JoshK

http://www.cnn.com/2005/POLITICS/10/03/scotus.miers/index.html I will fully admit I know ZERO about this woman as I haven't even heard of her before, but I was a bit surprised to see she has NEVER been a judge at any level.

Thanks for the grammar lesson FW, obviously your schooling was well spent. Sorry, I admit I forgot about his whopping TWO YEARS experience as a federal judge.

lick sack Well, that was the most informed statement you've made in this thread.

Mal_Con, very well put. Kasakstan or whatever your name is: again, I recommend you return to a basic level American politics class. What you call "obstructionism" is the way the founders intented the government to work. Things are supposed to change slowly and over a period of time. Our system was not designed so that sweeping radical reform can happen overnight. So you may challenge that this is far and beyond what the intended and it is now obstruction for the sake of obstruction. Well, to that I say this: you are watching the system work exactly as planned. When presidents nominate very left or right of mainstream judges we SHOULD see things take a while. The entire point is to keep the representation of our government in line with what the overall population wants, not one hard line president determined to push his crap agenda through.

the precedent is to confirm the President's nominees unless they are grossly unqualified. BTW - eat s**t. If you want to talk precedent, it was also precedent to not threaten rule changes to block fillibusters. Irregardless, a senator's "boss" is his state's citizens, not the president. In any event, I was never really against this Roberts character. I think he is certainly unqualified to be Chief Justice as I tend to think Chiefs should be nominated from existing Justices, or at least somebody with a history at the federal court level. He has nither. But aside from that, i'll take him as a presumed improvement to Renquist.

I knew a righty would have something stupid to say. Last time I checked senators are supposed to represent their state's interest not bow to the president's whim. You might want to retake a basic American political systems course.

Anybody notice the pattern? With the exception of Scalia, all of the conservative judges have had significant resistance. All of the progressive judges have passed by overwhelming majorities, as has Sandra, who I would rank as a moderate. Stephen Breyer Confirmed 87-9 on 7/29/94 Ruth Bader Ginsburg Confirmed 96-3 on 8/3/93 Clarence Thomas Confirmed 52-48 on 10/15/91 David H. Souter Confirmed 90-9 on 10/2/90 Anthony M. Kennedy Confirmed 97-0 on 2/3/88 Douglas Ginsburg Withdrew before confirmation hearings Robert H. Bork Rejected 42-58 on 10/23/87 Antonin Scalia Confirmed 98-0 on 9/17/86 William H. Rehnquist (for Chief Justice) Confirmed 65-33 on 9/17/86 Sandra Day O'Connor Confirmed 99-0 on 9/21/81 John Paul Stevens Confirmed 98-0 on 12/17/75 William H. Rehnquist (for Associate Justice) Confirmed 68-26 on 12/10/71

Yes, I got your fucking point, thanks. No, Arch, a priest doesn't nescessarily have any formal training. Any training they do have, furthermore, is slanted towards their church's views and not nescessarily what approach might be best for the couple. Your example of a shrink not having to be insane is, again, bunk. Shrinks go through years of formal training, learning these interesting concepts called "science." It's true that a good portion of their work is not nescessarily science but if they are good at their jobs they should have a wide range of techniques and be able to use different approaches with different patients. I don't think is true of somebody like a priest. I agree that a priest may certainly be of some help, but I don't think they are qualified as an expert on the issue in any way.

In my current job, I am proposing changes to a huge organizational hierarchy tool. I have never built one. But I can provide excellent consulting on the project based on what I have learned about other processes like this one, other processes I have built, and the specific needs of this process. And don't you know, marriage has very little to do with sex anyway. HAHAHAHAHA. An "organizational tool" is nothing like a marriage. Your analogy is bunk. I'm not married and I can tell you that much. The marriage counseling by people not involved, ever involved, or trained in the art is laughable at best. If churchs they want to do some good they would help people see that it is probably "god's intent" that they seek help through their fellow humans rather than think he'll just fix shit by showing up at church, praying, etc.

Thinking is a huge waste of time and energy. I'm gonna go watch a few minutes of Pat Robertson then go nap...

I would NEVER let my partner carry some contraption like that if we were actually traversing avalanche terrain. For clearing camp it would be fine, but putting your life in the hands of some ghetto-rigged shovel contraption is just plain stupid.

Ding ding ding ding...we have a winner. It completely saddens me that the people who most represent my beliefs just can't seem to play the political game nescessary to implement an agenda to improve this country - for all of us. Instead we get outmanuevered by people willing to do what it takes to pull the wool over the eyes of the public and implement an agenda which is costing us not only financially but in plenty of other ways. The best part? The Republican party claims to be the one of fiscal soundness.

HAHAH. YEAH, NO SHIT!!! Did anybody ever think that religous practices enhanced society's morality in any way!?

Very good point. That is the most frustrating aspect of today's administration and their goons in Congress; they have a machine going and it is damn good. The first and foremost task for Democrats winning back the country and us seeing progressive change is figuring out how to get a real message out there and show the public that their best interests do not lie with the right's bankrupt ideology layered on top of unsound policies. I'd like to think there is a way to accomplish this without resorting to the right's playbook of scare tactics, "moral" BS and outright lies.

You had to see this coming...It is the perfect opportunity for them to slam this bullshit through with less public opposition. I'd be willing to bet ANWR would have made no difference in the impact of the hurricanes owing to the fact that refining is still concentrated in a few specific areas. You gotta love the Bush administration: use a natural disaster to ignore the bigger problem (energy dependency, and lack of any sort of plan at all) to hook your buddies in the oil industry up at the expense of the rest of us. What a pathetic piece of garbage this administration is.

I would have supported US intervention in Rwanda on simple moral grounds. Clinton seemed to think helping out the violent KLA/terrorist muslim minority in the Serbian region known as Kosovo was more important. Actually, a better description would be that he bowed to the political pressure from the American public not being able to stomach lives being "wasted" to help poor Africans. My point is that there are huge amounts of suffering going on there (and in plenty of other places) that we could, if we chose to, pay attention to. Unfortunately for them there isn't enough of a political impedus. So don't use the "let's do it for the Venezuelan children" argument cause I know it's crap coming from you or anybody else.

How do those who call for our intervention in Venezuela with the argument of saving "three generations of Venezuelans" differentiate between that country and all the others we could save? Perhaps it is the difference between Venezuela being a heavily socialist state versus countless number of African states being ruled by dictators? In other words, "helping people" is a great justification when it serves their ideological tastes but "helping people" isn't enough of a justification to help people for non-political reasons.

you got to quit seetting yourself up like this josh. Just google "agent 86" if you've never seen Get Smart. Yeah, I should have googled - that is one of life's great rules I broke. Google needs a new slogan - "Making message board posters seem remotely informed since 1998."

This explains away a small portion of your limited world-view. The cone of silence was, perhaps, the greatest comic invention of all time. Every thought I might spend my time reading about events out side my of my life span that hold a little more importance and personal interest to me? I hardly think age qualifies you to claim any sort of expansive world knowledge. If your posts on this board are any indication, your extra years have added little more than bitterness and paranoia.

He must be a convert and successful example of Bush's "ownership society".

Who are these guys? What movies are these references from?

Really? last arc'teryx product I bought was made in some southeast asian country. It certainly wasn't canadia.

Of course as Tip O'Neil said "All politics are local". How many of the seats up for grabs in '06 are real contests? Time to google. More than you think but, agreed, it isn't enough to make for a gigantic swing. Hopefully the good guys can win back a few, however. One race of interest is in Penn where there is a chance Santorum's sorry ass could be voted out. That would be a huge win - he defines the typical neocon asshole.

the same "good majority" that reelected dubya? Take a look at a poll, asshat. And....he won't be running any in 2008...so poll numbers are pretty useless at this point. The real test is if he still get his agenda across in the Congress and the Courts. Seeing that he is filling two vacancies on SCOTUS and most likely have the tax cuts made permanen, it really does not matter what his poll numbers are. I was simply referring to the polls showing opposition to the Iraq War. The majority of the country feels it was a mistake at this point.

"Enviro-hysteria"?? LOL. Yes, that was a very extreme ecoterrorist response of mine. My point is she is someone that is an advocate for responsible use of a valuable natural resource and your knee-jerk response is a typical one of assumption that she represents some sort of infringement on your rights, even if you didn't out and out state it. Whatever. She is cool, if you don't think so due to your warped political reality, then that is your deal.