Just because Congress in 1869 stipulated a Supreme Court of nine doesn't mean Trump must appoint anyone

 Trump would be a fool not to make a Supreme Court appointment, of course, and he has done it, but the executive branch is co-equal and doesn't have an obligation to comply with the act of Congress from 150 years ago by appointing a replacement for RBG to make it nine if it doesn't want to make an appointment for prudential or even political reasons.

The executive can say the court costs too much and for that reason not make the appointment. The executive can say the court hears too few cases to require a ninth justice. The executive can say "eight is enough". Marbury v Madison, perhaps the most consequential decision ever, was decided by a Supreme Court 4-0 with a 6-member court (two were sick at the time). There was no magic odd-numbered formula which was required before that decision was made. No one today as a matter of politics views the decision as illegitimate for that reason, nor because the case was decided by too few members.

And FDR certainly is precedent for saying there were prudential reasons for believing the nine member court was inadequate for the historical moment. Just because he lost in this political quest doesn't mean it was illegitimate.

Consider that FDR wanted to pack the court in 1937 through a bill scheming to swell its numbers because the Supreme Court kept thwarting his New Deal legislation in Congress as unconstitutional from 1933. The Great Depression was a dire moment in American history, requiring, in FDR's mind, one attempt after another to alleviate it, no matter how unprecedented.

The other powers that be thought otherwise.

But eventually and fortuitously one justice on the Supreme Court, named Roberts !!! by the way, actually switched sides to favor a New Deal case pleasing to FDR, which ended up having the odd result of taking the wind out of FDR's court-packing sails.

The March 1937 5-4 decision came to be known for this reason as "the switch in time which saved nine". The court showed that it could, in fact, rule New Deal ideas constitutional. That removed the argument for packing the court, by effect if not by intent. The nine member court was adequate after all.

It's an interesting case showing the power of the Supremes, not just to rule, but to maneuver.

The presidential appointment power is a political matter because the president is elected.

But don't kid yourself that the court absolutely eschews politics when rendering its opinions. Though not politically conservative in nature, a March 1937 ruling upholding innovative, New Deal legislation, ended up preserving the traditional character of the Supreme Court reaching back to just after the Civil War. And it persists to this day.

The founders were genius in this respect, recognizing that political forces are inescapable and must be accepted, accounted for, and balanced in order to prevent a lurch into the absolute tyranny of a single one of the branches of government.

The imperative of the moment is the free exercise of politics within the constitutional framework, not tampering with the framework.

Never forget, one week before Election 2016 Trump was getting creamed in the polls in WI, MI and PA and ended up winning them all

"He's NOT going to retake WI (Clinton +5.7), Michigan (Clinton +6.7), Pennsylvania (Clinton +6), or New Mexico (Clinton +8.5)."

I said at the time, Tuesday Nov 1.

I said that it was dumb for Trump to be spending money in those states. Obviously Trump campaign internal polling must have indicated something quite different.

Today Biden is +5.5 in WI, +6.7 in MI and +7.1 in PA. 

Trump won't lose because he dropped the f-bomb on the Rush Limbaugh Show, but it's a sign of the basic disrespect for his audience, his office and the American people which will be the reason

 Here.

Election 2016's dirty little secret is that 52% of nonvoters were non-Hispanic whites, a huge untapped reservoir of votes feared by the identity politicians of the left

And Pew Research did its best to lie about them in this study from 2018, saying "nonvoters were more likely to be younger, less educated, less affluent and nonwhite. And nonvoters were much more Democratic".

Pew's own graph and statements show this not to be true.

Nonvoters were more likely to be white, 52% vs. 46%, and fully 53% of them did not prefer Hillary Clinton in 2016: "37% expressed a preference for Hillary Clinton, 30% for Donald Trump and 9% for Gary Johnson or Jill Stein; 14% preferred another candidate or declined to express a preference". 

The American left fears this potential white vote, which is why it must lie about it, minimize it, drug it, demoralize it, and vilify it.

It is why you hear so much about mythical white supremacists in the news, and mythical violent white militias causing mayhem everywhere, even as media and Democrats deny Antifa is a thing or that BLM is violent. Meanwhile those leftist groups, anarchist and communist, are getting away with inciting and actually causing riots, arson, looting, injury, and murder on a previously unimaginable scale, now approaching a cost to the economy of $2 billion. Their foot soldiers are the half-educated, indoctrinated, young, poor products of America's unionized public schools.

The left demonizes whites in order to neuter them, knowing their deep-seated American cultural propensity for guilt derived from Christianity. It plays on that guilt and perverts it chiefly by outlawing religion in the schools and teaching white responsibility for slavery to your children qua white instead. Its greatest fear is whites who will no longer accept that new religion and that guilt and fight back. And it particularly fears any politician whose specific appeal is to them.

POLITICO knows the name of the game is suppressing Trump's white vote

 From the end of the story, which is intent on doing just that, here:

Even if the result is a margin of victory with noncollege-educated white voters that is smaller than it was four years ago, Trump will almost certainly carry that group. And if he can turn them out in greater numbers, he could shift the electorate toward him in several predominantly white states. Republicans and Democrats alike estimate there are hundreds of thousands of unregistered, noncollege-educated whites in key swing states that Trump could still pick up.

That fight for those voters was on display in Minnesota on Friday, where Trump and Biden appeared not in the Minneapolis-St. Paul suburbs, but in more culturally conservative, northern reaches of the state. Republicans there and in some of the whitest counties in the country say they haven’t seen any falloff for Trump, and many of them suspect that polls are still underrepresenting his support.

Stephanie Soucek, chair of the Republican Party in Wisconsin’s Door County said she sees more Trump signs in her county than she did in 2016. Jack Brill, acting chair of the local Republican Party in Sarasota County, Fla., said “the base in Sarasota County is as strong as ever.”

In Duluth, the target of much attention from the Trump campaign, the city’s former mayor, Gary Doty, acknowledged that the president may have shed some support among some white women because of “the way he presents himself. He’s sometimes crude and rude, and I don’t care for that style.”

However, he said, “I think there’s this silent group of people” who support Trump and will turn out for him.

Doty said that after he endorsed Trump recently, “people that wouldn’t talk to me about politics … after they heard I had supported the Trump ticket, would come say, ‘Hey, I’m for him, too.'"

Kind of amazing Trump comes down with the COVID right after throwing the Proud Boys under the bus on Hannity

 

Idiot caller from Michigan to Rush Limbaugh doesn't know Michigan's already a red state, claims Trump's $750 IRS payments were fees to file an extension when there are no such fees

LOL, when you file for an extension to file your taxes, it's entirely free. There are no fees. If you suspect you will owe taxes, however, you must make the payment at the time.

Crazy Michigan woman thinks she's a tax expert when even the IRS can't seem to decide how to finish its audit of Trump.

The New York Times article says Trump filed extensions to file and made various tax payments. He made payments totaling $5.2 million for the two years in question, 2016 and 2017, $1 million when he filed for an extension in 2016 and $4.2 million when he filed for an extension in 2017. His accountants carved out a nominal tax liability of $750 for each year when actually filing the two returns, on the assumption that the $5.2 million would be construed by the IRS as overpayments pending resolution of the claims made in the returns. Those moneys would then constitute pre-payment carry forwards for future tax years.  

The worst part of this call is that Rush Limbaugh just let this woman's BS out there without questioning it. He's as uninformed about this stuff as the next guy, and won't lift a finger to educate himself. It's irresponsible, but this is the same guy who calls the Minneapolis police "killers".

Rush Limbaugh is a horrible representative of conservatism. 

Today, here:

CALLER: Greetings from Michigan, Rush. We hope to be a red state soon.

RUSH: Yeah, that would be great.

CALLER: That would be great. You know, watching the debate was, you know, made your eyes want to bleed, but Chris Wallace set the pace with that first question about taxes. And don’t tell me he didn’t know that that $750 was the fee for an extension, not what he paid.

RUSH: He might not have known. I don’t know.

CALLER: How? If I know, it was in the news, he is the news —

RUSH: There we go. We’re making the assumption that people in the news business know more than you do. Don’t make that assumption.

Five weeks out from Election 2020 Biden is ahead of Trump by as much as Hillary was ahead of Trump five days before Election 2016

What, me worry?

The polls haven't budged at all for Trump since July: He's still getting crushed by Biden and winning just ~185 Electoral College votes

These maps, one from July 15 still showing Ohio tied, and one from today, were created at Real Clear Politics simply awarding the toss-ups to whomever has the polling advantage.

The result is the same. Trump is getting crushed.

Democrats are squealing like pigs over Cocaine Mitch's supposed Supreme Court hypocrisy, but there isn't any

Americans put Republicans in control of the US Senate again in 2018, with Trump in the White House, so Democrats have no one to blame but themselves for what's about to happen, and Harry Reid in particular for trashing the filibuster rule for judicial appointments.  

From the story here, which explains it all:

The reason is simple, and was explained by Mitch McConnell at the time. Historically, throughout American history, when their party controls the Senate, presidents get to fill Supreme Court vacancies at any time — even in a presidential election year, even in a lameduck session after the election, even after defeat. Historically, when the opposite party controls the Senate, the Senate gets to block Supreme Court nominees sent up in a presidential election year, and hold the seat open for the winner. Both of those precedents are settled by experience as old as the republic. Republicans should not create a brand-new precedent to deviate from them.

Michael Anton, Publius Decius Mus, is back, and it's still Flight 93

After “Is 2020 another ‘Flight 93 election?’” the question I most often hear is “What happens if Trump loses?”

  

The answer to the first question, unfortunately, is yes, but more so. 

 

The rest.

The George Floyd hospital blood toxicology results entered in evidence yesterday are the biggest story of the summer, and Mark Levin isn't even interested tonight

Same old, same old Mark Levin, Mr. NeverTrump for most of 2016.

This dinosaur is so behind the curve on everything it's ridiculous, comic, entertainment!

Conservative talk radio doesn't get it that Trump is president now

Both Todd Herman filling in for Rush Limbaugh yesterday and Michael Savage on his own show today keep talking about how law and order are going to disappear if Biden is elected and that Trump has to run on that issue.

But Trump IS president, and law and order have already disappeared.

A caller to Rush even pointed this out to Herman, who quickly changed the subject.

You can't run for re-election and win by promising to provide later what you're not providing now.

NOW.

It's the Limbaugh Theorem in action under a Republican president, pretending that the present problems aren't the president's problems.

Recipe for losing.

How many looted cities will it take to re-elect Trump?

Inquiring minds want to know.

Real Clear Politics has moved Minnesota into "toss-up" status because of Trafalgar Group poll

The poll has Biden beating Trump by only five points in liberal Minnesota.

"A five-mile stretch of Minneapolis sustain[ing] extraordinary damage" recently, per the New York Times, probably had something to do with it.

The federal government could have read the news wires in Jan and Feb like the rest of us and learned that the coronavirus spread asymptomatically, but no, that was too hard

As coronavirus threatened invasion, a new 'Red Dawn' team tried to save America:

'In some cases, government officials appeared to be learning about developments for first time from the Red Dawn emails. In one exchange, Eva Lee, the director of the Center for Operations Research in Medicine and Healthcare at Georgia Tech, flagged a study showing a 20-year-old woman left Wuhan with no symptoms and had infected five family members.

'Dr. Robert Kadlec, the Trump administration’s Assistant Secretary for Preparedness and Response, appeared surprised. “Eva is this true?!” Kadlec replied. “If so, we have a huge [hole] on our screening and quarantine effort.”'

Anyone carefully following the news about coronavirus knew there already were confirmed reports of asymptomatic spread by air travelers before the end of Jan: to Japan, Washington State, and Germany, but a week before Feb ended the Trump administration and many US health authorities were still clueless about them.

And then this curious story about the 20-yr old Wuhan woman came out on Feb 21/22, long after the fact refocusing attention on the issue of asymptomatic spread, curious mostly because she infected others far away from Wuhan around Jan 10 but a month later was herself still symptom-free.

But did it do anything to get the feds to move? Obviously not.

It took another almost four weeks from Feb 22 before the US instituted the half-hearted stay-at-home advisory, triggered mostly by community spread in Washington State. And air travelers didn't abandon flying until after Mar 15, when they finally realized the feds were taking the epidemic sort of seriously and the threat was real.

Meanwhile the disease is obviously still spreading asymptomatically in the United States like wildfire, and the feds are doing . . . what exactly to stop it? The weakness and incompetence the Trump administration has shown have only encouraged the nay-sayers to masks and social distancing.

The stay-at-home period should have been used to mobilize production of adequate masks for the population and to prepare schools to social distance, at a minimum, but now we're at war over both of those, too.

Sad!

Reuters had the Wuhan woman story on Feb 22 and it was picked up immediately by The Straits Times in Singapore:

Wuhan woman with no symptoms infected five relatives with coronavirus: Study:

"A 20-year-old Chinese woman from Wuhan, the epicentre of the coronavirus outbreak, travelled 675km north to Anyang where she infected five relatives, without ever showing signs of infection, Chinese scientists reported on Friday (Feb 21), offering new evidence that the virus can be spread asymptomatically."

Lynn Afendoulis running vs. Peter Meijer in MI-3 says attack ad against her traces to Meijer crony "former" Democrat Greg Orman

Afendoulis says Orman is behind the Fix Congress Now! mailings attacking her.

She says Peter Meijer donated in 2017 to Orman's failed run for governor in Kansas in 2018.

She also says Orman's Fix Congress Now! is funded by Unite America, whose board members include Orman.

Unite America stands for Ranked Choice Voting, Open Primaries, Vote By Mail, and Independent Redistricting, all of which traditional Republicans have opposed.

Orman ran as a Democrat against Republican Senator Pat Roberts in Kansas in 2008 but now claims to be an independent.

DeVos money is backing Meijer.

I recommend a vote for Afendoulis, and shopping at Sam's Club.

 

Got a call today from the Peter Meijer campaign, running for Justin Amash's seat (MI-3)

I asked about Meijer's position on immigration. Got the typical "he supports Trump's position" and favors lots of LEGAL immigration.

When probed on H1B visas the caller didn't know what they were. When I explained they allowed foreigners to work in the US, he offered that he thought Meijer was in favor of lots of those, too, even after I pointed out that tens of millions of Americans are out of work and don't need the competition. 

The campaign worker clearly expected me to be a libertarian who is in favor of lots of immigration, which is what you'll get from Peter Meijer, Republican, if he's elected.

The caller wasn't prepared to encounter a voter who has often voted Republican who is against that.

Shows you how thimble deep Republican thinking is on the issue, and that Trump's GOP hasn't moved an inch in the direction of immigration restriction, mostly because Trump's a phony on immigration.

Won't be checking the box for Peter Meijer.

Trump excels at the adulation, insatiable desires, convulsions and distractions

"He who is the real tyrant, whatever men may think, is the real slave, and is obliged to practise the greatest adulation and servility, and to be the flatterer of the vilest of mankind. He has desires which he is utterly unable to satisfy, and has more wants than any one, and is truly poor, if you know how to inspect the whole soul of him: all his life long he is beset with fear and is full of convulsions, and distractions, even as the State which he resembles."

-- Plato's Republic, Book IX

Trump as tyrant in the classical sense

This brief excerpt from an essay which is otherwise an exercise in hysteria is quite accurate:

'Trump is rather a tyrant in the classical sense, a man utterly at the mercy of his basest impulses, which he has aplenty. He is weak not strong, obsessed with his “ratings,” and incapable, even in the gravest moments, of pretending to the statesmanship required of his office.'