How Ukraine Might Affect the Russian People's Opinion

 Now that Ukraine is sending drones deep into Russian territory, instead of  armaments some drones could drop millions of small cards over populated areas with the simple message:

THE WAR WILL END AS SOON AS YOUR TROOPS LEAVE OUR COUNTRY

The USPS

 The USPS continues to run at a loss.

I have to ask:  why do we need 6 days a week mail delivery? (Particularly for residential mail.)  I check my mail service box twice a week or so - that keeps me sufficiently up to date with the few things that still come in the mail, while matters that need immediate attention come through email, text, or phone.

I would suggest changing to twice a week mail delivery for home delivery: say Monday and Wednesday to half the addresses covered by a sorting station, and Tuesday and Thursday delivery for the other half.  Perhaps businesses could have mail three times a week - MWF and TuThS.

By changing and consolidating delivery routes, it should be possible to cut the number of mail carriers down by half, if not more, saving the USPS a bundle on labor costs.

Another Democratic Party messaging failure

 Glenn Youngkin's victory in VA was largely due to his bogus claim that Critical Race Theory was being taught in VA schools.

Dems were so dumb playing defense on CRT.

Why not go on offense. and put Youngkin on the defensive?

"Glenn Youngkin doesn't want students to learn about slavery and Jim Crow." "What Glenn Youngkin calls Critical Race Theory, the rest of us call History."

The ACB Vote

 

The vote to confirm Amy Coney Barrett was a foregone conclusion.

Democrats had the opportunity during debate to make headlnes and an historic gesture if they had each stood up in turn and addressed the GOP Senators by saying exactly the same thing, and no more, quoting Joseph Welch from the Army-McCarthy hearings:

"Have you no sense of decency, sirs, at long last? Have you left no sense of decency?"

On Packing the Courts

 Biden continues to be pressed on whether he intends to "pack" the Supreme Court by increasing the number of justices.

He should be pushing back with something like the following:

Look, we want our courts to decide cases before them fairly and impartially on the law, not on partisan political bases.

Unfortunately, for the last three and a half years the Republicans have been packing the courts with partisans, judges that have been approved by the Federalist Society, a conservative, you might almost say right wing, political organization set up to push the Republican agenda through the federal judiciary.

For the last half of President Obama's term, Mitch McConnell's senate refused to consider nominees out forward by President Obama to fill vacancies, so that President Trump was able to fill about two hundred empty seats with Federalist Society partisan judges,  even though some of them were rated unqualified by the American Bar Association.

Most egregiously, Mitch McConnell refused to even grant a hearing to Present Obama's nominee to the Supreme Court, Merrick Garland, a distinguished independent jurist - a lawyer's lawyer, you might say, not a partisan of any political party.

In the last three years, we have seen two justices with pronounced conservative views appointed to the Supreme Court, and a third about to be appointed.  The federal judiciary has been well and truly packed, so it has become more and more a way for the Republican Party to advance its agenda by, in effect, legislating from the Bench.  It is not controversial for me to say this - Mitch McConnell has openly boasted of his success in packing the federal courts.

As president, I will have to find a way to begin restoring the principle of an independent judiciary that desides cases solely on the law and the facts before them, not on political and ideological prejudices.   How to overcome this wave of court packing is not yet clear to me, but for the sake of the country, we need to make a start.

Another Press Fail

This is typical of the press's reaction to McEnany's comments on schools reopening:

This taking a quote out of context is the kind of thing that bolsters DJT's bogus claim that the press is "fake news".

After saying "the science should not stand in the way", McEnany went on to refer to a pediatric study to support her claim that "the science is on our side here.”  

Even though the study she quoted is of dubious validity in the context of the spread of COVID-19 - nevertheless, she was not saying science should be disregarded - she was just cherry picking what science she wanted regarded.  

Or, to summarize, she was saying:  "the science should not stand in the way of school re-opening, because the science supports reopening."

But the press is just jumping on just one part of her full statement.

The study McEneny referenced purported to show that infected kids had a mild response to COVID-19, comparable to everyday flu.

A smart follow up question would have been:  "Maybe, but how does that affect the concern that kids could take the infection home to more vulnerable adults?"

Let's hope follow up articles are on the lines of "Here's the study the Trump administration is relying on to support its policy", along with an analysis of the quality of the study, whether later events called it into question, and so whether the administration is justified in basing policy on it. i.e. responsible journalism.  

Update 7/17/2020

The New Yorker piles on.

Facebook hosts a tennis match with no referees

Facebook’s Nick Clegg defends FB’s allowing outright lies in political ads by comparing FB to a tennis court.

“Our job is to make sure the court is ready — the surface is flat, the lines painted, the net at the correct height,” Clegg said. “But we don’t pick up a racket and start playing. How the players play the game is up to them, not us.”

Er — no.  How the players play the game is up to the referees, who ensure that the rules are followed and that the game is played fairly.

It’s okay for FB to make the tennis court analogy.  They only need to complete it by supplying the needed impartial referees.