‘There’s always the possibility that something will compel social media platforms to take some responsibility and actually do something to protect the public from misinformation. But in the meantime, please listen to that faint buzzing noise you now hear almost constantly. It’s your bullshit meter, it’s working harder than ever — and your health could depend on whether you’re paying attention….’ (Vox)

“There are … ways in which Biden and his allies can stop his bad night from turning into curtains for his political career”,  writes POLITICO,  and offers pointers as to what to watch to see if he can pull it off. Watch the polls but know that they might over start his nosedive. Will the media cover evidence of competence and bounce back as definitively as evidence of concern? Will down-ballot Democrats embrace or distance themselves from him? Will third-party movements attract more interest? How quickly can attention refocus on the elephant in the room, the twice-impeached felon, misogynist, sociopath and pathological narcissist running against him?

More has been written about the implications of Biden’s disastrous debate performance Thursday night than can be borne. It would be difficult to add any original punditry, especially as someone who is not a sophisticated political commentator. However, there is one observation that bears making. To turn concerns about Biden’s aging, and fumbling on stage, into the unquestioned conclusion that he is too old to govern reflects the very undemocratic assumption that he governs alone. I think it is really only as great a concern as it is being made out to be if your mindset is receptive to autocracy, whether you know it or not. Yes, trump must be stopped because he would surely be an autocratic dictator, but that is not inherent to the Presidency, which in democratic rule is really less important than the current fervor would make it out to be. Even trump knew that, dismissing alarm during his first stand for the presidency about his lack of governing experience with the assertion should not be a concern because of the people with whom he would surround himself. (We should remember the accumulated evidence that he was not bright enough or patient enough to understand the briefings he was given throughout his reign.)

In 1977, I watched a searing and soul-searching German film called Our Hitler. This was notable not so much for its 442-minute running time as for its unflinching inquiry into the role in his rise played by the German people’s receptivity to, or even yearning for, autocracy. His personality style and propaganda machinery deftly played on that foundation to solidify his power. There will always be Hitlerian figures. There will always be trumps. Quite simply, we must be careful what we are unconsciously wishing for. 

‘The question at the center of the spat may seem abstract: How should the court use “history and tradition” to decide modern-day legal issues? But the answer may determine how the court resolves some of the biggest cases set to be released in the coming days, particularly its latest foray into the Second Amendment right to bear arms.
If the court adheres to a strict history-centric approach, as Thomas favors, it will likely strike down a federal law denying firearms to people under domestic violence restraining orders.

But Barrett recently foreshadowed that she is distancing herself from that approach. If she breaks with Thomas in the gun case, known as United States v. Rahimi, and if she can persuade at least one other conservative justice to join her, they could align with the court’s three liberals to uphold the gun control law….’ (POLITICO)

Perhaps a glimmer of hope that a rift will emerge and widen, since the power of the Court has been a major source of despair. And can we be encouraged by the suggestion that, despite trump’s effort to stack the decks, he wouldn’t have the capacity to grasp such nuanced but ultimately impactful differences? Law of unintended consequences indeed!

‘1. Keep reminding the public that “he is now a convicted felon, he is an adjudicated rapist, [and] he attempted to overthrow the Constitution of the United States,” said Conway, a co-founder of the Lincoln Project. “And he’s just down right nuts,” he added. And now that donald trump, whose latest trial just ended, is on the loose during the thick of his election run, we will be seeing more and more of his nuttiness, which Conway says is a good thing. People need to see it. And speaking of his mental condition [cut to his next piece of advice]…

2. “You’ve got to actually say it. We have not had a full national conversation about this man’s psychological condition. … He’s literally nuts. … He’s a narcissistic sociopath. He has narcissistic personality disorder, and…that needs to be talked about openly. It needs to be pointed out when he is doing things that meet those criteria,” Conway said. Why? Because “it drives him nuts when people do that,” and this creates a vicious cycle where trump acts nuts, the media points it out, and that triggers the MAGA maniac to act even nuttier. And so on and so forth.

3. “The other thing I would recommend to liberals is don’t get mad,” he said. “The people who support trump like it when liberals get mad. That’s why they like trump.” Instead, Conway advises the media to repeatedly “make fun of him. You can make fun of him and mock him … laugh at him. Now, that doesn’t mean you don’t appreciate the seriousness of what would happen to this country.”

And what might that be, you ask? “We are going to have civil disorder like you’ve never seen” if trump wins.

And if Biden wins, Conway says, there are still going to be around 60–80 million people who voted for trump, and “we still have to live with those people and we’re going to have to deprogram them at some point.”…’ (Boing Boing)

‘Florida governor Ron DeSantis, seeking to prevent public expressions of the LGBTQ+ Pride flag colors, has mandated only red, white and blue lights on the state’s bridges. Such decisions were previously left to local governments, but they kept putting up the devil’s rainbows during Pride Month….’ (Boing Boing)

‘Rep. Jamie Raskin is one of my favorite people in public life. He’s smart, brave and profoundly decent and honorable. He’s dedicated to the rule of law and democracy itself. How dedicated? He buried his 25-year-old son on January 5, 2021. The next day he came to work to certify the election results.

I’m too old and cynical to have heroes but if I did have one, he’d be it.

Raskin, a former constitutional law professor, was interviewed by Dahlia Lithwick, reprinted in Slate Magazine — this is essential reading for anyone looking to understand the dangers the Supreme Court poses to democracy and some potential fixes that might save the us from the Court and the Court from itself.

First, he lays out the problems:

“[The Supreme Court is] the only federal court in the land that does not have a binding ethics code. And it shows.

If you don’t have an ethics code, you get people flying on junkets with their billionaire buddies all over the world and taking, you know, huge cash payments for a motor coach, a house, private school tuition. Why not? You only make, what? $325,000 a year.”

Disgusting. Truly outrageous. Makes my blood boil. How is this allowed to happen?

“I never thought I would live to see the day where justices have their own billionaire sugar daddies who give them houses and automobiles and private school tuitions. My friend Dar Williams sings a song where she says: “It’s a long road from law to justice.”

…to my mind, we’ve gotta organize the people in America. That’s where the power comes from. And we will, if and when we win back the House and the Senate and the White House. We will look at the Supreme Court and figure out what can be done about that extremely corrupted and contaminated body.”

Okay, so what solutions is he proposing?

“The Constitution does not fix the numerical composition of the Supreme Court, and it has changed nine or 10 different times over the course of our history. We have 13 federal circuits. We’ve got nine justices. Five of those justices are from New York. We’ve got one for each borough. We have entire federal circuits that don’t have a single justice. How about we start to talk about having 13 justices on the Supreme Court, one from each circuit, 18-year terms—they still get life tenure because they can go and be on the district bench or the circuit bench. Each president gets two appointments to the court. Obviously, the Senate still has to advise and consent, but it will remove some of the toxicity and the poison from the nominations if we know that each president will get two. We can deal with this problem, but the current Supreme Court is just a scandal.”

I’m not sure how possible any of these options are in the real world, but we should be adopting all of them immediately or else the six radicals on the Court are going to set this country back decades if not centuries….’ (Boing Boing)