I’m sure he’ll heh-indeed some Megan McArdle counter-theory soon enough, but for now Kevin Drum puts it well:
If the court does overturn the mandate, it’s going to be hard to know how to react. It’s been more than 75 years since the Supreme Court overturned a piece of legislation as big as ACA, and I can’t think of any example of the court overturning landmark legislation this big based on a principle as flimsy and manufactured as activity vs. inactivity. When the court overturned the NRA in 1935, it was a shock—but it was also a unanimous decision and, despite FDR’s pique, not really a surprising ruling given existing precedent. Overturning ACA would be a whole different kind of game changer. It would mean that the Supreme Court had officially entered an era where they were frankly willing to overturn liberal legislation just because they don’t like it. Pile that on top of Bush v. Gore and Citizens United and you have a Supreme Court that’s pretty explicitly chosen up sides in American electoral politics. This would be, in no uncertain terms, no longer business as usual.
I blame Democrats for blocking the nomination of Robert Bork. That’s what started all of this.
NobodySpecial
I blame John Cole for making bad remarks about lawyers, who are as touchy as the 1%.
Patricia Kayden
Maybe if it is overturned, it will rally the base to vote for Obama and not sit on the sidelines. Millions of Americans are benefitting from the ACA right now and have a vested interest in getting it reinstated by Congress.
NR
The correct decision would be to overturn the mandate, because nowhere is Congress empowered to force people to give money to private corporations.
However, the corporatist leanings of the Supreme Court ensures that the mandate will NOT be overturned. The same court that gave us Citizens United will fall over themselves to uphold the mandate, because it brings about a massive transfer of wealth from American citizens to private corporations.
NobodySpecial
@NR: Pull the other one, it’s got bells on it.
kay
It’s refreshing to read the truth, but I still think media will rally to the side of the justices, and order us to get over it.
Remember when newspapers “counted the votes” in Florida and declared Bush the winner, AFTER Bush v Gore?
I’m still amazed by that. “We counted the VOTES, so shut up”
Since when do newspapers count votes? We were just supposed to accept that? “Oh, okay. Sorry I asked”
srv
Obama really didn’t give Scalia a choice once he punted on single payer.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Seems to me the SC has become less of a national issue since ’92. I don’t get it. I frequently have to remind myself that we political junkies are a tiny, tiny minority, but CU makes me want to kick the country in the collective ass. Even the people who just watch their local news for the weather and sports have to have some inkling about Sheldon Adelson. Do they really think this guy is writing checks for a hundred million dollars cause Romey’s on their side? Beam me the fuck up, as the man says.
sort of on-topic: Sullivan (yeah, yeah, I know) says the WaPo spiked a story on a free clinic in Tennessee because:
j
This the test case that will tell us whether Fascism has taken over the country.
And they don’t need the “cross in one hand and the Constitution on the other”.
My guess…6/3 FOR!
Fire Island Johnny has a shit load of medical problems and he doesn’t want to be the Hitler of the USA.
The Fascists lose. WE win!
Comrade Scrutinizer
Phixed.
lol
@NR:
Maybe we can also overturn the mortgage mandate which forces me to take out a mortgage or pay more money in taxes.
beltane
@kay: I was, and am, dismayed, that protests did not erupt around the country when the Bush v. Gore decision was announced. The populaces in other countries with even worse media than ours manage to must a little outrage when an election is stolen or won under questionable circumstances. We submitted with barely a whimper and that is not to our credit.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@beltane: Remember David Broder: Gore’s refusal to concede was the worst national crisis since Kennedy was shot.
David Koch
But, but, but…. liberal True Progressives told me there would be no difference bwtn Bush and Gore on Supreme Court nominations.
Baud
@kay:
How about we coin the term “Death by John Roberts” for those who die because they can’t afford health care?
Omnes Omnibus
@NobodySpecial: Fuck you, we’re touchier than the 1%.
Comrade Dread
Also too, both sides do it!
Valdivia
I forget, who said this gem about the whole utopian paradise of DC disappearing after the Bork thing?
@Omnes Omnibus:
been reading, almost done :)
NR
@lol: The mandate penalty is a punitive fine for those who don’t buy insurance, not a tax deduction for those who do. Try again.
Steve
@NR: You’re the one who needs to try again. Much as we might wish the Constitution had some sort of ban on privatization, it doesn’t.
Omnes Omnibus
@Valdivia: Cool. Be kind.
NR
@Steve: Nowhere in the Constitution is Congress empowered to force people to give money to private corporations.
Baud
@Valdivia:
I think I told you yesterday that the health care decision would come out on Monday. Now I’m hearing rumors that they might have a special day for it later next week. So I don’t know.
beltane
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Our shitty media is no better at its core than Russian state media under Putin or even the old Soviet media. All of them are relentless in pushing a certain agenda; our media just does it American-style with appeals to “civility” and faux-centrism, things that lull people into thinking that the Very Serious people in charge know what is best and have our country’s best interests at heart.
Baud
@NR: Just like there’s nothing in the constitution that empowers Congress to grant legal rights to unions.
Gin & Tonic
OT, and maybe it’s been mentioned, but I’ve been on airplanes and stuff. Reuters is reporting that our friend George Zimmerman and his wife engaged in at least 16 cash transfers of sums between $9,000 and $9,990 in those days after the shooting when he was “broke.”
Some tax attorney should explain “structuring” to him.
Anoniminous
What do you call five lawyers in a six seat tumbril on their way to meet Monsieur Guillotine?
A waste of Public Transportation resources.
What do you call a busload of people heading to St. Patrick’s Cathedral on Sunday morning?
Mass Transportation.
(Thank you. Thank you. I’m here forever. Don’t forget to tip your waitress.)
The Dangerman
@Baud:
Or, for that matter, allows the USSC to grant personhood rights to corporations.
Don
I think we really CAN trace the resurgence of the vandals, and it started with Newt doing his character assassination of Jim Wright in ’79. It showed that there are no consequences if you just yell loudly enough that the media are biased when their reports don’t fit your narrative. Then came Ronaldus Magnus, and the rest, as one says, is IOKIYAR.
Quaker in a Basement
That’s a rather pointless bit of snottiness, isn’t it?
Valdivia
@Omnes Omnibus:
I promise. I reserve my hatchet only for special occasions ;)
@Baud:
No worries. I read that too somewhere. So it could be this Thurs, next Monday or the following Thurs. I am prepared for the law to be struck down now.
Metrosexual Black AbeJ
@Quaker in a Basement:
It won’t be when he does it.
kay
@Baud:
I’m sick about it. I’ve been really lucky as far as health, but our youngest had eye surgery 2 weeks ago and he got really excellent care at U of Michigan childrens’ hospital. I hate hospitals and I was close to hugging staff members in gratitude I was so relieved it went well.
I have no idea how we would pay for it w/out health insurance. I don’t know if they even take people who don’t have insurance. His EYES. Jesus. Just takes it right out of the abstract, fast.
Chris
@beltane:
Though you can be sure it would’ve gone differently if the decision had been the other way around.
Omnes Omnibus
@Valdivia:
I am not.
Baud
@kay: There are so many things we take for granted, even if we intellectually understand the situation others are facing.
Glad to hear all is well with your youngest.
Valdivia
@kay:
I am with you on this. My dad just had brain surgery and I worry every day about him and how we would cope if he didn’t. These people are making decisions without even understanding superficially how the health market operates. Forget the hackery of the legal arguments on the right, if they are going to go by politics surely at least try to get the basics of what you will be ruling on.
trollhattan
@Baud:
I’d guess the “Special Day” will become the new Wingnut Christmas(tm), replacing 9/11.
Valdivia
@Omnes Omnibus:
I meant that I am mentally already assuming that. Prepared for what comes nest definitely not.
@kay:
and also: glad your youngest is ok from his surgery.
goblue72
@NR: ACA does not force you to buy insurance. If your employer does not provide insurance AND you choose not to insure yourself, then you pay a tax. You are perfectly free to remain uninsured.
Baud
@trollhattan: I don’t want to predict what they’ll do. I really don’t know.
Mnemosyne
@NR:
The mandate penalty is a tax you pay to cover your health costs in case you get sick without insurance. That money goes to the government, not to a private company:
So, really, if you’re all het up about being forced to give money to a private company, shouldn’t you opt to go without insurance and pay the “fine” (really, take less of a tax refund) since, after all, that money goes to the government?
trollhattan
@goblue72:
Shhh, details is hard!
beltane
@trollhattan: Except a lot more Americans will die as a result of this new wingnut Christmas than because of 9/11.
David Koch
@NR: Name one liberal True Progressive scholar who supports your view. Even the imminent Glen Greenwald, perhaps the greatest legal mind, evah, rejects your view.
trollhattan
@Baud:
Honestly, given the current lineup I expect each SCOTUS decision to go the opposite of what I hope/presume. That way, I occasionally am pleasantly surprised.
Very occasionally.
Omnes Omnibus
@beltane: The decision has not come out. No one is dying yet and it is possible that no one will.
Baud
@trollhattan:
That’s a good rule of thumb. I agree with this approach.
Mnemosyne
Also, too, though people are freaking out at the unbridled hackitude of Scalia, I don’t think anyone realistically thought he could be one of the swing votes on PPACA. As a non-lawyer, I’ve always thought that Roberts would be the most likely conservative to break with the pack assuming that Kennedy swings to the “uphold” side. I always assumed that Scalia, that hack of hacks, would never be able to uphold a law passed by a n… Democrat.
dslak
@NobodySpecial: Fuck you, you shithead weasel, GG groupie.
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
@Omnes Omnibus: Indeed we are. Even when we’re part of the 99% and not engaged in the practice. And nobody better forget that, with nobody special to take certain note.
kay
Ginsburg scared me with her “dissents are valuable.”
I like her, with her little old lady white gloves, but I wish she wouldn’t issue cryptic paragraphs that I’ll read over and over.
Tonal Crow
@NR:
Wrong. The mandate is a run-of-the-mill conditional tax credit. If you have qualifying insurance, you get the credit. If you don’t, you don’t get it. It’s just like the child tax credit — if you have qualifying children, you get the credit, and if you don’t, you don’t get it. That it’s phrased in terms of a “penalty” makes no difference whatsoever, because the effect is exactly the same as any other conditional tax credit.
Congress gets power to enact conditional tax credits from its general power to tax and spend, which comes from the Tax-and-Spend Clause, Art.I s.8 cl.1. As far as I know, not even Thomas has questioned conditional tax credits.
ETA: Also, Congress forces you to buy every imaginable kind of thing from private corporations, many of which you will never use, and the vast majority of which you will never see or even know about. It’s called “taxation”. This is an entirely different question from whether Congress can force you to consume a product; that involves the negative right of substantive due process (look it up).
Baud
@kay:
I’m sure she was just being kind to Scalia. :)
OzoneR
@NR:
blatant lie, it’s a tax.
Steve in DC
@NR:
Like that’s ever stopped them. Constitutionality of the issue aside (and I agree with you but as we are not lawyers…) what can stop them? Congress has used federal funding to jerk the chain on states to make them enact laws or enforce standards. Hence the drinking age, hence many vehicular regulations, hence insurance.
The constitution doesn’t matter much when congress can simply curtail or add federal funding as needed. Most states do not have a choice but to comply and then pass laws that congress cannot.
If the court strikes the mandate down, there is nothing stopping congress (if it wants to) from passing another bill to get around it.
OzoneR
but they totally would’ve been cool with single payer.
WereBear
@kay: So glad it went well. Anything with the helpless goes right to your gut.
Yes. What kind of lives do these Republican supporters live? Or they ignorant, or lucky, or what?
Omnes Omnibus
@Steve in DC: I honestly confess that this comment has defeated me. There is so much inaccuracy, fuzzy logic, and general fail here that I genuinely do not know where to start.
Steve in DC
@Omnes Omnibus:
Congress can’t mandate certain things, states can, congress uses funds to force states to do this. It’s happened before and still happens now.
mclaren
This offers one of the most important reasons why the obot argument “We have to vote for Obama because otherwise a Republican will appoint more far-right justices to the Supreme Court!” is bogus nonsense.
Republicans, whether on the Supreme Court or in the House of Representatives or in the White House, simply do not believe the rules apply to them. They will systematically violate the law and break all the laws to do anything possible to block the Democrats. This won’t change if we keep electing Democratic presidents. It will merely make the Supreme Court and the congress more extreme and more violently contemptuous of the law.
Mino
Kill me now. Lanny Davis and Michael Steele have formed a consulting partnership.
gogol's wife
@mclaren:
I love the idea that seeing Obama as preferable to Romney (on any number of counts, not just Supreme Court appointments) makes one an obot. I am an obot, but you don’t have to be one to see the difference between the two men. If you’re not an idiot.
Baud
@mclaren:
You do understand that presidents appoint Supreme Court justices, right?
OzoneR
@mclaren:
Hey, Crazy McLooney, the reason SCOTUS is turning into a political arm of the GOP is BECAUSE we let GOP Presidents win and appoint 5 of the sitting justices. What would Citizens United look like if President Gore or Kerry had replaced Rehnquest with Sotomayor?
Steve in DC
@Omnes Omnibus:
Here is the best example, federal highway act… it’s enforced by yanking transportation funds. Now a state can perfectly well not follow it and the legal standing of it is doubious, but it doesn’t matter, don’t set your minimum age at 21 and congress yanks 10% of your funding.
It’s always about the cash.
coin-operated
@Tonal Crow:
Damn…best explanation I’ve ever seen on the individual mandate. I’ll be borrowing that one for ammo against my wingnut friends. Thank you in advance…
Omnes Omnibus
@Steve in DC: Congress doesn’t force the states to do things – well, I guess it forces them to make a choice between Federal funds and certain policies.
Gex
I just love (and by love I mean “want to scream with rage and tear my hair out”) all the idiots who say they see no difference in the two parties. All the billionaire tycoons who profit off of lowering our living standards sure as hell see a difference.
doofus
@mclaren: You’re funny! If Obama can replace Scalia or Thomas or Alito then the court will have more extreme dissents, but much more liberal majority opinions.
[Edited to correct grammer.]
Omnes Omnibus
@Steve in DC: The legal standing of it is rock solid. You may not like it, but that is a bit immaterial.
burnspbesq
@Omnes Omnibus:
And with good reason. If y’all would just stop blaming us for the antics of people who were bugfuck insane before they ever set foot inside a law school, we’d get over ourselves.
Tonal Crow
@mclaren: That’s remarkably poor reasoning, unless you believe that Romney will appoint justices along the lines of Sotomayor and Kagan instead of Scalia and Thomas clones, in which case it’s remarkably poor judgement.
grandpa john
Calling Mr Nader, I need it explained to me again how there was not a dimes worth of difference between Bush and Gore especially when it comes to appointments made by the winner, along with a couple of off budget wars and 9-11 and a major recession because of policies and well you get the gist, I could go for a while about the destructive effect on our country as a result of the decision by the SC declaring which of the 2 “not a dimes worth of difference” candidates, would become president.
Steve in DC
@Omnes Omnibus:
That’s pretty much forcing “do what we say or we pull funds”. Hell we are now yanking funds from states that screw with planned parenthood to help keep that in play. This game is played with military bases all the damn time.
Make no mistake congress can make a state it’s bitch in an instant even if it’s not legal, just yank funds and starve them out. Texas just got it’s medicare cut over planned parenthood, oooppppsss!
burnspbesq
@Gin & Tonic:
A bit late for that.
burnspbesq
@The Dangerman:
Except that the Supreme Court didn’t do that. Congress and the state legislatures did when they enacted and ratified the Fourteenth Amendment. Or, alternatively, the Framers did when they didn’t include a clean break with English common law in the Constitution.
You don’t have to be a lawyer to know American history.
Davis X. Machina
@Gex: It’s fashionable. That’ll drive people to do a lot of dumb things….
Steve in DC
@grandpa john:
This one is too easy….
We don’t know what Gore would have done post 9/11 so that’s a non argument.
Clinton, with Gore! Presided over the deregulation of Wall Street that caused this mess just as much as Bush did.
Gore is a coropratist, what’s to say his picks would have been “progressive”, he sure as hell wasn’t one.
Sorry but for a lot of us we are out of federal politics till we get a leftist populist, it’s up to you guys to get one through the primaries. But since it’s all social issues all the time, maybe you’ll wake up when the Theocracy hits and we can get a better deal out of you. Till then, let’s watch it burn!
So if you are Andrew Sullivan sure, Gore would have been better, if you give a damn about economic issues it’s been the same.
Yutsano
@burnspbesq: Calling it now: they don’t report the 1099 from PayPal on their 2012 return.
Omnes Omnibus
@Steve in DC: I am having trouble seeing the illegality of it. Doesn’t Congress choose how Federal funds are spent? Look, WI was going to get money to build high speed rail lines through the state, but the idiots in charge decided they didn’t want the trains. Should WI still have received the money? Walker wanted it for highways. I say no. The money was designated for certain purpose; if you want the bucks, you need to use them for their intended purpose.
burnspbesq
@Yutsano:
You’re just hoping that you get to levy on their assets after there’s a match made, a 90-day letter issued, and they default.
burnspbesq
@Steve in DC:
Carried to its logical conclusion, your argument says that all Federal money to the states has to be a single block grant. That is not and never has been the law.
Sophist(from droid)
@NR: So I can tell the gov. to stop spending my tax dollars on JDAMs from Ratheon?
Mnemosyne
@Steve in DC:
I know, it’s so weird that when the states say they’re going to deny healthcare to an entire gender, the federal government takes that money away instead of saying that it’s okay for them to only spend it on men. Not that we should be spending money on prenatal care or cancer screening for bitches, amirite? Let ’em die, because that will totally show your sister that she’s wrong and you’re right about everything.
Mnemosyne
@mclaren:
Shorter mclaren: if we just do everything the Republicans want, maybe they won’t hurt us!
Omnes Omnibus
@Mnemosyne: Come on now, you are just being a social liberal. Get over it.
Lurker
@WereBear:
Or what. I know fierce Republican/Libertarian opponents of the ACA who are now broke, dead and/or blind because they were unlucky enough to get sick without health insurance.
I also know fierce opponents of the ACA who are uninsured and OK because they were lucky enough to not yet get sick while uninsured.
At least one of the lucky ones has uninsured children. He insists that the paltry $1000/month he saves by not paying insurance premiums for his family will be more than enough to cover medical bills if things go bad.
SiubhanDuinne
@beltane:
What, less than two weeks before Christmas?
grandpa john
@Steve in DC: Bullshit, we certainly know that Gore would not have duplicated the actions taken by Bush, nor would he have appointed right wingers to the SC as well as lower courts. he also would not have ignored the August intelligence briefing ;meaning that there is a good probability that 9-11 would have been avoided completelyand certainly would not have fought 2 wars off budget while cutting taxes on the wealthiest citizens.
NR
@goblue72: The idea that the mandate penalty is a tax is absolutely ridiculous. A person does nothing, and they are taxed? Complete nonsense. You cannot tax inactivity.
No, the mandate penalty is a punitive fine–a punishment–for doing nothing; i.e., for not buying insurance.
Omnes Omnibus
@NR: Nope.
NR
@David Koch: And I should care about that because…?
NR
@Omnes Omnibus: Great argument.
Yutsano
@NR:
Uhh…what? You can most certainly get taxed for inactivity. Don’t file your tax return next year. See what happens. Hint: you’ll get taxed and it won’t be pleasant.
Baron Jrod of Keeblershire
@NR: By that standard, every year I’m taxed for not having a mortgage.
Please explain the difference between the mortgage mandate and the health insurance mandate, as you would to a small child.
Mnemosyne
@NR:
Please give us at least two examples of people in the United States who will never — not once — in their lives use healthcare. They will never get a vaccination, they will never visit a doctor, they will never have an accident and have to visit the emergency room. Keep in mind that for someone to completely avoid the healthcare system for their entire lives, their mother gave birth to them at home without a doctor, nurse or midwife present.
If you can present us with at least two (2) examples of people who will have to pay this penalty who (A) have never received any healthcare in their entire lives and (B) are planning to drop dead of whatever kills them without ever receiving any medical intervention, then we will grant you that “inactivity” is being taxed. Otherwise, it’s not “inactivity” when you get a vaccination, or visit the ER without insurance. You’re actively using the system but not paying into it, and that’s what the tax penalty is meant to cover.
SiubhanDuinne
@DougJ / top:
Hey, what happened to Metrosexual Black?
NR
@OzoneR: Single-payer is unquestionably constitutional. Congress has the power to tax–this is clearly enumerated in the Constitution.
fuckwit
@beltane: Exactly. The business of America is business– big business. And newspapers and TV shows are nothing more than advertising salespeople.
Dmitry Orlov told a great story about how his uncle fed his goats copies of Pravda, because goats can digest any cellulose, even if it is filled with Communist propaganda. If Orlov had a goat today, he said, he’d feed it The Wall Street Journal.
NR
@Mnemosyne:
Except that under the ACA, you’re not just paying into the healthcare system. You’re paying for CEO bonuses and corporate profits for the private insurance companies. A fact that nobody here seems to want to acknowledge.
DougJ
@SiubhanDuinne:
See the next post I wrote.
taylormattd
@NR: If only we could go back to the amazing medicare-for-all plan we had before the ACA.
KILL THE BILL.
NR
@taylormattd: The only reason we didn’t have Medicare for all is because Obama and the Democrats decided we wouldn’t have it. They were more concerned about protecting the profits of the big insurance companies than they were in improving the health care system.
Omnes Omnibus
@NR: No, you are not. If you choose not to get health insurance, you will be taxed. This tax will go toward funding your care if you get hit by a truck. You don’t have to give money to CEOs.
Baron Jrod of Keeblershire
Oh NR, I think you missed my question. An honest mistake, I’m sure, so I’ll repeat it. Regarding the mandate being a tax on inactivity:
Remember, when I take a mortgage I’m paying for CEO bonuses and corporate profits for the private
insurance companiesbanks.Come on, troll. Earn your 20 cents a post or whatever the Super Koch Bros. are paying you. Answer the fucking question.
mclaren
@gogol’s wife:
The differences between Romney and Obama are entirely cosmetic and rhetorical.
Obama supports and offers and signs the legislation Romney has said we would support and offer and sign, but afterwards Obama gives eloquent speeches about dignity and freedom and economic justice.
Yutsano
@mclaren:
What’s this “we” shit, white man?
mclaren
@Mnemosyne:
Shorter Mnemosyne: signing off on more tax cuts for billionaires and murdering children without charges or a trial and giving speeches explaining how we must slash the social safety net in order to boost military spending are core liberal values, and explain why we have to vote for Obama.
DougJ
@Yutsano:
You’re mixing Tonto and Sweet Sweetback here, my friend.
mclaren
@Tonal Crow:
That’s remarkably poor reasoning, unless you haven’t realized that there’s a bipartisan consensus in America to boost military spending and continue fighting endless foreign wars and slash the social safety net and gut the bill of rights and endlessly expand the unwinnable War on Drugs and the unwinnable War on Copyright Infringement and the military/police/surveillance state — and this bipartisan consensus applies to judges as well as elected politicians. And if you don’t realize that, that’s also remarkably poor reasoning.
pseudonymous in nc
“Pack the court, pack the court, pack the motherfucking court.”
doofus
@NR:
Hospitals have CEOs that need paying too, whether the ACA gets struck down or not. (It’s amazing to me that people never talk about provider pay and reimbursement rates in these discussions.)
mclaren
@OzoneR:
And now the crackpot fringe chimes in with yet another crayola-scrawled manifesto from the locked ward at Bellevue.
Gotta love reasoning this garbled and scrambled. Let’s parse this crazy logic:
[1] Bill Clinton, a Democratic president, was in the White House for 8 years, and able to appoint Supreme Court justices;
[2] Al Gore would, like Bill Clinton, appoint wonderfully liberal judges to the Supreme Court;
[3] The Supreme Court is packed with far-right reactionary fanatics because for the 8 years before Bush 43 got into office, Bill Clinton appointed the Supreme Court justices.
Great reasoning there, skippy.
It cannot possibly have escaped your notice that if your argument is correct then it fails, while if it is incorrect, I’m right and you’re still wrong.
If your argument that Gore would appoint the kinds of justices Clinton did is correct, then your argument fails because Clinton had 2 terms to appoint magnificently liberal judges…and where the fuck are they?
If your argument that Gore would appoint the kinds of justice Clinton did is incorrect, then you’re wrong and I’m right.
Love it. Only a genius like OzoneR could manage to construct a line of logic in which I’m vindicated regardless he’s wrong or right.
Steeplejack
@Lurker:
Hell, Ron Paul’s campaign manager died $400,000 in debt because he didn’t have health insurance. The dissonance, it is cognitive.
mclaren
@DougJ:
He’s actually trying to make hay out of a one-letter typo. This is what passes for “thinking” on this blog.
Coming up next: I omit a period and Yutsano proclaims me functionally illiterate, mentally ill, and brain damaged.
Oh well. I guess Yutsano’s demented overreaction to a one-letter typo isn’t as bad as this cellphone’s missing dot that killed two people and put three more in jail in Turkey.
Omnes Omnibus
@mclaren: Breyer and Ginsburg are pretty decent. Breyer is a bit too corporatist but ultimately he is a reliable liberal vote.
Yutsano
@DougJ: Oh I know. It’s just fun to set her off on her wild tangents because she’s just like Special Timmeh: only she can see DA TROOF!! and we are all traitors to her true and just cause.
doofus
@David Koch: Mclaren and steve in dc have proven you correct.
Joel
@NR: Holy shitballs, you are a fucking moron.
doofus
@Joel: I prefer to believe intentionally obtuse.
mclaren
It’s fascinating to me that over the last 20 years, we’ve have 3 terms of Democratic presidents and and 2 terms of Republican presidents.
That’s twenty years, a pretty damned long time, and certainly long enough to determine the ideological make-up of the Supreme Court.
If the argument being foolishly and ignorantly bruited about here were correct — namely, that the problem is we’ve elected too many Republican presidents over the last 20 years, and they’ve stacked the Supreme Court with far-right justices! — how do the obots explain the peculiar fact that despite having Democratic presidents for 12 out of the last 20 years, the Supreme Court somehow mysteriously manages to get stacked with extreme far-right justices?
While the obots tie thesmelves into knots of verbal calisthenics and confect increasingly outlandish flights of illogic in a failed and futile effort to explain this, I can explain it simply and easily.
The consensus in Washington D.C. and among federal judges in favor of the kind extremist far-right policies that 5 of the 9 Supreme Court justices are currently deciding in favor of is bipartisan.
How do we know this?
Look at the evidence.
Who authored the repressive extremist far-right USA Patriot Act?
A Democrat, Joe Biden. He boasts about it.
Who extended the Bush-era policy of assassination of foreign nationals (run by secret military kill squads out of Dick Cheney’s office) to American citizens?
A Democrat, Barack Obama.
Who voted to continue the Iraq war long after it has become clear to everyone that it was a futile counterproductive lost cause?
Democrats along with Republicans.
Who gave a speech explaining with insane and long-debunked Herbert-Hoover-style 1920s economic malpractice reasoning that
A Democrat. Barack Obama.
Who slashed welfare while misnaming it “reform,” so that America now has children living in cars with their parents?
A Democrat. Bill Clinton.
The consensus for the War on Drugs and the war on the bill of rights and endless unwinnable foreign military debacles and for privatization and against the social safety net and for more cruelty and brutality to the poor is bipartisan.
That’s why if Barack Obama appoints two justices to the Supreme Court, their verdicts brutalizing the poor and crushing the defenseless and slashing our civil liberties and tearing up the social safety net will continue.
The answer to the increasing problems created by the Supreme Court’s insane verdicts isn’t to whimper and crawl at the feet of Democrats who have for 3 out of the past 5 presidential terms appointed the Supreme Court justices about whose verdicts foolishly ignorant and gullible obots now scream in rage.
The answer is to bypass the “lesser of two evils” presidential voting kabuki game and go directly to civil disboedience on a massive nationwide scale. If millions of Americans do sit-ins so that the Supreme Court can’t function and congress shuts down because the hallways are jammed with people and the president of the united states can’t get into the White House because millions of people are sitting in front of his driveway, then things will start to change.
This bogus argument of “we must vote for a good Tsar instead of a bad Tsar!” is bullshit.
The Tsar is the Tsar. He’s going to fuck you no matter whether he’s the “lesser of two evil” or not.
mclaren
@Omnes Omnibus:
I’m still waiting (with bated breath) for you to explain why the 12 years of Democratic presidents over the last 20 years nonetheless left us with a massive superfluity of far-right extremist Supreme Court justices.
Feel free to use sophistry, infantile name-calling, circular reasoning, begging the question, straw men, and dishonest analogies as is your custom.
Mnemosyne
@mclaren:
You’d almost think that some of the justices on the Supreme Court were appointed more than 20 years ago.
Nah, that’s not possible, because everyone knows that each president appoints his own Supreme Court, so clearly the problem is that Bill Clinton never should have appointed
William RehnquistAntonin Scalia to the court.ETA: Sorry, forgot who Roberts was the replacement for.
doofus
@mclaren: Dude. A third of the court was appointed more than 20 years ago.
Mnemosyne
@mclaren:
Because we don’t get to machine-gun the sitting justices every time we change presidents and replace them with the new president’s appointees?
pseudonymous in nc
@mclaren:
Feeding the firebagger for a brief moment — because they didn’t use drone strikes to create vacancies?
Yutsano
@Mnemosyne: The Supreme Court doesn’t work like the Cabinet? Hoocodanode??
@pseudonymous in nc: Okay I LOLed.
Mnemosyne
@Yutsano:
I sometimes wish mclaren would take a basic civics class to understand how our system of government works (“You mean Supreme Court justices are appointed for life? Get out!”) but we would be deprived of so much entertainment if she did.
mclaren
@Mnemosyne:
Ah, so now you’re moving the goalpost.
First, the obots like you inform us in tones of punitive hysteria that we have to vote for Democratic presidents instead of Republican presidents. And, over the past 20 years, it turns out that we have, by a ratio of 3 presidential terms to 2 presidential terms.
So now you move the goalpost and tell us, oh, no, no, no, no, no, no! The problem isn’t really that we have to vote for Democratic president instead of Republican presidents, the real problem is that all of us shiftless worthless brain-damaged insane liberals must somehow insure that the United States of America has an unbroken string of Democratic presidents for more than 20 years at a stretch.
Because, as Mnemosyne informs with the kind of gaping grin so typical of the recently lobotomized, Supreme Court judges can stay on the court for more than 20 years!
So explain to us, mastermind, how liberals insure that we have an unbroken string of nothing but Democratic president for more than 20 years at a stretch?
Or, of course, we could try Door Number Two. Tell us what’s behind Door Number Two, Don Pardo!
Thanks, Monty. Door Number Two is the simple answer and the correct one. The consensus in favor of extreme privatizion of public services and in favor of rampant militarization of American society and against a social safety net for the poor is bipartisan, as political scientist Sheldon Wolin pointed out when he identified America as an example of “inverse totalitarianism.”
As Wikipedia points out
Needless to say, these totalizing drives are bipartisan and thus found in any federal judge appointed by either party, as well in all congressional legislation offered by both parties and in the policies of the presidents of both parties.
Mnemosyne
@mclaren:
You set the 20-year mark, and I’m moving the goalpost?
I’m not even sure what your argument is, frankly. Because Democrats haven’t had a 20-year stretch in power since FDR, that proves that they don’t need that amount of time to fix the damage Republicans have done, so argle-bargle fascism. QED!
mclaren
@Mnemosyne:
I sometimes wish Mnemosyne would take a course in basic logic so she can recognize the bizarre consequences of her weird arguments. Viz., first she tells us that the solution to our supreme court problems is that we have voted for too many Republican presidents…then, when it turns out that over the past 20 years we’ve actually voted for more Republican than Democratic presidents, she turns around and (in Megan McArdle-like fashion, without skipping a beat) completely changes her argument without noticing the illogic and without paying any attention to her own garbled reasoning and scrambling reasoning.
Now Mnemosyne tells us that our supreme court problems aren’t actually the result of us voting for too many Republican as opposed to Democratic presidents, but are the result of us somehow failing to prevent any Republican presidents from gaining the White House over a course of more than 20 years at a time.
Naturally, Mnemosyne doesn’t explain to us how liberals are supposed to accomplish this political miracle. But then, Mnemosyne, like Megan McArdle, never explains: she merely vomits out illogic and nonense and leaves everyone else to clean up her verbal diarrhea.
Yutsano
@Mnemosyne: All I can say to that is uhh…wow.
mclaren
@Mnemosyne:
Of course you’re not sure what my argument is. You’re not bright enough.
The hard cold fact is that the history of the last 30 years shows a consistent shift to the right by both Democrats and Republicans. Of course, “you’re not sure” about that, just as you’re doubtless “not sure” about the roundness of the earth, the luminosity of the sun, and little details like whether 2 + 2 = 4.
Mnemosyne’s “argument,” if we can call it that, boils down to: “Everyone vote for Barack Obama this November despite the constant ongoing rightward drift by all branches of government, and somehow, argle-bargle, we’ll get wonderfully liberal verdicts out of the Supreme Court!
Mnemosyne
@mclaren:
Well, no, that would be the cause of our Supreme Court problems. “Cause” and “solution” are antonyms, not synonyms.
Okay, this is the point when responding to mclaren becomes not fun anymore, because the complete inability to construct a coherent paragraph becomes more sad than amusing.
Yutsano
@Mnemosyne: The meds are worn off. Oh well. Cookie?
Quaker in a Basement
You’re cheating, mac. You’re the one who came up with the entirely artificial 20 year timeline and declared it “long enough to determine the ideological make-up” of the court.
Let’s expand your timeline to cover the appointment of all the justices currently on the court. We’ve had Republican presidents for 20 of the last 32 years, and that’s why we have a court run by Scalia, Thomas, Roberts, and Alito.
Mnemosyne
@Quaker in a Basement:
Don’t forget Ronald Reagan appointee Anthony Kennedy. He’s pretty firmly in the Republican camp at this point.
So we have 5 justices who were appointed by Republicans and 4 that were appointed by Democrats and — how weird! — the court leans conservative with a lot of 5-4 decisions. Almost as though the justices reflect the politics of the presidents who appointed them.
matt
if congress doesn’t have the power to force people to buy from private corporations, why does it have the power to tax and buy from private corporations?
SFAW
Scalia – Appointed by Reagan
Kennedy – Appointed by Reagan
Thomas – Appointed by Bush 41
Breyer – Appointed by Clinton
Ginsburg – Appointed by Clinton
Alito – Appointed by W
Roberts – Appointed by W
Sotomayor – Appointed by Obama
Kagan – Appointed by Obama
So we have four fairly extreme right-wingers and one Norma Desmond clone appointed by Rethug Preznits, and four “moderates” or “centrists” appointed by Demoncrats.
I guess mclaren is right – it IS the Dems’ fault that there’s such a rightward tilt, because SHUT UP! that’s why.
It’s times like this that I’m glad that there are still Naderites (or at least purity trolls, no matter whom they supported) showing up here, ’cause it keeps me reminded of how fucking stupid they are/were/are. (As if I would ever forget.)
EDIT: And what Mnemosyne said a couple up from here. Also, too.
mclaren
@Yutsano:
Notice the McCarthy-style smears from the obots — as soon as someone points out their arguments are factually false and logicall incoherent, they resort to the usual smear tactics. “Insane,” “meds have worn off,” and so on.
Smears and character assassination — so much easier than making a credible political argument.
Sophist(from droid)
@NR: Thats an argument that the ACA is a bad law, not an unconstitutional one. Try again.
mclaren
@Yutsano:
Naturally. Since you have no facts and no logic, what other response can you offer?
Like all obots, your arguments boil down to the Underpants Gnome Theory of Politics:
[1] Steal underpants
[2] Vote for Obama
[3] ????
[4] Liberal policies and liberal verdicts from the Supreme Court! (Despite a constant rightward drift in all 3 branches of government over the past 30 years, and utterly diregarding the extreme far-right bipartisan consensus in Washington D.C. across the entire gamut of issues from welfare “reform” (so-called) to bankruptcy “reform” (so-called) to copyright extension to the endless war on drugs to endless unwinnable foreign wars to infinite expansion of the military/police/terror/surveillance state.)
OzoneR
@NR:
Is this? Is this for real?
OzoneR
@mclaren:
Sweet mother of Christ, are you for real?
Because those Democratic Presidents only appointed 4 of the 9 SCOTUS justices, and 3 of the 9 were appointed more than 20 years ago.
There was 11 years, 1994-2005 when there were NO vacancies!
mclaren
@Quaker in a Basement:
No, you’re cheating. Because now that you’ve extended the period in question to 32 years, I can extend it to 40 years, and so on.
The real problem here is not that we’ve had too few Democratic presidents over the voting lifetimes of most of the people on this forum…
…The real problem is that the Republicans have become much, much more extreme far-right fanatics.
The Citizens v. United decision is one of the most extreme intrusions by the supreme court in everyday life since Plessy v. Ferguson.
Ask yourself: if Quaker in a Basement is correct, why didn’t Eisenhower’s supreme court appointments derail school desegregation and undo the New Deal?
The answer is obvious. Because the Republican party was a reasonable party full of relative moderates during the 1950s. Since 1980, the Republican party has become far more extreme, and has used extremist tactics…such as the unprecendented number of filibusters used by this Republican House of Representatives.
So here’s a question for the Obots:
Let’s say everyone votes for Obama and he wins in a landslide come November. Then he appoints two moderate reasonable justices to the Supreme Court.
What makes you think the Republican-dominated congress won’t block both those appointments and prevent Obama from appointing _anyone_ to the Supreme Court?
Because that’s how U.S. government now works. Once again, Quaker in a Basement offers us the Underpants Gnome Theory of Government:
[1] Steal underpants
[2] Vote for Obama
[3] ????
[4] Liberal polices and liberal verdicts from the Supreme Court! (Despite the fact that extreme far-right Republicans in the senate will undoubtedly block any judges Obama tries to appoint to the supreme court.)
SFAW
I think it would have been outstanding if you or someone like you had been running the Rethug game plan back when they started their long game (let’s say it was Nixon era, just for argument’s sake).
“The Congress is Sooooo liberal! Why bother trying to change things if we can’t get what we want RIGHT AWAY? It’s HARD to do it incrementally! Ah, fuck it, there ain’t a dime’s worth of difference between Nixon and Humphrey, so I’m voting for George Wallace, because HE ain’t like the others, nosiree!”
Of course, it didn’t help that Bobby had to go and get himself killed, the jerk. (Yes, that IS something of a non sequitur.)
shep
Bush v Gore started it.
It was a naked, corporatist, Republican, judicial coup d’état. Nothing less.
OzoneR
@NR:
I see, but taxing people who don’t buy insurance, that they can’t do.
#rolls eyes
Also, you missed my point, not surprising since your mind is preoccupied with Hillary’s primary lost, my point was if its true what Drum said, that SCOTUS is now partisan, they’d FIND some reason to rule Single Payer unconstitutional, it doesn’t matter what.
SFAW
Yeah, it’s going to be tough for Obama – if he wins in November – to fill those two vacancies, and get the Court back to nine justices, instead of the current seven.
mclaren
@OzoneR:
Are you drunk? Or just brain-damaged?
Why was there a period of 11 years when there were no vacancies in the Supreme Court?
Sheer random chance.
Which destroys your entire argument.
If it’s a matter of random chance when supreme court justices get sick and die or retire, then it doesn’t matter how many Republican vs Democratic presidents get elected in any given period of time, because the controlling factor isn’t whether the president is Democratic or Republican, but whether there are enough retirements or deaths on the supreme court during that interval for the president to make a difference.
Moreover, like the rest of the crackpot obots, you utterly ignore the brutal reality that the extreme far-right Republicans in the senate will undoubtedly block any appointments Obama tries to make even if Obama gets re-elected.
And, yes, that means we have to limp along with 8 or 7 justices of the supreme court instead of 9. Do the you think the Republicans give a shit? The Republicans were ready to wreck America’s economy by throwing us into default and block raising the debt limits. The Republicans don’t care, they’re crazy.
Once again, the Underpants Gnome Theory of Government from the obots.
[1] Steal underpants
[2] Vote for Obama
[3] ????
[4] Somehow Republicans in congress and the supreme court stop acting crazy! Victory, we get wonderful liberal policies and liberal verdicts from the supreme court!
Sophist(from droid)
@mclaren:
Counting the number of years the Dems have had the presidency over the past 20 is moronic. The Pres doesn’t get to appoint a judge every year.
mclaren
@SFAW:
I think it would have been outstanding if you or someone like you had been running the Democratic game plan back when they started their long game (let’s say it was the LBJ era, just for argument’s sake).
“The Congress is Sooooo full of southern conservatives! Why bother trying to work with the liberal wing of the Democratic party if they dare to do horrible things like DISAGREE WITH US? It’s HARD to deal with liberals who have different opinions and facts and logic to back them up! Ah, fuck it, there ain’t a dime’s worth of difference between Martin Luther King and the Weathermen, so I’m supporting the Vietnam war and boy, will we ever ride THAT winner to electoral victory for the next 20 years!”
Oh…wait. Hopeless fools like you were in charge of the Democratic party back during the 1960s. And clowns like you are why we wound up with Republican lunatics in the White House like Nixon, Reagan and Bush 43. Because going along with the insanely destructive policies of a foolish but well-intentioned Democratic president produced results so toxic the Republicans were able to capitalize on it politically for a generation.
mclaren
@Sophist(from droid):
Thank you for living up to your handle, Sophist. In the same spirit, it’s easy enough to respond to your garbled logic and scrambled reasoning by pointing out that your argument consists of words and is therefore moronic. After all, the process we’re talking about involves appointments to the supreme court, not words.
Let us know when you pass your IQ test, Sophist.
OzoneR
@mclaren:
WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOW
There were 2 fucking vacancies during Clinton’s eight years, two, do you know why there were two?
Here’s why
There needs to be an open seat on the Supreme Court in order for the President to appoint one, between 1993-2001, the years Clinton was President, there were only 2 open seats. Now if you do the math, you’ll know that means 2 appointments. That’s the same number as Bush 43 and Bush 41 and one less than Reagan.
Where the fuck are they? They are Ruth Bader Ginsberg and Stephen Breyer. Unfortunately President Clinton couldn’t kill off anymore. I know that means we should all not vote in November.
OzoneR
@mclaren:
Um, nobody fucking died, yes sheer random chance.
That’s what we’re all saying. You keep a Democrat in the White House in the event there are enough retirements or deaths.
I mean, you can’t really be for real right now, really.
SFAW
mclaren –
Well, good to know that the the totality of your response is a combination of “I know you are, but what am I?” and “I’m rubber, you’re glue etc. etc”
In addition to being somewhat unhinged on the subject, you’re demonstrably stupid about it as well. We ended up with Nixon primarily because of Viet Nam. (Well, that and Bobby’s assassination.) He then had the luxury to continue implementation of his Southern strategy, which helped set the stage for Reagan (who might not have won, if Carter hadn’t been so ineffective).
So, please keep telling us all how wrong Wrong WRONG we are, and how YOU are the only one who understands things like the Supreme Court and the entire political landscape in the country.
It’s quite endearing, in much the same way that a four-year-old tries to stay up all night on Christmas Eve, because he/she is SURE that Santa will be there. Of course, they’re cute because they aren’t old enough to know better. YOU, on the other hand, ARE (theoretically) old enough to know better, and yet you still keep doing you damnedest to demonstrate how stupid (or maybe just naive) you truly are.
As Cole might say, there apparently is no such thing a Peak Mclaren.
mclaren
@shep:
Well, I’d say that the Reagan maladministration actually started it. Reagan was the first president in modern times who refused to obey laws passed by congress. He simply ignored them. Reagan’s White House had to be sued in court to force his EPA to enforce clean air and clean water regulations, because Reagan pioneered the practice of appointing people to the EPA and HUD and other institutions who tried to dismantle those agencies.
Indeed. But so was Reagan’s election. One of the stories I heard at the time was all the limousines from the states surrounding Washington DC were hired out and unavailable to anyone else because rich people recognied that they had finally completely won, they now totally controlled the White House, and were prepared to capitalize on their corporatist putsch.
Bush v Gore showed the iron hand hidden within the velvet glove of the Reagan presidency. Bush v Gore was the point at which the corporate masters finally stepped out from behind the curtain and let the proles see who was really running things, because they were certain that their coup d’etat was irreversible.
And Obama’s corporatist policies tends to confirm their belief.
mclaren
@OzoneR:
Oh, great, wonderful to learn that you’re finally making a reasonable sensible argument.
“The solution to the problem of extreme far-right Supreme Court verdicts is NEVER EVER TO ALLOW ANY REPUBLICAN TO GET ELECTED EVER!”
To quote someone other than myself:
Sophist(from droid)
@mclaren:
Are you a moron? The more years we have a Democratic, the more likely it is a random event will occur while one is in office. I mean, duh.
mclaren
@SFAW:
C’mon, now, come clean — you’re a bot, right? A version of Eliza programmed to vomit out strings of words containing “Obama” and random insults aimed at anyone who disagrees with Obama or his polices.
Pseudocode for the SFAW-bot:
INSERT RANDOM INSULT #1
INSERT RANDOM INSULT #2
REPHRASE WHAT THE HUMAN BEING SAID TO THE BOT.
INSERT RANDOM INSULT #3 — ADD WILD EXAGGERATIONS AND BIZARRE NON SEQUITUR (the equivalent of Eliza’s “I’m glad you like cookies!” when no one mentioned cookies)
INSERT RANDOM INSULT #3
INSERT RANDOM INSULT #4
END PSEUDOCODE
It’s easy to see that SFAW is a bot because a human being would have dealt with some of the arguments I made rather than vomiting our random insults and non sequiturs. But that’s what you get when you deal with bots. Proof yet again of the catastrophic failure of Artificial Intelligence as a computer science research paradigm.
mclaren
@Sophist(from droid):
Thank you for demonstrating your ignorance of basic mathematics. One of the fundamental characteristics of ergodic distributions like Gaussian distributions is that they tend to clump. You get intervals with lots of events and other intervals with no events at all. Events are not uniformly distributed. You can see this looking up at the night sky: there are places with lots of bright stars, and places in the night sky with no stars at all. Your argument assumes an even distribution of events per interval, which is course not the case.
Moreover, Ramsey Theory assures us that there are bound to be long “runs” of events in any given intervals. For example, Ramsey Theory tells us that the longer the series of coin-flips, therefore, the more likely a long run of either heads or tails. For example, it is virtual certain that in a series of 101 coin flips there will be at least one run of either 10 heads or 10 tails.
This utterly destroys your argument, but of course you’re too ignorant of mathematics and too incompetent at statistics to realize it. In fact, you don’t even know how to spell “Ramsey theory” or explain what it is. Standard stuff for obots. As history shows, obots rely on smears and lies and name-calling rather than on facts and logic.
By all means, continue your name-calling while demonstrating your lack of understanding of basic statistics. It saves me the trouble of discrediting you.
matt
I mean, we’re to believe congress has the power to tax people and take the money and go and buy things with the money, but doesn’t have the power to say people are required to buy the things they’d buy with the money? what kind of law system is this, the lilliputian system?
OzoneR
@mclaren:
Actually, it makes his argument, but what do you know.
Uriel
@mclaren:
Jesus jumped up Christ. You are copleatly out of your rabbit-assed mind.
Get help. You need it.
feebog
@ McClaren:
So, lets take a period of twenty years of Democratic Presidents, from 1932 to 1952. How many Supreme Court Justices did FDR and Truman appoint together?
Twelve. And a number of them remained on the court well into the 1960s, when we had another 8 years of Democrats appointing Justices.
So yes, if we re-elect Obama, and elect another Democrat after that, chances are execellent that we will have a court packed with liberal and moderate judges by 2024.
The fact is that we have had 20 years of Republican Presidents and only 13 years of Democratic Presidents that cover the time span of the current sitting court. And please remember that Obama’s picks have been to replace a liberal and a moderate, no conservative Justice has died or resigned in the last three years.
Fucking Supreme Court appointments, how do they work?
SFAW
mclaren –
Too much brown acid? You’ve really gone completely off the rails.
Do a coupla ‘Ludes, that should calm you down a little.
Won’t magically turn your arguments into rational ones, but at least you won’t be spouting quite as much gibberish.
But I DID like the Obot attempt at humor – especially since my two/three uses of the name “Obama” were:
1) Included in the list of SCOTUS appointees, and
2) Commenting in direct response to YOUR use of it
When you write stuff like that, you remind me very much of Clearhead O’Keefe.
Sophist(from droid)
@mclaren: Now I know you are a moron. A moron with access to Wikipedia. Yes, they can come in groups, but you don’t know WHEN that will happen. All things being equal, the best you can do is try to win as many elections as you possibly can.
IrishGirl
@Baud: That is an outstanding idea. But why just Roberts…why not Death by SCOTUS……none of them get off the hook in my book…..all that civil discourse and judicial comeraderie is bullshit. Ginsburg should have told the triumvirate of idjits to STFU and STFD on Citizens United. Of course, that’s the reason I am not, nor will I ever be one of the one percent…..I just can’t keep my mouth shut nor bare to kiss anyone’s ass for the sake of conservative fee fees.
Pseudonym
@Quaker in a Basement: To the contrary, it is a very pointed bit of snottiness.
Pseudonym
@mclaren: As John McEnroe would say, you CANNOT be serious. Are you actually denying that the more years we have a Democratic president, the more likely it is that a given random event will occur while one is in office? I mean, I’ve never even seen the word “ergodic” before, much less heard of Ramsey Theory, but for any possible distribution of Supreme Court vacancies, changing a presidential term from Republican to Democratic will either increase or preserve the number of appointments that Democrats get to make. (Okay, this assumes that vacancies are independent of the appointments made, but if that assumption is what you want to hang your argument on, go ahead and admit it.) We also can look back at actual historical reality and see that Rehnquist died in 2005 and O’Connor retired in 2006, both during Bush the Lesser’s second term. It’s entirely possible that O’Connor wouldn’t have retired had a Democrat been in office, I’ll grant you that; now it’s your turn to argue that having a Democratic president would have cured Rehnquist’s cancer.
Paging White Ruralsexual AbeJ: as the resident blog math expert, do you have a spare clue to deliver here?
Mike Lamb
@mclaren: Doode. You are fucking craaaaazy. Like tutu with a gorilla mask, bat shit insane.
Pseudonym
Shorter mclaren: Ergodic distributions and Ramsey Theory prove that Romney and Obama would appoint identical Supreme Court justices, just like Gore would have appointed Roberts and Alito.
Pseudonym
And McCain would have appointed Sotomayor and Kagan, of course. Just like Mondale would’ve nominated Bork.
TenguPhule
Therefore, mass executions are the only way forward.
TenguPhule
Or the GOP will do what was previously thought unthinkable and simply try to run out the clock by blocking every nomination, its not like they haven’t had practice with justices on the lower levels.
Until GOP heads roll in the literal sense, its just fun and games for the Republicans.
TenguPhule
Yes, I’m sure the Republicans in the House and Senate out to destroy Medicare completely had noting to do with it.
Take a number for your turn on the wall please.
bob h
Take back the House and you’ve got a shot at impeaching Roberts for basically lying during his confirmation hearings.
SFAW
What, you mean that little “stare decisis” thing? Or were there others?
Should you Boshulists try to impeach him, his defense will be:
1) I was misquoted
2) I crossed my fingers when I answered
3) I said “PSYCH!” under my breath after responding to questions
4) It depends on what the meaning of “is” is
5) Robert Bork!
6) Look! Over there! A bunny rabbit entered the country illegally!
usw.
And, once again, right-thinking people will triumph.
Bob2
@Pseudonym:
Being a contrarian really should mean that one has a solid argument. The problem with political blogging is that inaccuracy and glibness is a feature, not a bug.
Rafer Janders
@mclaren:
R-a-m-s-e-y t-h-e-o-r-y.
Richard Miller
@Steve in DC: @Steve in DC:
Why do you assume 9/11 would even have happened under Gore? The intelligence was there. Perhaps he would actually have acted on it, rather than telling the responsible agent that he “covered your ass now”.
I suspect you are right about economic issues, but without two expensive wars going on, the flexibility to tackle the crisis when it struck would have been much greater.
And the justices he would have appointed would have been infinitely better. No Citizens United. No other right wing hackery being passed off as majority binding decisions.
Quaker in a Basement
Go ahead and do that, crazy man. Let us know how many more years you have to go back to find a justice currently sitting on the court.