I don't disagree; but there's absolutely nothing keeping the corporatist ideologues on the Supreme Court from striking down the Civil Rights Act in its entirety 'because we said so'. And in fact, we can comfortably count on them basically doing just that, leaving behind only a few shreds so the pro-Republican 'unaffiliated' voters can pretend it's not gone and go on being soft racists without feeling bad about it.

Look, it's too late to pretend we can save the country or it's government without defanging the Republicans in the Supreme Court. The only question is how it should best be done. If we're not going to pack the Supreme Court or make it physically impossible to pack (the 'all appeals court judges are Supreme Court judges' route), then we need to marginalize it. Either/or, there is no other way.

So, Trump's lungs are badly enough compromised that his oxygen level fell twice, he was given steroids which are counterproductive to anyone with a Covid infection who isn't seriously ill, and he may be discharged on Monday. From being hospitalized on Friday with an infection that takes a bare minimum of a week to go from 'serious' to 'fit enough for someone without gold plated insurance to be thrown out by hospital administration'. Unless 'discharged' is the new code phrase for 'dead', you'd have to be a trifle naive to think that he's going to be basically finished with his infection by tomorrow night.

Supreme court - needs term limits. Most sane countries do not have life or death battles over judicial appointments because top judges don't sit until they drop dead. And have three of the nine or five of the thirteen or whatever rotate in from the lower appeals court in reverse alphabetical order. Most Commonwealth countries have solved this problem without taking a nuke to the foundations of common law.

And it was practically inevitable that Trump caught the 'rona, given his entire administration's macho stupidity. It's a wonder it didn't happen sooner. The only two reasons I don't want him to die is because I want to see him live to get indicted, and because the conspiracy nutters would say it was a murder and that's the last thing the world needs.

And the docs are gonna be talking bollocks for as long as Trump is alert enough to be watching TV from his hospital bed. They're doing the "if you're good we'll take you to the waterpark tomorrow" ploy usually used on small children.

Looking at the various polls and who is spending money on what, it's pretty clear that every professional Republican not in the White House is praying that Trump dies. So long as it remains a referendum on him, they're going to get crucified; and not a one of them gives a damn about him. Or anything else but themselves, but especially not him.

I'm actually afraid that he will die because the lunatic base is going to insist it was an assassination then commit at least one mass shooting.

It looks like Trump kept his infection quiet for a few days and went to his fundraiser on Thursday while sick. The steroid they gave him is for second phase covid (the inflammatory stage), so he likely had been infected for a week by then. And they probably hadn't been testing him very frequently either because he is a whiner.

Doctors have gotten much better at treating COVID-19 since March so he most likely will not die, even though he insists on maximum stupidity.

Dying? Depending on just how bad his immune system is (he never exercises) and how many hidden comorbidities he has (circulatory system problems and high blood pressure are pretty much a given), he probably has at most a 10-20% chance of actually dying in the next few weeks. Just being 74 years old and obese would be about 5% with cutting edge treatment available. The chance he'll be completely incapacitated is rather higher, and serious disease related problems in four weeks is more or less the way to bet so far as I can tell (though if he can dope himself up enough to sign blank sheets of paper, he and his crew will of course lie about it).

Idly amusing to me is that a poll being done while it was announced that he is sick saw his positives drop from 41% to 37% overnight. Apparently the feral white trash in his base really will hold it against him if he gets sick.

Hence the absurd "I punched COVID-19 in the FACE!!!" posturing. Wheeeeeee.

Trump is deliberately so stupid as to be offensive and dares you to be shocked by it, so that he can make fun of you.

Pence smarmily says that water flows uphill and bears never **** anywhere, least of all in the woods, and insinuates that you are a crazy person for insisting otherwise.

Well part of the position of a leader in a group that we evolved our instincts for (such as a tribe, where everyone knows everyone else) is to be the person you can hide behind if someone else is mean to you.

If you are sick, you are no longer fit to fill the position and if that goes on for a while, the tribe will pick someone else for that position.

IMHO a lot of authoritarianism is failed attempts to scale up group dynamics, that only really work that way for small groups.

So it fits, that some see him getting hospitalized as him loosing his mojo.

In the near future I expect Trump's newest pick for the Supremes to refuse to give a straight answer about the propriety of the Nuremburg Laws. Why not, she's already in favor of the four Ks and government by dictat.

Yeah, what's up with that? For someone who is 99% sure to be handed a lifetime appointment, she sure is going far out of her way to avoid offending President Cheeto's most insane claims in front of a legislative body that does not even love Trump all that much.

It's not as though the Senate Republicans are going to refuse to confirm her if she says "yes actually, presidents should step aside peacefully if they lose elections". It's not as though being an uber conservative justice on the Supreme Court requires staying in the good graces of random MAGAhats in Kentucky. Which leaves only two possibilities, that she's an insane Trumpist true believer herself, or that she's afraid Trump would capriciously withdraw her nomination three weeks before an election if she said a single word against him.

I know, it's popular to misread what happened four years ago and assume we're in the same place. But unless Trump or Biden do something that completely changes the game then the chances of Trump winning without massive election fraud are south of 1%. And freely granted that (only) Republicans are getting caught committing election fraud every day, it's still a really tall order to openly steal every single swing state. And since right now all of the states where the polling is within the margin of error are red states that Biden doesn't need to win; if he and his party can't steal them all then Trump is toast.

Which is a big part of why Fascist Barbie is heading for the Supremes to join Drunken Date Rapist Ken by November 1. This should be interesting.

The polls are saying that even Texas, Texas, is competitive this year. Let's hope Biden wins in a big enough landslide that even a 6-3 conservative Supreme Court can't throw Trump the election Bush v. Gore style.

But voting rights hereafter aren't looking good. They'll probably rule that Federal law gives state legislatures the right to gerrymander and disenfranchise voters almost however they wish, and not even state courts will be allowed to do a thing about it.

After this the Republicans are going to have the Supremes taken from them, or the Supremes will lose the ability to tell anyone anything except as specifically laid out in the Constitution. Possibly both. Judicial review can be useful, but it's not legal and it's too dangerous to let Republicans have it. Granted folks would rather not go there, the criminal ideologues the Federalist Society put on the Supremes will make it both obvious and unavoidable.

Now we could decide to keep JR as a concept but just vest it somewhere other than the Supreme Court; say, the entire Federal Appeals Court level. Though that invites the lowlifes to just keep abusing the idea by constantly pushing cases to decide the same thing over and over again until they get a decision they like (one where the draw happened to come up with a panel mostly made of them). It'd need some work.

As for elections, the states can also have the ability to gerrymander, install easy to hack systems and restrict voters taken from them. I'd wondering if Congress is going to head down that road.

Anomalous court decisions that contradict numerous other decisions at the same or a lower level don't have to be taken as precedent by subsequent courts, unless a higher court buys the anomaly and overturns the established norms. But if you get to the point where a third to half of the judges in the country are cynical nutbags willing to spew contradictory nonsense as long as it serves their political football team, you have a bigger problem than judicial review. A way bigger problem.

Look on the bright side, at least your judges aren't getting transferred to desk jobs and subjected to threats for pointing out when cops are obviously lying.

Ok, so I voted a couple of days ago. And given the number of folks pestering me to do it, I'm starting to feel like a bit of a slacker that I left it at that. So now we see if non-Republican enthusiasm will outweigh Republican and Russian election fraud. We can but hope.