Summations Only

Here's another post in the continuing series of Trump lies. Naturally since I'm only one person I'll only be able to comment on a small fraction.White House goes quiet on coronavirus as outbreak spikes again across the U.S. - POLITICO quotes Trump as follows:

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We’ve made every decision correctly, Trump claimed in remarks in the Rose Garden Friday morning. We may have some embers or some ashes or we may have some flames coming, but we’ll put them out. We’ll stomp them out.

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Anyone remember similar promises, er, lies back in February and March? After more than 110,000 Covid-19 deaths and still rising at around 1000 per day does anyone think Trump knew what he was talking about back then? Is there any reason to think he knows what he's talking about now?---------In another Trump lie Trump claims he went to bunker for 'inspection' amid violent protests - CNNPolitics.Of course, since Trump said it we know it's likely a lie, and Bill Barr provides the truth: Contradicting Trump, Barr says he went to White House bunker for security not 'inspection' - ABC News---------There are some out there insisting that Trump is dealing with a more hostile media than any prior president. The truth is that Trump calls negative attention to himself by his constant lying and inability to inform himself on subjects like, well, anything. We know Biden is a gaffe machine, but Trump is a complete lie manufacturing industry.--Percy

Guess what, the decision to drop the prosecution is politically motivated and without any basis in law. Who would have guessed? here it isFlynn negotiated with the Russians unofficially before Trump took office, worked to oppose current US policy and lied about it to officials and the FBI. That’s not a mistake or an accidental lie (and people have been in serious trouble for those) - it was covering up serious misbehaviour, Ultimately Gleeson argues that the court should deny the motion to dismiss and proceed to sentencing.Edited by PaulK, : No reason given.

CNN publishes a poll that Trump doesn’t like, so of course the Trump campaign issues legal threats. Backed up by the opinion of a second-rate polling company.

Our Glorious Orange Leader has decided to resume his re-election rallies, and has chosen Tulsa, Oklahoma as the site. The rally there will be on June 19, aka Juneteenth, the commemoration of the end of slavery in the USA. Tulsa’s Greenwood neighborhood was the site of a massacre of Black citizens a hundred years ago or so, but the Juneteenth celebration planned there was called off due to Coronavirus.But the Trump appears to not give a single solitary shit.
Despicable.
Words fail me, except for obscene ones.

AP Hill, Pickett & Lee; in Virginia
Bragg in North Carolina
Benning & Gordon; in Georgia
Rucker in Alabama
Beauregard & Polk; in Louisiana
Hood in TexasWell, color me Red with surprise.Edited by jar, : Fix error

In that regard, according to the BBC News website: It’s pretty hard not to interpret that as saying that the existence, leadership and defence of the slave owning South was part of a Great American heritage.

But what about the fact that they were all traitors to their country, the USA? So in the USA, we are supposed to honor traitors to the USA as part of "a Great American heritage"?And don't you go throwing King George III in our face now!

No chance of that :-)

Just wanting to toss out a historical hypothesis. Basically that what is done usually is based on what had happened before.For example, the Franco-Prussian War (1870-1871) resulted in a resounding defeat for France in which the Prussians sat in the palace at Versailles watching Paris tear itself in a weeklong civil war (the "Bloody Week"). At the end of that, from Versailles Prussia declared the formation of the German Empire, recovered Alsace-Lorraine (or more properly, Elsa-Lothringen) which they had lost to the French in 1640, and demanded reparations from the French forcing them to pay for the expense of that war. A bit less than half a century later, the results of the German Empire losing WWI was that the treaty was negotiated at Versailles, it called for the destruction of the German Empire, and it demanded reparations from Germany forcing them to pay for the expense of that war. The results of WWI didn't come from nowhere, but rather came from how previous wars had ended.There's also the old adage of generals always going into a new war fighting the previous one. Eg, the infamous British cavalry charge against German machine gun emplacements. You cannot make this kind of stuff up!My pet hypothesis refers to the American Revolution: why did the British act in such a repressive manner as to make the situation increasingly worse? I think that they were simply applying lessons learned in the Jacobite uprisings without applying them to the situation in the Colonies. Those uprisings were quelled by extreme repression which completely destroyed the Scottish clan system, cleared the glens of troublesome Scots to make way for much more profitable (and easier to handle) sheep, etc. So when the Colonists started grumbling, the British did what had "worked so well" in Scotland and took the same extreme military repression route. Part of the reason why it wouldn't work this time was that in the mean time Scotland's primary export was Scots, with many of them ending up in the Colonies. So the Colonists basically saw what was coming and had some their own ideas of what to do about it.Anyway, those are a couple of my hypotheses about the American Revolution, FWIW.

The history of Britain has been blighted by the most spectacular arrogance, elitism and brutality, dressed up as enlightened civilisation. For centuries, we used the sheer fluke of being at the forefront of the industrial revolution to pillage, subjugate, steal, rape and murder people in far off places, all in the belief that we were "bringing civilisation " to them. It's an arrogance that persists today.And you're right, that arrogance was shown when Georgey boy and his people assumed that they could subdue anyone by sending out a few regiments and killing a bunch of people. It didn't work in the States (though to my great sadness, it did elsewhere, for many years).I am not proud of this country's imperialism. They were more brutal times, and there has to be some context in that regard, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't feel shame for it today, in more enlightened times.And on a more general note, I would agree that history sees us repeating a great many mistakes. The one I am really worried about is the rise of populism in many countries (the UK and the US at the top of the list). Some deeply disturbing parallels with what happened in the 1920s and 1930s in Europe.

...has decided that is is illegal to sack people for being homosexual or transgender. Gorsuch voted with the majority. You can probably guess the dissenters.Much wailing from those conservatives who were hoping for an ideological ruling.Meanwhile Ted Cruz has got into a twitter fight with Ron Perlman
and Ted Cruz is not coming out well.Finally, it turns out John Bolton refused to testify in the impeachment trial of Trump because he was saving the juicy stuff for his book, which is due out next week.Edited by PaulK, : Corrected judge’s name

Wow. That ruling is a bit unexpected. I’ll bet that some of the usual suspects are a bit, uh, butthurt.

I think Gorsuch’s vote is the big surprise. And yes, some people like Anne Coulter and Eric Erickson are upset.

In my opinion here is the most important aspect of Justice Gorsuch’s majority opinion:

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Those who adopted the Civil Rights Act might not have anticipated their work would lead to this particular result. Likely, they weren’t thinking about many of the Act’s consequences that have become apparent over the years, including its prohibition against discrimination on the basis of motherhood or its ban on the sexual harassment of male employees. But the limits of the drafters’ imagination supply no reason to ignore the law’s demands. When the express terms of a statute give us one answer and extratextual considerations suggest another, it’s no contest. Only the written word is the law, and all persons are entitled to its benefit.

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Court's opinion with dissents. -- .pdf fileBoth Alito’s (joined by Thomas) and Kavanaugh’s dissents center on the Civil Rights Act’s use of the word sex in its prohibitory statement in Title VII:

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Title VII makes it unlawful . . . for an employer to fail or refuse to hire or to discharge any individual, or otherwise to discriminate against any individual . . . because of such individual’s race, color, religion, sex, or national origin.

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The court’s opinion acknowledges that sex as the Act is written must include sexual orientation, not just the physical sex of the individual, because the two are inextricably linked and cannot be separated. Discrimination against one’s orientation is in fact discrimination against one’s sex. Firing lesbians because they are attracted to women is discrimination if men are not also fired for this same attraction toward women. The orientation is the same in each case thus the discrimination is based solely on the sex of the individual which Title VII prohibits.Alito argues the two concepts are separate and the court is legislating from the bench by expanding the definition of sex beyond the meaning understood at the time of the Act. Kavanaugh argues the concepts may be linked in a literal sense but not in the ordinary sense so the intent of the congress was not specifically stated and despite the worthy goals of the court’s majority opinion for inclusion and equality the decision should be one for the Congress to decide.IMHO both dissents are bullshit.Still, for me, the court’s opinion that When the express terms of a statute give us one answer and extratextual considerations suggest another, it’s no contest. Only the written word is the law, and all persons are entitled to its benefit. is a wrinkle that will have far reaching ramifications.I will add that Gorsuch’s majority opinion is quite plainly written without the legalese verbosity Scalia used to enjoy.Finally:

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Critics sometimes say that the Congress does not hide elephants in mouse holes, Justice Gorsuch wrote on Monday, meaning that lawmakers do not take enormous steps with vague terms or in asides.

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We can’t deny that today’s holding that employers are prohibited from firing employees on the basis of homosexuality or transgender status is an elephant, he wrote. But where’s the mouse hole? Title VII’s prohibition of sex discrimination in employment is a major piece of federal civil rights legislation. It is written in starkly broad terms. It has repeatedly produced unexpected applications, at least in the view of those on the receiving end of them.

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This elephant, he wrote, has never hidden in a mouse hole; it has been standing before us all along.

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Civil Rights Law Protects L.G.B.T. Workers, Supreme Court Rules - The New York TimesThis is quite a relief to hear coming from a conservative justice.Edited by AZPaul3, : No reason given.

That Trump is an idiot is self evident, but he provided yet another example yesterday:

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If we stop testing right now, we’d have very few cases, if any, the president told reporters later in the day during a meeting with some members of his Cabinet.

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And if we stopped medical testing altogether we'd have very few cases of any disease. Trump has just solved our health care crisis. What a genius!Source: Trump signals a move past coronavirus with rallies, even as cases spike in many states--Percy