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U.S. Politics part X


EHK for Darwin

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reflection from this weekend. I'd forgotten how much hate my dad used to put into his voice whenever he described something 'wrong' with the country and attached "Clinton" to it in some way. Then this weekend I heard the same venom when he described something 'wrong' with the country and attached "Obama" to it in the same way.

It is surreal. I grew up thinking that a democrat president like Clinton was surely leading us to world ruin we were in a perpetual state of barely avoiding because that's what my dad said, democrats are going to destroy everything great about the country. Now I'm suddenly hearing it again, the 'democrats are destroying everything great about the country.' WTF? we've had eight solid years of a republican president actively trying to destroy everything great about the country, driving the country off a cliff, possibly having taken it into an unsalvagable state, and in all those eight years you never had a bad word to say about Bush, and he was a great leader and we were on the right track and he'd restore things to the good state things were before Clinton nearly wrecked the country?

I hope I don't wind up so blinded by partisanism as I get older. But I already feel somewhat blinded because I can't stand anything republican right now. I will, perhaps, remain open to being courted by a socially liberal fiscally conservative type though, but I really can't say that I'm any better than my Dad in regards to the partisan blinders I've got on.

I ran into much the same thing with my dad growing up. Except he didn't name names. Didn't really have a party or an ideology. Just generally hated and distrusted everyone. It didn't matter whether we had a conservative Republican or a liberal Democrat in office, he was always convinced they were destroying the country. He'd rant about our 'Communistic fucking government screwing the people' whether government did something bad or private industry did and government failed to 'fix' the problem. I've pointed out that that term doesn't really mean what he thinks it does, but he doesn't much care. Communist = bad. Thankfully he hasn't started using socialist to describe anything.

He'd read some shit in the paper that might set him off here and there, but he never expressed much interest in the big ticket items. Didn't give a shit about Clinton's indiscretions, Bush's power abuses, and seemed rather disinterested in the war entirely. He could rant til the cows come home about foreign steel dumping, pensions (and those evil communistic government bastards who work half the years and never lose theirs), gun rights, and anyone who fucks with unions, but beyond that, usually isolated examples of everyday abuse or unfairness.

So I've got an idea of where my overall negativity comes from, but I can't quite explain my conservative early years. There wasn't exactly a formative ideological influence in my youth.

That said, I'm pretty much in the same boat. I can't get two words into a typical Republican talking point without wanting to vomit. I can't listen to conservative radio in the car without looking for pedestrians to run over. And for the sake of the long term health of my plasma TV, I never throw on Fox news. If I did, I'd very quickly turn remote hurling into a house destroying Olympic sport. Pretty much everything about the party disgusts me. And I don't quite understand how any intelligent person isn't disgusted by it themselves whether they agree with the platform or not.

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I will, perhaps, remain open to being courted by a socially liberal fiscally conservative type though

You mean since fiscal conservativism has worked out so well thus far?

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Sotomayer has been nominted by Obama for the vacant Supreme Court seat. CNN seems to think she wont have too much trouble in her confirmation proceeding.

However, most of the TV commentators I heard about an hour ago discussing the final "short list" thought that Sotomayor, though almost surely to be confirmed, would get more negative votes in the Senate than the other three finalists would. So Obama didn't go for the least controversial possibility.

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I ran into much the same thing with my dad growing up. Except he didn't name names. Didn't really have a party or an ideology. Just generally hated and distrusted everyone. It didn't matter whether we had a conservative Republican or a liberal Democrat in office, he was always convinced they were destroying the country. He'd rant about our 'Communistic fucking government screwing the people' whether government did something bad or private industry did and government failed to 'fix' the problem. I've pointed out that that term doesn't really mean what he thinks it does, but he doesn't much care. Communist = bad. Thankfully he hasn't started using socialist to describe anything.

I can relate to this. My dad STILL blames Reagan for everything that's wrong in the world.

I will never, ever forget my 7th grade social studies teacher telling us that if we didn't "believe in" or understand "Reaganomics" that we were all Communists and deserved to die. The post-WWII generation in particular had a very real fear of Communist, Communism, and the USSR. They still have that fear today, and when they so much as hear the word "socialism" they automatically react despite the fact that they have no real understanding of what it really is.

That said, I'm pretty much in the same boat. I can't get two words into a typical Republican talking point without wanting to vomit. I can't listen to conservative radio in the car without looking for pedestrians to run over. And for the sake of the long term health of my plasma TV, I never throw on Fox news. If I did, I'd very quickly turn remote hurling into a house destroying Olympic sport. Pretty much everything about the party disgusts me. And I don't quite understand how any intelligent person isn't disgusted by it themselves whether they agree with the platform or not.

I quit the GOP a few years ago. I can't stomach them any more. Unfortunately, there's no longer any such thing as a "moderate" Republican. To the Republicans that remain in the party, "moderate" is a synonym for "Democrat."

Even if they ever get back to true fiscal conservatism (as opposed to the neocon version of fiscal conservatism, which is little more than being too liberal to be a true Republican but not liberal enough to be a Democrat), I doubt I'll go back. Their social policies just sicken me.

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What I'm reading all suggests that, barring a surprise, she'll be confirmed. She was appointed by GHWB and received 7 or 8 GOP votes back then. Pkus, it seems like Republicans will face further trouble with the Hispanic constituency, if they oppose her. That said, I wonder if this author (Roger Pilon, Vice President for Legal Affairs, Cato Institute) has fingered a possible bump in the road:

Given the way she recently all but dismissed the Ricci case – involving the complaint by New Haven, Connecticut, firefighters that the city had thrown out the results of an officers exam because the results did not come out “right†– and the expectation, based on oral argument, that the Supreme Court will reverse the Second Circuit decision, there will likely be an extremely contentious confirmation battle ahead. If confirmation hearings are scheduled for summer, they will follow shortly upon the Court’s decision in that explosive case.

And I think this was well put:

The attacks are inevitable and tremendously regrettable, just as they were for Chief Justice Roberts and Justice Alito. A cottage industry – literally an industry, given the sums of money raised and spent – now exists in which the far left and right either brutalize or lionize the President’s nominees. Because the absence of controversy means bankruptcy, it has to be invented by both sides, whatever the cost to the nominee personally and to the integrity of the judiciary nationally.

That is not to say that there aren’t legitimate – in fact, critical – debates over issues like judicial philosophy and the proper way to interpret the Constitution that can and should be front and center in a Supreme Court confirmation hearing. But the most extreme interest groups and ideologues are transparently uninterested in that reasoned debate as they rush to caricature the nominee and the opposing viewpoint.

http://www.politico.com/arena/
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And Obama gets help from a potentially persuasive voice on Gitmo.

I think, on balance, that those moves help [us]," said the chief of U.S. Central Command. "In fact, I have long been on record as having testified and also in helping write doctrine for interrogation techniques that are completely in line with the Geneva Convention. And as a division commander in Iraq in the early days, we put out guidance very early on to make sure that our soldiers, in fact, knew that we needed to stay within those guidelines.

"With respect to Guantanamo," Petraeus added, "I think that the closure in a responsible manner, obviously one that is certainly being worked out now by the Department of Justice -- I talked to the Attorney General the other day [and] they have a very intensive effort ongoing to determine, indeed, what to do with the detainees who are left, how to deal with them in a legal way, and if continued incarceration is necessary -- again, how to take that forward. But doing that in a responsible manner, I think, sends an important message to the world, as does the commitment of the United States to observe the Geneva Convention when it comes to the treatment of detainees."

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/05/26/p...s_n_207513.html

Powell as well, he was also making the case this weekend, although I'm not sure how much weight he carries these days with conservatives.

In an appearance on CBS' "Face the Nation," the former Secretary of State noted that he had called for Gitmo's closure for "the past six years," and argued that the former vice president's defense of the detention center put him at odds even with his former boss.

"Mr. Cheney is not only disagreeing with President Obama's policy, he is disagreeing with President Bush's policy. President Bush stated repeatedly to international audiences and to the country that he wanted to close Guantanamo."

[...]

Mr. Cheney the other day said, well, we're doing it to satisfy European intellectuals or something like that. No," said Powell. "We're doing it to reassure Europeans, Muslims, Arabs, all the people around the world that we are a nation of law. It isn't so much Guantanamo. It's the people at Guantanamo. How do we deal with them? We can't keep them locked up forever. This business about making the country less safe by bringing these people to our prison system, we have got two million people in jail in America, the highest incarceration rate in the world. And they all had lawyers. They all had access to the writ of habeas corpus and they're all in jail. I don't know... if you've ever seen some of these prison reality shows on television where they show you what a super lock-up is. I'm not terribly worried about one of these guys going to a super lock-up."

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/05/24/p...e_n_207158.html
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According to Cheney, Powell isn't even a Republican, so what does he know? And Cheney and Rush seem to speak for the GOP these days...

I think it will be interesting to see how things shape up in the SCOTUS confirmation debate, where there's something more tangible to vote on, perhaps? Will there be a threat of a filibuster? It seems unlikely, but you never know.

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I'm pretty happy about the SCOTUS pick. Iirc, she was my favourite, back when I was listening to NPR cover the top 3, and when I'd done a minor bit of research on them on my own (it's sad how these things don't stay in my head very long). I'm very happy that Obama seems determined to get another woman on the court. Thank gods for that. I hope the confirmation goes relatively smoothly.

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She's the safe choice, the political choice, bipartisanest choice, and the boring choice. I'm not with Obama politically, but I did kinda hope that he'd have the balls to ram the left's version of Scalia down the throat of the Senate, or failing that the left's version of Roberts. With control of both houses, why is he trying so hard to play to the middle?

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She's the safe choice, the political choice, bipartisanest choice, and the boring choice. I'm not with Obama politically, but I did kinda hope that he'd have the balls to ram the left's version of Scalia down the throat of the Senate, or failing that the left's version of Roberts. With control of both houses, why is he trying so hard to play to the middle?

I'm not sure how she's the safe choice, since she's the one that attracted initial controversy. And it seems to me that she basically is the left's version of Roberts. From what I hear, she's likely to the left of anybody on the Court right now, for the simple reason that she'd be the only one on the Court who wasn't picked off of a Republican short-list. (Both Breyer and Ginsburg were picked by Clinton because Orrin Hatch included them on a list of candidates that Republicans can support.)

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Inigima,

You mean since fiscal conservativism has worked out so well thus far?

What "fiscal conservatism" are you refering to? The largest new entitlement program in 40 years with Medicare part C? Lowering taxes while pushing two wars? Determining particular banks and insurance companies are "Too big to fail" and then "saving" them with taxpayer dollars? Would that be the "fiscal conservatism" you mean?

Harry,

Isn't a big plus for her that she was first appointed to the bench by George H. W. Bush? I'm not fond of the "Empathy" standard for Judicial nominees. There are two things I want in Judges: 1) Competent (i.e. understands the Law); 2) Impartial.

The "empathy" standard could be construed as looking for a judge who is biased in favor of those the Judge empathizes with.

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Harry,

Isn't a big plus for her that she was first appointed to the bench by George H. W. Bush?

I suppose. Although really she was Daniel Patrick Moynihan's suggestion (as Senator from New York, it's a traditional perogative), and Presidents don't tend to micromanage district court selections.

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The "empathy" standard could be construed to be looking for bias with those the Judge empathizes with.

Sure, I mean, the "Empathy" standard could also mean that Obama is looking for a half-human, half-Betazed like Deanna Troi, who has the ability to sense the emotions of others. That speculation as about as much rational grounding as your speculation.

Further, "Judge" could be construed as someone named Judge, like the actor, and not someone appointed or elected to a judicial position. I mean, I guess it depends what your position on what the definition of is is is.

And yes, "is is is" is a grammatically correct construction, as is "'is is is' is".

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Yagathai,

Sure, I mean, the "Empathy" standard could also mean that Obama is looking for a half-human, half-Betazed like Deanna Troi, who has the ability to sense the emotions of others. That speculation as about as much rational grounding as your speculation.

Further, "Judge" could be construed as someone named Judge, like the actor, and not someone appointed or elected to a judicial position. I mean, I guess it depends what your position on what the definition of is is is.

And yes, "is is is" is a grammatically correct construction, as is "'is is is' is".

Sorry, poor sentence construction. Corrected. Damn, you should replace the MS grammer checker.

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This just in. California's Supreme Court upheld Proposition 8. There's a link to the story here.

I guess this means there's going to be a concerted effort to get it overturned in 2010?

I can't really argue too much with the ruling. It does seem to make sense. I think this pushes for more urgency in the need for a CA constitutional convention, though. And I'm guessing that a gay marriage ban would not be part of any constitution drafted there?

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why is he trying so hard to play to the middle?

I leave just how middle vs. left she is to others more familiar with her but I speculate that he's trying to maintain/build his political capital to help get his big ticket stuff through.

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I leave just how middle vs. left she is to others more familiar with her but I speculate that he's trying to maintain/build his political capital to help get his big ticket stuff through.

I would assume that a SCOTUS nomination is about as big-ticket as it gets.

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This just in. California's Supreme Court upheld Proposition 8. There's a link to the story here.

I guess this means there's going to be a concerted effort to get it overturned in 2010?

I can't really argue too much with the ruling. It does seem to make sense. I think this pushes for more urgency in the need for a CA constitutional convention, though. And I'm guessing that a gay marriage ban would not be part of any constitution drafted there?

As part of the constitutional convention? I doubt it. The legislature has enough of a clusterfuck to deal with re: budget deficit to want to consider gay marriage at this point. Which isn't to say they don't want to deal with it, but I'm willing to bet a stack of money that this is going to be a problem for voters to deal with, not the state leg. They won't be able to get the 2/3 vote they need there anyway.

This will be back on the ballot in 2010, and if it loses then, it will be back in 2012 at least. I hope they manage to get it on the June primary ballot rather than the November one.

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