Patterico's Pontifications

9/19/2020

Weekend Open Thread

Filed under: General — Dana @ 9:40 am



[guest post by Dana]

Here are a few news items to talk about. Feel free to share anything that you think might interest readers. Please make sure to include links.

First news item

“PresidentTrump’s nominee will receive a vote on the floor…”.

Related:

Second news item

Then:

“There is certainly long historical precedent for a Supreme Court with fewer justices. I would note, just recently, that Justice Breyer observed that the vacancy is not impacting the ability of the court to do its job. That’s a debate that we are going to have.”

“I think for those of us who care passionately about the Constitution and Bill of Rights, who care about free speech and religious liberty and the Second Amendment, the best way to protect those rights is to win on Election Day so that we see strong conservatives nominated to the court, and maintain a Republican majority in the Senate to confirm those strong conservatives.

and now:

[Ted Cruz told Sean Hannity] that Trump should nominate a successor to the Supreme Court next week and the Senate should confirm it before election day, citing concerns about Democrats contesting presidential election results if Trump wins.

“A 4 – 4 court that is equally divided cannot decide anything and I think we risk a constitutional crisis if we do not have a nine justice Supreme Court, particularly when there is such a risk of contested litigation and a contested election.”

Third news item

(Before knowing RBG had passed) At rally last night, Trump campaigned for Ted Cruz for SCJ:

“I’m putting Ted Cruz as one of the people for the Supreme Court. And you know why I did it? Because I wanted to make sure that I had somebody on the list … We had about 45 unbelievable people… the smartest, the best, the absolute creme de la creme. The best minds in the country, conservative; they believe in the Constitution.”

“I have to have somebody that we’re going to make sure we get approved, and the only one I could think of was Ted because he’s going to get 50 Republican votes and he’ll get 50 Democrat votes,” Trump said. He went on to say: “We will defend the dignity of work and the sanctity of life. That’s why the Supreme Court is so important. The next President will get one, two, three, or four Supreme Court Justices…If you don’t get it right we will not have a country anymore.”

Fourth news item

More non-black goobers admit to passing themselves off as black:

An Indianapolis racial justice activist admitted to lying about being Black in a social media post Friday. Satchuel Cole wrote on Facebook, “I have taken up space as a Black person while knowing I am white. I have used Blackness when it was not mine to use. I have asked for support and energy as a Black person… I am sorry for the harm I have caused. I am sorry for the hurt and betrayal.” Cole worked with Indy10 Black Lives Matter and Indy SURJ and served as a Grand Marshal for the Indianapolis pride parade in 2020, according to the Indianapolis Star.

and

What I know is that I am Southern Italian/Sicilian. In trying to make sense of my experiences with race, I grossly misstepped. I went along with however people saw me. I over-identified with unreliable and unproven family history and latched onto anything I remembered growing up. All of those actions were deeply misguided and have caused an incredible amount of hurt for the Madison community, those I organize with, and everyone who has been exposed to this public reckoning. It was my choice and error to identify any differently.

What I know now is that perception is not reality. Race is not flat, it is a social construct rife with contradictions. Fighting racism never required dissociating myself from whiteness. In fact, it derailed the cause by centering my experience.

I would like to identify, apologize for, and correct each misstep and overeager identification, and begin providing redress

Fourth news item

Good news from the Middle East, good on Trump:

The Emiratis and Bahrainis became only the third and fourth Arab states ever to recognize the Jewish state. And more good news may be on the way: Oman issued a statement of support for the accords; there is talk of Sudan following suit and Morocco opening direct flights. And though Saudi Arabia may be the last Sunni-majority state to formally recognize Israel, it is now permitting Israeli aircraft to cross its airspace.

No less remarkably, when the Palestinian Authority petitioned the Arab League for a denunciation of the deal, the league voted it down.

Smug elitist hardest hit:

Or as JVW, with his classic witty precision, described Kerry:

The smug certainty which turns out to be 100% wrong, the peering down his nose past his reading glasses, the insouciant posture reclining back with this legs crossed, the location being – what else — a Brookings Institution event sponsored by Haim Saban’s Foundation with Jeffrey Goldberg as event moderator: it’s the complete vileness of the Democrat establishment in one short video. The only wrong note is that it took place in Washington DC, not in Aspen or, better yet, Davos. But still.

Fifth news item

U.S. Covid-19 deaths surpass 200,000:

In the predawn hours of March 30, Dr. Deborah Birx stepped in front of the camera on the White House lawn and made an alarming prediction about the coronavirus, which had, by then, killed fewer than 3,000 people in the United States.

“If we do things together, well, almost perfectly, we can get in the range of 100,000 to 200,000 fatalities,” Birx, coordinator of the White House coronavirus task force, told Savannah Guthrie of NBC News’ “Today” show.

“We don’t even want to see that,” she added, before Guthrie cut her off.

Yet here we are.

Sixth news item

Inspirational innovation:

A family in North Carolina created a pop-up store that sells children’s books featuring main characters who are Black to counter the lack of diversity in literature.

The idea was born in 2019 when 8-year-old Langston Miller…told his parents about his dream of becoming a writer. Already an avid storyteller who spends his days filling up journal after journal with short stories, Langston said his books would be about young Black boys just like himself.
“I want books to show us Black children the way we are — beautiful, handsome, intelligent, and smart,” he told CNN.

Inspired by Langston’s dream, his parents set off on a mission to see how many books they could find that feature characters who look like him and his 4-year-old brother…

“We spent more than two hours and ended up finding just five books that had the style and quality of the stories he wanted to write,” his father, Duane Miller, told CNN. “When we noticed there wasn’t space for him, we decided to make that space for him ourselves.”

Months later, Liberation Station was born in mid-2019. The independent bookstore sells books written for, by and about the African Diaspora and specializes in the pop-up market.

Have a good weekend.

–Dana

UPDATE BY PATTERICO: Susan Collins joins Murkowski in saying no vote for a Trump nominee unless he is re-elected.

That’s two of four.

UPDATE BY JVW: A tale of two WaPo headlines, or why so many of us think that the major newspapers genuinely do not care for conservatives. (h/t Powerline)
Supreme Court


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