In a fair election, Trump would win FL by 4-5%. I’m hoping for at least a 2% Trump victory in orderto avoid or limit the DEMs’ post-election shenanigans in FL.
It won't be so bad since the corrupt elections supervisor in Broward County has been replaced with an honest appointment. Ditto Palm Beach County.
In a fair election we would have multiple significant news organizations. In fact, because the wire services and especially the AP constitute virtual meetings of “People of the same trade,” andPeople of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices. - Adam Smith, Wealth of Nations (1776)we have an establishment known as “the media.”It is protected by the infamous New York Times Co. v. Sullivan decision, which strongly inhibits libel suits by public officials, including judges. Sullivan was unanimous in 1964, but it hinges on the false premise that
". . . libel can claim no talismanic immunity from constitutional limitations. It must be measured by standards that satisfy the First Amendment”We all love us some First Amendment, but (asbestos suit ON) the Bill of Rights was not intended to change anyone’s rights. Including the right to sue for libel.The reason is simple: the Federalists didn’t want rights to be an issue, the Antifederalists made it one. Rights, as understood at the time, were Common Law. To “enumerate” rights was actually to do violence to the Common Law system; Americans’ rights were a matter of court precedents and were nowhere comprehensively listed.
Forced by the Antifederalists to create a bill of rights by amendment, the Federalists enumerated certain rights - rights historically abused by tyrants - and concluded with
Thus we see that the Bill of Rights does not pretend to enumerate all of Americans’ rights, quite the contrary. Nor, certainly, all of the rights of the state governments. Thus, no court from the founding to the present day has ever held that pornography laws are unconstitutional. And no court from the founding to 1964 had ever held that the First Amendment had modified libel law, either. Unanimous or no, the Sullivan decision was an illegitimate loosening on the constraints against propaganda.
- Amendment 9:
- The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.
- Amendment 10:
- The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.
The wire services and the FCC must be held to account for libelous propaganda. Broadcast journalism must be dramatically reformed, and PBS and NPR must die.
In a fair election, Trump would win FL by 100%.