Justice Kennedy announces retirement

[bilby]

McConnell's policy is to not confirm justices in an election year, so I wouldn't worry about this.

I'm sure that you're right....

Seriously, the republicans are just better at the US Game of Thrones than the democrats. They are a minority party. There are more people on the left than on the right. But the right kicks ass. They are more devoted. They vote better. They know how to play the game. They game the system better. And the left is going to feel the consequences of this for - for a generation...

Compromise is essential for good government. When your system is configured so as to reward with power, those who are uncompromising in their pursuit of that power, you are fucked.

The only people who can get power are those unsuitable to wield it.

Republican voters don't think about policy; They support their team. Democratic voters don't blindly support anyone; They want a candidate with policies they can get behind.

The former gets you winners who are awful at governing. The latter gets you the best available candidates wondering why they lost to such a useless bunch of morons.

 

[couch_sloth]

I do not think Hillary's problem was that she was not left-wing enough. Clinton, her husband, was the epitome of the moderate "Third Way" and he not only got elected twice but also enjoyed high popularity since he left office.
Hillary's problem was lack of charisma and mismanagement of the campaign. Like running up the score in California and ignoring the Midwest. Or too much emphasis on identity politics.....

Yeah. Hillary just doesn't have the ideal personality for a successful presidential candidate. Reagan, Bill Clinton and Obama were very personable, and people were more likely to forgive them for the mistakes they made.
Hillary, unfortunately, comes across like Bob Dole.

That's one of the problems. People are so shallow that they vote on how personable the candidate is. Face it. You're never going to sit down and have a beer with a presidential candidate.

Then again, cult 45 obviously has the ideal personality.

It is rather sad that people vote by how personable a candidate is. Hillary is smart and knowledgeable, unfortunately, that just not enough.
I thought she was still going to win against Trump. My biggest fear was that she would only be elected for one term.
In a weird way, Trump won as an outsider anti-establishment candidate. The closest thing I can think of, in the past, was the election of Andrew Jackson.

 

[J842P]

Hillary picked the most non-descript vanilla candidate she could fined

It's because the center-right democrats are so out of touch that they are playing politics as if it were 1995. No doubt, some totally useless "consultant" came up with some analysis that showed that Tim Kaine was the right choice. The same consultants that have bankrupted the party and consulted their way to huge losses in almost all arms of state, federal and local government.

 

[repoman]

What this country needs is for Kennedy to give a speech like Eisenhower as he left office, but this time about how fucking stupid it is to leave the fate of the country to 9 motherfuckers. But it already has been done on Boston Legal.

https://vimeo.com/116114392

And shit like this is why these psychopath SCOTUS cowards pick a tight cadre of lawyer fuckers to present cases in front of them.

 

[Treedbear]

Last night Maddow noted that the SCOTUS will get to decide whether Trump can pardon himself. Talk about a litmus test!

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

What this country needs is for Kennedy to give a speech like Eisenhower as he left office...

He did... in a concurring paper in the bullshit Travel Ban case. I call it his "Hand in the Cookie Jar" warning. He gave it after concurring on a decision that said it was okay to put one's hand in the cookie jar.

- - - Updated - - -

Hillary picked the most non-descript vanilla candidate she could fined

Of choices within her control, this was likely one of the two biggest mistakes she made.

 

[Iznomneak]

 

[repoman]

He is fucking old, looking at him gives me anxiety for my own time to be that old if it happens.

We don't know his medical condition.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

View attachment 16368

Genius!

 

[Jarhyn]

I don't know if I mentioned this on these forums before, but in response to the rethuglicans controlling the narrative, there's a simple reason: you don't get good at rhetoric and spin without practice, and you don't get practice at rhetoric and spin unless you have positions that can't be defended through more honest means. In short, it takes telling a lot of lies to get good at lying.

So of course those greedy, socially destructive self centered fucks are going to be better at dissembling, lying, and spinning.

 

[Treedbear]

I don't know if I mentioned this on these forums before, but in response to the rethuglicans controlling the narrative, there's a simple reason: you don't get good at rhetoric and spin without practice, and you don't get practice at rhetoric and spin unless you have positions that can't be defended through more honest means. In short, it takes telling a lot of lies to get good at lying.

So of course those greedy, socially destructive self centered fucks are going to be better at dissembling, lying, and spinning.

The problem is that their rhetoric is so poor and yet it's sufficient to convince almost half the country.

 

[Jolly_Penguin]

Does anyone else find it disturbing that these judges are appointed based on how they will vote on a particular issue, rather than how good a Judge they are in the actual reading of the laws?

These are supposed to be judges and not politicians, right?

 

[whollygoats]

Does anyone else find it disturbing that these judges are appointed based on how they will vote on a particular issue, rather than how good a Judge they are in the actual reading of the laws?

These are supposed to be judges and not politicians, right?

They are the latter with the pretension of being the former.

 

[Don2 (Don1 Revised)]

Does anyone else find it disturbing that these judges are appointed based on how they will vote on a particular issue, rather than how good a Judge they are in the actual reading of the laws?

These are supposed to be judges and not politicians, right?

You seem to think democrats and republicans behave like republicans?

 

[Copernicus]

There is another angle to this that has not been widely reported, although it is getting passed around in social media. Kennedy's ties to Trump are a little deeper than most of us were aware of before. It turns out that Kennedy's son was Deutsche Bank's head of real estate capital markets and had been Trump's main source of funds for years. See Inside the White House’s Quiet Campaign to Create a Supreme Court Opening.

Mr. Trump was apparently referring to Justice Kennedy’s son, Justin. The younger Mr. Kennedy spent more than a decade at Deutsche Bank, eventually rising to become the bank’s global head of real estate capital markets, and he worked closely with Mr. Trump when he was a real estate developer, according to two people with knowledge of his role.

During Mr. Kennedy’s tenure, Deutsche Bank became Mr. Trump’s most important lender, dispensing well over $1 billion in loans to him for the renovation and construction of skyscrapers in New York and Chicago at a time other mainstream banks were wary of doing business with him because of his troubled business history.

That in itself would not motivate Kennedy's move to give Trump a break with this retirement months before Democrats might take over the Senate, but Trump is good at getting his hooks into people. This fact gave him a close connection to Kennedy, and he was careful to appoint some of Kennedy's proteges to federal office, thus establishing a sense that Trump was interested in preserving Kennedy's "legacy". At worst, it was a quid-pro-quo bargain, which is the kind of deal that Trump likes.

 

[Angra Mainyu]

Does anyone else find it disturbing that these judges are appointed based on how they will vote on a particular issue, rather than how good a Judge they are in the actual reading of the laws?

These are supposed to be judges and not politicians, right?

My impression is that the people choosing them usually believe that the Justices they want are actually pretty good at reading the laws, whereas those on the opposite side are the ones who misread the laws (and more specifically, the US constitution) badly.

 

[fromderinside]

I agree with Angra Mainyu here. Earl Warren was nominated by a Republican president.

 

[Trausti]