Fox Paws

 

Welcome back to the Scuttlebutt: 

 

The topic of the day is Faux Pas, or as I used to pronounce it before I had heard someone say it aloud that actually speaks “surrender monkey” Fox paws.

 

I’m going to start out with the absolute disaster that is the SCOTUS leak because it’s the 1000 lb. elephant that’s shitting all over the rug in the living room.

 

Holy HELL. In a city that creates more ‘bad decisions’ than any other city in America, with the possible exceptions of NYC, Chicago, and LA, this one is in the top five in history.  It ranks up alongside: 
“let’s tell Ho Chi Min to fuck off, he’s not the sort of guy we want to support,” 
“Let’s go bug the DNC offices in that hotel downtown, what’s the worst that can happen?” and “Hey, we both need a break, the war is over, let’s go see that new play, ‘Our American Cousin’ at the Ford.”

 

This leak of a “draft opinion” is something that has never happened before in the history of the Supreme Court.  There have been monumental, earth-shattering decisions that have changed the US for good or ill, many of whom were AT LEAST as controversial as the possible overturning of Roe V Wade… To include Brown V The Board of Education, Dred Scott, Miranda V Arizona, and for that matter Roe itself… But none were intentionally leaked beforehand.  I can only assume (and this assumption is shared by virtually everyone, including Chief Justice Roberts) that this was an attempt to sway the court by publishing the decision before it was final in hopes of: 
  1. Causing a justice or justices to reverse their decision in light of protests, 
  2. Shoring up a wishy-washy vote by suggesting that any voting change is due to public opinion instead of the law, or
  3. Trying to turn around the midterm election debacle that the Democrats fear will happen in November, by galvanizing the left to show up and vote.

 

Whatever the plan, my Gods was it stupid, and the fact that there were protest mobs primed and ready to go, as well as barricades all ready to go within minutes of the release of the story by Politico, lends me to believe this was a leftist plan, not a rightwing plan… Though I could be wrong, Gods know that leftists don’t have a patent on stupidity.

 

Whoever’s dumbass idea it was, it brought a rash of possible consequences to the fore and most of them are BAD IDEAS as well. But before we explore those bad ideas, let’s take a look at why this was such monumental stupidity.

 

The SCOTUS is supposed to be, and for the most part, (with a couple of exceptions, which I will note) has been, apolitical and fairly immune to “public opinion.”  The few times that it HASN’T been immune, bad decisions, most of which eventually got overturned by a later version of the court, were the result.  Its charter in the constitution is not to make law, but to interpret the law, and to determine whether or not a law is legal IAW the constitution.  That interpretation has nothing to do with Public Opinion, the Verdict of History, Common Mores, or any other claptrap.  The times when the court has failed at this include Dred Scott, and through no coincidence at all, Roe V Wade, as well as the Courts ruling on ObamaCare in 2012.

 

See, there’s this little thing called the Tenth Amendment.  Or as I like to call it, the forgotten amendment.  It’s the second shortest, and most simple-to-understand amendment in the entire document. ONE SIMPLE SENTENCE: The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people. 

 

It’s one word longer than the Second Amendment, which is the second most misunderstood, ignored, or bypassed amendment.

 

Purely and simply, if the constitution doesn’t say it’s the federal government’s business, it is NOT.  If the document doesn’t say “here is a place where the federal government has sway, input, a voice, or authority.” Then the federal government must stay the fuck out of it.  
Trade that goes international? Yeah, that’s something that the feds are intrinsically in charge of. Trade that crosses state lines (another of the most abused sections, this piece has gotten as stretched as out of shape as Orpha Windbag’s corset) That’s another area where the feds hold sway.  Making coins and money? YUP. 
Declaring war? YUP. 
Funding an army? Oh yeah.
Telling a private citizen what they must sell something to their neighbor for? Nope.
Enforcing a national school curriculum? Nope. 
Telling people how they must worship, or who? Oh HELL no.
Telling the entire nation that they must authorize abortions, or perform any other sort of medical procedure? NO.

 

Roe v Wade violated the shit out of this amendment. It was, pure and simple, BAD LAW, not only because the SCOTUS isn’t supposed to make law, but because it not only created a right that was not on the books, but that right was about something that the federal government doesn’t have any say-so.  

 

This contrasts to: Oh say, the recent SCOTUS decision against the City of Boston, where the city refused to allow a Christian group to participate in a flag-raising.  In that case, the First Amendment, which deals with Freedom of expression and religion, and the 14th Amendment, which says (among a lot of other things) that any freedom recognized by the constitution can not be abridged by the states, gives the SCOTUS jurisdiction to say: “Uh, no, you can’t let an atheist group raise their flag one day alongside the state and national flags, but then refuse a Christian group from doing it on another day, because you don’t like their beliefs.

 

The decision that this “draft” states, does NOT illegalize abortion, it does NOT “set back woman’s rights by a hundred years” it does not perform “violence to the constitution,” and while it doesn’t “mock” Roe v Wade, it does in fact say “Roe V Wade, you’re wrong, you were bad law, and we revoke you.”  It doesn’t explicitly “Threaten gay marriage equality” or any of the other stupid ass things that Nasty Pelosi claims it does in this article: https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/the-violence-it-does-to-the-constitution-nancy-pelosi-says-marriage-equality-could-be-in-danger-if-roe-ruling-is-finalized/
Nancy claims: “The very idea that they would be telling women the size, timing or whatever of their family, the personal nature of this is so appalling, and I say that as a devout Catholic,” Pelosi said. “They say to me, ‘Nancy Pelosi thinks she knows more about having babies than the Pope.’ Yes I do. Are you stupid?”

 

OK, no, this decision does NOT tell women when they can and can’t have an abortion, which is what I think the confused babbling I just quoted means. While I am not Catholic, (much less “devout”) I’m pretty sure that this is heretical to that faith…

 

What the decision DOES DO, is say quite simply: “This isn’t our call.  We don’t have the authority to make the decision. This is for the legislature to decide.  MAKE A LAW. Make it at the state level, or make an amendment to the constitution at the federal level!  Mr. and Ms. Legislators, DO YOUR JOB.”  

 

Now, it does at least imply that the court is open to other people arguing that various decisions made in violation of amendment 10 are in need of revisiting, which MIGHT bring up whether the federal government has any say on the subject of same-sex marriage. (By the way, and this may be a shock, it’s my opinion that the federal government DOES get a say on marriage laws, primarily because Marriage Law as it exists right now, is all about taxes and inheritance law, which is the purview of the IRS…)

 

But all of that aside, this move to leak the decision, pours nitroglycerine (not just gasoline) on the fire that is the division between the left and the right in America today.  It brings back the incredibly bad ideas of removing the filibuster from the Senate, Court-packing (making the SCOTUS an 11 man or more court, so that democrat appointed judges are in the majority, which some people seem to think ought to be a law of nature) and all the other silliness that Nancy, Schumer, OAC, and the rest of the idiots are suddenly screaming about. 

 

I find it funny, that the cry from the left is that this decision is racist… Look, I know that that’s one of the two default screams from the “progressive caucus.” Everything they don’t like is either racist or going to kill us all due to climate change, but in this particular case, the cry is that “well, more blacks get abortions than whites, and they’re all poor, so they can’t afford to go to a state where it’s legal if they live in a state where it’s not.”  

 

Now dwell on that a second.  Re-read it if needed.  “they’re all poor” Uh, bigot much?

 

Look, I’m reserving my comments on the morality, or lack thereof, of abortion in the first place because well, it’s a complex subject, and frankly, my opinion has changed a couple of times over the years. Both of my exes have had abortions at one point or another, and the reasons seemed good at the time, though I’m pretty sure that my first wife’s abortions (neither of them my child) caused her to not be able to carry to term, something that I now see as a blessing, but at that point was instrumental in our divorce. In short, I believe this to be something that good men can agree to disagree on. 

 

I see this as a state issue, and if you don’t like the way your state decides; well, I’m old enough to remember when “divorce tourism” was a thing, back when most states required a reason for a divorce, you could fly (or catch a bus) to Vegas for a quickie divorce, and maybe get lucky at the tables while you were there.  I promise that at least 20 or 30 of the states will still allow abortions, hell a couple of them allow them up until the last week!  If your conscience permits that sort of thing, go to New York, Jersey, or CA.  
Hell, the leadership at Amazon has announced a company policy https://www.dailywire.com/news/subsidizing-the-abortion-industry-amazon-to-fund-abortion-tourism-for-its-employees
That pays up to $4000 in travel expenses to any employee that wants or needs to travel to get an abortion.  I’m sure that many other companies with “woke” management will follow suit. (Disney, red curtesy phone please)

 

If you do want to make this federal, FINE.  Pass a law.  Of course, they’ve already tried that, and they can’t even get a majority of the house to pass it, it’s DOA in the senate.  

 

It’s not going to be “An America without Roe v. Wade will be a Dark Place” As the NYT threatens, with illegal abortions in every back alley.  “This Supreme Court is Out of Step With Most Americans” is also a lie that the NYT is shilling today.  (The NYT couldn’t recognize most Americans in a lineup.  They’re in a little bubble that covers about 30 blocks of downtown Manhattan.  They really have no concept of what upstate NY thinks, much less the Midwest, the South, etc.) And if (as they also said today) “It’s Time to RAGE” well, you go right ahead and rage, I promise you that if you start burning things, you’ll actually drive more people away from your party.

 

Fun quotes include: 
“Let’s be clear: The right to an abortion is sacred.” —Pennsylvania Lt. Gov. John Fetterman (Sacred?  I don’t think that word means what you think it means.) 
“People elected Democrats precisely so we could lead in perilous moments like these — to codify Roe, hold corruption accountable, & have a President who uses his legal authority to break through Congressional gridlock on items from student debt to climate. It’s high time we do it.” —Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (Uh, once again, you need to go back to your “government” class in high school, assuming you had one, and weren’t asleep through it, and look up what the powers of the presidency are.)

 

“How can overturning Roe v Wade be an assault on women’s rights if you can’t tell us what a woman is?” —Liz Wheeler

 

What it will be, because of the leak, is a furthering of the distrust in the last part of the government that people had any trust in, and further construction of a separation between the left, and the right.  All in all, it’s several more bricks in the wall.

 

Other miss-steps coming out this week, include the establishment of the “Disinformation Governance Board” run by Homeland Security, and chaired by someone that claimed the Trump Russia collusion was real, and the Biden laptop was a Russian hoax. (both of which the FBI and CIA knew were bullshit at the time, but they let it slide, because “reasons.”) The only justification we’re given is that she’s “eminently qualified” WOW.   Once again, this is not the government’s job in a republic.  The only places that have government agencies that govern what is truth and what is disinformation have names that start with “The Peoples Democratic Republic” or “the kingdom of.” Let’s hope that SCOTUS gets a case on this one too!  Of course, if the Democrats lose as big as they’re likely to in November, this may be the shortest-lived board in the history of government and SHOULD be.

 

Then we have the interesting item that the CDC (a government agency) bought cellphone location data to track the locations and travel patterns of at least 20 million Americans.  Their justification includes: “analysis of compliance with curfews, track patterns of people visiting K-12 schools, and specifically monitor the effectiveness of policy in the Navajo Nation.” But includes: monitoring curfews, neighbor to neighbor visits, visits to churches, schools, and pharmacies, and also a variety of analyses with this data specifically focused on ‘violence.’”  This tracking is admitted to be ongoing. (all of this is from a Freedom of Information Act request submitted by CYBER. A cyber security group, and all of this of course is without a warrant.)
Now if I were part of the Navajo nation, I would get DAMN bent out of shape by this shit, and we would be discussing this in a court of law.  

 

And finally, under the “do you actually understand what the news is” category we have an article in the NYT called “Truth and Trust” about the FDA approving Covid-19 vaccines for children under 5 YO.  Down in the third paragraph, there’s a little sentence, that the author used as a segue to a further point that he wanted to make.  I’ll quote that sentence by Mr. David Leonhardt:Sometimes, the confusion has been intentional: Officials haven’t trusted Americans with the truth.”  

 

Now I don’t have a college degree in journalism, and I don’t work for “the paper of record” but it seems to me, Mr. Leonhardt, that THIS is the freaking STORY!  Your government is admitting that it lies to you because it “doesn’t TRUST YOU WITH THE TRUTH!”  His story is about how the government needs to be better at being consistent in its messaging.  It doesn’t seem to bother him at all that the government doesn’t trust the people that OWN the government with the truth.

 

I’ll tell you what, I can understand not telling you shit because you don’t need to know, and it would start a war, or get troops killed, or something like that… 

 

But to admit to lying because if they told the truth, people might not react the way the government wants them to???  And then to shamelessly admit it with an eh, we didn’t think people would understand the nuances, and wouldn’t behave right, so “Instead, the officials provide only partial truths and hope that Americans won’t notice.” (this is a quote from the article.)  His only comment on this was “The strategy hasn’t been very successful.”

 

Uh, excuse me, but other presidents have been impeached for lying to the American people… What THE ACTUAL FUCK is wrong with you?  Why are you giving these people a pass?  Oh, I forgot, they’re good “progressives” so anything is allowed in the furtherance of the cause, right?

 

Folks, it’s getting to be time for heads on spikes.

 

Take care, watch your six, 
Until next time I remain,
Yours in service.
William Lehman.

7 Comments

  1. I don’t think the right wing is organized enough to stage a protest of any kind in advance of some ‘op’ that they’ve planned.
    And if they did, you better believe that the FBI, NSA, CIA, SS, BATF, and every news organization in the world would be all over it like white on rice.

    Look at what happened to Project Veritas when someone gave them Biden’s daugther’s diary and the TURNED IT IN TO THE FBI!!!
    They got raided at night! Their offices, all of the employee’s homes! Everything!
    But on this ‘first time in over 240 years crime’? Crickets. They haven’t raided anybody. Oh, and they already KNOW who did it. One of Sotomayor’s aids.

  2. Good thing you explained the title up front. I was wondering whether FOX PAWS was any relation to PAVE PAWS.

    The ruling I’d really like to see reversed is of course Wickard v. Filburn, which stood the Commerce Clause on its head and opened the magic door to unbounded central power – while going far beyond what was necessary to address the case at hand.

    • Wow. I was not familiar with that case until you brought it to my attention, it’s one of those cases that I suspect a lot of the federal government would just as soon no one knew about. You’re right, that looks like the start of the overreach and wild-ass definition of “what is interstate commerce?” that we still deal with to this day. The very idea that they allowed that case to be decided that way is ridiculous, especially as by the time it was decided, we needed all the wheat we could get.
      Thanks for the education!

  3. So.
    Reminder: Impeachment is NOT conviction, it’s an ACCUSATION. The Senate has to vote to convict on any accusation (impeachment).
    Stop incomplete information.
    As far as heads on spikes – I want tar & feathering and Public Stocks to return to everyday use. Maybe even caning…

  4. If regulating abortion is in fact not a power assigned to the Federal Government by the Constitution (which it is not), then any law to that effect passed by Congress and signed by the President would also be unconstitutional under the 10th Amendment. As is often the case, Schumer and Pelosi are just flapping their gums to rally the base and intimidate this or some future Supreme Court.

  5. Holy HELL. In a city that creates more ‘bad decisions’ than any other city in America, with the possible exceptions of NYC, Chicago, and LA, this one is in the top five in history. It ranks up alongside:
    “let’s tell Ho Chi Min to fuck off, he’s not the sort of guy we want to support,”

    Is this yet another reiteration of “nationalist Ho asked for US support for Vietnamese independence in 1945. was turned down, and became a Communist”?

    Because that’s a lie. Ho had been a Communist since 1920, when he participated in the founding of the Communist Party of France. In the 1930s, he lived in Moscow, and worked for the “Comintern” as a loyal follower of Stalin.

    In any case, the US had no interest in supporting armed rebels against a friendly government (France was an Ally). The US was opposed to colonial rule as a matter of national principle (democracy and self-determination), but not to the point of going to war against all colonial rulers. Recognizing Ho and his associates as the government of Vietnam would have been an act of war against France. US policy was to support peaceful decolonization, which in the next 25 years eliminated nearly all colonial regimes.

    Ho didn’t want peaceful decolonization; he wanted a violent overthrow of French rule so his group could seize total power without any nonsense about elections. They showed their true colors in 1954, when after taking power in north Vietnam they ordered “liquidation” of over 100,000 “class enemies”. (Some of the victims were chosen at random by local cadres to fill the execution quotas issued by the central government.)

    • And yet, backing the French was an absolute disaster. In fact, backing the French has been an absolute disaster every time we’ve done it. I note that you consider France in the late 40s and early 50’s to have been an ally, and I would dispute that. France under DeGaulle had no allies, DeGaulle pissed on everyone, walked out of NATO, tried to hold the US hostage on nuclear power and submarine-launched ballistic missiles, then promptly sold the technology we gave them to try to convince them to stay in NATO, to the USSR. Vietnam was not worth a single American life, especially when we were there with our hands tied behind us. Yes, we had a treaty to defend them, and that treaty was a huge mistake.
      In this author’s opinion, every single time we have made a deal with a government that we knew was a piece of shit, “because, well, they’re less of a piece of shit than the other guy…” (also known as Kissingeresque “realpolitik”) it’s blown up in our face.
      Vietnam was a mistake in three ways. 1) we backed France when it was still French Indochina, and we knew it was rotten to the core then. That cost us huge amounts of treasure and some lives that “were never there, they died in a ‘training accident'” 2) We went in in a big way because of a lie (The Tonkin Gulf incident, there was no torpedo, the sonar tech freaked over a noisemaker) and LBJ needing to be seen to be doing something about an issue to be powerful and to separate himself from JFK (both of which were disasters, but LBJ was far worse) and 3) When we went in, we went in under South Vietnam control and limitations.
      The idea that we should fight communists in Vietnam, because “communism” while allowing it in Cuba because, “well, no good reason actually” was and is ridiculous. Yes, I am aware of the domino theory, I grew up in that era. Yes, it was right. It was also right in central America, which is a LOT closer to home, and is part of the reason we have the border crisis today. Either declare war on communism where ever it rears its ugly head, or state that “you do you, as long as you don’t attack us or our friends.” I would suggest the second alternative. It’s not our job to tell everyone in the world how to live, and frankly, it doesn’t work. It takes a certain mentality and culture to live in a society where the people are supreme and there is no “Supreme Leader.” You can not just wiggle your nose and give that culture to a foreign country, as we’ve had proved to us again and again, most recently in the “Arab spring” and Afghanistan.
      Don’t send troops if you’re not willing to do whatever it takes to win, and to HOLD the country unless you want to go in as a “punitive expedition.”
      Allow me to explain the difference:
      Punitive expedition: “you killed some of my people, and you did it with government sanction and approval, or are at least refusing to provide the culprits. Therefore I’m going to invade your ass, destroy your military, in so far as they resist, find the people that allowed this to happen, and kill them… Yes, that means your government leader. Then I’m going to leave while pointing out that ‘if you do this to my people again, I will be back, and this will look like a sandbox fight between a couple of 5-year-olds. Do I make myself clear?'” (see also several Indian Tribes, Mexico in 1911, and several nations in the Caribean)
      Actual war: “You have done something so egregious that your country needs to cease to be, at least in its current form. Not only am I going to invade you, but I will also be destroying your ability to resist, destroying your government, building you a new government, and a new constitution, and I’m going to be occupying you for at least three generations until I’m sure that it’s going to ‘Take.'” (see also Imperial Japan, Nazi Germany, Several Indian tribes, Mexico in 1846, and the Confederate States of America)

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