters of the Constitution, I illuminate with disturbing alarm the words of Vice President Pence at a political rally in West Palm Beach, Florida, on Tuesday, 22.December.2020:

As our election contest continues, I’ll make you a promise.  We’re going to keep fighting until every legal vote is counted.  We’re going to keep fighting until every illegal vote is thrown out.  We're going to win Georgia.  We're going to save America and we'll never stop fighting to make America great again.  You watch.

What is shocking in the vice president’s words is not his choice of words but the timing.  All 50 states certified their election vote counts by the 8^th of December.  In accordance with the Constitution of the United States of America, the Electoral College met in their respective states and cast their votes—the votes are done and certified in each state.  A joint session of Congress will officially count the Electoral College votes on the 6^th of January.  I suspect the BIC is depending upon Stalin’s philosophy, i.e., it is not who votes that counts; it is who counts the votes that matters.  My guess is, the BIC and the BICP believers intend to count the votes in their own little secret way.  Further, I guess Pence has decided to be the BIC-mini-me—sad but that is how it appears.  The Constitution says the election is done, so why is Pence defying the Constitution.  Oh wait, he is in the same party as McConnell who already set the standard for defying the Constitution. So, when any BICP (former GOP) member talks about defending the Constitution, we should all stand up and shout as loud as we can—BULLSHIT!  They are not defending the Constitution; they are only defending their tenuous grip on power—Constitution be damned!  Let us call a spade a spade here.  The BICP stands for the Constitution when it suits their needs to retain power, and they clearly and demonstrably have absolutely no problem ignoring the Constitution when it suits their need to retain power.

 

I could easily rant on for quite some time or unleash another of my infamous tirades about the BIC’s outrageous pardons this week, but I am very, very tired of this man and his irrational behavior.  I thought Clinton’s Mark Rich pardon was bad, but the BIC has lowered the bar so bloody low we can no longer see the bar.  At least when he is no longer in office, we can be rid of a portion of his terrible conduct.  Be gone you rat!

 

ALSO, with large, bipartisan majorities in both chambers, Congress passed the William M. (Mac) Thornberry National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2021 [H.R.6395; Senate: 84-13-0-3(0); House: 335-78-1-16(5)] and sent the bill to the president on the 11^th of December.  On the 23^rd of December, the BIC vetoed the legislation for a host of reasons that were in fact in his budget proposal to Congress, i.e., Congress gave him what he asked for, and now he rejected that congressional action.  He specifically cited two items that he now says he must have are: 1.) the repeal Section 230, and 2.) removal of the provision renaming of U.S. military bases currently and historically named for Confederate generals, e.g., Bragg, Hill, Hood, et cetera. The “Section 230” he refers to is Title V, Subtitle A, §509 [110 Stat. 137] of the Telecommunications Act of 1996 [PL 104-104] that protects Internet service providers from content liability for subscriber postings.   [The provision has repeatedly angered the BIC for social media providers intervening against his false information and propaganda].  The second item is in the current legislation as Title III, Subtitle E, §370 of the bill.  The BIC’s action will now force Congress to override his veto.

 

As the BIC sits on the COVID relief bill, a good chunk of the American citizens suffer, and he forces Congress to override his veto in the Defense appropriations bill, he goes to his Florida resort and goes golfing every day.  I do not fault any president (including the current version) from enjoying his/her form of relaxation.  However, the BIC has taken his pleasure in to a rather excessive extent.  Further, more so than any of his predecessors, the BIC has his relaxation to the extreme and without the slightest twit of concern for the timing or optics.  Today, he is the contemporary version of Emperor Nero fiddling as Rome burns, or Queen Consort Marie Antoinette’s “Let them eat cake.”  Perhaps we should look upon his latest shenanigans as a blessing in that we only have to endure another three weeks of his abuse and nonsense.

 

            Comments and contributions from Update no.988:

“Thanks Cap-do you know I must have lost track of the date-these came in something of a surprise!  Will read of course.  Ghastly weather here-the country is beginning to flood. The virus is rampant, we are banned from visiting many other countries and many of the nation is in lock down-not us, as yet.”

My reply:

Hey, happens to all of us.  No more Saturday, or Wednesday; now, it’s just Day.  Today is Day.  They are all the same now.

Yes, indeed, we see news of a new strain in the motherland.

We are not in lockdown yet either.  Hopefully, it does not come to that, but we are dreadfully close.  Growing numbers of hospitals are reporting full-up, saturation, no-room-at-the-inn.  Now, we must hope and pray none of us needs critical care medical services.

 . . . follow-up comment:

“I was only a moment ago reading about your BICs inclination to introduce martial law in five states, I thought ‘I wonder if Cap knows about this?’  Glad I didn’t raise the point!  Unbelievable.  He has no ‘fans’ this side-let’s move on, we have enough to worry about currently.”

 . . . my follow-up reply:

No worries.  You are welcome to raise any point you wish for any reason you wish.

I suspect we are living the quiet before the storm.  I also suspect that the first week of January we might witness the full ferocity of the storm as we get the Georgia senatorial runoff election results on the 5^th, and the Electoral College official results in a joint session of Congress on the 6^th.  The martial law chat is real.  Fortunately, the military is pushing back on such a ludicrous notion, but the BIC is a cornered and wounded cat that might do just about anything to retain office and stay ahead of the law.

The majority this side are not fans of the BIC either.  But alas, he remains the duly elected POTUS until noon on the 20^th of January.  I do not underestimate his desperation, and his paucity of any sliver of morality, conscience, or honor.  We must brace ourselves for the storm to come.  70M American citizens still believe they have been cured of their ills by the BIC’s magic snake-oil elixir; we cannot fix that.

 

Comment to the Blog:

“The Chump will continue to rant.  I applaud the Federal judiciary’s decisions to date on the Chump’s attempts to overturn the election.  Our ‘government of laws, not of men’ (John Adams) appears to be holding.  Meanwhile, we have much work ahead to take our country back from the oligarchs.

“I’m doing my bit for the medical system by avoiding my providers’ entire corporation until they change their mask requirement.  I can’t breathe at all with the one they allow, and they have no sympathy for my nasal structure problem.  I’ll take care of myself and do a better job than they are doing now.

“The third vaccine that’s in the pipeline requires only refrigeration rather than freezing and is cheaper than the first two.  That should help.

“I’m much closer to that ‘democratic socialist’ set of positions than the Democratic National Committee (DNC) is.  Both they and I object to your other correspondent’s characterization of the DNC as any kind of socialist.  The DNC serves Wall Street and corporate America, just as they have since Clinton.

“I learned information and source assessment by being trained in journalism during Watergate and again in college.  I studied distortion and misuse of information in a marketing-department major that supported those techniques.  (That includes buzzwords such as ‘socialist’ and ‘leftstream’.)  Your statement about the right misusing information is spot on.

“As I type this, the moment of the Solstice has passed, marking a new beginning in my particular spiritual path.  I’m feeling it.”

 . . . my response to the Blog:

Yes, he is, although he is spending more time than usual for him on the golf course.  He has been comparatively quiet by BIC standards.  My suspicion is that this moment is simply the quiet before the storm.  As the events of the first week of January loom larger, I suspect we shall witness the storm.

The strength of this republic has been sorely tested during these last four years and most of all in this last year (2020) from hell.  We have an incredibly great amount of work ahead to heal the deep wounds exacerbated by the BIC’s politics of division.

Thank you for doing your part.  We are doing our part as well.  Despite the me-me-me bent of the BIC and his believers, we continue to do our part to protect them.  Unfortunately, the virus does not care; it only looks for hosts to infect and multiply.  The BICP has provided ample hosts; the anti-vaxxers will add more.  The virus will continue to do what it does best, and we shall continue to do our part to defeat the virus.  Please continue to take care of yourself.

Yes, the third vaccine and others are still in work.  The first two used the new mRNA technology.  The others are using more traditional methods as I understand such things.  You noted a big plus for the traditional vaccines.  With so many variants, I wonder whether we will have a choice?

Yeah, the right loves to bandy about the ‘socialist’ term like it is some curse word.  The reality is, we have embraced forms of socialism for nearly a century.  What is worse is the hypocrisy of the BICP and former GOP; they have embraced corporate socialism for a longer period, and we see more evidence of that fact in the latest pandemic relief legislation passed by Congress yesterday.  I believe in strong corporations and vibrant commerce, but not at the expense of people.  If my choice is the BICP or socialism, I’ll take the latter.  Thank you.

I must acknowledge that the right, the former GOP, and now the BICP are far more effective at using the various elements of propaganda.  They have no conscience, which makes it very easy to embrace conspiracy theories and attack everything not to their liking.  The Clintons loved to scream about the “vast right-wing conspiracy.”  I used to discount such statements as political whining.  I do not think that way today.  Perhaps they were far more prophetic than we thought.  The BIC’s “Fake News” attacks on the Press is a very important element of that campaign.  We must resist.

 . . . Round two:

“Oddly enough, you might have missed the sarcastic tone for my avoiding medical treatment.  I find it ironic that corporate medicine gave me a medical reason to stop using their medical services.

“I wasn’t concerned with the Republicans’ use of ‘socialism’ but with the Republican Lites’ (aka ‘mainstream’ Democrats’) adopting of the term.  The Republicans have always talked like that, but the Democratic National Committee keeps moving further and further right.

“I find spiritual rewards in connecting to eternal things, such as the cycles of the years and the days. Among other things, they remind me that ‘all this’ (stress) is temporary.  The conjunction wasn’t visible in rainy Ohio, but I’m glad it rewarded many others.”

“PS: I hesitate to bring this up publicly, but what influence could the Russian hacking have had on the news cycle, directly or indirectly?  We’ve been hearing some unlikely notions from the far right.”

 . . . my response to round two:

Yep; didn’t detect the sarcasm.  Sorry.  Ironic . . . perhaps.  The word I would choose is sad, or maybe tragic.

You persist in that demonstration.  I do not see it as a right shift.  I believe it is more like seeking the middle.  The DNC is definitely to the right of the hard progressives like Sanders & AOC, but that does not make the DNC on the right side of the spectrum.  Collaterally, the BICP is hard set upon the fascist end of the right extreme of the spectrum.  So for me, the choice is simple.

I’ve seen articles, memes and such that are pretty far out there.  Some of them stink of Russian stirring-the-pot operations.  Sadly, a significant chunk of our citizenry believes the stuff; they send it to me as if its evidence, which is exactly what the FSB & NKVD want.  They seek the BICP believers including the BIC himself.  I believe the Russians are trying very hard to poke the BIC into declaring martial law and the election null & void.  I suspect we shall see the ferocity of the storm the first week of January, or the week after.  I so want to be wrong, but I fear I’m not.

I’m sorry you missed the peak of the conjunction, but it will still be in the evening sky for a few days.  Rain = green.  We need the rain.  Enjoy your spiritual rewards.

 . . . Round three:

“If we ignore the noise and look at national policy back to the Reagan Administration, a general rightward shift appears in war-making, foreign affairs more generally, taxation, corporate regulation, and tax policies.  The DNC reflects that.  The only exception is a limited range of social policies that don’t concern the money people much one way or the other.

“I’ll be glad if you get rain there. Any precipitation is valuable in the desert.”

 . . . my response to round three:

I think you may be excessively discounting accomplishments in previous administrations.  For example:

-- McCain–Feingold Act [PL 107-155; 116 Stat. 81] [322] {Bush 43 admin.} – a valiant attempt at campaign finance reform (although largely gutted by SCOTUS).
-- Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 [PL 107-204; 116 Stat. 745] [455] {Bush 43 admin.} – major corporate accounting reform to gain greater uniformity and insight into public company finances.

-- Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA) [PL 111-148; 124 Stat. 119] [432] {Obama admin.} – the most comprehensive effort at health care reform yet accomplished; we can rightfully argue the PPACA did not go far enough and the BICP has worked tirelessly to emasculate the PPACA (on-going to this very day), but it was a helluva effort.
-- Don't Ask, Don't Tell Repeal Act of 2010 [PL 111-321; 124 Stat. 3515] [471] {Obama admin.} – a major step forward with non-heterosexual equal rights.

I could go on, but these were all major pieces of legislation and laws that improved the social policies in previous administrations.

 . . . Round four:

“Neither McCain-Feingold nor Sarbanes-Oxley was enough, and both were promptly watered down.

“PPACA was and is a gift to insurance companies.

“Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell and its follow-up address one of those social issues I mentioned that the money people don’t care about.  You seem to be focused on social policies that don’t matter to the oligarchs.  Even there, we’ve made more progress in the courts than the Congress, and that’s likely to stop soon.”

 . . . my response to round four:

“Perfect is the enemy of good.” [Voltaire]  Of course, none of the cited laws and in fact most laws are not enough.  That is the very nature of compromise.  Something is better than nothing.  They were all worthy efforts to correct long-standing wrongs.  And with the direct efforts of the BICP and assistance of the SCOTUS, we are headed back to the bad ol’ days, e.g., Citizens United [424].  So let’s give them their due credit for trying to fix things.  The BIC is pissing on the Constitution because he can.  We must standby and watch.

 . . . Round five:

“‘Something’ is only better than nothing if it means change and if it holds up over time.  That hasn't occurred with the financial-industry laws or with PPACA.  The centrist Democrats are not an improvement over the Republicans other than the Chump, and the Chump wields less actual power than McConnell and Pelosi.”

 . . . my response to round five:

Thank you for sharing your opinion.  Respectfully, I do not agree.

 

Another contribution:

“Enjoy your weekly narrative, trying to be objective about politicians of both parties kind of winds up I don’t trust many of them, their arrogance and self-interest.

“I tell my wife they are all like pet rattlesnakes never turn your back on them plus don’t get too close and pet them with a long stick.

“Hope 2021 is a better year for the Grand Republic and its worthy citizens.

“Keep up the good work.”

My reply:

Very well said.

 

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

Cheers,

Cap                  :-)