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softlynow

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Posts posted by softlynow

  1. 4 minutes ago, wildcat09 said:

    WAT.jpg

    I'm going to give him the benefit of the doubt and say he meant Catholics are consistently pro-life (against abortion AND the death penalty) whereas the protestant pro-lifers aren't really pro-life, just out for control of poor female uteruses.

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  2. 4 minutes ago, Pescado_Rojo said:

    Does anyone here believe Chuck Schumer has the killer instinct to pull off any of this? Who's the biggest asshole D Senator? Put that person in charge ASAP. 

    This is another reason to leave Warren in the Senate. She's very much needed there. The Dems in the Senate don't have any other bomb-throwers among them, unless you count Gillibrand, but she's into torching her own house. Other than Warren, I think Chris Murphy, Cory Booker and Amy Klobuchar are your best bets to step up effectively in this fight. I have doubts that Schumer will even want to go the direction that's needed.

  3. 7 minutes ago, Brisketexan said:

    And this is the key -- the Dems can't go into this tentatively or half-assed.  They need to go in brutal, vicious, and stating flat out "the GOP left us no choice.  They demanded that we do this by their actions, so we're doing it.  Next question?"

    The first (and possibly one which stymies the whole thing) step to doing this is to get everyone on the same page. The press is going to make a huge deal about the Dems acting like Pubs. That will be off-putting to the older Dems, set in their cravenness, who expect their appearance on TV to be rather pleasant and well in their comfort zone. If the weaklings can't handle a tough sounding question from creampuffs like Willie Geist, stay the fuck off TV and let the new blood take the lead. They should lean heavily on Katie Hill, Eric Swallwell, Ted Lieu and Chris Murphy. They should prepare to go on MSNBC like they're going on OANN. Prepare to bring their A games, because the "liberal" media is going to go completely apeshit. There's nothing those guys like better than a chance to show how objective they are by tearing into what is perceived to be their own "team" (kind of like Kirk Bohls picking Reggie Bush).

    This isn't the well-traveled road to an easy life of wealth and power for these folks. Which is why I'm not really expecting them to take it.

  4. 12 minutes ago, Chuckie Finster said:

    So, uh, what's the list of current Republican senators that would temporarily be replaced with a Democrat should *something* happen to them?  I fear that if Republicans make this a race against time, the general public may try and find ways to run out the clock...

     

    9 minutes ago, Grade of D as in David said:

    That and there's always the chance that someone Pelican Briefs Trump's 3 justices after the election.

    The constant stoking of violence is not going to end well I fear.

    Y'all are gonna scare the DT crowd to death. They're only into tacticool cosplay, not the real thing.

  5. Just now, FondrenRoad said:

    I agree to an extent.  However, Nikki Haley, like so many others, does nothing at all lately except carry Trump's water.  There aren't too many politicians that are able or willing to pick up the full Trump hate platform.  They ride on it when Trump is running it, sure, but outside of Miller and the head of the neo-nazis, nobody else even wants to run the full Trump platform. 

    And when Trump is gone, someone else will take over the GOP and swing it slightly in their direction.  Haley would try to passify the deplorables, but she wouldn't implement most of their platform.  Some of this shit even made Jeff Sessions pause.  Think about that for a second.  If racist Jeff Sessions is pausing, however briefly, because racist tactics are going too far, then they are going to be hard pressed to find a Trump 2.0.

    Nobody else can combine showmanship with a platform of pure hatred, while also being narcissistic enough to focus on the grifting aspect while not giving a shit about running a platform of hatred.  The true believers aren't showman and aren't likable even to the hardcore Trumpers. 

    Haley - Ivanka 2024.

    The deplorables don't have a platform, and don't need pacification they need the hate spice to flow.

    The showmanship got him here, but post-TIA/stroke/whatever he's not a showman any more. He's the crazy fucker at the end of the bar people used to find engaging but now drop by for a story and quickly wander away once their nostalgic needs are met. The cult is formed, and will be sated with mere allusions to the man and what he meant to the cult in 2016.

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  6. 3 minutes ago, longhornmatt said:

    Yeah, I’m actually starting to think Trump himself is an anchor of sorts, but the coalition of disenchanted trolls is actually a pretty formidable base for a while.  The Democrat response of telling them how stupid they are, while true, is also not at all helpful.  

    “You think you’re better than me, Mr. Big Shot?” has a fairly decent chance of working as a party platform the more they lean into it, and the more Democrats lean into, “Well, yes, I do think we’re better.”   We are going to have tough times for a while, and more people are going to become disenchanted and lash out. 

    Add to that the fact that the structural economic problems that are leaving more people behind while enriching a few to fantastical levels, and I don't see this election and year as cataclysm but as prelude.

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  7.  

    2 minutes ago, longhornmatt said:

    And with that 14-4 advantage, they’ve basically made it easier for big business to engage in financial shenanigans and done exactly jack shit about all the things that get social conservatives riled up.  

    The next abortion case will be much like the GOP Congress’s attempt at repealing and replacing Obamacare.  “OMG, they thought we were serious!  Um, sorry, we still can’t reverse Roe v. Wade because ... reasons.   But, listen, you should support Republican politicians in the next election so they can continue the fight to overturn Roe v. Wade!”

    Hell, Blackum wrote Roe v. Wade, and Stevens would go on to be one of the court's most liberal justices. Souter also drifted to the left after being thought of as a probable conservative.

  8. 2 hours ago, hobbes2702 said:

    Because it’s happened before. 
    And I might call a global pandemic at level unseen for 100 years qualifies as a pretty cataclysmic event.

    So cataclysmic on the day 200k covid deaths is reached the NYT cover is about politics as usual. So cataclysmic that, while Biden led Trump in national polls by about 8 in February, he now leads by . . . about 8.

    If you're looking for a fourth turning type event, a reset of the political spectrum, the end of the sixth political party system and the rise of the seventh, this ain't it. If you're predicting one, though, après Trump le deluge.

    In fact, I think we should be quite concerned about what comes next. The deplorables are not going away. When Reagan invited evangelicals into the GOP, he created a new tranche of his base. Their side won some elections and lost some elections, but have yet to disappear as they did between the Scopes Monkey trial and 1980. Trump has done the same with completely moronic pieces of shit. They are an activated political force, and losing this election doesn't end that. And they're not just old people about to die. The next GOP candidate will not alienate the morons. Liberal tears will be a campaign promise for many more election cycles.

    Imagine the power of a GOP that has the deplorables not only excited to continue their nihilistic push for . . . whatever, but rallied around a Nikki Haley who wouldn't be a non-starter with independents and suburban women. Trumpism without Trump has the potential to coalesce quite the lasting coalition.

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  9. 2 minutes ago, wildcat09 said:

    Did everyone take a big dose of stupid this morning? The GOP has basically used biological warfare to kill 250,000 Americans and their poll numbers have barely budged. Yet we've got multiple posters here predicting decades in the wilderness for the GOP.

    Even if the Dems take a clean sweep this year, pass a new Voting Rights Act, pack the courts to ensure it's not thrown out, increase the minimum wage, pass some sort of universal healthcare, and add DC and Puerto Rico as states, you know what political results that will guarantee? Fucking nothing. For fuck's sake, stop pretending, and stop telling other people, that all we need to do is win this November. Winning in November is step one of a hundred. Not the fucking endgame.

     

    I seem to recall each party predicting decades in the wilderness for the other party every 2-4 years. I've never understood why people think one party in a two-party system could ever gain that kind of dominance absent a cataclysmic event like the Civil War.

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  10. 9 hours ago, Anastasis said:

    Yeah, that is the article that I linked from SCOTUS blog in the OP softly.

    I don't know how all this clerking thing works in your field. Are we suppose to automatically assume that the people who clerk certain judges adhere to all of their positions? Or do we analyze their writings on their own merits?

    She has a tiny record, so that’s what we have to go on. She may break from her mentors, and SC justices do often drift, sometimes pretty far, from the ideologies of their early careers, but you can’t link to their future thoughts. 
     

    I have to laugh that I blew past your OP link. I had read that previously, and went searching for more on ACB when RBG died. There’s very little out there to discuss. Not that any of it matters beyond predicting how consistently she’ll did with Alito/Thomas/Gorsuch/Beer! Most likely, quite. There will be little suspense if the court remains at 9 members. 

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  11. 1 hour ago, Anastasis said:

    Where is she at on civil liberties? Can we get some legal analysis of her positions?

    She’s been with the 7th for less than 3 years. She’s a former Federalist Society member and has the profile cons love. Clerked first Scalia. (If she’s another Scalia, she’ll always side with LE when drugs are involved, and the 4th amendment won’t mean much outside of your home). Below is the Scotusblog writeup from 2018, and there are a few mildly controversial rulings in there. I’m sure another rundown will be forthcoming. 
     

    https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.scotusblog.com/2018/07/potential-nominee-profile-amy-coney-barrett/amp/

  12. 1 minute ago, TwiceHorn said:

    Well, that's not horribly egregious, but I think takes an unduly narrow and academic view of the whole thing, which makes sense given who she is.

    We need more lawyers with broader legal and judicial experience on the Court.

    Agreed. She’s not satan and will be alright, probably. But the court rolled over and played dead when the war on drugs heated up, and she’s not carrying the defibrillator it needs.

    And her confirmation will highlight yet again the hypocrisy of “libertarians” like a few on this board who shrink from every opportunity to actually curtail state power in favor of guns rulings that mean little, fetus rulings that won’t mean much and rulings allowing the wealthy to hoard more wealth that are what this game is really all about. 

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  13. 31 minutes ago, TwiceHorn said:

    Can you point me to that dissent?  I googled for it and couldn't find it.

    A real conservative, not a hackjob lawnorder bullshit artist, should be strongly in favor of civil liberties, including and especially those reserved to criminal defendants.

    http://media.ca7.uscourts.gov/cgi-bin/rssExec.pl?Submit=Display&Path=Y2018/D05-29/C:17-1727:J:Hamilton:aut:T:fnOp:N:2162392:S:0

     

    Her opinion starts on page 35. 

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  14. 6 minutes ago, Mole said:

    It seems like a good opportunity to not religiously persecute then. Most (almost all) Christian claims of persecution in America are complete nonsense, but some of this stuff here is treading dangerously close. It's a perfectly valid line of questioning to determine if the potential Justice will fairly apply the law, but when those questions are predicated on caricatured and often bigoted interpretations of a person's religious beliefs, that's an entirely different matter.

    The word covenant is a bit of a conservative Christian shibboleth; describing it as a "loyalty oath" is generally not accurate. No doubt though, some covenants are really bad for those signing them, so it's a good personal rule to avoid them. My knowledge of People of Praise is about 1 inch deep, but their materials and the articles read a lot like many Christian groups that I've been associated with except for the Catholic obsession with hierarchies.

    Y’all do as you like on the religious angle. Boring.

    She penned a worrying dissent to me on the 6th Amendment right to counsel which tells me she’s exactly the wrong kind of justice to help reform our broken criminal justice system. Of course we knew that when she became a darling of the cons. And no, I won’t find any discussion on her civil rights attitudes interesting either. Nor her dismissiveness of Starr decisis. It’s noise past learning who she is. She’ll get on unless it’s revealed she thinks tax cuts violate the third amendment or something equally bizarre that would spook cons. 

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  15. 24 minutes ago, Gatorubet said:


    Or he knows that they will be losing the Senate - and he loses nothing by forcing the nomination.

    Even if they keep the Senate Mark Kelly could be sworn by Nov 30 and that might be enough to prevent a lame duck confirmation.

    He’s going forward because he will win. That’s the calculation, always. Why not when every norm broken, every new height of hypocrisy reached only firms up the evangelical/deplorable/grifter/feed the rich base?

    If there ever is a Dem-dominated federal government again they have to not be the pussies they always are. Anyone really think that’ll happen?

  16. 3 hours ago, Red Five said:

    You can listen to them while you do other things. That’s like saying who has time to listen to music?

    True. But music is enjoyable. If my background noise is somebody talking, they’re gonna be either intelligent and very knowledgeable about something(s) or funny as hell. I guess if you enjoy train wrecks he’s your guy. 

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  17. 3 minutes ago, Anastasis said:

    It’s gonna be interesting watching senators flirt with the religious test line during the hearings. 

    Meaningless noise isn’t interesting. No one’s mind is changed. No votes are in doubt. Liberals will use it to rally the pro-choice troops. Cons will play up that Christians are being persecuted again. Unless you’re life revolves around tv news, who fucking cares?

  18. 3 hours ago, Voldemort86 said:

    I’m starting to not worry as much about winning this election. 
     

    independemts are going to see this country shifting so far to the right because of the courts alone that they will overwhelmingly vote for Biden. Trumps crappy 40% base can’t outweigh a bunch of pissed off democrats and independents.

    i know the damage is done because Ginsburg didn’t make it, but I see relief coming in a few months. 

    I feel a bit better not because of independents but because turnout on the Dem side is going to be 2008 levels or better. That alone will do it. Independents are morons, and don’t seem swayed by left-right anyway. The additional gravy, especially in Arizona and maybe a couple other states (Georgia, Texas, SC Senate race?) is defecting Pubs, not necessarily Indys.

  19. McConnell said what he said because he knows he’s got the votes OR he thinks losing the vote helps in November. Maybe both. Collins, Murkowski and Romney aren’t necessary. Hell, you could let another vote nay or abstain if Manchin votes yea like he did for Justice Beer!

    This one is likely done.

  20. 2 minutes ago, Parliament said:
    10 minutes ago, David Dennison said:
    He's going to get his justice during the lame duck.
    Fuck.

    Is that possible? I'm just asking.

    John Fucking Marshall was appointed by lame duck John Adams. Yes, it’s possible.

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