Ya gotta wonder what they're continuing to get out of trying to keep these kinds of bogus stories alive. Is the Democrats preparing to "clamp down" on supposed Russian information services (read: anybody we don't like) in advance of the mid-terms because they're seeing the writing on the wall that they're not doing so well with the pub…
Ya gotta wonder what they're continuing to get out of trying to keep these kinds of bogus stories alive. Is the Democrats preparing to "clamp down" on supposed Russian information services (read: anybody we don't like) in advance of the mid-terms because they're seeing the writing on the wall that they're not doing so well with the public? Or is it just the tabloid/clickbait mainstream media trying to keep their deluded readership from changing the channel? Either way it seems like it's desperation on somebodies part.
People use the image to amplify what they already felt about the person. I liked Dukakis but he was clearly a wuss and they amplified the contrast. Putin doesn't look like a complete fool in his photo ops because even you and I already think of him as generally badass (evil aside).
Love it... funny watching the security guys try to grab slippery people with a prominent off limits no-grab area. Putin would have had no such compunction.
Every day it's a new bs story or ten. Today it was Elizabeth Warren calling the filibuster racist. The logic of that has to be astonishing. The only reason I see this garbage is that my corporate computer has a homepage set to MSNBC because ownership.
I believe there was another one there last week about John Dean - mind you, the same dude that managed to get 1 to 4 in the federal pen by giving away all his Nixon admin coworkers - talking about how the walls are closing in on Trump. I mean, who would trust that idiot with any useful information after his piss-poor performance both as a white house counsel and as a witness against his buddies, most of whom skated. Then the WaPo promptly blows a huge hole in the hull of their Trump felony story the next day with their retraction.
I believe they are trying to let their crowd down easy with this stuff. Eventually, sometime in the future, they'll realize they were hoodwinked, but not yet.
The filibuster is a bulwark against hyper-partisanship. If you can't get at least a few people in the opposing party to put it to a vote, it's probably a bad idea.
Same with the electoral college system. Who wants an absolute tyranny of the majority?
I trust Republicans over Democrats to safeguard these safeguards, and not because they're (frequently) in the minority, but because they're sticklers for tradition.
It's like my dad told me when I wanted to buy a new car. "Don't ever buy a 'completely redesigned' model. It'll take them at least 5 years to work out the bugs from a total factory redo. Yes, it's flashy and shiny and exciting, but you'll get burned every time. Always wait at least 5 years, because that's when the problems will start showing up, and the company will have tweaked the design to correct them."
Republicans (even the crooked ones) generally want incremental change. Progressives (especially the crooked ones) generally want immediate, radical change.
Ironically, Trump was probably the one president over the last few decades who took a little from column A and a little from column B. Both Republicans and Democrats wasted the opportunities he presented.
I agree with most of what you've posted in this thread, so please don't take this as *too* much of a rebuke . . .
Republicans aren't strict stickers for tradition; the Merrick Garland maneuver took balls and was, frankly, the kind of move that Dixiecrats would've pulled to kill civil rights. And even they might not have done it.
And there's some strip-mining of regulations, particularly of the financial industry, that could've done with a bit of incrementalism in the late 20th century. Both parties have approved of radical changes, just for different reasons.
If the platform is decent, it's more like 2-3 years. Because the engineers already know, in advance, what is problematic and are already working on the fixes as they launch. THEY KNOW...they just typically run out of time. For example, Explorer rollover problems with under inflated Firestones. The ride/handling guys knew what happened when they did a high speed J turn. They talked about it during the design/test phase. "Just make sure tires are properly inflated" - yep, like the average American checks their tire inflation weekly ;-)
«The filibuster is a bulwark against hyper-partisanship. If you can't get at least a few people in the opposing party to put it to a vote, it's probably a bad idea.»
To me that is not a serious argument, in the USA case it is more in practice supercharging the enormously larger weight given to states with smaller populations.
Also the "bad idea" and "bipartisan" concept seems to me to related to the eternal illusion that politics is about choosing the best ideas during a debate among philosopher-kings rather than a fight among competing interests.
«Same with the electoral college system. Who wants an absolute tyranny of the majority?»
Same: the Senate already has an anti-majority device in the 2-per-state rule.
«I trust Republicans over Democrats [...} because they're sticklers for tradition. Republicans (even the crooked ones) generally want incremental change. Progressives (especially the crooked ones) generally want immediate, radical change.»
That to me seems the usual burkean propaganda, which was bullshit even as he wrote it. The conservatives are always and everywhere not for incremental change, but for advancing the vested interests of incumbents. That often is done defensively, by delaying change adverse to incumbent with the "incremental change" argument, but when advancing the interests of incumbents they can switch and do radical change. This has been even codified in a saying "change everything so that nothing changes" ("tout changer pour rien changer").
PS Burke was defending the vested interests of incumbent feudal "tory" landowners against the potential "radical change" of the french and american "whig" revolutions, or at least slow down the takeover of the english state by the new class of "whig" ironmasters. A battle that in some ways is echoed today in that between the tradcon right and the neoliberal right.
The more expansive and intrusive government policy and regulation become, the more important that said policies represent those of most people. Since both parties pander to fringe partisans, we need super-majorities in Congress to keep more extreme ideas from being imposed by 50% plus one.
As for conservatives promoting incumbents and GOP party interests, of course they do--just like Democrats.
«The more expansive and intrusive government policy and regulation become, the more important that said policies represent those of most people. Since both parties pander to fringe partisans, we need super-majorities»
I think that you may be forgetting that the most "expansive and intrusive government policy and regulation" like PATRIOT Act, Afghanistan+Iraq TARP+bailout have been approved by 90%+ congressional majorities, because those are the policies where the entire ruling class likes. The "controversial" ones that appear prominently on the media are usually just posturing for the benefit of gullible voters.
The filibuster was supposed to only be used sparingly, rarely. Yet it is used daily, repeatedly to block just to prevent a "win" from the other Team. We elected these people - we don't need bulwarks on top of bulwarks. We already have a bulwark - representative democracy versus mob rule.
I have held for a while for the need for the filibuster to "hurt", especially politically, to be used. It aligns with Manchin's idea of going back to the speaking filbuster.
Both of your statements cannot be true. The Constitution specifies the very few instances where a super-majority is required and passing a bill in the Senate is not among them.
The filibuster was the result of an oversight, albeit only discovered decades later. Both houses of Congress ended debate on a bill by “moving the question”. That motion became obsolete as there was always an understanding among the members on when to close debate. It was VP Aaron Burr who suggested ridding the Senate of rarely if ever used rules, so out went that particular motion.
The issue arose of how to close off debate, since there was no longer a procedure and the custom of consensus was falling apart, mostly if not exclusively in the context of the slavery debate (hence the “racist” tag placed on it by some today).
So, the filibuster is, at a minimum, anti-democratic and likely unconstitutional. It is certainly at odds with Originalism and should therefore be dispensed with. Its creation was the result of a procedural oversight and the rise of a partisanship that ignored custom and practice.
the Senate gets to set its own rules, so a Constitutional argument is bunk.
The only real reason to retain it is fear of what will happen when the shoe is on the other foot, as McConnell (and it pains me to say this) correctly points out. That shoe on the other foot thing probably happens even faster without the filibuster than with it. Changes piss people off, the status quo is a winner.
The filibuster’s constitutionality has in fact never been tested in Court, so to dismiss the issue as “bunk” proves nothing. The underlying principle should be uncontroversial: even Senate rules are subject to the Constitution. On top of it all, the Founders strictly limited the need for super-majorities to a few discrete cases - and passing general legislation was not among them. So if you are an Originalist, that alone should be enough evidence to get rid of the filibuster. Your argument is, at its essence, anti-majoritarian and really a policy matter, not a constitutional one. I am making a legal argument only.
"The filibuster’s constitutionality has in fact never been tested in Court"
And it never will be because in general political questions are not justiciable, and second, no one has standing to bring it to court in the first place. The Constitution says both House and Senate shall establish their own rules of operation - so not certain where you think some other provision trumps that.
Are you really saying that a Senate rule that, for instance, prohibited any black Senator from becoming a member of a particular committee would be beyond judicial review under the political question doctrine? But if the constitutionality of one rule is subject to judicial review, why not the constitutionality of other rules?
Nowhere in my comment did I suggest litigation. I was setting out what I saw as reasonable rationales for the Senate itself to act and abolish the filibuster rule.
But if I understood your comment correctly, as the Senate has an unfettered right to set its own rules, then the Senator loses his challenge because the Constitution’s protections cannot be used to overturn a duly enacted Senate rule.
While no one has a property interest in a particular law, I still wonder whether standing jurisprudence wouldn’t capture a Senator whose bill fails because of an allegedly unconstitutional rule - in other words, does a legislator have an protected interest in having his legislation subjected to a constitutional process on its way to becoming law/or failing.
Also I am not certain in the end whether this issue would be decided by the political question doctrine. Since Marbury v. Madison, the scope within which each coeval branch of government gets to declare what is constitutional without interference from the judiciary is exceedingly narrow. But, absent a court decision, we cannot know for sure where the filibuster rule may fall along that spectrum - so it is all law school level theorizing until a lawsuit may be filed.
I would doubt a Senator could challenge the filibuster in court simply because he lacks standing - failing to have his legislation considered is not a tort.
I'll amend my argument on the Black Senator - aside from his own tort, there is the matter that the Senate would be denying the equal suffrage of states and that would run afoul of an actual provision within the Constitution. Now, we've had to invent quite a hypothetical to make the issue justiciable - which is a far cry from your speculation on the filibuster.
Litigating Senate rules won't work. The Senate itself would just state that it wasn't bound by another branch of government in how it organized itself. Silence on this matter in the Constitution won't give a court an ability to invent stuff. A judge who doesn't like being ignored would dismiss the whole thing. That's why I said bunk. Senate rules are their own. The filibuster itself once was 66 votes, now it is 60. It could be adjusted to 57 or 53 or 75(!) or whatever the Senate saw fit. Or dispensed with altogether. But that would be foolish from everyone's perspective except those looking for short-term gain.
Abolishing the filibuster would have the advantage of restoring the Senate to its original way of functioning. In ruling on the filibuster’s constitutionality, the Court would not only be inventing nothing from any “silence”, but rather applying well understood canons of constitutional interpretation.
As to whether the Senate would abide by any court ruling, I suppose there might be the potential for a constitutional crisis, but it would be very unlikely in my view.
Because the consumers of the NYT, WaPo, NPR, CNN, etc., don't care if it's true or not. Reading what they WANT to be true is enough to make them happy, and thus willing to pay for that brief high each morning.
Sure, the media has always been liberal, but a true echo chamber for Democrats? Relatively recent development. I know Republicans, and you probably do too, who still in their heart-of-hearts believe that the Clintons murdered Vince Foster. I don't know of a Democratic equivalent from the 1990s, willing to bet that those began developing in the last few years. In 2040, there will still be Democrats who believe half of this Russia nonsense.
I'm saying this without personal animosity toward you, but I have a degree of schadenfreude about those who find Trump offensive and unacceptable. My thoughts are "now you know how I felt about Clinton" and I voted for him in 1992.
In the 90's Fox News pioneered the model and everyone listening hated Clinton(s). The MSM has the same model now and made everyone hate Trump. see Hate Inc. for more
And the internet killing print subscriptions drove them to this. There's a nice article I read once that equated to: Bezos didn't direct the WaPo editorial lean, but he did institute the use of modern tech analytics like "which headline, A/B, yields us a subscriber?". The rest is history as Democracy Died in (media) Darkness. My favorite was they once had a 2017 headline about how much Trump voters regretted their choice and literally not one of the ones interviewed did.
Folks, we shouldn't fail to consider the slightly sinister possibility that one reason to keep the focus on anti-Russia is that they are making a lot of money being pals with China. Pelosi's husband makes way more than Hunter Biden. Even McConnell's family is in on it, check out his wife's business transactions. The last thing they want is for us to turn more attention to China.
It's not pure treason, just immoral profiteering or sometimes staying in office on the back of the money. It's like why Prescott Bush (41's dad) kept working with a Nazi steel magnate after it was outlawed. Despite being caught he still got elected to the Senate after that.
Given the fact that the CCP (and PLA) have their fingers in so many Chinese corporate pies, it's one degree of separation from a violation of the emoluments clause.
Part of me thinks Putin loves the "muh Russia" narratives. He's happy to speak softly and let the American media exaggerate the size of his stick.
Seems the issue is the old one; if something is legal is it right? In the alternative, if something is illegal, is it wrong? Interactions with China may not be illegal but most often are wrong for the nation.
The standard should not be whether the behavior is illegal. Hunter Biden being on the Burisma board was 100% legal. And in that case I think Joe's hands could have been clean (at least through 2016 when it mattered; Bobulinski's claims all described events in 2017 when it is important to note he was out of office).
But if Dr. Jill Biden had been on Burisma's board, bringing money into Joe's household, that would be both legal and completely ridiculously a conflict of interest.
It's everybody making money in China who has a stake in this... Apple, Nike, all corporates, my buddy who is a blue blooded American tech CEO making money using Chinese labor says some astonishing things ("I think they really may have come up with a better system than the US")
Back in the 1870s the tactic of the GOP constantly bringing up the traitorous nature of Southern Ds during the civil war in political campaigns was known as “Waving the Bloody Shirt”. Maybe we can call this new msm initiative “Waving the Orange Rug”......
"Waving the Bloody Shirt" originated with Caesar's toga being waved around by Antony in the follow-up to his assassination. Made Rome unhealthy for Brutus, Cassius and company. They did the usual Roman failed rebel move and ran off to Greece. It wasn't a perfect metaphor for what the Radicals were doing post-Civil War.
"And when he saw that the people were mightily swayed and charmed by his words, he mingled with his praises sorrow and indignation over the dreadful deed, and at the close of his speech shook on high the garments of the dead, all bloody and tattered by the swords as they were, called those who had wrought such work villains and murderers..."
The actual Greek word used by Plutarch is "χιτωνίσκους" which is tunics. The term "shirt" had no closer analogue in 44 BC.
I always look at guys who try to change things and I am like, "Why are you even trying?" But I'm a weak man. I don't like rolling rocks uphill all day.
Ya gotta wonder what they're continuing to get out of trying to keep these kinds of bogus stories alive. Is the Democrats preparing to "clamp down" on supposed Russian information services (read: anybody we don't like) in advance of the mid-terms because they're seeing the writing on the wall that they're not doing so well with the public? Or is it just the tabloid/clickbait mainstream media trying to keep their deluded readership from changing the channel? Either way it seems like it's desperation on somebodies part.
"Razor wire around the Capitol Building" seems like desperation to me.
Screams "legitimacy" like nothing else. Makes Tiananmen Square look classy, almost.
I'm at the point in life where I'm willing to stand in front of a tank.
I'd rather be driving the tank.
I was thinking of that incident when Yeltsin got up on a tank in front of Red Square, i'm not just having hallucinatory memories, am I?
How come when Mike Dukakis gets in/on a tank he's lame but when Boris Yeltsin does it he's cool?
I am reminded of Hafez Assad's aphorism: "The next time I come back to Damascus, it will be in a tank."
Bc Boris was smart enough to not put the helmet on. Made all the difference.
Possible because even a drunk Boris could never be as lame as Dukakis?
Yeltsin's overt don't-give-a-shit alcoholism was cool, actually. Many people love a bad boy.
People use the image to amplify what they already felt about the person. I liked Dukakis but he was clearly a wuss and they amplified the contrast. Putin doesn't look like a complete fool in his photo ops because even you and I already think of him as generally badass (evil aside).
You ever watch that clip where a bunch of Femen activists rip off their shirts and try to rush Putin?
His surprise lasts for all of 5 milliseconds before he smirks and gives their naked breasts two thumbs up. Dude is unflappable.
haha.... maybe all of his shirtless photos were inspired by them.... haha can't make this stuff up.
You might get a kick out of a promo video I put together using footage of the incident.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u7VQ1-COo7A
That...is...awesome.
Love it... funny watching the security guys try to grab slippery people with a prominent off limits no-grab area. Putin would have had no such compunction.
Read as: They orchestrated a violent coup and nobody showed up. Like a Biden or Klinton speech.
Every day it's a new bs story or ten. Today it was Elizabeth Warren calling the filibuster racist. The logic of that has to be astonishing. The only reason I see this garbage is that my corporate computer has a homepage set to MSNBC because ownership.
I believe there was another one there last week about John Dean - mind you, the same dude that managed to get 1 to 4 in the federal pen by giving away all his Nixon admin coworkers - talking about how the walls are closing in on Trump. I mean, who would trust that idiot with any useful information after his piss-poor performance both as a white house counsel and as a witness against his buddies, most of whom skated. Then the WaPo promptly blows a huge hole in the hull of their Trump felony story the next day with their retraction.
I believe they are trying to let their crowd down easy with this stuff. Eventually, sometime in the future, they'll realize they were hoodwinked, but not yet.
I like the filibuster, actually, just like I like the Constitution, actually.
The filibuster is a bulwark against hyper-partisanship. If you can't get at least a few people in the opposing party to put it to a vote, it's probably a bad idea.
Same with the electoral college system. Who wants an absolute tyranny of the majority?
I trust Republicans over Democrats to safeguard these safeguards, and not because they're (frequently) in the minority, but because they're sticklers for tradition.
It's like my dad told me when I wanted to buy a new car. "Don't ever buy a 'completely redesigned' model. It'll take them at least 5 years to work out the bugs from a total factory redo. Yes, it's flashy and shiny and exciting, but you'll get burned every time. Always wait at least 5 years, because that's when the problems will start showing up, and the company will have tweaked the design to correct them."
Republicans (even the crooked ones) generally want incremental change. Progressives (especially the crooked ones) generally want immediate, radical change.
Ironically, Trump was probably the one president over the last few decades who took a little from column A and a little from column B. Both Republicans and Democrats wasted the opportunities he presented.
I agree with most of what you've posted in this thread, so please don't take this as *too* much of a rebuke . . .
Republicans aren't strict stickers for tradition; the Merrick Garland maneuver took balls and was, frankly, the kind of move that Dixiecrats would've pulled to kill civil rights. And even they might not have done it.
And there's some strip-mining of regulations, particularly of the financial industry, that could've done with a bit of incrementalism in the late 20th century. Both parties have approved of radical changes, just for different reasons.
If the platform is decent, it's more like 2-3 years. Because the engineers already know, in advance, what is problematic and are already working on the fixes as they launch. THEY KNOW...they just typically run out of time. For example, Explorer rollover problems with under inflated Firestones. The ride/handling guys knew what happened when they did a high speed J turn. They talked about it during the design/test phase. "Just make sure tires are properly inflated" - yep, like the average American checks their tire inflation weekly ;-)
«The filibuster is a bulwark against hyper-partisanship. If you can't get at least a few people in the opposing party to put it to a vote, it's probably a bad idea.»
To me that is not a serious argument, in the USA case it is more in practice supercharging the enormously larger weight given to states with smaller populations.
Also the "bad idea" and "bipartisan" concept seems to me to related to the eternal illusion that politics is about choosing the best ideas during a debate among philosopher-kings rather than a fight among competing interests.
«Same with the electoral college system. Who wants an absolute tyranny of the majority?»
Same: the Senate already has an anti-majority device in the 2-per-state rule.
«I trust Republicans over Democrats [...} because they're sticklers for tradition. Republicans (even the crooked ones) generally want incremental change. Progressives (especially the crooked ones) generally want immediate, radical change.»
That to me seems the usual burkean propaganda, which was bullshit even as he wrote it. The conservatives are always and everywhere not for incremental change, but for advancing the vested interests of incumbents. That often is done defensively, by delaying change adverse to incumbent with the "incremental change" argument, but when advancing the interests of incumbents they can switch and do radical change. This has been even codified in a saying "change everything so that nothing changes" ("tout changer pour rien changer").
PS Burke was defending the vested interests of incumbent feudal "tory" landowners against the potential "radical change" of the french and american "whig" revolutions, or at least slow down the takeover of the english state by the new class of "whig" ironmasters. A battle that in some ways is echoed today in that between the tradcon right and the neoliberal right.
The more expansive and intrusive government policy and regulation become, the more important that said policies represent those of most people. Since both parties pander to fringe partisans, we need super-majorities in Congress to keep more extreme ideas from being imposed by 50% plus one.
As for conservatives promoting incumbents and GOP party interests, of course they do--just like Democrats.
«The more expansive and intrusive government policy and regulation become, the more important that said policies represent those of most people. Since both parties pander to fringe partisans, we need super-majorities»
I think that you may be forgetting that the most "expansive and intrusive government policy and regulation" like PATRIOT Act, Afghanistan+Iraq TARP+bailout have been approved by 90%+ congressional majorities, because those are the policies where the entire ruling class likes. The "controversial" ones that appear prominently on the media are usually just posturing for the benefit of gullible voters.
So true. Trump was not an idealogue but a utilitarian. Wanted to get things done. Lost opportunities.
The filibuster was supposed to only be used sparingly, rarely. Yet it is used daily, repeatedly to block just to prevent a "win" from the other Team. We elected these people - we don't need bulwarks on top of bulwarks. We already have a bulwark - representative democracy versus mob rule.
We should go back to the Senate as intended - to represent the interests of each State. Mandating popular election was a mistake.
Probably the second biggest mistake in Constitutional Amendments.
Any time people bitch about Wyoming having two senators, my answer is "Move to Wyoming and vote, or run for the Senate yourself."
Notice those folks use Wyoming as the outlier and not Vermont or Delaware?
Well said. Turns out wyoming is bullish on bitcoin.
I have held for a while for the need for the filibuster to "hurt", especially politically, to be used. It aligns with Manchin's idea of going back to the speaking filbuster.
You're probably happy there was a filibuster in 2017.
Both of your statements cannot be true. The Constitution specifies the very few instances where a super-majority is required and passing a bill in the Senate is not among them.
The filibuster was the result of an oversight, albeit only discovered decades later. Both houses of Congress ended debate on a bill by “moving the question”. That motion became obsolete as there was always an understanding among the members on when to close debate. It was VP Aaron Burr who suggested ridding the Senate of rarely if ever used rules, so out went that particular motion.
The issue arose of how to close off debate, since there was no longer a procedure and the custom of consensus was falling apart, mostly if not exclusively in the context of the slavery debate (hence the “racist” tag placed on it by some today).
So, the filibuster is, at a minimum, anti-democratic and likely unconstitutional. It is certainly at odds with Originalism and should therefore be dispensed with. Its creation was the result of a procedural oversight and the rise of a partisanship that ignored custom and practice.
the Senate gets to set its own rules, so a Constitutional argument is bunk.
The only real reason to retain it is fear of what will happen when the shoe is on the other foot, as McConnell (and it pains me to say this) correctly points out. That shoe on the other foot thing probably happens even faster without the filibuster than with it. Changes piss people off, the status quo is a winner.
The filibuster’s constitutionality has in fact never been tested in Court, so to dismiss the issue as “bunk” proves nothing. The underlying principle should be uncontroversial: even Senate rules are subject to the Constitution. On top of it all, the Founders strictly limited the need for super-majorities to a few discrete cases - and passing general legislation was not among them. So if you are an Originalist, that alone should be enough evidence to get rid of the filibuster. Your argument is, at its essence, anti-majoritarian and really a policy matter, not a constitutional one. I am making a legal argument only.
"The filibuster’s constitutionality has in fact never been tested in Court"
And it never will be because in general political questions are not justiciable, and second, no one has standing to bring it to court in the first place. The Constitution says both House and Senate shall establish their own rules of operation - so not certain where you think some other provision trumps that.
Are you really saying that a Senate rule that, for instance, prohibited any black Senator from becoming a member of a particular committee would be beyond judicial review under the political question doctrine? But if the constitutionality of one rule is subject to judicial review, why not the constitutionality of other rules?
Nowhere in my comment did I suggest litigation. I was setting out what I saw as reasonable rationales for the Senate itself to act and abolish the filibuster rule.
That black Senator would at least have standing - having an actual tort.
But if I understood your comment correctly, as the Senate has an unfettered right to set its own rules, then the Senator loses his challenge because the Constitution’s protections cannot be used to overturn a duly enacted Senate rule.
While no one has a property interest in a particular law, I still wonder whether standing jurisprudence wouldn’t capture a Senator whose bill fails because of an allegedly unconstitutional rule - in other words, does a legislator have an protected interest in having his legislation subjected to a constitutional process on its way to becoming law/or failing.
Also I am not certain in the end whether this issue would be decided by the political question doctrine. Since Marbury v. Madison, the scope within which each coeval branch of government gets to declare what is constitutional without interference from the judiciary is exceedingly narrow. But, absent a court decision, we cannot know for sure where the filibuster rule may fall along that spectrum - so it is all law school level theorizing until a lawsuit may be filed.
I would doubt a Senator could challenge the filibuster in court simply because he lacks standing - failing to have his legislation considered is not a tort.
I'll amend my argument on the Black Senator - aside from his own tort, there is the matter that the Senate would be denying the equal suffrage of states and that would run afoul of an actual provision within the Constitution. Now, we've had to invent quite a hypothetical to make the issue justiciable - which is a far cry from your speculation on the filibuster.
I should have said “in my initial comment”. The comment to which you responded was replying to HBI’s that it seemed to me raised the issue.
Litigating Senate rules won't work. The Senate itself would just state that it wasn't bound by another branch of government in how it organized itself. Silence on this matter in the Constitution won't give a court an ability to invent stuff. A judge who doesn't like being ignored would dismiss the whole thing. That's why I said bunk. Senate rules are their own. The filibuster itself once was 66 votes, now it is 60. It could be adjusted to 57 or 53 or 75(!) or whatever the Senate saw fit. Or dispensed with altogether. But that would be foolish from everyone's perspective except those looking for short-term gain.
Abolishing the filibuster would have the advantage of restoring the Senate to its original way of functioning. In ruling on the filibuster’s constitutionality, the Court would not only be inventing nothing from any “silence”, but rather applying well understood canons of constitutional interpretation.
As to whether the Senate would abide by any court ruling, I suppose there might be the potential for a constitutional crisis, but it would be very unlikely in my view.
"...they'll realize they were hoodwinked, but not yet."
Oh please. They will never realize they were hoodwinked because they were never hoodwinked.
Then why does none of this bullshit pan out?
Because the consumers of the NYT, WaPo, NPR, CNN, etc., don't care if it's true or not. Reading what they WANT to be true is enough to make them happy, and thus willing to pay for that brief high each morning.
So the MSM is a woke phone sex service, in essence.
Comment of the day.
Correct...you could also call it a "False Hope Hotline"
LMFAO
Sure, the media has always been liberal, but a true echo chamber for Democrats? Relatively recent development. I know Republicans, and you probably do too, who still in their heart-of-hearts believe that the Clintons murdered Vince Foster. I don't know of a Democratic equivalent from the 1990s, willing to bet that those began developing in the last few years. In 2040, there will still be Democrats who believe half of this Russia nonsense.
I'm saying this without personal animosity toward you, but I have a degree of schadenfreude about those who find Trump offensive and unacceptable. My thoughts are "now you know how I felt about Clinton" and I voted for him in 1992.
In the 90's Fox News pioneered the model and everyone listening hated Clinton(s). The MSM has the same model now and made everyone hate Trump. see Hate Inc. for more
And the internet killing print subscriptions drove them to this. There's a nice article I read once that equated to: Bezos didn't direct the WaPo editorial lean, but he did institute the use of modern tech analytics like "which headline, A/B, yields us a subscriber?". The rest is history as Democracy Died in (media) Darkness. My favorite was they once had a 2017 headline about how much Trump voters regretted their choice and literally not one of the ones interviewed did.
Folks, we shouldn't fail to consider the slightly sinister possibility that one reason to keep the focus on anti-Russia is that they are making a lot of money being pals with China. Pelosi's husband makes way more than Hunter Biden. Even McConnell's family is in on it, check out his wife's business transactions. The last thing they want is for us to turn more attention to China.
It's not pure treason, just immoral profiteering or sometimes staying in office on the back of the money. It's like why Prescott Bush (41's dad) kept working with a Nazi steel magnate after it was outlawed. Despite being caught he still got elected to the Senate after that.
Given the fact that the CCP (and PLA) have their fingers in so many Chinese corporate pies, it's one degree of separation from a violation of the emoluments clause.
Part of me thinks Putin loves the "muh Russia" narratives. He's happy to speak softly and let the American media exaggerate the size of his stick.
I can't see into Putin's soul like George W. Bush could, but I do think he's a man with a dry sense of humor.
Seems the issue is the old one; if something is legal is it right? In the alternative, if something is illegal, is it wrong? Interactions with China may not be illegal but most often are wrong for the nation.
The standard should not be whether the behavior is illegal. Hunter Biden being on the Burisma board was 100% legal. And in that case I think Joe's hands could have been clean (at least through 2016 when it mattered; Bobulinski's claims all described events in 2017 when it is important to note he was out of office).
But if Dr. Jill Biden had been on Burisma's board, bringing money into Joe's household, that would be both legal and completely ridiculously a conflict of interest.
https://www.newsweek.com/mitch-mcconnells-wife-elaine-chao-abused-office-help-family-firm-china-business-watchdog-found-1573653
Hmm... I don't agree with you there. An Aussie think tank did some pretty damaging work on how bad the labor situation is over there. Along the lines of major brands buying forced labor with a kicker of 40% over the usual forced labor cost to payoff the labor inspectors to bless it. And, well, one US news service covered it: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-china-rights-xinjiang/think-tank-report-on-uighur-labor-in-china-lists-global-brands-idUSKBN20P122
It's everybody making money in China who has a stake in this... Apple, Nike, all corporates, my buddy who is a blue blooded American tech CEO making money using Chinese labor says some astonishing things ("I think they really may have come up with a better system than the US")
A better system when they can't even feed their people right now
Back in the 1870s the tactic of the GOP constantly bringing up the traitorous nature of Southern Ds during the civil war in political campaigns was known as “Waving the Bloody Shirt”. Maybe we can call this new msm initiative “Waving the Orange Rug”......
"Waving the Bloody Shirt" originated with Caesar's toga being waved around by Antony in the follow-up to his assassination. Made Rome unhealthy for Brutus, Cassius and company. They did the usual Roman failed rebel move and ran off to Greece. It wasn't a perfect metaphor for what the Radicals were doing post-Civil War.
Wouldn't that have been the bloody tunic rather than the bloody shirt?
The original Plutarch:
"And when he saw that the people were mightily swayed and charmed by his words, he mingled with his praises sorrow and indignation over the dreadful deed, and at the close of his speech shook on high the garments of the dead, all bloody and tattered by the swords as they were, called those who had wrought such work villains and murderers..."
The actual Greek word used by Plutarch is "χιτωνίσκους" which is tunics. The term "shirt" had no closer analogue in 44 BC.
I hear Greece is nice this time of year.
My goal is to be on the team of Americans petitioning Greece and Venezuela for foreign aid. I give it less than thirty years.
I've also heard it's great for tax avoidance
Poor Yanis Varoufakis. He's like Sisyphus.
I always look at guys who try to change things and I am like, "Why are you even trying?" But I'm a weak man. I don't like rolling rocks uphill all day.