Justice Thomas makes it clear decisions support our rights are next

[BootmanLA]

On 7/15/2022 at 1:24 PM, BareLover666 said:

My crystal ball tells me most people - however outspoken and strong in their points of view - are actually moderates.

That is probably true. However, the problem in the United States is that a huge number of those people do not vote. In the 2020 election, which had record levels of turnout, still fully one-third of eligible voters did not vote. What's more, millions more have been deprived of the right to vote because of a past felony conviction (in many states, you don't regain the right to vote even after serving your sentence unless you're pardoned). Conservatives in the U.S. have spent years honing a strategy designed to limit the ability of people who lean non-conservative to vote; and even though that strategy rarely involves an outright ban (like for felons), all they have to do is make it so burdensome to vote that a lot of people give up.

Conservatives skew older (often retired), so they have fewer time constraints on voting, for instance. Poorer working people, often working two or more jobs, often find it hard to get to the polls during the limited hours some states provide for casting votes on election day. Many states don't allow mail-in ballots or early voting at all.

Conservative states also skew things by providing fewer voting resources in poorer communities. Go to a polling place in a well-to-do area, and you'll see three or four voting machines, or half a dozen workers with a seemingly limited supply of paper ballots if those are used. Go to a poorer location, and you'll likely find only one or two machines and they're servicing a much larger number of voters. When early voting locations are provided, they're often inconveniently located not near public transit, so they're far more useful to people with time on their hands and cars to get around than working people who have to use the bus.

And so on. The biggest problem in the U.S. is that there are virtually no standards for elections that apply to everyone, so counties and states that are determined to make things harder for certain voters have lots of ways to make that happen. 

[BootmanLA]

12 hours ago, BareLover666 said:

- We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness -
 

Bear in mind that 41 of the 56 (white) men who signed the Declaration of Independence noting that all men were created equal also owned slaves. I'm not inclined to put a whole lot of stock into the thought process of people who exhibit that much patently obvious cognitive dissonance.

 

12 hours ago, BareLover666 said:

Because a lot of people from both sides of the US political spectrum are disillusioned and feeling very disappointed to the the point of frustration - the 'MAGA' protesters/rioters just the same as people in favour of women's and gay rights, and perhaps even like @TotalTop who has lost his faith in the entire two-party system - could this not be a time to critically review the US founding documents and perhaps even redraft them?
France did, they're on their fifth constitution as of the 1950's (I believe) and so: 'The Fifth Republic'.

Over the years, aside from the initial set of ten amendments (the Bill of Rights) adopted as a compromise to gain ratification of the original document, there has only been one serious set of revisions (the 13th, 14th, and 15th amendments, all adopted in the aftermath of the U.S. Civil War). Every other change has been a sort of modest tinkering around the edges; that's not to say that things like guaranteeing the right to vote if you're 18 or older, or if you're a woman, weren't significant for the affected individuals, but the reality is that none of these changes changed the fundamental nature of the federal government or its relationship to the people. The two other amendments that come closest, in my opinion, are the one authorizing an income tax and the one providing for direct election of U.S. Senators. But even that latter change pales in comparison with the impact of the existing system that allocates two senators to the 581,000 people of Wyoming and also two senators to the 39,500,000 people of California.

In other words, in order to bring about a massive change in the relationship between the people and our government, we first had to fight a bloody war that killed over 600,000 people. And even then, the victors (seeking to preserve the Union) only got the changes approved by conditioning allowing the rebelling states re-entry to the nation on approval of those amendments. They would never have been ratified by the southern states other than at the literal barrels of the guns pointed at them. That's how hard it is to make a substantive change to the U.S. Constitution.

By contrast, in the same timeframe that the U.S. has had its constitution, France had an absolute monarchy, the First Republic, the Directorate, the First Empire, a restored monarchy, a brief return to the First Empire, another restoration of the monarchy, a constitutional monarchy, the Second Republic, the Second Empire, the Third Republic, the Vichy-Nazi collaborationist government, the Fourth Republic, and the Fifth Republic. France has a far greater appetite for completely throwing out the current system of government for a new one than the United States ever will.

12 hours ago, BareLover666 said:

But as I understand it, changing the US constitution is exceptionally hard - needing three quarters of the US-States to approve them; And never by changing the original wording of the constitution itself but by the amendments as appendices which are just as and perhaps even more binding than the original wording. 

Correct. An amendment to the US Constitution requires first approval by 2/3 of the US Senate AND 2/3 of the US House - the former an impossibility as long as sparsely populated states, predominately conservative, get the same senate vote as a massively populated ones - or else approval by a "constitutional convention" - which has never been called since the beginning and for which there are no precedents (who could serve, how many per state, any requirement of proportionality, etc.). Then, assuming either Congress or such a convention proposes an amendment, it must be ratified by the legislatures (not the people, directly) of 3/4 of the states, or 38 out of 50. It's barely possible to do with wildly popular ideas that face little objection. It's impossible otherwise.

12 hours ago, BareLover666 said:

For the moment, I'm not sure if the 'Right to pursue happiness' can be - or has ever been - used to advance civil liberties and human rights in the US system. But if not: Shouldn't it be?

No, because the "right to pursue happiness" is listed in the Declaration of Independence, not the Constitution. As such, the only thing the Declaration did was separate us from Great Britain - and realistically, it was actually the war we fought that achieved the goal, not the Declaration. It's otherwise completely non-binding, so there's nothing for the Supreme Court to interpret there. As far as actual governance is concerned, the Declaration is 100% irrelevant. Inspirational, but irrelevant.

12 hours ago, BareLover666 said:

And I'd like to ask you @BootmanLA what your ideas are on how to change this, how to defuse this current political partisanship and populist/religious tendencies that as I understand is you are not in favour of?

To expound on my point above about the Civil War: that's what it takes when you have a deeply divided country. It's possible, as @ErosWired and others have hinted, that demographics and time will take care of this: younger people are far more liberal than their parents, generally speaking (even with weasly Nazi sympathizers like Stephen Miller and Charlie Kirk in the same age bracket), and over time, as the dyed-in-the-wool reactionaries die off, they'll be outnumbered. But that's why they're so frantic to lock in discriminatory voting regulations - to stave off those changes for another generation. And still, even if younger, more liberal voters gain control of much of the power, the malapportionment of the U.S. Senate will remain a stumbling block for advancing anything. Unless a future Democratic majority in the Senate is willing to end the filibuster, it will take 60 votes in the Senate to do anything progressive, and I'm not sure that with 2 GOP senators per conservative state that we will ever again reach that 60 vote threshold. The current impasse over passing anything of substance will remain in place, I'm afraid. 

[BergenGuy]

14 hours ago, BootmanLA said:

Unless a future Democratic majority in the Senate is willing to end the filibuster, it will take 60 votes in the Senate to do anything progressive, and I'm not sure that with 2 GOP senators per conservative state that we will ever again reach that 60 vote threshold.

I predict that the next time Republicans control the White House, House of Representatives and Senate that they will end the filibuster themselves in order to pass a nationwide abortion ban and other regressive legislation knowing that it will take a triple sweep by the Democrats to undo the legislation.  It won't happen in 2023, even if they take the Senate and House because there's no advantage in ending the filibuster if they don't control the White House.  But, they might in 2025.

[hntnhole]

Thanks, as always, BootmanLA, for the exemplary explanations.  Also to BergenGuy for the incisive input.  The idea that the R's might ditch the filibuster themselves hadn't occurred to me.  

BZ isn't just full of sex-crazed kids .... there are some serious intellectuals here too (who are, I'm assuming, also sex-crazed).

[BootmanLA]

2 hours ago, BergenGuy said:

I predict that the next time Republicans control the White House, House of Representatives and Senate that they will end the filibuster themselves in order to pass a nationwide abortion ban and other regressive legislation knowing that it will take a triple sweep by the Democrats to undo the legislation.  It won't happen in 2023, even if they take the Senate and House because there's no advantage in ending the filibuster if they don't control the White House.  But, they might in 2025.

You're absolutely right. The Senate GOP, especially if Mitch McConnell is in charge, will detonate the filibuster if they need to.

They blew it up for Supreme Court nominees, because they needed to. They didn't need to for the Trump tax cuts, because tax cuts can already be enacted through reconciliation procedures that bypass the filibuster. So until now, they've had no legislative priorities that required them to end the filibuster; they're perfectly content to let it hang out there, hamstringing the Democrats.

But if the GOP doesn't face major blowback from the Dobbs decision in this year's midterms, the social conservative wing may decide in 2025 that a nationwide ban on abortion can be had. and if they have the presidency, the House, and 50 votes in the Senate (plus the VP to break the tie), they'll end the filibuster immediately in order to pass it.

I can't see them passing a ban on gay marriage (they'll let individual states deal with that, or not), but if SCOTUS overturns Obergefell, or even Windsor, look for them to pass more legislation removing any federal protection for same-sex marriages. 

Part of the problem is the imbalance between Democratic and Republican priorities. By and large, the Republicans don't want to DO anything - they want to hamstring government enough that it fails to function, which benefits them, electorally. As P.J. O'Roarke used to say, the Republicans are the party that says that government doesn't work, and then gets elected and proves it. Inertia favors them, for the most part (although it favored the opposition to Trump, because he and his team were so incompetent at implementing the things they nominally wanted). Inertia does not favor the opponents of a competent authoritarian, like DeSantis or Cruz or Hawley.

[BergenGuy]

22 minutes ago, BootmanLA said:

By and large, the Republicans don't want to DO anything - they want to hamstring government enough that it fails to function, which benefits them,

Exactly, it is easier to maintain the status quo than to implement change.  

And, I agree, I don't think that they'll try to pass a nationwide ban on same-sex marriage.  Marriage has been traditionally regulated at the state level and it would be a stretch to argue that the ability to ban same-sex marriage falls under the interstate commerce authority of Congress.  Windsor wasn't decided on the basis of privacy, so it might (repeat, might) be relatively safe.  But, I can see us returning to a situation where same-sex marriage is legal in some states, but not in others.  At one time, the fact that big business would oppose such a situation would have been enough to prevent it.  But, the Taliban wannabes in control of the GOP don't even care about that.

[ErosWired]

8 hours ago, BootmanLA said:

Inertia does not favor the opponents of a competent authoritarian, like DeSantis or Cruz or Hawley.

And Cruz isn’t wasting one second. In today’s reporting, he’s unequivocal in his view that the Supreme Court erred in Obergefell, and explicitly says that it should be left for people to persuade the fellow citizens of their respective states of the laws, policies and rights they ought to have. Chilling.

What is needed now is espionage. Such men have darkness in them, and darkness breeds dark secrets. Someone needs to ferret out Mr. Cruz’s secrets where they lie  deeply buried and closely guarded, and leverage them without mercy.

Know who else had a Senate, and a Republic? Rome. If we were in the Roman Empire someone would have likely poisoned him by now. That’s the way things were managed then. Life spans could be tenuous in Roman politics.

[hntnhole]

8 hours ago, ErosWired said:

What is needed now is espionage. Such men have darkness in them, and darkness breeds dark secrets. Someone needs to ferret out Mr. Cruz’s secrets where they lie  deeply buried and closely guarded, and leverage them without mercy.

Know who else had a Senate, and a Republic? Rome. If we were in the Roman Empire someone would have likely poisoned him by now. That’s the way things were managed then. Life spans could be tenuous in Roman politics.

One never knows exactly when history will repeat itself: only that eventually, it does.  

[BreedingTop71]

This country continues to disappoint. I don’t care if you vote down my post, but I am getting this out of my chest. 
 

the way minorities are treated by the legal system (including most of the people who post here), the election of a racist fascist in 2016 for president, the attempted coupl on January 6, the social restructuring by the SCOTUS, the recent attacks and hostility towards trans people during pride pride 2022. Etc etc etc. 

The word “disappointment” doesn’t begging to cover it. 
 

why isn’t Biden and other (old, ooooold) Democratic leaders screaming off the top of their lungs like conservatives are? Why is our voice always drowned by the hysterics  and nonsensical screams on the right? Do we not have a loud voice? Where is it?

[Close2MyBro]

It's astounding to me how many members here are unable to blame the current administration for anything going wrong in our country right now. What happened to all those promises that things could only get better??

[BootmanLA]

2 hours ago, Close2MyBro said:

It's astounding to me how many members here are unable to blame the current administration for anything going wrong in our country right now. What happened to all those promises that things could only get better??

Because it's not that simple?

Because there's a difference between, say, a president who actively is trying to undermine civil rights in this country and who appointed three justices to the Supreme Court to carry out that mission (one to a seat stolen from the previous president, one who actively lied during a deliberately botched FBI investigation into his background, and one rammed into the Court only a few weeks before said president was resoundingly rejected by the people), and a president who is facing obstruction to his entire agenda from the opposition party?

I can explain the difference between being unable to overcome resistance to doing good things, on the one hand, and actively trying to harm people, on the other hand, to you. I can't understand it for you.

But yes - many of us DO call out the present administration for its missteps. Here's an example. Trump weaponized the judicial appointment system beyond the SCOTUS nominations, with the GOP ignoring the home-state "blue slip" approval process for appellate court judges (who are the final arbiters of virtually all federal cases, since only a handful get to the Supreme Court). Coupled with the blockade on approving Obama appointees during his last two years, that gave Trump and the GOP a huge advantage in packing the appellate courts with right-wing judges.

When Biden took office, he was in a position to at least somewhat balance that. But he's refused to encourage older federal appellate judges appointed by Democrats to step down (which would create a vacancy he could fill with a younger judge, who would serve a lot longer than the 70 or 80 year old she's replacing). He's not been in a particular rush to appoint judges in red states, which runs the risk that those seats will be open when/if the Senate changes hands to the GOP and thus blocked from getting filled. He was caught trying to cut a deal with Mitch McConnell to have the GOP stop blocking some district federal judicial appointees (they're currently blocked with unfavorable "blue slips") in exchange for agreeing to appoint a right-wing anti-abortion lawyer to a federal judgeship in Kentucky, and the Democrats have been uniformly furious with him over that. He's now committed to not nominating that person.

That's just one example, but yes, we do hold Biden accountable when he's making wrong decisions about the future of the country. 

What we don't do is blame him for things outside his control. No president - not Biden, not Trump, not Obama, not Bush, none of them - have control, or even much influence, over gasoline prices at the pump. Yet GOP supporters invariably trot out the "Why are gas prices so high this summer?" in every Democratic administration, even though it also happens in Republican ones, because they see it as a winning issue for the economically illiterate. It's amazing how silent they've gotten now that gas pump prices have been falling steadily for five weeks.

And those same economically illiterate people who are blaming him for inflation never seem to notice that inflation is, right now, a global problem, not a US problem. It's global because the factors that are driving it - chiefly labor shortages, supply chain issues, and pandemic recovery - are global issues as well, and inflation is an issue for right-wing governments, centrist governments, left-wing governments, coalition governments, and completely dysfunctional messes of governments. But the GOP again thinks it's got a winning issue by whining that a Coke that cost $1.75 last summer is now $2.

You are free to blame the current administration, of course, for anything you want, including gas prices, inflation, or a toenail fungus. That doesn't actually make them responsible for any of the above, of course.

[ErosWired]

59 minutes ago, BootmanLA said:

But the GOP again thinks it's got a winning issue by whining that a Coke that cost $1.75 last summer is now $2.

The lamentable thing is, they could be right. Never underestimate the value the masses place on bread and circuses. I have very little faith left in the American masses to vote in their greater interests.

[hntnhole]

2 hours ago, BootmanLA said:

she's

there has to be an "applauding" emoji around here somewhere ......... 

[NEDenver]

6 hours ago, Close2MyBro said:

It's astounding to me how many members here are unable to blame the current administration for anything going wrong in our country right now. What happened to all those promises that things could only get better??

Biden has been okay.  Not good, not great but okay, and that’s outperforming my expectations.  However, as a normal person, Republican/conservative policies are a train wreck and have been for at least 40 years.  So just having a Secretary of Education sitting on student loan forgiveness for victims of fraud is net positive.  Allowing trans people to exist without harassment is net positive.

The most terrifying thing for me is how red state gerrymandering is probably going to screw us all in November.  Biden is fine only because the alternative is a nightmare.  

[NEDenver]

Oh, wait.  Did you mean high gas prices?  That’s strictly the result of capitalists finally setting the correct price according to capitalism.  Granted there’s some collusion happening there, and I expect prices are finally coming down because phone calls were made about antitrust and colluding to set prices high.  Amazing how many right wingers I know don’t understand capitalism even though it’s there favorite thing—far better than Jesus, for sure