Being the adults in the room would mean voting for a qualified, non-crazypants candidate, like another Kennedy. But absolutely oppose another Bork (or Scalia, for that matter). That was the thing about Garland, he was someone the GOP said they would fucking vote for, then they didn't. And they get rewarded for it.
I 100% knew this would happen. Absolute fucking guarantee someone around here, maybe a lot of people, was going to argue for this.
I fully expect all the rage against filibusters to completely flip as well.
Oh come on Spool. You know this crowd. *Someone* was going to say it.
Maybe I'm crazy, but they actually seem like somewhat different scenarios: an RRR government versus a DRR government.
I'm not saying blocking or filibustering is the "right" thing, but it would seem to me there's more of a case to use a filibuster in this situation, given that the other levels of "checks and balances" are no longer intact. It should, of course, depend on who the nominee actually is, on whether Trump nominates, say, Garland again or really does decide to nominate his own sister or something.
0
knitdanIn ur baseKillin ur guysRegistered Userregular
edited November 2016
Yeah, If he nominatedmoderates then I'd be ok with that.
But all indications are he's not going to. It will be whomever the Family Research Council and the Heritage Foundaion and the League of the South want.
Maybe Roy Moore will get a shot.
Edit: spool, for the last several months you've had the luxury of standing in your principles. You could come in here and say "oh no I don't agree with what the GOP is doing, refusing to consider Garland" while simultaneously refusing to consider solutions to the problem. Because no matter what, the status quo was unchanged and that's what matters to you.
Well now we don't have that luxury. So go ahead and call me a hypocrite. I'll take that label if it means stopping your side from dragging us all back to the 1950s or worse.
knitdan on
“I was quick when I came in here, I’m twice as quick now”
-Indiana Solo, runner of blades
I 100% knew this would happen. Absolute fucking guarantee someone around here, maybe a lot of people, was going to argue for this.
I fully expect all the rage against filibusters to completely flip as well.
can you understand why someone might feel that way right now?
I would welcome a little empathy right now instead of "I called it"
ehhhh, not on this topic.
Half this thread is people blasting the Senate for obstruction of various kinds.
Think it might have anything to do with Obama nominating an older and perfectly acceptable (by GOP standards) candidate, and them shitting on it, and the followup concerns that Trump/his admin will put forth some mid 40's guys that makes Scalia look like the Liberalest Lib that ever Lib'd?
Yes, we should wait and see who they nominate, but this isn't somewhere I'm particularly optimistic.
How about where I said that if there are reasonable candidates suggested, that the system works as intended?
But if it's someone who's all "Roe V Wade LET'S DO THIS THING!" then yeah maybe that'd be something to stand against?
Forar on
First they came for the Muslims, and we said NOT TODAY, MOTHERFUCKER!
I 100% knew this would happen. Absolute fucking guarantee someone around here, maybe a lot of people, was going to argue for this.
I fully expect all the rage against filibusters to completely flip as well.
See, you claim to know this kind of talk would happen but have still yet to understand why. Or are explicitly trying to ignore the context in order to throw shade around and stroke your ego over having "called it".
Scalia's replacement is Obama's to nominate. This is literally what the constitution says. That the GOP stonewalled this at every turn in order to let them steal the nomination a year later is a rather unprecedented violation of the constitutional order, as has been well explained in this thread for months now.
The problem with your framing here is it refuses to acknowledge that this isn't someone calling to do the same thing the GOP did, it's someone calling for a response to the GOP creating a constitutional crisis in order to prevent anyone but them from filling seats on the SCOTUS.
I 100% knew this would happen. Absolute fucking guarantee someone around here, maybe a lot of people, was going to argue for this.
I fully expect all the rage against filibusters to completely flip as well.
can you understand why someone might feel that way right now?
I would welcome a little empathy right now instead of "I called it"
ehhhh, not on this topic.
Half this thread is people blasting the Senate for obstruction of various kinds.
I mean, yeah, I get how upset people might be.
I wanted Garland on the court too. The Senate GOP remains as disgraceful as ever. But holy shit guys. Come on.
Not to "defend" it, per se, but this is the expected outcome given rational agents. The Republicans just played Prisoner's Dilemma and won. They defected while the Democrats cooperated, and they were paid out for doing so.
Except this is iterative Prisoner's Dilemma. And in iterative Prisoner's Dilemma, while double cooperation is possible, any break in cooperation tends to lead to degeneration into the double-defect equilibrium. This is the rational option now for Democrats, at least in the short-term; as the Republicans are defecting whether or not the Democrats are cooperating, then the rational choices are for the Democrats to also defect, and hope the Republicans come to their senses, or for them to perpetually cooperate, essentially handing the game over the Republicans.
With this payout grid that's been assembled by the electorate, the choices for the Democrats are losing quickly, with some hope for course-correction (block), losing slowly, with no hope for course-correction (cooperate), or finding some way to change the entire game (change the electoratal calculus), but they're going to be at at disadvantage even in that last option due to SCOTUS control, gerrymandering, redistricting, and incoming anti-immigration/voter suppression policies.
I 100% knew this would happen. Absolute fucking guarantee someone around here, maybe a lot of people, was going to argue for this.
I fully expect all the rage against filibusters to completely flip as well.
See, you claim to know this kind of talk would happen but have still yet to understand why. Or are explicitly trying to ignore the context in order to throw shade around and stroke your ego over having "called it".
Scalia's replacement is Obama's to nominate. This is literally what the constitution says. That the GOP stonewalled this at every turn in order to let them steal the nomination a year later is a rather unprecedented violation of the constitutional order, as has been well explained in this thread for months now.
The problem with your framing here is it refuses to acknowledge that this isn't someone calling to do the same thing the GOP did, it's someone calling for a response to the GOP creating a constitutional crisis in order to prevent anyone but them from filling seats on the SCOTUS.
I would possibly, possibly support a limited "renominate Garland or else it never gets filled" effort.
For somebody who agrees that there's a huge problem going on, you don't support a lot of actions.
I definitely oppose all the ones that escalate to a worse crisis, further empower an Imperial Executive, or render me a giant hypocrite.
I suspect that the Imperial Executive outcome might be locked in at this point, regardless of whether the Democrats cooperate or not. Do we seriously expect Trump's SCOTUS nominee to roll back executive or federal power in any way?
I don't think the gay marriage ruling will be reversed. The most homophobic member of the court is gone.
They just need to replace Scalia and Ginsberg with true believers. It's not like Thomas, Alito and Roberts would side for gay marriage.
But they can't ban it nationwide. Even DOMA couldn't do that, that's why there was so much chatter in the mid-2000s over a marriage amendment, the only way to make sure it couldn't happen is to change the constitution. Similar with abortion, because abortion is not something which can be enabled by law, it is not something which can be banned at the federal level without an amendment. Worst they do is return it to the states and then we'll have to fight ballot initiatives to get it banned in every state where the legislature doesn't immediately impose a no-exceptions ban (and add in "all miscarriages must be investigated as suspected homicide" for good measure).
Yea they can. Congress can write a law and then when hallenged they can say its constitutional.
There is no political capital expended here. It's what they all want. They have to buy it from no one.
There is no need to stack the court. There is no way to stop that from happening anyway.
For somebody who agrees that there's a huge problem going on, you don't support a lot of actions.
I definitely oppose all the ones that escalate to a worse crisis, further empower an Imperial Executive, or render me a giant hypocrite.
I suspect that the Imperial Executive outcome might be locked in at this point, regardless of whether the Democrats cooperate or not. Do we seriously expect Trump's SCOTUS nominee to roll back executive or federal power in any way?
That depends on how Conservative he turns out to be. Scalia wasn't a mortal lock for increasing federal power, and neither is Thomas.
We're more likely to see a truncated Commerce Clause than we are to see an even more powerful Executive.
0
knitdanIn ur baseKillin ur guysRegistered Userregular
I fully expect the incoming Senate to remove the filibuster, as the Republican Senators have repeatedly shown they will do whatever is in their interest in the short term. There have clearly been no consequences for their unprecedented actions undermining the way our government is supposed to function. The Democratic Senators are going to have very little power to influence anything for at least two years, and probably longer than that. I agree that we are likely to get an extremely conservative SCOTUS out of this, with the best case being back to the way it was before Scalia died for four years, and then Trump losing re-election and more obstruction on replacing justices going forward.
The utterly frustrating part is that in addition to the empty seat on SCOTUS, there are going to be 103 Federal Judicial vacancies filled by the new government. I'm reasonably certain that none of the 59 pending nominees to those seats are going to be filled in the lame duck session. It's not just SCOTUS, it's a huge rightward swing in the entire Federal Judiciary.
+2
ChanusHarbinger of the Spicy Rooster ApocalypseThe Flames of a Thousand Collapsed StarsRegistered Userregular
'Cuz the problem here is that the way of being better than the GOP while still trying to mitigate the damage of a Trump appointment is to do the evaluations but say no to anyone who isn't a moderate.
But confirmation only requires a majority (which the GOP has) unless you filibuster. So if the Dems don't outright refuse to do the evaluations, they're basically committing themselves to filibustering every candidate until the GOP budges a bit.
Which seems like a pretty precarious situation to be in. Is this a fair assessment?
For somebody who agrees that there's a huge problem going on, you don't support a lot of actions.
Other than, you know, "let the GOP get away with it."
This is entirely false.
Even if that is not your intent, all the actions you do support have the ultimate effect of "the GOP gets away with it"
The action I supported was "Democrats win the election"
I don't think they're saying you actually voted for Trump.
But when you're pooh-poohing all the things that Democrats could do to try and stop the GOP from being able to benefit from having inarguably violating the spirit of the law* over the past year, it's difficult not to read you as a tacit supporter of the GOP's benefiting from the situation.
*Because we already went over how the actual law itself is vague as fuck in the thread, no need to do that all over again.
I 100% knew this would happen. Absolute fucking guarantee someone around here, maybe a lot of people, was going to argue for this.
I fully expect all the rage against filibusters to completely flip as well.
Nope. I still support eliminating the filibuster. I also support holding McConnell responsible for unilaterally dismantling the functioning of our government. I doubt I'll get either.
Only somewhat related to SCOTUS, but I think this is still the best place for it.
The information on the vacant seats in the Federal Judiciary is staggering. A position in North Carolina has been vacant since Dec. 31, 2005! Six positions (that seem to be for Claims Court and whatever IT is, perhaps International Trade?) have had nominees waiting since Jan. 7, 2015 (ie the first day of the current Congress). Now these positions (and so many others that were never voted on) will almost certainly be filled in the next Congress, now that those pesky Democrats are almost completely powerless.
FWIW, I do really like that '(iterated) prisoners dilemma' explanation, I'm going to steal it for the next time it comes up.
Well, FYI, "tit for tat" is generally considered the optimal strategy for iterated, deterministic, discrete, infinite Prison's dilemma (which is how I abstracted the situation, rightly or wrongly). It's described on Wikipedia thusly:
The winning deterministic strategy was tit for tat, which Anatol Rapoport developed and entered into the tournament. It was the simplest of any program entered, containing only four lines of BASIC, and won the contest. The strategy is simply to cooperate on the first iteration of the game; after that, the player does what his or her opponent did on the previous move. Depending on the situation, a slightly better strategy can be "tit for tat with forgiveness." When the opponent defects, on the next move, the player sometimes cooperates anyway, with a small probability (around 1–5%). This allows for occasional recovery from getting trapped in a cycle of defections. The exact probability depends on the line-up of opponents.
By analysing the top-scoring strategies, Axelrod stated several conditions necessary for a strategy to be successful.
Nice
The most important condition is that the strategy must be "nice", that is, it will not defect before its opponent does (this is sometimes referred to as an "optimistic" algorithm). Almost all of the top-scoring strategies were nice; therefore, a purely selfish strategy will not "cheat" on its opponent, for purely self-interested reasons first.
Retaliating
However, Axelrod contended, the successful strategy must not be a blind optimist. It must sometimes retaliate. An example of a non-retaliating strategy is Always Cooperate. This is a very bad choice, as "nasty" strategies will ruthlessly exploit such players.
Forgiving
Successful strategies must also be forgiving. Though players will retaliate, they will once again fall back to cooperating if the opponent does not continue to defect. This stops long runs of revenge and counter-revenge, maximizing points.
Non-envious
The last quality is being non-envious, that is not striving to score more than the opponent.
If the Democrats were to follow this strategy, at this point, they should be defecting and they should continue defecting until Republicans cooperate, and every once in a while they should pop their head up and cooperate a few times to see if the Republicans switch over in response, if they're using "tit for tat with forgiveness".*
The problem is, of course, that modern Republicans do not seem to be using "tit for tat", or really any strategy that would be considered "successful" - they're certainly not nice or forgiving, and it's in doubt whether they're non-envious. In this case, when you know the opponent's strategy and it's locked in - as opposed to when you do not know or it's random (i.e. in tournaments) - "tit for tat" may no longer be optimal. And in the case that Republicans are really playing "always defect", the optimal counter-strategy is also "always defect," in which case the US is screwed.
* Note, generally in Prisoner's Dilemma, the two sides can't coordinate their moves, so when you "forgive" and cooperate with a defector, you have to do it for a few rounds in a row to send the "signal". In politics, in theory, the Democrats should just be able to "reach out" to Republicans to assess their willingness to cooperate.
I 100% knew this would happen. Absolute fucking guarantee someone around here, maybe a lot of people, was going to argue for this.
I fully expect all the rage against filibusters to completely flip as well.
See, you claim to know this kind of talk would happen but have still yet to understand why. Or are explicitly trying to ignore the context in order to throw shade around and stroke your ego over having "called it".
Scalia's replacement is Obama's to nominate. This is literally what the constitution says. That the GOP stonewalled this at every turn in order to let them steal the nomination a year later is a rather unprecedented violation of the constitutional order, as has been well explained in this thread for months now.
The problem with your framing here is it refuses to acknowledge that this isn't someone calling to do the same thing the GOP did, it's someone calling for a response to the GOP creating a constitutional crisis in order to prevent anyone but them from filling seats on the SCOTUS.
I would possibly, possibly support a limited "renominate Garland or else it never gets filled" effort.
This is literally the only outcome I'd support.
Obama was President, and should have gotten a nominee through. Period. The idea that you can just obstruct until your party takes office is obscene, and let's face it there's no limit to it. Next time it'll be "there's only two years left in his term."
I say stonewall until we get down to 7 justices, or until Garland gets an up-or-down vote. Done.
+5
silence1186Character shields down!As a wingmanRegistered Userregular
If Thomas were to retire, for example, could a 4-3 court begin passing judgments that set precedent again?
Posts
Oh come on Spool. You know this crowd. *Someone* was going to say it.
can you understand why someone might feel that way right now?
I would welcome a little empathy right now instead of "I called it"
Maybe I'm crazy, but they actually seem like somewhat different scenarios: an RRR government versus a DRR government.
I'm not saying blocking or filibustering is the "right" thing, but it would seem to me there's more of a case to use a filibuster in this situation, given that the other levels of "checks and balances" are no longer intact. It should, of course, depend on who the nominee actually is, on whether Trump nominates, say, Garland again or really does decide to nominate his own sister or something.
But all indications are he's not going to. It will be whomever the Family Research Council and the Heritage Foundaion and the League of the South want.
Maybe Roy Moore will get a shot.
Edit: spool, for the last several months you've had the luxury of standing in your principles. You could come in here and say "oh no I don't agree with what the GOP is doing, refusing to consider Garland" while simultaneously refusing to consider solutions to the problem. Because no matter what, the status quo was unchanged and that's what matters to you.
Well now we don't have that luxury. So go ahead and call me a hypocrite. I'll take that label if it means stopping your side from dragging us all back to the 1950s or worse.
-Indiana Solo, runner of blades
ehhhh, not on this topic.
Half this thread is people blasting the Senate for obstruction of various kinds.
I mean, yeah, I get how upset people might be.
I wanted Garland on the court too. The Senate GOP remains as disgraceful as ever. But holy shit guys. Come on.
Think it might have anything to do with Obama nominating an older and perfectly acceptable (by GOP standards) candidate, and them shitting on it, and the followup concerns that Trump/his admin will put forth some mid 40's guys that makes Scalia look like the Liberalest Lib that ever Lib'd?
Yes, we should wait and see who they nominate, but this isn't somewhere I'm particularly optimistic.
How about where I said that if there are reasonable candidates suggested, that the system works as intended?
But if it's someone who's all "Roe V Wade LET'S DO THIS THING!" then yeah maybe that'd be something to stand against?
See, you claim to know this kind of talk would happen but have still yet to understand why. Or are explicitly trying to ignore the context in order to throw shade around and stroke your ego over having "called it".
Scalia's replacement is Obama's to nominate. This is literally what the constitution says. That the GOP stonewalled this at every turn in order to let them steal the nomination a year later is a rather unprecedented violation of the constitutional order, as has been well explained in this thread for months now.
The problem with your framing here is it refuses to acknowledge that this isn't someone calling to do the same thing the GOP did, it's someone calling for a response to the GOP creating a constitutional crisis in order to prevent anyone but them from filling seats on the SCOTUS.
Not to "defend" it, per se, but this is the expected outcome given rational agents. The Republicans just played Prisoner's Dilemma and won. They defected while the Democrats cooperated, and they were paid out for doing so.
Except this is iterative Prisoner's Dilemma. And in iterative Prisoner's Dilemma, while double cooperation is possible, any break in cooperation tends to lead to degeneration into the double-defect equilibrium. This is the rational option now for Democrats, at least in the short-term; as the Republicans are defecting whether or not the Democrats are cooperating, then the rational choices are for the Democrats to also defect, and hope the Republicans come to their senses, or for them to perpetually cooperate, essentially handing the game over the Republicans.
With this payout grid that's been assembled by the electorate, the choices for the Democrats are losing quickly, with some hope for course-correction (block), losing slowly, with no hope for course-correction (cooperate), or finding some way to change the entire game (change the electoratal calculus), but they're going to be at at disadvantage even in that last option due to SCOTUS control, gerrymandering, redistricting, and incoming anti-immigration/voter suppression policies.
Filibustering a nominee is different than not voting on the nominee at all.
Rock Band DLC | GW:OttW - arrcd | WLD - Thortar
I would possibly, possibly support a limited "renominate Garland or else it never gets filled" effort.
Rock Band DLC | GW:OttW - arrcd | WLD - Thortar
I definitely oppose all the ones that escalate to a worse crisis, further empower an Imperial Executive, or render me a giant hypocrite.
Other than, you know, "let the GOP get away with it."
I suspect that the Imperial Executive outcome might be locked in at this point, regardless of whether the Democrats cooperate or not. Do we seriously expect Trump's SCOTUS nominee to roll back executive or federal power in any way?
Yea they can. Congress can write a law and then when hallenged they can say its constitutional.
There is no political capital expended here. It's what they all want. They have to buy it from no one.
There is no need to stack the court. There is no way to stop that from happening anyway.
We are fucked. Super duper fucked.
I'm not seeing Garland on there.
This is entirely false.
That depends on how Conservative he turns out to be. Scalia wasn't a mortal lock for increasing federal power, and neither is Thomas.
We're more likely to see a truncated Commerce Clause than we are to see an even more powerful Executive.
Even if that is not your intent, all the actions you do support have the ultimate effect of "the GOP gets away with it"
-Indiana Solo, runner of blades
The utterly frustrating part is that in addition to the empty seat on SCOTUS, there are going to be 103 Federal Judicial vacancies filled by the new government. I'm reasonably certain that none of the 59 pending nominees to those seats are going to be filled in the lame duck session. It's not just SCOTUS, it's a huge rightward swing in the entire Federal Judiciary.
But confirmation only requires a majority (which the GOP has) unless you filibuster. So if the Dems don't outright refuse to do the evaluations, they're basically committing themselves to filibustering every candidate until the GOP budges a bit.
Which seems like a pretty precarious situation to be in. Is this a fair assessment?
The action I supported was "Democrats win the election"
Yeah, spool32 did his part as much as everyone else.
There's only so much you can do when the voters decide to fuck everyone. Welcome to democracy.
Exhibit A:
Exhibit B:
I don't think they're saying you actually voted for Trump.
But when you're pooh-poohing all the things that Democrats could do to try and stop the GOP from being able to benefit from having inarguably violating the spirit of the law* over the past year, it's difficult not to read you as a tacit supporter of the GOP's benefiting from the situation.
*Because we already went over how the actual law itself is vague as fuck in the thread, no need to do that all over again.
Rock Band DLC | GW:OttW - arrcd | WLD - Thortar
But our Senators won't. That is the difference.
Nope. I still support eliminating the filibuster. I also support holding McConnell responsible for unilaterally dismantling the functioning of our government. I doubt I'll get either.
He's going to nominate a crony.
What's Chris Christie up to these days?
twitch.tv/Taramoor
@TaramoorPlays
Taramoor on Youtube
Praying he's not indicted for Bridgegate
-Indiana Solo, runner of blades
The information on the vacant seats in the Federal Judiciary is staggering. A position in North Carolina has been vacant since Dec. 31, 2005! Six positions (that seem to be for Claims Court and whatever IT is, perhaps International Trade?) have had nominees waiting since Jan. 7, 2015 (ie the first day of the current Congress). Now these positions (and so many others that were never voted on) will almost certainly be filled in the next Congress, now that those pesky Democrats are almost completely powerless.
Well, FYI, "tit for tat" is generally considered the optimal strategy for iterated, deterministic, discrete, infinite Prison's dilemma (which is how I abstracted the situation, rightly or wrongly). It's described on Wikipedia thusly:
If the Democrats were to follow this strategy, at this point, they should be defecting and they should continue defecting until Republicans cooperate, and every once in a while they should pop their head up and cooperate a few times to see if the Republicans switch over in response, if they're using "tit for tat with forgiveness".*
The problem is, of course, that modern Republicans do not seem to be using "tit for tat", or really any strategy that would be considered "successful" - they're certainly not nice or forgiving, and it's in doubt whether they're non-envious. In this case, when you know the opponent's strategy and it's locked in - as opposed to when you do not know or it's random (i.e. in tournaments) - "tit for tat" may no longer be optimal. And in the case that Republicans are really playing "always defect", the optimal counter-strategy is also "always defect," in which case the US is screwed.
* Note, generally in Prisoner's Dilemma, the two sides can't coordinate their moves, so when you "forgive" and cooperate with a defector, you have to do it for a few rounds in a row to send the "signal". In politics, in theory, the Democrats should just be able to "reach out" to Republicans to assess their willingness to cooperate.
This is literally the only outcome I'd support.
Obama was President, and should have gotten a nominee through. Period. The idea that you can just obstruct until your party takes office is obscene, and let's face it there's no limit to it. Next time it'll be "there's only two years left in his term."
I say stonewall until we get down to 7 justices, or until Garland gets an up-or-down vote. Done.