SCOTUS and whatnot

[Motown Bombers]

40 minutes ago, Tiger337 said:

Abortion clinics in national forests?  I never heard of that and it sounds like a terrible idea.  When I go to a national forest, I want to be in a forest.  I don't want it to be some kind of political experience.  I go to the forest to get away from that ****.  

It was literally your senator who suggested having clinics set up on the edge of federal land. 

From this article, you can also see the rat****ing from the progressives. They kept whining about vote harder when voting harder is what codified abortion in states like Michigan. 

White House: No Abortions on Federal Land, But Have You Considered Voting Harder? (vice.com)

[Tiger337]

8 minutes ago, Motown Bombers said:

It was literally your senator who suggested having clinics set up on the edge of federal land. 

From this article, you can also see the rat****ing from the progressives. They kept whining about vote harder when voting harder is what codified abortion in states like Michigan. 

White House: No Abortions on Federal Land, But Have You Considered Voting Harder? (vice.com)

I am not a political maven like most people here.  I don't follow everything Warren does and says, so I am not surprised that I missed it.  LOL, NH hiking enthusiasts would not be surprised that massholes wanted to set up abortion tents in national forests.   

[chasfh]

Fascinating Fresh Air episode from the other day talking to the guy who make the new Frontline doc about Clarence Thomas. He spent a lot of time talking about Thomas's upbringing. It was fascinating.

Clarence Thomas was born in Pinpoint, GA (seriously!) in the Jim Crow south as a coastal geechee, born Catholic, abandoned by his father, rejected by his grandfather, cast off to live alone and make his own way before he was an adult, went to seminary for high school and then Holy Cross on a scholarship, was never accepted by the overwhelmingly white student body at either, the latter because he was part of the first black class borne of affirmative action.

While he was at Holy Cross he joined the Black Panthers, grew out his hair, went to protests and whatnot. One day he had some sort of epiphany: why am I doing this? I might get arrested! So he quit that.

After getting his JD from Yale he did not get offers of high-paying law firm gigs so he decided to try to get into government, and he chose to work for Republicans because "the line was shorter" for black people to rise up in those ranks. He knew nothing of conservative ideology so he contacted John Bolton, who had been a classmate of his, and asked him to recommend books he should read on conservative topics.

By the time he joined the Reagan administration, the Republicans were only too happy to hire any black person who would be willing to step out in front of the media and defend their racialized policies, and Thomas was only too glad to do so. He eventually became chairman of the EEOC (with Anita Hill on his staff) and stayed there until nominated to the Circuit Court of Appeals by Bush Sr and, eventually, became the affirmative action appointee to the Supreme Court, of which he has always resented the implication, which might explain why he is so anti-affirmative action.

So now that I've capsulized his story, I want to share the big insight I got from listening to this program:

Clarence Thomas had no ideology growing up into adulthood. He was neither liberal nor conservative. He joined an extreme black organization because he felt he had to; he then went to work for extreme right wingers because it was a good career move. He had no problem going from extreme left to extreme right. The only thing they had in common is that they were extreme, kind of like the Bernie Bros from 2016 who turned around and voted for Trump in 2020. Some people just want to do things to the extreme because it makes them feel alive. I think that's Clarence Thomas. He had a ****ty childhood that made him feel dead inside. Once he got agency he busted out and chose extreme paths in all directions. Didn't matter what side of the spectrum the extremeness was. Just that it was extreme.

I've learned a lot about Clarence Thomas just from this Fresh Air. I might watch the Frontline on it, too.

 

 

[Tigeraholic1]

Good summary, very interesting.

[gehringer_2]

47 minutes ago, chasfh said:

Fascinating Fresh Air episode from the other day talking to the guy who make the new Frontline doc about Clarence Thomas. He spent a lot of time talking about Thomas's upbringing. It was fascinating.

Clarence Thomas was born in Pinpoint, GA (seriously!) in the Jim Crow south as a coastal geechee, born Catholic, abandoned by his father, rejected by his grandfather, cast off to live alone and make his own way before he was an adult, went to seminary for high school and then Holy Cross on a scholarship, was never accepted by the overwhelmingly white student body at either, the latter because he was part of the first black class borne of affirmative action.

While he was at Holy Cross he joined the Black Panthers, grew out his hair, went to protests and whatnot. One day he had some sort of epiphany: why am I doing this? I might get arrested! So he quit that.

After getting his JD from Yale he did not get offers of high-paying law firm gigs so he decided to try to get into government, and he chose to work for Republicans because "the line was shorter" for black people to rise up in those ranks. He knew nothing of conservative ideology so he contacted John Bolton, who had been a classmate of his, and asked him to recommend books he should read on conservative topics.

By the time he joined the Reagan administration, the Republicans were only too happy to hire any black person who would be willing to step out in front of the media and defend their racialized policies, and Thomas was only too glad to do so. He eventually became chairman of the EEOC (with Anita Hill on his staff) and stayed there until nominated to the Circuit Court of Appeals by Bush Sr and, eventually, became the affirmative action appointee to the Supreme Court, of which he has always resented the implication, which might explain why he is so anti-affirmative action.

So now that I've capsulized his story, I want to share the big insight I got from listening to this program:

Clarence Thomas had no ideology growing up into adulthood. He was neither liberal nor conservative. He joined an extreme black organization because he felt he had to; he then went to work for extreme right wingers because it was a good career move. He had no problem going from extreme left to extreme right. The only thing they had in common is that they were extreme, kind of like the Bernie Bros from 2016 who turned around and voted for Trump in 2020. Some people just want to do things to the extreme because it makes them feel alive. I think that's Clarence Thomas. He had a ****ty childhood that made him feel dead inside. Once he got agency he busted out and chose extreme paths in all directions. Didn't matter what side of the spectrum the extremeness was. Just that it was extreme.

I've learned a lot about Clarence Thomas just from this Fresh Air. I might watch the Frontline on it, too.

 

 

IOW, another sociopath, making his own way at anyone else's expense.

[chasfh]

31 minutes ago, gehringer_2 said:

IOW, another sociopath, making his own way at anyone else's expense.

Sociopathy is pretty much indicative of just about anybody who rises to the tippy-top, isn't it? I can hardly imagine a circumstance in which someone rises to the top tier of a major function—government, business, whatever—without breaking laws, flouting ethics, disregarding integrity, and/or callously ruining some people's lives along the way.

[gehringer_2]

media getting excited over SCOTUS voting rights ruling in Alabama case. And certainly any voting rights win from this court is better than the court further eroding democracy. The problem is the looked at this case purely on racial discrimination grounds, which means that sadly, it will have no applicability to gerrymandering in general.

[Crazy Cat Gentleman]

 

[ewsieg]

I listened a bit to some perspective on this yesterday and what a bunch of crap from so many levels.  While the conflicts of interest are obvious (oddly I suspect folks to agree with me for some reason now), the fact that WSJ allowed Alito to get out ahead of it via their own paper is utterly ridiculous.  

[gehringer_2]

3 hours ago, ewsieg said:

I listened a bit to some perspective on this yesterday and what a bunch of crap from so many levels.  While the conflicts of interest are obvious (oddly I suspect folks to agree with me for some reason now), the fact that WSJ allowed Alito to get out ahead of it via their own paper is utterly ridiculous.  

It wouldn't be half so bad if he were even a competent Judge, but he's an idiot. Invoking the 13th century in Dobbs - then yesterday he was the *sole* dissenter in the courts rebuff of a couple of states trying to control how the Federal gov runs immigration. You can have all the complaints you want about US immigration policy from admin to admin, but the idea that a State has any standing force the Federal government's hand on policy is legal drivel. Even Normally-I'm-a-mile-off-the-reservation-Thomas couldn't see his way to disagree with the majority on that one.

[pfife]

as with all matters of Mmerican jurisprudence, we should consult Sir Matthew Hale

[chasfh]

On 6/23/2023 at 1:19 PM, ewsieg said:

I listened a bit to some perspective on this yesterday and what a bunch of crap from so many levels.  While the conflicts of interest are obvious (oddly I suspect folks to agree with me for some reason now), the fact that WSJ allowed Alito to get out ahead of it via their own paper is utterly ridiculous.  

This is the big thing from the Trump Playbook for Right Wingers: control the narrative by breaking the unfavorable story with your spin on it. Get it out there first. It’s also what Justice allowed Trump to do when he got indicted: he announced it, and established the initial narrative. 

[CMRivdogs]

Has anyone talked to Gym Jordan recently?

 

[oblong]

6-3... Roberts/BK/Barret join the libs.

This was a big one I think.

 

[gehringer_2]

56 minutes ago, oblong said:

6-3... Roberts/BK/Barret join the libs.

This was a big one I think.

 

If this had gone the other way it would pretty much opened the door to majority mob rule as opposed to a system of protected rights and ordered liberty. The fact that Alito, Thomas, and Gorsuch were on the other side just proves again they are a clear and present danger to the Republic, and have no business being alowed with a country mile of where they're sitting. FWIW, which isn't much, Thomas would have punted the case but he still rejected the majority opinion.

Edited June 27, 2023 by gehringer_2

[gehringer_2]

This case was another case of the minority attaching themselves to a detail of text but missing the whole import of the Constitutional structure itself. The plaintiff's fundamental argument was that when it comes to elections, a state Constitution cannot constrain the power of its own legislature. But that flies in the face of the fact that the US Constitution (and Federal Courts) do exactly limit the power for the Federal legislature in exactly those ways. Despite the use a the word ' legislature' at that sentence in the US Consitution in reference to state governments, it flies in the face of the overall logic of the US constitutional system to argue that the Framers intended in that sentence to neuter the liberty protections of checks and balances of Constitutional Democracy at the state level.

Edited June 27, 2023 by gehringer_2

[romad1]

Welp...they decided.  

I'm torn.  My son definitely faced weird discrimination against him in his attempt to get into certain schools on this basis.  But, he got into a decent tier B B1G school and if he works hard he can overcome that. 

[gehringer_2]

58 minutes ago, romad1 said:

Welp...they decided.  

I'm torn.  My son definitely faced weird discrimination against him in his attempt to get into certain schools on this basis.  But, he got into a decent tier B B1G school and if he works hard he can overcome that. 

Brown does undercut her case in laying out so many historical injustices that were in fact de jure. 

To me college  affirmative action is a debate that generates the most heat but I don't believe is where the action should be. It comes way too late in the overall social process to change much regardless of how it is or isn't practiced. To me the fundamental racial issue in the US is economic/political resource allotment, and as long as the society is segrated and political districts are geographical, US minorities will continue to be short shrifted. That is the fundamental problem. I don't know what the answer to it is, but it's not in college affirmative action. 

Edited June 29, 2023 by gehringer_2

[Tiger337]

Are they also going to ban legacy admissions?  

[oblong]

My view on the AA issue is that if blacks and minorities benefit from that when maybe some shouldn't.... oh well.  There's so many other examples where they get the short end that I can overlook this if it happens.  There's always outliers and anecdotes to show it might not be needed or someone got hosed but.... life isn't fair.  We don't always get what we want and what better way to start adulthood than learning that.   (This isn't directed at you Romad, just a general statement).  I have a friend who claims his hatred of UM football, etc. is because they didn't accept him and he had to settle for EMU.  He's got a good job.  Met his wife at EMU.  He's not close enough for me to ask "What the **** are you bitching about? You turned out ok"

and following up on G2's points... if those issues that crop up earlier were addressed then I'd be fine addressing AA at the college level.  

 

 

 

[romad1]

4 minutes ago, gehringer_2 said:

Brown does undercut her case in laying out so many historical injustices that were in fact de jure. 

To me college  affirmative action is a debate that generates the most heat but I don't believe is where the action should be. It comes way too late in the overall social process to change much regardless of how it is or isn't practiced. To me the fundamental racial issue in the US is economic/political resource allotment, and as long as the society is segrated and political districts are geographical, US minorities will continue to be short shrifted. That is the fundamental problem. I don't know what the answer to it is, but it's not in college affirmative action. 

Its easy enough to see the benefits of Affirmative Action in hiring when I encounter AA individuals who are solid, crab-bucket clawing strivers who would not have had that chance to demonstrate that without certain opportunities.  The US military has produced a lot of talent that wouldn't come forward without its merit-(ish) system.  Plenty of racism in the US Mil still but A Colin Powell a Lloyd Austin don't emerge from normal processes.   

My son was in a social circle that was blessed with an economic class of parent cadres of educated, merit-conscious strivers.  He'll be fine.  

[Tiger337]

6 minutes ago, oblong said:

My view on the AA issue is that if blacks and minorities benefit from that when maybe some shouldn't.... oh well.  There's so many other examples where they get the short end that I can overlook this if it happens.  There's always outliers and anecdotes to show it might not be needed or someone got hosed but.... life isn't fair.  We don't always get what we want and what better way to start adulthood than learning that.   (This isn't directed at you Romad, just a general statement).  I have a friend who claims his hatred of UM football, etc. is because they didn't accept him and he had to settle for EMU.  He's got a good job.  Met his wife at EMU.  He's not close enough for me to ask "What the **** are you bitching about? You turned out ok"

and following up on G2's points... if those issues that crop up earlier were addressed then I'd be fine addressing AA at the college level.  

 

 

 

As long as the top students (maybe top 20%?) get admitted based on merit, I don't think affirmative action is a big deal.  If an average White student misses out because of an average Black student, then I don't care. 

I think stupid lazy people getting admitted because they were born into wealthy connected families is a bigger issue and a very common one.

[romad1]

8 minutes ago, Tiger337 said:

As long as the top students (maybe top 20%?) get admitted based on merit, I don't think affirmative action is a big deal.  If an average White student misses out because of an average Black student, then I don't care. 

I think stupid lazy people getting admitted because they were born into wealthy connected families is a bigger issue and a very common one.

Yes

[The Ronz]

26 minutes ago, Tiger337 said:

Are they also going to ban legacy admissions?  

To my knowledge the answer is no.

Legacy admissions, donors, employee families and special recommendations will still be allowed.

[ewsieg]

I'm conflicted on this as well.  Instead of just race based, is there an argument schools can make for a certain percentage to be based on financial consideration alone?  For instance, X percent of students must be getting max contributions related to financial aid?  I guess percentage wise that still wouldn't ensure the numbers we see under affirmative action.

I don't like affirmative action, but I also don't like a scenario without it.  I wish most race discussions could be talked about in terms of class discussions as I've felt making everything about race pits two groups of people, poor blacks and poor non-blacks, against each other, despite having a lot more similarities than they realize.