Breyer retirement

Deez, has the American people, specifically the middle and working classes gone completely woke and are dragging the Democrat Party left with them? Or is it the other way around?

From my perspective the break in the US is due to the Marxist lurch leftward that started in the universities, is entrenched in the bureaucratic state, and political HQ'd in the Democrat Party.

That's not a "we're broke" issue. That's a "the elites have betrayed our country" issue. The politicians who are willing to fight that gain popularity because the working and middle class want them to fight this Leftist revolution within the form. They (we) see, maybe too late, that "nice" Republicans are a part of the revolution and don't represent their (our) values.

Trump talked big, but did very little. We need politicians of any stripe to follow through with rhetoric to hold back Leftism in our country. Those who aren't willing to fight should go find another job.
 
Smart of Breyer. Would'be been smart of Ginsburg to do the same during Obama times, but she had too much hubris.
 
I'm to the point that I would LOVE to see Breyer announce that the screwed up manner in which the news broke, he is actually NOT going to retire and instead intends to serve at least another term.

It is mildly ironic that the only one who seems to have no comment right now IS Biden, while the rest of the political world dances on the grave in the stampede to make a pick using standards that the SCotUS won't allow businesses and colleges to use...
 
I just hope Republicans play this right in a way that does not screw up the 2022 election momentum. Let the democrats infight over the nominee.
 
I hope your political prognostications are not as good as your college football ones. That is a scary proposition.
 
ii's,

I have already cussed Matinelli (sp) for the botched deal he had forced on him, otherwise, I'd be packing to move South. I was trying to figure out how I would get him to land his jet in Austin on his way to Fayetteville on football Saturdays.
 
mb227 said:
Seeing the news that Breyer is set to retire...he was a Dem appointee so I don't believe this really tips the balance.

The concern, for me, is this insistence I am hearing that Biden MUST appoint a black female to the Court. I have no doubt that there are some reasonable judges on a bench somewhere that fit that classification, but what if, as a worst-case scenario...this becomes the easy way to try and get Kamala out of the VP office. She was horrid as the California AG and she would be horrid on the bench.

Breyer clearly is doing this now to play some manner of politics since this ensures that the appointment comes prior to mid-terms. This is a distraction from the massive missteps going on in Ukraine as well as the many failures domestically. On a daily basis, the movie Wag the Dog is coming to life before our very eyes.
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Two words: Lena Guerrero.
 
Monahorns said:
Deez, has the American people, specifically the middle and working classes gone completely woke and are dragging the Democrat Party left with them? Or is it the other way around?

From my perspective the break in the US is due to the Marxist lurch leftward that started in the universities, is entrenched in the bureaucratic state, and political HQ'd in the Democrat Party.

That's not a "we're broke" issue. That's a "the elites have betrayed our country" issue. The politicians who are willing to fight that gain popularity because the working and middle class want them to fight this Leftist revolution within the form. They (we) see, maybe too late, that "nice" Republicans are a part of the revolution and don't represent their (our) values.
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I don't necessarily disagree with this, and I'll happily criticize the woke Left both on the merits and their tactics. However, the unwillingness to forge consensus and compromise to solve problems by legislation (whether it's by expanding or contracting the reach of government) is much broader than the woke Left.

Monahorns said:
Trump talked big, but did very little. We need politicians of any stripe to follow through with rhetoric to hold back Leftism in our country. Those who aren't willing to fight should go find another job.
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Most of us don't know what it means to "fight" in the legislative context. Are Lauren Boebert, Madison Cawthorn, Matt Goetz, and Marjorie Taylor Green "fighters?" To me they aren't, because they aren't doing anything to advance the cause. They talk a lot of **** (most of which is counterproductive) and not much else, but to most on the Right think they're fighters. They aren't players on the field moving the ball. They're drunks in the stand throwing batteries and beer bottles on the field.
 
Mr. Deez said:
I don't necessarily disagree with this, and I'll happily criticize the woke Left both on the merits and their tactics. However, the unwillingness to forge consensus and compromise to solve problems by legislation (whether it's by expanding or contracting the reach of government) is much broader than the woke Left.
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Yeah. It's because the Republican Party hasn't been willing to vigorously fight the Leftward movement. They are okay with half-measures which always take us a bit more Left or grow the government more. They verbally smear those who are willing to fight for lower spending and keeping the debt ceiling. The Republican Party attacked Thomas Massie when he simply wanted the Leg to vote on the Trump stimulus, which is the start of all this inflation we are seeing. The Republicans don't even attack AOC like they attacked him.

The Republican Party is the Washington Generals compared to the Globetrotters, a mock competitor.

Mr. Deez said:
Most of us don't know what it means to "fight" in the legislative context. Are Lauren Boebert, Madison Cawthorn, Matt Goetz, and Marjorie Taylor Green "fighters?" To me they aren't, because they aren't doing anything to advance the cause. They talk a lot of **** (most of which is counterproductive) and not much else, but to most on the Right think they're fighters. They aren't players on the field moving the ball. They're drunks in the stand throwing batteries and beer bottles on the field.
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I am with you. Maybe that is part of the Washington Generals show. Talk but don't act. Would be the perfect mirage, right? I think voters think the talkers will actually do something compared to those who sound like they are more go along to get along. We had the Tea Party movement too, which was all about taxes and government spending. Most of them turned out to be squishes. Dan Crenshaw who once looked like a conservative who would do something, is now looking like an average DC creature.

Seeing this for at least a decade is what moved me out of the Republican Party and into the Libertarian Party. The Libertarian Party is cooky and ineffectual too, but there is a movement to make it more of a traditionally conservative or classicly liberal voice. Who knows how it will turn out? But I can't in general keep supporting a party that is obviously unserious.
 
^Excerpt from the linked article -
"... the President is not interested in things such as competency, character, or any knowledge of the Constitution whatsoever."

So the only thing that matters to the current White House is that they have an aggressive Affirmative Action Program - they need to have data that indicates they're meeting quota. :brickwall:
 
HornHuskerDad said:
^Excerpt from the linked article -
"... the President is not interested in things such as competency, character, or any knowledge of the Constitution whatsoever."

So the only thing that matters to the current White House is that they have an aggressive Affirmative Action Program - they need to have data that indicates they're meeting quota. :brickwall:
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Well, the link is to the Bee, so that statement might contain the tiniest speck of sarcastic exaggeration.
 
Just out of curiosity, why are we giving Biden **** about committing to appoint a black woman? I get the idea that qualifications and willingness to uphold the law should trump everything, and I agree with it wholeheartedly. I don't like it and never have.

However, where is our side's credibility on this? We've pulled the "diversity hire" maneuver as well. In fact, we've done it a lot. Amy Coney Barrett, Clarence Thomas, and Sandra Day O'Connor are examples. I have nothing against them, but let's be honest. None of them would have been nominated for the Court (at least not for the seats for which they were chosen) if they were white guys. They would have had to compete for other slots with other white guys. A set-aside was made for people of their race or sex. I don't see how it's different from what Biden is doing.
 
Monahorns said:
Yeah. It's because the Republican Party hasn't been willing to vigorously fight the Leftward movement. They are okay with half-measures which always take us a bit more Left or grow the government more. They verbally smear those who are willing to fight for lower spending and keeping the debt ceiling. The Republican Party attacked Thomas Massie when he simply wanted the Leg to vote on the Trump stimulus, which is the start of all this inflation we are seeing. The Republicans don't even attack AOC like they attacked him.

The Republican Party is the Washington Generals compared to the Globetrotters, a mock competitor.
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Two problems with this mentality. First, it ignores the fact that members of Congress are ultimately going to do what it takes to keep their jobs. If your constituents don't want you to to cut the size of government, you're not going to do it. For example, if a bill to reform Social Security comes up and you get 40,000 calls from constituents saying to vote No and 200 saying to vote Yes, you're voting No if you want to keep your job. Tossing the moderate Republican from a swing district under the bus for a liberal Democrat isn't smart from a political or policy standpoint. You're always going to have people in tight districts that will bail on tough votes, and if you look at the numbers, even when we've controlled the House, rarely is our majority big. We usually have little margin for error.

Second, it also ignores the fact that our system is designed to make change (especially big changes) difficult. The planets need to line up to make big changes. You need the White House, 60+ plus votes in the Senate, and a big enough majority in the House to account for those in tight districts. How often have we had that?

Instead of seriously considering theses obstacles, you all seem to treat them simply as failures of will. They aren't.

You also act as though Democrats don't have this problem. They do. For example, they've wanted a national health insurance system since the Truman Administration. Unlike the GOP, they've had periods in which they had giant majorities on Capitol Hill. In 70 years of fighting for this, what have they managed to deliver? Obamacare. We may not like Obamacare, but it's hardly a national health insurance system. If creating an American version of the NHS is a grand slam and the public option (like the German system) is a triple, Obamacare is reaching first on an error or at best a hit-by-pitch. The point is that the problem you complain about is not a GOP-specific problem. Everybody deals with it.

Monahorns said:
We had the Tea Party movement too, which was all about taxes and government spending. Most of them turned out to be squishes.
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It also got hijacked by Trumpism, which advocated not caring about spending.

Monahorns said:
Dan Crenshaw who once looked like a conservative who would do something, is now looking like an average DC creature.
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Dan Crenshaw is pro-military and somewhat neocon (more than I am). You were never going to be a fan. He's also from a pretty tight district in which he needs crossover support to win in Democratic years. Did you really think he'd be some big right wing firebrand?

Monahorns said:
Seeing this for at least a decade is what moved me out of the Republican Party and into the Libertarian Party.
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So ditch the party of Reagan for the party that's unified primarily around legalizing dope.
 
Mr. Deez said:
Just out of curiosity, why are we giving Biden **** about committing to appoint a black woman? I get the idea that qualifications and willingness to uphold the law should trump everything, and I agree with it wholeheartedly. I don't like it and never have.

However, where is our side's credibility on this? We've pulled the "diversity hire" maneuver as well. In fact, we've done it a lot. Amy Coney Barrett, Clarence Thomas, and Sandra Day O'Connor are examples. I have nothing against them, but let's be honest. None of them would have been nominated for the Court (at least not for the seats for which they were chosen) if they were white guys. They would have had to compete for other slots with other white guys. A set-aside was made for people of their race or sex. I don't see how it's different from what Biden is doing.
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C'mon man...even you have to acknowledge that he has expressly placed a criterion that a private entity could NOT advertise. He announced it would be specifically ONE race and ONE sex, qualifications be damned.

When Reagan said he would be appointing a woman during his term, there were multiple seats which would be open and he was not committing to putting a woman and ONLY a woman into the nomination for the first seat. Biden is deliberately excluding ALL others, male or female, white or Hispanic or Asian, who might ALSO be qualified jurists.

It ALSO runs contrary to MLK and the desire to be taken based on content of character and NOT the color of skin.

It is ALSO mildly ironic given that Biden routinely voted against black nominees to the federal bench, including one that DJT named here in Texas as I recall.

Biden is floundering in the polls and he needs a dead cat bounce to recover from his screw-ups domestic AND abroad.
 
mb227 said:
C'mon man...even you have to acknowledge that he has expressly placed a criterion that a private entity could NOT advertise. He announced it would be specifically ONE race and ONE sex, qualifications be damned.

When Reagan said he would be appointing a woman during his term, there were multiple seats which would be open and he was not committing to putting a woman and ONLY a woman into the nomination for the first seat. Biden is deliberately excluding ALL others, male or female, white or Hispanic or Asian, who might ALSO be qualified jurists.

It ALSO runs contrary to MLK and the desire to be taken based on content of character and NOT the color of skin.

It is ALSO mildly ironic given that Biden routinely voted against black nominees to the federal bench, including one that DJT named here in Texas as I recall.

Biden is floundering in the polls and he needs a dead cat bounce to recover from his screw-ups domestic AND abroad.
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this is as much about baiting GOP reps as it is fulfilling a promise to the left. For the Dem party this represents a pro-liberal signal but also what they believe is a dinner bell to the so called "racist republicans". They will attempt to take any dissent and spin it into a racism charge against the party as a whole. They need a very emotional event to rally the liberals around. The dem's fall campaign are going to be largely focused on race and Roe v Wade.
 
Mr. Deez said:
Two problems with this mentality. First, it ignores the fact that members of Congress are ultimately going to do what it takes to keep their jobs. If your constituents don't want you to to cut the size of government, you're not going to do it. For example, if a bill to reform Social Security comes up and you get 40,000 calls from constituents saying to vote No and 200 saying to vote Yes, you're voting No if you want to keep your job. Tossing the moderate Republican from a swing district under the bus for a liberal Democrat isn't smart from a political or policy standpoint. You're always going to have people in tight districts that will bail on tough votes, and if you look at the numbers, even when we've controlled the House, rarely is our majority big. We usually have little margin for error.
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I don't disagree in general. My challenges are 1) how much do voters really know and vote according to voting records and 2) is your theoretical example real?

I think there is some insulation there which you don't account for. I don't think representatives are that directly influenced by voter opinion. I am open to real examples.

Mr. Deez said:
Second, it also ignores the fact that our system is designed to make change (especially big changes) difficult. The planets need to line up to make big changes. You need the White House, 60+ plus votes in the Senate, and a big enough majority in the House to account for those in tight districts. How often have we had that?

Instead of seriously considering theses obstacles, you all seem to treat them simply as failures of will. They aren't.
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I get gridlock and celebrate it. My bigger criticism is the 120 years of Leftward movement. The Right has turned into what the Left said yesterday. Then there has been a huge lurch over the last 10 years facilitated by Critical Marxist power grabs. That isn't gridlock. That is losing America.

Mr. Deez said:
You also act as though Democrats don't have this problem. They do. For example, they've wanted a national health insurance system since the Truman Administration. Unlike the GOP, they've had periods in which they had giant majorities on Capitol Hill. In 70 years of fighting for this, what have they managed to deliver? Obamacare. We may not like Obamacare, but it's hardly a national health insurance system. If creating an American version of the NHS is a grand slam and the public option (like the German system) is a triple, Obamacare is reaching first on an error or at best a hit-by-pitch. The point is that the problem you complain about is not a GOP-specific problem. Everybody deals with it.
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This is part of your big blind spot. You are claiming victory on healthcare because the Left hasn't won 100%. But they have won 95% on this issue. They wanted socialist healthcare. They have fascist healthcare. They have been taking over medicine since the Progressive era, and completely control medical schools, doctor quotas, medical regulation, insurance regulation, certificate of need, hospital cartelization. They won and you don't even know it. That's the problems with Republicans. They don't even know what a medical/health care market would look like. Hint, it doesn't exist today.

Mr. Deez said:
It also got hijacked by Trumpism, which advocated not caring about spending.
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Amen. That was one of my main criticisms of Trump.

Mr. Deez said:
Dan Crenshaw is pro-military and somewhat neocon (more than I am). You were never going to be a fan. He's also from a pretty tight district in which he needs crossover support to win in Democratic years. Did you really think he'd be some big right wing firebrand?
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I was a fan when I first heard him talk even while disagreeing with his military views. But he has become significantly worse. And he yells at little girls who ask him questions in public forums. He is a bum.

Mr. Deez said:
So ditch the party of Reagan for the party that's unified primarily around legalizing dope.
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Once again proving your blindness. There are Republicans calling for legalization too. Plus, it is already completely legal in all 50 states because the pot growers found a loophole. You can buy legal weed in my neighborhood at a vape shop or on the web. The issue is determined and unimportant.
 
Mr. Deez said:
However, where is our side's credibility on this? We've pulled the "diversity hire" maneuver as well. In fact, we've done it a lot. Amy Coney Barrett, Clarence Thomas, and Sandra Day O'Connor are examples. I have nothing against them, but let's be honest. None of them would have been nominated for the Court (at least not for the seats for which they were chosen) if they were white guys. They would have had to compete for other slots with other white guys. A set-aside was made for people of their race or sex. I don't see how it's different from what Biden is doing.
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Deez, you specifically said Barrett was one of the most if not the most conservative SCOTUS candidate on the list when the Kavanaugh hearing was ongoing. So why are you treating her as a token appointment now? And Thomas is one of the best justices we have right now. Who are you saying would have been better at the time? Just because Lindsay Graham is being a traitor doesn't mean you have to agree.
 
Monahorns said:
Deez, you specifically said Barrett was one of the most if not the most conservative SCOTUS candidate on the list when the Kavanaugh hearing was ongoing. So why are you treating her as a token appointment now? And Thomas is one of the best justices we have right now. Who are you saying would have been better at the time? Just because Lindsay Graham is being a traitor doesn't mean you have to agree.
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She is a solid conservative and was well-qualified. I'm not ripping on her. What I'm suggesting is that those things weren't enough to get her that nomination to the Court. She had to meet a sex requirement. If she had a cock 'n balls, she would not be on the Court today. Her qualifications might have eventually gotten her nominated to one of the "white guy" slots, but she wasn't going to get the nomination she received. It was going to a chick, not a dude, and that's my point. We play the quota like Biden is playing it. It's stupid, but we do play it too.
 
Mr. Deez said:
She is a solid conservative and was well-qualified. I'm not ripping on her. What I'm suggesting is that those things weren't enough to get her that nomination to the Court. She had to meet a sex requirement. If she had a cock 'n balls, she would not be on the Court today. Her qualifications might have eventually gotten her nominated to one of the "white guy" slots, but she wasn't going to get the nomination she received. It was going to a chick, not a dude, and that's my point. We play the quota like Biden is playing it. It's stupid, but we do play it too.
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So, who was passed over for her?
 
Monahorns said:
So, who was passed over for her?
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Anyone with more experience on the bench than 3 years? That was her most underwhelming characteristic. She had been on the Circuit Court of Appeals for less than 3 years when she was nominated.

Experience is no longer valued by the Federalist Society anymore but rather ideology and youth to lock down a lifetime appt for as long as possible.
 
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Monahorns said:
Okay so she wouldn't have been passed over due to sex.
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It actually bolsters @Mr. Deez claim that she was put on the bench because of her gender, at least it helped. As I stated, her level of experience should have put her far down the list of qualified candidates.

Of course, I don't have any issues with the SCOTUS more reflecting the US demographics as long as the experience bar is met. In recent years "experience" has become more devalued though which is a significant concern to me. It's as if we are betting that someone will be a good judge in the future with the more recent nominees.
 
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And again, none of my comments are to attack Barrett or excuse Biden deciding to exclude everyone who's not a black woman. I don't like any of that. I'm simply questioning where the Right's credibility is to attack him for it. We've done the same damn thing.
 
Mr. Deez said:
And again, none of my comments are to attack Barrett or excuse Biden deciding to exclude everyone who's not a black woman. I don't like any of that. I'm simply questioning where the Right's credibility is to attack him for it. We've done the same damn thing.
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That is what I asking about though. What is the basis of you saying that Barrett was a diversity hire? I don't remember that ever being discussed as a requirement at the time.
 
Monahorns said:
That is what I asking about though. What is the basis of you saying that Barrett was a diversity hire? I don't remember that ever being discussed as a requirement at the time.
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Imagine the rancor if Trump had 3 SCOTUS nominee opportunities and placed 3 white men?

Has the Federalist Society list of judges ever been published? I'm curious how many minorities are on it.
 
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