NY'ers Dare You To Elect Zeldin. Left Awakes? Ross Rants.

I seriously doubt most New Yorker's are sophisticated enough to elect Lee Zeldin as their governor. He is articulate, brave, rational, has a military background and even, a stable personality.  He has two obvious negatives. Zeldin is a Republican and every positive, I enumerated, is a negative. Most New Yorkers, like their west coast contemporaries, are bizarre human beings. In many ways they are quite sophisticated because they live in a world swamped with diverse cultures. In other ways, they are totally insular and have not the slightest idea of what occurs beyond their city or state nor seem to have much interest. Worst of all they cannot see beyond being a Democrat and believing whatever The NYT's prints.

The two tails of our coastal book end states have been wagging our nation far too long and until this changes it is doubtful our nation will be able to get back in touch with it's core roots

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As the mid terms approach Democrats are faced with overwhelming negatives and have chosen certain tactics both laughable but equally serious.  Are they out of total desperation or are they betting "deplorables" are as stupid as Hillary believes?

Obviously, they realize they cannot deny inflation, gas prices, border penetration, drugs, Afghanistan, crime, Biden's mental debilitation and his low standings in the press. There are too just many challenges to confront so they have decided at embrace three things:

1) Pivot by reversing their former embrace of radical policies by supporting large sums for police protection. This is no surprise because Biden loves spending money but has consistently been blocked by his own nemesis, Sen. Manchin.  Maybe Manchin will support Biden's current proposal.

2) Shift attention from the current negatives and keep J6 active so Trump is so damaged he loses enough support and  decides not to run.  In this regard I hope the radicals are successful even though the J6 hearings are being conducting in a manner in opposition to every principle undergirding  our judicial system.  

Trump is his own worst enemy and therefore a threat to whomever the GOP might otherwise nominate.

3) Here frustrated Democrats are throwing a Hail Mary by financing what they deem are the weakest candidates among opposition candidates.

It is perverse and proves what I have consistently maintained, ie.Democrats will go to any length to retain power. Winning is everything and if gutter tactics help go for it.

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 The Left Wakes Up to Constitutional Law

Democrats are realizing that in ceding to Republicans the founding text, they have built their top policy priorities on legal quicksand.

After a season of conservative rulings by the Supreme Court, progressives have rediscovered the Constitution.

How  nice to see the New York Times ruminating over the Constitution. What a change. Only 12 years ago, Republican efforts to open the 112th Congress with a reading of the Constitution were met with what the Editor of this paper termed “hoots of derision” and “outrage” punctuated with “keening.” The Times itself labeled the exercise “a ghastly waste of time.” 

Little more than a decade on, a new interest in the national parchment has caught on amongst Democrats. From the pages of the Gray Lady to the halls of Congress to grassroots legal organizations, those on the left are belatedly realizing that in ceding the founding text to Republicans, they have built their top policy priorities on legal quicksand. 

Holdings of the Supreme Court, which this year delivered conservative wins on guns, abortion, criminal procedure, religious liberty, and regulatory delegation are being met by the Times with more daring coverage of the Constitution. One columnist, Jamelle Bouie, has been plumping for “transforming the structure of American government” via Constitutional reform.

In a column Sunday, Mr. Bouie proposed stripping the Senate “of its power to introduce or veto legislation” to make it “into something like the British House of Lords, which has limited power to veto legislation or make policy.” Yet the Constitution ordains that “No Title of Nobility shall be granted by the United States.” It was a veritable allergy of the Founders.

Mr. Bouie aspires to “move the locus of policymaking back to the House of Representatives,” which he would expand it to “at least 600 members.” To end senatorial hegemony, Mr. Bouie would side with conservatives, who’ve long favored repealing the 17th Amendment, which ordained the popular election of Senators rather than having them chosen by state legislatures.

Left unmentioned by Mr. Bouie in his argument for putting the Senate out to pasture is the sacrosanct status the Constitution hands that body. The parchment specifies in Article V that “no state, without its consent, shall be deprived of its equal suffrage in the Senate,” the sole remaining part of the Constitution that it is unconstitutional to amend. 

While ending the direct election of Senators would not by itself contravene this order, Mr. Bouie clearly envisions a different role for the upper chamber. The columnist has taken the same approach to the Supreme Court, reminding his readers in a column last month that “The power to check the Supreme Court is there, in the Constitution.”

That power adheres in Congress recalling its power to, in Mr. Bouie’s words, “discipline a rogue Supreme Court.” It can impeach justices, scale up and strip down the court, circumscribe its jurisdiction, and alter its procedures for overturning precedent. He urges Congress to “seize” the “power to check the Supreme Court” articulated in Article III, Section 2. 

That campaign has already begun, in the form of a letter written by congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez to Speaker Pelosi and her junior partner, Senator Schumer. Ms. Ocasio-Cortez urged a legislative push to restrict “the Supreme Court’s appellate jurisdiction in the areas of abortion, marriage equality, non-procreative intimacy, and contraception.”

Ms. Ocasio-Cortez’s letter was issued two weeks before Mr. Bouie’s column, suggesting that a circuit of constitutional interpretation might be clicking between pundits and politicians. Just last week, congressman Hank Johnson, a Georgia Democrat, publicly pushed the 2021 Judiciary Act, which would add four seats to the court as medicine for “a Supreme Court at crisis with itself and with our democracy.”

Mr. Bouie asserts that The Constitution contains several “idle provisions” — “words, phrases and clauses that have little to no bearing on our constitutional order as it currently exists.” Free Speech for People, a legal advocacy group allied with the left, is seeking to put one of those “idle provisions” to work, namely Section 3 of the 14th Amendment. 

That clause bars from office those who “engage in insurrection,” and Free Speech for People has is attempting to use it to cudgel off the ballot everyone from Representative Madison Cawthorn to President Trump. In respect of the latter, the group has mailed a letter to all 50 secretaries of state urging them to commit to barring Mr. Trump from the ballot.

The provision has been idling since 1919, when it was deployed to bar the seating of a socialist Congressman, Victor Berger, who was accused of giving aid and comfort to Germany during the First World War. That maneuver was eventually reversed by the Supreme Court, which over-ruled the famed trial judge Kenesaw Mountain Landis, who was promoted to Commissioner of Baseball.

Legal revolutions can be long gestating — and might well come into view only as they near completion. It took more than half a century — 58 years — to undo Plessy v. Ferguson. The toppling of Roe v. Wade took nearly a half century. That doesn’t mean that the awakening of the Left to the power of the Constitution will come to naught.

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Yes, she needs to lighten up because she is a lightweight.

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Ross Rants:
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There is now no question the Fed is going another 75, and possibly 100. The only question now is what happens in August when there is no official meeting, and the CPI looks better when the July gas prices show a decline, and some other products are discounted in an inventory clearance. Rents will still rise as will food. Oil is not going to stay down. Biden got nothing from the Arabs that will make any real difference, and so there is not much more oil production going to occur so long as Biden continues his war on fossil. My assumption is the Saudis essentially said, without saying it, we are not going to help you since you did not help us when we needed more weapons to protect against air strikes. There will be no real ramp up in US oil production for a very long time even if a new Republican Congress can change the regulations. Yesterday on CNBC Buttigieg was asked-given that inflation is harming many families and the energy shortage will create a potential crisis in the EU this winter, and since whatever the US does will not make any real difference to climate, should we be trying to fix those serious immediate issues first and worry about climate later. His response was no, climate is much more important. So there is zero chance for more oil production in the US in any quantity. Several of us listening thought his responses were just plain ignorant, and out of touch with reality. Once the economy starts to recover, oil goes back up and inflation does not return to 2%.

We still don't know if the bottom is in. We need to wait to see what the Fed does next on July 27, and what the GDP print is on July 27. It is possible 3666 on June 16 was the bottom, just below my 3750, but we need to wait to see until we see these reports and more earnings. Many traders think there is another leg down. I am not sure. The geopolitical risks in Ukraine and the Mideast are major black swans

According to B of A earnings report, consumers still have decent bank balances, and are transacting. They forecast no recession. Apparently a lot of people are still spending in the mistaken belief they will continue to have a job and they don't need to be saving when we are headed into recession. However, a new poll shows 65% are now starting to cut back on entertainment, and 40% are reducing their grocery shopping. The day of reckoning is coming soon, but for now the excess savings people had is keeping the recession from being much worse than it probably would have been. We will see how long it lasts as inflation is now changing shopping habits and eating savings and paychecks. We will know on June 27 what the GDP report says. Atlanta Fed still says negative 1%. 

One very good news point. Wheat and corn prices have fallen a lot (20%-40%) in the past few weeks for a variety of reasons, including use of alternative grains, more wheat coming from Russia, and some good weather in a few places. The world food crisis everyone predicted seems now to have been mitigated for the moment. Russia is still pumping gas to Europe for the moment. One more bad news point, Draghi has resigned as Italian premier. Italy will be even more chaotic and weak than it already is. Nobody has the brains and experience he has.

There is an even greater shortage of housing than before as costs of construction and mortgage rates climbed, causing builders to be more cautious, and buyers to be priced out. As the cost of lumber and copper drops further, possibly more houses will get built, but the shortage will continue for a long time, probably keeping house prices from dropping as much as we might expect in a recession. A decline of 10%-15% is likely. If you are a seller, you missed the top. The current homebuilder confidence survey just had the biggest drop in 37 years. At $449,000 houses are unaffordable to many. Good news for rental market.

Copper has dropped by almost 30% year to date. Historically this always means recession is here.

CA has passed a new law that essentially ends independent truckers in that state . The truckers are shutting down ports. Just what we need now.

Biden's Mideast trip was a disaster. He looked weak and got nothing, and even though the Israelis and the Saudis told him his new deal with Iran will be catastrophic, he pushed it ahead anyway, and he gave the Palestinians millions more to their fund that pays terrorist families. He never should have gone. The generals told him not to pull out of Afghanistan, but he did it anyway. Everyone in the Mideast said don't do the Iran deal, but he is pushing it ahead anyway. He knows the border is a crisis, but he does nothing. Most sane people know we need to pump more oil, but he puts on more regs and constraints, and proposed new taxes on oil companies. He says the economy is doing great. Maybe he is truly insane, or an just an idiot.

 

There is no reason Pelosi should be going to Taiwan right now. It just sets up another potential risk. China has said it will react, and it will not be good.

The LA Times has now come out and said what many of us had warned about. All those solar panels, contain toxic chemicals that leach into the ground water when disposed into a land fill. Now CA is deluged with old solar panels and no place to get rid of them. When they raced to subsidize solar installation on homes, they never bothered to think about what happens when the panels get old and need to be disposed of. Apparently because of the glass and the way they are manufactured, you can't just take apart an old panel. There is a very expensive and time consuming way it has to be done. Oh, but who bothered to consider the true full life cycle cost of a solar panel through its dismantling and disposal. They never want to consider that cost, nor the contamination. And now CA has ordered that almost every new building in CA has to have solar panels on the roof. Just imagine in 20 years what the amount of toxic chemicals will have to be buried or incinerated. One more glaring example of how the left never thinks about the ramifications of what they are doing. They just rush to do the latest fad thing to be woke, and years later the real problems surface worse than the original problem they were thinking they solved.

The power solution is going to be nuclear. Many of the EU nations and Japan and S Korea are now building, or are about to build, nuke power plants. Only Germany seems to still be living in the climate hysteria world, and is still closing nuke power plants. The US is not even a player and is falling behind the rest of the world because the climate crazies prefer to push solar and wind instead of what works well, which is small nuke plants. I believe there will come a time in the not distant future when the world shifts to nuclear power generation and away from wind and solar on a large scale. The US will lag behind for years due to a series of court battles that the left will wage. 

Last winter in TX you could not charge up your EV due to no power. This summer you can't between the hours of 3-8 because of strains on the utilities. The wind does not blow sufficiently in very hot weather. Now many towns across the country have outlawed any windmills as people realize what a noise creator and disruption they are. Now Buttigieg says we all need to buy EV's to solve the high cost of gas. I guess all those lower and middle income people can just take out a second mortgage to pay for their new EV, or maybe we will just pay for it out of new taxes on the rest of us. But Biden says we need to rush to close down fossil fuels. Another example of how they never stop and say -how is this going to work. 

U of Penn just nominated the transgender swimmer, Lia Thomas, to be Woman of the Year for the NCAA. Thomas is who wrecked women's sports, and now Penn thinks should be rewarded. I went to Penn, but now have nothing to do with the school which has gone so far left it is off the charts. The federal court has just stopped transgenders from using the wrong bathroom. The fixation with identity politics has become absurd. There are around 1 million trans people in the US according to the government. That is .3% of the population, but the other 99.7% are supposed to alter the things we do just to accommodate this miniscule number of people. Penn has promoted Thomas as a hero when in fact she/he is a disaster for young women.

SCOTUS next year will take up Sackett vs EPA as a follow on the recent EPA case where the court restricted what agencies can do. Since the EPA and others are now trying to circumvent SCOTUS the new case, Sackett vs EPA, hopefully will put an end to that

The following needs your immediate attention if you care at all about freedom of speech, and the indoctrination of university students. You need to help here with money, and any other support you can provide to Amy Wax. Amy is someone I know, and she is always a person who speaks truth based on fact and data. She has always been the shining light of freedom of speech on campus. She is a long term law professor at U of P, and has won awards for her ability to teach effectively, and to relate to the students. A couple of years ago Amy gave an interview to a Philadelphia paper wherein she stated the fact that the students admitted to the law school as diversity admits vs on merit, rarely scored above the 50th percentile. This was based on actual data that the law school has since refused to release. The school and students went nuts. How dare she tell the truth. They tried to fire her, but could not due to tenure, so they cut out her classes and ostracized her. Now they are trying to terminate her and cancel her tenure based on the fact that she has made other statements that do not comport with the university's radical left wing ideology. They are trying to make an example of her, and to intimidate all other professors across the country from speaking truth that does not comply with woke ideology. This is going to be the nation's landmark case in a hearing before a university panel, and is all about freedom of speech and thought on campus. It is essential that everyone who cares about what has happened in academia has to help. This also needs all the publicity you can provide or generate. Amy needs financial help to pay her legal team through her go fund me page which is gofundme.com/f/amy-wax-legal-defense

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