US Politics: Ruthless ambition

[Larry of the Lawn]

6 minutes ago, Kalibear said:

For me, the Ginsburg thing was not exactly the last straw, but the last bastion of 'will there be a check on authoritarianism' in the US. With a 6-3 basis in the court there is basically nothing that will stop that slide save court packing. I also believe specifically that this will ensure Trump will win the election. 

The good news is that if Biden actually wins I'll have to be here because no country is allowing us to actually move right now, and won't until after the election and likely the inauguration. So I don't have to decide for sure until next year. But we're going to be preparing and seeing what we need to do. Probably refinancing the house to get some extra money and make it ready for a sale, getting rid of more of our stuff, and figuring out what precisely we'll need to move, especially move our older adult kids.

Curious about why this changes much?  Even with RBG any court decision would be 5-4 for Trump.  Roberts has already signalled that when it comes to voting he's pretty much willing to let the states have carte blanche.

[Kalbear]

1 minute ago, larrytheimp said:

Curious about why this changes much?  Even with RBG any court decision would be 5-4 for Trump.  Roberts has already signalled that when it comes to voting he's pretty much willing to let the states have carte blanche.

There was in my mind a reasonable chance that Roberts would not want to go too far down the rabbit hole of suck and would be unwilling to go against any MAJOR changes as the deciding vote.

But he won't be the deciding vote. 5 federalist justices who believe that slavery was not decided properly are up there. 

[A Horse Named Stranger]

1 minute ago, larrytheimp said:

Curious about why this changes much?  Even with RBG any court decision would be 5-4 for Trump.  Roberts has already signalled that when it comes to voting he's pretty much willing to let the states have carte blanche.

I assume, you could rely on either Roberts or Gorsuch (to some degree) to prevent utter mayhem, and you could hope for Thomas to exit the court (one way or another) over the next couple of years.

[DMC]

10 minutes ago, Kalibear said:

I also believe specifically that this will ensure Trump will win the election. 

This suggests a vast overestimation in the differences between John Roberts and Neil Gorsuch.

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

44 minutes ago, DMC said:

First, the fact it would be too late was kind of the point.  Second, you've clearly already put way more thought into that statement than I did.  I mean, who wears brown polo shirts?

Browns fans and coaching staff?

[DMC]

2 minutes ago, Tywin et al. said:

Browns fans and coaching staff?

Well, maybe wealthy Browns fans and coaching staff.  But if you root or work for the Browns, it's unlikely you've been successful at life.

[Fragile Bird]

I'm surprised that no one has mentioned the huge banking scandal that has been brewing for some time. I think we've all had the "everybody knows banks are money-laundering" conversations, but apparently banks in the US have been filing reports about huge amounts of money being moved around in suspicious circumstances for years now, and the US government is powerless to do anything about it. The stuff has really hit the fan in Europe, and is part of the reason why the markets are down, especially in Europe. The DAX in Germany is down almost 4.5%. The DOW is down over 800 points, but that's only just under 3%, 4.5 would be 1200+. Rising Covid-19 cases are affecting both Europe and the US as well, and the the election, but this banking story does not bode well for financial stocks. Banks realized they could do all kinds of shit and get away with it, as long as they reported it.

Buzzfeed got access to all kinds of reports and has shared them with the Investigative Consortium of Investigative Journalists. from the intro:

Quote

A huge trove of secret government documents reveals for the first time how the giants of Western banking move trillions of dollars in suspicious transactions, enriching themselves and their shareholders while facilitating the work of terrorists, kleptocrats, and drug kingpins.

And the US government, despite its vast powers, fails to stop it.

Today, the FinCEN Files — thousands of “suspicious activity reports” and other US government documents — offer an unprecedented view of global financial corruption, the banks enabling it, and the government agencies that watch as it flourishes. BuzzFeed News has shared these reports with the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists and more than 100 news organizations in 88 countries.

These documents, compiled by banks, shared with the government, but kept from public view, expose the hollowness of banking safeguards, and the ease with which criminals have exploited them. Profits from deadly drug wars, fortunes embezzled from developing countries, and hard-earned savings stolen in a Ponzi scheme were all allowed to flow into and out of these financial institutions, despite warnings from the banks’ own employees.

https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/jasonleopold/fincen-files-financial-scandal-criminal-networks

eta: and one person with a paw in it is Paul Manafort. Surprise, surprise.

[A Prince of Dorne]

2 hours ago, IheartIheartTesla said:

On the polling note, Biden has been receiving some modest poll numbers (both the USC/Dornsife and a new IBD/TIPP have him in the vicinity of ~6 rather than higher) bringing his average to ~6.8. I do note that the USC numbers are going back up, so I think he may recover a little bit of that in a while. I imagine this ending up being a +6 race around election time.

Nate Silver talked about the USC/Dornsife poll on the 538 podcast on Saturday. Apparently they have done something very strange. They  have two different "sets" of people they have been polling back and forth for the past month or so. The first set seems to have a slight Biden lean (by random chance), whereas the second set seems to have a slight Trump lean (again by random chance). So one week it'll look like the race is tightening and the next week it'll look like it's widening again. But really this is due to the pollster sampling from one set or the other, causing the numbers to go up and down in a sine wave fashion

[DMC]

28 minutes ago, A Prince of Dorne said:

But really this is due to the pollster sampling from one set or the other, causing the numbers to go up and down in a sine wave fashion

This is very common in all panel surveys, it's just academic ones don't publish daily updates.  What I'm wondering is whether they can afford to poll all respondents the last week or two.

[Martell Spy]

As Trump rushes to fill a court seat, conservative groups fear missteps
What seemed like a preelection gift — Republicans replacing a die-hard liberal on the Supreme Court — has led some conservative groups to worry about not going far enough to the right.

https://www.politico.com/news/2020/09/21/conservatives-supreme-court-pick-419179

Almost as soon as Trump’s team focused on Judges Amy Coney Barrett and Barbara Lagoa as his frontrunners for the seat on Saturday, a behind-the-scenes horse race began between anti-abortion purists, who have long sought to overturn the landmark abortion rights decision in Roe v. Wade, and more libertarian conservatives, who are principally concerned with dismantling the administrative state. Several people said Barrett, a devout Catholic and former clerk to the late conservative Justice Antonin Scalia, and who has served on the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals since 2017, is seen as having more sufficient anti-abortion bona fides than Lagoa, a Cuban American from Florida who was confirmed to the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals last December.

The jockeying that began over the weekend has involved both social conservative groups — including Concerned Women for America, Heritage Action, Susan B. Anthony List and March for Life Action — and groups such as Americans for Prosperity and the Judicial Crisis Network that have tended to prioritize the judicial philosophies of originalism and textualism over social conservative causes.

Several social conservatives said they are still recovering from a pair of stinging betrayals this summer involving two Republican appointees to the bench, and want stronger commitments to social traditionalism before they can comfortably support the nominee Trump is expected to announce this week. They fear a nominee who does not satisfy these standards could contribute to a generation of disenchanted conservative voters down the road, citing their existing frustrations with Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Neil Gorsuch.

Roberts, a George W. Bush appointee, sided with liberals on the court earlier this summer to block a law that would have significantly curtailed abortion access in Louisiana. Gorsuch, Trump’s first appointee, penned the majority opinion in Bostock v. Clayton County, extending workplace discrimination protections to LGBTQ Americans.

“This is coming so closely on the heels of Bostock, where we were told Gorsuch was going to be great and we ended up getting completely slapped in the face, that I think the biggest divide will be the extent to which President Trump’s nominee should be scrutinized,” said one conservative policy activist.

“This was not the first term that Roberts gave us reason for concern, plus what happened with Gorsuch — it has people questioning the vetting process,” added Curt Levy, a veteran of Supreme Court confirmation battles and president of the Committee for Justice.

Depending on who Trump chooses, Tom McClusky said his anti-abortion group March for Life Action could wait until it feels the nominee has been properly scrutinized before lending support to the confirmation battle. He noted that they did this with Kavanaugh, who was initially met with reservations from some anti-abortion conservatives.

 

[Jace, Extat]

16 minutes ago, Triskele said:

The darkest thought I've had in a while is that the reports of what's happening at the border are a warm-up for the rest of the country.  Hope I'm overthinking it.  

You are underthinking it.

There are now a secret police in this country that uses sworn state authority to pretext acts off duty abduction against CITIZENS in the service and at the behest of their political champion.

There's no going back.

 

[A Prince of Dorne]

Edit: I said mean things about evangelicals not being happy with Gorsuch or Roberts. 

[A Horse Named Stranger]

2 minutes ago, Triskele said:

The other comparably dark thought I've had  was something like "The Obamas have to have a plan to get out of the galaxy similar to some of the Senators in Star Wars, right?"  

You want me to ask them, whether they have room for one tiny chimp on their escape pod? We are obviously friends, since they joined my imaginary Square Dance Team. [sorry, that was the whitest activity I could come up with on the fly].

[A Horse Named Stranger]

Just now, Triskele said:

Do you mean "tiny" like you'll emphasize to them that I ought not take up too much room?  Or do you mean that amongst chimp kind I am quite wee?  I need to know what you're saying here.  

The former obviously. I mean a chimp does not take up as much space as full grown gorilla.

[DMC]

8 minutes ago, A Horse Named Stranger said:

The former obviously. I mean a chimp does not take up as much space as full grown gorilla.

I could see Obama just carrying Trisk on his shoulder like Thor does with Rocket in Infinity War below (and War Machine does in Endgame):

 

[Kalbear]

3 hours ago, DMC said:

This suggests a vast overestimation in the differences between John Roberts and Neil Gorsuch.

I dont' think they're particularly different. I think Roberts is bound more with being CJ compared to Gorsuch, and that means a couple things. It means he's less likely to want to do major 5-4 decisions where he will go down in history as the really bad dude, and it also means that he's not going to be part of the minority decision in these cases either. 

I think both are pretty much the same in their viewpoints. I think Roberts is a smidgen less likely to exercise that power. 

[DMC]

3 minutes ago, Kalibear said:

I think Roberts is a smidgen less likely to exercise that power. 

Completely agree, but like I said the other day talking to Maith, I think that means Gorsuch increases the likelihood the SC gives Trump the election by maybe 15-20%.  Hardly "ensuring" the election.  Unless you already had Trump's likelihood of prevailing at 80-85%.

[Kalbear]

Just now, DMC said:

Completely agree, but like I said the other day talking to Maith, I think that means Gorsuch increases the likelihood the SC gives Trump the election by maybe 15-20%.  Hardly "ensuring" the election.  Unless you already had Trump's likelihood of prevailing at 80-85%.

I think that it is one more  thing that is 100% in the pocket of Republicans now. We had police, we had several states, we had the federal executive branch and now we have the entire judicial branch. I had already thought that his chances were likely to be around 80% or better - but I think this is the absolute nail in the coffin, because I think most dems will simply accept whatever shitty choice is handed down from SCOTUS like they continually have.

[DMC]

Just now, Kalibear said:

I had already thought that his chances were likely to be around 80% or better

Of Trump winning in whatever manner?  Fair enough, but I just think that's silly.

1 minute ago, Triskele said:

Do you think that GOP Senators are making calculations like this at all, and do you think there are a few that actually prefer Trump gone and might factor that in?  Saw something the other day (maybe here?) that's reaffirms that privately the vast majority know that Trump is horrible and want him gone.  ETA:  meaning in their decision on the SCOTUS vacancy

Well, I think many if not most GOP Senators privately would not be too sad if Trump was gone, yes.  But, as we've seen, that does not matter in the slightest irt their public position-taking, so no I don't think it weighs much in calculations on filling the vacancy.  I mean even Alexander, who's retiring and has zero electoral self-interest, is already backing McConnell/Trump cuz he's good buds with the former.

[Kalbear]

Just now, DMC said:

Of Trump winning in whatever manner?  Fair enough, but I just think that's silly.

Yes. I've said repeatedly that I expect Trump was going to win. That people's faith in polls and fair elections and people turning out for Biden are all very much misplaced. I don't know how this is particularly surprising.

The other thing this changes is the calculus in how the US will be post-2020. With a 5-4 decision setting I was expecting similar slow unravelling of laws for the next 4 years that might be survivable. With 6-3 decisions I don't see that as the case; I see it being very fast, very abrupt, and massively damaging to the point where democracy cannot recover.