Gas Bandit's Political Thread V: The Vampire Likes Bats

jwhouk

jwhouk

Dei said:
Personally, I wish there was a retention vote on all Justices every X amount of years. We do it for state and district judges, why not the Supreme Court? :p
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I voted disagree because of how my current ballot looked. Over half of the ballot was "vote to retain" of judges.

EDIT: 49 different judges, from state supreme court to county circuit courts.
 
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GasBandit

GasBandit

Staff member
Tress has a point. The idea behind lifetime appointments is that once they're elected, they are beholden to nobody to keep their position.

So, do we want judges that are unrestrained in the application of their personal beliefs - for good or ill - or do we want supreme court justices who have to kowtow to the two party system even more to keep their seats (benches?) on the supreme court?

I think the real fix may be a little of both - limited terms, not lifetime appointments.... but no re-election. You get one stint for.. call it 10 years. (2 for representatives, 6 for senators, 10 for supreme court justices)... then you're done.

Of course, the problem with that is, it would open up the whole thing of "after my term is up, I want a cushy job, so I'm gonna do Lockheed a lot of favors so they'll put me in a corner office sinecure" thing that we already have with military generals.
 
Frank

Frank

At the same time, all it takes is one insane piece of shit to stack the supreme court for a generation....like what's happening now. Being beholden to the 7 lifetime kings of law as the final say in all matters of law is pretty nuts.
 
Dei

Dei

GasBandit said:
Tress has a point. The idea behind lifetime appointments is that once they're elected, they are beholden to nobody to keep their position.

So, do we want judges that are unrestrained in the application of their personal beliefs - for good or ill - or do we want supreme court justices who have to kowtow to the two party system even more to keep their seats (benches?) on the supreme court?

I think the real fix may be a little of both - limited terms, not lifetime appointments.... but no re-election. You get one stint for.. call it 10 years. (2 for representatives, 6 for senators, 10 for supreme court justices)... then you're done.

Of course, the problem with that is, it would open up the whole thing of "after my term is up, I want a cushy job, so I'm gonna do Lockheed a lot of favors so they'll put me in a corner office sinecure" thing that we already have with military generals.
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And Congresspersons. :p
 
ScytheRexx

ScytheRexx

You guys make some good points. It does align with my theory that the only reason Gorsuch and Kavanagh have not hard sided on all Republican hot button issues is that they know even if they don't go with the Republican agenda it's not like they will be kicked out.

Honestly, I just don't want the people IN POWER to pick them. If anything, they need to be an independent body. Like maybe the nomination is done by a nonpartisan committee of lower court judges who make the nomination, which is then approved by the Senate, but without the President. It's better then giving the choice to a single polarized political figure, left or right, and might give us more confidence in the picks.
 
GasBandit

GasBandit

Staff member
ScytheRexx said:
You guys make some good points. It does align with my theory that the only reason Gorsuch and Kavanagh have not hard sided on all Republican hot button issues is that they know even if they don't go with the Republican agenda it's not like they will be kicked out.

Honestly, I just don't want the people IN POWER to pick them. If anything, they need to be an independent body. Like maybe the nomination is done by a nonpartisan committee of lower court judges who make the nomination, which is then approved by the Senate, but without the President. It's better then giving the choice to a single polarized political figure, left or right, and might give us more confidence in the picks.
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we will have to figure out something to maintain the checks and balances between the three branches. The only checks that the legislative and executive branches have on the judicial is that they appoint the judges. If we start electing them directly, that might open the door for them truly to become the robed masters they are often cast, beholden to no one.

Maybe something like a vote of no confidence, initiated by the executive, ratified by the legislative, and then put to a vote in a general election or something.
 
ScytheRexx

ScytheRexx

Texas broke voting records in nearly all it's more democratic counties for the first day. We are seeing more enthusiasm to vote then even Beto got in 2018, with only one county not breaking the 2018 record by less then 1000 votes. Not going to jinx it, but this might actually happen guys, we might actually turn Texas blue. Wish us luck.
 
blotsfan

blotsfan

Hopefully the voters are being diligent and filling out the entire ballot. I know they prevented the ability to auto select all candidates for one party because it killed republicans down-ballot during the Beto election.*

* I don't necessarily like the idea of a checkbox for an entire party but removing it just because it's hurting republicans is shady.
 
Bubble181

Bubble181

ScytheRexx said:
Texas broke voting records in nearly all it's more democratic counties for the first day. We are seeing more enthusiasm to vote then even Beto got in 2018, with only one county not breaking the 2018 record by less then 1000 votes. Not going to jinx it, but this might actually happen guys, we might actually turn Texas blue. Wish us luck.
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Election day it will be Red, and any votes arriving or counted afterwards will just be fraudulent, evil, lying democratic attempts at a coup.
I'm pretty sure that's the Republican playbook we'll be seeing repeated about 20 times, honestly.
 
ScytheRexx

ScytheRexx

The attempts at an October Surprise versus Biden is getting desperate.

The NYPost (has anyone ever taken that rag seriously?) is reporting on supposed leaked e-mails. The kicker? The e-mails were claimed from a computer repair shop, after someone turned in a waterlogged laptop that was never recovered by the owner. The computer supposedly had e-mails, saved in an image format to the hard drive, that implicated Hunter Biden "offering" a Ukranian Official to meet with Joe Biden. This info was offered to the NYPost by Giuliani, who supposedly got it from Barr, who claimed the laptop from the repair shop in December after the store owner turned it over to the Federal Government, for, some reason.

Just to add the cherry on top, the laptop also supposedly has a video of Hunter Biden smoking crack while having sex with a woman, because of course it does.

I wouldn't be surprised if next they find that Biden himself was communicating with Blexor the Conqueror from Mars by this time next week, and openly smoked a blunt on top of Reagen's grave.
 
figmentPez

figmentPez

Staff member
Being an "originalist" is the most flim-flamming bit of double-think I've seen in a while. It doesn't mean anything in particular, but implies an absolute standard.

Trying to stick to the exact letter of the law, as it was understood by the writer, is going against the intention of the authors of the constitution. To quote Joe Pesci in With Honors, "Our founding parents were pompous, middle aged, white farmers, but they were also great men. Because they knew one thing that all great men should know--that they didn't know everything. They knew they were going to make mistakes, but they made sure to leave a way to correct them." The constitution was written to be changed.
 
Dei

Dei

My mom sent me a text that started with "Are you watching the confirmation hearings," and I swiped it off my notifications without reading it because I'm sure it's some hot take on how Dems are all religion hating bullies.
 
Frank

Frank

Remember, Lincoln Project are fucking GOP grifters.

This is how George Conway, for example, feels about the current nominee who has two, TWO!!! years of judge experience and has previously documented her INSANE religious views:

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ScytheRexx

ScytheRexx

The amount of insanity that has ramped up out of the conservatives is giving me whiplash.

Remember when debates used to be two guys arguing about fiscal policy or general social programs and shit?

Now every time I see a conservative on Twitter it's about how Biden is going to raise taxes on Republicans to give free money to welfare queens, blow up all our hospitals and police departments to rebuild socialist death camps, release all the criminals from prison and arm them to be domestic terrorists and defend his pizza pedophile ring while eating babies and abolishing borders so immigrants can move into the suburbs and execute Christians.

What the fuck happened to us.
 
PatrThom

PatrThom

ScytheRexx said:
What the fuck happened to us.
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Not happy with the period nor magnitude with which the pendulum of public opinion and/or emotion swings in this country, some people decided to influence it to get it to swing wider, faster, and more extreme, hoping that we would all be so distracted by the whooshing of the pendulum to notice what else they were doing.
It seems to be working so far.

--Patrick
 
figmentPez

figmentPez

Staff member
DarkAudit said:
And Q and Russian bots.
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- 24-hour cable news networks.
- The decline of people directly paying for news.
- The deliberate undermining of the public education system
- The growth of global mega-corporations
- Voter suppression and gerrymandering
- The growing commercialization of religion

TL;DR businesses stood to make the most money from pushing the system in this direction.
 
figmentPez

figmentPez

Staff member
DarkAudit said:
Cheeto = ratings. Which makes shareholders happy. Which explains all the both sides-ism you get from media outlets that should really know better.
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Oh, it's so much more than that. I don't just mean that media outlets stand to make more from Trump. I mean a highly polarized, two-party system makes it easier for all sorts of giant corporations to make money. Automobile, aerospace, agribusiness, Amazon, Walmart, film studios, etc. Every gigantic business has an easier time when you keep as many people out of politics as possible, especially individuals. It's easier to predict how the extremes are going to react, and it's easier to bribe lobby for your industry when there's only one or two sides that need to be bribed given money.

This has been building since long before Trump decided to run for office. He's the sludge that's left after all the morality has been boiled out of the system, but the pot has been on the stove for a long time.
 
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