A commie on the SCOTUS dies with the first smart and skilled GOP pres in 40 years and a GOP Senate and I'm supposed to think "advantage Dems?" Sorry, no. I certainly hope my pessimism is baseless.

How many SC justices retired before they died? From a USA Today article: In a 2012 blog post, Marquette University Law School noted that 38 of 57 Supreme Court justices who served between 1876 and 1900 died in office, while 39 of 46 who have served since that time left in retirement. And for 50 years —1955 to 2005 – not one justice died while in office.

One positive aspect is that I think this will force the Biden camp to reveal who they want on the Supreme Court -- something they seem to be avoiding, because they know how distasteful many people will find them

Collins has no choice but yes or she is totes not elected. I'm not sure it works that way for Collins. She's a Republican Senator in a non-Republican state. I think she's at least as much in danger from voters to the more moderate left, who will abandon her if she appears to be too conservative. In some ways she damned if she doesn't, damned if she does. Another reason I think this is such bad timing for Republicans.

MJW, I don't know what will happen, but I trust DJT. I do. It's not Trump I doubt. It's a certain segment of Republican voters, who refuse to accept the reality under which Trump must work.

I think this is very bad timing for Trump and the Republicans. With the Senate as it is now, Trump won't be able to get a nominee through before the election, and there seem to be plenty of Republicans who will hold Trump responsible. It's self defeating, and in my opinion just plain stupid, but that's what I fear will happen.

If only Joe had been part of a previous administration, he wouldn't need to fix the hurricane problem now.

Weak 1: Monday Night Football Ratings Crash by over 20% Amid Social Justice Protests Surprising! It almost makes me question my belief that the main reason people watch sports is to be lectured on politics.

It, and the AAAS in general, is a mouthpiece for academia, and one has to keep that in mind. There never has been a government program they didn't like, and science funding never is enough. I can tolerate simple self-interest like that a lot better than I can tolerate the shameless use of their scientific prestige to push their politics.

... accept what they say . . .

DrJ, Science recently published an editorial called something like "Politics has always been part of science," defending the intrusion of politics into science. They want to have their cake and eat it: they expect us to except what they say because of their scientific credentials, while using those credentials to advance their politics.

And I well remember during the 2000 election, how Science hastily published a paper on how confusing and misleading the Florida butterfly ballot was. The paper's experimental procedure barely rose to the level of a third-place junior-high science fair project, but Science had to do their part to support Gore!

In regard to Science, one of the most outlandish things they did, under the execrable Donald Kennedy's leadership, was to publish a news item concerning a scientist who wrote a favorable letter to be presented in Scooter Libby's sentencing hearing. What was the science angle? There wasn't one. It was just an attempt to smear the scientist for doing something the magazine disapproved of.

People have been discussing the politicalization of science, but so far I haven't noticed any mention of the ridiculous "scientific paper" (scare quotes justified)in last week's Science establishing the while left-wingers use their online presence in upright, honorable ways, right-wingers use it to evilly collude with the dishonest right-wing media. Think I must be joking? Here's part of the abstrat:Although left-wing actors operate primarily through “hashtag activism” and offline protest, right-wing activists manipulate legacy media, migrate to alternative platforms, and work strategically with partisan media to spread their messages. Although scholarship suggests that the right has embraced strategic disinformation and conspiracy theories more than the left, more research is needed to reveal the magnitude and character of left-wing disinformation. Science, supposedly the United State's premier scientific journal, actually published this piece of trash.

I have something that I know is Beethoven that I can't get out of my head, and I can't identify it If you can write down the notes (preferably transposed into the key of C or C minor), someone can likely identify it. Even better if you can show the rhythm: | - E E E | CCCC | - D D D | BBBB | I even have a book of classical themes that helped me when Rimsky-Korsakov's "The Young Prince and the Young Princess" was running through my head. There's also a music search engine that might be helpful: https://www.musipedia.org/melody_search.html It identified the song "The Girl I Left Behind Me" despite my quite incompetent rendition.

In her report today, claiming again that she'd confirmed the Atlantic report, Jennifer Griffith tried to rebut someone who was with Trump on the trip, who said he'd never heard Trump disrespect the military. She brought up the time in 2017 when Trump chewed out the generals. Man, if ragging on generals is disrespecting the military, Lincoln was surely be the most disrespectful president of all. I suspect it does give some insight into the attitude of those behind the leaks.

Amicus curiae shall file his reply brief on September 11, 2020...hereby ORDERED I suspect that's not something Sullivan has done, but rather a proposed order filed by Powell.

The questions to Biden were such softballs and pitches down the middle that even Chris Stirewalt -- not exactly a Trump partisan -- was appalled. It brought back memories of when Hillary was running for NY senator, and the reporters were asking her how difficult was it to be so unfairly attacked by Giuliani. At the time, I was shocked, but now I expect it.

On The Conversation: What kind of spoiled it for me is the way they altered Cindy William's inflection on the key overheard line. I suppose it could be interpreted as indicating Hackman's perception of what he heard, but it seemed to me to be a cheat.

There was a bit of unintentional humor in last night's Fox News crawl line (which I believe comes from the AP). In a report on the temporary stay of New York's subpoena for Trumps tax records, it said even if the records were turned over to the grand jury, grand jury secrecy laws would prevent them from becoming public. Sure, nothing is ever leaked if there's a law against it -- just ask General Flynn.

Please forgive my airing of a silly pet peeve, but there's no reason to abbreviate "until" as "til" or "'til" when there's a perfectly good and very old word, "till," that means the same thing, and is pronounced the same way.

When exactly did "passed away" become "passed", anyway? It goes back at least to the 1960s, probably well before. My ancient two-volume World Book Encyclopedia Dictionary, copyright 1963, has under pass -- v.i. [verb intransitive]:7. to come to an end; die: King Arthur passed in peace. Dynasties pass.

From a PowerLine piece by Steven Hayward: I just did a bit on the Howie Carr show, and Howie closed by noting that in his upcoming column he is going to write that Harris got her start working under Willie Brown.

That massive orange cloud is a puzzlement. Solid rocket propellant? What else blows up orange? Nitric acid will produce orange smoke.

One more try: I suspect and hope that he "gave in" in the sense Br'er Rabbit gave in to being tossed into the briar patch. (I blame my mistakes on the lateness of the hour, but this is the shank of the evening to me.)