Chairslinger

In the articles that have examined what Kennedy leaving the court means, the lists actually aren't that long. Because as I mentioned in the other thread, Kennedy was never really a moderate to begin with, he was a conservative with a few exceptions like gay rights and being marginally willing to protect Roe in some form. There are also a few others like maybe being more open minded on gerrymandering or criminal justice reform then whoever Trump replaces him with. What I haven't seen anyone really mention is how Heller may have been relatively watered down at the time to get Kennedy's vote. A recent lower court decision used Scalia's words against him to find a way to uphold an assault weapons ban, and SCOTUS decided not to intervene. It's very much an open question how far to the right the court will go on gun rights with Kennedy gone.

I love it when Trump's fantasies aren't even internally consistent. Like, even if you grant him 5 different dubious and/or downright bullshit propositions the claim still makes no sense. In this case. No collusion! Witch hunt! Putin is a great guy who did nothing wrong. But also, there was Russian collusion, by Hillary Clinton, so she's a piece of shit, but somehow Putin is still totes cool.

Wasn't there an old interview from the 80's or 90's where Trump said he thought we should ditch all our other allies and align with Russia because Russia and America are all you need? It looks like he might be making good on that plan.

Sean Hannity is a pretty good propagandist. If that's the best he can do to smear this woman, I am fairly unworried about this supposed radical socialist takeover. I would consider myself more on the moderate side of the party, and there is only 2 or 3 things on that list I might find objectionable at all.

I mean, to me it really depends on whether or not the vote is symbolic or not. If we have enough to actually block the nominee with a couple GOP defections and a Dem casts the deciding aye vote, then fuck them. Probably the biggest challenge to my "anybody but a Republican" mindset this year was when I found out Donnelly voted aye for Haspel when we had enough GOP defections to stop her if we had stayed united. However, if the GOP has the votes anyway, I see little use in taking a symbolic vote that only serves to make the Senate even harder to win. Dems need to get more pragmatic, not more ideological. I'd rather have the 51st Dem in the Senate in 2019 when Trump tries to name RGB's successor then have a solid 49 loss on whoever Trump nominates this year. Even funner fact. If Trump gets a second term that number will likely be 6.

Trump doesn't have to pick someone flashy, entertaining, or weird for SCOTUS. He'll take the Federalist Society's recommendation and nominate someone presentable, qualified, and absolutely horrifying. It's like picking Pence. Don't let the game show fool you. When it comes to the big decisions Trump knows where his bread is buttered.

Quit writing 2020 slogans for Trump's campaign.

Did you read my post in your other thread that kind of predicted this a couple days ago? I think the narrative of Kennedy as the swing vote, while accurate up to a point, gave a false impression of exactly where the guy sits on the spectrum. He always preferred a Republican to replace him over a Democrat, and when Trump appointed his buddy Gorsuch it likely calmed any worry Kennedy had of Trump choosing someone unacceptable. Getting a replacement on the court is more of an art than a science, anyway. The president can't check every issue off a list when picking a nominee, and Kennedy has even less control over who his replacement is. For every Roe or Obergefell that Kennedy might have to worry about, he is also worried about just as many, if not more, conservative opinions he signed on to that might be overturned if he waits for a Democratic successor to Trump to replace him. This kind of connects to what I was saying above. I was going to reply half jokingly to Mass's wish for a balanced court by saying they're all balanced courts.....after the dust settles. The idea that we had a "balanced" court was an illusion molded by what the court would allow. I am not sure of the statistics, but I read that this recent session out of 13 5-4 decisions Kennedy voted with the conservatives 13 times. Obviously he wasn't always that one-sided, but the few Kennedy defections were such big deals that they generally overshadowed the fact that he sided with the conservatives far more often than he did the liberals. If this court was "balanced" than the court after Kennedy will be "balanced". The center(likely Roberts) will just shift a good deal to the Right.

As I stated above, I think that might help Republicans. They keep it in their pocket to energize their base, and even on the off chance that it doesn't work the House is the one in danger, not the Senate. And even in the off-er chance that Dems win the Senate, McConnell can just confirm during the lame duck, anyway. Let's not hold any illusion that losing would "shame" him into not ramming through someone. It's essentially what they did with the tax cuts after Jones won. Bottom line is that Dems have never shown that a SCOTUS pick is a political winner for them. Republicans have.

Just for reference, a basic sanity check means a quote is obviously false if a random CEO sounds even half as petty, vindictive, and unhinged as our current president?

Yup. This is like the tax cut vote. Dems were hoping they could repeat the health care win by peeling off some votes, but they should have appreciated that tax cuts were always what Republicans wanted to do. Many of them didn't want to take a hard vote on health care and own it. Getting judges is probably the only thing that Republicans want more than tax cuts. John McCain will vote aye to whoever Trump picks if they have to wheel his hospital bed onto the Senate floor.

Yup. With the tax cuts not resonating, and the White Nationalist message seeming to turn off as many people as it energizes for them, this is the one thing I have seen all year that I think has a good chance of de-fanging that blue wave.

Get used to reading descriptions like for a lot of SCOTUS decisions going forward. Sure am glad we don't have all those "activist" judges on the court....

McConnell might want to use the vote to energize the Right. Since the Senate is a long shot for Dems to begin with, and it worked out for him pretty damn well in '16, I wouldn't be surprised if he actually dragged out the final vote until after the election. It can not be overstated just how intoxicating the promise of finally overturning Roe is to the Right. Evangelicals held their nose and voted for Trump in '16 just to keep the status quo on the court. Imagine what it looks like to single issue voters to finally have that victory within reach after 4 decades of fighting for it.

This is why Kennedy has been punting and rolling over. He didn't want his "legacy" to be a bunch of quickly overturned decisions. Prepare for a court with Roberts as the "swing vote". Obergefell might survive, but Roe is likely gone in all but name. Which actually might be worse because they'll get to keep it as a campaign issue, while making abortion effectively illegal in every state that can come up with a minimally defensible law. As bad as Roberts is, at least he's not an originalist activist. The real fun is when Trump gets to replace RGB or one of the other liberals. At that point, you all but have a Scalia-like majority on the court. Forget gay marriage, we might be back to sodomy laws. Miranda rights might be gone. Almost no one appreciates how far a court like that might go because the things they might do are things we take so for granted that we haven't even thought to ask the questions. Here's a pleasant thought. If Trump is considering fighting a supeona, firing Mueller, or pardoning himself he now has a timeline to do it.....

So they're giving him the travel ban with a bunch of warnings about going too far. It's a good thing that authoritarian leaders don't perceive such victories as a license to push things one step further..... I was always pretty skeptical that the ban would lose at SCOTUS because I think the court is kind of hoping we can get through 4 years without having to entirely rewrite presidential authority due to what they are hoping is a one time thing.

I agree. I enjoyed Jurassic World, and I like the direction they went with Fallen Kingdom trying to shake up the formula a bit. But ultimately it's a franchise that made for one great film due to it's unique concept, but all the followups(no matter how well executed) are stuck in that same constraining concept.

You know, out of all the threads over the years, one that really jumped out at me is how big of a bummer it is that we lost the Star Trek impressions thread. Getting to see you go from hesitant to huge fan of TNG reminded a lot of us longtime fans just why we were big fans to begin with. Lots of good discussion on that thread.

These types of arguments are some of the stupidest I've heard, but also one's I have the hardest time countering on the fly for some reason. The "arbitrarily changing the meaning of words to fit my need at the moment" defense reminds me of the "Christianity isn't a religion, it's a relationship" defense that Christians use as to why it just magically doesn't have to follow the First Amendment's prohibition on state sponsorship. It's like the fucking Chewbacca defense...... Also, I can relate to not even bothering in the workplace. It's bad enough trying to debate this stuff in an ideal setting. Trying to drill through the impenetrable brick wall that is the thinking process of a Trump supporter inbetween having to get shit done at work strikes me as about the most pointless waste of time imaginable.

I appreciate the effort Ironically, I don't socialize much online nowadays other than these boards. Kind of a catch 22 when they were down.....

They "won't pay tariffs" in the same way that "Mexico is going to pay for the wall".

I have a hard time putting myself in the mindset of these hypothetical overweight people who are fat but just don't know it. Perhaps they have been obese since childhood and so have no frame of reference? Personally, I got about 20 pounds over what I would consider my normal weight at one point, and I felt it every time I would bend over or sit up. And this was at a point where I was just barely over the "overweight" line on BMI charts.

Wisconsin is one of the states Trump won with a razor thin margin to put him over the top. Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, and Michigan by just over 75,000 votes combined. Just 22,000 votes in Wisconsin, or .7 percentage points.

Becky's husband died, and Darlene divorced David. I don't think they went into enough detail in the new season to know for sure what name they go by, but it wouldn't be a big stretch to say they're both Conners. The Conners aren't hicks.....they're white trash. Get it right I find myself conflicted in that I find some of the remorse Roseanne has shown to be more sincere than you're typical "I am sorry if anyone was offended" boilerplate stuff. But then she still goes off on crazy Twitter rants, so how sorry can you really be if you continue the behavior(even if not quite as blatantly racist). You know what's easier than going on a redemption tour, and apologizing for the stuff you did? Shutting down the damn Twitter account the moment your series got rebooted in the first place. I remain convinced the cancellation was as much, if not more, about Roseanne's comments and actions before the show came back. She should have appreciated that it was a minor miracle that the show ever got green lit in the first place since she had a dozen or more Tweets in her back catalog that were enough to get a show cancelled. I am glad the cast and crew get another chance, but it's hard to see Roseanne without Roseanne.