dagblog - Comments for "FL whether: Kav's shady Elian, Schiavo, 2000 election dealing"

Wondering when you were going

PeraclesPlease — Sat, 15 Sep 2018 18:45:58 +0000

Wondering when you were going to rise to the occasion. OK's bringing up the Anasazi and Pueblo people and all the other SW ghost-who-walks tribes. He's been out there in the desert beating dust for so long I can't imagine anyone better for the job. Yippy-kay-yo-kay-yay, motherfuckers.

Not just Americans but

ocean-kat — Sat, 15 Sep 2018 18:08:34 +0000

In reply to Breaking. We are taking the

Not just Americans but numerous dead and undead Americans are angry as well as evil spirits. I wouldn't be surprised if an evil clown rallied ghosts and spirits to torture and kill Collins. Or possibly a spirit possessed dog attacking her in a remote area when she's campaigning.

Breaking. We are taking the

artappraiser — Sat, 15 Sep 2018 17:55:55 +0000

In reply to FL whether: Kav's shady Elian, Schiavo, 2000 election dealing

Breaking. We are taking the threat thing to a whole 'nother level of activism! What happens when one of the most famous Maine'rs of all times who also is famous for scaring people and who has mass market intuition skills about doing exactly that, tweets a threat to Collins to his entire followers list of almost 5 million? It may just work!

IF Susan Collins votes to confirm Kavanaugh, and IF she runs for re-election—two bigs ifs—she will be defeated. It would be unwise for anyone to mistake how angry most Americans are at the way this is being railroaded through.
— Stephen King (@StephenKing) September 15, 2018

In some cases -but not all-

Flavius — Sat, 15 Sep 2018 12:17:40 +0000

In reply to Either Kagan is spinning to

In some cases -but not all- our side does have the advantage of actually being right and clearly so .The suffering should be helped; potential immigrants from all lands should be treated equally ; all first graders should learn to spell; there should be a good doctor available for everyone who needs one.

There isn't a convincing argument against any one of those ~~principles~~ positions.

But in other cases, not so much.

Is inequality a bad thing in itself ? Would the world be a better place if Steve Jobs' second million had been taxed at 90%? Or would that just mean the rest of us would not have smartphones? Should everyone who wants to come here , come here? Is it harassment for a teaching assistant to ask a student for a date?

Are we "right" on issues like that? Is there a "right" side ?

I took a course which consisted of examining "land mark" judicial cases of several decades-ones decided by narrow majorities. Brilliantly argued by both sides. On the first day the instructor had a show of hands: democrats? republicans?

I started as thinking of myself a conservative but as I found I mostly agreed with the liberals , I switched .

But most of the class changed the other way.

"Saying fag was like saying

PeraclesPlease — Sat, 15 Sep 2018 06:28:09 +0000

In reply to Either Kagan is spinning to

"Saying fag was like saying fuck you. It's not like I even considered a penis .." - this is a pretty important point that floors me so often. Many uses of fag or the n-word likely don't express heartfelt anti-gay or racist feeling - they're used cause they know it'll piss off the other person. If I'm angry & arguing with a short person, I might let fly a midget joke (no, probably wouldn't, but some would) just to get their goat. Even this white power sign, now that they know it drives the left crazy, they're going to do more of it. Just like the right-wing guy who said he'd leave his SUV running all night in the driveway, even though that's the antithesis of the "conservatism" he thought he was espousing.

And then we have people like my (ex-) friend who bragged about beating up a guy who hit on him and throwing him in a dumpster. These really are sociopaths who have a problem to be worried about. Unfortunately, the level of hate stirred up and the actual violent murderous that do take place make it hard to just put the idiotic stuff behind.

Either Kagan is spinning to

ocean-kat — Sat, 15 Sep 2018 01:14:28 +0000

In reply to this @ Forward on the same

Either Kagan is spinning to attempt to maintain the influence of the Supreme Court or she just doesn't understand. The court has always been political or at least political during times of change. Even someone with only a general knowledge of history can come up with several examples. The Supreme Court in Roosevelt's era declared much of the New Deal unconstitutional. The truth is the court is political. Four justices almost always vote together and the other four almost always vote together. The 5-4 decisions swing because one justice moved right or left and decided which four justices would be the majority this time or in the minority the next.

Thing is, we could get a "moderate" that was moderate in the opposite way Kennedy was. Socially conservative and economically liberal and we'd have just as many 5-4 decisions. But they would all be different 5-4 decisions. Every previous 5-4 decision would be overturned. Would that be good? Would that be an example of a non-political court?

We call an issue political because we're still fighting over it. Once the issue is firmly resolved it's no longer political. Whether blacks should be slaves was a political issue. Whether women should vote was a political issue. A large amount of our current law that originated during the Roosevelt era was a political issue. No one except for perhaps a tiny fringe element would consider any of those issue political today.

Most of the issues we argue about with the right are not political to me. They are part of my core values and obvious. I didn't come to my views through the democratic party. I don't believe because it's the party belief. I came to my beliefs and choose the party that most clearly fought for them. In that sense I'm not partisan.

When I was in junior high school everyone insulted each other by calling them fags or cock suckers etc. It wasn't like I actually hated gay people or that I even considered that there were men who had sex with other men and that it was bad. Saying fag was like saying fuck you. It's not like I even considered a penis entering a vagina when I said fuck you. There was no moment of revelation when I stopped. There was no intellectual shift. I read something I can't remember what since it was so inconsequential. It could have been a couple of paragraphs in a science fiction novel that simply made the case that two men might want to have sex together and it didn't hurt those who didn't. They should be allowed to have sex and shouldn't get beat up or punished over it. It seemed obvious to me. They want to marry? Why not? It doesn't hurt me at all. There was no shift because I was a child and had no opinion before even though I was mocking my friends by calling them fags.

Honestly, almost all of this seems obvious to me. It's not really political for me. I came to my views almost spontaneously by reading and growing up. Sure there are a few tough spots when we get into the details but for the vast number of issues it seems obvious. And in the vast sweep of history obvious where we should go. We, the Supreme Court, our political leaders just need to decide whether we're going to go there and how fast.

If only you were on the

ocean-kat — Fri, 14 Sep 2018 23:28:37 +0000

In reply to I'm beginning to believe

If only you were on the Supreme Court so you could rule on these issues. From your post it really seems like you're qualified.

I'm beginning to believe

NCD — Fri, 14 Sep 2018 22:58:46 +0000

In reply to I can't find a link to

I'm beginning to believe Obamacare is like slavery, which wasn't so bad, and that MS-13 gangs will overrun my neighborhood if we don't build The Wall. I also believe Republicans sincerely care about the deficit very very much, and that making cakes for gays violates religious freedom. And I understand global warming is a Chinese hoax.

How am I doing?

this @ Forward on the same

artappraiser — Fri, 14 Sep 2018 22:46:37 +0000

In reply to I can't find a link to

this @ Forward on the same talk comes a little closer to what I heard reported (that she thinks they need a replacement centrist in the middle between the two groups):

The jurist mostly skirted political topics at Wednesday’s discussion, but she did address what she described as a “danger” for the Supreme Court today. In the recent past, Kagan said, the court has been seen as split between the left and right, with one jurist in the middle.

“It prevents anybody from thinking that the court is on some team because the court just wasn’t acting as if it was on any team,” she said of the previous configuration. “Sometimes some people got what they wanted and sometimes other people got what they wanted.”

The Senate Judiciary Committee is holding hearings on the nomination of Brett Kavanaugh to the seat recently vacated by the swing voting Anthony Kennedy. Kavanaugh would be President Donald Trump’s second appointment to the court and represent an expected 5-4 conservative majority.

Kagan, who is part of the court’s liberal wing, worried about a court being seen as merely political, especially in the big cases that “people care about.”

I can't find a link to

artappraiser — Fri, 14 Sep 2018 22:39:47 +0000

In reply to I don't see how having a lot

I can't find a link to anything on public radio but I found this Brooklyn Eagle report obviously refering to the same, she said it at a public interview at a Brooklyn school on Weds. with supreme court specialist Dahlia Lithwick. Unfortunately the article doesn't cover everything I heard, it's got this part but not the part about needing a moderate:

[....] Eventually the conversation turned much more serious as Lithwick began to ask about the Supreme Court, and noted that even as politics has become increasingly ugly, decorum in the court has remained.

“It's an amazing thing really because we obviously disagree profoundly on important things, things that each of us feels deeply about,” Kagan said.

“It's a good thing that that's not what the court in recent decades has been like,” she continued. “That's in large part because of the leadership of the Chief Justice [John Roberts] now and the chief justice before him as well.”

When asked about the court becoming increasingly political itself, Kagan explained that it is a dangerous time for the court because if people view it as overly political, its decisions might not be as legitimate in the eyes of the citizens it governs. She said that it’s something the justices themselves are very mindful of.

“There will be 5-4 decisions and 5-4 decisions that people care about and feel they really lost, but you try as hard as you can to reduce the number of those, and you do that by taking big questions and making them small,” she said. “When you take big questions and you don't have to decide the whole thing. You can find a place where more of us agree and can achieve consensus.”

She added that when the court was limited to just eight justices, following the death of Hon. Antonin Scalia, it tried very hard to avoid 4-4 decisions so people wouldn’t lose faith in the court.

“Sometimes it had a bit of a ridiculous air to it,” Kagan said. “We answered a question that nobody was interested in and affected nobody and left the big thing that had to be decided out there. We're not going to take big, big steps when we're divided in this sort of way. We're going to find compromise positions and keep talking until we do.”

Finally, Kagan spoke directly to the students in the audience on the topic of coming to a compromise and said that the key to convincing someone else of your argument is to listen to theirs first.

“You learn things when you open yourself up to different ideas, even ideas that seem foreign or crazy,” Justice Kagan said. “It's all of a sudden, ‘I get that,’ or maybe, ‘I get that and I agree with that.’ You have to be open yourself to changing your mind to change anybody else's.

I'll keep looking.

In the process I ran across @ NPR a good long report on what happened yesterday with Congress by Nina Totenberg, including on his credit card charges