The Girl Scouts and Princeton University find it hard to back away from their garbage moves

 These stories are rich indeed.

First, the Girl Scouts.

The organization sent out a tweet congratulating Amy Coney Barrett for being the fifth female Supreme Court Justice in the nation's history, and it did not go over well with the hard left:

Many pointed specifically to the threat that the justice represents toward women’s reproductive rights, LGBTQ rights and the nation’s response to climate change; some even threatened to boycott the organization. Within hours, the organization’s initial tweet was deleted and replaced with an explanation.

One gal said that "as a queer, disabled lifelong Girl Scout, this bums me out hard." Another prattled about how girls "grow up and need a full range of health care." One need not be an expert in code language to know that this refers to the extermination of fetal Americans.

But the thing that really strikes me is how these leftists think federal courts operate. They think entirely in terms of protecting their pet "rights." They envision SCOTUS originalists salivating to "oppress" supposedly beleaguered demographics in our society.

The Supreme Court merely gets cases that come before it, some having to do with inflammatory social issues, but most of a more arcane and benign nature. The originalists then refer to the Constitution - its actual text and the intent of those who crafted it (including amendments) -  in coming to a decision on the matter they're considering. If there are any justices that have an agenda, it's the living-Constitution types. But basically, as Chief Justice John Roberts says, it's a panel of nine serious grownups who aren't up there to shill for any political party or passing ideological fad.'

Now, Princeton.

I thought this was great:

This summer, Christopher Eisgruber, the president of Princeton University, admitted that the institution he has run for years is plagued by “systemic racism.” He also admitted that racist assumptions “remain embedded in structures of the University itself.” 

U.S. law bars colleges and universities that receive federal money from subjecting students to discrimination on the basis of race. Princeton receives lots of federal money. 

Accordingly, the U.S. Department of Education, which is charged with enforcing the federal ban on discrimination by colleges and universities, commenced an investigation of Princeton. As the saying goes, Eisgruber had stepped in it.

Is there a way to square Eisgruber’s admission of systemic racism at Princeton with the federal ban on race discrimination? I discussed some possible ways to attempt that reconciliation here and here. They don’t work.

Nonetheless, Eisgruber is determined to squirm his way out of the problem he created. The Daily Princetonian reports:

Pushing back against the [Department of Education’s] investigation’s premise, President Eisgruber said, “It is very surprising to me, frankly, that the Department of Education thinks that because Princeton has stated that we want to address systemic racism that we are somehow admitting … there is something wrong in our community that requires intervention from the federal government.”

Eisgruber said he is not aware of any civil rights violations that the University had committed.

“I am not aware of instances where the University has discriminated unlawfully against individuals, and we will explain that to the government,” Eisgruber said.

But here is what Eisgruber admitted before he realized Princeton might be investigated for discrimination:

Racism and the damage it does to people of color. . .persist at Princeton.

Thus, Eisgruber wasn’t being honest at the town hall. Princeton (Eisgruber) has said more than that it “want[s] to address systemic racism.” It has admitted that such racism exists at Princeton and that it damages “people of color” at Princeton. 

And clearly, this state of affairs means that “there is something wrong in [the Princeton] community.” Or does Eisgruber want to tell Princeton’s black students that there is nothing wrong with systemic racism at the University they attend?

This dust-up would not have occurred had he not felt compelled to puke all over himself in a fit of white guilt:

 

The only honest way for Eisgruber to escape his pickle is to admit that he was blowing smoke when he copped to persistent systemic racism at Princeton. But the consequences of such an admission would be waves of protest, loss of credibility, and presumably the end of Eisgruber’s time as president. 

Thus, Eisgruber will continue with his double talk in the expectation that Joe Biden will be elected president and that Biden’s administration will bail Eisgruber out by ending the federal investigation of racism at Princeton.

This is why the political fallout from next week's election is only of limited importance. The cultural rot will proceed apace wherever the fault lines of government power run.  Yes, if Democrats get the White House and both chambers of Congress, they'll feel empowered to use government to accelerate the rot, but there will be a wild swing to the right in the midterms - and maybe some Trumpist-ish populist unrest in the meantime. And if Trump is re-elected, he'll continue to give lip service to traditional values, but it will continue to ring hollow because he lacks conviction and it's obvious to all. 

But, anyway, these are a couple of delicious stories for the "you'll never be woke enough" file. 

Justice Barrett

 The final vote in the Senate was 52 to 48.

Of course, it was an excellent moment for America. She's an originalist and no amount of infantile attempts to deceive the public as to what that means puts a dent in what it actually means. A judge looks at the plain text of the Constitution to see what it has to say about a matter before the court. In cases where those on a panel of judges are coming to different conclusions about what the text is saying, a judge is to refer to what the intent of the text's author was. 

It maintains the Constitution's status as the bedrock of our entire legal system. Some kind of "living" Constitution would turn our very national foundation into mud. 

As to this argument that the Framers could not have foreseen the impact of urbanization and the advancement of technology on American life, it does not change a thing about the fundamental premise of the supreme law of the land: keeping government's reach to a bare minimum so as to maximize liberty within the context of a safe and orderly society. 

Amy Coney Barrett is a devout Christian, a devoted wife and mother, and, by all accounts, a generous, caring and loyal friend.

She is decent and principled, two traits of which this society is screamingly in need.

Regardless of what happens from here, how the election turns out, what kinds of chaos the losing side unleashes, how the pandemic continues to play out, how identity politics poisons everything about our culture, we can be sure that matters coming before the highest court in the land will be scrutinized according to the greatest legal document ever conceived by humankind. 

Barney & Clyde - Season 2, Episode 20

 It's here! Season two, episode 20. Pour yourself something bracing, pull up a stool and join us for an hour-ish discussion of three matters on the nation's plate at the moment:

FAMILY DISAGREEMENTS: Why are Libertarians Dissing Ron Paul?

THE HYPERBOLIC CHAMBER: Joe Biden’s radical energy views and what they portend for his campaign in the final days THE

GREAT AMERICAN SPEECHES SERIES: “A Time for Choosing” by Ronald Reagan, October 27, 1964 Please subscribe, like, share, and comment

Please subscribe, like, share, and comment.

Thursday roundup

 My informal assessment of the ad featuring both the Republican and Democratic candidates for Utah governor calling for civility is that there's a consensus across the spectrum the it's a refreshing alternative to the societal brittleness that worsens every day. Well, maybe not complete consensus. It turns out that, even though Democrats are coming to see that Amy Coney Barrett is a jurist of impeccable integrity and a fine human being, the hardcore Left is throbbing with rage over her inevitable confirmation. And Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer has strongly hinted that he has told Juciary Committee ranking member Dianne Feinstein he's none too happy with her role in fostering civility during ACB's hearings. Not everyone is feeling the unicorns and rainbows. 

At Desiring God, Jon Piper has an excellent piece entitled "Politics, Persons and Paths to Ruin: Pondering the Implications of the 2020 Election."

A couple of tastes:

This article is probably as close as you will get to an answer on how I will vote in the upcoming presidential election. 

Probably? 

Right. Only God knows what may happen in the next days. 

Nothing I say here is intended to dictate how anyone else should vote, but rather to point to a perspective that seems to be neglected. Yes, this perspective sways my vote. But you need not be sinning if you weigh matters differently.

Actually, this is a long-overdue article attempting to explain why I remain baffled that so many Christians consider the sins of unrepentant sexual immorality (porneia), unrepentant boastfulness (alazoneia), unrepentant vulgarity (aischrologia), unrepentant factiousness (dichostasiai), and the like, to be only toxic for our nation, while policies that endorse baby-killing, sex-switching, freedom-limiting, and socialistic overreach are viewed as deadly.

And:

May I suggest to pastors that in the quietness of your study you do this? Imagine that America collapses. First anarchy, then tyranny — from the right or the left. Imagine that religious freedom is gone. What remains for Christians is fines, prison, exile, and martyrdom. Then ask yourself this: Has my preaching been developing real, radical Christians? Christians who can sing on the scaffold, 

Let goods and kindred go,
This mortal life also;
The body they may kill:
God’s truth abideth still;
His kingdom is forever.

Christians who will act like the believers in Hebrews 10:34: “You joyfully accepted the plundering of your property, since you knew that you yourselves had a better possession and an abiding one.” Christians who will face hate and reviling and exclusion for Christ’s sake and yet “rejoice in that day, and leap for joy, for behold, [their] reward is great in heaven” (Luke 6:22–23). 

Have you been cultivating real Christians who see the beauty and the worth of the Son of God? Have you faithfully unfolded and heralded “the unsearchable riches of Christ” (Ephesians 3:8)? Are you raising up generations of those who say with Paul, “I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord” (Philippians 3:8)? 

Have you shown them that they are “sojourners and exiles” (1 Peter 2:11), and that their “citizenship is in heaven,” from which they “await a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ” (Philippians 3:20)? Do they feel in their bones that “to live is Christ, and to die is gain” (Philippians 1:21)?

Or have you neglected these greatest of all realities and repeatedly diverted their attention onto the strategies of politics? Have you inadvertently created the mindset that the greatest issue in life is saving America and its earthly benefits? Or have you shown your people that the greatest issue is exalting Christ with or without America? Have you shown them that the people who do the most good for the greatest number for the longest time (including America!) are people who have the aroma of another world with another King?

Kori Schake of the American Enterprise Institute shows us the dark side of America First:

The 2016 election was hardly the first time that the U.S. political system alarmed many of the United States’ partners broad. After the election of 1832, the British complained that the United States was governed by “demagogues and non-entities,” and versions of that grievance have been repeated regularly by allied leaders since. Yet this time is different. During the presidency of Donald Trump, the United States’ friends have, for the first time, begun to hedge their bets in clear and consequential ways. A second term for Trump would accelerate such moves, with the result of transforming the international order for good.

Even before the start of the coronavirus pandemic earlier this year, support for the United States had plummeted to historic lows. Over the past six months, Washington has shown both indifference to the magnitude of suffering among its own citizens and sharp-elbowed selfishness in its approach to global cooperation on vaccines, medical supplies, and more—decimating support for both U.S. leadership of a mutually beneficial international order and global aspiration to the American way of life.

If Trump is reelected, his “America first” foreign policy will have been validated, and the result will be an America snarling into decline. The admiration for the United States that reduces the cost of everything it tries to achieve in the world will evaporate, and other countries will move on, shaping a new order to protect themselves from a self-seeking, often hostile United States. Washington will find that it has squandered an international order that was built to enhance its security and sustain its prosperity and instead faces a world without the institutions, alliances, and goodwill that have long bolstered U.S. interests. The president and the Republican leaders who support him will have to take responsibility for what they have wrought: a new order that excludes the United States.

So the Very Stable Genius is not such a great choice. How about the other choice? It's starting to look like we should not be dismissive about the new round of Joe-Biden-Hunter-Biden-China-deals allegations:

Wait until Scranton hears about this.

One of Joe Biden’s ways of contrasting himself with President Trump has been to declare the election a battle of Park Avenue values vs. Scranton, Pa., values.

Now we learn that Biden has secretly been playing footsie with China.

The statement Wednesday night asserting that the former vice president was a willing and eager participant in a family scheme to make millions of dollars by partnering with a shady Chinese Communist firm is a singular event in a presidential race already overflowing with drama and intrigue.

The dynamite assertion, believable because it aligns with earlier information we know to be true, came in a statement by Tony Bobulinski, who describes himself as a former partner of Hunter Biden, Joe Biden and Joe’s brother Jim in the China scheme. Bobulinski unloads his bill of accusations in blunt but precise language and detail.

He confirms that he was one of the recipients of the May 13, 2017, email published by The Post eight days ago. That email, from another partner in the group, laid out cash and equity positions and mysteriously included a 10 percent set-aside for “the big guy.”

Sources have said the “big guy” was Joe Biden. In a matter-of-fact manner, Bobulinski states that the “email is genuine” and that the former vice president and the man leading in the 2020 race is indeed “the big guy.”

That claim alone rips out the heart of nearly everything Joe Biden has ever said about Hunter’s many businesses and Joe’s knowledge of them. His repeated insistence that the two never spoke of the son’s global sources of money didn’t pass the laugh test.

After all, they traveled together to China on Air Force Two, where Hunter landed a $1.5 billion commitment from a government-controlled Chinese bank. Then there was Hunter’s $83,000-a-month gig on the board of a Ukrainian energy company — despite his lack of experience in Ukraine or knowledge of energy.

It was no coincidence that the vice president was the Obama administration’s point man in both countries. Wherever Joe went, Hunter went along, not to do good, but to do well. Very well.

Current national security advisor Robert O'Brien reminds us that, for all its trappings of modernity and urbanity, China is in its essence what it has been since 1949: a Marxist-Leninist state. Marxist-Leninists tend to be a fiercely determined lot, and that is playing itself out in China's machinations on the world stage:

Chinese-owned TikTok deletes accounts criticizing CCP policies. Since August 2019, Twitter has removed more than 170,000 CCP-linked accounts for spreading “manipulative and coordinated” propaganda. It is no coincidence that China has expelled so many Western reporters in recent months—Beijing wants the world to get its news about China, and especially about the origins of the novel coronavirus, from its own propaganda organs.

In addition to influencing the information Americans receive regarding China, the CCP is increasingly using its leverage to control American speech. When the general manager of the Houston Rockets basketball team tweeted his support for peaceful protesters in Hong Kong, the CCP announced that Rockets games would not be shown on Chinese TV and pressed others associated with the league, including star players, to criticize the tweet. Under pressure from the CCP, American, Delta, and United Airlines removed references to Taiwan from their websites and in-flight magazines. Mercedes Benz apologized for posting an inspirational quote from the Dalai Lama. MGM digitally changed the nationality of an invading military from Chinese to North Korean in a remake of the movie Red Dawn. In the credits for its 2020 remake of Mulan, Disney thanked public security and propaganda bureaus in Xinjiang, where the CCP has locked up millions of minorities in concentration camps.

The CCP is also gathering leverage over individuals by collecting Americans’ data—their words, purchases, whereabouts, health records, posts, texts, and social networks. This data is collected through security flaws and backdoors in hardware, software, telecommunications, and genetics products (many operated by CCP-subsidized businesses such as Huawei and ZTE) as well as by theft. Beijing hacked Anthem Health Insurance in 2014; the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, which holds security clearance information on millions of government employees, in 2015; Equifax in 2017; and Marriot Hotels in 2019. In these instances alone, the CCP gathered key information on at least half of all living Americans, including their names, birth dates, Social Security numbers, credit scores, health records, and passport numbers. The CCP will use this data the same way it uses data within China’s borders: to target, influence, harass, and even blackmail Americans to say and do things that serve the CCP’s interests. 

In what we know of Ghislaine Maxwell's deposition so far, she recalls the heyday of Jeffrey Epstein's sybaritic empire quite differently from Virginia Giuffre. She also waffles when pressed on whether Epstein and Bill Clinton could be characterized as friends. 

 

 

 

 

 

There's not much time left and the VSG is wasting it by focusing on Hunter Biden - say two prominent conservative analysts

 As we know, when the Very Stable Genius becomes obsessed with something, there's no convincing him to ease up.

It's badly damaging his re-election prospects in the case of his preoccupation with Hunter Biden. He's so ate up with it, he wants Attorney General William Barr to "act."

But it looks like exactly the wrong course to at least a couple of figures who would very much like to see optimized prospects for the GOP.

Marc Theissen, a Washington Post columnist and American Enterprise Institute fellow, has been dismaying me for a few years now with his inclination to carry water for the VSG, but has seen enough of what's presently going on to speak plainly:

Fox News contributor Marc Thiessen criticized President Donald Trump on Monday for “yelling” at reporters about the alleged corruption of his opponents, arguing that message is the wrong one in the final stretch of the 2020 campaign.

People are “tired of the chaos,” Thiessen said on Fox News Monday.

Thiessen — a reliable Trump defender on Fox News and in the pages of the Washington Post, where he serves as a columnist — first criticized social media platforms for cracking down on recent reports about files allegedly found on a laptop belonging to Hunter Biden, the son of Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden, before arguing that is still not a winning message for Republicans.

“This election is not going to turn on Hunter Biden,” he said. “This is not the closing argument that Donald Trump wants to be make in his last two weeks. This is not what he should be talking about.”

Voters “don’t care about Hunter Biden,” he said. “They don’t care about this. They care about the economy and they care about not having four more years of chaos.”

Thiessen then brought up an exchange Trump had on Monday in which he called a reporter “a criminal” for not covering the Hunter Biden story.

“You just showed a clip of yelling at that reporter saying ‘He’s a criminal, and you’re a criminal.’ And I watched that clip and I said, ‘Oh my gosh if he does that during the debate on Thursday, that’s going to be a disaster.'”

GOP pollster Frank Luntz paints an even starker picture:

Prominent Republican pollster Frank Luntz blasted President Trump and his campaign on Tuesday for focusing on Hunter Biden in the stretch run to Election Day, calling Trump’s campaign the worst he’s ever seen and saying the president’s advisers should be “brought up on charges of political malpractice.”

Speaking at a briefing for the British strategic advising company Global Counsel, Luntz said Trump’s advisers have “their heads up their asses” if they think Hunter Biden will be a winning issue for them.

“I’ve never seen a campaign more mis-calibrated than the Trump campaign. Frankly, his staff ought to be brought up on charges of political malpractice,” Luntz said. 

“It is the worst campaign I’ve ever seen and I’ve been watching them since 1980. They’re on the wrong issues. They’re on the wrong message. They’ve got their heads up their assess. … Your damn job is to get your candidate to talk about things that are relevant to the people you need to reach. And if you can’t do your damn job then get out.”

And now there's even more fodder for such assessments, what with the way the VSG acted like a big baby regarding his 60 minutes interview with Leslie Stahl. 

Behold the fruits of your enthusiasm, Trumpists. 

 

 

Substantive explanations can't get an airing at the end of a campaign season

 There is a congressional race going on in Indiana's fifth district that provides a dismaying microcosm of the state of policy discourse in 2020 post-America.

The campaign of the Democratic candidate, Christina Hale, is running an ad saying that her opponent, current state senator Victoria Spartz, doesn't think that matters such as education and health care should be concerns of the federal government. 

The Hale team expects you to be aghast about this. You're not supposed to give it enough consideration to ask, "What is her position, then? Quite obviously, she's not stupid. She would not bother to run for such an office is all she had to say about this issue is that it's not the concern of the federal government. What is her vision of how health would get cared for?"

It is a thoroughly thought-out vision, and yes, it is predicated on getting the federal government out of the health care business:

“It is important to understand what states can and cannot do, what the federal government should and should not be doing, how to incentivize states correctly and how to give states some flexibility in what they need to be concentrating on,” Spartz said. “Healthcare reform is number one. Indiana has some of the highest prices in the country. If we don’t deal with that, we will eventually have socialistic healthcare and a socialistic country.”

According to Spartz, we have been doing too much politics and our country is in crisis with a ballooning debt, 70 percent of which she says is healthcare.

“As someone who grew up is a socialistic and government-controlled system I can say that government should be limited to only do core functions: Protect life, liberty and property, and then to stay the hell out of the way,” Spartz said. “Socialism is terrible. It not sustainable and it runs out of money, which is only a matter of time. We have a lot of it now and we need to stop it.”

Now, that sheds a different light on the alarmism that the Hale camp is peddling, doesn't it? 

It's so late in this election cycle that campaigns have to spend their time and money getting out soundbite-size messages such as TV spots, and most of those at this stage take on a my-opponent-is-corrupt focus. 

Specifically, Team Hale wants you to get worried that Spartz would let you get sick and die:

Spartz does not believe vital federal programs like Medicare should exist, which would put countless seniors at risk of losing their health coverage. In the middle of a global pandemic, that position isn’t just irresponsible, it’s flat out dangerous.”

But for anyone who cares to devote a little more thought to the matter, there does indeed exist an explanation of Spartz's position on health care.

Spartz has been thinking about this matter for some time - as in before she announced she was running for Congress:

As someone who experienced firsthand the many negative aspects of fully socialized health care while I was growing up in the former Soviet Union — including how those aspects contributed to the death of my father at the age of 41 — I am deeply concerned that so many aspects of health care in our country are now socialized as well.  Therefore, I took a deeper dive into this issue when I became a legislator.

When I talk about the aspects, I mean consumer aspects I experienced such as: being uninsured as a small business owner; having corporate insurance and working crazy hours with little kids; paying for COBRA; purchasing high deductible insurance through the individual marketplace before the Affordable Care Act; being forced into the Affordable Care Act; and paying penalties for not having the Affordable Care Act due to its cost.

In this 2019 Indianapolis Star column, she goes on to provide a succinct yet comprehensive history of how government came to be so involved in health care. It covers much of the same territory as a 2012 Forbes article by Avik Roy.   Government encroachment into the insurance market basically dates to World War II and the manufacturing sector attempting to circumvent wage and price controls by offering more fringe benefits. 

As she brings her account up to the present, she says that we are now faced with two fundamentally opposite ways forward:

Partially socialized medical care also creates what Friedman called “political entrepreneurship,” where it gives incentives for politicians to compete for votes by offering new government services. Therefore, the state and federal governments have increasingly specified the coverage of insurance not common in other areas. Special interest warfare was fought in the political arena with protectionism from market competition, and competition to shift costs like a hot potato by using political influence. Special interest groups now represent virtually every disease, disability and health care service. As we all know the market empowers individuals, bureaucracies — special interests, and poor people is an excuse to transfer large sums of money to wealthy and healthy in all large bureaucracies. 

Then there is the pharmaceutical market, which represents about 25% of our health care spending, and has the same perverse incentives, cost shifting, bureaucratic barriers of entry, and a convoluted pricing system, which led to consolidation, cost shifting and rise of oligopolies.

So, where do we go from here? As I mentioned above, we, the government, created a monster, and now we have two choices: acknowledge that we failed the markets and our people and go to complete government monopoly with absolute power to control prices and cost, which would be fatal for health care value, or have the guts to drastically reverse the course and restore the right competitive forces on the markets. A piecemeal approach has not been working and will not work. We must have a comprehensive and all-encompassing approach to eliminate barriers and deliver value through human ingenuity and incentives of free markets. Everyone and everything should be on the table and on the menu. We are all the losers in this socialized system, but the sick and poor lose the most. Let’s not forget: government is always the biggest problem.

Again I say, that answers the perplexity posed by the Hale claim that Spartz would be stupid enough to run on a platform of "I want to see large swaths of the public I want to elect me go without medical attention." 

The free-market vision is a little tricky to make clear today, after decades of the post-American public being accustomed to thinking about government in terms of what it's going to do to make our lives better, and of candidates for office in terms of their various proposals for how government is going to do that.

Spartz and other actual conservatives are saying, "Don't think of government that way. Claim your freedom and take charge of your own destiny."

Leftists like Hale are scared to death that you might ever think this through. They want the populace to come ever-more to resemble cattle, easily herded into the pen and content with the daily ration of feed.

 

Two things that are both true: Donald Trump is unfit to be president, and Amy Coney Barrett will be an excellent Supreme Court Justice

 I only got to watch a little of the hearing proceedings this morning while I was in a public place where a television was on. I caught Sheldon Whitehouse's toxic grandstanding about big Republican donors. I saw Ted Cruz give a fine explanation of why this nomination fits into longstanding precedents. I saw Amy Klochubar spend her time talking about Donald Trump's penchant for lying rather than the matter at hand.

Look, it would clearly be infinitely better if this nomination had occurred under a truly conservative president with a record of integrity and coherence. It's the height of misfortune that it's happening under Trump with the surrounding circumstances, particularly the timing, being what they are. 

Be that as it may, it is a fine thing for this country that Barrett will be filling the current vacancy on the Supreme Court. 

Any left-leaner who isn't completely given over to tribalism knows as much. The American Bar Association has given her its "well qualified" rating.  Harvard Law professor Noah Feldman says this about her:

I disagree with much of her judicial philosophy and expect to disagree with many, maybe even most of her future votes and opinions. Yet despite this disagreement, I know her to be a brilliant and conscientious lawyer who will analyze and decide cases in In her opening sttementgood faith, applying the jurisprudential principles to which she is committed. Those are the basic criteria for being a good justice. Barrett meets and exceeds them.

To say she's well-regarded by alumni and fellow faculty of Notre Dame law school is an understatement:

Her respect among her colleagues and students is reflected in the fact that she has been elected professor of the year three times by the law school’s graduating class and in letters of support for her nomination to the 7th Circuit, including ones signed by all of her full-time faculty colleagues at Notre Dame, all of her fellow Supreme Court clerks, hundreds of former students and dozens of prominent law professors from around the country.  

 In her opening statement for these hearings, she makes clear what her approach to judging is:

This demonstration of solid understanding of the role of the judicial branch in the workings of the federal government make all the more laughable claims by some of those howling about her nomination that it's "unconstitutional."

And the claim by the likes of Chuck Schumer and Dick Durbin that the difference in the way the Merrick and Barrett nominations have been handled amounts to Republican court-packing is a lot of disingenuous hooey. There are different precedents applicable in each case - namely, whether the Senate and the White House are controlled by different parties or the same party.

Look, the Republicans have definitely lived up to their image as the stupid party in the name of Trump. He was supposed to be the Queens brawler who would do what the supposed effete little pointy-heads couldn't do: halt the advance of leftism in America. But he's failed, and his failure is probably going to result in an acceleration in that advance. 

One does not have to be a leg-humper for the Very Stable Genius to applaud the pretty much certain confirmation of Amy Coney Barrett as a Supreme Court Justice. She'll give that body an originalist majority, and an expanded number of seats, even if the Democrats take the Senate, is unlikely. 

Heartening developments in post-America are not easy to come by, but this is unequivocally one of them.

 

Dr. Fauci to the VSG: not so fast, buckaroo

 I don't think he takes kindly to this:

Dr. Anthony Fauci did not consent to being featured in a new advertisement from the Trump campaign touting President Donald Trump's handling of the coronavirus pandemic. Instead, the nation's leading infectious disease expert told CNN his words were taken out of context.

"In my nearly five decades of public service, I have never publicly endorsed any political candidate. The comments attributed to me without my permission in the GOP campaign ad were taken out of context from a broad statement I made months ago about the efforts of federal public health officials," Fauci said in a statement provided exclusively to CNN when asked if he agreed to be featured in the ad. 

The Trump campaign released the new ad last week after the President was discharged from Walter Reed National Military Medical Center following treatment for Covid-19. The 30-second ad, which is airing in Michigan, touts Trump's personal experience with the virus and uses a quote from Fauci in an attempt to make it appear as if he is praising Trump's response.

"President Trump is recovering from the coronavirus, and so is America," the ad's narrator says. "Together we rose to meet the challenge, protecting our seniors, getting them life-saving drugs in record time, sparing no expense."

The ad then flashes to an interview with Fauci in which he says, "I can't imagine that anybody could be doing more."

Though no date is provided in the ad, Fauci's quote is from an interview with Fox News in March. During that interview, Fauci praised the White House coronavirus task force's round-the-clock effort to respond to the pandemic, which he says included numerous White House meetings and late-night phone calls.

"We've never had a threat like this. The coordinated response has been...There are a number of adjectives to describe it -- impressive, I think is one of them. We're talking about all hands on deck. I, as one of many people on a team, I'm not the only person," Fauci said at the time. "Since the beginning, that we even recognized what this was, I have been devoting almost full time on this. I'm down at the White House virtually every day with the task force. It's every single day. So, I can't imagine that under any circumstances that anybody could be doing more."

In response to Fauci saying the ad took his words out of context, Trump campaign communications director Tim Murtaugh said, "These are Dr. Fauci's own words. The video is from a nationally broadcast television interview in which Dr. Fauci was praising the work of the Trump Administration. The words spoken are accurate, and directly from Dr. Fauci's mouth."

The Very Stable Genius has been wondering how he could get some of the doctor's mojo:

In late July, Trump publicly wondered why the doctor's approval rating is so high when his is so low.

"It's interesting: he's got a very good approval rating. And I like that, it's good," Trump said. "Because remember: he's working for this administration. He's working with us. We could have gotten other people. We could have gotten somebody else. It didn't have to be Dr. Fauci. He's working with our administration. And for the most part we've done what he and others -- and Dr. (Deborah) Birx and others -- have recommended."

Trump continued: "And he's got this high approval rating. So why don't I have a high approval rating with respect -- and the administration -- with respect to the virus? We should have it very high."

Classic VSG: compensating for his envy by saying, "And don't you forget he's part of TEAM TRUMP!"

Why don'y you have his approval numbers? Because he's a grownup and a civil person and you're an obnoxious buffoon. 

 

 

 

North Korea proves impervious to the VSG's attempts at patty-cake

 Kim - who, by the way, proved once again that speculation stemming from his occasional absences from the spotlight that he might have been incapacitated or died is off the mark - may write beautiful letters to buffoons in order to stroke their egos and buy time, but made unequivocally clear that the real agenda has nothing to do with summits, letters and other place-holding gestures, but rather this kind of thing:

North Korea unveiled what analysts believe to be one of the world's largest ballistic missiles at a military parade celebrating the 75th anniversary of the Workers' Party broadcast on state-run television on Saturday.

The massive weapon was carried by an 11-axle truck at the climax of the almost two-hour ceremony and military parade in the capital of Pyongyang.

Analysts said the new missile is not known to have been tested, but a bigger weapon would allow North Korea to put multiple warheads on it, increasing the threat it would pose to any targeted foe.

"Largest *road-mobile* liquid-fueled missile anywhere, to be clear," tweeted Ankit Panda, senior fellow in the Nuclear Policy Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

"Liquid fuel, Huuuuge, capable of carrying MIRV nuclear warheads," tweeted Melissa Hanham, deputy director of Open Nuclear Network at Stanford University.

"What North Korea has shown us, what appears to be a new liquid-fueled ICBM that seems to be a derivative of what was tested back in late 2017, known as the Hwasong-15, is much bigger and clearly more powerful than anything in the DPRK's arsenal," said Harry Kazianis, senior director of Korean studies at the Washington DC-based Center for the National Interest.

North Korea can now hit North America with multiple warheads in one strike.

And the Supreme Leader was one proud tyrant:

Speaking before the tanks and missiles rolled by, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un touted his country's military and said it was there to defend the people.

"We will continue to strengthen war deterrence as a means of self-defense," Kim said. 

"Our war deterrence will never be abused or used preemptively, which will contribute to protecting the sovereignty and survival of the country and pursuing regional peace," he said.

"However, if anyone hurts the national safety or threaten to use military force against us, I will preemptively mobilize all of our strongest offensive forces to punish them," Kim said.

And it appears that the hermit kingdom understands that its stooge in the White House may be an ephemeral partner in patty cake. No matter; summits and letters were merely the tactic that worked best over the last four years. NK was willing to bide its time during the Agreed Framework, the Six-Way Talks and the era of strategic patience. None of it has any effect on the long-term pursuit of the Kim dynasty's aims. 

In the final days, he's coming off the rails

 A theme running through a lot of my recent posts has been the Very Stable Genius's penchant for self-sabotage. There's this one and this one. 

Since getting sprung from Walter Reed, he's continued the pattern. Actually, it would be most apt to say that he's continued the pattern "on steroids," because that may well be literally the case.

With no downside to continuing the Pelosi-Mnuchin stimulus negotiations, the VSG up and pulls the plug:

President Donald Trump has ordered his negotiators to halt talks over a new stimulus package, after the two sides have struggled for months to reach a deal, a stunning move that puts an end to last-ditch efforts for a major economic relief package as millions are reeling from the coronavirus crisis.

"I have instructed my representatives to stop negotiating until after the election when, immediately after I win, we will pass a major Stimulus Bill that focuses on hardworking Americans and Small Business," Trump wrote in a series of tweets Tuesday afternoon.

Trump's message stunned lawmakers -- especially since Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi had been trading proposals and negotiating for days in the hopes of narrowing their differences, though they were still far apart in their talks.

The decision to pull the plug on the talks is a major blow to Americans still struggling with the fallout from the once-in-a century pandemic and endangers an economic recovery that for months was driven by the initial $2.2 trillion stimulus passed by Congress in the spring. With that money largely spent and gone, economists -- including Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell in a renewed plea for action Tuesday -- have warned more support is imperative in the months ahead. 

The timing of Trump's sudden move perplexed even Republicans since there was little downside politically to allowing the talks to continue to play out. Now, they fear, that Trump's decision will make it easier for Democrats to pit the blame squarely on the White House for the collapse of the talks as many voters are eager for more relief from Washington.

As Nate Silver says on Twitter:

Nate Silver

@NateSilver538

Wait, so Trump not only rejects stimulus funds that would probably have helped his re-election chances, but *also* does so in a way to make sure that he personally will take blame for it?

And this is pretty obviously a political hail-mary: overriding FDA standards for authorizing a vaccine. Rigorous assurance of a drug's efficacy by experts be damned! There's an election to be won! 

A couple of weeks ago, Donald Trump's rhetoric about a coronavirus vaccine took a weird turn. "We will have a vaccine so soon, you won't even believe it," the president told supporters in Jacksonville, "although they are trying to do a little bit of a political hit. 'Let's delay the vaccine just a little bit.' Did you notice that?"

The Republican didn't specify who, exactly, "they" were, but in context, Trump appeared to be referring to the FDA's new standardsfor emergency authorization of a coronavirus vaccine. In the interest of public safety and public confidence, the FDA made clear that its standards would be stringent.

A day later, Trump said he was prepared to reject the FDA's tougher vaccine guidelines, all of which led to the president's conspiracy theory about "their" decision to "delay the vaccine" as part of "a political hit" -- because in his mind, the FDA applying high standards to a vaccine must be part of an election scheme.

Overnight, the New York Times reported that Trump is no longer just threatening to reject the FDA's vaccine standards, the White House is now actively blocking them.

He's been on quite a tear for a guy who's supposed to be convalescing from a dangerous virus. 

Oh, and this is noteworthy: at least one of the five military guys tasked with custody of the nuclear-goes football has tested positive for COVID-19.