Update no.1155

 Update from the Sunland

No.1155

26.2.24 – 3.3.24

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

 

To all,

 

The follow-up news items:

-- The Supremes decided to hear the immunity claim of [the person who shall no longer be named] [601 U.S. 23A745 (2024); case no. 23-939], which will further delay the federal election interference case, an appeal of United States v. Trump [DC CCA No. 23-3228 (2024)] [1152], which was in turn an appeal of United States v. Trump [USDC DC Case 1:23-cr-00257-TSC (2023)] [1125]. They will not hear the arguments until April 22, and we will not likely have a decision until May or June. The DC CCA ruling was demonstrative and definitive. That was apparently not enough for the Supremes.

What I find particularly disturbing in the certiorari statement was the framing on the question before the court in this case. They declared they would decide:

Whether and if so to what extent does a former President enjoy presidential immunity from criminal prosecution for conduct alleged to involve official acts during his tenure in office. [emphasis mine]

To me, the question is largely settled law—United States v. Nixon [418 U.S. 683 (1974)] [870] and Nixon v. Fitzgerald [457 U.S. 731 (1982)] [970]. The question from my perspective is whether a sitting presidency holds absolute immunity to commit felonious (unofficial) acts and avoid prosecution (not persecution) even when he is no longer in office. The case before the district court will determine and establish whether the acts he committed were official or unofficial, therefore until district court makes its factual findings, the Supreme Court should not address the validity of the root accusations. [The person who shall no longer be named] has appealed the lower court rulings on his motion to dismiss based on his claimed absolute immunity were denied. If the motion to dismiss is allowed by the Supremes based on their statement of immunity, we will not get to the questions of official or unofficial, legal or illegal.

Surprisingly, the Supremes are taking their sweet time in deciding this element of the charges against the former president. I thought far more urgency was required. In the timing alone, the Supremes are enabling the obvious delaying tactics of [the person who shall no longer be named].

-- The Odysseus (Odie) lander’s mission team [1154] is striving to make the most out of the bag of lemons they have. The lander appears to have broken two of its six legs on landing and has taken on a pronounced tilt. The current plan is to attempt to sleep the spacecraft through the two-week nighttime it is about to enter in the hope of reviving the spacecraft when daylight returns. All the onboard experiments appear to be at least partially functional. I wish them good luck in keeping the craft alive.

-- Illinois joined Colorado [1145] and Maine in banning [the person who shall no longer be named] from the ballot under the insurrection clause of the U.S. Constitution [§3, 14^th Amendment]. The plot thickens. The Supremes have yet to render their opinion on the disqualification {Trump v. Anderson [case no. 23-719 (2024)] [1149]}.

 

The Republicans and the Russians want to convince you that your vote does not matter, so why bother? They want you to doubt our election system to the greatest extent possible, so that you do not vote.

To that end, the folks who call themselves Republicans are striving mightily to convince us the election system is insecure, unreliable, and untrustworthy. They seek to impose dramatic constraints on voting to make it far harder to vote, so only citizens who have the means and capacity will vote, i.e., their people. If election day was a holiday, paid, day off, and they had sufficient polling stations so that every citizen could walk to the voting place and wait in line not more than 10 minutes, I might accept the elimination of vote-by-mail, early voting, and such. They (and here I mean Republicans, fBICPs, MAGAts) have gone the other way making is far more difficult and problematic to vote so that only the well-to-do can afford to vote.

Just remember, that gaggle on the far right want us to lose faith in our election system, to doubt the results. They want us to feel voting is not worth the time or effort. Why? So everyone other than their faithful will not vote. The result . . . their faithful will vote and thus dominate our governance, judicial, law enforcement, and education systems no matter how much of a minority they are.

If that is the nation you want, then you are well on the way to achieving it. If you do not want that society, then you must vote and not succumb to the Siren’s Song of the Right.

 

Octogenarian Senator Addison Mitchell ‘Mitch’ McConnell III of Kentucky announced he would resign as minority leader effective in November, but he would remain as the senior senator of Kentucky. McConnell will be remembered by history as the single legislator, then majority leader, who stole a supreme court nomination from President Barack Obama, refusing to even consider the president’s nomination of Merritt Garland for NINE (9) months, and then when the shoe was on the other foot just four years later, he turned around and jammed confirmation of [the person who shall no longer be named]’s third Supreme Court nomination through the Senate in one month at the end of his presidency. The time has come, long overdue.

 

Apple, Inc. announced they have abandoned their quest to produce an electric car. They have reportedly sunk more than US$1B into the development effort, employed roughly 2,000 employees. Why they decided to abandon the effort is unknown. Apple indicated they planned to transfer the employees work on the electric car to the expansion of their generative Artificial Intelligence initiative. Their car would likely have been as advanced as their other devices. Unfortunately, we will likely never know. Bummer!

 

Here is a simple observation. [The person who shall no longer be named] has made a daily, if not hourly, claim that he is the victim of a prejudicial legal system. He sayis being persecuted by the legal and judicial systems simply because he is the leading Republican candidate for president. He further claims that the indictments and suits against him are election interference efforts by the Democrats to prevent him from becoming president. The reality is there is only one person, one reason, why he is named in all these different cases in separate jurisdictions. HE VIOLATED MULTIPLE LAWS IN MULTIPLE JURISDICTIONS, period, full stop, shut the front door! He has only to look in the mirror to see the source. Do not be fooled by his worthless drivel. If any of us common citizens had done a mere fraction of what he has done in just one of these cases, we would be charged, tried, convicted, and imprisoned already. The man violated the law! Now, that said, he is innocent until proven guilty in a court of law. The gears of justice turn agonizingly slowly. The millions of dollars good American citizens have given to him and enabling him to use every possible tool to delay, delay, delay, on the gamble that he will be re-elected president, and in that position, he will order the dismissal of at least the federal cases and further obstruct the state cases against him in hopes of delaying any criminal trial until after he can no longer run for president or the grim reaper gets him. Either way . . . justice denied!

[The person who shall no longer be named] has also argued that any trial, federal or state, during the election campaign period (September to November) is unfair to him as a presidential candidate. To which I say, hey, numbnuts, again, look in the mirror. You are the one who broke the law beyond probable cause [beyond reasonable doubt is yet to be determine in court], and you are the only one striving mightily to delay rather than seeking swift justice to clear your name. I think of most us know what your delaying tactics mean regarding your guilt or innocence.

We are teetering on the precipice of making an accused (yet to be convicted) state and federal felony criminal president of the United States . . . again! What does that say about us as a people, a society, a culture?

 

Comments and contributions from Update no.1154:

Comment to the Blog:

“The question that can’t be answered in the abortion debate is when a separate consciousness or spirit enters the body. The partisans use whatever answer they can imagine in order to control women’s sex lives. With any luck, the ridiculous Alabama IVF decision will be overturned.

“Alexander Smirnov, the centerpiece of the case against the Bidens, is a liar and appears to be a Russian asset. The MAGAts don’t want to talk about that.

“I’d love for Justice Thomas to accept John Oliver’s retirement offer. It’s easily the best Thomas could do once he’s no more use to the oligarchs.

“I come from a rural place that’s been a home of Christian nationalists for a long time, and I’ve been watching them gain strength since Reagan’s time. This country won’t be safe for anyone if they take over.

“One issue with all of the above stress is that it distracts us from the climate issue. I saw a figure several times in my news feeds this week that 2.6 million Americans were displaced by natural disasters last year, and we are not a hard-hit area.”

My response to the Blog:

Quite so! Those factors are unknowable, which is exactly why I prefer to rely on a demonstrable extrauterine viability metric. When Roe was decided (1973), that threshold was pegged by medical science at 26-weeks gestation (post-fertilization). Medical science has progressed since 1973. Today, the threshold of extrauterine viability is roughly 20 weeks. If medical science and knowledge advanced to lower that threshold to two weeks, I could support reducing the decision threshold, which would concomitantly mean the detection of fertilization in a reliably practical manner would have to progress to allow such detection. Granting a zygote ‘minor child’ status is scientifically and rationally ridiculous based on emotion and religious belief. Those are not practical, measurable parameters to make such judgments and impose upon a woman’s fundamental right to privacy in her medical treatment.

Oh so true about Thomas. Just an unimportant FYI, I believed Anita Hill and was convinced Thomas should have never been nominated, set aside confirmed (1991). But that is history; we have what we have today.

I do not know nor am I able to judge safe or unsafe, I absolutely believe we would have less freedom of choice, less privacy, and reduced levels of other constitutional rights. As I have written many times, white Christian nationalism would be essentially just as calamitous as fascism, theocracy, and other forms of dictatorship.

Again, I see the issue at a very personal level in my very heavy lift convincing my wife that we must abandon fossil fuels and go all-electric. The struggle continues. We must dramatically reduce (with zero being the objective) our demand for and use of fossil fuels.

 . . . Round two:

“I agree that we can follow the threshold of viability in our understanding of what independent life is, but it raises the question of whether society is willing to pay for advanced procedures in the many cases where neither parents nor insurance can do that.

“I take my understanding of safety in a given nation from studying the history of governments. Under any given form of dictatorship, including theocracy, nobody is safe in their life or liberty.

“I have been car-free, partly by choice, for several years now. Yes, I'm bragging but I'm also a role model.”

 . . . my response to round two:

Absolutely agreed, which is precisely why that decision belongs solely with the pregnant woman and her presiding physician—no one else! The State has no business in private medical decisions. Most genetic anomalies can be detected before the viability threshold. Those that cannot or might threaten the life of the mother after the window opens are still the domain of medicine. The life of a mother supersedes that of an unborn fetus threatening her life, unless she freely chooses to risk sacrificing her life for her unborn fetus. In the latter case, I suppose we would be sanctioning suicide by baby.

While I agree that history records that your observation is generally true, it is not specifically true . . . or a given. Other people should be free to choose their preferred form of governance. As for me, I prefer freedom of choice over any form of authoritarianism including theocracy (or any version thereof) and especially MAGA governance.

You are fortunate to have access to an acceptable transportation system. We are not so fortunate in the Valley of the Sun. Far too many forces resist a workable public transportation here. Perhaps the best public transportation system I have yet experienced is the London Underground. Everything is within easy walking distance of an Underground station to the very outskirts of the city and links directly with five major railway stations for access to the rest of the UK and Mainland Europe. For us, a private automobile is a necessity.

 . . . Round three:

“You may be seeing news reports of tornadoes here. My immediate vicinity is okay, but several nearby areas saw damage.

“Whether or not people choose authoritarian governments, they are not safe under tyrants. The dictators turn on anyone for any reason or none.

“I found your transit system trip planner. You’re in a decent place for transit, although the far reaches of suburbs everywhere are less well served. You even have rail service, which we lack. I have included a link from your ‘burb to Tempe.

https://www.valleymetro.org/trip-planner?oname=Fountain+Hills%2C+AZ%2C+USA&olat=33.6042079&olng=-111.7256936&dname=Tempe%2C+AZI'%2C+USA&dlat=33.4255104&dlng=-111.9400054&mode=now&dt=-&tm=-

You also have Amtrak service, which we have been promised sometime in the future. I’m not convinced electric cars in their current incarnation will serve our needs.”

 . . . my response to round three:

Yes, I did see those weather reports. I am so glad you are safe & sound. Rough weather is always a challenge of life.

I would certainly agree with that. My point, it is their right to choose. One of our ‘Ugly American Syndrome’ consequences is our tendency to evangelize our form of democracy in countries whose people do not want that form of democracy, e.g., Afghanistan. We like to think all people want to be free. The reality is they do not. We must accept reality.

Thank you for our local transit planner. Most cities have such planners. I will include the link as a public service. It is also illustrative of the difficulty. According to the planner, the noted journey should take 1 hour 41 minutes with two transfers. In an automobile, the journey usually takes 30-45 minutes. My experience with public transportation worldwide is it often takes longer than expected. Further, that is one way. With a one or two hour appointment (doctors), we are talking about the better part of a day versus a quarter of a day. Therein lies the rub—time. Further, some buses are electric, most buses are diesel. The local rail is electric. Amtrak is diesel. I am still trying to do my part to eliminate fossil fuels. The struggle continues.

 . . . Round four:

“The USA doesn’t really evangelize true democracy. Those people might reject American capitalist control if we did that. (They will anyhow, but we’ve been able to buy the oil and other industries up to a generation of profits.)

“My other methods of living car-free are via walking (very location-dependent) or electric bicycles or scooters. Those work very well except in winter, but I’ll stipulate that I have a great deal of experience with bicycles as non-hobby transportation. (Transit use reduces fossil-fuel consumption because of shared use of resources.) Other than that, keep your eyes open. Other choices are in development and will roll out when the tipping point of climate change arrives.”

 . . . my response to round four:

Oh, we often say it, but I agree. Our representatives have espoused the American (capitalist based) form of democracy. The ‘Ugly American Syndrome’ has led to a unique form of arrogance on the world stage that has not endeared our nation to other across the global. We are admired for what we have accomplished and despised at the same time for how we impose our chosen system on others. The common disorder of American exceptionalism is not an admirable trait.

You are a far better man than me, my friend. I remain attentive to evolving technology that would enable us to dramatically reduce our consumption of petroleum in its myriad uses. As I often paraphrase the Chinese philosopher Lao Tsu, long journeys begin with small steps. My current writing project (hopefully my next book, provisionally titled Anod’s Glory) centers on our future five centuries from now. It is a fun book to write and imagine.

 

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

Cheers,

Cap                  :-)