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raminasi posted:Hasn’t it been decades since Mitch McConnell decided that Democratic presidents categorically shouldn’t get to appoint judges? I dunno about decades, but yeah, it's been awhile since McConnell decides judicial appointments ran on Calvinball rules.
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Sep 17, 2022 20:46
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raminasi posted:Hasn’t it been decades since Mitch McConnell decided that Democratic presidents categorically shouldn’t get to appoint judges? Not even one decade, yet!
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Sep 17, 2022 21:29
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Murgos posted:Edit: Teri’s faq is pretty good as a brief summary of where we are at and has some reasonable explanations for a lot of the common ‘why…’ questions that keep coming up. https://terikanefield.com/all-new-doj-investigation-faqs/
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Sep 17, 2022 21:49
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Fuschia tude posted:Not even one decade, yet! Ok it looks like it was 2009, so more than one decade but not “decades.”
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Sep 17, 2022 21:53
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Republicans have been eroding decorum rules, while the Democrats stubbornly stick to them, at least since Gingrich. That's not mask-off, for them, it was just Tuesday. Their big dramatic reveal moment was Alito peeling his own face off while writing Dobbs and putting zero effort into hiding the fact that he was completely making poo poo up. Then what was left of the decaying segregationists, with wistful memories of Dixie, finally light cigars all across the old south. Popehat recommended a good thread by Akiva Cohen on "legal realism". https://twitter.com/Popehat/status/1570808794250350592
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Sep 17, 2022 22:18
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-Blackadder- posted:Republicans have been eroding decorum rules, while the Democrats stubbornly stick to them, at least since Gingrich. That's not mask-off, for them, it was just Tuesday. i think its also that Dobbs and the various big hateful anti trans/LGBT stuff in general is kinda of the "oh its real now" moments for alot of not politics followers. same with jan 6th and trump to various degrees.
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Sep 17, 2022 22:27
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Akiva still has respect for Roberts which is pretty hilarious given his whole tenure
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Sep 18, 2022 00:06
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Imagine that you just never followed politics, that the most exposure to it you typically had was occasionally half paying attention to the evening news, or momentarily reading a headline in Apple's news alerts. Maybe you did your patriotic duty and voted for the Republican or the Democrat, maybe you just didn't bother because both sides and gosh it's just silly to bother with all of that nonsense. You've never even heard of there being a certification process for an incoming president, but on Jan 6th you're suddenly getting flooded with alerts, or your Facebook friends start going off, or you flip on the news expecting some weather report and they're showing a mob breaking into the capitol building and screaming about killing the outgoing vice president. Maybe you start paying attention at that point, because what the gently caress is going on. Maybe you notice the Republicans go from dismay to defending it in less than a week. Maybe you start listening to some of their insanity. Maybe you start realizing politics isn't content to leave you alone. Maybe, though, it sort of drifts by after the initial shock. Biden's president now. Cops are surely handling it. Everyone's saying, if they're saying anything, that it wasn't actually a big deal. Things go on. Except one day there's a big to do on the television, and suddenly very official people are giving very official hearings laying out how much the former president was involved in this. That he approved of it. That he may have orchestrated it. That he definitely set it off. But maybe you don't even pay attention to that. Maybe you just don't want to deal. You don't care about it. Life's going to go on, and the people whose job it is to handle things will continue to do their jobs. Just a blip of fear. Not to worry. Then suddenly Roe v. Wade is over and you had no idea whatsoever it was going to happen. Maybe you didn't have any idea whatsoever it was even something other people wanted. Suddenly politics isn't just refusing to leave you alone, it's shoving its way into your life and telling you that the people you trusted to handle things aren't just failing to do that, they're actively, maliciously trying to hurt you. You listen to what's being said and all these idiot old white men are going on about making ten year olds carry rape babies, throwing women and their doctors into prison over abortions, and putting out bounties on parents trying to care for their kids. There's a good chance you're living in a state that's suddenly made abortions illegal, and this isn't politics anymore, it's personal. These people are trying to hurt you, your family, your friends, your neighbors. You find out they've been hurting other people like this for a long rear end time, and you were ignoring it. They're up there on their podiums shouting about all the stuff they're still going to do, all this terrible poo poo they're going to inflict, and how they're not going to let you ignore it ever, ever again. You march down, register to vote, and mark election day on your calendar. You're not ignoring politics anymore, and you might well never again. Republicans are self sabotaging themselves at an incredible rate. It might not save us, but if they lose midterms it's almost entirely because the dipshits went full Skeletor under the mistaken assumption that the Silent Majority would appreciate it.
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Sep 18, 2022 03:04
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kartikeya posted:Republicans are self sabotaging themselves at an incredible rate. It might not save us, but if they lose midterms it's almost entirely because the dipshits went full Skeletor under the mistaken assumption that the Silent Majority would appreciate it. I mean...they're also executing their agenda and doing so successfully overall so far. Unless something is done about the supreme court at some point then this is going to be a lovely battle for years fought to deal with their hackery
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Sep 18, 2022 03:07
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Levitate posted:I mean...they're also executing their agenda and doing so successfully overall so far. Unless something is done about the supreme court at some point then this is going to be a lovely battle for years fought to deal with their hackery Absolutely, but they sure as hell aren't helping their cause. Republicans benefit when people don't pay attention to what they're doing, their slow, creeping strategy has, as you've pointed out, paid off for them greatly. The only thing their current bullshit is doing is scoring points with the screaming, tantrum-throwing ghouls that get off on it (who will always vote for them anyway). I'm not saying that the extremely numerous population they've indoctrinated and radicalized isn't substantial, terrifying, and possibly the death of us all. But their platform is deeply unpopular and getting moreso. Going "hey, look at our evil poo poo!" is more or less the only way you get the part of the population that isn't a screaming, tantrum-throwing ghoul in waiting to start paying attention. The people who are only registering to vote now aren't doing it because they suddenly think Republicans are cool. It's easy to lose track of, but there's a very, very big chunk of this country that still, in 2022, prefers to ignore "politics" out of some weird sense of decorum. These aren't the mythical independent voters, they're just straight up non-voters. Trump got a bunch of them to suddenly care because he was/is a wildly racist bully, but at this point if the Republicans' antics haven't recruited them, then they're almost certainly not going to be drawn in by that poo poo. Basically, lighting someone's house on fire is a really good way to get them to suddenly start caring about the fire department.
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Sep 18, 2022 03:50
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To add to this: The GOP has abandoned the basic function of government: to serve the people; to act as a governor on the voice of the people (or individually, their constituencies) and the power of their will. Quite telling that they complain about 'giving people things' so that the people vote for more of such behaviour. Look, fucknuts: if you want to earn power, and hold it, you need to have a platform that is appealing to the voters. Doing your jobs - helping people in a humanist way - is a core foundation of democratic politics. The GOP's last rational moment of introspection was after the '08 election, when they realized that they would have to open their tent to non-white, non-rich folks if they expected to survive as a party in a representative democracy. I am of high hopes that the GOP is going to learn this fall what happens when all that you have left is pandering to folks that are already fully in your camp. The alternative is full fascism.
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Sep 18, 2022 15:00
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PainterofCrap posted:
LBJ had a famous quote about some poor whites would dig deep into their pockets and vote against their interests so that they could keep black people down. The GOP has given up any pretense of governance and now appeals to people who only want to punish. The candidates that double down win primaries. The people that vote for them are fine with having less if they can make people outside their tribe have it worse. In fact, continuing their own disparity and fueling further grievance is a bonus. Margaret Atwood recently pointed out that these people enjoy cruelty. That’s what they love about Trump and MAGA. The mask is off and they don’t have to hide any more. There is no rational other than to harm and destroy the system that prevents them to do that. There is no way to compromise or negotiate with something like this because it is all or nothing with them.
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Sep 18, 2022 15:17
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Automatic Slim posted:LBJ had a famous quote about some poor whites would dig deep into their pockets and vote against their interests so that they could keep black people down. To add to it, they view politics as a zero sum game. If the democrats win, we are losing. If we win, they are losing. If they give money to X group, they are taking money from us. Its all black and white, good and bad. The concept that doing something that helps one group might help everyone can't seem to permeate their minds.
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Sep 18, 2022 16:32
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PainterofCrap posted:
I don't share your optimism. Not only do I think the dems are going to get wrecked, I also believe that the GOP is in a full on (what Prester Jane used to call) compaction cycle. Any election they lose moving forward will have been rigged and the only solution is more conservatism. Or fascism as you put it. Same thing anymore. Over half the party still believes the election was stolen. A LOT of those polls and their cross tabs and poo poo are terrifying. We're talking about a lot of people and a ton of grifter candidates willing to exploit them whether they believe it or not. I suspect that most don't but we're seeing an increasing number of True Believers winning races and walking the halls of government, with a well oiled loud media machine propping them up. I mean, this is the 1/6 thread so we've already seen it with our own eyes. And after a point, elections might largely cease to even matter given how effective republicans have been at packing the courts with crazy people and zealots. I think the move going forward for the GOP is to just DO poo poo and dare anyone to do anything about it while the opposition mostly stands around saying "nuh uh, no fair" like a group of kids playing touch football where the bully always gets to decide if he was tagged, in bounds, fumbled, what down it is, what the score is and so forth. Or like a baseball team getting to select it's own umpires. Just look at this "special master" bullshit for an obvious example.
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Sep 18, 2022 17:04
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PainterofCrap posted:To add to this: The GOP has abandoned the basic function of government: to serve the people; to act as a governor on the voice of the people (or individually, their constituencies) and the power of their will. The GOP’s unspoken ethos is that we’re in a competitive yet corrupt and unfair society and the current democratic government system cannot reform it (so we reform the government system into something less democratic.) Them not offering anything right now is a part of what they offer. Don’t want to help the poor and drag everybody else down the hierarchy with inflation, after all. (Not that’s what happened. That’s the perception.) Automata 10 Pack fucked around with this message at 17:45 on Sep 18, 2022 |
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Sep 18, 2022 17:09
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Oh, they want to help people. Very certain people. The glorious job creators that supposedly drive society, churches that preach supply side jesus from the pulpit, cops that murder with impunity, young men and women who will fight in wars that they won't dirty their hands with and jailers who lock up poor minorities for profit. You can't be a staunch proponent of the death penalty, harsh prison sentences and actively obstructing education and the teaching of critical thinking and then tell me about freedom and how the state has too much power. Or how the free market solves everything up until it results in something they don't like. They're not the party of small government and never have been. BiggerBoat fucked around with this message at 19:06 on Sep 18, 2022 |
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Sep 18, 2022 17:47
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Edit: also biggerboat is correct. and people really have rewritten the “blue wave 2018” results. The Democrats underperformed that year compared to the polling and the shift was smaller than 2006’s midterms and half the size of the Republican 2010 red wave. The Democrats almost lost the house in a surprise upset and barely won the Senate in hell year 2020. This optimism that the house projections is secretly incorrect feels like those alternate Obama-Mitt polls from 2012. A whole lot of cope.
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Sep 18, 2022 17:51
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Ok I'll bite, What percentage of voter registration was 1st-time voters? How does that compare to the trend just since Dobbs?
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Sep 18, 2022 18:30
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Automata 10 Pack posted:This optimism that the house projections is secretly incorrect feels like those alternate Obama-Mitt polls from 2012. A whole lot of cope. The House projection started out awful for Dems and has been improving ever since. The Senate projection started out meh for Dems and has already way past flipped to bad for Reps. Biden's and the party's approval has similarly been climbing this summer. It doesn't have to be unskewing so much as following the trend.
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Sep 18, 2022 18:49
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Here's the thing about polls - they are a snapshot of the electorate at a given moment in time. Until election day, peoples' minds can change and nobody wins or loses. Saying that a poll is or was more correct at a different period of a cycle is disingenuous unless you have proof there has been deliberate miscalculations.
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Sep 18, 2022 20:10
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Automata 10 Pack posted:Edit: also biggerboat is correct. and people really have rewritten the “blue wave 2018” results. The Democrats underperformed that year compared to the polling and the shift was smaller than 2006’s midterms and half the size of the Republican 2010 red wave. The Democrats almost lost the house in a surprise upset and barely won the Senate in hell year 2020. Wasn't Democrats results in 2018 "underperforming" mostly because Republicans over performed? I feel like at that point people really had no idea how Republicans would go and whether they would really fall in line behind Trump
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Sep 18, 2022 21:33
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Levitate posted:
If 2020 was a referendum on Trump himself the 2022 is a referendum on if Trumpism is to be the parties future. If the Republican Party makes gains in swing areas with protrump candidates there’s a real problem. I’m not talking some R+35 seat chooses to go 100% a dick but if some toss up seats flip because the big lie rhetoric and the FBI is always picking on the orange man appeals to moderate voters. If so, all we’re getting for the next decade is doubling down on Trumps rhetoric and ramping up Q level nonsense. I’m hopeful the not MAGAs can hold their noses long enough to vote for a blue candidate in the national level elections but I expect that mostly they’re just going to not vote. Wokeness and BLM are just not things the moderate Rs like and may be too much for them. The thing about trump is he managed to find new voters so moderate Rs just not voting isn’t good enough, they’ve already be priced into the system, they have to flip in numbers big enough to matter. If that happens then Trumpism becomes a novelty side show for 2024. Sure, there’s going to be loons in congress bringing up big lie rhetoric for years and years but it won’t be driving the bus. Murgos fucked around with this message at 22:04 on Sep 18, 2022 |
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Sep 18, 2022 21:59
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Murgos posted:If 2020 was a referendum on Trump himself the 2022 is a referendum on if Trumpism is to be the parties future. i think various moderate R types think parts of "wokeism" is extreme when its couched to them with lots of buzzword and other stupid poo poo but i think Roe dying scared a gently caress ton of white women both old and young enough to realize that the chuds are gonna go worse and farther and they arnt happy with trump making the party about him and his hosed up grievances, neither are they happy with the weird uber chud evangelical types and their constant screaming about "woke" stuff when they still have grocery issues and poo poo. i also think many think the GOP is too openly cruel now.idk various things i have seen given me hope but we will see.
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Sep 18, 2022 22:34
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At least Cannon has taken any suspense out of who the GOP will put on the Supreme Court next time they get an opportunity.
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Sep 18, 2022 23:02
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FWIW, anecdotal evidence on the ground in a red Florida county suggests that being "woke" or "politically correct" does seem to bother a lot of people for some reason and it seems to come up a lot in what's normally just a general conversation environment. Or more than it should. I'm not sure what's so intrusive or aggressive about "try to be polite, listen to people and do your best not be an rear end in a top hat" that bothers some folks so much but it's a real thing that many seem to think is infringing on their freedom. Freedom to be a rude rear end in a top hat but freedom none the less is how they seem to see it and, near as I can pin it, most of it comes down to others not finding their jokes all that funny anymore when, time was, you could insult gays and minorities with impunity under the guise of "jokes". And your targets? Those people would curl up in a ball of embarrassment, shame and just take it or stay closeted. Comedy and societal norms are just never supposed to change or evolve I guess. Also, "Santa Claus and the Little Mermaid are WHITE god dammit" sort of thing. They view two men kissing on TV or a trans character as having something "shoved down their throats" when they could really just change the channel and go read the Bible or do whatever it is that makes them happy. But nothing makes them happy. Beyond the suffering of others I mean. And maybe shooting guns. They also seem to like really big loud trucks and flags. BIG flags everywhere. For no real reason I can ascertain. But if any of this is bringing them joy, I'm damned if I can see it. BiggerBoat fucked around with this message at 23:07 on Sep 18, 2022 |
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Sep 18, 2022 23:05
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BiggerBoat posted:FWIW, anecdotal evidence on the ground in a red Florida county suggests that being "woke" or "politically correct" does seem to bother a lot of people for some reason and it seems to come up a lot in what's normally just a general conversation environment. Or more than it should. I'm not sure what's so intrusive or aggressive about "try to be polite, listen to people and do your best not be an rear end in a top hat" that bothers some folks so much but it's a real thing that many seem to think is infringing on their freedom. This is a genuine question - have you gotten to know one of them? Like really well? The answers to your questions are actually really simple and internally consistent. So, you know how a lot of Israelis see Israel as a Jewish country specifically for Jewish people? A lot of Americans see America as a white Christian country for white Christian people in exactly the same way. They reject the idea that everyone has a right to be here. This is their country that they own and other people are taking it from them. They aren't trying to be mean. Don't they have a right to live in a country made for them the way Jews can live in Israel and keep everyone else out? Forcing them to accept people who are different IS infringing on their right to live where everyone has the same values and beliefs they do. The modern conservative movement is fundamentally a rejection of late 20th century globalism and liberalism (the real globalism, where everyone participates in a global ideas exchange, not the dog whistle)
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Sep 18, 2022 23:25
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I'm fully expecting us to lose this year, to the point I've no intention of doing anything more than taking a sleeping pill and going to bed as soon as possible on election night. I used to like watching results come in, but at this point it's just a drawn out agony. See also: election night 2024, wherever we are at that point. However, I also think past a certain level doomerism is actively harmful. Yes, things are bad. Yes, things will almost certainly get worse. Yes, even if we win, poo poo's still sliding rapidly into a pit, the Republican party has decided their platform is competitive cruelty, and the judiciary is behaving like the unaccountable monarchy this country has somehow let them become. There's a youtube video I saw, whose creator I've unfortunately forgotten at the moment, that pitches the idea of hope as defiance. That it is indeed possible to fight as hard as you can, do everything possible, and still lose. That it is possible, maybe even likely, that losing (and by this I don't mean an election, I mean entirely losing) is inevitable. In that circumstance, there's only two options: 1. give up entirely, sink into an endless depression and wait for the end, or 2. keep fighting out of sheer spite. I don't think either response is the 'wrong' one, but I prefer spite, not least because option 1 is what all this cruelty is designed to do. The fascists don't want to just win, they want to dominate. They want to grind every single perceived enemy into nothing. if the end result is the same, I like the one where they're slightly less satisfied. The active harm, however, is believing we've reached that state before we have. Maybe we have. Maybe we haven't. What's clear is that the fascists don't believe it yet. They're still crying big sobby tears about Biden saying mean things to them. They're doing dumb cruel poo poo like this Martha's Vineyard thing because they're seeing their poll numbers drop like crazy and they're lashing out, hoping to rile up their base even further by proving their opponents are every bit as racist and cruel as they are, and as that didn't happen, they're now running around lying their asses off about it because it's all they've got. Republicans rightly believed that 2022 was going to be an absolute massacre for the Democrats, as did basically anyone else paying attention. That is still very likely. But they've been taking body blow after body blow this year, and it's entirely because they're stupid loving fascists. They caught the car on Roe, and decided that meant they could go full mask-off insanity. States rights? Pfeh. Let's talk about banning it nationwide. Let's set off every trigger law that's been sitting there waiting. Let's actually argue about how ten year olds should have rape-babies, and try to prosecute the doctor that saved her. Let's say gay marriage is next, let's absolutely destroy schools right out in the open, let's threaten contraception, try to take trans kids away from their parents, literally burn books. Meanwhile, the Jan 6th committee has put out an entire season of Trump Crimes: He Definitely Did It, and for all the right wing tried to claim no one was watching, a whole lot of people were, and the season finale apparently hasn't aired yet. The FBI raided Trump's home, and even the most ignorant, non-politics informed person is going to have a bit of a heart attack when they hear "stole nuclear secrets". They put themselves in this position because they embraced Trump. After Jan 6 they could have denounced him and run far in the other direction. A whole bunch of their voters were shocked and horrified, they would have followed, and they would have had two years for this "betrayal" to calm down while pumping up DeSantis. Now they're stuck trying to defend a traitor who apparently can't stop committing crimes for a single solitary second. I think it's a reasonable response to go "probably not, but hey, maybe" because electorally we're in a better spot than we were. Hell, that bit about "aw well, nevertheless"? gently caress it. Why not? Be honest about how bad things are, and then nevertheless into the grave.
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Sep 18, 2022 23:34
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KillHour posted:This is a genuine question - have you gotten to know one of them? Like really well? Kiiinda....? But, no, not really. I don't have any close friends that really think like that because I guess what I view as limited thinking sort of throws up barriers to becoming close in the first place, like any relationship. It comes down to not having much in common and the limitations that puts up to forming close relationships. Not really sure what you're driving at tbh but hopefully I answered the question well. I have friends and even intimate relationships for sure with people who aren't as far left as I am but when someone thinks that black people are too uppity and it's a shame that no one can tell racist or homophobic jokes anymore like in the old days, it kind of puts a ceiling on the whole friendship ladder. I can get along with almost anyone and can empathize with most people. Getting to know some of them really well, though? Sure. You could say that, now that I think more about it. I think I confused making friends with them with getting to know them well.
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Sep 19, 2022 00:39
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BiggerBoat posted:Kiiinda....? I didn't really have a point other than to say that if you're confused about their motivations, you're probably hearing them third hand. The reasoning behind their ideology is actually pretty clear and they aren't just literal 1 dimensional comic book villains. I completely disagree with it, but it's no less internally constant than any other ideology. People in the thread really like to boil it down to "they are all psychopaths that love suffering more than anything else" and it's just not true in the same way that leftists aren't all going around identifying as chairs to annoy them.
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Sep 19, 2022 00:51
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kartikeya posted:The active harm, however, is believing we've reached that state before we have. Maybe we have. Maybe we haven't. What's clear is that the fascists don't believe it yet. They're still crying big sobby tears about Biden saying mean things to them. They're sore losers AND sore winners. Unless the Republicans can find a magic lamp to make life exactly like they remembered it being when they were 11 years old, they'll never be satisfied. Edit: I think the easiest way to understand their mentality is to imagine if you built your identity around being "normal." If being straight is normal, you're fine. But if straight becomes one of many valid possibilities, then that entire part of your identity is threatened. Your sexuality is no longer normal, and to make matters worse, there is no normal, everything is equally deviant and strange. That's intolerable, so it has to go. Dr. Arbitrary fucked around with this message at 01:07 on Sep 19, 2022 |
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Sep 19, 2022 01:04
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CNN special airing right now, it's called "American Coup" and it's on from 21:00 - 23:00. Not sure when it airs again.
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Sep 19, 2022 02:17
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It seems like random thought Sunday here, so I'll share a random thought I had this morning: Boomers (for lack of a better term, sigh, apologies) sure really loving hate their kids and grandkids because sheesh how many 70yr+ people are they voting into office? I know it's skewed by the minimum 30/35 retirement but quote:The average age of Members of the House at the beginning of the 117th Congress was 58.4 years; of Senators, 64.3 years  and my parents were born in 1952.Whatever they're called, whatever their age, there's quite a large block of voters de facto saying "we'll see we suck at raising children and grandchildren because we certainly won't vote for them".
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Sep 19, 2022 03:06
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Oath Keeper Jeremy Brown is set for trial on October 3rd. He was initially charged with trespassing for his role on the events of January 6th, Oath Keeper snitch (Oathbreaker?) Caleb Berry mentioned to the feds that Jeremy brought grenades to DC that day. You might think, with all the poo poo going down in the aftermath, Jeremy would have gotten rid of those grenades or gotten a friend to take them. But then, you're probably smarter than Jeremy. So, Brown caught a weapons charge in addition to his trespassing charge because he wouldn't get rid of things. But a trespassing charge and a weapons charge isn't a very notable Jan 6 defendant. If only there were something more recently relevant that could be enlightening, and tell us more about Justice's plans in another case. Lucky for us, Jeremy's attachment to the proof of his crimes also extends to 18 U.S. Code § 793e, the National Defense Information charge they obtained a warrant for with Trump. Author/Journalist Marcy Wheeler has a post up showing some of the similarities and walking through Justice's apparent plans with Brown. I'll go through them in light detail here, drawing out the pieces I find most interesting. Click the link above if you're down bad enough to want more info. First, Justice is looking to introduce evidence that Jeremy had been previously visited by Air Force investigators seeking those same documents in 2017, based on drunken boasts Jeremy made after a fellow soldier's funeral. Jeremy apparently repeatedly denied that he had any classified documents and told the investigators that they could search only the shed that contained all of his military gear and files it did not contain all his military gear and files. Other than painting Jeremy as a drunken buffoon, it also establishes something important. Quoting from Justice's doc on 793e (emphasis mine) quote:Whoever having unauthorized possession of, access to, or control over any document . . . . relating to the national defense . . . willfully retains the same and fails to deliver it to the officer or employee of the United States entitled to receive it s]hall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than ten years, or both. Next comes actually trying the case, something that I've been interested in and trying to pick up an understanding of from their filings in front of Cannon. The path forward they note with Brown likely mimics the logistics with Trump. First is how to define the historically nebulous "National Defense Information" for the jury... trying to avoid a verdict where the jury decides that the retained documents weren't that important because they weren't spies names or carrier schematics. quote:To establish that the Documents contained “information relating to the national defense,” the government need show only that (1) the information is directly and reasonably connected with the national defense, and (2) the information was closely held by the government. See United States v. Campa, 529 F.3d 980, 1004-05 (11th Cir. 2008) (“‘information relating to the national defense’ . . . is limited to information that the government has endeavored to keep from the public”). The Supreme Court has held that “national defense” is a “generic concept of broad connotations, referring to the military and naval establishments and the related activities of national preparedness.” Id. (quoting Gorin v. United States, 312 U.S. 19, 28 (1941)). There's more about their plans for Berry but it comes down to bringing in a cleared expert witness to testify about the documents and why it's important that they remain classified. Of course, that presents its own issue - how can you tell the jury it'd be dangerous for this information to get out to the wrong people only to then give the information in a public trial? The FBI is proposing to use the Silent Witness Rule, a weird legal quirk with a tumultuous history. The government's plan is this: quote:As part of this testimony, the government’s expert will testify about the Classified Documents. To enable the jury to adequately weigh this testimony, the government will provide copies of the Classified Documents to the jurors. The Court and the defense will also receive copies of the Classified Documents. However, because public disclosure of the Classified Documents reasonably could cause serious damage to national security, the Classified Documents cannot be declassified for the trial. It's likely that a similar effort would be undertaken in the Trump case. The other quirk that we may see arise (if Trump is ever actually charged) is what Brown was charged with. Part of his objection to including the visit from 2017 is that the government hasn't charged him with anything relating to the documents he admittedly drunkenly bragged about. Just other NDI stored with it. Marcy theorizes it's because the original documents remain too sensitive to share in court, even under the procedure shown above, and that we could see similar with Trump: Charging him with documents that are bad enough to merit conviction but not with the rumored most sensitive documents. Which is to say that just because eventual Trump charges don't include anything about another country's nuclear program, it doesn't mean they weren't included in the files he took.
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Sep 19, 2022 03:27
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PhantomOfTheCopier posted:It seems like random thought Sunday here, so I'll share a random thought I had this morning: Boomers (for lack of a better term, sigh, apologies) sure really loving hate their kids and grandkids because sheesh how many 70yr+ people are they voting into office? I haven't actually looked up numbers to support it, but that's probably just incumbency advantage at work, along with the general advantage given by having a long political career with a lot of experience, connections, and name recognition. A 35-year-old has only been out of college for a bit over a decade, and the people running straight into House elections as soon as they're eligible tend to be Buttigieg types who wanted to be in politics from the beginning and should probably be kept as far from power as possible.
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Sep 19, 2022 08:09
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Main Paineframe posted:I haven't actually looked up numbers to support it, but that's probably just incumbency advantage at work, along with the general advantage given by having a long political career with a lot of experience, connections, and name recognition. Nope https://twitter.com/davelevinthal/status/1570099704830074881 Also, seems thread appropriate https://twitter.com/amandacarpenter/status/1571583238996475909 Charlz Guybon fucked around with this message at 09:10 on Sep 19, 2022 |
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Sep 19, 2022 09:04
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It's all those young people voted during that dip in the 1980s who have just stuck around. Comparing it to the 1800s is kind of silly because there just weren't that many 70 year olds around to even be in office. Even in 1960, the life expectancy was around 70 years old, and it's improved to 78 now. I'm hoping we see some mass retirements/deaths soon and we can reset a little to get younger people in office. We have 6 senators over 80, they can't be around for that much longer.
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Sep 19, 2022 13:23
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Bird in a Blender posted:It's all those young people voted during that dip in the 1980s who have just stuck around. Comparing it to the 1800s is kind of silly because there just weren't that many 70 year olds around to even be in office. Even in 1960, the life expectancy was around 70 years old, and it's improved to 78 now. That's absurd and completely irrelevant. Even in 1850, the percentage of people in their 70s who were still alive was 22%; by, 1890 that number had grown to 30%. [source] Even if you start from a small number, say 700,000 (the first census found a population of 3.9 million, and the first 8 censuses found a population growth rate of 32-36% per decade, so calculate it back a bit to get an estimate of the growth over the decade of the 1770s), and take only 22% of that, it's still three orders of magnitude larger than the size of Congress. Especially back then, when it was a couple hundred seats smaller than it is today. So, considering you only need 0.05% of the population born 70 years ago to be alive to completely fill Congress in 1850, if in fact you have 22%+ of them still alive, then lack of eligible candidates in 1850 is not the problem. Even ancient Rome had a series of governmental offices with minimum ages necessary to become eligible to serve in them. Why would this go up to an age 42 minimum to be a Consul, if Roman life expectancy was somewhere around 22 to 32? They didn't even have 40 year olds, let alone 42! The answer is, obviously, they did. They had 40-year-olds, and 50-year-olds, and 60-year-olds, and 70-year-olds. A life expectancy of 22 does not mean everyone dies before they reach that age, any more than a life expectancy of 70 in 1960 means that decade saw no septuagenarians. It means it was a coin flip at birth whether you would live to see your 22nd birthday. The reason life expectancy back then was so low was the same reason it was low in the 1800s: infant and child mortality. Once you reached age 5 or so, life expectancy shot way up; teenagers two thousand years ago, or two centuries ago, could expect to live nearly as long as teenagers today. What really changed the actuarial tables over the course of the 1900s was the near-total elimination of infant and child mortality in more and more countries over time. The US was not unable to find a few hundred people in their 70s, even in the 1800s; in fact, it had over a hundred thousand of them by midcentury. It just didn't want to elect them to Congress. Now, it does. It's a change in voter preference, not a lack of septuagenarians. Fuschia tude fucked around with this message at 16:09 on Sep 19, 2022 |
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Sep 19, 2022 16:04
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Bird in a Blender posted:It's all those young people voted during that dip in the 1980s who have just stuck around. Comparing it to the 1800s is kind of silly because there just weren't that many 70 year olds around to even be in office. Even in 1960, the life expectancy was around 70 years old, and it's improved to 78 now. I'm hoping we see some mass retirements/deaths soon and we can reset a little to get younger people in office. We have 6 senators over 80, they can't be around for that much longer. Strom Thurmond says 'lol.'
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Sep 19, 2022 16:20
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Fuschia tude posted:The US was not unable to find a few hundred people in their 70s, even in the 1800s; in fact, it had over a hundred thousand of them by midcentury. It just didn't want to elect them to Congress. Now, it does. It's a change in voter preference, not a lack of septuagenarians.
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Sep 19, 2022 16:22
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Yeah, but the 70+ folks usually aren't freshmen. They're people who've been in those seats for decades, mostly strong and connected incumbents in very safe or highly gerrymandered seats. Established members are able to hold onto their seats longer and longer. And in fact, the article you posted even says that! quote:How Congress is aging Fortunately, there's a wikipedia article listing the 2020 House freshmen, which also lets us search by birth year. So we can see that of 60 non-incumbents who entered the House from the 2020 elections, only 2 of them were over age 70, while 11 of them were younger than 40. Which also means that 11 of them have never known a world without Steny Hoyer in the House, since he was first elected to the House in 1981. Eyeballing it, the majority of them seem to be in their 40s or 50s. An interesting trend that does come out when looking like this is that even though the GOP's Congressional membership has skewed a bit younger in recent years, the oldest freshmen are mostly GOP. Of the 14 non-incumbents above the age of 60, only two of them are Dems. It's unclear whether this is a MAGA effect (a lot of the oldest had little to no previous political experience) or something else.
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Sep 19, 2022 16:27
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