2016 US Presidential Election Thread Part XI

[Headache in a Suitcase]

Negotiation and compromise are key in democracies.

Not everyone agrees with you. You still have to get along with them.

Irvine thinks compromise matters. Not true! Sad! #makeinterferencegreatagain

 

[bono_212]

So Mike Pence has endorsed Paul Ryan.

Annnnnd I'm dying.

Actually, I would want someone who didn't have an agenda either way.


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[Headache in a Suitcase]

https://www.google.com/amp/mobile.n...ers.amp.html?client=ms-android-hms-tmobile-us

 

[namkcuR]

Actually, I would want someone who didn't have an agenda either way.


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Negotiation and compromise are key in democracies.

Not everyone agrees with you. You still have to get along with them.

I'm going to go the other way on this.

I understand that the court is supposed to be an apolitical body. In a perfect world, it would be. But the reality is, it is a political body and it is naive to think otherwise. Furthermore, I find it unreasonable to expect intelligent, successful public servants who sit on the court to not allow their personal politics and convictions to affect their decisions just because they're justices and not senators or congresspeople.

Now, I will grant there is a difference between letting your personal politics affect your judicial decisions and having an agenda. I will agree that agendas aren't good. But the political views of judges matter. Conservatives have litmus tests for judges and so we must too.

Is it not fair to say, Irvine, that you would oppose any justice who would vote to restore DOMA and the ban on gay marriage?

I would, and I would also oppose any justice would vote to overturn Roe v Wade, or one that would support Citizens United, or one that thinks Obamacare is unconstitutional. Etc.

At this time, it is not 100% clear what Garland's views on abortion and gay marriage are.

Negotiation and compromise are key, but there are some things we can't compromise on.

 

[Irvine511]

Yes, I would oppose a justice who disagreed with marriage equality were I a Senator, however, tradition dictates that elections have consequences, and generally the president, having been elected by a popular majority, does get to name people to the court. This spirit of compromise stops, of course, when it comes to extremists (i.e., Bork), but if we are talking about SCOTUS, specifically, the sitting president gets some deference. What the GOP is doing with Garland is beyond the pale, but one gets the sense that their tactics would be applauded by some of our more Hard Leftists.

 

[namkcuR]

Yes, I would oppose a justice who disagreed with marriage equality were I a Senator, however, tradition dictates that elections have consequences, and generally the president, having been elected by a popular majority, does get to name people to the court. This spirit of compromise stops, of course, when it comes to extremists (i.e., Bork), but if we are talking about SCOTUS, specifically, the sitting president gets some deference. What the GOP is doing with Garland is beyond the pale, but one gets the sense that their tactics would be applauded by some of our more Hard Leftists.

Oh, I'm not defending what the Republicans have been doing, refusing to even have a hearing or vote on him. Like you say, that's beyond the pale. Absolutely unprecedented and ridiculous.

I was just saying that I would understand if some on the left would be in favor of the President pulling the Garland nomination after the election(if Hillary won and we took the Senate back) so that Hillary could nominate someone more decidedly liberal.

 

[BigMacPhisto]

Well, it's especially warranted for Obama to pull Garland because it's not like he wanted him the first place. It's a political ploy to begin with and that ploy should not be on the Supreme Court.

Again, I'm all for compromise, but kowtowing to the right is a different matter. You don't need to compromise on the Supreme Court. It's going to tend to lean in one direction and the justices vote for whatever they feel is right.

Finding middle ground is always a plus, but when there is no middle ground because one side is blatantly obstructionist in their tactics, then there can be no compromise. As I've reiterated time and again, Clinton is never going to get Republicans to meet her in the middle on anything that they feel leans to the left. I know it won't happen because we saw it not happen when Obama was President. So any legislation that Clinton passes with heavy support from the right isn't some well worked out "compromise"...it's merely her agreeing with the right on something that those on the left do not.

 

[Irvine511]

Oh, I'm not defending what the Republicans have been doing, refusing to even have a hearing or vote on him. Like you say, that's beyond the pale. Absolutely unprecedented and ridiculous.

I was just saying that I would understand if some on the left would be in favor of the President pulling the Garland nomination after the election(if Hillary won and we took the Senate back) so that Hillary could nominate someone more decidedly liberal.

After this nonsense, yes. I agree.

My earlier point was meant to be really broad.

 

[Axver]

Does any other country in the world have such a politicised process of appointing judges? Looking at the other international posters here.

I only know the names of some Australian and New Zealand judges, and practically nothing about their political inclinations. The only time a recent appointment has become a serious political issue is when Campbell Newman, the Queensland premier who won the greatest landslide in state history only to then somehow lose the next election, appointed a grossly unqualified mate who eventually resigned because he lacked the capacity for the job and nobody in the legal profession took him seriously.

Because seriously, I find this one of the more mindboggling parts of American political culture.

 

[Popmartijn]

Interesting analysis on the success of Donald Trump in becoming a nominee (and not (yet) being crushed in the polls by Hillary): Would Democrats accept a wackadoo nominee?

The site Electoral Vote continues this analogy quite well:
ElectoralVote

Now let's go one step further. Imagine there is a big terrorist attack somewhere in America on Nov. 1 and Trump wins the election. He governs badly and by 2020 has an approve/disapprove rating of 20/80, the worst in history. Every Democrat and his uncle thinks he can beat Trump in 2020, so 30 Democrats run in the primary, each averaging about 3%. Kanye West and Kim Kardashian flip a coin and Kim wins. She enters the primary as a Democrat (mostly as a publicity stunt) and with 5% of the vote becomes the leading candidate. Since the Democrats have eliminated the superdelegates and opened all the primaries to please Bernie Sanders, large numbers of Republicans vote in the Democratic primary and she gets the nomination. She is totally unqualified and knows nothing about politics, but campaigns in a skimpy bikini and draws crowds far larger than any candidate in history. Once in a while she reads a speech written by a staffer from a teleprompter and seems like a normal Democrat. As her running mate, she picks a standard Democrat, say Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D-NY). The question now is would Democrats support her in the general election against Trump, even though by comparison she makes him—now with four years in the White House under his belt—look like a real statesman. Once again, our guess is yes they would, even though Republicans would say "She's completely stupid and has never run anything."

 

[Popmartijn]

Does any other country in the world have such a politicised process of appointing judges? Looking at the other international posters here.

[...]

Because seriously, I find this one of the more mindboggling parts of American political culture.

Define "politicised".
Because your example describes just as much a political process as the US process. In both situations the judge was appointed by a politician. Only, in the US there's (in theory) a checks and balances system in that the nominee needs to be approved by the Senate. Where it goes wrong nowadays is that the Senate (or at least, part of it) is no longer looking at qualifications, but at the position of the judge on several issues.

 

[digitize]

Does any other country in the world have such a politicised process of appointing judges? Looking at the other international posters here.

I only know the names of some Australian and New Zealand judges, and practically nothing about their political inclinations. The only time a recent appointment has become a serious political issue is when Campbell Newman, the Queensland premier who won the greatest landslide in state history only to then somehow lose the next election, appointed a grossly unqualified mate who eventually resigned because he lacked the capacity for the job and nobody in the legal profession took him seriously.

Because seriously, I find this one of the more mindboggling parts of American political culture.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think that a lot of this has to do with the fact that judges in the US actually have a lot to do with setting policy, because Congress has to deal with the constitutionality of what it passes, and constitutional theory is open to interpretation. So, the stakes are very high here. Too many right-leaning judges could easily result in abortion being banned in the vast majority of the country, for instance.


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[Axver]

Interesting analysis on the success of Donald Trump in becoming a nominee (and not (yet) being crushed in the polls by Hillary): Would Democrats accept a wackadoo nominee?

The site Electoral Vote continues this analogy quite well:
ElectoralVote

I was going to raise a variant of the objection #2 from the first article, and I don't think the author satisfactorily dismisses it. If the Democrats had nominated Sanders or another person strongly associated with the left, I can see why moderate Republicans would suck it up and stick with their lunatic rather than swap to the other party's lunatic. (I don't mean to say I think Sanders is a lunatic, but that he would have been seen as such by the hypothetical voter under discussion.) But Clinton really does fall into a centrist position; if she were in Australia, I promise you she would be a member of our centre-right Liberal government rather than in Labour or the Greens. The idea that she is the devil incarnate is based - as has been discussed here at length - on a decades-long character assassination almost entirely divorced from reality. The fact that the hard right, the hard left, the Trump populists, and the BMP populists all despise her proves the point that she sits in the middle; go to an extreme and they're shooting in towards her. I would suggest any reasonable Republican able to step back from the hyper-partisanship of today's politics to consider abandoning their party's nominee would not find Clinton as objectionable as the author suggests; she would be the D's Romney rather than the D's Cruz. (And, in fact, I can attest that the handful of Republicans I know outside here are all stumping hard for Clinton. His nuclear weapons comments swung the last who was undecided.)

Define "politicised".
Because your example describes just as much a political process as the US process. In both situations the judge was appointed by a politician. Only, in the US there's (in theory) a checks and balances system in that the nominee needs to be approved by the Senate. Where it goes wrong nowadays is that the Senate (or at least, part of it) is no longer looking at qualifications, but at the position of the judge on several issues.

You know what I mean by politicised. Let's not play word games here.

In any case, the fact I can name more US Supreme Court judges than I can name judges of the High Court in Australia proves the point that the partisanship of the appointments process is both surprising and striking. Here, although the governor(-general)-in-council (of the Commonwealth of Australia, for federal courts, or of individual states, for state courts) makes the appointment, it is in wide consultation - e.g. with independent advisory panels, existing judges, the bar. There is no vote in parliament. Apart from the Queensland case where there was brazen defiance of advice received, nobody pays any attention to who's appointed or how, yet there is confidence in the independence of the judiciary. It is not seen as a tool of politics, nor is it seen important whether the judges are appointed by left- or right-wing governments. Nobody would suggest that a particular legal decision was reached because one side of politics or another had stacked the courts.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think that a lot of this has to do with the fact that judges in the US actually have a lot to do with setting policy, because Congress has to deal with the constitutionality of what it passes, and constitutional theory is open to interpretation. So, the stakes are very high here. Too many right-leaning judges could easily result in abortion being banned in the vast majority of the country, for instance.

This is probably close to the truth. Something like marriage equality, for instance, could not have been settled in the Australian courts, but could in the US.

Edit: for the record, here's the appointment process for Australia: https://www.lawcouncil.asn.au/lawco...ocs/FedJudicialAppointmentsPolicy_May2010.pdf

 

[Irvine511]

if anyone is still fighting back tears and anxiety attacks, take heart: Trump is down 10 points in the latest Fox News poll.

the Fox News poll.

http://www.vox.com/2016/8/4/12374000/trump-clinton-polls-today

 

[Popmartijn]

I was going to raise a variant of the objection #2 from the first article, and I don't think the author satisfactorily dismisses it.
[...]
But Clinton really does fall into a centrist position; if she were in Australia, I promise you she would be a member of our centre-right Liberal government rather than in Labour or the Greens. The idea that she is the devil incarnate is based - as has been discussed here at length - on a decades-long character assassination almost entirely divorced from reality. The fact that the hard right, the hard left, the Trump populists, and the BMP populists all despise her proves the point that she sits in the middle; go to an extreme and they're shooting in towards her. I would suggest any reasonable Republican able to step back from the hyper-partisanship of today's politics to consider abandoning their party's nominee would not find Clinton as objectionable as the author suggests; she would be the D's Romney rather than the D's Cruz. (And, in fact, I can attest that the handful of Republicans I know outside here are all stumping hard for Clinton. His nuclear weapons comments swung the last who was undecided.)

Yes, you are right that Clinton is not some extremist. She is center-right of the political spectrum. But, as you also indicate, she has been the victim of a decades-long character assassination almost entirely divorced from reality. So she is being viewed by others as an extremist. And that's also the gist of objection #2, her being viewed as an extremist.
In short, while she'll probably be a very good president (and in general, her approval has always gone up when she was in office, while being negative when she was running for office) she is a flawed candidate.

You know what I mean by politicised. Let's not play word games here.

It was a genuine question, actually. Especially as to me your example seemed to contradict your statement "Does any other country in the world have such a politicised process of appointing judges?"

Apart from the Queensland case where there was brazen defiance of advice received, nobody pays any attention to who's appointed or how, yet there is confidence in the independence of the judiciary. It is not seen as a tool of politics, nor is it seen important whether the judges are appointed by left- or right-wing governments. Nobody would suggest that a particular legal decision was reached because one side of politics or another had stacked the courts.

For a long time this also seemed to hold true for the US, as I tried to mention in my previous post. Reagan appointed a SC judge with a liberal streak, Obama's nominee Garland is quite moderate (and his previous appointed SC judge Kagan wasn't some extreme liberal either).
But yeah, as digitize mentioned, the US Supreme Court is more actively involved in evaluating laws against the constitution or setting precendent. So there a judge's political standing shines through more.

 

[Hewson]

Amazing that everyone cheers when Hillary says "we are going to raise taxes on the middle class", who was at this rally, a thousand Bernie supporters?

 

[digitize]

if anyone is still fighting back tears and anxiety attacks, take heart: Trump is down 10 points in the latest Fox News poll.

the Fox News poll.

The newest polls are devastating for Donald Trump - Vox

It's been a pretty great week to watch FiveThirtyEight. Hopefully this isn't just a going-to-fade convention bounce.

 

[mikal]

It's been a pretty great week to watch FiveThirtyEight. Hopefully this isn't just a going-to-fade convention bounce.

Yeah, even if the convention bounce brings her back to earth, this week has swung so much in her direction that something major is going to happen either in the debates or an unforeseen event that hurts Hilary to allow Trump to bounce back. My initial pessimism last week was based on the fact that I thought Trump had smartened up and was no longer picking fights with the wrong people. He may go quiet and behave for a while again, but I'm sure he'll say something completely offensive in one of the debates which will be the final nail in the coffin.

 

[BEAL]

It's been a pretty great week to watch FiveThirtyEight. Hopefully this isn't just a going-to-fade convention bounce.

I think it'll fade a little as we get further away from the convention.

But every day Trump opens his mouth and it's a new controversy. This is where the election process begins.

He doesn't have 15 other buffoons to compete with, he now has to go after one person. And that person happens to be very, very good at politics.

His campaign is a joke, both in terms of finances and efficiency. You cannot say that about Clinton's campaign.

She has more money, advertising, and most importantly won't say such stupid things like Trump.

Trump can't even unify his own party. While there are plenty of liberals who cannot stand Hillary, I feel they'd be upset with anyone else at this point who wasn't a pure progressive/savior.

You are seeing more and more old school GOP'ers openly stating they are voting for Clinton. Even donating money to her.

You cannot win without a strong support system.

 

[phanan]

Amazing that everyone cheers when Hillary says "we are going to raise taxes on the middle class", who was at this rally, a thousand Bernie supporters?

I think most who follow her understood that this was a slip of the tongue. It's well documented that she wants to raise taxes for those families making more than $250k a year.

 

[Irvine511]

I think some of it was the convention. The GOP had none of the smashing star power of Biden, Bill, and especially Barack and Michelle. Sanders (and even Warren) don't have their magnetism. And the convention effectively otherized the GOP as a party of freaks and losers.

Plus, Obama is pretty popular. She is running as Bush 1 to his Reagan.

 

[dazzledbylight]

Had heard about this around 2 months ago (on the radio) that Trump at some point paid 0 Federal taxes. Finally got to go and find a print piece. First part.

By The Washington Post
Follow on Twitter
on May 20, 2016 at 7:10 PM

By DREW HARWELL
The Washington Post

WASHINGTON — The last time Donald Trump's income-tax returns were made public, the bottom line was striking: He had paid the federal government $0 in income taxes.

The disclosure, in a 1981 report by New Jersey gambling regulators, revealed that the wealthy Manhattan investor had for at least two years in the late 1970s taken advantage of a tax-code provision popular with developers that allowed him to report negative income.

Today, as the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, Trump regularly denounces corporate executives for using loopholes and "false deductions to "get away with murder" when it comes to avoiding taxes.

"They make a fortune. They pay no tax," Trump said last year on CBS. "It's ridiculous, okay?"

The contrast highlights a potentially awkward challenge for Trump.

I'm guessing he hasn't changed this practice too often.

 

[BVS]

I think some of it was the convention. The GOP had none of the smashing star power of Biden, Bill, and especially Barack and Michelle. Sanders (and even Warren) don't have their magnetism. And the convention effectively otherized the GOP as a party of freaks and losers.

Plus, Obama is pretty popular. She is running as Bush 1 to his Reagan.

But they had Chachi and Jagger Cates...

 

[dazzledbylight]

This is batshit insane:

Joe Scarborough Claims Trump Asked Advisor Why US Can't Use Nukes (VIDEO)

And apparently Trump himself said a similar thing in an interview earlier this year.

It's not surprising, but the Republican Presidential Candidate doesn't understand nuclear deterrence.

I know!!! I hadn't learned to do the cut & paste right on my tablet (vs compueter) yesterday when I saw this, so thanks. As some who lived with spikes of high anxiety through much of the cold war in NYC (#1or#2target) the idea of someone being THAT reckless. I'm not sure my jaw could drop much lower after reading this.

Apparently the ferret-wearing shitgibbon thought that the fire marshalls limiting the number of people in the building were working for Clinton.

Instead of doing what fire marshalls do.

!!! Was once at a patti smith group show where Springsteen showed up to duet "because the night", soon after the Fire Marshals showed up and closed the concert down. Trump #fuckingidiot

So Drumpf is speaking in Green Bay on Friday and I'm thinking about going just as a social experiment.

What's funny is that basically all GOP senators and the governor (Fuck Scott Walker) are not showing up. Must be in response to Drumpf being a dick to Paul Ryan.

Just be carful, mikal. Don't let any Super Trumpeters hear you muttering under your breath!

The GOP seems to only react, there's no vision of what's ahead by their actions.

Their inability to see further than their nose down the road is one of the many reasons they have a dysfunctional sociopath at the top of their ticket.

They used to, though! That's how they to hold all these State Houses,Assemblies, Governorships etc. After the Goldwater Debacle they decided to work their way up to rebuild their party a long term strategy to take the Federal races by controlling lower political offices. And how people suffered because of that success!

It's difficult to have sympathy for Ryan.

you got that right!

If he eats at Kroll's, I don't want to know, because then I'd never be able to set foot in there again.

#obligatoryGreenBayreference

Oh, no!

So Mike Pence has endorsed Paul Ryan.

love John Stewart, thanks for the gif!

I mean your simple answer about people believing Obama and Clinton want a "Stalinist regime" isn't a serious discussion. People who believe this have nothing more than a C average high school knowledge of world history and government. They don't know what that means. They're just sheeple who replay lines they've heard before, and equate left to social to socialism to communism to Russia to enemy. Not worth a discussion.

Not necessary. Some of these people may have gotten Cs in history & government, but they did better elsewhere in their studies because a fair amount are in various at least middle level occupations or higher.

I believe you mean "worse president."

#Trumpgrammar

Irvine thinks compromise matters. Not true! Sad! #makeinterferencegreatagain

 

[deep]

I think most who follow her understood that this was a slip of the tongue. It's well documented that she wants to raise taxes for those families making more than $250k a year.

that is probably about half of us that post on this board,
class warfare

 

[Edge_Orchestra]

So Mike Pence has endorsed Paul Ryan.

Pence must be hoping Trump dumps so he can get the nod?

Even if Trump did quit, they'd put Ryan forward to take the slot.

Ryan said he wouldn't accept the nod. But then again, he said that about the Speaker of the House position and he took that position so... Yeah. There's that.

 

[Oregoropa]

Dazzled - Bruce doing "Because the Night" on live 75-85 is amazing. It was originally his song that he gave to Patti when they were working in studio. Hybrid cover I suppose.


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[phanan]

that is probably about half of us that post on this board,

class warfare

I seriously doubt that.

 

[Irvine511]

Someone is buying those d-bag seats.

 

[iron yuppie]

This is the richest forum in all the land, apparently.