Has U.S. Democracy Been Trumped?

[kenberg]

That's quite an achievement for an 18 year old to appreciate that kind of criticism. A lot depends on how it's handled by both parties. I used to think accepting constructive criticism was the hardest thing. Now I think giving it is harder.

 

17 actually. My birthday is Jan 1 and in 1943 that meant you could start kindergarten when you were 4. I was the second youngest in my class. Kindergarten was much much simpler then. We have now upped kindergarten to be like first grade was back then, so now we need pre-k for the 4 year old. It would have been simpler to just leave it as it was..

 

Adolescence is strange. There were times I was completely oblivious, other times when I really understood and appreciated my reality. The Spanish teacher, Mrs. K, was in many ways very eccentric. In my sophomore year we were told to read a translated Spanish work of fiction, our choice as to which, and write a paper on it. I chose Don Quixote. Then I went to the St. Paul library to check it out and found it needed several volumes. So I bought and read the Classics Comics version. When Mrs. K handed back the essays she singled mine out, saying that it had really captured the spirit of the author. Huh? I thought about that a bit and, I believe, understood exactly the point she was making.

 

There are many stories I could tell about Mrs. K, she was high on my list of memorable teachers.

[y66]

When one group fights for power at all costs vs a group fighting for the rule of law, the second group had damned well better mobilize while it still can, because it only gets harder. Trust me on this one.

[pilowsky]

I was thinking about Presidents being cross with protesters and sending in armed forces to clear them away.

 

The only other time I know of this happening was during another depression in the term of another ill-thought of Republican President: Herbert Hoover.

 

This story is sort of personal for me. Patton was incredibly popular by the end of WWII. A swashbuckling figure. He even rode a horse and invented a sword! If I had been around at the time I would have been concerned that Patton might run for President. His grip on things psychiatric was not great - he was well-known for being as empathetic as a potato.

 

Unfortunately for him, he was injured in a car accident at the end of the war and taken to a hospital in Heidelberg. At the same time, Gilbert Phillips a pugilistic, physiologist and neurosurgeon from Sydney who was working at Oxford discovering for the first time that sympathetic nerves have a respiratory modulation to their activity was rushed to his side.

 

Phillips was an astonishing man he founded a wine society that still bears his name. There is a plaque on the Falcon Street gates to North Sydney Boys High School that I admire frequently. He could do nothing for Patton. Phillips accomplished much in a short life that ended in his fifties as a result of that scourge of Australia: melanoma.

 

I care because I developed a scientific career around the neuroscience of breathing and blood pressure.

 

Here is the excerpt from Wikipedia.

 

"In July 1932, Patton (still a Major) was executive officer of the 3rd Cavalry, which was ordered to Washington by Army Chief of Staff General Douglas MacArthur. Patton took command of the 600 troops of the 3rd Cavalry, and on July 28, MacArthur ordered Patton's troops to advance on protesting veterans known as the "Bonus Army" with tear gas and bayonets. Patton was dissatisfied with MacArthur's conduct, as he recognized the legitimacy of the veterans' complaints and had himself earlier refused to issue the order to employ armed force to disperse the veterans. Patton later stated that, though he found the duty "most distasteful", he also felt that putting the marchers down prevented an insurrection and saved lives and property. He personally led the 3rd Cavalry down Pennsylvania Avenue, dispersing the protesters.[86][87] Patton also encountered his former orderly as one of the marchers and forcibly ordered him away, fearing such a meeting might make the headlines.[88]"

 

 

[Winstonm]

I was thinking about Presidents being cross with protesters and sending in armed forces to clear them away.

 

The only other time I know of this happening was during another depression in the term of another ill-thought of Republican President: Herbert Hoover.

 

This story is sort of personal for me. Patton was incredibly popular by the end of WWII. A swashbuckling figure. He even rode a horse and invented a sword! If I had been around at the time I would have been concerned that Patton might run for President. His grip on things psychiatric was not great - he was well-known for being as empathetic as a potato.

 

Unfortunately for him, he was injured in a car accident at the end of the war and taken to a hospital in Heidelberg. At the same time, Gilbert Phillips a pugilistic, physiologist and neurosurgeon from Sydney who was working at Oxford discovering for the first time that sympathetic nerves have a respiratory modulation to their activity was rushed to his side.

 

Phillips was an astonishing man he founded a wine society that still bears his name. There is a plaque on the Falcon Street gates to North Sydney Boys High School that I admire frequently. He could do nothing for Patton. Phillips accomplished much in a short life that ended in his fifties as a result of that scourge of Australia: melanoma.

 

I care because I developed a scientific career around the neuroscience of breathing and blood pressure.

 

Here is the excerpt from Wikipedia.

 

"In July 1932, Patton (still a Major) was executive officer of the 3rd Cavalry, which was ordered to Washington by Army Chief of Staff General Douglas MacArthur. Patton took command of the 600 troops of the 3rd Cavalry, and on July 28, MacArthur ordered Patton's troops to advance on protesting veterans known as the "Bonus Army" with tear gas and bayonets. Patton was dissatisfied with MacArthur's conduct, as he recognized the legitimacy of the veterans' complaints and had himself earlier refused to issue the order to employ armed force to disperse the veterans. Patton later stated that, though he found the duty "most distasteful", he also felt that putting the marchers down prevented an insurrection and saved lives and property. He personally led the 3rd Cavalry down Pennsylvania Avenue, dispersing the protesters.[86][87] Patton also encountered his former orderly as one of the marchers and forcibly ordered him away, fearing such a meeting might make the headlines.[88]"

 

 

 

The rule of law only works with two requisites: 1) an ability to enforce, and 2) a willingness to enforce.

 

Without those two, law is simply words that have no meaning . It is the might of the state that makes lawful right or lawful wrong. How else can the U.S. president be immune from prosecution due to voters having been conned in a previous election?

 

Because might makes right - it has always been so - the people need to regain that power of the state in order to truly have effective laws.

[y66]

From Jennifer Senior at NYT:

 

For the second time in five years, a sitting Supreme Court justice has died, and for the second time in five years, Senator Mitch McConnell has befouled the process to replace that justice with his signature blend of fresh greed and rancid partisanship. A Ruth-less court, answered with ruthlessness.

 

As many have endlessly — almost tediously — noted, the irony of this two-part drama is that both seats were occupied by individuals who overcame the very rancor that McConnell hopes to exploit. Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Antonin Scalia were famously good friends, one of Washington’s storied odd couples; by now, many of the details of their two-headed vaudeville act are well known — they went to the opera together, they spent New Year’s Eve together, they once spent time together atop an elephant.

 

But me? I can’t stop thinking about the civil, uncomplicated nature of Ginsburg and Scalia’s own appointments to the bench. They were supported with a kind of bipartisan enthusiasm that’s unthinkable in today’s gladiatorial politics.

 

If you were to guess, how many senators would you say voted to confirm Ruth Bader Ginsburg, whose dissent jabots would go on to launch a thousand mugs, tattoos and Halloween costumes, whose initials would become a liberal feminist supersignifier? And how many would you say voted to confirm Scalia, hero of the Federalist Society, defender of originalism, dreaded foe of progressive argle-bargle?

 

Answers:

 

Ginsburg was confirmed in 1993 by a vote of 96-3.

 

Scalia was confirmed in 1986 by a vote of 98-0.

 

Among those who voted for Ginsburg: Bob Dole, who would be the Republican nominee for president three years later; Strom Thurmond, who once ran for president as a Dixiecrat supporting segregation; and yes, Mitch McConnell.

 

Among those who voted for Scalia: Al Gore, John Kerry and Joe Biden, all of whom would go on to become the Democratic Party’s nominee for president. Also Ted Kennedy, at the time the party’s standard-bearer for approximately forever.

 

Under such circumstances, is it any wonder that bipartisan friendships weren’t just possible, but even typical?

 

It has sometimes been suggested that the media loved the friendship between Ginsburg and Scalia even more than the justices themselves. But it was quite real. As the awful news of Ginsburg’s death spread, one of Scalia’s sons shared a story I’d never heard before, about how his father once bought her two dozen roses on her birthday. When one of Scalia’s former clerks, Jeffrey Sutton, asked him why, given that she never gave him the vote he needed on a 5-4 case of any significance, Scalia replied: “Some things are more important than votes.”

 

It’s hard to remember sometimes that political disagreements, in the not-too-distant past, weren’t necessarily cause to retreat into our respective corners, and that ideological differences weren’t viewed as moral defects.

 

This is not to say that Scalia did not write pitiless opinions, at times so searing they could grill their own steak. But Ginsburg chose to not take them personally, and sometimes viewed them appreciatively, of all things. In the 1996 case, U.S. v. Virginia, which finally allowed women to attend Virginia Military Institute, Scalia made a point of sending Ginsburg his dissent as quickly as possible, so that she might better reckon with it in her majority opinion. “He absolutely ruined my weekend,” Ginsburg told Irin Carmon, co-author of “Notorious RBG,” “but my opinion is ever so much better because of his stinging dissent.”

 

It is not a surprise that before the political got viciously personal, our democratic institutions functioned better. As recently as a decade ago, the Senate was confirming Supreme Court nominees with some measure of bipartisan good will. The vote for Elena Kagan in 2010 was 63-37 (Lindsey Graham and four other Republicans, including Susan Collins, voted yea). The vote for Sonia Sotomayor the year before was 68-31 (including nine Republicans that time).

 

Of course, it’s important not to idealize the recent past either. One year after Scalia was confirmed, the Senate got embroiled in an operatic feud over the nomination of Robert Bork to the Supreme Court, where the nominee ultimately lost in a vote of 58 to 42. The Republicans claimed, with not a little justification, that this was the first time a jurist was rejected for his views, rather than a lack of qualifications; the Democrats claimed, with not a little justification, that it was precisely those inflammatory views that attracted Ronald Reagan to him in the first place — that Bork’s nomination itself was a provocation.

 

In 2000, Scalia violated his own beliefs about the sanctity of states’ rights in Bush v. Gore, helping to end the Florida recount. (To anyone who challenged his decision, he’d simply say, “Get over it.”) In 2013, I interviewed Scalia for New York magazine, and I remember being stunned to discover that even a Supreme Court justice had been swallowed up by the populist tide: He told me point blank that he got most of his news from talk radio.

 

Two years later, in his dissenting opinion on Obergefell v. Hodges, the landmark decision that deemed same-sex marriage a constitutional right, Scalia railed against the disproportionate representation of coastal elites on the bench, pointedly adding it contained not a single evangelical Christian or Protestant. (He then tossed in a disparaging line about hippies for good measure.) It is quite easy to imagine President Trump saying the same thing at one of his rallies.

 

Yet still, the friendship between Ginsburg and Scalia persisted. Just as powerful as their shared love of opera and jurisprudence may have been their upbringing in the outer boroughs of New York. Scalia was a conservative from a liberal metropolis; Ginsburg was a liberal who worked, increasingly, in a conservative court. It’s a good reminder that heterodox environments are essential to keeping our common humanity top of mind. The Supreme Court is a family of nine whether it wants to be or not; it has no choice if it wants to function. The place may be the ultimate purple state.

[shyams]

Isn't it curious that the Judicial branch of the US Govt. is so much more powerful than the Legislative? Why is that?

 

Outside of the US, most people can't name one member on their own nation's Supreme Court (or equivalent highest judicial authority). Yet, I'd wager that many of the same people can name at least 2-3 Justices of the US Supreme Court.

 

It's not because your SC Justices are superstars and ours aren't. It's simply that your Legislature has surrendered their law-making authorities to the judges instead. And there is so much concentration of power residing in these judges.

 

In most countries, if the Judiciary rules that a particular law must be interpreted in a particular way (not consistent with what the lawmakers intended), the Legislature often steps in to pass new laws that close the loop. I'm not sure it ever happens in the US.

 

I'm sorry but the mess is of your own politicians' doing and there is absolutely nothing that you the people can do to fix it. Honestly, your votes matter much lesser than the lobbying powers exerted by the rich & powerful.

[Winstonm]

Isn't it curious that the Judicial branch of the US Govt. is so much more powerful than the Legislative? Why is that?

 

Outside of the US, most people can't name one member on their own nation's Supreme Court (or equivalent highest judicial authority). Yet, I'd wager that many of the same people can name at least 2-3 Justices of the US Supreme Court.

 

It's not because your SC Justices are superstars and ours aren't. It's simply that your Legislature has surrendered their law-making authorities to the judges instead. And there is so much concentration of power residing in these judges.

 

In most countries, if the Judiciary rules that a particular law must be interpreted in a particular way (not consistent with what the lawmakers intended), the Legislature often steps in to pass new laws that close the loop. I'm not sure it ever happens in the US.

 

I'm sorry but the mess is of your own politicians' doing and there is absolutely nothing that you the people can do to fix it. Honestly, your votes matter much lesser than the lobbying powers exerted by the rich & powerful.

We no longer have a functioning government because - starting in 1994 - the Republican party decided that Democrats were no longer entitled to the status of loyal opposition but instead were deemed "the enemy", which must be defeated. This fit in nicely with the black and white worldview of many Christians, who were then granted permission by their leaders - both political and religious - to choose sides. This, in turn, was fed to fearful privileged whites as "American values", and any attempt to level the playing field for those of color was deemed an attack on "American values", meaning "white values", meaning "white privilege" if not outright racism. The overt racists learned to modify their attacks into more tolerable language - attacking "welfare queens" and describing help for those of color as discrimination against whites. This attack on "American values" required the equivalent of a war resolution to "save America" from the socialist left.

 

In other words, since 1994 the GOP has been running the long con - just as depicted in The Sting, creating a false reality that encouraged the worst faults of the grifted and expected the "marks" to abandon caution - and its natural conclusion was to elect a master grifter as president.

 

Any hope of the possibility of the continuation of self-rule can only come with a total repudiation of the Republican party's grip on power. After that, a complete reworking of the system of checks and balances must occur., including an abolishment of the electoral college and the format of Senate seat distributions. It is not appearing any of that will happen. The biggest shock is the rapidity at which American democracy has failed and the ease at which it was dismantled. And how easily we were conned.

 

 

[Winstonm]

More Republican/Russian talking points

 

 

 

Fox News and other conservative media began circulating a new talking point last week in the ongoing effort to sow doubt about the upcoming presidential election, warning that Democratic operatives and government insiders are plotting a “color revolution” to overthrow Trump in November.

 

“Color revolutions” is the term used for popular uprisings against authoritarian regimes, such as those that took place in former Soviet countries such as Ukraine and Georgia in the early and mid-2000s. Though it’s likely an unfamiliar term for most Americans, the recent warnings from Trump allies about an American color revolution set off alarm bells for some experts on the topic.

 

 

 

[cherdano]

Agree with basically all of shyams' post but it's missing an important point IMO:

It's simply that your Legislature has surrendered their law-making authorities to the judges instead. And there is so much concentration of power residing in these judges.

 

In most countries, if the Judiciary rules that a particular law must be interpreted in a particular way (not consistent with what the lawmakers intended), the Legislature often steps in to pass new laws that close the loop. I'm not sure it ever happens in the US.

 

I'm sorry but the mess is of your own politicians' doing and there is absolutely nothing that you the people can do to fix it. Honestly, your votes matter much lesser than the lobbying powers exerted by the rich & powerful.

Why doesn't the US legislature fix laws when the Judiciary comes up with dubious interpretations of ambiguous statutes?

Because to pass a law in the US, the

• House leadership, and
  
• the majority of the House, and
  
• the Senate leadership, and
  
• a supermajority of senators (unless it can pass budget reconciliation, then it only needs a simple majority)
  

have to agree to pass essentially the same law. And that's only if POTUS agrees, otherwise it has to pass with 2/3-majority in each chamber.And of course I have simplified, the law also has to survive committees where members might try to insert poison pills on unrelated issues.

 

Sure, members of Congress deserve some of the blame (Senators could force the leadership's hand much more often to get them to act on bills that are popular and have a majority support in the chamber). But the main reason is the system, not the politicians themselves.

[johnu]

More Republican/Russian talking points

I think you meant More Klan/Russian talking points.

[johnu]

But the main reason is the system, not the politicians themselves.

The politicians are the ones who decide on and implement the system (within constitutional constraints), so if the system is broken, politicians are responsible.

[Chas_P]

The politicians are the ones who decide on and implement the system (within constitutional constraints), so if the system is broken, politicians are responsible.

So Jenny Durkan is responsible for the unrest in Seattle? I'm just askin'.....

[shyams]

So Jenny Durkan is responsible for the unrest in Seattle? I'm just askin'.....

No, not at all. It's just that the State of Washington has had more than usual Chemtrails exposure. Then there's the illuminati who have been rearing their ugly head at such critical times and the NASA wonks who helped fake the moon landing who are up to their shenanigans again. They are the true perpetrators.

 

Source? Trust me, bro.

[Chas_P]

No, not at all. It's just that the State of Washington has had more than usual Chemtrails exposure. Then there's the illuminati who have been rearing their ugly head at such critical times and the NASA wonks who helped fake the moon landing who are up to their shenanigans again. They are the true perpetrators.

 

Source? Trust me, bro.

By Jove, I think you have broken the code! Well done bro.

[shyams]

By Jove, I think you have broken the code! Well done bro.

In case the HUMONGOUS flaw in your original comment wasn't evident to you (and it is quite likely so) , let me explicitly tell you what you did wrong.

 

The mini-discussion underway pertained to LEGISLATIVE PROCESS (i.e. making laws). So when cherdano said "system", he was talking about passing laws. Similarly, johnu's response specifically said that if the "system" (i.e. process of making laws) was broken, it is for politicians to fix and consequently they are still responsible.

 

You may agree or disagree with the merit of those comments w.r.t. legislative process. However, only a fool will take those words and foist them onto the Seattle situation in order to claim moral superiority.

[Zelandakh]

However, only a fool will take those words and foist them onto the Seattle situation in order to claim moral superiority.

The BBF racist could never claim moral superiority on anything, shyams.

[Winstonm]

Welcome to Donald Trump's America:

 

 

Scientists are firing back at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention after the federal agency on Monday reversed its identification of the coronavirus as an airborne virus, a conclusion that many experts say scientific evidence has supported for months now.

 

The CDC's brief recognition of the virus as being airborne on Friday was celebrated as long overdue by concurring scientists, who expressed relief that the agency was finally catching up. Three days later, however, the agency said that new language in its coronavirus guidance had been published in error.

 

"The CDC is broken. Seriously broken," Matthew Fox, an epidemiology and global health professor at Boston University, tweeted in response.

 

Scientists and public health experts scoffed at the CDC's flip-flop. Not only was it dangerous to release confusing information during a pandemic, they argued, but the science doesn't support the stance the agency was apparently reverting to.

 

 

 

 

It seems, at least for now, that Piggy has the conch shell.

[shyams]

What does airborne mean?

 

Is this about the water droplets in air (the main driver of "social distancing" advice worldwide) OR a generic airborne (i.e. infection remains largely suspended in normal air for extended periods of time)?

 

AFAIK, health authorities have insisted that the disease is not airborne. It does transmit due to water droplets carrying the virus from infected to non-infected but it does not generally transmit through air. The WHO does warn of specific situations (mainly during medical procedures) where the airborne nature has been observed. Barring those situations, there is no advice about airborne transmissions.

[y66]

On Oct. 6, 2017, I said it was very likely that the 2020 elections would produce unified government at the federal level one way or another. So how’s that looking?

 

Not bad, for a long-range prediction. The Cook Political Report rates 222 House seats as “Leans Democratic” or better for that party, meaning that even if Republicans were able to sweep all 28 toss-up seats they’d need to find five more (while also protecting each of their own). Not only that, but the vast majority of recent rating changes at Cook and similar organizations have moved in the Democrats’ direction. At this point, it’s unlikely that even a significant late surge for President Donald Trump and the Republicans would be enough to get them to 218 House seats.

 

It’s also still a good bet that the next president will have at least a slim Senate majority, not least because the vice president would be the tiebreaker if the chamber has a 50-50 split. The Economist’s model gives Democrats a 67% chance of gaining a Senate majority, while FiveThirtyEight gives them 62%. Former Vice President Joe Biden is leading in the polls (and in both prediction models) right now; if he fades, so would Democratic Senate candidates. It’s certainly possible that Biden could win while the Democrats failed to reach 50 seats or that Trump could win despite Republicans losing a net of four or more from their current 53. But I’d be surprised.

 

(All this assumes that Trump’s attempts to overturn the election results if he loses — which he mused about again on Wednesday — are unsuccessful. Yes, we've reached the point where such disclaimers are necessary. No, that isn’t good news for U.S. democracy.)

 

Overall, it seems likely that if Biden wins, the Democrats will also have majorities in both chambers of Congress, but if Trump prevails both parties will maintain their current majorities in the split Congress.

 

Back to the Senate: The biggest change over the course of the last year is that the Democrats are now very likely to make at least some gains, and there’s a realistic (albeit slim) chance that they could reach 54 or more seats. The Economist’s model gives that about a one in five chance, while FiveThirtyEight thinks it’s about one in seven. That mid-50s number is important because getting there would mean the party would have the votes to enact a significant portion of its legislative agenda with a simple majority, but almost no chance to overcome a Republican filibuster. That’s a formula for ending the filibuster — even if there isn’t an urgent specific reason.

[y66]

Of course he’s incapable of a “coup” but the Federalist Society is extremely capable of making a series of judicial decisions that lead to the American people’s preferences being overridden in favor of their preferences — they’ve done it before.

I'm going to stick with the same assessment till the last: Trump is unfit and proves it every day, but he's incapable of an authoritarian coup and in the event of a FL-in-2000 tipping-point-state tie, his toxic rhetoric only makes him more likely to lose the post-election battle.

[kenberg]

What does airborne mean?

 

Is this about the water droplets in air (the main driver of "social distancing" advice worldwide) OR a generic airborne (i.e. infection remains largely suspended in normal air for extended periods of time)?

 

AFAIK, health authorities have insisted that the disease is not airborne. It does transmit due to water droplets carrying the virus from infected to non-infected but it does not generally transmit through air. The WHO does warn of specific situations (mainly during medical procedures) where the airborne nature has been observed. Barring those situations, there is no advice about airborne transmissions.

 

In practical terms, "Is it airborne?" means "Should we get on a plane?". This came up very specifically. I live in Maryland, my granddaughter lives in New York, she and her boyfriend were down in Maryland visiting her parents who live nearby (to me) in Maryland. From NY to Maryland is maybe a four hour drive so no problem. They were all out to see us yesterday (except my son-in-law who was teaching online). The original plan was that my grandson and his girlfriend would be part of this gathering. He lives in LA. They were going to fly but he recently tested positive.. He is asymptomatic and he is young and healthy so we can reasonably hope this will pass without lasting effect. Not certain, but reasonable to hope. But he stayed in LA. To my mind this was wise even just for his own sake but the decision was, I think, mostly driven by social responsibility. The airlines don't check, or so I understand. He decided it was the right thing to do.

 

Trust in anything being said by government is disappearing. Sure, I was brought up to be skeptical of government pronouncements but we have reached a whole new level. From Winston's post: "Three days later, however, the agency said that new language in its coronavirus guidance had been published in error.".

What? Whether you are R or D or Libertarian or Socialist or a Whig, you start to wonder if these guys have any idea of what they are doing. When we are speaking of a raging disease that has been going on since early this year and killed 200,000 in this country you, if you are the CDC, don't get to publish something in error. And nobody really believes that this is an honest correction of an honest mistake.

 

We have a problem. We need a new president. We need this very much and we need it now.

[Winstonm]

What does airborne mean?

 

Is this about the water droplets in air (the main driver of "social distancing" advice worldwide) OR a generic airborne (i.e. infection remains largely suspended in normal air for extended periods of time)?

 

AFAIK, health authorities have insisted that the disease is not airborne. It does transmit due to water droplets carrying the virus from infected to non-infected but it does not generally transmit through air. The WHO does warn of specific situations (mainly during medical procedures) where the airborne nature has been observed. Barring those situations, there is no advice about airborne transmissions.

 

The reality is that all of it is "airborne" - but big droplets are heavy and gravity pulls them to surfaces within a few feet of the cougher or sneezer so they don't stay airborne long. The issue is the size of contagious droplets. The problem is with aerosols, tiny droplets that can hang around in the air for some time. The fact that there is heightened danger in exposing yourself to indoor environments indicates the possibility of some degree of non-droplet transmission.

 

Here is CDC information from a super spreader event with a church choir back in March. Short version? Aerosols may have been involved. Thanks CDC, but it's no longer May. It's almost October and you still don't know?

[Zelandakh]

What does airborne mean?

The original advice of the CDC, that has never officially been updated, was that the virus particles are heavy and fall to the ground quickly, thus as long as you are 1.5m away from the next person, you are safe even without masks being used. However, for some time now the evidence has supported the conclusion that the virus acts in an aerosolised form, meaning it can travel much further distances. This makes the usage of masks even more important than would be the case for the old advice. Basically the only possible reason for the CDC not having updated its advice long before now is political influence. Given that it is widely looked to internationally for objective advice, that is extremely worrisome and disappointing. Hopefully things can return to a more reliable basis in a few months.

[Winstonm]

. And nobody really believes that this is an honest correction of an honest mistake.

 

We have a problem. We need a new president. We need this very much and we need it now.

 

It would be bad enough if only this. However, Vanity Fair by way of The Atlantic is signaling a much more dangerous and widespread problem:

 

Now the Trump campaign is said to be considering another, even more outrageous approach: In a thorough and deeply disconcerting piece about the constitutional crisis that may await us between November 3 and the inauguration in January, the Atlantic’s Barton Gellman reports that the Trump campaign has been discussing “contingency plans to bypass the election results and appoint local electors in battleground states where Republicans hold the legislative majority.” Citing the president’s baseless claims of fraud, Team Trump could ask GOP-controlled state governments to choose electors, completely ignoring an unfavorable or uncertain popular vote, state and national Republican sources told Gellman.

 

This could be poo-pooed as sensationalism in The National Inquirer. That it is The Atlantic and Vanity Fair is much more troubling and might explain why Trump is not acting like he is well behind in polls. With a state like Wisconsin, which has a state legislature filled with Matt Gaetz and Ron DeSantis clones, this near-invisible coup attempt cannot be ruled out.

[y66]

Great discussion between @JimPethokoukis and @mattyglesias about the "One Billion Americans" idea. I'm totally on board.

 

https://www.aei.org/economics/the-case-for-one-billion-americans-my-long-read-qa-with-matthew-yglesias/

Yglesias at his best.