Here’s a handy guide to anti-HCR lawsuits. Most of the judges who have heard the cases or are currently hearing the cases are Republicans. But in a lot of cases so far, the suits have been dismissed.
I don’t have a great sense of how much Republican judges are going to act purely as partisans. If you’d asked me before Bush v Gore, I would said not at all, but after that and Citizens United, we can’t be sure of anything.
Splitting Image
28% percent of them will break ranks.
arguingwithsignposts
How many gop judges got their law degrees from Regent Law? I think there’s your indicator.
Baud
Frankly, the Virginia judge that declared the mandate unconstitutional may have done the HCR law a small favor. He seems about as favorable a judge as the Republicans could find, and he refused to declare the whole bill unconstitutional. That will make it harder for the appellate court or the Supremes to go further, even if they agree with this judge.
But I agree, anything is possible with these folks.
freelancer
@arguingwithsignposts:
I’m currently reading this tome of Christianist butthurt. The heroine is a Regent law student. It is a heartbreaking work of staggering dumbness.
MikeJ
@Baud:
Hahahahahahaha!
Have you ever played the Catskills?
General Stuck
OT
Somebody explain to me what good the blogs are for on politics. It’s like getting updates from Mars, here on planet earth.
Alex S.
Yep, the conservative movement goes from institution to institution and either staffs them with its footsoldiers or replaces them with one of their own creations.
Quicksand
@freelancer:
WHY?
Baud
@General Stuck: They were pretty good right until Obama took the oath. Then they gave up on reality. I don’t know if they figured it was more profitable or whether they sincerely feel a need to be anti-establishment and contrarian, regardless of the circumstances.
Joseph Nobles
OT: Apparently Glenn Beck is doing some sort of “America’s First Christmas” special on the Internet in that Pennsylvania town he’s championing. Right this very minute. Anyway, it opened up with Glenny in a Santa suit, talking in what he uses as a Nazi accent, and then saying that Santa was Marxist because he gives away gifts. I have not seen this myself, but @StopBeck says he’s dead serious.
General Stuck
@Baud:
Absolutely true. I could go back in the archives three years or so ago, and find comments where I predicted the netroots would be an awesome weapon for democrats into the future. And now, they are nothing more than an idiot stick. I was very very wrong.
Alex S.
@Joseph Nobles:
Christmas is very unamerican. America is very unamerican.
Dennis SGMM
Good to know that, no matter what the topic, General Stuck can be counted on to sound his one-note bugle and begin another shitstorm.
jwb
@General Stuck: Yes, it’s especially ironic when you could consult the teabaggers and get roughly the same results on Obama’s popularity as the left blogosphere.
Omnes Omnibus
@Alex S.: Christmas is unChristmassy as well.
jwb
@Joseph Nobles: Santa certainly does push beebee jeebus right out of Christmas. But the Marxist thing. Not so much. Cover for capital is more like it. No one sells Christmas better than Santa does.
Davis X. Machina
@Joseph Nobles:
Santa used to bung bags of gold coins through the bedroom windows of teenage girls, so they’d have dowries, and attract decent husbands, and not hang out on streetcorners in early fourth-century AD fishnet stockings, saying “Khaire, ō nautēs panourge” (Hello, naughty sailor…).
The real St. Nicholas of Myra was too whack even for Beck.
jwb
@Omnes Omnibus: On the other hand, since it goes without saying that Glenn Beck is going to attack some target, Santa is more harmless than most.
jeffreyw
Little pieces of red in this thing, too.
General Stuck
@Dennis SGMM:
dude, numbers don’t lie. any shitstorm will be disputing that fact. My purpose is to help end the shitstorm, and once again return to reality. And I am aware that is Pollyanish thinking, sosume.
Dennis SGMM
@General Stuck:
You could have presented the numbers as proof that Obama’s popularity remains high among Democrats without lobbing a bomb at anyone.
Omnes Omnibus
@Dennis SGMM: What fun would that be?
General Stuck
@Dennis SGMM:
I wasn’t lobbing a bomb but dispelling a myth, with , ohnoes, a fact. There shouldn’t be anything controversial about that.
kwAwk
@General Stuck:
Can’t say I understand the constant need to bash the Netroots around here. At least they seem to care and not everybody can be a non-committal moderate.
Did you really vote for Obama so that he could make the centrists in the Senate feel powerful?
John - A Motley Moose
@Dennis SGMM: Oh, right. Posting on a blog without lobbing a bomb at anyone. Spend much time on the intertoobs?
maus
@General Stuck:
Would anyone be more likely to listen to them if they believed exactly as you do, or would they continue to get ignored?
In your world, does the perfect internet political machine just sit and agree with the establishment 24/7?
General Stuck
@maus:
Hey, I just stated my opinion about the liberal blogs. If you have a different one, good for you. I won’t argue with you about that. Unless you insist
schrodinger's cat
@jeffreyw: How is the handsome Homer kitteh?
Martin
@kwAwk:
Yes, but care about what?
79% of liberals still seem to approve. Are you suggesting that they don’t care and that the 21% know better?
arguingwithsignposts
Hard to believe someone was talking about all the “peace” on this blog earlier today.
Omnes Omnibus
@arguingwithsignposts: Why on earth would someone do that?
Omnes Omnibus
Deleted for redundant redundancy.
KG
For what it’s worth, from a lawyer, my sense is that the lower courts tend to be less political in their nature. They don’t make precedent (though a lot of attorneys will cite, and other district court judges will rely on previous decisions). The Courts of Appeal and the Supreme Court are a bit more political, in part because they make binding precedent. And in part because they’ve inserted themselves into the political thicket regardless of what they say.
Dennis SGMM
@John – A Motley Moose:
Only since before DNS.
El Cid
I don’t see why liberal blogs exist at all. They aren’t making statements for any significant Democratic politician, and the opinions expressed typically don’t represent a majority of those surveyed who identify themselves as liberal or Democrats, much less a majority of the American population.
In addition, they serve no useful purpose — at any given moment, all energies must be turned toward the next election, since there are theories that if people do so it will affect the likelihood of Democratic election wins.
In fact, by encouraging the types of discussions which could lead to repeated and even emotional criticisms of major Democratic leaders, they’re actually counter-productive.
arguingwithsignposts
@Omnes Omnibus:
Obviously, just to stir up shit.
Omnes Omnibus
@KG: While this is largely true, there are some real political hacks at the district court level.
kwAwk
@Martin:
My comments were really directed towards those who seem to think Obama’s election was an end to itself.
It seems that some people are perfectly satisfied with whatever Obama does as if Obama is the delimitor of what is possible. If Obama doesn’t do it then it isn’t possible to have been done.
mr. whipple
@General Stuck: I predicted on election night that the feel good wouldn’t last and the first to start complain would be ‘our’ side. I’m usually wrong w/predictions, but I could see it coming in this instance. OTOH, I had no idea it would be so continuously negative, and how often plain stupid.
Just Some Fuckhead
Yeah, but it’s the four or five people that actually disagree with the topic at hand that are ruining the blog, not the handful that start shit just to start shit.
General Stuck
@kwAwk:
I will be clear as to what I am talking about on liberal blogs, and it is not about policy, as I mostly agree with those. It is a pervasive and insidious lack of respect for finding the truth, or working toward finding it out before conclusions are formed. It is all emo, about, all the time, whether it’s about Obama, or anything else. I guess this should be expected for such a medium, and that I should accept it as such. But when I hear on the msm, story after pol story about how the progressive/liberal community, meaning on line, is unhappy about this or that, it makes me mad. Because it leaves the impression that there is a problem, say with general liberal support of Obama, when there is not, overall.
Martin
@kwAwk:
And some people seem to think that Obama is a monarch rather than merely the head of one branch of government out of three.
So, where do we go from here?
Corner Stone
@Just Some Fuckhead: Actually, it’s the people like Hob and the unlamented Chad N Freude who can’t be fucking bothered to read through a thread and see where the damage is being done.
People disagreeing? Oh well, I’m sure it’s all in earnest and honest disagreement.
mr. whipple
They had a valuable goal of helping to elect more Democrats, and since the easy seats were already in our hands this meant electing blue dogs.
Once they had them they were shocked, shocked I say, the Doggies didn’t vote like the represented Berkley. They were therefore happy when the ones they worked so hard to elect all lost reelection.
El Cid
@kwAwk:
The way you say that suggests that you have failed to incorporate it.
Just Some Fuckhead
@Martin:
Yeah, I heard about “some people” on Faux News. Those fuckers are always thinking shit we wanna project onto other people.
El Cid
@mr. whipple: There was a time in which it was not actually known that Democrats would win Congress; at such a time it may have been less possible to know the value of supporting any particular candidate, unless victory was taken as given.
Nellcote
@Joseph Nobles:
Did he mention that the Pilgrims outlawed christmas?
jwb
@Martin: I would take it to mean that the crazifaction on the left is far smaller than on the right. That may actually be a problem inasmuch as it’s often convenient to keep those around who are willing to lob literal and figurative grenades at the other side, and at this point the left wing crazy is just woefully inept. I continue to be perplexed by the tactic of lobbing the vast majority of the grenades at Obama. This tactic only makes sense if you believe the Democratic party is so far gone that it needs to be destroyed and rebuilt from the bottom up, and that it is worth having politics dominated by the Goopers for the next 20 years or more in order to realize that goal. On the other hand, if that’s the goal, methinks it would be better to start at the local level taking over the party infrastructure than wasting time lobbying those grenades at a President who is not going to change directions in any significant way.
fasteddie9318
@mr. whipple:
I assume you think you were right on this prediction, but since teabaggers started protesting literally a month after Inauguration Day, how does it follow that “our” side started complaining first?
El Cid
On the plus side, the bankruptcy of our local government financing means the end to much of big little gubmit soshullism.
Now the citizens will be free of the government confiscating their money, even if it wasn’t because there wasn’t any, and have the chance to develop their independence without the oppressive, patronizing Big Firefighter and Big Crossing Guard telling them they can’t do those jobs just as well via their own private initiatives.
Sly
@General Stuck:
When all you hear or read is nonsense, all you know is nonsense. SATSQ.
However, there are plenty of Americans who believe that the recession was triggered by Jimmy Carter giving a trillion dollars worth of houses to black people who were too busy smoking crack and buying Cadillacs to pay off their loans. The delusions of the left are humorous. The delusions of the right are dangerous (and much more racist).
El Cid
@Sly: Actually, there are not only ‘plenty of Americans’ who ‘know’ that the financial collapse was caused by Jimmy Carter making the banks give homes to blacks who didn’t deserve them, it’s the view of the Republicans on the bipartisan Financial Inquiry Commission.
‘Bipartisan’ in that Republicans said ‘Fuck all y’all’ and are issuing their own report blaming Jimmy Carter, CRA, n******, and of course Fannie-Freddie and presumably Barney Frank and Nancy Pelosi and Chris Dodd.
But mostly Jimmy Carter & the n******.
{Oh, fuck, I didn’t even notice — these assholes even include the budget deficit in a report ostensibly on the financial crisis.}
General Stuck
@Sly: I agree with you wholeheartedly. Doesn’t mean I can’t hope for something little better , and useful from the left blogs.
kwAwk
@Martin:
Can we start by saying that while some of the expectations of people on the left may have been too high, Obama has failed in some aspects to deliver on some things he should have?
jwb
@General Stuck: If you take political blogs as a form of political entertainment, the equivalent of going to the coffee house and shooting the breeze, they make a lot more sense.
jwb
@kwAwk: I don’t think anyone here would deny that the President has made some serious mistakes.
Sly
@General Stuck:
At least they’re usually better than newspapers or television, but YMMV. Because blogs are an interactive medium, there’s a chance (however slim) you might get a commenter on a particular topic who actually has some expertise on the matter.
But the big problem is that American politics is an arcane science. I doubt, for instance, that many self-identified liberal bloggers know what “Rule 22” is, what it says, and why they should hate it with the passion of a thousand suns.
amk
@General Stuck: When you have self-important sounding names for your blog like Daily Kos: State of the Nation, 99% of your job is done. Balance 1% is all about rolling out dkos 4.0.
jwb
@Sly: Blogs compete with newspapers only to the extent that newspapers have devolved to simply quoting and printing opinions.
Hob
OK, I was too slow in updating my pie filter and I know I shouldn’t reapond to this, buf… I’m a little weirded out by being added to Corner Stone’s enemies list. I don’t post here a whole lot (but read pretty much everything) and as far as I know I never said anything to the guy until 20 minutes ago. But then I asked him to dial down the random flamewars on that Thugs thread, because he posted like 20 times just to trade insults with people and never said anything about the topic, so now I’m like the symbol of… something bad, I can’t really figure it out. And I was disagreeing with the main guy he hates, too. Anyway, at least now I know it’s all about me! Everyone please let me know if there’s some way I can fuck up the discourse more.
Sly
@kwAwk:
That’s far too nebulous a phrase on which to base any kind of consensus. What aspects? What things?
Here’s a better question: On what issues and in what manner can the executive branch act without consent from either the legislature or the judiciary?
The answer is: very little. Most of the issues that the left cares about involve money, to at least some extent, so congressional approval is therefor a must. And the United States has one of the most anti-democratic legislatures in the world. Not just in terms of political theory, but in actual, measurable statistics. The old “rotten boroughs” of Great Britain have got nothing on contemporary American congressional districts.
handy
@El Cid:
Now there’s a bona fide Galtian paradise I tell ya! After all, you know who else keeps ’em down with oppressive crossing guards? Well, no not that megalomaniacal dictator silly! This one!
Corner Stone
@Hob: Poor baby.
Martin
@jwb: Yeah, it’s possible that it’s smaller on the left, but I don’t think so. I too am perplexed, but not surprised, at the behavior.
I think the Democratic party’s stated goals are quite a bit more moderate than the Republican party’s. The fringe on the right are much more able to reconcile their goals with those of the party. It’s harder for the left to do that and that leaves more of the fringe out of the party altogether. And as often as the left portrays their side as weak, I would give them great credit for not allowing themselves to be dragged out of the mainstream as politicians on the right seem so eager to do. That’s not easy.
That said, I’m hesitant to say that the crazification of the left is smaller than the right. I run across quite a few people on the left that have taken up ideological positions that simply don’t align with any known evidence, and the presentation of evidence doesn’t sway them one bit. That puts them in the crazification category, as far as I’m concerned. Overall, they’re no where near as loud and fucking obnoxious as those on the right, but they’re no less wrong about things.
And there’s an odd selectivity to all of this. Here in CA I’m watching liberals who are very critical of Obama continue to express support for Jerry Brown. Now, there’s a real possibility that Brown is going to slash spending in the state to a degree that no previous governor has – not Arnold, not Reagan. The Democratic Treasurer suggested a 25% across the board cut of K-12 and have local communities vote to fill the gap with taxation (the states rights argument applied one notch down). That’d be on the order of $20B in cuts. Another idea tossed out is to completely eliminate funding for CA higher ed – turn the 38 UC and CalState campuses into private universities. Now, it’s accepted that this is some kind of a shock doctrine to get the voters of the state to finally endorse higher taxes to save education or whatever it is that gets cut, but I’m having a hard time seeing the very same people or the FDL crowd not completely losing their shit if Obama were to do the same thing, hoping that the voters would come to their senses.
The difference from my perspective is that Brown isn’t pushing against anyone. He doesn’t need to negotiate with anyone other than a heavily Democratic legislature, so nobody views it as a capitulation to any other party, and because of that, they instead warily see this as a rational, reasonable, responsible direction. The Democrats are proposing something that the GOP could never, in a million years even hint at doing, and the most liberal voices in the state are nodding along. The apparent double-standard is really quite striking.
kwAwk
@Sly:
I agree with the notion of the anti-democratic legislature. It is very true. Hopefully Harkin’s fireworks come to pass in Janurary to make things at least a little more democratic.
The odd thing is that generally people have different ideas about where Obama has failed. Some think it was the public option others thing it was the failure to prosecute Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, others think it was the size of the stimumuls package, some think it was don’t ask don’t tell others think it is the failure to get out of Iraq and Afghanistan, and still others think it is the failure to repeal the tax cuts for the wealthy.
I’m a public option guy myself. What I’m beginning to think is that the real problem with Obama is that after so many years getting it handed to us by Bush and Co. liberals are looking for an issue which they can say, dammit we won.
Obama doesn’t seem to want to win in those particular terms. Even if you look at his supreme court choices he has gone to the center. Maybe that’s what he meant by the phrase post partisan, but post partisan kind of sucks if you ask me, because we’re surely going to go back to a state of losing as soon as the next Repub heads into the White House.
In fact post partisan seems to mean that Republicans get everything they want during Republican administrations and half what they want during Democratic ones. Pretty good deal for them.
Joseph Nobles
@Nellcote: Oh, wow, I forgot about that. No, I wasn’t listening, so I didn’t get the scoop on America’s first Christmas. I don’t know if it was in Jamestown or if a colony of Catholic Spain counted, or even if it was Samuel’s prophecy being fulfilled in Third Nephi where the day of Jesus’ actual birth was celebrated by celestial signs above the Western Hemisphere.
Jewish Steel
@kwAwk:
So the question has evolved from, “How has Obama Failed You Today?” to, “What Kind of How has Obama Failed You Today?”
You’re a PO guy but I’m a “what’s he done for the White Sox lately?” guy.
But I think we can find common ground.
Martin
@kwAwk:
Absolutely he’s failed in some aspects – many even. Did you expect the GOP would willingly go along, however? Did you even expect the Dems would willingly go along? And a number of the things that I wish he would have delivered on don’t have compelling reasons to do in the manner I would have preferred, so I can’t exactly argue that someone else held forth a different preference.
Take DADT. The argument that Obama should have issued an EO isn’t a bad argument. It’s appealing in that it provides immediate if not necessarily long-term relief to a problem. But legislative solutions to civil rights problems tend to be much more binding and permanent. Brown vs Board of Ed didn’t change much other than put the energy behind the Civil Rights Act. Even Johnson upholding that ruling through the use of the National Guard didn’t resolve the problem. It took a proper legislative action to really get things going. And had the EO been offered, do you think anyone would be talking about a legislative repeal of DADT right now or would it have been kicked down the legislative calendar, never to see the light of day again? Those calling for an EO weren’t wrong, but there’s a different viewpoint on how to handle the problem that has equal merit and I don’t think we should call that a ‘failing’ unless we are looking for a failing to define.
Further, name one President ever that batted 1.000 on their agenda. This is hard shit – all of it. They’re bound to get a fair bit of it wrong. The good ones get most of it right, and I’d argue that this one has so far, with some chapters still to be written. I certainly cannot imagine Hillary Clinton or any other potential candidate having done any better job. On individual issues, sure, but taken as a whole? No. In fact, I don’t know anyone else who could have gotten HCR done, primarily because Obama didn’t play to the Democratic playbook on that one. He tackled a specific and sensible structural problem, one that nobody in the GOP disagrees exists, and brought along a number of progressive causes toward solving that goal, without trying to meet the progressive agenda. It was a lot like pitching the batter into a double play as a means to get the guy out on first.
jwb
@Martin: Obama has never enjoyed the level of trust that would allow him to do what Brown is doing. If Obama took exactly these same actions for the same reasons, he would be accused of caving to the corporate interests, etc. My own feeling is that this lack of trust stems from early actions with his economic team, when he gave far too much deference to a former president of Harvard, which led to the lethal combination of bad policy and bad politics.
mr. whipple
@fasteddie9318:
People complained about who Obama was vetting for cabinet and who was speaking at the inauguration, fer crying out loud.
Taylor
I have two words: activist judges
Pongo
I don’t think there’s much question about whether the Supremes will act in a partisan manner. Cantor’s urgency in getting the HCR act in front of them tells us all we need to know. The right knows they have a compliant and partisan court. Now they just need to get their pet projects in front of them. I think the highjacking of the Supreme Court conservative activists is the big missing story of our time.