U.S. Politics; Who Watches the Watchers?

[Guy Kilmore]

14 minutes ago, Sword of Doom said:

https://www.npr.org/2018/05/21/605012795/supreme-court-decision-delivers-blow-to-workers-rights?

Great................... I honestly hate this fucking country and the millions that infest it that voted for these scumfucks.

I kept telling my liberal friends that the Supreme Court matters, well, we get another generation of these types of decisions. Good times.

[Gertrude]

Well, congress could fix this through legislation, but since congress is so fucking broken and useless, there's little hope on that front.

[aceluby]

1 minute ago, Guy Kilmore said:

I kept telling my liberal friends that the Supreme Court matters, well, we get another generation of these types of decisions. Good times.

Yes and no.  Had Clinton won we'd still be at 8 judges with a high likelihood of losing seats in the house and the senate this year and 8 judges until 2020, at which point it would have been Clinton's "scandalous first term" against whatever dumb fuck the GOP decided to run against her; and Clinton would likely lose and we'd have the same scenario, just 4 years later.

The supreme court does matter, but I think the better takeaway from this is that if you can cheat the norms, fucking do it.  I think democrats should double or triple the number of federal judges at all levels the next time they come into power.  Never allow a SC nomination through if they hold the senate, and push anything and everything they can via reconciliation budgets.  Play fucking hardball for once.

[Bonnot OG]

https://www.whitehouse.gov/articles/need-know-violent-animals-ms-13/

Get ready for death camps at some point. They'll double down on labeling immigrants gang members and then instead of deporting them, just start systematically killing them off.

[Kalbear]

8 minutes ago, Sword of Doom said:

https://www.whitehouse.gov/articles/need-know-violent-animals-ms-13/

Get ready for death camps at some point. They'll double down on labeling immigrants gang members and then instead of deporting them, just start systematically killing them off.

Given that ICE has already labeled random people as members of gangs without any evidence, held them without any representation for months due to that fact, and used this as a justification for a number of raids - this seems pretty close to spot on. 

[Mexal]

I guess the demand will be official.

 

[Fez]

2 hours ago, aceluby said:

Yes and no.  Had Clinton won we'd still be at 8 judges with a high likelihood of losing seats in the house and the senate this year and 8 judges until 2020, at which point it would have been Clinton's "scandalous first term" against whatever dumb fuck the GOP decided to run against her; and Clinton would likely lose and we'd have the same scenario, just 4 years later.

Considering every Democratic senate nominee won in the states Clinton won and every Republican senate nominee won in the states Trump won, if Clinton had won in 2016 she'd almost certainly have had a Democratic majority to approve her SCOTUS nominee. 

Of course, if Clinton had won in 2016 but the fundamentals of the election were basically the same, 2018 would've been a bloodbath for Democrats. That slim Democratic senate majority would flip into an almost, or possibly actually, filibuster-proof Republican majority (so many red-state Democratic senators), and Republicans probably would hit the magic number of state legislatures to be able to unilaterally create constitutional amendments (of course, the odds of all the legislatures getting on the same page to actually do so would be pretty slim).

[lokisnow]

1 hour ago, Fez said:

Considering every Democratic senate nominee won in the states Clinton won and every Republican senate nominee won in the states Trump won, if Clinton had won in 2016 she'd almost certainly have had a Democratic majority to approve her SCOTUS nominee. 

Of course, if Clinton had won in 2016 but the fundamentals of the election were basically the same, 2018 would've been a bloodbath for Democrats. That slim Democratic senate majority would flip into an almost, or possibly actually, filibuster-proof Republican majority (so many red-state Democratic senators), and Republicans probably would hit the magic number of state legislatures to be able to unilaterally create constitutional amendments (of course, the odds of all the legislatures getting on the same page to actually do so would be pretty slim).

The state legislatures have no independence, they’re all intimately and expertly coordinated by evil organizations like ALEC and they will do whatever evil ALEC tells them to do (hail hydra). 

And democrat senators would have never had the balls to get rid of the filibuster on Supreme Court judges, so we would probably not have gotten Clinton’s appointment confirmed.

[Guy Kilmore]

4 hours ago, aceluby said:

Yes and no.  Had Clinton won we'd still be at 8 judges with a high likelihood of losing seats in the house and the senate this year and 8 judges until 2020, at which point it would have been Clinton's "scandalous first term" against whatever dumb fuck the GOP decided to run against her; and Clinton would likely lose and we'd have the same scenario, just 4 years later.

The supreme court does matter, but I think the better takeaway from this is that if you can cheat the norms, fucking do it.  I think democrats should double or triple the number of federal judges at all levels the next time they come into power.  Never allow a SC nomination through if they hold the senate, and push anything and everything they can via reconciliation budgets.  Play fucking hardball for once.

I wasn't referring to Clinton winning, but paying attention to it in general and weighting their decisions with that political calculus in mind. 

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

4 hours ago, aceluby said:

Play fucking hardball for once.

While I agree, I do wonder how voters would respond to that. It's clear that playing hardball doesn't bother conservative voters at all, but I don't know if it would play the same on the left. It could end up backfiring on potential candidates. \

58 minutes ago, lokisnow said:

And democrat senators would have never had the balls to get rid of the filibuster on Supreme Court judges, so we would probably not have gotten Clinton’s appointment confirmed.

Word! 

[Larry of the Lawn]

50 minutes ago, Tywin et al. said:

While I agree, I do wonder how voters would respond to that. It's clear that playing hardball doesn't bother conservative voters at all, but I don't know if it would play the same on the left. It could end up backfiring on potential candidates. \

Word! 

I doubt it. The liberal base has been begging for the Dems to play hardball on this shit.  

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

14 minutes ago, larrytheimp said:

I doubt it. The liberal base has been begging for the Dems to play hardball on this shit.  

There's a key difference though. Liberals want government to work while Conservatives want government to work for them. I think that allows supporters of the latter to stomach bad behavior on a more consistent basis. Democrats need to stand up for themselves and not be so timid, but the same tactics used by Conservatives will not work consistently for them.  

[The Anti-Targ]

6 hours ago, Guy Kilmore said:

I kept telling my liberal friends that the Supreme Court matters, well, we get another generation of these types of decisions. Good times.

 

6 hours ago, Sword of Doom said:

https://www.npr.org/2018/05/21/605012795/supreme-court-decision-delivers-blow-to-workers-rights?

Great................... I honestly hate this fucking country and the millions that infest it that voted for these scumfucks.

Surely the response to that is to unionise

[lokisnow]

For example, as a liberal, I want the government to work and hardball or not, I don't my side to sacrifice standards to achieve goals, and conveniently, there is an article in the LA Times on Sunday about all the criminal democrat politicians (Garcetti, Villarigosa, Antonavich etc) engaging in massive criminal corruption pursuing their liberal goal of electric buses.

http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-electric-buses-20180520-story.html

[Larry of the Lawn]

I'm not there.  There's too much at stake to let the perfect be the enemy of the good.  If you can legally get a favorable result, fucking do it.  Especially when it comes to shit like Supreme Court seats.  Principles are great and all, if they can like, actually affect the law and reality.  

Spelling and capitalism

[Bonnot OG]

9 minutes ago, larrytheimp said:

I'm not there.  There's too much at stake to let the perfect be the enemy of the good.  If you can legally get a favorable result, fucking do it.  Especially when it comes to shit like Supreme Court seats.  Principles are great and all, if they can like, actually affect the law and reality.  

Spelling and capitalism

One of my biggest issues with my fellow leftists is how many will say defeat fascism at all costs, then not doing that by not voting for the more favorable person than a fucking fascist like Trump and other GOP fuckheads.

[LongRider]

10 hours ago, Gertrude said:

That's right, none of them. Maybe we should look at the gun part of our culture, just a thought.

Having just reread The Hunger Games trilogy, last night on some major news program (not Fox tho,) they showed photos of some of the killed students and read their names.  jfc, I was reminded of how the killed Tributes were shown at the end of the day in the HG Arena.  Is that what murdered students are now....Tributes to the Second Amendment?

Ga'hhh!  

[LongRider]

2 minutes ago, Triskele said:

Think of many of these Obama-to-Trump voters in Ohio and Pennsylvania and Michigan and Wisconsin.  The Supreme Court just fucked them something proper.  And this was an utter certainty if Trump was elected.  How many of them considered that?  

They were too busy celebrating how the SC would soon be legislating the reproductive tracts of American women.   Whooo hoooo!    

[Bonnot OG]

1 hour ago, Triskele said:

Man, reading up on this court decision...I've been saying for years that it's crazy how little attention the Supreme Court gets in the broader public discourse.  Sure, political junkies know all about it.  But when the average person is voting it seems like far too many of them just get caught up the narrative about the presidential candidate.  Think of many of these Obama-to-Trump voters in Ohio and Pennsylvania and Michigan and Wisconsin.  The Supreme Court just fucked them something proper.  And this was an utter certainty if Trump was elected.  How many of them considered that?  

I'm glad they got fucked by it. Their own selfishness and bigotry fucked everyone else over, about time they get fucked by their own shittiness. 

[DMC]

6 hours ago, lokisnow said:

And democrat senators would have never had the balls to get rid of the filibuster on Supreme Court judges, so we would probably not have gotten Clinton’s appointment confirmed.

If Clinton had won and the Dems taken the Senate, they would have gotten rid of the filibuster if only because the GOP would have forced them to.  They refused to even meet with Garland, obviously they would have filibustered any nominee.  No matter how the election shook out, the cloture vote for SCOTUS nominees was a dead-procedural-rule-walking once the GOP refused to vote on Garland.  Really, it was inevitable once Reid killed it for lower-court nominees in 2013.

As for Dems refusing to play "hardball," I don't think that's necessarily true.  Not only was Reid the first one to actually activate the "nuclear option," but barely anybody knew what reconciliation was until the Dems used it to pass part of the ACA.  The problem is the Dems tend to wring their hands about playing institutional hardball, and look guilty afterwards because of it.