The Kavanaugh Confirmation Charade Thread

[Commissar SFLUFAN]

1 minute ago, b_m_b_m_b_m said:

Go one step further, you're almost there. The Germans not taking Paris early in WWI leading to a German victory caused this. Instead we get the treaty of Versailles directly leading to WWII.

The Treaty of Versailles is one of the greatest crimes against humanity ever created.

[b_m_b_m_b_m]

1 minute ago, SFLUFAN said:

The Treaty of Versailles is one of the greatest crimes against humanity ever created.

So much has happened in the century since, and virtually everything can be tied back to it. And it's almost all bad.

[Commissar SFLUFAN]

3 minutes ago, b_m_b_m_b_m said:

So much has happened in the century since, and virtually everything can be tied back to it. And it's almost all bad.

John Maynard Keynes -- to his eternal credit -- warned everyone about it...in December 1919:

 

If we aim at the impoverishment of Central Europe, vengeance, I dare say, will not limp. Nothing can then delay for very long the forces of Reaction and the despairing convulsions of Revolution, before which the horrors of the later German war will fade into nothing, and which will destroy, whoever is victor, the civilisation and the progress of our generation.”

[b_m_b_m_b_m]

That JMK guy is pretty alright in my book.

[Commissar SFLUFAN]

The greatest threat that we face today is that there is no single "rational" political leader who is willing to entertain what I have outlined even remotely seriously.  If I was to suggest it to Barack Obama, this would be his reaction:

 

 

I don't blame them for recoiling from such notions.  I mean, what politician would say "Yeah, maybe we should start planning for the dissolution of the country", but to not at least contemplate this future in private moments seems to me as not-so-benign neglect.

 

I don't have very much going on in my life other than the work, the dog, videogames/reading, and thinking about stuff, so maybe I'm the problem

[b_m_b_m_b_m]

2 minutes ago, SFLUFAN said:

The greatest threat that we face today is that there is no single "rational" political leader who is willing to entertain what I have outlined even remotely seriously.  If I was to suggest it to Barack Obama, this would be his reaction:

 

 

I don't blame them for recoiling from such notions.  I mean, what politician would say "Yeah, maybe we should start planning for the dissolution of the country", but to not at least contemplate this future in private moments seems to me as not-so-benign neglect.

A greater degree of state autonomy would help, but I don't see liberals/leftists going along with it for many things. Personally, I'd be fine with that (aside from a carbon tax) because what we have in this moment is unsustainable, and many of the Republican leaning States need to really reap what they sew.

[RedSoxFan9]

 

[Jwheel86]

5 minutes ago, SFLUFAN said:

The greatest threat that we face today is that there is no single "rational" political leader who is willing to entertain what I have outlined even remotely seriously.  If I was to suggest it to Barack Obama, this would be his reaction:

 

 

I don't blame them for recoiling from such notions.  I mean, what politician would say "Yeah, maybe we should start planning for the dissolution of the country", but to not at least contemplate this future in private moments seems to me as not-so-benign neglect.

 

I don't have very much going on in my life other than the work, the dog, videogames/reading, and thinking about stuff, so maybe I'm the problem

Or start discussing solutions to the fundamental issue of why the country is frozen. Not policy, just things that reinforce the basics of the Constitution. 

-End money in politics

-End partisan gerrymandering

-Paper ballots

-Open Primaries

-Same day voter registration

 

Do those things and you'll get a better class of politican who can deliver a New Deal before the country destroys itself. More dangerous is this idea that everything is fine and nothing needs to change. 

[Chairslinger]

19 minutes ago, SFLUFAN said:

The greatest threat that we face today is that there is no single "rational" political leader who is willing to entertain what I have outlined even remotely seriously.  If I was to suggest it to Barack Obama, this would be his reaction:

 

I don't blame them for recoiling from such notions.  I mean, what politician would say "Yeah, maybe we should start planning for the dissolution of the country", but to not at least contemplate this future in private moments seems to me as not-so-benign neglect.

 

I don't have very much going on in my life other than the work, the dog, videogames/reading, and thinking about stuff, so maybe I'm the problem

 

I know she's Russian, but that's no way to talk about your roomate.

 

 

[mclumber1]

14 minutes ago, Jwheel86 said:

Or start discussing solutions to the fundamental issue of why the country is frozen. Not policy, just things that reinforce the basics of the Constitution. 

-End money in politics

-End partisan gerrymandering

-Paper ballots

-Open Primaries

-Same day voter registration

 

Do those things and you'll get a better class of politican who can deliver a New Deal before the country destroys itself. More dangerous is this idea that everything is fine and nothing needs to change. 

 

-End money in politics

 

Impossible.

 

-End partisan gerrymandering

 

Increase the size of the house instead.  1 rep for every 100,000 residents.  

 

-Paper ballots

 

Better yet:  100% mail in ballots.  It works great in WA and OR.

 

-Open Primaries

 

Sure, why not.

 

-Same day voter registration

 

Sure, why not?  

[Massdriver]

1 hour ago, SFLUFAN said:

@Chairslinger

@CayceG

@Scott

 

If you want to see the roots of what I'm referring to, we have to go to the very colonization of this country which was largely based on "delusion".  As @Nokra can attest, I've recommended this book  to begin to understand why the very foundational essence of the United States has led to where we are today and where we are going in the future. 

 

To answer @Scott's question, I can't exactly pinpoint any specific books or articles that directly inform my worldview as I express it here.  It's largely a combination of observation, my reading of multiple texts, and my own passion for history and the rise and fall of great empires/nation-states.  While there are some very tangential similarities between the United States of 2018 and the late Roman Republic, the differences are so very significant as to render them all but moot and they are not points worth belaboring. That being said, there are some points of confluence between the United States in 2018 and the late Roman Republic. There have been any number of articles/books in recent years that state that far from being a single unified state, the United States consists of multiple nations with their own separate and unique cultures.  This is one such example.

 

The fact of the matter is the United States of America is very much a misnomer in 2018 and I simply cannot see how it is feasible for anybody to continue to indulge the illusion that it exists or is viable.  I genuinely do believe that we are heading towards a "soft" dissolution, one where laws/regulations/etc. are simply ignored by those political entities who oppose them.  Perhaps there will be some violence here and there, but it won't even be remotely on the scale of 1861-1865.  At some point,  domestic political entities will cut their own agreements with each other or with other foreign political entities while paying little more lip service to national/state wishes.

 

An example that I can see in the immediate future is the looming political fight over California's fuel emission standards.  I could definitely see the Supreme Court ruling against them and the state giving SCOTUS the bird and saying "Screw you, we're keeping them, and whatcha gonna do about it?" and proceeding as if nothing changed.

 

When do you believe this will happen? 

 

While I see cracks forming in the system, I don't believe things are going to fall apart in our lifetimes, although things can change rapidly. If we did split apart into multiple nations, it would create a vacuum that China would be glad to fill. It would be the world power completely unchecked, and China's values are not even close to our own as it currently stands. Let's hope it doesn't happen!

[Massdriver]

59 minutes ago, b_m_b_m_b_m said:

A greater degree of state autonomy would help, but I don't see liberals/leftists going along with it for many things. Personally, I'd be fine with that (aside from a carbon tax) because what we have in this moment is unsustainable, and many of the Republican leaning States need to really reap what they sew.

It could be argued that a right leaning court would weaken the commerce clause (or reinterpret it to give states more autonomy), and weaken other portions that support Federal supremacy which would result in more state autonomy. Let blue states be blue and let red states be red. It sounds good, but is it?

 

I see issues with this in several respects. As you mentioned, a carbon tax needs to be national (while getting others to do the same). Things like universal healthcare would also work much better on a national scale rather than state by state. Many environmental and financial regulations have to be nationwide. 

 

However, given the way things are going, it' is certainly worth thinking about. I have always been interested in the idea of more state autonomy, and even combing the governments of many states into one entity, while having the Federal government focus on certain basic functions may be the best bet for our future. The divide  and anger certainly seems to be growing. 

[Chairslinger]

44 minutes ago, Massdriver said:

It could be argued that a right leaning court would weaken the commerce clause (or reinterpret it to give states more autonomy), and weaken other portions that support Federal supremacy which would result in more state autonomy. Let blue states be blue and let red states be red. It sounds good, but is it?

 

I see issues with this in several respects. As you mentioned, a carbon tax needs to be national (while getting others to do the same). Things like universal healthcare would also work much better on a national scale rather than state by state. Many environmental and financial regulations have to be nationwide. 

 

However, given the way things are going, it' is certainly worth thinking about. I have always been interested in the idea of more state autonomy, and even combing the governments of many states into one entity, while having the Federal government focus on certain basic functions may be the best bet for our future. The divide  and anger certainly seems to be growing. 

 

I am reminded of Diocletian's Tetrarchy.

 

In this scenario are you venting some of the built up steam in our contentious political system. Or are you just dividing the country into 4-8 autonomous chunks that feel no allegiance to one another essentially making a seeding chart for a Civil War elimination tournament?

 

[marioandsonic]

3 hours ago, b_m_b_m_b_m said:

Go one step further, you're almost there. The Germans not taking Paris early in WWI leading to a German victory caused this. Instead we get the treaty of Versailles directly leading to WWII.

Why did Germany have to decide to invade Belgium?  If they just attacked France, the UK may not have entered the war until it was too late!

[TheBladeRoden]

6 hours ago, CayceG said:

And based on that, I'm trying to find a genesis point for where it all went wrong.

I blame the 3/5 compromise

[Anathema-]

2 hours ago, TheBladeRoden said:

I blame the 3/5 compromise

 

Now we're getting somewhere.

[SaysWho?]

 

[SaysWho?]

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/04/us/politics/trump-al-franken-minnesota.html

 

Quote

Mr. Trump, addressing a rally in Mr. Franken’s home state of Minnesota, mentioned the woman who was appointed to take the senator’s seat, Tina Smith, during an extended riff in which he suggested that Mr. Franken was weak for stepping down so quickly.

 

“Nobody knows who the hell she is,” Mr. Trump said. “She took a wacky guy’s place.”

 

“He was wacky,” Mr. Trump said. “Boy, did he fold up like a wet rag, huh? Man. Man. He was gone so fast, O.K.?”

 

“Oh, he did something,” he said, adding, “‘Oh, oh, oh, I resign, I quit.’”

 

[SaysWho?]

We were Brett Kavanaugh’s drinking buddies. We don’t think he should be confirmed.

 

Quote

We were college classmates and drinking buddies with Supreme Court nominee Brett M. Kavanaugh. In the past week, all three of us decided separately to respond to questions from the media regarding Brett’s honesty, or lack thereof. In each of our cases, it was his public statements during a Fox News TV interview and his sworn testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee that prompted us to speak out.

 

We each asserted that Brett lied to the Senate by stating, under oath, that he never drank to the point of forgetting what he was doing. We said, unequivocally, that each of us, on numerous occasions, had seen Brett stumbling drunk to the point that it would be impossible for him to state with any degree of certainty that he remembered everything that he did when drunk.

 

He's such a bad choice for the country.

 

The only silver lining I can see is that there are going to be a lot of pissed off people organizing and voting in November (over and above the extraordinary protests and civic engagement the past two years). One of my relatives of a friend (I seriously feel I'm friends with him just to study him like an animal in its natural habitat) said there's not going to be a blue wave, not because of Kavanaugh, but because of Donald J Trump who will "single-handedly" save the Republican Party.

[Commissar SFLUFAN]

10 hours ago, Massdriver said:

 

When do you believe this will happen? 

 

While I see cracks forming in the system, I don't believe things are going to fall apart in our lifetimes, although things can change rapidly. If we did split apart into multiple nations, it would create a vacuum that China would be glad to fill. It would be the world power completely unchecked, and China's values are not even close to our own as it currently stands. Let's hope it doesn't happen!

To a certain extent, it's already started with so-called "sanctuary city" municipalities refusing to share immigration information on those in detention with ICE, but this a pretty insignificant issue.  As I mentioned, a definite acceleration would occur if California rejects a Supreme Court ruling declaring its CAFE standards to be unconstitutional.  That could be a catalyst for other states to engage in both progressive and regressive forms of rejectionism of both past (homosexual marriage) and future (net neutrality) rulings and laws that they disagree with.

 

In regard to China, I see no evidence that Beijing has any real desire to fulfill the "global arbiter" role that the United States assumed post-WWII.  China knows that role is both expensive monetarily and fraught with political risk, so the juice to be obtained from it ain't really worth the squeeze.  Beijing will certainly look out for its interests (hence why they are aggressively pursuing a blue water navy and the "Belt and Road" initiative), but they're not gonna be invading/occupying places for...reasons.  

[Commissar SFLUFAN]

7 hours ago, marioandsonic said:

Why did Germany have to decide to invade Belgium?  If they just attacked France, the UK may not have entered the war until it was too late!

The plan called for them to move through the Netherlands and Belgium, but they decided to skip the Dutch part.

[SuperSpreader]

Remember when liberals loved big government, sad 

[CitizenVectron]

I don't think conservatives will push for or be okay with a states' rights movement. It's true that they want to have that autonomy for themselves, but they also want power to spitefully stop blue states from having what they want.

[Guest]

3 minutes ago, CitizenVectron said:

I don't think conservatives will push for or be okay with a states' rights movement. It's true that they want to have that autonomy for themselves, but they also want power to spitefully stop blue states from having what they want.

I don’t think that is true. There are areas in which the actions of specific states (California in particular) have ramifications on the rest of the country simply due to the size of the California economy and the preeminence of the state in crucial industries.

[Spawn_of_Apathy]

11 hours ago, Jwheel86 said:

Or start discussing solutions to the fundamental issue of why the country is frozen. Not policy, just things that reinforce the basics of the Constitution. 

-End money in politics

-End partisan gerrymandering

-Paper ballots

-Open Primaries

-Same day voter registration

 

Do those things and you'll get a better class of politican who can deliver a New Deal before the country destroys itself. More dangerous is this idea that everything is fine and nothing needs to change. 

Also, kill the electoral college. Just popular vote. 

[b_m_b_m_b_m]

11 minutes ago, CitizenVectron said:

I don't think conservatives will push for or be okay with a states' rights movement. It's true that they want to have that autonomy for themselves, but they also want power to spitefully stop blue states from having what they want.

Literally the southern states before the civil war. See the fugitive slave act

[mclumber1]

18 minutes ago, Spawn_of_Apathy said:

Also, kill the electoral college. Just popular vote. 

 

One amendment to rule them all:

1.Kill the electoral college and use the popular vote for president

2. Kill the 17th amendment and return the election of senators to the state legislatures.

3. Expand the house to guarantee 1 rep for every 100,000 residents.

[SaysWho?]

51-49 to advance debate and limit debate to 30 hours. Flake/Manchin said aye, Donnelly/Heitkamp/Murkowski voted no. 

 

Collins announces that she'll make an announcement of final confirmation at 3.

[Kal-El814]

1 minute ago, SaysWho? said:

51-49 to advance debate and limit debate to 30 hours. Flake/Manchin said aye, Donnelly/Heitkamp/Murkowski voted no. 

 

Collins announces that she'll make an announcement of final confirmation at 3.

Donnie must be rock hard knowing that Collins is treating this like an event.

[Commissar SFLUFAN]

3 minutes ago, SaysWho? said:

Collins announces that she'll make an announcement of final confirmation at 3.

This is like the teaser trailer for the actual trailer for a videogame.

[SaysWho?]

4 minutes ago, SFLUFAN said:

This is like the teaser trailer for the actual trailer for a videogame.

 

That's what I just said in the newsroom, and it was an appreciated observation!

 

If Collins is no, then Pence is the tie-breaker.

[Guest]

I’m not sold on Manchin as a yes on the final. 

[Chairslinger]

After the FBI investigation I became slightly less confident Murkowski would be a no because she seemed to be treating it as adequate cover like Collins and Flake. 

 

Just now, SaysWho? said:

 

That's what I just said in the newsroom, and it was an appreciated observation!

 

If Collins is no, then Pence is the tie-breaker.

 

But this is the vote before the final vote, right? If Collins goes no, couldn't Manchin still switch for the final vote if it becomes clear he is the deciding vote?

 

How fucking tragic if both female GOPers swing no, and Kavanaugh still gets confirmed thanks to one defecting Democratic man.

 

That would look both morally wrong and be horrible for the party in November. With one vote, totally kill the impression that one party is for women and the other isn't.

[Guest]

3 minutes ago, Chairslinger said:

After the FBI investigation I became slightly less confident Murkowski would be a no because she seemed to be treating it as adequate cover like Collins and Flake. 

I’m honestly baffled that anybody would have this take. Collins and Flake were speaking very positively of the re-opened investigation, and Murkowski was silent. It was incredibly clear she was a No.

[b_m_b_m_b_m]

Manchin won't be 50, but he sure as shit will be 51+

 

He's not a principled man.