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[Micro102]

There has to be some consideration that not all the Republicans are on the same side. If you treat them as a unified group, you cannot separate them into groups of "good for this reason, bad for that reason"; and you lose the ability to help some Republicans fight against other Republicans.

This applies to the Democrats as well, because there are plenty of rotten apples in that barrel.

I've given that consideration for over 10 years now. The last straw was Trump's entire presidency. All the shit that's happened and they refuse to do anything about it. They couldn't even vote to kick the Qanon loving, Jewish space laser conspiracy spreading senator from her duties. Republicans fall in line every time. The only discourse is in the democrats, because it's made up of everyone left of bat-shit crazy right.

[delphonso]

That's true, anewname, and I assume is in response to my blanket statement against Republicans. To clarify, the overarching message/goals of the Republican party are those which do not align with evidence. Topics include but are not limited to: evolution, covid19, climate change, systemic racism, and economics.

All of these are likely to (and occasionally already have) reach the Supreme Court.

[Micro102]

Wierd, your only proposed solution is "vote together with the group that is breaking the system". You have no solution that fixes the problem.

And there are no facts in what the supreme court should be, or which partisan judges are better for America. Those are all subjective. This doesn't make sense.

You aren't further breaking the system. You are just refusing to use part of the system that is already broken, allowing the system to break further. This also doesn't make sense.

EDIT: And how could I forget... The process is LEGAL!. You want to say that these laws were made in a way for a reason, to be the correct way, but when this lawful action is taken, suddenly, the law wasn't made correctly! More nonsense.

I'm going to press my hypothetical here... Wierd. It's bad to kill humans. but this human is shooting you and others. Do you shoot it? It's bad to kill people but this person is killing people so do you do a "bad" thing to stop a worse thing? Or do you stand by your principles and watch the people and yourself get mowed down, trying to convince the other guy with the gun to help destroy the gun he is wielding? Note that shooting this person means you are justifying his shooting of you and others.

(if this sounds messed up it's because it is)

[Rolan7]

Oh wow thread moved fast for 5AM

As for the edit-- somebody get an oija board-- Ruth Bader Ginsburg's ghost must be making the most shrill of banshee screams at this point.

Is this supposed to be convincing?  FDR's plan was good.  She claims that his idea of periodically growing the court (contingent on geriatric members refusing to step down) would have made the court more partisan.  She just asserts it.  Considering such a policy would have weakened her personal power and kinda implies that she should have stepped down years ago, I'm not convinced of her position or her impartiality.

The lady made some good calls about civil rights and feminism.  Then she got herself replaced by Amy Coney Barret because she didn't want Obama to pick her successor (but HRC was sure to win!).  I'm sure she was wise before she hit 80, but that was a heck of an oopsie doopsie and is having real actual consequences for the women and womb-havers of Texas.  I think she's rolling in her grave indeed.

Anyway.

I am against court packing on the simple principle that THAT IS NOT HOW THE COURTS SHOULD OPERATE.

EG, the court system is not something that one should treat as yet another political vehicle for their feels (presumably, the court system is about finding facts. How one FEELS about facts, has no validity whatsoever to objective reality.)-- the court system is an important component in a modern society for the derivation of justice in the face of wrongdoing, not a mechanism by which you get what you want all the time.

to me, that's like filling a safety council with lobbyists, because they represent your company's interests.  That is not what the safety council is for, and doing that thing is a gross abrogation of duty, done exclusively to "Get your way."


Did the Republicans do exactly that thing? (pack the bench with pundits, specifically so that they could 'get their way'?)  You bet your fucking ass they did.


Does that make it A-OK for the Democrats to do the same fucking thing?  FUCK NO IT DOES NOT.  2 wrongs does not make it right.

This is wrong for three reasons.

1) This assumes that democrats will be just as biased in their judge selections as republicans are, and they won't be. Biden isn't going to pick judges who will just go "oops, sorry, can't shut down this constitution defying law that violates Roe v Wade right now. maybe later". He will pick milk toast judges that dilute the GOP's treachery.

2) Even if he did pick partisan lefty judges, it would be a morally net good thing. Republican choices are bad because they are a fascist party trying to destroy democracy and take people's right away. What would a partisan left judge do? Help provide healthcare?

3) 2 wrongs can absolutely make a right. If the game if rigged, and people's well-being is relying on you winning the game, and your opponent cheats and you can see that they can cheat, you are morally obligated to cheat as well.

EDIT: and note, this isn't even cheating. This would be lawful and not the first time the court was expanded.

NO.

1) That is not the correct response. The correct response is to recall the justices in question, and replace them, not add more just to counterbalance them.  You do that by calling them on their incorrect jurisprudence, and citing specific examples.  This recent snafu with the tx abortion law applies.

2) NO, IT IS NOT. THAT IS PUTTING PUNDITS IN TO GET YOUR WAY. FACTS DO NOT CARE ABOUT YOUR POLITICS.

3) The notion that this can be true does not fix a system, it makes it irredeemably broken. See also, how the current US legislature FAILS to operate.

I'm not sure you're specifically responding to what Micro102 said.
1) Democrats will pick moderates.  That's a reasonable counter to your assumption that they'd pick radical liberals, and I think it's born out by history.  Merrick Garland for example is pretty moderate.  He's certainly no mirror to Kavanaugh or Barret.

I feel like your suggestion of recalling the bad ones, while interesting, is a pivot.  It's also simply less precedented than expanding the court.  It last happened in 1805, and it's far worse optics than adding justices. 

2) The fact is that Justices can be legally added to the court.  We can argue the morality of putting Garland (or similar) in when he was blocked purely by procedure, or we could just do it.

3) Well I for one don't accept the premise that there's anything inherently wrong with adding justices.  The Republicans did something wrong but technically legal, and we have a way to fix that.  Simple as.

What I find vastly more convincing is the idea that it's political suicide.  It's the right thing to do, but it might be unpopular (though apparently there's a question of whether it's 70-30 or 50-50).  I was mostly just venting so I'm prepared to accept that it would be career suicide.

Career suicide for the president who has already hinted he might be going for one term, can't further alienate the massive fascist death cult that is Trump's (not the Republican's) base.  He pulled out of Afghanistan despite that being career suicide as well.  I dunno, I'm probably grasping at straws.  What I do know is that it's frustrating to watch the Democrats keep try to cooperate with Republicans who keep taking advantage.

It's not a matter of cheating, it's a matter of playing the Prisoner's Dilemma against an opponent who constantly picks "betray", and the stakes are human lives.  It's a legitimate strategy, but at some point it's really stupid to keep choosing the "nice" option against that opponent.  There's certainly nothing moral about it.

[Micro102]

The Republicans did something wrong but technically legal

I don't think it CAN be legal. Their own arguments on what was allowed contradict each other. One of them thus, was not allowed. By their own words.

[Starver]

If Hermann Goering (of Nazi infamy) came out and said 'The sky is blue', it does not suddenly become a false statement, just because that fucking asshole said it.

Noting, apropos of nothing else relevent to this conversation, that I'd probably completely believe Goering (WW1 fighter-ace, years before he became head of the WW2 Luftwaffe) as having absolutely the right knowledge and experience and no reason to mislead anyone on this issue.

(Compared to some other drug-addled overweight morally insolvent high-fliers I could mention, and one in particular I have already noted in the past would lie even without any reason, even on this issue. Never mind his paying far more attention to greens than blues.)

But that's by the by. Just highlighting why I thought that was an interesting choice of comparison, if it wasn't exactly as intentional as I might not have thought it to be.

[wierd]

Wierd, your only proposed solution is "vote together with the group that is breaking the system". You have no solution that fixes the problem.

And there are no facts in what the supreme court should be, or which partisan judges are better for America. Those are all subjective. This doesn't make sense.

You aren't further breaking the system. You are just refusing to use part of the system that is already broken, allowing the system to break further. This also doesn't make sense.

EDIT: And how could I forget... The process is LEGAL!. You want to say that these laws were made in a way for a reason, to be the correct way, but when this lawful action is taken, suddenly, the law wasn't made correctly! More nonsense.

I'm going to press my hypothetical here... Wierd. It's bad to kill humans. but this human is shooting you and others. Do you shoot it? It's bad to kill people but this person is killing people so do you do a "bad" thing to stop a worse thing? Or do you stand by your principles and watch the people and yourself get mowed down, trying to convince the other guy with the gun to help destroy the gun he is wielding?

I would call out that this scenario is blatantly begging the question (It assumes wrongly that the only solution is shooting the assailant, which is false), and is also false dichotomy and false equivalence.  There are many ways to subdue an armed assailant, that do not involve either showing up packing heat yourself, or spinelessly capitulating as your guests get massacred.

Further, the metaphor simply does not apply;  In the case of the shooter at the wedding, there is no legally prescribed methodology, leaving the details up to the vivid imaginations of the host and his guests. (For a realworld example, see the plane full of passengers that restrained an armed terrorist during their flight on sept 11. None of them had guns.) In the case of the toxic judges, there is a process prescribed at law; you have simply discarded it because it is difficult to invoke, while blatantly ignoring that the reason why it is functionally impossible to invoke, is due to the very broken nature of the legislature, due to the very practice you are suggesting be imposed here, being in effect THERE.

I believe Einstein has something to say about trying the same thing over and over and expecting different results.

[Eschar]

Einstein does not have anything to say about that.

What? No, I don't have anything useful to contribute, I might as well quibble.

[Bumber]

Republicans fall in line every time.

It's funny because Republicans see Democrats as the ones who do that. For an obvious example, only one side had Senators break rank in the impeachments of Donald Trump, and it wasn't the Dems.

For actual data, I found this on Joe Manchin's website. (Surprisingly, he was only 15th place for lack of party unity in the Senate.) The top 15 for unity in the House were uniquely all 100.0% for Democrats.

Can't be bothered to keep digging for an answer of which party truly falls in line more overall.

[Dostoevsky]

It's changed over time, but regardless there's plenty of evidence that both parties have issues with 'unity' in recent times. Remember that the ACA repeal was one of several major Trump-era R efforts that failed, and there were plenty more that never made any legislative progress at all due to internal division. When it comes to congress there's a lot of rank-and-file folks in both parties who just follow leadership direction either due to loyalty or lack of interest in actual governance, but leadership needs more than just the rank-and-file folks to get things done.

Now there is some evidence that Republican politicians these days are further right-of-center than Democratic politicians are left-of-center, so when it comes to perceptions of 'ideological purity' Rs look more unified. But I'd argue that's a perspective issue from those are are more left-of-center, since these days the Democratic platform isn't quite on the same page as they are. (that's a larger kettle of fish to dissect, to mix metaphors.)

[MorleyDev]

For the in-house voting itself you do have to factor in the effect of the political ideologies on voting motivations as well.

A conservative right is supposed to emphasize a small federal government, as such it's going to be a more frequent occurrence amongst them for members to argue on whether a bill goes too far and so rebel and vote against it.

A liberal left is going to more often be in the situation where they don't think a bill goes far enough or a bill does enough to solve the issue, and in that situation you're going to get a lot more votes for the bill from those people because they'll adopt a "take what we can get for now but push for more later" mentality.

So for aid bills in particular you can expect the lefter ones will tend to have more public disagreements on policy but more consistent voting when it comes to the table, whilst the right will have more 'one-off rebels'.

[Random_Dragon]

Bit belatedly, my opinion on the court-packing issue is this: There is no practical way we can get our broken mess of a government to unfuck itself in a bipartisan manner. If there's no chance of the partisan judges being recalled then the only options are going to be either to use a dangerous precedent that has already been set AND abused, or hope for violent revolution. Neither option is going to be good in the long-term, but there is no hope that the court is going to unfuck itself on its own.

This same reason is pretty much the only reason the democrat party even HAS progressive voters supporting it, despite being right of center by global standards. Because no other legal recourse is left to the people who want this shit sorted out, because solving our broken mess of a government is going to take bipartisan effort that will be actively detrimental to the wide range of people currently holding the powers that need to be used.

And with the partisan shitshow politics have become, the violent outcome has a high risk of making things infinitely worse, because the only way it could ever hope to improve things would be for it to be directed at replacing the entire system, and all those benefiting from it, both political and corporate, with something more functional.

And the Jan. 6th domestic terror attack has demonstrated that so far any violence that does break out is much more likely to be of partisan nature and rooted in the same "us vs them" attitude that got us into this mess in the first place.

[Micro102]

I would call out that this scenario is blatantly begging the question (It assumes wrongly that the only solution is shooting the assailant, which is false), and is also false dichotomy and false equivalence.  There are many ways to subdue an armed assailant, that do not involve either showing up packing heat yourself, or spinelessly capitulating as your guests get massacred.

Further, the metaphor simply does not apply;  In the case of the shooter at the wedding, there is no legally prescribed methodology, leaving the details up to the vivid imaginations of the host and his guests. (For a realworld example, see the plane full of passengers that restrained an armed terrorist during their flight on sept 11. None of them had guns.) In the case of the toxic judges, there is a process prescribed at law; you have simply discarded it because it is difficult to invoke, while blatantly ignoring that the reason why it is functionally impossible to invoke, is due to the very broken nature of the legislature, due to the very practice you are suggesting be imposed here, being in effect THERE.

I believe Einstein has something to say about trying the same thing over and over and expecting different results.

If there is a different way to stop the shooter, name it. Because that's what is happening with your argument about the supreme court. You are arguing that we should try to convince the person shooting people, to help destroy the gun they are using. You haven't proposed any other solution, and while you are running around, trying to find a way to not shoot the guy, people are dying and suffering. Of COURSE it begs the question. My entire argument is that the question is begged in reality. The damage needs to be undone now before it gets worse. If you want to try to heroically run at the person with the gun, and fail as use that gun to shoot you, thereby preventing you from ever stopping them, then you have just allowed who-knows how many people to be shot. You could have ended it quickly and maximized the sanctity of life if you just shot the person to begin with.

And I noticed another problem. Why is the legal action of removing judges through a 2/3 vote the correct prescribed way, but adding judges with a majority a sneaky, partisan way? Why is appointing judges normal, but appointing many judges partisan? You have to assume that the democrats are doing this for partisan reasons, and will install partisan judges. But if you assume that, then the supreme court that you said should be unbiased is already completely broken and has been whenever anyone has appointed a judge. It's always going to be partisan and at that point you would have to decide which way it would be partisan.

Republicans fall in line every time.

It's funny because Republicans see Democrats as the ones who do that. For an obvious example, only one side had Senators break rank in the impeachments of Donald Trump, and it wasn't the Dems.

For actual data, I found this on Joe Manchin's website. (Surprisingly, he was only 15th place for lack of party unity in the Senate.) The top 15 for unity in the House were uniquely all 100.0% for Democrats.

Can't be bothered to keep digging for an answer of which party truly falls in line more overall.

Yeah but the republicans are pathological liars that project all their faults onto others. And that list seems woefully dry on data. It does not have all the senators, it's only for one year, and seems like it would include minor votes that don't really mean anything. A vote on renaming a school doesn't really tell us about partisanship. I also don't see why this would differentiate on bills that both parties just all voted yes on.

It also doesn't really tells us about "falling in line". That requires some moral standard to be tossed out. We aren't just talking about agreeing on if people shouldn't suffer. Like I said, Greene was a lunatic who bought into Qanon conspiracy theories, and claimed that Jews were using space lasers to burn our forests and cause national disasters. That's some real Nazi shit. And only 2 republicans voted to remove her. The others have demonstrated their tolerance for insanity. Republicans almost passed a vote to remove healthcare coverage without replacement, which would cause millions to lose their insurance, causing countless death and suffering. It took one of them getting a fucking lethal brain tumor and to make a big display of his decision to not fuck millions of people over, to vote to keep healthcare.

What do the democrats have? An impeachment of a president that has done blatantly horrible things? A bill that spends money on infrastructure and education? Who is breaking their morals here? Who is selling out? If anyone, it's Manchin, who got money dumped on him as he blocks bills that would hurt his donators.

We have literal recordings of republicans telling each other "no leaks, that's how we know we're a family", and can watch Trump insult Cruz's wife, followed by Cruz embedding his face in between Trumps cheeks. Meanwhile lefties like AOC regularly criticize moderate democrats like Joe Biden (and their voters don't treat it like the plague, I could go on another huge rant about how republican voters fall in line too). The ideological diversity in the DNC is significantly larger than the republicans.

[Bumber]

That's some real Nazi shit.

It's really not even close.

Republicans voted to throw her out of her committee assignments. Her constituents elected her, and she hadn't broken any rules, so I think that's more than might be expected of Dems, who won't even censure their own over antisemitic comments.

Besides that point, your reply consists of moving the goal posts and no true Scotsman fallacy. If you want to say that Republicans fall in line every time, then you can supply the data.

[Random_Dragon]

Here we go again...