POTUS 2016

Push the button, pull the lever, who's it going to be?

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tsubaki said:
As a criticism of the political class it is spot on, though the article may be a case of someone putting more thought into the implications of what Trump said than Trump did when he said it.
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Out of interest, how does the average American see George W Bush and his time as President?
I am guessing probably very different to the rest of the world's opinion?
 
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kithnou said:
Out of interest, how does the average American see George W Bush and his time as President?
I am guessing probably very different to the rest of the world's opinion?
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Democrats and many Repubs don't want to admit it but other than social issues there wasn't too much difference between him and Obama. Both president's big domestic spending initiatives are similar. Obama's health care policy is pretty much an expanded version of GWBs perscription plan. Obama wound some things down a bit in Iraq but we just spread our bombing campaigns out to a larger number of countries in smaller doses (and unlike Bush he "feels bad about it" so its cool now). For the low low price of a 1-3% income tax hike on the top 1% Obama/Holder were even more hands off on Wall Street than GWBs admin (which is a high bar to overcome). CIA still has free reign to do whatever the hell they want without threat of prosecution as well.
 
mezzrow said:
On Scalia, from today's NYT. So true, and so on point, that I leave this here to help explain this highly fraught situation we find ourselves within.

Ross Douthat in this morning's Times:

As absurd as it often feels to have Anthony Kennedy as the last arbiter of everything, in a way we’ve been weirdly fortunate in the court’s long-running 5-4-with-a-swing-vote split. It’s allowed both halves of our polarized republic to feel somewhat represented on the highest court, to feel as if they have at least a fighting chance in the majority of controversies, to feel as if there’s some legitimacy — not a lot, maybe, but some — to the decisions of our unelected guardians. (As much as liberals may hate the Roberts court for Citizens United, it also gave them same-sex marriage and protected Obamacare; as much as conservatives object to Kennedy’s ruling in Obergefell, they’re grateful for his ruling in Hobby Lobby.)

To have the intellectual godfather of the conservative bloc replaced by a liberal appointee would upset this balance, perhaps irrevocably. As it was for a time — and not a happy time — in the 1960s and 1970s, the court would simply become the Enemy to half the country, a vanguard force pulling the political order to the left.

This reality trumps the patterns of (very modest) compromise that enabled Samuel Alito, John Roberts, Elena Kagan and Sonia Sotomayor to win confirmation, and it makes it impossible to imagine Republican senators confirming an Obama appointee in the next 11 months. And it’s probably a good thing for the republic that they won’t: If there is to be a liberal replacement for a figure as towering as Scalia, if the court is about to swing sharply to the left, it’s far better for the judicial branch’s legitimacy if that swing follows a democratic election, a campaign in which the high court stakes are front and center in the race.

But because they will be front and center, Scalia’s death promises a war like none other between here and November, and an extra layer of insanity in a campaign already defined by radicals and demagogues.

The irony is that this kind of high-stakes collision of law and politics is precisely the thing that Scalia’s legal philosophy strained to curb and check and roll back, by promoting a more limited and humble vision of the Supreme Court’s role in our republic.

But for all of his importance, all his influence, in this effort he clearly failed — and what’s about to come will prove it.
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There should be nothing "highly fraught" about this at all. Having a vacancy in the Supreme Court for 11 months is a constitutional crisis. The next president has no claim to this vacancy, no matter who it is. End of.

Unless we want to just nuke our entire government. Which, honestly, we probably should, but that's a different discussion.
 
Garrick said:
There should be nothing "highly fraught" about this at all. Having a vacancy in the Supreme Court for 11 months is a constitutional crisis. The next president has no claim to this vacancy, no matter who it is. End of.

Unless we want to just nuke our entire government. Which, honestly, we probably should, but that's a different discussion.
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Do you remember the Bork hearings? I do. The GOP is in the position the Democrats were at that time. They will not budge on this. If they do budge, they will be thrown out of office by the people that put them in Washington. They understand this, because they are politicians. This concentrates the mind.

I don't want to nuke this government. I want it to be operated constitutionally. We both know we're on different sides on this one, and neither of us will make a bit of headway in changing each other's mind. Just explaining the way this is playing out over on this side of things. I'm used to standing alone on most of this in here. (misses TxBill...)
 

mezzrow said:
Do you remember the Bork hearings? I do. The GOP is in the position the Democrats were at that time. They will not budge on this. If they do budge, they will be thrown out of office by the people that put them in Washington. They understand this, because they are politicians. This concentrates the mind.

I don't want to nuke this government. I want it to be operated constitutionally. We both know we're on different sides on this one, and neither of us will make a bit of headway in changing each other's mind. Just explaining the way this is playing out over on this side of things. I'm used to standing alone on most of this in here. (misses TxBill...)
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Obama should just popcorn them by picking someone who might be acceptable to the GOP normally.
 
tsubaki said:
Obama should just popcorn them by picking someone who might be acceptable to the GOP normally.
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He should. He knows there's not enough trust left between himself and the 'pubs for them to approve anyone he offers, so he should go ahead and just offer Ted Cruz and see if they reject him. I'd be going through a big tub of extra butter flavor.
 
mezzrow said:
He should. He knows there's not enough trust left between himself and the 'pubs for them to approve anyone he offers, so he should go ahead and just offer Ted Cruz and see if they reject him. I'd be going through a big tub of extra butter flavor.
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Morning my best mate ever since I meet you on this forum
 
mezzrow said:
Do you remember the Bork hearings? I do. The GOP is in the position the Democrats were at that time. They will not budge on this. If they do budge, they will be thrown out of office by the people that put them in Washington. They understand this, because they are politicians. This concentrates the mind.

I don't want to nuke this government. I want it to be operated constitutionally. We both know we're on different sides on this one, and neither of us will make a bit of headway in changing each other's mind. Just explaining the way this is playing out over on this side of things. I'm used to standing alone on most of this in here. (misses TxBill...)
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False equivalency. Bork was not an election year appointment, and actually received hearings and a vote. McConnell and company are proposing shutting down and not even starting the process until after the election, which is absolutely insane.

Kennedy, on the hand, was an election year appointment. I'm not expecting another Sotomayor, no matter where we are on the election calendar. But I am expecting hearings and a vote.

We've been putting the nails in the coffin of the constitution at an alarming rate in the past 20 years. Here's a better explainer for what I'm talking about: http://www.vox.com/2015/3/2/8120063/american-democracy-doomed
 
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mezzrow said:
He should. He knows there's not enough trust left between himself and the 'pubs for them to approve anyone he offers, so he should go ahead and just offer Ted Cruz and see if they reject him. I'd be going through a big tub of extra butter flavor.
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If he did that I would probably put in for every overtime shift I could, save up all my pennies, buy an island and then invite Obama to be President of it for as long as he wanted.
 

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