Great piece, but one thing is becoming abundantly clear; between A.I. generated memes and the effusive nonsense coming from the president, we're in for the biggest PAC-funded dose of pre-election bullshit in American history. It's about to explode from every MAGA orifice out there. One can only hope that voters have enough critical thinking and seeing skills to know the big bamboozle that's underway.
“Wales has become the world’s first country to enforce rules that allow politicians to lose their jobs for lying?
Under the new law, politicians can be suspended or removed if they deliberately mislead the public. It is a major shift toward accountability and political honesty and it sets a precedent other countries have never taken this far before.
Whether it changes politics long term remains to be seen but it is a bold move that is already getting global attention.
Should more countries do this? What are your thoughts?
It is apparent to me as a clinical psychologist that Donald Trump is severely delusional and psychiatrically ill and this accounts for his blatant misinterpretations of things that Maggie Haberman and many others say and do.
Historians I have reviewed and studied agree that our Founding Fathers wanted our country governed by popular sovereignty. Above all, they sought to safeguard against rule by a despotic king or a parliament. They established a three-tier government to ensure that citizens, not anyone else, ruled it.
But since the 1800s, we have been governed by judicial sovereignty rather than by popular sovereignty. Popular sovereignty is the political principle that the authority of a state and its government is created and sustained by the consent of its people, who are the ultimate source of all political power. Judicial sovereignty is the principle that courts operate independently of the legislative and executive branches and hold the ultimate authority to interpret laws and review government actions for constitutional compliance.
With all their precautions in place, we have a country where the Supreme Court functions as a judicial sovereign, and the money Mongols rule us.
How did this happen?
How did we go from a country designed to be governed by popular sovereignty to one controlled by judicial sovereignty and ruled by oligarchs?
I reviewed the Supreme Court's history as best I could, hoping it might tell me something. I know the Court has two opposing philosophies about how it should function: originalism and living constitutionalism. Still, I believe none of these differences would have led us to our present state: a country with a dictator in the White House.
William J. Watkins, Jr., writes in his book “Judicial Monarchs” that Americans have been taught that the Framers designed the Court as the ultimate arbiter of constitutional issues. The Supreme Court has held that the federal judiciary is supreme in interpreting the Constitution. Watkins asks whether this judicial sovereignty aligns with the first principles of this new government, and he answers by tracing our English roots. Remember that the first English settlers left a land where King James and the Church of England emphasized that the king ruled by divine right and served as God's messenger. At the time, many believed a ruler was an absolute sovereign who recognized nothing greater than himself. After the Glorious Revolution in 1688, England's Parliament could make or undo laws.
Americans rejected the notion that a legislature held sovereign power or that God appointed the king. Instead, they emphasized popular sovereignty and used conventions to ratify written constitutions in which legislatures, governors, and judges served the people and exercised delegated power. Massachusetts was the first state to embody popular sovereignty in its constitution. The people wanted a new government framework that guaranteed and protected rights and secured the consent of the governed. That state created the “Massachusetts Agreement of the People,” part of the Massachusetts Constitution of 1780, and established the principle that a government must derive its power from the explicit consent of the people.
So where did we go wrong, and how did it happen?
Our founding fathers wanted a country ruled by the people, and the states did too. Yet today we are ruled by oligarchs and Supreme Court judges. Watkins states that our present Supreme Court resembles a divinely anointed monarch of the 1600s or the omnipotent British Parliament of the 1700s. Popular sovereignty - the legacy of the American Revolution - has been forgotten. At its inception, however, America took a different, braver course and accepted popular sovereignty. The people, not the legislatures or other artificial bodies, held ultimate power. Authority could be delegated to agents such as governors, representatives, or judges, but true sovereignty rested with the people.
What became obvious to me was that at the 1779 convention, the Federalists and Anti-Federalists disagreed sharply. Federalists wanted more power invested in the new government, while Anti-Federalists wanted the document to acknowledge the importance of the states and the people of those states; they wanted popular sovereignty. In my view, this difference was fundamental to the divide that billionaires used to control our government and increase their wealth.
If the government were in control and could bribe representatives, it could use this enormous government to benefit itself. In Prospect 2025, the Heritage Foundation spelled out its objectives: a smaller, weaker centralized federal government and a more powerful president. These are the conditions for a takeover of our government.
Watkins argues that to remedy this, Americans must remember that, to the founding generation, judicial independence never meant independence from the people. State and federal judges are not high priests of the constitutional order. Like governors, senators, and representatives, judges are mere agents of the people. When judges begin making public policy decisions, they rebel against their masters and usurp power.
Another change driving this shift was that, beginning in the late 1800s, the Court gradually asserted the power to judge the reasonableness of laws passed by national and state legislatures. Writing in 1893, Harvard Law Professor James B. Thayer warned the courts against dabbling in judicial supremacy. At that juncture in American history, the Supreme Court had just begun to hint that it was open to using the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments' due process clauses to assess the reasonableness of legislation. This threat of judicial sovereignty or judicial activism is not new. Judicial activism is a judicial philosophy that holds that courts can and should go beyond the applicable law to consider the broader societal implications of their decisions. It is sometimes used as an antonym of judicial restraint. The term usually implies that a judge rules based on personal views rather than precedent. Even before this phrase was coined, the general concept already existed. For example, Thomas Jefferson dubbed the judiciary a "despotic branch."
Our founding fathers had wonderful intentions, but they had no idea where we would be 250 years later. We must address the shortcomings by taking action to address what is happening in our country. Some things can be done, but it will require serious, difficult changes to restore our government and protect our way of life.
Trump has BS stories for every occasion. He's like a little boy that tells all of these stories to get attention. It's look at me, look at what I've done, I have the best toys, etc. It's really pathetic from an 80 year-old man and that 80 old year-old man has the nuclear codes. Scares the hell out of me.
He also needs to get off this kick with women reporters. They are 1,000 times more capable than him. I guess I'd call that insecurity.
Jim - he has no decency and never will. My first presidential recollection goes back to JFK and there is not a more despicable person to occupy the WH than Donald J. Trump. His remarks yesterday were about the lowest he’s ever gone but my guess is he’ll go even lower as his old, demented mind gets worse and worse
Has Trump ever produced photos or witnesses or evidence to refute any legitimate reports about his behavior? For a man whose entourage always includes a photographer, why the heck can’t Trump produce a photo or witnesses or who can verify this account of 9/11? By his own record, he was not there alone.
And if he does produce such evidence now, why in the world should we believe it at this late date? Sorry that Trump believes his own lies, but this is one case where he should have been able to refute the reports of his absence by proving his presence. But he doesn’t seem to be able to .. . .
He always has to be the center of attention. Not any more buster! We know your tricks. This story is just your way of thinking that it really happened. But every person in NYC knows that you are lying……again. What a horrible legacy you are leaving your children and grandchildren. VERY SAD
I vaguely remember that Trump applied for a 9/11 grant for his 40 Wall St building. Not sure if he was entitled to it. Can't wait to see you on The Contrarians.
I just looked this up: I'd forgotten the details: Even more depressing than the original story, as you will see.
Donald Trump, the Rockefeller Group and Ford Models were among the tycoons and huge corporations that received federal 9/11 recovery grants earmarked by Congress for small businesses, a Daily News investigation has found. Other unlikely recipients include subsidiaries of corporate giants Dell Inc., Morgan Stanley, The AXA Group and the Bank of China, records show. Even World Trade Center leaseholder Larry Silverstein's company qualified for some small-business recovery aid. The firms were allowed to collect small-business grants because the state agency that dished out the free money, the Empire State Development Corp., ignored the federal definition of a small business and adopted a much looser standard. The ESDC used employee counts — setting the maximum for its $556 million Business Recovery Grant (BRG) program at 500 workers — to determine whether applicants were small businesses.
Federal law requires that the size category of the types of businesses most common in lower Manhattan — finance, insurance, real estate and law firms — be determined based on annual revenue. Only the wholesale, manufacturing and mining sectors — obviously uncommon downtown — are measured by number of employees. Also, in totaling the number of employees, the ESDC didn't require applicants to include employees of subsidiaries and other affiliated businesses. Federal regulations require that linked companies are included in determining whether a business is small.
Only a deluded and befuddled mind with the utmost arrogance would spew out this virtual nonsense. The sad thing is not just the fictionality, but the desperate need for importance, inclusion, and veneration, all of which are repeatedly unfulfilled from any sane person.
Not only does Trump have no decency, he doesn't aspire to have it. Decency in Trump's fractured psyche is a weakness, along with honor, truth, sacrifice, conscience, fairness, the public good. This absolute abomination of a human being is motivated only by money, power and adulation and he will lie, cheat, steal, rage, belittle and torture and kill innocents to get it. The citizens of the United States elected a narcissistic sociopath as President. He will not change. He is incapable of it. Therefore, the decency question is directed squarely at Republicans in Trump's orbit who have turned a blind eye to all of his depredations. Have all of you, at long last, lost any shred of decency?
"Fight [Trump] and you may [lose your job/relevance]. Run [and hide] and you'll live...at least for a while. And dying in your beds, years from now, would you be willing to trade all the days from this day to that for just one chance to come back and tell [Trump] that he may take our [power/lives] but he'll never take our freedom [integrity.] William Wallace, "Braveheart. "
As always, thank you Jim for your continued courageous stands against Trump, who is the enemy of all decent people.
Thank you, Jim. You were always one of my favorites on CNN, and you remain so on this platform. Keep up the good work!
Agree Pam. You’re a good man Jim.
Thanks Tommy and Trump with his stolen valor shows the world that he is a vile, sickening poor excuse of a human being.
As long as that smarmy POS has breath, the lies will never stop. There will never be a line he won't cross. He is the scum of the earth.
Great piece, but one thing is becoming abundantly clear; between A.I. generated memes and the effusive nonsense coming from the president, we're in for the biggest PAC-funded dose of pre-election bullshit in American history. It's about to explode from every MAGA orifice out there. One can only hope that voters have enough critical thinking and seeing skills to know the big bamboozle that's underway.
They don’t. 🥴
From the Humanity Project last January:
“Wales has become the world’s first country to enforce rules that allow politicians to lose their jobs for lying?
Under the new law, politicians can be suspended or removed if they deliberately mislead the public. It is a major shift toward accountability and political honesty and it sets a precedent other countries have never taken this far before.
Whether it changes politics long term remains to be seen but it is a bold move that is already getting global attention.
Should more countries do this? What are your thoughts?
#fyp #fpyシ #FbLifestyles #Politics”
It is apparent to me as a clinical psychologist that Donald Trump is severely delusional and psychiatrically ill and this accounts for his blatant misinterpretations of things that Maggie Haberman and many others say and do.
Judicial Sovereignty versus Popular Sovereignty
Historians I have reviewed and studied agree that our Founding Fathers wanted our country governed by popular sovereignty. Above all, they sought to safeguard against rule by a despotic king or a parliament. They established a three-tier government to ensure that citizens, not anyone else, ruled it.
But since the 1800s, we have been governed by judicial sovereignty rather than by popular sovereignty. Popular sovereignty is the political principle that the authority of a state and its government is created and sustained by the consent of its people, who are the ultimate source of all political power. Judicial sovereignty is the principle that courts operate independently of the legislative and executive branches and hold the ultimate authority to interpret laws and review government actions for constitutional compliance.
With all their precautions in place, we have a country where the Supreme Court functions as a judicial sovereign, and the money Mongols rule us.
How did this happen?
How did we go from a country designed to be governed by popular sovereignty to one controlled by judicial sovereignty and ruled by oligarchs?
I reviewed the Supreme Court's history as best I could, hoping it might tell me something. I know the Court has two opposing philosophies about how it should function: originalism and living constitutionalism. Still, I believe none of these differences would have led us to our present state: a country with a dictator in the White House.
William J. Watkins, Jr., writes in his book “Judicial Monarchs” that Americans have been taught that the Framers designed the Court as the ultimate arbiter of constitutional issues. The Supreme Court has held that the federal judiciary is supreme in interpreting the Constitution. Watkins asks whether this judicial sovereignty aligns with the first principles of this new government, and he answers by tracing our English roots. Remember that the first English settlers left a land where King James and the Church of England emphasized that the king ruled by divine right and served as God's messenger. At the time, many believed a ruler was an absolute sovereign who recognized nothing greater than himself. After the Glorious Revolution in 1688, England's Parliament could make or undo laws.
Americans rejected the notion that a legislature held sovereign power or that God appointed the king. Instead, they emphasized popular sovereignty and used conventions to ratify written constitutions in which legislatures, governors, and judges served the people and exercised delegated power. Massachusetts was the first state to embody popular sovereignty in its constitution. The people wanted a new government framework that guaranteed and protected rights and secured the consent of the governed. That state created the “Massachusetts Agreement of the People,” part of the Massachusetts Constitution of 1780, and established the principle that a government must derive its power from the explicit consent of the people.
So where did we go wrong, and how did it happen?
Our founding fathers wanted a country ruled by the people, and the states did too. Yet today we are ruled by oligarchs and Supreme Court judges. Watkins states that our present Supreme Court resembles a divinely anointed monarch of the 1600s or the omnipotent British Parliament of the 1700s. Popular sovereignty - the legacy of the American Revolution - has been forgotten. At its inception, however, America took a different, braver course and accepted popular sovereignty. The people, not the legislatures or other artificial bodies, held ultimate power. Authority could be delegated to agents such as governors, representatives, or judges, but true sovereignty rested with the people.
What became obvious to me was that at the 1779 convention, the Federalists and Anti-Federalists disagreed sharply. Federalists wanted more power invested in the new government, while Anti-Federalists wanted the document to acknowledge the importance of the states and the people of those states; they wanted popular sovereignty. In my view, this difference was fundamental to the divide that billionaires used to control our government and increase their wealth.
If the government were in control and could bribe representatives, it could use this enormous government to benefit itself. In Prospect 2025, the Heritage Foundation spelled out its objectives: a smaller, weaker centralized federal government and a more powerful president. These are the conditions for a takeover of our government.
Watkins argues that to remedy this, Americans must remember that, to the founding generation, judicial independence never meant independence from the people. State and federal judges are not high priests of the constitutional order. Like governors, senators, and representatives, judges are mere agents of the people. When judges begin making public policy decisions, they rebel against their masters and usurp power.
Another change driving this shift was that, beginning in the late 1800s, the Court gradually asserted the power to judge the reasonableness of laws passed by national and state legislatures. Writing in 1893, Harvard Law Professor James B. Thayer warned the courts against dabbling in judicial supremacy. At that juncture in American history, the Supreme Court had just begun to hint that it was open to using the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments' due process clauses to assess the reasonableness of legislation. This threat of judicial sovereignty or judicial activism is not new. Judicial activism is a judicial philosophy that holds that courts can and should go beyond the applicable law to consider the broader societal implications of their decisions. It is sometimes used as an antonym of judicial restraint. The term usually implies that a judge rules based on personal views rather than precedent. Even before this phrase was coined, the general concept already existed. For example, Thomas Jefferson dubbed the judiciary a "despotic branch."
Our founding fathers had wonderful intentions, but they had no idea where we would be 250 years later. We must address the shortcomings by taking action to address what is happening in our country. Some things can be done, but it will require serious, difficult changes to restore our government and protect our way of life.
Trump has BS stories for every occasion. He's like a little boy that tells all of these stories to get attention. It's look at me, look at what I've done, I have the best toys, etc. It's really pathetic from an 80 year-old man and that 80 old year-old man has the nuclear codes. Scares the hell out of me.
He also needs to get off this kick with women reporters. They are 1,000 times more capable than him. I guess I'd call that insecurity.
He hates women. They are only in his life to provide things for him. I believe he probably hated his mother, too. 🤷♀️
Jim - he has no decency and never will. My first presidential recollection goes back to JFK and there is not a more despicable person to occupy the WH than Donald J. Trump. His remarks yesterday were about the lowest he’s ever gone but my guess is he’ll go even lower as his old, demented mind gets worse and worse
Has Trump ever produced photos or witnesses or evidence to refute any legitimate reports about his behavior? For a man whose entourage always includes a photographer, why the heck can’t Trump produce a photo or witnesses or who can verify this account of 9/11? By his own record, he was not there alone.
And if he does produce such evidence now, why in the world should we believe it at this late date? Sorry that Trump believes his own lies, but this is one case where he should have been able to refute the reports of his absence by proving his presence. But he doesn’t seem to be able to .. . .
He always has to be the center of attention. Not any more buster! We know your tricks. This story is just your way of thinking that it really happened. But every person in NYC knows that you are lying……again. What a horrible legacy you are leaving your children and grandchildren. VERY SAD
Wales!!!!!
That would never pass here.
The day you don't lose your lunch is a day tRump didn't speak.
I vaguely remember that Trump applied for a 9/11 grant for his 40 Wall St building. Not sure if he was entitled to it. Can't wait to see you on The Contrarians.
I just looked this up: I'd forgotten the details: Even more depressing than the original story, as you will see.
Donald Trump, the Rockefeller Group and Ford Models were among the tycoons and huge corporations that received federal 9/11 recovery grants earmarked by Congress for small businesses, a Daily News investigation has found. Other unlikely recipients include subsidiaries of corporate giants Dell Inc., Morgan Stanley, The AXA Group and the Bank of China, records show. Even World Trade Center leaseholder Larry Silverstein's company qualified for some small-business recovery aid. The firms were allowed to collect small-business grants because the state agency that dished out the free money, the Empire State Development Corp., ignored the federal definition of a small business and adopted a much looser standard. The ESDC used employee counts — setting the maximum for its $556 million Business Recovery Grant (BRG) program at 500 workers — to determine whether applicants were small businesses.
Federal law requires that the size category of the types of businesses most common in lower Manhattan — finance, insurance, real estate and law firms — be determined based on annual revenue. Only the wholesale, manufacturing and mining sectors — obviously uncommon downtown — are measured by number of employees. Also, in totaling the number of employees, the ESDC didn't require applicants to include employees of subsidiaries and other affiliated businesses. Federal regulations require that linked companies are included in determining whether a business is small.
Only a deluded and befuddled mind with the utmost arrogance would spew out this virtual nonsense. The sad thing is not just the fictionality, but the desperate need for importance, inclusion, and veneration, all of which are repeatedly unfulfilled from any sane person.
I despise liars, especially an old, filthy, orange liar that has lied for years.
Not only does Trump have no decency, he doesn't aspire to have it. Decency in Trump's fractured psyche is a weakness, along with honor, truth, sacrifice, conscience, fairness, the public good. This absolute abomination of a human being is motivated only by money, power and adulation and he will lie, cheat, steal, rage, belittle and torture and kill innocents to get it. The citizens of the United States elected a narcissistic sociopath as President. He will not change. He is incapable of it. Therefore, the decency question is directed squarely at Republicans in Trump's orbit who have turned a blind eye to all of his depredations. Have all of you, at long last, lost any shred of decency?
"Fight [Trump] and you may [lose your job/relevance]. Run [and hide] and you'll live...at least for a while. And dying in your beds, years from now, would you be willing to trade all the days from this day to that for just one chance to come back and tell [Trump] that he may take our [power/lives] but he'll never take our freedom [integrity.] William Wallace, "Braveheart. "
As always, thank you Jim for your continued courageous stands against Trump, who is the enemy of all decent people.