 And all right, so let's jump into this with May the Ginsburg. I mean, you've probably, I'm not gonna give her bio and stuff. I think you can read that elsewhere. It's all over the news. It's all over everywhere. I mean, obviously an incredibly accomplished woman, an incredibly successful woman, a woman who was pathbreaking in terms of the acceptance of women into the legal profession at the beginning of her career, the second female Supreme Court justice, somebody who clerks of hers have written about how supportive she was and how helpful she was in the careers of those clerks. When she was in the Supreme Court, she was a good friend of Anthony Scalia. So obviously an incredibly sharp mind. I don't think you make the Supreme Court without a sharp mind. And I don't think Anthony Scalia becomes your friend without a sharp mind. A woman who obviously I disagreed with on many, many things and disagreed with her opinions as a Supreme Court judge on many, many things. But you have to admire somebody who had had some principles and fought for those principles and stood by them. And on issues like abortion, she represented my voice on the Supreme Court. So I very much supported her opinions on abortion. And I think she held in the balance an important, she held the poor abortion position. She was strongly supportive of that position, was a voice for that position on the Supreme Court. And we'll talk about that, because I think that one of the consequences of Trump appointing a her replacement will be, I think the death of Rosa versus Wade, the death of abortion protection at the federal level. And then, then it's gonna be interesting. Then it's gonna be interesting where that takes us. You know, she was a strong character over the last few years. She's been incredibly sick in and out of hospital, in and out of emergency rooms, cancer treatments. She basically did everything she could to hang on and not die while Trump was president. I mean, I don't think there's any question about that being the case. And it's gonna be, yeah. So really smart, really bright, really important for the advancement of women in the legal profession, a real fighter. I mean, let, you know, you can disagree with somebody and still view them as a real foe. And I think, and respect them as a real opponent. And I think that's what Scalia, Justice Scalia's attitude towards this, I think some Scalia, Scalia's son is with an attribute to her. You can find that on his tweets, on his Twitter account. So I think she garnered real respect from her opponents and that's to her credit. I think flags flying at half-mast, you know, across Washington DC makes a lot of sense today in her honor. So, you know, a significant woman who's achieved significant things in her life. And we as objectivists, I think who recognize accomplishment and shouldn't view everything through the prism of politics, I think should be in a position to recognize that and to appreciate that. So my respects to RBG, which is the term that people use to refer to him. All right. So now the political question. The political question is should Trump nominate replacements? And Trump is indicated he will. The Senate Republicans, at least Mitch McConnell is indicated that he will bring a Trump nominee to a vote. It's not clear Republicans have enough votes. There are a number of Republicans that have expressed their opinion that they should not be bringing a candidate to a vote. Right now, less than two months less than two months before an election. And of course there's a precedent. The precedent for this was under Obama when Scalia died. And it's interesting that Scalia created the fury around 2016. It is his friend RBG who's creating the fury right now. When Scalia died about 11 months before the election and Republicans held the Senate, Republicans refused to bring a nominee forward to being, it is the president who presents the nominee. It is the Senate that must confirm the nominee and Republicans refused to even consider even bring to debate, nevermind vote on a, on Obama's nominee. So Obama nominated a kind of a leftist but a centrist leftist because he had a Republican Senate to contend with. A rabid leftist could have never passed, probably not passed that Senate. And Republicans were in a position to at least vote and maybe vote his candidate down. They did not want to vote the candidate down because there's a tradition in the Senate that you vote four candidates that you believe are qualified. And the person that, the judge that Obama had nominated was certainly qualified. So what they decided to do was say, look, we want to wait until after the election. And the reasoning there was, look, the Senate is Republican. The people have voted for Republican Senate twice in 16 and in 18, sorry, in 12, what was it, 12 and 14. And we have a majority Senate and therefore we have divided governments and we should let the people resolve who they want as their next Supreme Court judge by letting the, let the vote go through in the presidential election. Now I think that was a disingenuous argument. I think they should have voted and if they didn't want this guy they should have voted him down. But to delay a nomination for 11 months because of a pending election was a precedent. It was, you know, and it was just, Mary Garland was the name of the candidate. It was wrong. It was disingenuous. The reasoning was made up. They just didn't want to be in this quandary of voting him down. And they didn't want to confirm it. So they fudged the rules in a sense and didn't even consider him. And you have to remember that then the Republicans did one more thing which is going to be crucial, crucial if the Democrats win the Senate at some point down the road. Certainly if they win the Senate soon. If they win the Senate in this election and Biden gets to become president Republicans will pay for this. But in, during Trump's, during the Trump administration Trump, if you remember has been calling for throughout his presidency the elimination of the filibuster, the idea that you need 60 votes to really to vote on a, on a, on an amendment. So you really need 60 supporters to get any bill passed. Trump has been against that. Republicans have held their ground on the filibuster. They've kept the filibuster, but then, but then they eliminated the filibuster for judicial nominees, at least the Supreme court nominees. I'm not sure if it goes all the way down to other kinds of judges. So the Gorsuch and Kavanaugh, I don't think Gorsuch got 60. I know Kavanaugh didn't get 60. Gorsuch and Kavanaugh were the first Supreme court justices at least in modern times to have been elected to the Supreme court without 60 votes. So twice Republicans have changed the precedents have changed the kind of the traditions. Yeah, Gorsuch got 55 votes. I think Kavanaugh got 50, 51, I think. I think 51, 48 to 51, something like that. Maybe it was 52 to 48. They've changed the historical precedents, right? In order to get, to get their way, not taking a vote on, on Merrick Garland and doing away the filibuster for the purposes of, of nominating a judge that they wanted and passing a judge that they wanted to remember, right? Right? Yeah, I mean, the first time that this idea of 60 votes was removed, right? It was removed on the read and it was, yes. And, and, yeah. It's, it's, so this idea of eliminating it. Okay, so it was 50 to 48 by Kavanaugh and two abstain. The idea of eliminating the filibuster basically makes us more of a democracy. The idea of, of, of, you know, fudging the rules in a Senate to get your way makes us more of a democracy and less of a constitutional republic. The whole idea of what the founders created here is a system of government that makes it difficult to pass legislation, difficult to make fast changes. And the Senate recognizing the dangers of a simple majority introduced the filibuster. Originally you had a literally filibuster and then they exchanged literally filibuster means literally speak, right? Then they, they, they replaced that with the 60 votes and now they've done away with it with judges and Democrats are already threatening to do away with the filibuster completely if they win the Senate in, in this election and if the, if Biden gets elected as, as president. So again, whatever you vote for president, I do think you should vote Republican in the Senate if only to prevent the Democrats from doing away with the filibuster which I think would be a disaster. Of course, again, Trump has been advocating for doing away with the filibuster for a long, long time. Yeah, the filibuster was never supposed to be what it became because it was supposed to be somebody could stand up and speak and hold up a vote by speaking. But I like the fact that they need 60 votes because I think it prevents bad laws from getting through and we have a lot of bad laws. Almost all bad laws are bad. Almost all laws are bad. So, you know, I'm, I'm a big believer in gridlock. So, you know, Republicans basically violate tradition in 2016 by not bringing garland to a vote, changed the filibuster rules and now less than two months before a vote for the presidency are going to cram through a judicial nominee of their choosing. If the Democrats win both the presidency and the Senate, they're gonna be in a very bad mood. They're gonna want payback and there are two things that they're likely to do. Not likely, but at least a threatening to do. We'll see if that turns out to be likely. One is that they are likely to deal with the filibuster completely so they can get a green new deal. They can get socialized medicine, Medicare for all, whatever, public choice, whatever, whatever they want. They'll cram through the Senate and there'll be no stopping them because if the Republicans lose everything, they would lose everything. And second is, Benjamin says, Democrats can eat at six, three and it's done. No, it's not done. The fact is that the Democrats can change the number of Supreme Court justices. What Democrats can do and what has been threatened in the past and what they're threatening right now, if you follow the news, you'll see Democrats actually making this threat is that they can expand the Supreme Court to 11 justices, nominate two of their own and at least bring it back to six to five. That's what they can do. FDR threatened to do that. FDR threatened to do that. And as a consequence of threatening to do that, the Supreme Court, it basically caved. But there's nothing wrong. There's nothing, it didn't try to. He threatened it. It was a realistic threat and as a consequence, he got to what he wanted because they didn't force his hand into doing it. But there's nothing to stop Democrats from expanding the court to 11 and nominating two of their judges. Again, they feel cornered, just like Republicans have felt cornered when Democrats do the BS and given the tribalism and given the antagonism, the hatred, the division, where they are today, it would be a disaster to see this kind of gamesmanship at the Supreme Court level of expanding the court when you get nominees you don't like. But I wouldn't be surprised if they did it. So first is there's a real potential for really bad political outcomes as we move forward that this has created. And I don't think it's avoidable. I don't think there's anything that can be done. I mean, we'll see whether there's enough Republican senators to support a nominee. Just less than two months before the election, a presidential election, I'm not sure. Right now, there are at least three to four Republican senators who are wavering. They can afford to lose three. So it's a 50-50 tie and then Pence steps in and votes. But even that would mean a Supreme Court gets a judge where it's even worse than the Kavanaugh, 50 to 48, where it's 50-50 or 51-50 where the vice president had to vote in. And that all set up an even more contentious future. That all set up an even more tribalistic and even more Republicans, Democrats, and he does other strokes future. So we will see. The other issue is of course, who is Trump gonna nominate? Who is Trump gonna nominate for the court? Right now, we have a conservative majority in the court, but it's not that conservative and you've got Roberts and even Gorsuch who have voted in unexpected ways. It's a court that's unlikely to reverse Wade. It might weaken Roe versus Wade, but it's unlikely to reverse it and showed no inclination to reverse it. But the fact is that, and to me, abortion is a big deal. It's a big deal. And it was the Iron Man. I mean, Iron Man basically viewed this as one of the most important political issues that we face. One of the most important litmus tests, if you will, for candidates. I mean, one of the reasons she didn't vote for Reagan was because of his opposition to abortion and his elevation of the issue to such a high ranking. Well, it appears that the number one candidate that Trump has, and I will see who he ultimately nominates, but it looks like he's gonna try to replace Ruth Bader Ginsburg with a woman. And the number one candidate for that is Amy Connie Barrett. Amy Connie Barrett is a, you know, is the U.S. She's a judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit based in Chicago. She was confirmed to that court in 2017. She was a Trump nominee. She's been vetted. She's gone through the Senate. They know what they're gonna after. You know, so she's kind of an easy nomination. She was being on the shortlist. She was on the shortlist with Kavanaugh. And she is a devout Catholic, a devout Catholic. And she has seven kids. There's a reflection of her being a devout Catholic. And she would overturn world versus weight in a blink of an eye. She would do it in an instance. She claims that she does not allow her religious belief to interfere in her legal decision-making. And I'd like to believe her. I'd like to believe her, but I don't really. And there's nothing to suggest that she wouldn't. Other nominee, other suggestions. Other people that have been mentioned. Alison Rushing, who is the U.S. Court of Appeals and the fourth court based in Virginia. She's young. She's 38, very anti-gay, very religious right, very, very anti-abortion. Other nominees, it's less clear. The only guy, the only man on the list on what has come out as a shortlist by a variety of different news sources is a guy as a judge by the name of Amul Thapar, who is of Indian heritage. He is 51. He is also Catholic. I don't know how religious he is. He converted to Catholicism when he got married. And he is the U.S. Court of Appeals for the sixth district based in Cincinnati and a favorite of Mitch McConnell's. So I don't know, somebody I think Ryan says that he's pretty convinced that Rovers' words will not be appealed, will not be reversed no matter what. I disagree. I think it's gonna go pretty quickly. Certainly if they get a sixth vote, if they're Republicans, if they put on one of these judges who is committed to an anti-abortion position, I think that abortion gets voted against pretty quickly. I don't think Rovers' way was particularly well decided. I think it's left a lot of holes, just what do you call it, legally. I think the idea, the right to an abortion is something that is, the left has a really hard time defending, given that it doesn't really defend rights in any other arena. I think that conservatives present themselves as having them all high ground. And I think Rovers' way gets overturned. If they get six to three, Rovers' way is out. And again, I in fact, at least, considered the abolition of abortion, at least at the federal level, to be a horrific possibility and an anti-freedom, anti-rights, bellwether, right? And so, something to keep in mind is that gay marriage might be at risk, although I doubt that I actually vote that off. I think there are enough conservatives on the court right now who would vote for gay marriage right now that they wouldn't reverse that. And it's a recent enough ruling that I don't think it will reverse. But I think abortion is at real risk, real risk. What we need today, what I call the new intellectual, would be any man or woman who is willing to think. Meaning, any man or woman who knows that man's life must be guided by reason, by the intellect, not by feelings, wishes, whims, or mystic revelations. Any man or woman who values his life and who does not want to give in to today's cult of despair, cynicism, and impotence, and does not intend to give up the world to the dark ages and to the role of the collectivist, wrote. All right, before we go on, reminder, please like the show. We've got 163 live listeners right now, 30 likes. That should be at least a hundred. I figure at least a hundred of you actually like the show. Maybe they're like 60 of the Matthews out there who hate it, but at least the people who are liking it, you know, I want to see a thumbs up. There you go, start liking it. I want to see that go to a hundred. All it takes is a click of a thing, whether you're looking at this. And you know, the likes matter. It's not an issue of my ego. It's an issue of the algorithm. 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