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Brett Kavanaugh Confirmation Thread


Hugo Stiglitz

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5 minutes ago, wildcat09 said:

The conclusion that he basically does what Roberts wants isn't wrong, but using how often someone voted with someone else is just a really bad way to evaluate a justice or the Court overall and I'm going to point that out every time it's done. Not saying you're doing this, but too many people are using this last term and arguments like this to claim that the Court is actually carefully moderating and not veering sharply to the right, and it's nonsense.

Oh 100% nonsense - the court is not moderating and it's not a 3-3-3 court.

It's still 6-3, with the occasional bone being thrown to the liberals by Roberts and Kavanaugh, but not much. 

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no shit sherlock GIF by Team Coco

Reuters: FBI ignored tips on Brett Kavanaugh, Senate Democrats charge

Quote

WASHINGTON, July 22 (Reuters) - Seven Democratic senators on Thursday said that newly released materials show the FBI failed to fully investigate sexual misconduct allegations against U.S. Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh when he was nominated to the court in 2018.

The senators, including Sheldon Whitehouse and Chris Coons, said a letter they received from the FBI last month shows the agency gathered over 4,500 tips relating to Kavanaugh without any apparent further action by investigators.

According to that June 30 letter, written by FBI Assistant Director Jill Tyson, the most "relevant" of the 4,500 tips were referred to lawyers in President Donald Trump's White House whose handling of them remains unclear.

The agency was conducting a background check, not a criminal investigation, so "the authorities, policies, and procedures used to investigate criminal matters did not apply," Tyson's letter said.

 

"If the FBI was not authorized to or did not follow up on any of the tips that it received from the tip line, it is difficult to understand the point of having a tip line at all," the Democratic lawmakers said in a letter to FBI Director Chris Wray sent on Wednesday night, which they released to the public on Thursday.

Kavanaugh was the second of three jurists Republican Trump appointed to lifetime spots on the top court during his term, cementing a 6-3 conservative majority.

His nomination blew up into a personal and political drama when university professor Christine Blasey Ford accused Kavanaugh of sexually assaulting her in Washington in 1982. Two other women accused him in the media of sexual misconduct in the 1980s.

Kavanaugh fought back against the accusations, denying them in angry and tearful testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee that was viewed live on television by around 20 million people.

 

Trump, ceding to a request from Senate Republican leaders, ordered the FBI to conduct a background investigation of Kavanaugh.

The FBI completed its probe after speaking with 10 people, according to the Senate Judiciary Committee. Potentially key witnesses, including Ford and Kavanaugh, were never interviewed as part of the investigation, and Democratic lawmakers have long said the probe was a sham.

Democrats have also alleged that the Justice Department, which the FBI is part of, was politicized under Trump and sought to advance the former president's interests.

A FBI spokesperson did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Thursday. Beth Wilkinson, a lawyer who represented Kavanaugh during his confirmation battle, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

 

Ford's lawyers, Debra Katz and Lisa Banks, said in a statement that the new revelations show the FBI investigation was of limited value.

"Because the FBI and Trump's White House Counsel hid the ball on this, we do not know how many of those 4,500 tips were consequential, how many of those tips supported Dr. Ford's testimony, or how many showed that Kavanaugh perjured himself during his testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee," the lawyers said.

 

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On 7/13/2021 at 11:29 PM, HornPhD said:

“Very smart” as defined by his upbringing, educational pedigree, and connections. 
 

Like it or not getting through the schools he did with the grades he got sets him way apart academically and by proxy also in terms of intelligence. To argue otherwise is just silly 

 

You can say he has no scruples or morals and is beholden to big business and you will get no argument from me, but to suggest he is in any academic sense mediocre is ridiculous 

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5 minutes ago, Sawbonz said:

Like it or not getting through the schools he did with the grades he got sets him way apart academically and by proxy also in terms of intelligence. To argue otherwise is just silly 

 

You can say he has no scruples or morals and is beholden to big business and you will get no argument from me, but to suggest he is in any academic sense mediocre is ridiculous 

I've read his opinions. Describing them as mediocre is charitable. 

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Just now, wildcat09 said:

I've read his opinions. Describing them as mediocre is charitable. 

I haven’t read his opinions and wouldn’t know enough to form an opinion. But he is in no way mediocre in his academic accomplishments. 

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16 minutes ago, Sawbonz said:

But he is in no way mediocre in his academic accomplishments  privilege.

He had fantastic schooling and all that comes with that access.

There is no way a poor kid from Pampa (who is as smart as Kavanaugh) reaches Kavanaugh's station in life. 

Edited by washparkhorn
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10 minutes ago, Sawbonz said:

I haven’t read his opinions and wouldn’t know enough to form an opinion. But he is in no way mediocre in his academic accomplishments. 

Same could be said for Ted Cruz.  It's a valid point, as far as it goes.

From what I have seen of Kavanaugh's opinions, they're what you'd expect:  well-written, thorough, but fairly obvious where they are taking turns toward the conservative value choices that underlie their reasoning and outcome.  As opposed to those of Thomas, which often contain an outrageous bit and in less controversial ones tend to lack a bit of depth of analysis.  Or Scalia's, which did a masterful job at hiding his "value choices" behind the rubric of orignalism or textualism.

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8 minutes ago, washparkhorn said:

He had fantastic schooling and all that comes with that access.

There is no way a poor kid from Pampa reaches Kavanaugh's station in life. 

Yes, it is highly reflective of privilege.  A sort of Catholic privilege instead of the WASPy Choate/Andover/Exeter/St. Paul's privilege.

It is something of a testament to diversity consciousness that you can no longer simply assume privilege by Princeton, Yale, Harvard and the law schools.  Even for white guys.  You have to go back to high/prep school to really figure it out.  And diversity is making inroads there, too.

Edited by TwiceHorn
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18 minutes ago, washparkhorn said:

He had fantastic schooling and all that comes with that access.

There is no way a poor kid from Pampa (who is as smart as Kavanaugh) reaches Kavanaugh's station in life. 

But if that Pampa kid stays off drugs and doesn’t knock up Chad Briscoe's cousin when they’re in high school and makes sacrifices his kid or grandkid sure can. 
 

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33 minutes ago, washparkhorn said:

He had fantastic schooling and all that comes with that access.

There is no way a poor kid from Pampa (who is as smart as Kavanaugh) reaches Kavanaugh's station in life. 

why didn't that poor kid from pampa's great great grandpappy get a homestead from the state back when the state used to literally hand out wealth to white people so that his great great grandson would have a productive ranch with mineral leases to provide for him throughout his life?

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On 7/14/2021 at 5:33 AM, Fudge Nuggets said:

That's a lot of words to say "Ok, I was wrong but I will never admit it."

 

On 7/14/2021 at 6:41 AM, Lobo said:

Yeah, I hereby clearly admit that I was wrong.  I completely spaced on the Meiers nomination because I am stupid.  My Brett comments were merely that this continued, "every justice who doesn't vote in lockstep with my beliefs is a fucking idiot" is ridiculous.  Last I checked, it was 6-3 with Breyer thinking he's gonna live forever.  Obviously there have been bad nominations, bad justices, bad rulings, bad everything.  It's a 250 year old court with 9 people on it, and hundreds more failed nominees.  It's gonna have fuckups.  I made a fuckup.  But my macro point still stands, keep bitching and moaning about how stupid Kavanaugh is, how evil Thomas is, how corrupted Roberts is.  See what happens.  Breyer should have already announced his retirement.  The GOP bench at the federal level is as deep the Alabama offense.  Also, I was wrong about Meirs.  Neg rep me for the rest of the day, I was wrong.  I admit, I was wrong.  

Anyway, Brett is a Supreme Court Justice.  Many of them come from a frighteningly similar background.  On both sides of the aisle/dais.  But this constant "everybody who is not Ginsberg is a fucking moron" is just not serving y'all well.  I am reminded of something Justice Kennedy once said to our law class, "We're not apolitical because of the constitution.  We're apolitical because of the people in politics."  

At least we got to a lot of words to say "Ok, I was wrong and I admit it."

I think that's progress?

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The words you’re looking for should come from Breyer, not me.  And the silence Is deafening.  
 

tl:dr; there is nothing your party can’t fuck up.  Nothing.  And I pray to Christ each night the GOP leadership burns in hell

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Breyer's position permits him independence from parties, Presidents and Congress critters. Leave him be. He wants it to be respectful of the institution and its importance in holding this nation together using law, not emotion. 

__________

The split in the Court is solved by Congress passing robust laws. Effective and comprehensive laws passed by Congress and signed by the President eliminates a shit-ton of unnecessary litigation. The Court is attempting to patch drywall peppered with buckshot - with rounds still flying. 

______________

It's 3-3-3 from my viewpoint. There are ways to reach some of the 3 in the 6 group.

Take Gorsuch as an example - he is the son of the loathed Ann Burford, Reagan's embattled EPA Administrator. Gorsuch - a prep school boy now in the big time (and performing well in learning) - asked her not to resign her position. The DOJ stop providing counsel to her at a time when she needed it the most. She had been ordered to turn over superfund material to Congress; she did not agree with the position, but followed the President's order to her. She was bitter at Reagan and felt she had been stabbed in the back. I am sure the family of Ann Gorsuch (at the time) felt there had been an injustice. 

This would certainly expand my world view of how laws and regulations work in the real world. 

Spoiler

Anne M. Gorsuch Burford, 62, the Environmental Protection Agency director who resigned under fire in 1983 during a scandal over mismanagement of a $1.6 billion program to clean up hazardous waste dumps, died of cancer July 18 at Aurora Medical Center in Colorado. Her 22-month tenure was one of the most controversial of the early Reagan administration. 

A firm believer that the federal government, and specifically the EPA, was too big, too wasteful and too restrictive of business, Ms. Burford cut her agency's budget by 22 percent. She boasted that she reduced the thickness of the book of clean water regulations from six inches to a half-inch. Republicans and Democrats alike accused Ms. Burford of dismantling her agency rather than directing it to aggressively protect the environment. They pointed to budgets cuts for research and enforcement, to steep declines in the number of cases filed against polluters, to efforts to relax portions of the Clean Air Act, to an acceleration of federal approvals for the spraying of restricted pesticides and more.

Her agency tried to set aside a 30-by-40-mile rectangle of ocean due east of the Delaware-Maryland coast where incinerator ships would burn toxic wastes at 1,200 degrees centigrade.

Ms. Burford was forced to resign after she was cited for contempt of Congress for refusing to turn over Superfund records, arguing that they were protected by executive privilege. Ms. Burford acted under President Ronald Reagan's orders, with the advice of the Justice Department and against her own recommendation, her colleagues told the press at the time. A few months later, in what one of her aides called a "cold-blooded, treacherous act of political callousness," the Justice Department announced it would no longer represent her because it was involved in investigations into corruption at the EPA.

In her 1986 book, "Are You Tough Enough?" Ms. Burford called the episode her "expensive mid-life education."

"When congressional criticism about the EPA began to touch the presidency, Mr. Reagan solved his problem by jettisoning me and my people, people whose only 'crime' was loyal service, following orders. I was not the first to receive his special brand of benevolent neglect, a form of conveniently looking the other way, while his staff continues to do some very dirty work," she wrote.

A striking woman with jet-black hair, she was described as having television-star looks and perfect manicures. She wore fur coats and smoked two packs of Marlboros a day; her government-issued car got about 15 miles per gallon of gasoline.

She could charm opponents, but she also did not shy away from political combat. Denver's Rocky Mountain News once said, "She could kick a bear to death with her bare feet."

Born Anne McGill in Casper, Wyo., she graduated from the University of Colorado in 1961 and the University of Colorado Law School in 1964. She married David Gorsuch after law school, and they traveled together to India after she won a Fulbright Scholarship. Upon her return to Colorado, she was a deputy district attorney and a lawyer for the regional Bell telephone company. She was elected to the Colorado legislature in 1976 and became known as one of the "House Crazies," conservative lawmakers intent on permanently changing government. She and Gorsuch divorced in 1979.

Reagan was her political hero, and she was thrilled to win an appointment in his administration. She said she considered the EPA director's job the "second-toughest" in government, after the directorship of the Office of Management and Budget.

More than half of the federal regulations targeted for an early review by the Reagan administration's regulatory reform team were EPA rules. Virtually all of her subordinates at the EPA came from the ranks of the industries they were charged with overseeing. Her tenure enraged environmentalists, who tied her to the equally controversial policies of her friend and fellow Coloradan, then-Secretary of the Interior James Watt.

Her resignation did not end the political fight. Reagan, seeking to reward a loyalist, appointed her a year later to the chairmanship of the National Advisory Committee on Oceans and the Atmosphere. The Republican-controlled Senate, by a vote of 74 to 19, called on him to withdraw the appointment.

She told a meeting of Colorado woolgrowers that the panel was a "nothingburger" and a "joke" that met three times a year. "They don't do anything," she said.

The nation's capital, she added, was "too small to be a state but too large to be an asylum for the mentally deranged."

Those remarks further inflamed her opponents, so she withdrew from the advisory panel before she was sworn in.

She focused on her private law practice in Colorado, specializing in child advocacy law. Her son, Neil Gorsuch, said that as a young district attorney, she had pursued "deadbeat dads" long before that cause was popular, and she returned to those kinds of issues in her later work. She was still working at the time of her death.

Survivors include three children from her first marriage, Neil Gorsuch of Washington and Stephanie Gorsuch and J.J. Gorsuch of Denver; her mother, Dorothy O'Grady McGill of Denver; a brother; and five sisters.


© 2004 The Washington Post Company

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2 hours ago, washparkhorn said:

Breyer's position permits him independence from parties, Presidents and Congress critters. Leave him be. He wants it to be respectful of the institution and its importance in holding this nation together using law, not emotion. 

__________

The split in the Court is solved by Congress passing robust laws. Effective and comprehensive laws passed by Congress and signed by the President eliminates a shit-ton of unnecessary litigation. The Court is attempting to patch drywall peppered with buckshot - with rounds still flying. 

______________

It's 3-3-3 from my viewpoint. There are ways to reach some of the 3 in the 6 group.

Take Gorsuch as an example - he is the son of the loathed Ann Burford, Reagan's embattled EPA Administrator. Gorsuch - a prep school boy now in the big time (and performing well in learning) - asked her not to resign her position. The DOJ stop providing counsel to her at a time when she needed it the most. She had been ordered to turn over superfund material to Congress; she did not agree with the position, but followed the President's order to her. She was bitter at Reagan and felt she had been stabbed in the back. I am sure the family of Ann Gorsuch (at the time) felt there had been an injustice. 

This would certainly expand my world view of how laws and regulations work in the real world. 

  Hide contents

Anne M. Gorsuch Burford, 62, the Environmental Protection Agency director who resigned under fire in 1983 during a scandal over mismanagement of a $1.6 billion program to clean up hazardous waste dumps, died of cancer July 18 at Aurora Medical Center in Colorado. Her 22-month tenure was one of the most controversial of the early Reagan administration. 

A firm believer that the federal government, and specifically the EPA, was too big, too wasteful and too restrictive of business, Ms. Burford cut her agency's budget by 22 percent. She boasted that she reduced the thickness of the book of clean water regulations from six inches to a half-inch. Republicans and Democrats alike accused Ms. Burford of dismantling her agency rather than directing it to aggressively protect the environment. They pointed to budgets cuts for research and enforcement, to steep declines in the number of cases filed against polluters, to efforts to relax portions of the Clean Air Act, to an acceleration of federal approvals for the spraying of restricted pesticides and more.

Her agency tried to set aside a 30-by-40-mile rectangle of ocean due east of the Delaware-Maryland coast where incinerator ships would burn toxic wastes at 1,200 degrees centigrade.

Ms. Burford was forced to resign after she was cited for contempt of Congress for refusing to turn over Superfund records, arguing that they were protected by executive privilege. Ms. Burford acted under President Ronald Reagan's orders, with the advice of the Justice Department and against her own recommendation, her colleagues told the press at the time. A few months later, in what one of her aides called a "cold-blooded, treacherous act of political callousness," the Justice Department announced it would no longer represent her because it was involved in investigations into corruption at the EPA.

In her 1986 book, "Are You Tough Enough?" Ms. Burford called the episode her "expensive mid-life education."

"When congressional criticism about the EPA began to touch the presidency, Mr. Reagan solved his problem by jettisoning me and my people, people whose only 'crime' was loyal service, following orders. I was not the first to receive his special brand of benevolent neglect, a form of conveniently looking the other way, while his staff continues to do some very dirty work," she wrote.

A striking woman with jet-black hair, she was described as having television-star looks and perfect manicures. She wore fur coats and smoked two packs of Marlboros a day; her government-issued car got about 15 miles per gallon of gasoline.

She could charm opponents, but she also did not shy away from political combat. Denver's Rocky Mountain News once said, "She could kick a bear to death with her bare feet."

Born Anne McGill in Casper, Wyo., she graduated from the University of Colorado in 1961 and the University of Colorado Law School in 1964. She married David Gorsuch after law school, and they traveled together to India after she won a Fulbright Scholarship. Upon her return to Colorado, she was a deputy district attorney and a lawyer for the regional Bell telephone company. She was elected to the Colorado legislature in 1976 and became known as one of the "House Crazies," conservative lawmakers intent on permanently changing government. She and Gorsuch divorced in 1979.

Reagan was her political hero, and she was thrilled to win an appointment in his administration. She said she considered the EPA director's job the "second-toughest" in government, after the directorship of the Office of Management and Budget.

More than half of the federal regulations targeted for an early review by the Reagan administration's regulatory reform team were EPA rules. Virtually all of her subordinates at the EPA came from the ranks of the industries they were charged with overseeing. Her tenure enraged environmentalists, who tied her to the equally controversial policies of her friend and fellow Coloradan, then-Secretary of the Interior James Watt.

Her resignation did not end the political fight. Reagan, seeking to reward a loyalist, appointed her a year later to the chairmanship of the National Advisory Committee on Oceans and the Atmosphere. The Republican-controlled Senate, by a vote of 74 to 19, called on him to withdraw the appointment.

She told a meeting of Colorado woolgrowers that the panel was a "nothingburger" and a "joke" that met three times a year. "They don't do anything," she said.

The nation's capital, she added, was "too small to be a state but too large to be an asylum for the mentally deranged."

Those remarks further inflamed her opponents, so she withdrew from the advisory panel before she was sworn in.

She focused on her private law practice in Colorado, specializing in child advocacy law. Her son, Neil Gorsuch, said that as a young district attorney, she had pursued "deadbeat dads" long before that cause was popular, and she returned to those kinds of issues in her later work. She was still working at the time of her death.

Survivors include three children from her first marriage, Neil Gorsuch of Washington and Stephanie Gorsuch and J.J. Gorsuch of Denver; her mother, Dorothy O'Grady McGill of Denver; a brother; and five sisters.


© 2004 The Washington Post Company

spacer.png

Just another log on the fire of how the Republican Party is and has been destroying the country.

Edited by JimmyJames
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16 hours ago, TwiceHorn said:

Same could be said for Ted Cruz.  It's a valid point, as far as it goes.

From what I have seen of Kavanaugh's opinions, they're what you'd expect:  well-written, thorough, but fairly obvious where they are taking turns toward the conservative value choices that underlie their reasoning and outcome.  As opposed to those of Thomas, which often contain an outrageous bit and in less controversial ones tend to lack a bit of depth of analysis.  Or Scalia's, which did a masterful job at hiding his "value choices" behind the rubric of orignalism or textualism.

You should read The Enigma of Clarence Thomas. The author's take, which I find pretty persuasive, is basically that Thomas is an old-school black patriarch who thinks America is irredeemably racist and that black people should focus on gaining wealth through participating in business rather than attempting to involve themselves in the political system, which he thinks should basically return to Jim Crow because the burdens Jim Crow placed on black people forged them to be stronger and more resilient.

A lot of his opinions start to make more sense when you understand that perspective and can be quite persuasive. I don't find Kavanaugh persuasive at all.

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On 7/22/2021 at 4:32 PM, washparkhorn said:

He had fantastic schooling and all that comes with that access.

There is no way a poor kid from Pampa (who is as smart as Kavanaugh) reaches Kavanaugh's station in life. 

This just isn’t true and the post and the responses to it are just typical drivel. Admittedly I didn’t do a super deep dive into this but of the first handful of justices I looked at these three certainly jumped out.

Sotomayor- Born in NY to immigrant parents that barely spoke English. Lived in public housing for the majority of her early life.

Thomas- Grew up brutally poor in rural Georgia. 

Alito- Son of school teachers. 

if you go back a little to Marshall, Blackmun,  Rehnquist etc. it is actually pretty surprising how so many of the justices came from poor backgrounds.

The one thing they all had in common was that they were really, really smart and graduated at or near the top of their classes at almost every stop.

So I would say that that really, really smart kid from Pampa actually has just as much of a chance as becoming a supreme court justice as anyone else.  
 


 


 

 

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18 minutes ago, sheeeit said:

This just isn’t true and the post and the responses to it are just typical drivel. Admittedly I didn’t do a super deep dive into this but of the first handful of justices I looked at these three certainly jumped out.

Sotomayor- Born in NY to immigrant parents that barely spoke English. Lived in public housing for the majority of her early life.

Thomas- Grew up brutally poor in rural Georgia. 

Alito- Son of school teachers. 

if you go back a little to Marshall, Blackmun,  Rehnquist etc. it is actually pretty surprising how so many of the justices came from poor backgrounds.

The one thing they all had in common was that they were really, really smart and graduated at or near the top of their classes at almost every stop.

So I would say that that really, really smart kid from Pampa actually has just as much of a chance as becoming a supreme court justice as anyone else.  
 


 


 

 

Not "as much chance."  But a chance.

And very little chance of being a GOP nominee.  

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On Rehnquist:

How many Pampa ISD graduates went to Stanford for their BA, JD, LLM? How many of them married a CIA analyst? Both?

He wasn't poor when growing up. He grew up in Norwood. Want to see a house from that era in Norwood?  

220px-Thomas_Bossert_House_May09.jpg

And that is irrelevant to the point.

Opportunities appeared for him because he had access to Stanford for 9 years. This is the path and it starts at the local level. A little like Kavanaugh, except Rehnquist served his time in WWII, dedicated himself to learning, and had rock solid credentials. 

Now go look at the Pampa ISD. 

Objection Denied. Data not reliable nor cited. 

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10 hours ago, washparkhorn said:

On Rehnquist:

How many Pampa ISD graduates went to Stanford for their BA, JD, LLM? How many of them married a CIA analyst? Both?

He wasn't poor when growing up. He grew up in Norwood. Want to see a house from that era in Norwood?  

220px-Thomas_Bossert_House_May09.jpg

And that is irrelevant to the point.

Opportunities appeared for him because he had access to Stanford for 9 years. This is the path and it starts at the local level. A little like Kavanaugh, except Rehnquist served his time in WWII, dedicated himself to learning, and had rock solid credentials. 

Now go look at the Pampa ISD. 

Objection Denied. Data not reliable nor cited. 

This is just silly.  The valedictorian at Pampa ISD at a minimum could get a full  scholarship to UT.  If that valedictorian then graduates in the top five of their class at UT and nails the LSAT they will be accepted to every law school including Stanford, Yale and Harvard, especially if they are a minority. If they distinguish themselves and graduate in the top few spots in their  law school class they will have their pick of clerkships with federal judges or supreme court justices if they want them.

You said a Pampa kid could never be a justice.  Yet, we have current sitting Justices that grew up very poor with zero connections.   Sotomayor’s parents barely spoke English and neither had any real  formal education.   She grew up in Govt housing.  But she was super smart and super active and distinguished herself and now she is a Justice.  

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14 hours ago, sheeeit said:

This just isn’t true and the post and the responses to it are just typical drivel. Admittedly I didn’t do a super deep dive into this but of the first handful of justices I looked at these three certainly jumped out.

Sotomayor- Born in NY to immigrant parents that barely spoke English. Lived in public housing for the majority of her early life.

Thomas- Grew up brutally poor in rural Georgia. 

Alito- Son of school teachers. 

if you go back a little to Marshall, Blackmun,  Rehnquist etc. it is actually pretty surprising how so many of the justices came from poor backgrounds.

The one thing they all had in common was that they were really, really smart and graduated at or near the top of their classes at almost every stop.

So I would say that that really, really smart kid from Pampa actually has just as much of a chance as becoming a supreme court justice as anyone else.  
 


 


 

 

That was true between WWII and 1980, but social/economic mobility in the United States has declined pretty radically since then, mostly because of changes to the tax code. 

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An amusing irony.  For all the publitard's bitching about schools inculcating librul values, the FedSoc list of potential justices is largely drawn from those schools declared to be the most librul.

You'd think they'd have to find Hillsdale graduates, or Claremont.or some shit.  Maybe Liberty U.

There's always Chicago, I guess.  But that may actually be a bastion of principled conservatism.  One of the last.

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2 hours ago, Bozo_Casanova said:

That was true between WWII and 1980, but social/economic mobility in the United States has declined pretty radically since then, mostly because of changes to the tax code. 

You can graduate high school with 30 +hours. If your district doesn’t offer that you can go to community college for close to free and transfer those hours to a small branch in any of the state university systems and get your undergrad degree for around 15k per year. Graduate with honors from UT Dallas for instance and do well on LSAT/MCAT/whatever and you can get in to a quality graduate program (maybe IVY if you kill the test). It’s not as easy as it once was — the guys about 5 years ahead of me paid 500 a semester for medical school, and we thought we were getting killed at 6500 per year— but it’s doable. This presupposes engaged / knowledgeable parents as well for support and to help navigate. Pampa valedictorian might not have that. 

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6 hours ago, sheeeit said:

Sotomayor’s parents barely spoke English and neither had any real  formal education.   She grew up in Govt housing.  But she was super smart and super active and distinguished herself and now she is a Justice.  

You have done zero research. 

  • She went to Cardinal Spelling for High School for fuck's sake.
  • Her father worked in a tool and die shop and died when she was nine. 
  • Her mother was wise enough to buy an encyclopedia set for Justice Sotomayor (note: every parent should do this for bright, curious learners in my opinion).
  • Her mom spoke English and worked as a practical nurse and a telephone operator. 
  • She lived in Co-op City during High School.
  • Check out the notables from that Cardinal Spelling High School and Co-op city. And compare those to Pampa and Pampa High School. Night and day.
  • And that is no offense to Pampa. Pampa (and many places in America) were left behind; the austerity zeal buried these small flyover towns. 

Do some research with an open mind. And buy an encyclopedia set - read every entry from A-Z. You will thank me later. Good luck.

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47 minutes ago, washparkhorn said:

You have done zero research. 

  • She went to Cardinal Spelling for High School for fuck's sake.
  • Her father worked in a tool and die shop and died when she was nine. 
  • Her mother was wise enough to buy an encyclopedia set for Justice Sotomayor (note: every parent should do this for bright, curious learners in my opinion).
  • Her mom spoke English and worked as a practical nurse and a telephone operator. 
  • She lived in Co-op City during High School.
  • Check out the notables from that Cardinal Spelling High School and Co-op city. And compare those to Pampa and Pampa High School. Night and day.
  • And that is no offense to Pampa. Pampa (and many places in America) were left behind; the austerity zeal buried these small flyover towns. 

Do some research with an open mind. And buy an encyclopedia set - read every entry from A-Z. You will thank me later. Good luck.

Whoopsadaisie! 

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1 hour ago, washparkhorn said:

You have done zero research. 

  • She went to Cardinal Spelling for High School for fuck's sake.
  • Her father worked in a tool and die shop and died when she was nine. 
  • Her mother was wise enough to buy an encyclopedia set for Justice Sotomayor (note: every parent should do this for bright, curious learners in my opinion).
  • Her mom spoke English and worked as a practical nurse and a telephone operator. 
  • She lived in Co-op City during High School.
  • Check out the notables from that Cardinal Spelling High School and Co-op city. And compare those to Pampa and Pampa High School. Night and day.
  • And that is no offense to Pampa. Pampa (and many places in America) were left behind; the austerity zeal buried these small flyover towns. 

Do some research with an open mind. And buy an encyclopedia set - read every entry from A-Z. You will thank me later. Good luck.

Well, she did benefit from apparently excellent parenting, at least insofar as education was concerned.

The encyclopedia is an excellent idea.  My parents already had a Brittanica set and bought me a World Book.  I read the fuck out of that thing.

  • Hook 'Em 1
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15 minutes ago, Gil Bang said:

Is "Peter Davidson" the SNL guy?  Because, if so, some uptight conservative bitches got a deep dicking that night.

More likely it's this guy:  

Peter Davidson is a General Counsel for the House Republican Conference with three videos in the C-SPAN Video Library.

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