BComplex
BComplex's JournalJust read a Reuters article that has me incredibly upset: Supreme Court Shadow Docket
I did not know about any of this. In the middle of the night, the VERY ACTIVIST, VERY RIGHT WING Supreme Court is making rulings in secret, for all practical purposes.
According to the article, during the 16 years of the GW Bush and Obama administrations, there were only 8 shadow docket requests, 4 of which were granted/approved. During the 4 years of the trump administration, there were 41 cases...28 of which were approved. And they're planning to undo many of Biden's policies.
The 'shadow docket': How the U.S. Supreme Court quietly dispatches key rulings
In many of those cases, the court summarily overturned lower court rulings using an obscure legal procedure known as the “shadow docket.” But the short-circuit approach, intended only for emergencies, isn’t reserved for death penalty cases. It has, in the last four years, significantly changed the way the high court does business.
Increasingly, the court relies on the shadow docket to make decisions in a wide range of consequential cases, often in a dramatically accelerated fashion and without providing signed opinions or detailed explanations. Sometimes, as in death penalty cases, the decisions are irreversible.
snip
The public generally sees the court as sorting out matters of national importance through extensive briefing, oral arguments and lengthy rulings that explain the law. But the number of substantive shadow docket decisions rose dramatically during the Trump administration. In those four years, the government filed shadow docket applications at 20 times the rate of each of the two previous eight-year administrations. The high court granted the government’s requests in a majority of cases.
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-court-shadow-insight-idCAKBN2BF14U
Christina Greer was AWESOME on Ali Velshi tonight.
She hit every single point right on the head with incredible clarity. I was so impressed. I mean, she's always good, but tonight she hit her stride and blew me away. 
On edit: Ali Velshi was in for Lawrence O'Donnell.
IMPORTANT information about science & technology behind these COVID Vaccines
This is a well written and easily understood article behind the science and scientists who created the COVID vaccines, and the future of this technology to change ....well, everything when it comes to disease.
snip
Unlike traditional vaccines, which use live viruses, dead ones, or bits of the shells that viruses come cloaked in to train the body’s immune system, the new shots use messenger RNA—the short-lived middleman molecule that, in our cells, conveys copies of genes to where they can guide the making of proteins.
snip
On the other hand, vaccines are more predictable. When Lo’s team analyzed thousands of clinical trials, they found that vaccine programs frequently succeed. Around 40% of vaccine candidates in efficacy tests, called phase 2 clinical trials, proved successful, a rate 10 times that of cancer drugs.
(Emphasis mine)
The whole article is well written and touches on so many of the issues we're dealing with. We have a lot of work to do on our government!
Enjoy!
Ooops! I forgot to post the link!!
Here it is:
https://www.technologyreview.com/2021/02/05/1017366/messenger-rna-vaccines-covid-hiv/?utm_source=pocket-newtab
ELECTION REFORM - It's time. Paper ballots. Counting overseen by bipartisan workers.
And the results take as long as it takes.
This is an issue that many democrats have wanted for a long time. This might be a way for the unifying of Americans to begin. We need to hold these seditionists accountable, and I won't be satisfied until all of them are locked up.
But it makes sense to have a paper trail. We can still use computers to help do an initial counting, but we've seen some strange programming errors in the past that tipped the scales in a way that was the TOTAL OPPOSITE of what was predicted, and did not jibe with exit polls. (In fact, I still don't understand how Mitch McConnell regained his seat. Ok. 
Maybe.)
So...this is a chance for Americans to make sure that the programming cannot be hacked and make it through, because there will be hand counts as well, and this will serve as an immediate audit. No certification until the teams are through counting.
I think ELECTION REFORM is the place to start. If we have to give ground on photo ID's, or some other means of historical disenfranchisement, then I'm willing to join ANY organization that helps people everywhere to obtain and have a voter identification in order to REGISTER to vote. County Election officials must get the obituaries/death certificates of every dead person forwarded to them, and it has to match the information on the voter registration before ANYONE can be taken off the rolls. There has to be a way of telling which voter by the same name has moved/died, etc. This will be the most difficult task for election officials, but it needs to be done.
But, once registered, every voter who wants to should be allowed to vote by mail. Many states already do this, and it's a better way of voting. (Paper trail, for one. Convenience, for another.) Any discrepancies between eligible voters in a county and the number of ballots cast, instantly calls for an audit if there are more ballots than voters.
Furthermore, NO ELECTED OFFICIAL should for ANY reason, be allowed to eliminate a voter (ANY voter) from the voting rolls without approval of both parties, or an independent commission.
I'm just throwing out there some things both sides have brought up. Stacey Abrams has given me faith that we can reach out to EVERY voter in the country, and help them be registered and assisted and encouraged in every way to cast their ballots.
But to make voting count, we need to have standards of what can be spread over the internet and on the cable news, so we don't have two sets of reality going on at the same time, dividing the country. We can have different opinions, but we should NOT be having two sets of facts. And we need to make sure people know the difference.
It just seems to me that we need to start somewhere, and I've always felt like elections were just not as stable in the USA as they are with our neighbors to the North. 
Like waking up on Christmas morning to see I finally got my pony!!!
We finally went to bed about midnight last night...but first thing this morning I came to DU to see if I wanted to go back to bed and pull the covers over my head.
But I've been on the phone ever since I got up, talking to all my dem friends who were just as freaked out about this election as I was! And it's been a celebration burning up the phone lines ever since!
Georgia is my new favorite state!!!
How come we can't mail a check to both GA candidates and also to Fair Fight, instead of
signing up on line and paying online?
I hope I can make this post work... this is really awesome!
https://www.tiktok.com/@waltermasterson/video/6890923834384338181Does anyone know who I call to make the inspectors sweep my small county post office?
We have some heavily trump leaning managers in our post office in our North Carolina county of about 70,000 people.
Our election results are making my head spin.
I want audits and hand counts in EVERY STATE that went against the polling.
Every race needs to be audited. Until that happens, the country is not safe. Our democracy is going to remain in unbelievable in the eyes of the world.
We owe it to ourselves, and Biden, and all the senators, should not accept defeat until the audits are complete.
There has been way too much gerrymandering with the courts, the votes, and the polls to just sit back and accept this cluster f***.
If George W. Bush doesn't come out PUBLICLY for Biden, after what trump said about daddy GHW Bush,
then Junior is chicken shit.
What trump said about Bush Senior being a loser should bring out the big guns....bigger than the guns that brought down Saddam.
I'm wondering how many republicans will come out publicly, breaking free of their cult.
The ones that don't need to be sidelined.
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