I just don't understand the GOP

[Craig234]

Originally posted by: MotF Bane
At the risk of getting into an debate I don't want and lack information on...

Walsh, president of the ABA, an organization attacked by the Federalist Society as having a liberal bias. I wouldn't expect him to say anything complimentary about Federalist Society after that, and I also think that saying a pre-commitment to a political dogma may be hypocritical of him. It is reasonable to expect the ABA has its own interests, as would judges it "recommends".

So, every black leader who condemns the KKK, well, the KKK attacked the blacks, so you can't expect black leaders to say anything complimentary about them.

This proves that the attacks on the KKK by black leaders don't really show any problem with the KKK, they're just biased against the KKK.

You go on to accuse him of *hypocrisy*, in a completely baseless and ignorant attack, because you 'think it's reasonable to expect' the ABA is just a politically biased group?

The ABA, who has been the nation's evaluator of judicial qualitifications for both parties' presidents since Eisenhower, until Bush let the radical Federalist Society have that role?

As for ratical.org, looking at the homepage for that site gives me the same impression of some of the truly crazy sites for either side. "International Nuclear Mafia" or "gaia's children", et cetera. It's not going to be a good place to get a balanced view. The other site's homepage is just as much a Democrat mouthpiece as Fox News is a Republican mouthpiece. So again, you can't get a balanced view. Also, with Washington Monthly, there is a mention about a possible Supreme Court opening, and advocated a "progressive worldview" - making their distaste for the Federalist Society even more evident.

So, you can't respond to the information, you can only point out the liberal orientation of the sites that hosted the articles.

'Mainstream/Neutral' media are rarely going to provide in-depth commentary and analysis about a group like the Federalist society, it's not the type of thing their 'average readers' are all that interested in, so you are going to find that commentary on the right and the left, and gee surprise, the right isn't hosting a lot of critical articles. So judge the article, not the source, in this case. Though the Washington Monthly is a fine liberal source.

Going with the information from Washington Monthly, there are inevitably some issues with where funding is received from, such as with Boyden Gray. If I wanted, I'm willing to bet I could find similar problems with other judges that don't belong to the Federalist Society. Several of the other judges are doing the right thing though, such as Klausner's work against affirmative action and against benefits to illegal immigrants.

There is nothing to show the Federalist Society is entirely bad, only that certain members are bad. If we want to pick out certain members of groups that are bad, that's not hard, all groups have bad members.

Funding is the least of the issues. I could hardly care less about the 'individual bad members', which every group can have.

Nothing wrong with the overall society? Among all the info, you did not understand what Walsh summarized in the quote I posted, and which you did not respond to?

The Federalist Society has a radical ideology they want to spread to change the legal interpretations our court system has had on the right and left for several decades if not its history. They're doing this with an assault based on on the merits of the issues, but based on simply organizing for the assault, setting up widespread, ubquitous organziations to recruit people into the movement early and indocrinate them, and provide networking and opportunities to build the group's influence and power, and to receive powerful political help simply by their ideology happening to align with the most wealthy interests, and the next thing you know the traditionally conservative judges appointed by Republicans are 'liberals' by comparison, and you have four members on the Supreme Court turning 9-0 decisions into 5-4 on a regular basis - and sometimes winning, if they can pull in Kennedy.

You may have to some of your own research if you have any sincerity in actually understanding their agenda - it's hard for me to see why you shoudn't be the one to do it.

I will give you credit for at least looking at some of the quick links, even if your responses appear to ignore the substance generally and cherry pick points to nit pick.

 

[Craig234]

Not the best source - a political commentator but some bullet points on the Federalist Society and quotes about the radical nature of the agenda included in the article.

Molly Ivans wrote a piece on the nominatin of Roberts and how the White House tried to hide the fact that he'd been in the Federalist Society (Roberts went along with the lie).

[The Federalis Society agenda includes the desire to] Restrict the right of courts to end school segregation, slow down on enforcing laws against discrimination, divest lower courts of jurisdiction over school prayer cases, go easy on Title IX for women and so on. All that was when Roberts was a junior White House lawyer and the records were opened during the Clinton administration. The records from his time as assistant solicitor general during Bush I are what they're trying to keep under wraps.

The Wall Street Journal's editorial page (the People Who Don't Read Their Own Paper) tried to describe the Federalist Society as an anodyne debating society. No, it is not -- it is a radical right organization, which explains why the White House made calls to national media to deny that Roberts was a member.

Jerome Shestack, president of the American Bar Association in 1998, said, "So much of the society's leadership consists of active politicians and others whose slouching toward extremism is self-proclaimed."

The society is funded by millions of dollars from right-wing and libertarian foundations. It attempts to influence legal education and works with right-wing legal advocacy and litigation organizations.

Alfred Ross, of the Institute of Democracy Studies, explains that "through its own 15 practice groups, the society is busy developing new legal theories for every area of American jurisprudence, from civil rights law to national security law, international law, securities regulations law and so on. And if one goes through the publications of their practice groups, one can only gasp not only at the breadth of their agenda, but the extremism of their ideology."

The society has argued for the abolition of the Securities and Exchange Commission, severely limiting the Environmental Protection Agency, and rolling back gender equity laws (Title IX) and voting rights law. Its publications have criticized teaching evolution and attacked the principle of separation of church and state.

According to Ross, they recently launched a state judicial selection project to try to dominate the state, as well as federal, bench. This is all standard, ultra-right-wing claptrap. It's all about control.

Indeed, if yet another example is needed, one of the landmark and most widely praised decision of the last century was the Brown v. Board of Education ruling that ended the doctrine of 'separate but equal', a decision that was unanimous and which the country came to embrace; Scalia has said if the case came before him today, he would vote the opposite way.

To understand their agenda takes some research, but if you do the research, you find that the summary in my comments and others' like Walsh's represent the agenda they have.

Unfortunately, they've been so successful with their organizing and building power, that it's a case where what's radical becomes more mainstream, if it gets powerful enough.

 

[chess9]

Originally posted by: Balt
If they can find someone who actually resembles an intelligent leader they can recover, but right now they don't have it. Steele is a goofball who can't even be taken seriously anymore after his "let's appeal to the hip-hop crowd" nonsense. Mitch McConnell is.. well.. a dork. Boehner has the personality of a plank. Palin is dumb. Jindal needs to learn how to speak in his grown-up voice and stop fabricating pointless stories. Huckabee is a nut who is unlikely to appeal to much more than the evangelical wing of the party. Romney won't tell you what he had for breakfast without consulting a group of lawyers first.

Right now it seems like Newt is their best option, but I have my doubts he could survive a long vetting process or even a short one. At least he's fairly smart, though. For some reason Republicans have decided to EMBRACE anti-intellectualism and try to appeal to fans of Joe the Plumber and Rush Limbaugh. I don't see that as a path to success, personally.

Yes, this is pretty much my view. Steele has been awful in the brief period he's been head of the RNC. Regardless of what you stand for, at least present your ideas with clarity.

The Republican Party is a mess, no doubt about it. Personally, I hope they continue to fail (echoes of Rush Limbaugh? ).

Having said all of that, I'm getting less and less happy with Obama every day. He just let the AIG execs take a few hundred million dollars in bonuses without so much as a fight in the face of possible fraud, or at least gross negligence. He's leaning on state secrets, he's keeping open his option to do special rendition, etc. ad nauseam. He's in power and will probably try to expand Bush's perogatives. I've become very cynical in the last few weeks about Obama. He's better than McCain, but that's not saying much. We are fucked....

-Robert

 

[nullzero]

Originally posted by: chess9

Originally posted by: Balt
If they can find someone who actually resembles an intelligent leader they can recover, but right now they don't have it. Steele is a goofball who can't even be taken seriously anymore after his "let's appeal to the hip-hop crowd" nonsense. Mitch McConnell is.. well.. a dork. Boehner has the personality of a plank. Palin is dumb. Jindal needs to learn how to speak in his grown-up voice and stop fabricating pointless stories. Huckabee is a nut who is unlikely to appeal to much more than the evangelical wing of the party. Romney won't tell you what he had for breakfast without consulting a group of lawyers first.

Right now it seems like Newt is their best option, but I have my doubts he could survive a long vetting process or even a short one. At least he's fairly smart, though. For some reason Republicans have decided to EMBRACE anti-intellectualism and try to appeal to fans of Joe the Plumber and Rush Limbaugh. I don't see that as a path to success, personally.

Yes, this is pretty much my view. Steele has been awful in the brief period he's been head of the RNC. Regardless of what you stand for, at least present your ideas with clarity.

The Republican Party is a mess, no doubt about it. Personally, I hope they continue to fail (echoes of Rush Limbaugh? ).

Having said all of that, I'm getting less and less happy with Obama every day. He just let the AIG execs take a few hundred million dollars in bonuses without so much as a fight in the face of possible fraud, or at least gross negligence. He's leaning on state secrets, he's keeping open his option to do special rendition, etc. ad nauseam. He's in power and will probably try to expand Bush's perogatives. I've become very cynical in the last few weeks about Obama. He's better than McCain, but that's not saying much. We are fucked....

-Robert

I agree the same about Obama... All that hype about fairness etc... where is the indictments and prosecutions of these scum bags from AIG the banking industry and Wall street that ruined our country? I think the republican party is going to fracture here and we may see a realignment of the party. I think the populist movement is gaining steam and might be the force that takes over.

Here is a link of the views of the new populist party
http://www.populistamerica.com/ten_planks

Its basically like a variation of the libertarian party. People like Lou Dobbs would be classified under this party. The social and religious influences are going to fracture off I think. Almost all Americans all agree with freedom of speech and increased control over their own lives. Not to mention they also agree by a large majority on the right to bear arms. Its the social issues and strong religious views that turn away a lot of independents and others that would otherwise consider voting the other way.

 

[Craig234]

Originally posted by: nullzero
where is the indictments and prosecutions of these scum bags from AIG the banking industry and Wall street that ruined our country?

I'd love to see justified indictments of the people who did so much harm, but you have to recognize, that when people are so powerful they can get the laws changed to legalize the bad things they want to do, you can't really indict them for not breaking the law. Unfortunately, trying to get the public to pay any attention to subtle changes on page 600 of some bill years before the chang will cripple the country tends to get hidden by the idiot topics dominating the popular political discussion (tax and spend Democrats! Froth drool).

This is why we need to 'reform the system' to prevent its easy corruption, by decreasing the role of money from the few most wealthy, the media consolidation, etc.

 

[chess9]

Originally posted by: nullzero

Originally posted by: chess9

Originally posted by: Balt
If they can find someone who actually resembles an intelligent leader they can recover, but right now they don't have it. Steele is a goofball who can't even be taken seriously anymore after his "let's appeal to the hip-hop crowd" nonsense. Mitch McConnell is.. well.. a dork. Boehner has the personality of a plank. Palin is dumb. Jindal needs to learn how to speak in his grown-up voice and stop fabricating pointless stories. Huckabee is a nut who is unlikely to appeal to much more than the evangelical wing of the party. Romney won't tell you what he had for breakfast without consulting a group of lawyers first.

Right now it seems like Newt is their best option, but I have my doubts he could survive a long vetting process or even a short one. At least he's fairly smart, though. For some reason Republicans have decided to EMBRACE anti-intellectualism and try to appeal to fans of Joe the Plumber and Rush Limbaugh. I don't see that as a path to success, personally.

Yes, this is pretty much my view. Steele has been awful in the brief period he's been head of the RNC. Regardless of what you stand for, at least present your ideas with clarity.

The Republican Party is a mess, no doubt about it. Personally, I hope they continue to fail (echoes of Rush Limbaugh? ).

Having said all of that, I'm getting less and less happy with Obama every day. He just let the AIG execs take a few hundred million dollars in bonuses without so much as a fight in the face of possible fraud, or at least gross negligence. He's leaning on state secrets, he's keeping open his option to do special rendition, etc. ad nauseam. He's in power and will probably try to expand Bush's perogatives. I've become very cynical in the last few weeks about Obama. He's better than McCain, but that's not saying much. We are fucked....

-Robert

I agree the same about Obama... All that hype about fairness etc... where is the indictments and prosecutions of these scum bags from AIG the banking industry and Wall street that ruined our country? I think the republican party is going to fracture here and we may see a realignment of the party. I think the populist movement is gaining steam and might be the force that takes over.

Here is a link of the views of the new populist party
http://www.populistamerica.com/ten_planks

Its basically like a variation of the libertarian party. People like Lou Dobbs would be classified under this party. The social and religious influences are going to fracture off I think. Almost all Americans all agree with freedom of speech and increased control over their own lives. Not to mention they also agree by a large majority on the right to bear arms. Its the social issues and strong religious views that turn away a lot of independents and others that would otherwise consider voting the other way.

The vast majority of the abuses on Wall Street were stupidity and gross negligence, not criminal conduct. The threat of criminal prosecution, however, is about the only thing that will have any deterrant effect on these boys with more testosterone than brains. The huge bonus agreements are part of a pay scale that is way out of whack and fails to take into account the long term results of many credit default swaps. Someone forgot the word "IF" in these contracts.

-Robert

 

[Craig234]

Originally posted by: chess9
The vast majority of the abuses on Wall Street were stupidity and gross negligence, not criminal conduct. The threat of criminal prosecution, however, is about the only thing that will have any deterrant effect on these boys with more testosterone than brains. The huge bonus agreements are part of a pay scale that is way out of whack and fails to take into account the long term results of many credit default swaps. Someone forgot the word "IF" in these contracts.

-Robert

That's the thing - when the system rewards, encourages, almost requires behaviors that have short term gain and long term harm to the country - you have a systemic problem.

That's not the people on Wall Street, for the most part misbehaving, that's them doing what they need to make money, and perhaps saying the system is idiotic themselves.

The problem is, when people are making money that way, it's very difficult to get the political organization to battle for reform.

I watched a 2006 documentary tonight called 'in debt we trust' that pretty much nailed the coming crash, right down to the housing bubble fueling the debt that put the middle class at risk as they borrowed far more than the homes were worth because the secondary market that was buying the mortgages as derivative products was rewarding that, and lenders had listtle risk by selling off the loans. But what effect did it have?