February 9

Sunny today and fairly warm. I have swept up the mess the birds left under the feeder which I refilled. The avian chorus was in loud voice this morning. The trees must have quite a large number of birds staking out their territories.

The 1440 Digest provided a thumbnail of what the oral arguments at the Supreme Court yesterday. They are characterizing the case as determining whether Trump fits the definition of a seditionist but that isn't what the justices are looking at. The experts opining on the arguments had a list of seven questions the Court was asking and that Trump only needs one to go his way to win while Colorado needs all seven. I forget all of them but I think the two major questions are 1) if Section 3 of the 14th Amendment is self actualizing and 2) who decides if a candidate is disqualified. I doubt the court will agree on one or leave the decision to the states.

Thanks to the Special Prosecutor's report on his investigation into Biden's retention of classified documents the discussion is entirely focused on the part that says that, at a trial, Biden would appear to the jury as "a sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory." Of course, the divide is entirely by party with Republicans minimizing the faulty memory of their 77 year old almost-candidate while howling about Biden's gaffs. The Democrats are railing about the gratuitous comments about Biden's spotty memory by a lawyer who is not really qualified to give an opinion though they would like to ignore similar mental failures on Trump's part. Our problem is that neither party can find anyone who voters want instead of two septuagenarians. None of the millennial candidates have generated much interest. Halley lost to "None of the above candidates" during the nonsensical and meaningless Nevada primary.

Stray thought: at least two of the bloggers I follow have expressed the notion that it doesn't matter who is the president because who ever occupies the office is a figurehead. One claims that is why we can get along with a "dementia" patient in the office. I disagree with both. I have asked who would be the "power behind the throne" if Trump gets back in and what policies the administration would follow. I would rather have a "sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with memory problems" than an (un)stable genius who is petty, vindictive, and cruel.

Stray thought on Justice Kagan's question of why we should let one state decide the election for the entire nation: ruling that states can keep candidates off the ballot--including for cause, i.e., insurrection--would not necessarily result in one state dictating the result of a national election. We already had five states basically decide the last election and a total of about 40k votes over those five did the trick.