Re: We are all Slave now.
 

Canadian Club cleans tires like nothing else, save perhaps WD-40.

Re: We are all Slave now.
 

I don’t think that her legal decisions would differ from Kethowdge. Kavanaugh, oh the other hand is weak on the 4th Amendment, particularly with respect to FISA.

I think that she mainly would have been a home run politically. Any Trump nominee would be strongly opposed by the fill in the blank protesters. Kavanaugh is not a good enough a choice to fire up the many people who don’t like him but think SCOTUS is important. Barrett would have exposed again the left’s anti-religious bigotry right before the midterms. She also is a woman, and a mother of 7, including 2 adopted from Haiti, and has a child with special needs. We could also get ahead of the argument that Roe was overturned by 5 men. Democrats being asshats during confirmation would have provided good fodder for Senate races in the fall. In any case the recent data has chances of the GOP keeping the Senate at over 70%, but she would have helped.

I am ok with states doing what is constitutional. I’m pretty sure I answered this when GGG asked if I’d be ok with the repeal of the Hyde amendment and thought I would want States to go pre-Griswold. With what jurisprudence like emanations and penumbras have given us, I would be surprised to find that state-forced abortion or your other suggestions are constitutional. If they are, we are all screwed anyway. I think Roe can be overturned, as other bad decisions have been before, but NY is already considering pre-emptively securing the right to abortion in NY in case Roe goes down, and that’s fine.

Re: We are all Slave now.
 

Most corrupt White House ever.

Re: We are all Slave now.
 

Wait, getting eaten alive by a fish is part of the job??

Re: We are all Slave now.
 

Astonishing? Man's ownership of woman as a legal concept is not terrible far in the past.

Re: We are all Slave now.
 

Whether or not one agrees, it doesn't seem like it's the job of a federal judge to substitute his own views about the wisdom of such things in the place of whatever it is that Congress and the Department of Labor have done.

Re: We are all Slave now.
 

Blaming everyone is the same as blaming no one.

You're right that politics requires compromise. The main problem with our politics is that a significant portion of Republicans reject compromise. Conservative Republicans are driving polarization which makes compromise impossible. The single person most responsible for the change to our politics is Newt Gingrich.

Re: We are all Slave now.
 

This is almost as maddening as, "If you believe in nothing, you'll believe in anything." It's not pithy if it's flatly wrong.

Gingrich owns considerable blame. That's a very astute observation.

But I'm citing causes beyond politics. We've adopted a zero sum game mentality about so many things, society looks like a giant chessboard of nihilists. Winning is everything, which explains a lot about why so many people still admire this President.

Get paid, get rich. Fuck what's created, what you do, and what you leave. Get yours, now, and get so much of it you almost choke on it. Sound familiar? From Wall Street to 50 Cent to Mitch McConnell, it's a culture celebrating extraction -- how much can ya get? The blame for that I lay at the feet of the finance industry. When all anyone sees is numbers, they cease to be interesting, to have a soul, and everything becomes a game. Build a pile, then die. Pretty bleak.

Re: We are all Slave now.
 

Yeah, but to say it without any self-awareness? How fucking clueless is that?

Re: We are all Slave now.
 

So you think Roe was wrongly decided?

Re: We are all Slave now.
 

If you just say that "we" are responsible for something, without more, you are not saying that some people are more responsible than others, and you are absolving those people. To point a finger is to direct attention. If you "point a finger" at everyone, you aren't directing attention -- you're diffusing it, uselessly. There are people who are more and less responsible for what has happened in our politics, and if you want to avoid figuring out who they are, say the sort of thing you just said.

As Tonto said to the Lone Ranger when all those other Indians rode over the hill, Who do you mean "we," white man?

Nope.

Yes, that sounds bleak.

Re: We are all Slave now.
 

If I had been on that Supreme Court, I'm not sure I would have joined Blackmun's decision.

Re: We are all Slave now.
 

If someone's religion focuses on hating gays and justifies caging babies, all I can do is pray the Good Lord has mercy on their soul.

Re: We are all Slave now.
 

Re: We are all Slave now.
 

It's odd to me to talk about the left's "anti-religious bigotry" when anti-Moslem sentiment is so common on the right. Or to put it differently, Luke 6:42.

Re: We are all Slave now.
 

You do realize you lead a webpage started to make rich people richer, right? Instead of citing Luke’s Chapter 4 maybe you should read 18?

Re: We are all Slave now.
 

Did you think I collect taxes? I do legal work for an entity that serves, so far, to transfer money from rich investors to the shareholders of large financial institutions. When I put it that way to you, I hope you feel like a blind man receiving the gift of sight.

Re: We are all Slave now.
 

Nobody wants to be the Velvet Underground anymore, even in tech. They want to Get Paid.

Nothing wrong with it, of course. That desire powers the world. But a world of pure rational materialists is creepy, and it’s increasingly where we’re headed.

Not too long ago, finance was contained. There were partnerships, where people held risk, and so acted prudently. And our media, our art, was not infected with low cost shit designed to make maximum money for the shareholders of media conglomerates.

Would Robert Evans’ movies get made today? Maybe as indies, at shit budgets. Coppola did Apocalypse Now a mere 38 years ago. Today, the only movie 1/4 that size likely to be made has to have a dozen Marvel characters in it.

We’re crass. Plasticky, crappy, and dull. I can’t blame that on Newt. I blame it on materialism and lack of imagination.

Re: We are all Slave now.
 

Nobody’s worse than our sector. Turn paper, eat well. Hate the dull shit it is, but get addicted to the lifestyle. Get hobbies outside of it, take trips, do anything to forget it.

If the adage “Love what you do and you’ll never work a day in your life” holds, the modern professional, and particularly lawyers, are the most clueless of court jesters.

And most of us think we’re winning. We’d be closer to actually winning driving parasailing boats in Maui.

I say this with full awareness it’s into a mirror.

Re: We are all Slave now.
 

I'm not sure what you're looking at.

Apropos of which, caption please:

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Dh08we_WkAA3HN4.jpg:large

Re: We are all Slave now.
 

She’s not representative of anything more than Trump’s penchant for hiring blondes with big breasts.

“So, you know Mary Magdalene is my favorite biblical character. Want to see the Oval Office? It’s not as gorgeous as Trump Tower, but’s it’s very, very nice...”

Re: We are all Slave now.
 

If my answers bother you perhaps you should ask better questions? All I can say is that Jesus is not giving you points for your actions here, to the contrary. And the anti Trump rhetoric is actually making Jesus cry.

OK, try Ezekiel 25:17.
 

The path of the righteous man is beset on all sides by the inequities of the selfish and the tyranny of evil men. Blessed is he who, in the name of charity and good will, shepherds the weak through the valley of darkness, for he is truly his brother's keeper and the finder of lost children. And I will strike down upon thee with great vengeance and furious anger those who attempt to poison and destroy my brothers. And you will know my name is the Lord when I lay my vengeance upon thee.

Re: We are all Slave now.
 

This here is the essence of conservatism now (and why SEC Chick is wrong that another appointee would have better energized conservatives).

Re: We are all Slave now.
 

Your perpetual use of lazy whataboutism is only your second least effective form of engagement. I would estimate it is a feature of more than half of any of your replies to me.

It's an especially meta touch to include that specific reference while doing so, but I am pretty sure that irony escapes you.

Re: We are all Slave now.
 

Yes. A single post by someone I won't follow on Twitter because I find her to be too Trumpy totally proves that people who don't like Trump will be equally enthused by Kavanaugh.

Re: We are all Slave now.
 

As helpful as I think Democratic attacks on Barrett's devout Catholicism would have been for Republicans holding the Senate, the disdain being shown for Kavanaugh's beer drinking, credit card use, and love of baseball isn't bad either.

Re: We are all Slave now.
 

Where is he being criticized for those things?

Re: We are all Slave now.
 

Damn, after the attacks on Mom (and breastfeeding) and Apple Pie (in the form of tariffs on agriculture), I'm kind of surprised to see a Republican saying positive things about baseball. I thought you all were football fans?

I'm fine with drinking beer and going to baseball games on credit, I just want someone to pay off my debts, too.

Re: We are all Slave now.
 

I didn't think either of us thought that a lazy reference to purported anti-religious bigotry on the left warranted anything more than lazy whataboutism. I don't think "the left," whoever that is, is "bigoted" against religion. I say that as a lefty and a Christian. But if one is attuned to that sort of "bigotry," surely the anti-Moslem and anti-Semitic on the right is much more of a thing.

Thank you for your appreciation, and I'll just turn my cheek to the latter bit.

Re: We are all Slave now.
 

Questioning a devout Catholic (or a devout Episcopalian*) about how her religious views do or do not affect how she considers legal or constitutional issues is not “attacking” a devout Catholic. Even when you oppose her confirmation to the bench based upon her faith-based answers and say something like “the dogma is strong with this one.” (Maybe it’s sexist to say that, since I don’t think a senator would phrase it the same way to a dude.)

I wouldn’t call myself a “devout” Catholic - or even a particularly good one - but my faith-informed opposition to the death penalty will definitely keep me off the state and federal benches in Podunk. I don’t think that most would consider that as an “attack” on my Catholicism.

*Ha! Episcopalianism is, as my (married) Episcopal priest friend once put it, has all the pageantry of Catholicism with none of the guilt.

Re: We are all Slave now.
 

When I talk about conservatives, I'm talking about people who do like Trump. I know you don't like Trump. You may disagree, but I don't think your views are typical of self-identified conservatives any more. They have moved somewhere else. I don't know who that [tweeter] is, but will take your word for it that she's Trumpy. So are conservatives these days. (To the extent that you aren't, right on.)

IMO, the kind of voter who is going to be motivated to vote for Republicans by a Trump Supreme Court pick is going to be just as motivated by Kavanaugh as any of the other reported candidates. This post [i.e., the tweet I linked to] shows why. Supreme Court nominations are polarized and highly motivating to partisans. Swing voters don't care about them.

Re: We are all Slave now.
 

I am a devout Catholic. Her crew, of course, the folks whose "intellectual" mantle she's now wearing (she was too young at the time) did a number on good Catholics like Father Drinan back in my youth. She's on the wrong side of a lot of intra-Church debates, and I'm glad their star is currently fading in the Church. The Good Lord works in mysterious ways.

But, yeah, the fact that I align more with this Pope and she more with the last doesn't make either of us anti-religious. If she were nominated, I expect we'd hear some of my good Catholic brothers and sisters in the Senate quoting the Pope a fair bit in her hearing.

Re: We are all Slave now.
 

Trump has redefined conservatism. Trumpism is Conservatism. If there were a group of people who actually opposed some of trumps' policies or nominees who were Republicans I would worry about what to call them, but all I see are conservatives who support trump, some of whom whine a little while doing so.

And now the conservatives are defending Trump's insulting a Gold Star family. Conservative values at work.

Re: We are all Slave now.
 

By the way, are we all enjoying all the conservatives attacking the FBI today to provide cover for Trump?

Re: We are all Slave now.
 

I enjoyed this: http://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/...arkable-moment

Re: We are all Slave now.
 

Gowdy looks like he's been embalmed there. Except for one or two moments where it looks like he sucked a lemon.

Gowdy ought to be fucking ashamed of himself. But I am looking forward to the hearings on the participation of ICE agents in the election....

Re: We are all Slave now.
 

I worked for the US government once. There is a law against political comment, IIRC? Does this guy avoid it because it was on a private twitter account? Had he mentioned he was FBI on that account? It strikes me he is at least an idiot- albeit an idiot with a twitter account in our government may be something we are getting to think normal?

Re: We are all Slave now.
 

I think you're thinking of the Hatch Act. IIRC, this guy was texting a co-worker with a government phone. I don't think that's illegal under the Hatch Act.

Re: We are all Slave now.
 

Okay, i thought he was tweeting. He was using a gov phone to text- how about the part where I asked if he wasn't an idiot?