A software update!
Another one! Software updates normally go through alpha and beta testing before they are implemented but are still often buggy. I resist all software updates where I can and dislike a lot of those that have gone through. They are often the work of a technical team looking for something to fix where there is actually nothing that needs fixing
The perils of a cashless society were exposed yesterday as a technology blunder triggered 'the world's biggest IT meltdown'.
In what was dubbed a 'digital pandemic', a glitch in a software update sparked global chaos as computers crashed in shops, banks and hospitals.
Train ticket machines seized up, GP surgeries were forced to cancel appointments and planes were grounded in multiple countries.
Waitrose and Morrisons were among the supermarkets unable to take card payments for a time – meaning customers who no longer carry cash could not buy food.
Critics said the havoc showed the dangers of a cashless world, with almost half of Britons now leaving the house with only their phones as a means of payment.
************************************************
‘Absurd’: Joe Biden’s big misstep on Donald Trump
If you want to see what is true of the Left, just look at what they say about their opponents. They are full of projection
Politics is like sport to Americans. They nail their blue or red colours to the mast with pride.
And that interest is healthy for democracy – but it can also lead to the kind of crazed assassination attempt we saw on the weekend.
So divided is America politically that a young man tried to kill a former – and likely to be returned – president in Donald Trump.
It’s all good and well for President Joe Biden to call for the temperature to be turned down but it is Mr Biden and his Democratic Party that has driven most of the division.
They have always tried to blame it on Trump. He, they claim, is the evil causing division. But it is casting Trump as evil that actually causes the division.
The Democrats are so righteously convinced of their ideology that they have set the contest as one of good versus evil. And when you’re fighting evil, then almost anything can be justified.
Trump has been compared to Hitler, with The New Republic magazine last month publishing a front page with Trump’s face morphed with Hitler’s.
He’s been compared to a dictator. Robert De Niro in May claimed that if Trump were elected in November he would “never leave” – it would be the end of elections and democracy in the US.
Mr Biden told donors, after his disastrous debate, that it was “time to put Trump in a bullseye”.
He posted to X this month that “Donald Trump vows to be a dictator on day one”, a gross misrepresentation of a joking response he gave in an interview, and that “we must stop him”.
A bullet could have stopped him dead.
Mr Biden has repeatedly claimed that “Donald Trump will destroy our democracy” and that “this race is about our freedom – it’s about our democracy”.
He claimed in the CNN debate that anyone who exercised their democratic right to vote for Trump in a democratic election was anti-democracy.
It is all patently absurd.
But is it any wonder, with this kind of inflammatory rhetoric, that America is a divided country in which a lunatic tried to kill a presidential candidate?
Trump has never sought to divide America. His entire platform, from the beginning, was about making America great again – not splitting it in half.
His crime, the thing that has made him such an evil, Hilter-esque dictator, was to defeat Hillary Clinton in 2016 by pointing out the divisions in the US caused by ruling elites deliberately ignoring the needs and concerns of ordinary Americans to further their own ends.
And Clinton proved the division she and her cronies had created when she referred to Trump supporters as a “basket of deplorables” – people for whom she had no time or regard.
Divide, divide, divide.
And now Mr Biden has the gall to say, with a straight face, that we need to turn down the heat.
****************************************************
Trump would be ahead even without God
It's the electoral college that matters and Trump is way ahead there
Gerard Baker comments from Britain:
Providence was the real star of the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee this week. For a party in which the evangelical Christian heart beats strongly, it’s not news that Republicans claim a divine mission in their deliberations. But this year even a sceptic might grudgingly acknowledge that if there is a God, recent events would suggest he has dropped in on America, donned a Maga hat and gone to work on behalf of the Grand Old Party.
For speakers from the podium and delegates on the floor, Donald Trump’s brush with death at the hands of a would-be assassin’s bullet last Saturday was a miracle, no surer sign that the Almighty plans on putting the former president back in the White House. “On Saturday the devil came to Pennsylvania holding a rifle, but an American lion got back on his feet and roared,” declaimed the senator Tim Scott.
You don’t have to believe in Trump’s unlikely ordination as a leonine agent of God to think that he and his party are destined for glory as the US approaches the last 100 days of the election campaign. In the past month we have witnessed not just the failed assassination attempt, but the accelerating collapse of President Biden’s campaign after his catastrophic debate performance, the melting away of Trump’s legal problems, the rapid unification of the Republican Party under his leadership, and growing evidence of a solid and seemingly irreversible shift in the opinion polls in Trump’s direction.
I have been attending party conventions since 1996 and I can’t recall a more exuberant mood among Republicans than I have seen this week in this post-industrial city on the shores of Lake Michigan - rapturous, you might even call it. Despite three presidential election victories since then, popular electoral success has eluded them. Only once in that time, when George W Bush narrowly beat John Kerry in 2004, has the party won the popular vote over the Democrats. But in 2024 they sense the tide has turned decisively in their favour.
The simple reason is a mood shift in America that seems about to propel not just Trump to the White House but for the first time in a century to give Republicans clear majorities in both the House of Representatives and the Senate.
Many readers, especially in the UK, find this inexplicable. The spectacle of prominent representatives of the British media wandering around open-mouthed at the sheer awfulness of what they were witnessing in Milwaukee helps to explain why so many in the UK now view the US as on the brink of some kind of fascist takeover, at the hands of what the new foreign secretary called, a “neo-Nazi-sympathising sociopath”. So let me try to explain what is actually happening.
American politics is indeed undergoing radical change in a way that favours, for now, the Republicans. But it is not an embrace of apocalyptic authoritarianism. If Trump were not the party’s nominee, in fact, with all his evident character flaws, I suspect the Republicans would be on the brink of a landslide. It is a mark of the depth of the frustration that even as flawed a candidate as Trump may be about to secure a historic win.
Republican vice presidential candidate, U.S. Sen. J.D. Vance, is articulate and thoughtful. Picture: Joe Raedle/Getty Images/AFP
Republican vice presidential candidate, U.S. Sen. J.D. Vance, is articulate and thoughtful. Picture: Joe Raedle/Getty Images/AFP
The core change is the deepening of the realignment of American politics and the Republicans’ advantage in adapting to it. This was tellingly underscored by Trump’s selection of JD Vance as his vice-presidential candidate. Vance is far from the Putin-puppet, democracy-overthrowing demon he is routinely portrayed in the press. He is the most articulate and thoughtful exponent of a new national conservatism that has shifted the axes of American political choice.
What Trump, in his instinctive way, started, Vance is fleshing out in ideas and policy - the opportunity represented by the fact that millions of working-class voters are turning to the Republicans in revulsion at the elitism of the Democratic Party, and in their alienation from the key institutions of the country that have so palpably failed them in the past two decades.
The list is familiar: a climate of intolerant extremism in American education, the media and culture; the opening of the country’s borders to mass illegal immigration in ways that upend traditional American life, suppress wage growth and increase pressure on services; the imposition of new norms on issues of race, gender and sexuality; the sense, even among Trump-sceptics, that the whole media, government and legal establishment was mobilised against him, first to prevent him becoming president and then to defeat him when he was; environmental policies explicitly aimed at weakening America’s extraordinary advantage in energy production; a strategic posture that sent Americans abroad to die in failed attempts to build foreign nations, even as the nation at home was for many disintegrating in violence, drug use and despair.
It’s worth reflecting on this last point to understand why conservatives such as Vance have opposed US support for Ukraine. Two decades of disastrous national security policies have squandered America’s post-Cold War advantage and dramatically constrained its global capabilities. Vance simply asks why in those circumstances, when it faces a far larger existential threat in the Pacific, America should commit resources to a conflict in Europe - where rich allies have resources between them that dwarf those of the Russian adversary, but still demand Americans contribute more.
It is too soon and the race is still too close, despite the lead Trump has opened up, to declare it over. While Republicans gave thanks to God this week, Democrats were working feverishly to get Biden to stand down, and it seems likely that will happen. Perhaps a fresh Democrat will be able to exploit just enough of the doubts people have about Trump to eke out some kind of win. But after two decades of ignoring the rising frustrations of so many Americans, the ground has shifted beneath them. Even God won’t stop that.
*****************************************************
How the Establishment Clause Protects Religious Diversity and Freedom of Conscience
The "woke" religion of the elite in the USA today would seem to meet most of the criteria for an established religion, so most of their edicts could be struck down as a violation of the establishment clause of the 1st amendment
"Agreeing to Disagree", written by Nathan S. Chapman and Michael W. McConnell, charts the political, philosophical, and legal history of the First Amendment’s Establishment Clause. Contrary to the all-too-common misconception that the Establishment Clause’s function is merely to “separate church and state,” Chapman and McConnell offer a robust account of the historical evidence illuminating the original public meaning of the clause. They then explain how that meaning was lost by later generations and conclude by showing how rediscovery of the Establishment Clause’s original meaning helps clarify many of today’s most pressing religious liberty issues—from religious accommodations to school funding and church autonomy. Although written for a lay audience—and therefore perhaps a bit too familiar for those already acquainted with Chapman and McConnell’s legal scholarship— we highly recommend this accessible and thought-provoking work.
There is no question that the American public—and even many federal judges— have struggled to understand this often “contentious and misunderstood provision of the ... Constitution” (p. 1). The Establishment Clause is somewhat odd, after all. Though apparently well understood in the Founding era, an “establishment of religion” is not a familiar concept to Americans today, much less laws “respecting an establishment of religion.” Agreeing to Disagree demystifies this largely foreign concept by delving into the clause’s history, asking the all-important question: What was commonly understood by the term “establishment of religion” at the time of the clause’s writing?
Chapman and McConnell provide an answer: an establishment of religion, they say, was understood to mean “the promotion and inculcation of a common set of beliefs through governmental authority” (p. 18). Beyond this basic definition, however, they acknowledge significant variety between individual establishments. As they point out, an establishment could be “narrow ... or broad,” “more or less coercive,” and “tolerant or intolerant of other views” (p. 18). And the character of any particular establishment often changed over time. Indeed, as the authors also note, “the laws constituting the establishment” were often “ad hoc and unsystematic” (p. 18).
Even so, from their deep dive into the history of early American establishments, the authors distill six common “elements” of established churches, providing some tangible examples to supplement their general definition. These six elements are: “(1) control over doctrine, governance, and personnel of the church; (2) compulsory church attendance; (3) financial support; (4) prohibitions on worship in dissenting churches; (5) use of church institutions for public functions; and (6) restriction of political participation to members of the established church” (p. 18). In addition, the authors explain that laws “prohibiting blasphemy and enforcing sabbath observance” were widely considered to be “components of a religious establishment” too (p. 18). Laws advancing and regulating these intertwined aspects of church and state were the means by which the colonies largely controlled their established religious institutions; they gave the government authority to decide how churchgoers did or did not worship, subordinated churches to the public fisc, and restricted dissent from members of minority religions.
Chapman and McConnell also explain how these tools were used to regulate public services like caring for the “poor ... and for orphans and other homeless children,” to “impose religious restrictions on the right to vote,” and to limit “full citizenship to those who supplied proof of a genuine conversion experience” (pp. 24–27). These religious litmus tests tended to exclude many groups from full participation in public life, with this burden often falling hardest on “Catholics, Jews, Quakers,” and “Baptists” (pp. 23, 27).
By understanding these six common elements of state establishments, the authors argue, the Establishment Clause’s meaning also becomes clear. Chapman and McConnell explain—based on this common understanding of state establishments at the time—that the Establishment Clause’s plain text denies Congress the authority to create its own established church, while simultaneously preventing it from interfering with existing state establishments.
The authors’ arguments, however, become a bit more convoluted when they seek to explain how this original meaning—limited to what Congress could or could not do—was expanded by the Fourteenth Amendment to apply to all government actors (federal, state, and local). After giving the reader a taste of their arguments, Chapman and McConnell brush further questions aside, explaining that they “need not get into those complexities here, because no justice of the Supreme Court now questions the applicability of the personal rights of the Bill of Rights to the states” (pp. 75n1, 79).
This approach also points to a broader challenge inherent in a book like this one: the authors’ historical overview—covering everything from the origins of the Establishment Clause through the Fourteenth Amendment in 84 short pages—tends to both overwhelm an Establishment Clause newcomer and leave those familiar with the topic wanting more.
As noted above, when the authors address incorporation against the states (chapter 4), they attempt to make a complex topic broadly accessible in a few short pages. And while Agreeing to Disagree is largely successful in doing exactly that, the book stumbles a bit when it comes to addressing incorporation in particular. It assumes the reader understands the significance of this issue, only briefly addresses it from a historical perspective, and then ultimately throws up its hands by concluding that no one questions incorporation today—so we need not fully explore it. An unsatisfying answer, but fair enough for a 192-page book.
Not content to leave the Establishment Clause stuck in the past, Chapman and McConnell fast-forward to what they call the “modern controversies” over the clause’s application. This portion of the book is where the rubber hits the road as the authors work through the Supreme Court’s various attempts to interpret and understand the clause—starting with Everson, making a detour through Lemon, and concluding (for now) with Kennedy, American Legion, and Carson. Touching on numerous points of controversy—from government funding of religious schools to prayer and Bible reading in public school classrooms, conflicts over religious symbols on public land, and the interaction between employment laws and religious autonomy—the authors show how the Supreme Court’s decisions on these hotly contested issues have been driven by the court’s return to the Establishment Clause’s original meaning.
To take just one example, Chapman and McConnell chart the history of religious schools in the United States. They explain how a renewed focus on the original meaning of the Establishment Clause brought about, “with astonishing speed,” the complete repudiation of a whole line of Supreme Court precedent governing the relationship between government and religious schools (p. 137). According to the authors, “in all the annals of U.S. Reports, there is no example of a more complete volte-face in constitutional doctrine” (p. 137). Indeed, from the 1980s to today, the rule for religious schools went from one of “no-aid separationism” through a period of permissible neutral government aid, to (today) a rule of mandatory government neutrality between religion and nonreligion and among religions (p. 139).
Prior to this shift, the Supreme Court took a hostile approach to government aid for religious schools, imposing a requirement of “no-aid separationism”— essentially a rule that (with a narrow exception for public services like fire and police protection) mandated complete separation between church and state and barred religious schools from access to generally available government funding. This no-aid theory, according to Chapman and McConnell, reached its high-water mark in 1985 and is attributable to the Supreme Court’s misunderstanding of the meaning and purpose of the Establishment Clause.
Things changed quickly, however. Agreeing to Disagree describes this shift in three stages. The first stage, starting in the 1980s, culminated early in the twentyfirst century with Zelman v. Simmons-Harris (2002), which “explicitly replaced no aid theory with neutrality” (p. 139). After Zelman, the rule in the Supreme Court was that neutral school funding was permitted but not mandatory (stage two). This state of affairs, however, did not last long. Once neutral aid was permitted (removing the Establishment Clause barrier), litigants and Supreme Court justices alike began to question whether the Free Exercise Clause, which demands (at a minimum) equal treatment of religion, permits governments to “singl[e] out religion for unfavorable treatment” when creating generally available government funding programs (p. 140).
Within two decades, the Supreme Court answered that question in Trinity Lutheran v. Comer (2017) (stage three). Trinity Lutheran required the court to decide whether a religious school could be excluded from a government grant program for playground resurfacing solely because it was religious. The court ruled for the school, striking down Missouri’s state ban on funding for religious schools and holding that treating religious schools on equal footing with private secular schools in the resurfacing program was “not only permissible but also mandatory” (p. 141). Trinity Lutheran thus confirmed that if the government creates a generally available funding program, it has to make that funding available to secular and religious schools on a neutral basis.
Trinity Lutheran, however, created more questions than answers. Important among them: Was its rule limited to funding for facially “nonreligious” items (like playgrounds), or were governments required to treat religious and nonreligious alike even when the funds were used for things like primary school education, which included both secular and religious components?
The Supreme Court answered that question in Espinoza v. Montana Department of Revenue (2020), holding that Montana couldn’t exclude religious schools from a tuition aid program made generally available to secular private school students. This decision, however, did not end the controversy. Following Espinoza, governments intent on excluding religious schools pivoted—arguing that they weren’t excluding schools based on their religious “status” (plainly forbidden after Trinity Lutheran and Espinoza) but based on religious “use” or religious “exercise.” But this supposed distinction, too, was quickly repudiated by the Supreme Court in Carson v. Makin (2022), which held that exclusion based on “religious exercise” was no different from exclusion based on religious status.
For Chapman and McConnell, this “abrupt doctrinal one-eighty” on school funding reflected the court’s rapid return to the original understanding of the Establishment Clause: to ensure equal treatment and inclusion of religion in public life (p. 142). And, by starting off with a thorough account of the Establishment Clause’s history and original meaning, Chapman and McConnell attempt to persuade their reader that this swift shift—despite creating the “sense of whiplash” (p. 142)—is not only more faithful to the clause’s original meaning and purpose, but also leads to a healthier public square in which religion is not banished, but is instead viewed as a natural part of the human experience.
Agreeing to Disagree combines deep expertise with a style and structure that facilitate a comprehensive introduction to the Establishment Clause’s historical meaning and enduring importance. The authors structure the book in such a way that by the time they discuss modern controversies surrounding the clause, readers have a disambiguated understanding of its origin and purpose, leapfrogging the many decades that America and its highest court spent in confusion. Chapman and McConnell also leave readers on a hopeful note for the future of religious liberty.
They conclude by laying out how the Establishment Clause has facilitated and continues to maintain one of “the most religiously heterogenous societ[ies] the world has ever known” through the values of pluralism and neutrality (p. 188). Though lawmaking by its very nature often requires the government to take value-laden stances, Chapman and McConnell also argue that the Establishment Clause “serve[s] as a caution against the use of governmental power to create uniformity in matters of opinion” (p. 191).
They thus conclude that America needs “a broader spirit of disestablishment” to prevent the forced conformity of opinions not just about religion, but also about “other ideologies” (p. 192). While heartwarming, this attempt to wrap up the book with an appeal to a “spirit of disestablishment” that is applicable to broader cultural disagreements feels forced and contrasts sharply with the text-focused, originalist stance championed throughout the book.
Though Chapman and McConnell capture the significance of the Establishment Clause for religious liberty, the resolution of these broader cultural conflicts seems out of the clause’s reach. Nevertheless, the authors’ message rings clear: the Establishment Clause was never intended to separate religion from the public sphere; rather, it is meant to promote a freely religious society in which religious people and institutions need not fear exclusion due to difference.
https://www.independent.org/publications/tir/article.asp?id=2005&omhide=true
****************************************All my main blogs below:
http://jonjayray.com/covidwatch.html (COVID WATCH)
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)
http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)
http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)
http://australian-politics.blogspot.com (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com (TONGUE-TIED)
https://immigwatch.blogspot.com (IMMIGRATION WATCH)
http://jonjayray.com/short/short.html (Subject index to my blog posts)
***********************************************
/>
Kristina Pimenova, once said to be the most beautiful girl in the world. Note blue eyes and blonde hair
Bliss: What every woman wants: to feel safe and secure in the arms of her man. Robert Irwin and Rorie Buckey. See 
1 comment:
"If you want to see what is true of the Left, just look at what they say about their opponents. They are full of projection"
I'm stealing that quote!
Post a Comment