By now all of my American readers, I am sure, have heard
about the flap in Pennsylvania about a group of seven military absentee ballots
that were mistakenly thrown away. All of the ballots, which were opened, were
for Trump. There has been endless commentary about the inappropriate role of
the United States Attorney General in this matter, about his briefing of the
president, of the way in which this plays into the president’s story about
millions of phony absentee ballots, etc. etc.
But none of these high profile high paid hotshot
commentators seem to have done what it took me five minutes this morning to do,
which is to locate the Luzerne County website online, take a quick look at its bylaws,
and ascertain that this is a Republican County with a Republican County
Commissioner and a majority of Republicans on the County Council. Which means
that it was Republicans throwing away ballots for Trump!
That is the real story – or rather the real exposé of the
nonstory – and any 12-year-old could have found this out more quickly than I
did. What is wrong with these people?
11 comments:
In your eighties, after reading Marx, knowing Marcuse, interacting with Chomsky, and developing a sound theory of anarchism, one must ask, why do you still watch tv news commentators? and why are you surprised that they're vapid?
I would suppose the response to Anonymous is, like Willie Sutton said of why he robs banks, because that’s were the current news are covered, for better or worse. Gone are the days of the responsible television journalism of Walter Cronkite, Edward R. Murrow, Chet Huntley, David Brinkley, etc. Television journalism has, unfortunately (with the exception of PBS), deteriorated into another form of entertainment, but if you want to know what your fellow citizens are being told, you have to watch/read what they are watching/reading.
The foremost news of the day – Judge Amy Barrett is Trump’s choice to replace Justice Ginsburg. In past interviews, Judge Barrett, a devout Catholic, has expressed the opinion that while she believes the central holding of Roe v. Wade will not (should not?) be overturned, it is subject to regulation “at the edges.” What hypocrisy. Conservatives fight every state effort to regulate the 2nd Amendment right to bear arms “at the edges,” but a woman’s right to choose, protected under the 4th Amendment’s right to privacy, is fair game. Moreover, abortion is, first and foremost, a medical procedure, which, under Roe is protected by the Constitution up through the second trimester. No other medical procedure, for men or women, is subject to judicial scrutiny or manipulation “at the edges.” And how close to Roe’s central holding can the edges come – with each shaving at the edges, the edges get closer and closer to the central holding.
MS
Except, you can still get the news over the web, without having to be bombarded by the sexualized idiocy of televised news. It's much quicker too, and often more reliable.
"In past interviews, Judge Barrett, a devout Catholic, has expressed the opinion that while she believes the central holding of Roe v. Wade will not (should not?) be overturned, it is subject to regulation “at the edges.” What hypocrisy. Conservatives fight every state effort to regulate the 2nd Amendment right to bear arms “at the edges,” but a woman’s right to choose, protected under the 4th Amendment’s right to privacy, is fair game. "
The 2nd amendment is pretty clear as written in the constitution, anyone who can read English knows pretty well what it means and why it's there. The so-called "Right to choose" and "right to privacy" comes from vague legal decisions based on the "penumbra" of the constitution, and it certainly isn't clear that the unborn have zero rights to be weighed against the right of the woman.
By now all of my American readers, I am sure, have heard about the flap in Pennsylvania about a group of seven military absentee ballots that were mistakenly thrown away.
(Raises hand.) I didn't know.
Another FUD story. Kind of agree with Anonymous here. At this point, on a certain level we can largely predict what our fellow citizens are being told.
@Unknown—Wrt Amy Coney Barrett, she's not just a "devout Catholic." (Pope Francis is a devout Catholic.)
Ms. Barrett told the senators that she was a faithful Catholic, and that her religious beliefs would not affect her decisions as an appellate judge. But her membership in a small, tightly knit Christian group called People of Praise never came up at the hearing, and might have led to even more intense questioning.
Some of the group’s practices would surprise many faithful Catholics. Members of the group swear a lifelong oath of loyalty, called a covenant, to one another, and are assigned and are accountable to a personal adviser, called a “head” for men and a “handmaid” for women. The group teaches that husbands are the heads of their wives and should take authority over the family.
Current and former members say that the heads and handmaids give direction on important decisions, including whom to date or marry, where to live, whether to take a job or buy a home, and how to raise children.
Some Worry About Judicial Nominee’s Ties to a Religious Group
Am I allowed to wonder out loud why there are so many Catholic justices? (And does this apply to appeals court judges as well, or just to those appeals court judges who are on the SCOTUS track?) It's particularly curious given that in 230 years there's been only one Catholic president. Biden would be the second. And I will bet that he will select another (or more) Catholic justices, should the opportunity arise. It matters to me because the justices who are Catholic tend to vote a particular way (Sotomayor notwithstanding). So to be elected president, it's seemingly been required that one not be Catholic, yet no such barrier for a lifetime appointment to the highest Court. It's about time there were some openly atheist, and for that matter, gay justices. Republican presidents proudly nominate ultraconservatives justices, like Barrett. But Democrats won't dare nominate openly gay or atheist liberal/progressive jurists.
edit: Interesting tidbit that I did not know until now. Although Thomas was raised in a Catholic family and is Catholic now, he was not a Catholic at the time that Bush appointed him to the Court. He returned to Catholicism from Protestantism during the 1990s.
I'm not sure "incompetence" is the right word to apply to the MSM since that seems to connote a degree of innocence of sorts in relation to what they peddle. That they might be engaged in something worse than incompetence is conveyed in, e.g.,
https://www.jewishvoiceforlabour.org.uk/article/the-guardians-abject-failure-to-speak-out/
I hate to say it, but maybe the odious trump does have a point when he refers to the fake media.
"What's wrong with these people"???
Thomas Frank explained the self satisfied, smug orthodoxy of the professional liberal pundit class in his "Listen Liberal (2016)" quite well.
What's wrong with Trump supporters?
They have for decades been left behind economically and have thus retreated from a reality based belief system; retreated because it was reality that has destroyed so much of their self worth and economic lives. Couple that, with the a lower level of personality organization, i.e the "primitive schizoid position", where everything is seen as "good/bad" and ambivalence is not tolerated. It's an old tale in history, too many people are just are not up to the task of tolerating the ambiguity and responsibility that would make something close to a garden of eden possible on Earth... and they occasionally set about preventing and recking that possibility with their blind rage harnessed by a disingenuous sociopath.
I'm afraid our last hope to avoid a christian-dominionist-fascist state, is for Biden to win in a landslide and for the generals to choose the constitution over Trump and his sociopathic associates.
Anonymous at 1:33,
You are correct that the right to privacy is a somewhat vague right which J. Douglas deemed to exist within the “penumbra” of the 4th Amendment, but your assertion that “the 2nd amendment is pretty clear as written in the constitution, anyone who can read English knows pretty well what it means and why it's there. is false. If you have not already, I suggest that you look at the principal decision addressing the scope of the 2nd Amendment in District of Columbia v. Heller, 554 U.S. 570 (2008), in which Justices Scalia, writing for the majority, and Justice Stevens, writing for the 4-justice minority, slugged it out in extremely long opinions discussing in extraordinary detail the syntax and semantics of the Amendment, which is arguably the worse written, most ambiguous of the Bill of Rights, and then proceeded to discuss at great length the history of the right to bear arms in England and this country. In fact, for those who want to see how a well-written decision is constructed – both by the majority and the dissent – I recommend that you take a look at Heller. You can find it on Justia Law.com.
MS
> after reading Marx, knowing Marcuse, interacting with Chomsky
Yes, it seems RPW really needs a more balanced (dare i say philosophical?) perspective on what's going on... For example, consider this https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-features/ex-qanon-followers-cult-conspiracy-theory-pizzagate-1064076/
The endless debates on the 2nd amendment in Supreme Court and elsewhere are just a perfect example of how intellectuals with too many degrees and too much time spent in the ivory tower manage to completely twist and obfuscate something that used to be very clear and simple to the mind of an average citizen reading and interpreting the constitution. And the so-called constitutionally guaranteed "woman's right to choose" is another great example.
But when your legal system twists and turns all common sense onto its head, obfuscation, ornamentation, and just plain bullshit will rule the day over simplicity. That's the only possibly way you can convince people that your interpretation might actually be correct.
Appeals to common sense seem undesirable as an alternative to reasoned argumentation. They were denounced by Kant as "a more convenient method of being defiant without any insight." But even if that's not quite fair (there are some distinguished common-sense traditions in the history of philosophy), opponents of gun regulation and abortion rights can hardly claim to have a monopoly on common sense.
Common sense might urge us to allow for some gun ownership for some purposes of self-defense and recreation. But this is not the only relevant pronouncement of common sense. Common sense also reminds us that guns are very dangerous, and that a society that makes powerful weapons more accessible risks enabling greater amounts of preventable and unnecessary violence.
Common sense urges us that taking actions which result in the deaths of defenseless and vulnerable humans, e.g. children, is normally very problematic. But common sense likewise urges us that forcing a woman to undergo pregnancy against her will, is very problematic; that various circumstances, some more obvious than others, may persuade the woman that the least objectionable option is to terminate; and that when someone has to undertake a difficult and ethically ambiguous course of action, it's normally sensible not to deprive this person of agency. (Common sense also reminds us that our society would likely look at abortion rights very differently if it happened to be men who became pregnant.)
Chances are it would be to our benefit to consult a good deal of actual research so we can weigh these competing considerations more carefully and informedly. And IMO, it would tend to be a good thing, not a bad thing, if the researchers had advanced degrees in their subjects.
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