Sunday, September 06, 2026

Which Is More Pathetic, Part II

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Which Is More Pathetic?

That? 👆 Or this? 👇
“Many people suggested changing the name of New Mexico, one of the great vote cheating states of all time, to NEW AMERICA,” Trump wrote on his social media platform Truth Social. “So much more prestigious and beautiful for the people of that potentially incredible State. Wow, I Love It!!!”
Nobody else does. Good to know Trump is focused on the issues that matter to the country. And Paxton is running on the issues that matter to Texans.
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But The War Will Be Over Soon..:

...and the price of gas will drop to 30 cents a gallon and socialism will be vanquished and we’ll all have eggs in our beer, and no nasty immigrants living on welfare and driving up the cost of housing.
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Grandpa Needs A Nap

(He knows those “Space Force” uniforms are the attire of the Empire lackeys in “Star Wars,” right? Right? And is he going after “New Mexico” next? Maybe he just wants to simplify the spelling of “Albuquerque.”)

A frozen version:
Google and Apple are already falling into line.
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Just In Time To Turn Our Attention To The Midterms

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“I Don’t Do Things Like That…”

Trump: Upon his death, I gave Congressman John Dingell, the Royal Sendoff, MAXED OUT! His wife, Debbie Dingbat, called me and thanked me profusely, while crying uncontrollably. She couldn't believe I would do such a nice thing! Since then, she says nothing but bad about your favorite President, ME! Every time I see that Third Rate Loser ripping me, I'm amazed, because I'm a loyal person, I don't do things like that but, that's OK — It's Politics. However, it shouldn't be that way!
Says the leopard eating people’s faces….

“Debbie Dingbat” needs to be told it shouldn’t be that way, says the Toddler-in-Chief.
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How It’s Going 🇷🇺 🇺🇦 🇺🇸

There is quite a bit of symbolism in how Witkoff and Kushner arrived in Kyiv today. Ukraine had prepared its airports to receive the U.S. delegation by air, but Russia struck them.

Zelensky now says those strikes made the planned flight impossible, forcing the Americans to enter Ukraine by train instead.

Then, hours later, Putin sat across from the same American negotiators in Moscow, declared his “full trust” in U.S. mediation and promised to ensure the safety of the diplomatic process.

Whatever Moscow's precise targeting calculus was, the message of power was difficult to miss: The Americans could fly into Putin's Moscow. They had to take a train into Zelensky's Kyiv.

And that was the physical reality surrounding a negotiation supposedly intended to end the war.
Zelenskyy also said Ukraine would suspend attacks while the Americans were in Moscow, and asked Putin to reciprocate.
Witkoff: "President Putin, thank you so much for having us. We were sitting outside just now, me, Jared, Kirill, Yuri, and we were talking about, when we retire, we'll have all these incredible stories and memories, and yours will be right at the top of it all."

Just sickening! So much butt-licking toward a literal war criminal.

Your stories will be of trying to force the victim of horrible aggression to surrender while cozying up to the biggest monster of our time.
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Kristen Welker Wants To Sit With The Kewl Kids

And even the old guard is catching on.
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So, When Do We Declare “Victory!,” And Go Home?

BTW, the correct answer is: “Probably not.”
Following the U.S. targeting of three Iranian oil tankers, Iran’s IRGC has responded by saying that the IRGC Navy targeted six tankers in the Strait of Hormuz today. Additional reports from Iranian news outlets are now also saying that the IRGC has threatened even more actions against the region should such attacks continue.
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The Rick Perry Failure

The Energy Department replaced the old Atomic Energy Commission. Its purpose was to make oversight of the nation’s nuclear stores a Cabinet level concern.

Rick Perry never understood that, and tried to make it about oil because he was from Texas, and he was “Gov, Goodhair” (Molly Ivins). She meant that’s all his head was good for. Perry started us down this road of Energy Secretaries opining on gas prices, because they can’t really talk about the nuclear stockpile.

Chris Wright should be concerned with his department’s remit. He has as much authority over gas prices as he does over the phases of the moon.🌖 
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“Tell Me You Don’t Know Anything About Elections…”

 Professor Vladeck keeps us up to date:

The Trump administration has just filed its 37th #SCOTUS emergency application, this one seeking to put back into effect the USPS’s new rule re: mail-in ballots—even though (1) the First Circuit hasn’t denied a stay yet; & (2) Judge Talwani may shortly convert her TRO into a preliminary injunction.

Justice Jackson (as Circuit Justice for the First Circuit) has called for a response to the government’s application by Tuesday morning—but did *not* issue the immediate “administrative” stay that DOJ asked for.

There’s a lot of (baseless) chatter on the right that Justice Jackson has abused the timing of emergency applications. The fact that she called for a response by Tuesday (the end of a holiday weekend) ought to dispel that charge, at least if the people making them cared about facts.
Wisconsin and North Carolina have already mailed out ballots (the USPS rule is stayed by the TRO, which Jackson has not ruled against):
“There’s no practical way for Wisconsin clerks to comply,” said Republican Don Millis, chairman of Wisconsin’s elections board.

Millis criticized Trump's proposed policies, arguing they would “hurt the Republican turnout more than the Democratic turnout.”

Gerry Cohen, a Democrat on an elections board in North Carolina, also criticized the Postal Service's plans to receive updates on voter lists, noting his county receives about 1,500 registrations a week.

“Tell me you don’t know anything about elections without telling me you don’t know anything about elections,” he said.
The irony is, Trump is racing to build his ballroom and arch, betting the courts won’t order him to tear them down. Wisconsin and North Carolina are arguably doing the same, except they are following the law. 

And to the excuse that Trump really just wants this rule for 2028: it’s an EO. Congress can override it. And probably will. 
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Jawbone Of An Ass

Here’s a list of Scott Bessent’s wrong predictions and/or promises that didn’t happen:

February 5, 2025: Long-term interest rates would come down as Trump’s economic policies took effect.

Spring 2025: The federal deficit would move toward 3% of GDP.

Spring 2025: Trump’s policies would produce roughly 3% sustained real GDP growth.

July 8, 2025: The U.S. would collect well over $300 billion in tariff revenue in 2025.

September 1, 2025: The Supreme Court would uphold Trump’s emergency tariffs.

September 7, 2025: The economy would see a “substantial acceleration” in Q4 2025.

December 7–16, 2025: 2025 would finish with 3% to 3.5% real GDP growth.

December 16, 2025: Inflation would see a substantial drop in the first six months of 2026.

February 20, 2026: The economy could grow at least 3.5% in 2026.

April 14, 2026: 2026 GDP growth could easily exceed 3% or 3.5%.

April 14, 2026: Core inflation was falling and the Federal Reserve would need to cut interest rates.

April 14, 2026: Trump’s tariffs could be restored to their previous levels by the beginning of July.

June 2026: Again maintained that 2026 growth could reach roughly 3% to 3.5%.

2025–26: Lower energy prices, fiscal restraint and Trump’s policies would bring down long-term Treasury yields.

2025–26: Faster growth and tariff revenue would materially improve the federal deficit.

And now we get to track this one:

September 5, 2026: Oil could eventually fall to $40–$50 per barrel after the Iran war ends. The economy is now “in the liftoff phase.”
From that same interview: ???? Statistically, the economy was in good shape under Biden. Turns out, you can’t eat statistics. Statistically speaking.

And when does this war that isn’t a war end, if we have to maintain control over the Strait of Hormuz to keep the oil flowing and the blockade working?

🤡🎪
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Socialism Is For The Rich

AND Talarico supports dismantling capitalism! Or, Talarico wants to support people who aren’t rich, which doesn’t include Cruz and his supporters.

What is Cruz afraid of, really?
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Saturday, September 05, 2026

I Just Don’t Understand…

Tim Scott is secretly a Democrat? And now he’s threatening Democratic voters with a good time?
Tim Scott: Help up defend this majority. It is the only way we finish the legacy agenda of President Trump who has literally saved this nation from socialism. If you believe in keeping America are free market capitalist society, keeping fairness and the American dream alive and well—you've got to vote for President Trump in his agenda which mean supporting Republicans
Yeah, about that: In the 1950’s, in the small East Texas town where I went to college some 25 years later, decided it needed a hotel for the benefit of the town; so it built one. In the same period, Sen. LBJ established the LCRA, a central Texas version of the TVA. It’s all as American as apple pie. This really seems to be all they’ve got. And even Trump can’t come up with anything but Talarico is a vegan? And TV ads for the midterms that are all about Trump’s “accomplishments”?

Who does Tim Scott imagine he’s talking to? And why does he think it will GOTV? For his side, I mean.
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NOT The Strait Of Hormuz

The United Kingdom Maritime Trade Operations (UKMTO) Center has issued an advisory after receiving a report that several vessels in the Northern Arabian Gulf and Gulf of Oman were subject to disabling fire as part of ongoing military operations. The locations given by UKMTO are roughly the same as those mentioned in the release a short time ago from U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) announcing they had destroyed 3 Iranian tankers in response to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) targeting two U.S. Navy ships yesterday.
So it doesn’t count, right?
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Follow The Money 🤑

Paxton has raised $9.3 million. Elmo has given him $250,000 more. Talarico has raised over $31 million.

MAGA, Inc. wants to spend half the money on ads bashing Talarico. Saying what? He’s vegan? He’s gay? He’s a socialist? God is non-binary? Talarico has pretty much established himself by now. If they can’t do better than “Talafreako,” they’re wasting their money.

I guess the other $5 million will go for ads about Trump. Paxton’s record does him no credit.  So far, he’s trailing scandal and creating scandal, and nobody wants to give him any money. Trump can only peel off 10% of what his PAC has, putting Paxton up to just over half of Talarico’s war chest.

If money is the mother’s milk of politics, Paxton is the runt of the litter.
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The First Amendment Has Entered The Chat

New in PN: Nina Jankowicz on the golden age of disinformation

“I’m not optimistic about us clawing back from this unless there’s serious rethinking of our systems, and frankly, regulation of these social media platforms that are making us such passive and uncurious consumers of information."
"Congress shall make no law…” So who’s going to write these regulations? And who decides what they are, and how they’re enforced? Is my sarcasm going to be construed as lies? (It’s already sometimes misunderstood. I’m not Swift, so that’s on me.) Some of the burden of the First Amendment is on we, the people.

Racism in America has always been, in part, the passive and incurious consumption of information. Bad information, misinformation, if you will, but information nonetheless.  Isolationism before Pearl Harbor, the same. We were lucky that didn’t put us so much on our back foot we weren’t isolated by the success of Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan. The freedom of the First Amendment is that government can’t silence our thoughts. The burden, is that we are still responsible for our thoughts.

And the sad truth is; thinking is hard.
Jason Selvig: “Why do you think Donald Trump’s approval rating is at 32% right now?”

Trump supporter: “I don’t think it is, I think that’s a lie. That’s not what CNN says. And hell that’s the Clinton Nazi Network. I think she’s a Nazi. She colluded with Russia”

JS: “Has there been any evidence Hillary Clinton’s campaign colluded with Russia?”



TS: “As far as it coming out, arrests being made, no”



JS: “So why do you believe that?”

TS: “Cause I believe it”
You can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make him think.

Trust me. I was a teacher for 20 years.
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Checkmate ♟️

It’s called the Shannon number.  It was calculated in 1949, using pencil and paper.📝 It describes the possible number of chess moves, which is subject to disagreement (Shannon calculated “reasonable moves.” Other calculations include all possible moves, including useless ones.), but the number is far higher than any known system of data storage could store, much less than any computer could calculate.

But I guess this is why we need more AI centers?

Elmo and Trump are the poster children for the refutation of the old challenge: “If you’re so smart, how come you’re not rich?”
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The Campaign Ads Continue To Write Themselves

Among them: Paxton, the Republican nominee for U.S. Senate, reported owning seven homes but said he earned no income from any. Yet all but one was listed for rent during the reporting periods, and some current residents and neighbors at those addresses confirmed that the properties were rented, the news organizations found. Receiving income and not reporting it is a violation of federal disclosure law, three ethics experts said.

Additionally, Paxton did not disclose mortgages for three condos at a Utah golf resort that federal law requires him to list as liabilities if they are not personal residences.

He also valued his stake in a vacant plot of Texas land at up to $50,000 on last year’s filing, but his business partner told the newsrooms Paxton’s share for years has been worth about $1 million. Federal financial disclosure law requires property to be listed at fair market value.
It’s not the failures to list. It’s the lies. It’s the prevarication. It’s the sleaze.

Trump has already established that the corruption runs all the way down. Paxton is establishing he was there first.

It’s another brick in the wall.

😎
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Friday, September 04, 2026

Been Waiting All Day For This Community Note

I just didn’t realize it 

Trump is a fucking idiot. 
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“…and the second Person of the Trinity is our mother in nature and our essential creation, in whom we are grounded and rooted”

Except God is non-binary:
And so in our making, God almighty is our father by nature; and God all wisdom is our mother by nature, along with the love and goodness of the Holy Ghost; and these are all one God, one Lord....

For our whole life falls into three parts. In the first we exist, in the second we grow and in the third we are completed. The first is nature, the second is mercy, the third is grace. As for the first, I saw and understood that the great power of the Trinity is our father, and the deep wisdom of the Trinity is our mother, and the great love of the Trinity is our lord; and we have all this by nature and in our essential being. And furthermore, I saw that as the second Person of is mother of our essential being, so that same well-loved Person has become mother of our sensory being; for God makes us double, as essential and sensory beings. Our essential part is the higher part, which we have in our Father, God almighty; and the second Person of the Trinity is our mother in nature and our essential creation, in whom we are grounded and rooted, and he is our mother in mercy taking on our sensory being. And so our Mother, in whom our parts are kept unparted, works in us in various ways; for in our Mother, Christ, we profit and grow, and in mercy he reforms and restores us, and through the power of his Passion and his death and rising again, he unites us to our essential being. This is how our Mother mercifully acts to all his children who are submissive and obedient to him.

But Jesus, who in this vision informed me of all that I needed to know, answered with this assurance: 'Sin is befitting, but all shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well.'

With this bare word 'sin" our Lord brought to my mind the whole extent of all that is not good, and the shameful scorn and the utter humiliation that he bore for us in this life, and his dying, and all the pains and sufferings of his creatures, both in body and spirit--for we are all to some extent brought to nothing and shall be brought to nothing as our master Jesus was, until we are fully purged: that is to say until our mortal flesh is brought completely to nothing, and all those of our inward feelings which are not truly good. Have me insight into these things, along with all pains that ever were and ever shall be; and compared with these I realize that Christ's Passion was the greatest pain and went beyond them all. And all this was shown in a flash, an quickly changed into comfort; for our good Lord did not want the soul to be afraid at this ugly sight.

....And because of the tender love which our Lord feels for all who shall be saved, he supports us willingly and sweetly, meaning this: 'It is true that sin is the cause of all this suffering, but all shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well.'
--Julian of Norwich, 14th century 
You foolish Galatians! Who has bewitched you? It was before your eyes that Jesus Christ was publicly exhibited as crucified! 2 The only thing I want to learn from you is this: Did you receive the Spirit by doing the works of the law or by believing what you heard? 3 Are you so foolish? Having started with the Spirit, are you now ending with the flesh? 4 Did you experience so much for nothing?—if it really was for nothing. 5 Well then, does God[a] supply you with the Spirit and work miracles among you by your doing the works of the law, or by your believing what you heard?

6 Just as Abraham ‘believed God, and it was reckoned to him as righteousness’, 7 so, you see, those who believe are the descendants of Abraham. 8 And the scripture, foreseeing that God would justify the Gentiles by faith, declared the gospel beforehand to Abraham, saying, ‘All the Gentiles shall be blessed in you.’ 9 For this reason, those who believe are blessed with Abraham who believed.

25 But now that faith has come, we are no longer subject to a disciplinarian, 26 for in Christ Jesus you are all children of God through faith. 27 As many of you as were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. 28 There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus. 29 And if you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham’s offspring, heirs according to the promise.
Paul of Tarsus, 1st century 

God is not even gendered. Unless you think of God as a hairy thunderer, a giant old white guy with a beard, sitting on a throne. Which is idolatry in any historical version of Christianity you turn to.

Besides, nobody in Texas cares what Tim Scott thinks; even fewer know who he is. If this is what the GOP is counting on to motivate their base, I feel very good about the Senate race in Texas.
If this is socialism, I’m good with it.
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🥩 “It’s Very Clean.”

Trust him. Has he ever lied to you?

The story was, Trump did this for fast food giants who couldn’t afford domestic beef (supply and demand).  As for me, I’m not eating any hamburger I didn’t cook myself.
Costco? Wal-Mart? Are they trying to piss off middle America? If the beef packaging changes at Costco, I ain’t buyin’.
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Maybe In January Congress Will Save The Dog

By repealing every statute that gives the Executive a hint of authority to impose tariffs (hard times call for hard solutions.). Those laws can be replaced later, if deemed wides. Congress can also negate all the tariffs Trump has imposed and return all tariff authority to…Congress.

Radical, I know, but radical times….
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When You Put It That Way

The "menswear guy” makes more sense than anyone in the Administration. Absolutely anyone.
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Lordelpus

President Donald Trump's "incoherence" in a little-noticed exclusive interview with GB News caught the eye of a British journalist who was startled by what he witnessed, he said Friday.

During the interview, a rambling Trump managed to touch on subjects ranging from immigration to Meghan Markle's return to Britain, prompting iPaper columnist James Ball to argue the president was an “elderly man” who no longer had a grasp of reality.
What was your first clue?
Trump: If we're not going to be treated properly, we're going to do that, and all we have to do to cut our trade deficit with the country is not trade with them. If we don't do any trading with Canada. We just end all trade with Canada. We'd save ourselves $90 billion.

Don't forget they do all of their business, almost all of their business with the United States, and we do a relatively small amount of business with them, but if we didn't want to, if we were playing hardball, all we do is say, what are you going to do, no trading with Canada. If we did no trading with Canada, we'd save $90 billion.

And so what I'm saying very simply is that we should be paying the lowest interest rate in the world
Reporter: Can you explain to the American people, if this is not a war, what exactly is it?

Trump: A lot of people don’t call it a war. I call it a military conflict because it's small potatoes for us. It's not a big thing.

Reporter: It certainly doesn’t feel like small potatoes. 18 service members have died. We’re seeing record long deployments.

Trump: Why is it record long? How long were we in Vietnam?
The rest of that exchange:
“Why is it record-long?” Trump roared back. “How long were we in Vietnam? How long were we in Vietnam?”

“We’re in five months now — and you know what we did in five months?” Trump continued. “They’re not going to have a nuclear weapon. That’s what we did.”

Trump then dropped a warning while defending his war that has dragged on for over six months.

“Iran will not have a nuclear weapon, because if they did, you probably wouldn’t be standing here very long,” he told Scott.
Yeah, about that:
“This is an odd way to understand a nuclear capability.”

“Countries don’t immediately launch nuclear missiles as soon as they obtain them – instead, they generally use them to try to deter invasion by their adversaries,” he reasoned. “Why Iran would immediately launch its theoretical nukes against European nations who hadn’t involved themselves in the war against it is never spelt out by Trump.”
Trump has no fucking idea what he's doing. Absolutely none. He’s absolutely clueless. Congress could save us all from some of this, from legislation up and through impeachment and removal. We are at the clear and present danger stage. 

James Carville wants the networks to run wall to wall coverage of Trumpalooza so the country can see how demented Trump really is. More and more that sounds like a good idea.
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“How Many Divisions Does The Supreme Court Have?”

So, ignoring the Supreme Court was once common practice.

The reign of Republicans during the Civil War and Reconstruction was a democratic breakthrough in two senses. First, legislative majorities overrode the Court, repeatedly ignoring its rulings and adjusting the number of Justices to prevent its interference. Second, those majorities abolished slavery, extended citizenship, and guaranteed equal protection to all Americans. The historian Eric Foner, in “The Second Founding” (2019), describes this as the country’s “first attempt, flawed but truly remarkable for its time, to build an egalitarian society on the ashes of slavery.”
Add to that, after secession, the Congress ignored Dred Scott and prohibited slavery in the territories:
Taney remained Chief Justice until 1864, when he died. During the Civil War, he watched impotently as the Lincoln Administration brushed off rulings on habeas corpus, Black citizenship, and, of course, slavery. “There was no sadder figure to be seen in Washington,” the journalist E. V. Smalley wrote. “He had outlived his epoch, and was shunned and hated by the men of the new time.”
As Mr. Dooley said, the Court follows the election returns. What he didn’t add was: “Or else.”

Oh, and about Marbury v Madison:
Because the Court lacked a permanent abode, Marshall read out the ruling from the steps outside Stelle’s Hotel, on Capitol Hill. As with most impassioned avowals made on hotel steps, Congress ignored it. The Marbury decision didn’t compel anyone to do anything, so Marshall’s assertion just hung in the air.

Judicial assertions meant less back then. In ways that are hard to conceive of now, early-nineteenth-century politicians simply defied the Court. States regularly declined to appear before it when ordered. “Virginia’s highest court refused to concede that the Supreme Court had the authority to review its decisions,” Friedman writes. “Georgia actually hanged a man in the face of a Supreme Court order to the contrary.”
The distinction is not an historical one but an analytical one. The analysis is vertical v. horizontal rulings. Vertical is the Supreme Court overruling lower federal courts. It is the Supreme Court, after all. The Court’s power over state courts is more limited, and the limits are complicated, so I won’t go into them now, even though it shows up later. As the early examples of Virginia and Georgia show, it took awhile to accept that authority. The real interest here is with horizontal rulings, when the Court presumes co-equal power over other branches of government (Congress, Administration, and, yes, state legislatures). All branches are equal, but some are more equal than others.  There’s no way around that.

But does it have to be this way? History, as I’ve briefly pointed out, says “No.” Now, that history’s a bit more complicated than a blog post or a Twitter thread, or a New Yorker article, can explain. The point here is, it exists; and it deserves study. Because the Supreme Court is only as supreme as we, the people, let it be.

Now this argument is full of subtleties. There were people who favored ignoring Brown v Board, and Eisenhower used federal military power to enforce it. But now Brown is more honored in the breach than in the keeping. Texas, like southern states, has turned to vouchers for private schools. Greg Abbott is campaigning on eliminating school property taxes, which would not coincidentally eliminate public schools (he’s not explaining where the money to fund public schools would come from). Why injure public schools, or eliminate them? The answer ain’t socialism; it’s racism. The effort begins and ends with very rich white men who don’t like Brown and Plyler v Doe (children of immigrants must have access to public schools despite their immigration status). They can’t change those decisions, so they’ll eliminate the schools. Given time and money, there’s a way around any Supreme Court decision..

Marbury is not an unalloyed evil. A great deal more good has arisen from Brown and Plyler, than evil. Brown may not be as enforced as it was in the’70’s (when my home school district finally desegregated. Fun fact: “liberal” Austin was still fighting the application of Brown in the’80’s. I moved there 7 years after desegregation in my arch-conservative hometown, and the fight went on for most of the’80’s. One never know, do one?), but its legacy is a change in circumstances that makes the world I lived in before 1970 absolutely unimaginable to my daughter. I count that as a good thing.

Does that outweigh the Roberts court gutting the VRA? No. But you can’t ever slice the baloney so thin it only has one side.

The horizontal assertion of power does raise many questions, including whether the courts are truly co-equal powers to the legislative and administrative branches (spoiler; they aren’t). To say they are, again makes them more equal than others. But to say they aren’t, lets a corrupt President like Trump run unopposed through the fields of the country, and its laws.  In 20 months, the courts are the only branch that has proven an obstacle to Trump’s desires. Arguably, what Trump is doing is what we, the people, voted for. Well, some of it is. Especially the part that affects “them,” and not “us.” We shouldn’t always get what we want, either.

Horizontal power is not limited to the Marbury remit. It necessarily includes statutory interpretation, a basic function of courts of law, one as basic as the common law America and the states (save Louisiana) adopted before replacing it with statutory law. (Civil law and even criminal law arose from the courts of England once upon a time. Marbury really isn’t sui generis.) Statutory interpretation is a horizontal power, but a necessary one. The courts can’t enforce a statute without interpreting it, and that power is also the power to invalidate, if not directly, then indirectly. Congress may have intended one outcome from a bill, but the courts may find a different one altogether. Hard to know precisely what Congress means to do, anyway. And the court has to apply the law to the facts before it. Which means the court has to decide what the law is, in order to apply it. So this business of horizontal analysis v. vertical analysis isn’t simple and clear-cut, with one way right, one way wrong.

The New Yorker article lays out the reactionary history of the Court, especially the “Lochner Era,” when the Court issued a great number of horizontal rulings, mostly against state laws (Lochner held that a New York law limiting working hours violated the 14th Amendment). And that history is, indeed, problematic. But then, to be honest, the law as the country adopted it from England (common law), is highly reactionary. Chief Justice Rehnquist was closer to the nub when he disdained civil rights law in preference for property rights law. That really is the core of English common law.

Interestingly, the history of the Court’s application of this horizontal authority is largely used against state laws, less often against federal laws. But then it's called "vertical authority," in the analysis, presumably because states are inferior to the federal government.  Which is an interesting theory in it's own right, and not one the states have ever fully agreed with.  For one thing, there are areas of state law upon which federal courts cannot tread.  If there is no conflict with state law and federal law, or the U.S. Constitution, the federal courts cannot override state law based on some presumed supremacy.  But that's precisely what "vertical authority" is:  the rule of supremacy.  Which is fine in the federal system; but a problem when it's the basis of federalism.

I say this because the article argues that the Warren court engaged primarily vertical authority over state laws, and seldom exercised  horizontal authority over federal law. That authority was most evident, as I say, when Eisenhower sent in military power to open Arkansas schools to black students.  
The Warren Court had little need for horizontal review, Bowie and Renan believe, but it clung to that power nonetheless. A decision mandating school desegregation in Little Rock, Arkansas—signed by every Justice, for boldface emphasis—insisted that the Court’s supremacy over the other branches in interpreting the Constitution had been accepted since Marbury as “permanent and indispensable.” As history, this was ludicrous. The Warren Court, while making substantively democratic rulings, cemented a procedurally undemocratic arrangement.
That's a sweeping assertion of authority by the Supremes (even though it was a good result, as I said), but it's a more sweeping analysis of federal v state sovereignty.  That analysis I'm a bit less comfortable with.  Not the result, mind; the explanation 70 years later, by two law professors (Bowie and Renan.  Bowie, ironically, is the son of Lani Guineri.  IYKYK.).

So praise to the Warren Court, dubious glances to the contemporary law professors, but still, a problem:
In gratifying the left, the Warren Court debilitated the long tradition of opposing judicial supremacy. Just how debilitated it was became clear in the deadlocked Presidential contest between George W. Bush and Al Gore. In a similarly close nineteenth-century election, between Rutherford B. Hayes and Samuel J. Tilden, Congress had taken charge and no one had “ever dreamed of trying to resolve it in litigation,” Larry D. Kramer notes. Yet, in 2000, the dispute went through the judiciary as a matter of course. After the Supreme Court decided for Bush, who’d lost the popular vote, Democrats acquiesced. “While I strongly disagree with the Court’s decision, I accept it,” Gore said, adding that the process had shown the “strength of American democracy.”
I would say that long tradition began to die when Chief Justice William Howard Taft championed the Judicial Reform Act into law. But that's another argument for another time.  The Warren Court clearly cemented the idea that the Supreme Court was, indeed, supreme.  And now it's time to take a sledge hammer to that pedestal.

I’d say the Sinister Six are pondering that very possibility as the election results become more agreed on: Congress can control the court (as Professor Vladeck points out, the Congress did so regularly, until the Judiciary Act of 1927). States don’t enjoy such power. So the Court, one could conclude, regularly punches down. After all, they know where the power is. And that while they claim to be co-equal, they can’t determine where they sit (the current Supreme Court building hasn’t yet been in use 100 years, and Congress could close it tomorrow). They have no power to enforce their rulings (even federal marshals are under the Administration), and the size of the court, even its jurisdiction (save for that set by Art. III, which is minimal), is a set by Congress. Which can remove Justices for pretty much any reason it wants. The Supreme Court has no jurisdiction over impeachment proceedings. They are co-equal, or even first among equals, because we accept that they say they are.

So what happens if we stop doing that?
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Thursday, September 03, 2026

Why Would I Do That To The Animals?

They aren’t trying to kill all the other animals on the planet. 

"If man could be crossed with the cat, it would improve man, but it would deteriorate the cat."

—Mark Twain 
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More Reasons We Can’t Let The Chinese Take Our AI 🤖

If you need AI to floss your teeth, you’re doing it wrong. 🦷 
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QED

Tucker Carlson is old news. He’s fish wrap. Even his little meeting with MTG and other has beens didn’t resuscitate interest in him. Nobody cares. And “nobody” = political pundits and news talk hosts.

By contrast, Hasan Piker is fresh meat. Asking politicians about him (hem hem, Kristen Welker) makes you sound like you’re deep in the know about people the general public has never heard of (bonus points if it’s a hot topic on political Twitter, because then all the kewl kids will talk about you there). 

99.9% of political reporting/punditry is gossip. QED.
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Fox Is Woke?

Not why Maria was fired.
Specifically, per the report from Oliver Darcy, "After Trump delivered his unhinged prime time speech in which he pushed more conspiracy theories about the 2020 election, this time making a number of allegations against China ... Fox News issued guidance to senior employees instructing them to steer clear of giving credence to Trump’s delusional claims," in the form of a text message to staff.

Once this happened, said the report, Bartiromo spilled the beans to the White House "that Trump’s speech had received scant coverage on the channel because network bosses had ordered it so," and provided them with the text message proving it.

"In doing so, Bartiromo not only effectively betrayed her employer, but also disclosed confidential company information, violating the terms of her employment agreement," said the report.
And there is a connection to 2020:
Her uncritical promotion of claims that Dominion Voting Systems equipment was compromised, some of it coming from a woman who claimed to have learned this through time travel, played a key role in Dominion's defamation suit against the network, which was ultimately settled for just under $800 million.
Especially on FoxNews.
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Anyone Else Remember…

... when Trump complained about the reporting of Covid cases? As in, reduce reporting so things wouldn’t seem so bad? Especially the death rate.

Déjà vu all over again, isn’t it? Vote for the clown 🤡, get the circus.🎪 
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Stephen Miller’s America

All they care about is removing brown people. The economic impact, the emotional impact, and the spiritual impact, the impact on family, friends, communities people…all means nothing to them.

I think people like these called “sociopaths.” Seems right, anyway.
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I’d Be Surprised If He Spent Any Of It

Charity is not one of his features. At. All.
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“Who Look Extremely European In Every Way”?

We're done here.
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🎶” I got the presidential phone!/I got the presidential podium!”🎶

Trump: "The people and Media Outlets that keep harping on the fact that we have no ammunition (And they are 100% wrong!), are actually treasonous. They do it because they would rather see the United States LOSE a War that we’re easily WINNING, than see me WIN! President DONALD J. TRUMP"
"The people” = military personnel in the Pentagon warning about the state of military readiness around the world. Doing their jobs, IOW. Turns out they're treasonous, too:
Trump: "For the treasonous SCUM that refuses to accurately report on our Military Operation in Iran, we have virtually unlimited amounts of Mid to High Grade Ammunition, far more than we could ever use for this, or for any other War (which is highly unlikely!), that could improbably take place."
Covid was pretty improbable, too.
Grandpa ShoutyPants has completely lost the thread. No surprise, that.
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“Will You Survive On The Ocean Of Being?”

 The Lovely Wife is out for an hour, so I get to crank Genesis as loud as I like.

My stereo is hardly optimal, but it has a subwoofer (drives the LW nuts. Shakes the walls, she says. That’s the point, says I. Especially when it’s Thorvaldsdottir’s piece we heard in concert, with a contrabassoon soloist. Did I mention I played the bassoon in junior high and high school? My nerd privilege was earned, mf’ers!) Then I turn it down.

But now she’s gone, and I can feel the bass line in my chest. The way God intended it!

Me and the Winkler and walking across the living room to turn the television off, at volume that prohibits speech and rattles the rib cage. Life is good.

I’m too old to apply apologize for my musical tastes. 😈


Human 🥓 (IYKYK)

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To The Batphone!

Honestly, I’d expect to see this in a comic book of my childhood. The kind that inspired the “Batman” TV show. That, too.
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🛢️🛢️🛢️

Trump’s Energy Secretary says the flow is 17 million.

 DOE also says:

The U.S. government has provided data on oil exports through Hormuz that are higher than those reported by independent ship-tracking firms. Wright has said the U.S. military and Department of Energy have the best data as private companies often miss covert transits.

Why don’t I believe them? 

Ship-tracking service Kpler reported that "traffic declined sharply," with just five ships crossing on Monday, the same day that the US and Iran exchanged fire for the first time in a month. The data platform documented a mix of official ships as well as shadow vessels using concealment tactics.

Yet the picture from the Trump administration couldn't have been more different, with Energy Secretary Chris Wright saying in a CNBC interview that over 17 million barrels of oil passed through the waterway on Monday. Wright called it a record since the beginning of the conflict.

Wright's figures are rooted in claims from the Trump administration that dozens of ships are being assisted by the US Navy each night, undetected by commercial shipping trackers. Kpler and others use satellite imagery and other tools to gauge traffic in the waterway that is about 21 miles wide at its narrowest point.
Or maybe it’s because Brent Crude is over $97 bbl today.
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Somebody Alert Google And Apple 🍏 🫎

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The Boy Who Cried “Victory!”

Trump has said it so many times, how will we know when he means it?
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AI 🤖 Will Not Kill Us

 We’ll do that ourselves:

The role of AI in wilderness trip-planning has become a heated topic of conversation in California's north state following a series of instances in which hikers and campers in the Shasta area became lost or confused after relying on chatbots to help them devise their adventures.
You can’t make this shit up.
Earlier this summer, rangers with Shasta-Trinity National Forest found a woman camping in an off-limits area on the south side of Shasta clearly marked with "no camping" signage, Meyers said. She told rangers she had asked ChatGPT where she could camp in the forest.

"AI told me I can camp here," she said, according to Meyers.

Then in August, while hiking in Shasta's popular Bunny Flat area, a man stopped rangers to ask for directions. He showed them a print-out map he'd been following and explained that he'd prompted ChatGPT to produce it for him.

"It was terrible - terrible - not even close to accurate," Meyers said. "It had route lines and place names that were totally off - just ridiculous. We were like, dude, you gotta throw that away."

The most potentially consequential instance occurred last weekend when the novice college-aged climbers got into trouble and called for rescue.

On Saturday, the trio of climbers, all from California, left from the Clear Creek Trailhead on Shasta's southeastern side with a plan to camp partway up before making a summit push early Sunday morning, according to official reports. They'd asked Google Gemini for specific guidance, researched the climb on YouTube, and planned to use the AllTrails phone app to navigate the giant peak.
That hapless group of college age students misread a map on their phone, took the wrong (and harder) route up Shasta, drained the phone battery on the way down (and so got lost), and had to spend the night on the mountain.⛰️ 
During the hike down, the young climbers revealed to rangers that they'd relied on AI chatbots to guide their planning. Authorities noted that as a "key factor" of their mishap.

The climbers "reported that AI recommended simple carbohydrates for their climb, rather than fats because they 'take too long to digest,'" according to the official report. "In their words, 'We relied too much on AI rather than our own critical thinking.'"
This is why we need more data centers. We cannot allow China to make us stupider. We must do it ourselves!
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Wednesday, September 02, 2026

The President Of The United States, Ladies And Gentleman

Paxton:

Stole a $1000 pen at a courthouse in full view of a security camera.

Was impeached by his own party 

Was referred to the FBI by his own staff

Decided to run for the Senate because nobody wanted him to be AG anymore (basically: get out of the state).

Found a way to afford millions of dollars in real estate on a state employee’s salary.

So, yeah: Trump’s guy.
The President of the United States, ladies and gentlemen. Nope. Not hardly. (Innumerate idiot.) Not even close. (Trump has never darkened the door of a grocery store.) Never gonna happen. (Unless he just wants to lose another prosecution.) Talking to himself in the mirror again. Every time you think he can’t get more delusional, he reaches a new level. See what I mean? I have absolutely no idea what he thinks he’s saying. I’m not sure he knows, either.
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Sorting Through The Verbiage

Hunt: So, who’s right on data centers? President Trump or Governor Shapiro?

Fetterman: Oh, the president is actually right overall. I mean, you know, uh, we we used to be moving forward on data centers and now, I mean, he's actually scared by the polls. So I mean, what really what's really motivated by more than just the polls overall, you know, I set out I set up my message on it on data centers just a couple days on X where I'm saying it's, you know, the president happens to be right in this. You know, I think it's it's very necessary that we win the war on AI. Uh, we, I think it's necessary because AI is going to transform our world. And, you know, it can be either us be the leaders or it can be the Chinese. And we could we could live under those rules and they're going to build unlimited data centers. And they're not really, uh, really stopped by with the kind of like democracy and the kinds of rules that, that we have overall, I think it's important. And I would remind people, like a lot of the opposition is, is been driven by the ccp and a lot of a lot of influence. So I think now withwith data centers, uh, also there's the facts now that it, it consumes a very, very, maybe one tenth of 1%, you know, compared to almonds and compared to other other things, part of our economy and also our land usage as well, too. Pennsylvania, you know, we are energy rich, we are water rich. And we have we're land rich now. So I think it's an important part of our economy, not just for Pennsylvania's but also the country right now.
He’s limiting himself to Pennsylvania, but Trump doesn’t. So…

AI is not a force of nature which must transform our world. It’s not even clear it will.And frankly, the correct response to data centers is regulation, not “You must obey or China wins!” Nothing is that simple a dichotomy.

Blaming opposition on CCP propaganda is insulting and an assault on democratic processes in this country. Real people have real concerns about the real impact of these centers on their lives and their quality of life. As AOC and others have pointed out, if Trump likes them so, build one next to MAL. Or donate some of MAL property, to lead by example.

Yeah, that’ll happen. 

And PA may have a lot of water to spare, and electricity, but most of the country west of the Mississippi, doesn’t. Including Texas, which has more water than most of the states west of it, but none to spare for AI. Which so far is just producing child porn and pictures nobody needs, and junk summations for Google searches. Oh, and there was that AI that broke out of its limitations and hacked other databases to solve the problems it was told to solve. AI doesn’t know what’s wrong with that, or with creating pictures of naked children. If that’s how it’s going to transform the world, I don’t think we need help in those areas. 

It’s funny how the worst scenario for AI in all the stories was how it would try to kill us all, maliciously. But so far, it’s the worst aspects of the internet, cubed. Or maybe raised to the 10th power. Choose your metaphor.

I’m not an AI. Luddite. But neither am I willing to give the tech bros the authority to do as they please and rake in the money they expect for it. “Trust me, bro,” went out with Elmo and DOGE, if not when Elmo took over Twitter.

If all you’ve got to say as a U.S. Senator is “Let the tech bros run free, they’ll save us from China,” I’ve gotta say the last technological race with a foreign power was the Space Race, and private enterprise didn’t win that one. Government agencies and government contractors did. Government gave us the internet, too; and GPS. And it’s done a damned fine job regulating food and drugs for 100 years; well, until Trump got re-elected. “Let free enterprise be” is not at all the argument Fetterman and Trump think it is. Maybe that’s why 70% of the country is against data centers, and almost the same percentage is fed up with Trump.

Power to the people.
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A) He Really Thinks This Is Important

B) He really thinks this means something. No shit.
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A Man And His Numbers

Or...13,000 more. Based on his numbers. Says the man who knows his numbers. Didn’t someone suggest “Lake America” to him just the other day? We shoot them in the back of the head. Or while they’re driving their cars. Or just for being not-white. We’re much better; for some reason. The Trump endorsement. Focused like a laser beam on the concerns of voters in the midterms. 🫠
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