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Post by Marshall on Jan 11, 2019 14:18:44 GMT -5
  Twins? |
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Post by brucemacneill on Jan 11, 2019 14:19:54 GMT -5
Tough to take seriously when the accused in the blank is named "Amy". And is 47. No harder than the Kavenaugh hearings. |
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Post by AlanC on Jan 11, 2019 14:22:19 GMT -5
RBG is likely to resign in the near future. Trump is likely to nominate Amy Coney Barrett. In the grand tradition of Supreme Court dignity and decorum, her nomination will be greeted with near-universal enthusiasm, and embraced as just the thing a weary nation needs to heal the ugly wounds of division we currently suffer. I can't remember when I last disagreed with you but have to here. I would bet a doughnut that RBG has left instructions to prop her embalmed body up at her desk until DT is out of office. I could envision her wrestling with the angel of death and hanging on until "he" will no longer be the one to name her successor. |
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Post by sidheguitarmichael on Jan 11, 2019 14:23:41 GMT -5
So let's get on with it. Break the machine so we can get to starting over faster. To me that's not a bad thing. Having been to countries that habitually break the machine, I am one for limping the old jalopy along for as long as is possible. Now how long that actually is, is open to debate. Nobody knows which shot is the one heard around the flat earth disc until well after it has happened. Was it Kavanaugh? I doubt it--more symptom than cause, IMO. The media's treatment of "hands up, don't shoot?" Will it be Amy Coney Barrett? And what of NJ's zero compliance rate with their citizenry's mandatory turn-in of thousands of now-felonious firearms magazines holding more than 10 rounds? Zero compliance, and that includes their law enforcement community (who expected, but didn't get, a carve-out, naturally). Maybe none of those things are the shot. Maybe something else already was, and we won't know until the dust settles in a generation. Maybe there won't be a shot. Regardless, I'd like to stave off any efforts to reboot as long as possible. At least long enough to age out of the game and get a few more recordings done. Still, you all know that scene in Will Smith's zombie apocalypse movie "I am legend," where he is holding his beloved dog, and only friend, knowing that it has been infected with the virus, and will soon be turning into a monster? Sometimes, late at night, I get that feeling about the country I grew up in. I hope I'm wrong, and it's all just media spin. Time will reveal all, unless I kick the bucket first. |
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Post by billhammond on Jan 11, 2019 15:14:41 GMT -5
WASHINGTON - The National Air Traffic Controllers Association filed a lawsuit Friday against President Donald Trump and other top federal officials, saying they are depriving controllers of their "hard-earned compensation without the requisite due process."
Controllers across the country started seeing pay stubs Thursday showing that they are receiving no pay for their work guiding planes to airports nationwide.
The legal challenge, filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, seeks a temporary restraining order against the federal government for allegedly violating controllers' constitutional rights under the Fifth Amendment.
The air traffic controllers are also organizing a leafleting effort appealing directly to passengers at airports across the country, including in Dallas Atlanta, Seattle and Portland, Ore., as well as at Washington Dulles International Airport in Virginia, a union official said. The intent of the leafleting is to underscore the importance of their work and end the shutdown more quickly, the official said, not to protest.
The controllers are among hundreds of thousands of federal workers forced to work for free during the partial government shutdown. More than 24,000 Federal Aviation Administration employees are working without pay because their positions are considered vital for "life and safety." Separately, more than 17,000 other FAA workers have been furloughed.
"Each day, the FAA's Air Traffic Controllers," the lawsuit says, "are responsible for ensuring the safe routing of tens of thousands of flights, often working lengthy, grueling overtime shifts to do so. In fact, plaintiffs' job is so demanding and requires such rare stills that the FAA struggles to maintain a full complement of certified Air Traffic Controllers."
A similar suit was filed on behalf of federal workers at the departments of Justice, Agriculture and Homeland Security.
This article was written by Michael Laris and Ashley Halsey, reporters for The Washington Post.
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Post by brucemacneill on Jan 11, 2019 15:26:00 GMT -5
Easy Peasy. Fund the wall.
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Post by Russell Letson on Jan 11, 2019 16:16:05 GMT -5
About Barrett as a Supreme Court nominee and religion and politics in general:
In the US, anyway, you don't hear orthodox Jews suggesting that goyim give up pork or Muslims promoting prohibition of alcohol among unbelievers. There are, however, various Christian sects and alliances who would gladly impose parts of their particular belief systems on those outside their faith communities. Some of those folks are Catholic, and not just the Opus Dei or Vatican II-denying crowds. What matters is not mere Catholicism but what flavor of Catholicism--and like Terry, I'm old enough to remember both traditional American anti-Catholicism (it ran through both my parents' families) and the kind of paleo-Catholicism that parallels (theologically and politically) right-wing Protestantism.
Any public servant needs to draw a line between private religious belief and doing the work of the public. If you can't manage that--if you really think that gays shouldn't be issued marriage certificates or that prayer in public schools is OK, and insist on acting on such beliefs--then you shouldn't take the job. Period. And when it comes to lifetime-tenure judgeships, it is not surprising that a senator might ask a delicate question or two about the nexus of theology and public policy in a nominee's thinking.
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Post by sidheguitarmichael on Jan 11, 2019 16:45:37 GMT -5
Any public servant needs to draw a line between private religious belief and doing the work of the public. If you can't manage that--if you really think that gays shouldn't be issued marriage certificates or that prayer in public schools is OK, and insist on acting on such beliefs--then you shouldn't take the job. Period. And when it comes to lifetime-tenure judgeships, it is not surprising that a senator might ask a delicate question or two about the nexus of theology and public policy in a nominee's thinking. I agree, though I extend that distinction to strongly held secular beliefs with social policy implications, as well. That's why I like the idea of judges with a more constitutionalist track record. |
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Post by millring on Jan 11, 2019 16:58:48 GMT -5
Religious belief informs many aspects of the lives of people who have it. Some of those beliefs will manifest in public policy -- often without disagreement from people who arrive at the same policy but informed by a different means. I may believe people shouldn't kill others without justifiable cause. Even though I may have arrived at that conclusion because of my religious beliefs, I could probably comfortably form a policy coalition with someone who agrees about the killing thingy, but not about the religious reasons.
It's always been that way.
Some people have beliefs that inform them and drive them to make public policy that others will quite possibly not agree with. It isn't because of what informed the policy. It's because of the policy.
What is being suggested by the Democrats is nothing less than thought policing all public policy makers and disqualifying any, not on the basis of qualification, but on the basis that their belief system -- their religion -- is wrong. And they are generally doing that policing without understanding the philosophical and religious beliefs in the first place. They like the feel and smell of burning straw.
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Post by fauxmaha on Jan 11, 2019 17:03:45 GMT -5
What's peculiar is the way the very same pols who are raising the specter of religious extremism in potential SCOTUS nominees are now, without any apparent sense of shame or contradiction, openly invoking Biblical passages when it comes to border security, socialized medicine, poverty programs, etc.
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Post by millring on Jan 11, 2019 17:16:14 GMT -5
What's peculiar is the way the very same pols who are raising the specter of religious extremism in potential SCOTUS nominees are now, without any apparent sense of shame or contradiction, openly invoking Biblical passages when it comes to border security, socialized medicine, poverty programs, etc. But they're not invoking them because they believe them. They are invoking them and saying "I thought you said YOU believed this < nonsense >. They are trying to shame the religious as hypocrites. They interpret what religious people are supposed to believe (they quote a Bible they neither believe nor understand) -- though it is almost without exception a strawman mischaracterization of what the religious actually believe, or a simplification of such that renders in next to meaningless. They mean to be hoisting us on what they believe to be our own petard, but they neither understand the petard, what it is, nor what it means. |
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Post by brucemacneill on Jan 11, 2019 17:22:41 GMT -5
They're Democrats. What did you expect?
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Post by millring on Jan 11, 2019 17:49:50 GMT -5
It's not because they're Democrats. It's because they're human. I know how humans behave because I am one.
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Post by Russell Letson on Jan 11, 2019 18:16:30 GMT -5
I extend that distinction to strongly held secular beliefs with social policy implications, as well. That's why I like the idea of judges with a more constitutionalist track record. As do I. For that matter, it's worth inquiring into what "constitutionalist" means. At least secular beliefs (or, to be precise, epistemology, positions, assumptions, and systems of analysis) are secular--that is, not based on supernaturalist or revealed-truth views and values. Arguments that finally rest on supernaturalist/revealed-truth assumptions or assertions are not subject to falsification--they are inevitably private and subjective. John and Jeff: Pointing out inconsistency in policies or how they're carried out is a perfectly reasonable move in public discourse, because "equality under the law" and such is an underlying notion in our polity. It can easily descend into accusations of hypocrisy, but I'd call that a failure mode of that move. Asserting theological/philosophical ignorance or bad-faith arguing on the part of those making those bringing up matters of consistency is another failure mode of argument. I wonder what an audit of statements about unbelievers from swathes of the religious right would reveal about their grasp of the nature and range of unbelief. (Actually I don't have to wonder, since I've been putting up with it for my entire adult life.) |
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Post by millring on Jan 12, 2019 4:22:37 GMT -5
Asserting theological/philosophical ignorance or bad-faith arguing on the part of those making those bringing up matters of consistency is another failure mode of argument. I wonder what an audit of statements about unbelievers from swathes of the religious right would reveal about their grasp of the nature and range of unbelief. (Actually I don't have to wonder, since I've been putting up with it for my entire adult life.) I see what you did there. There's a name for it. But you knew that before you typed it. |
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Post by Russell Letson on Jan 12, 2019 13:00:49 GMT -5
Modes of argument (not an exhaustive list): Debate: The goal is "winning" as defined by some third-party--a voting audience in the hall, or, less definitively, a voting populace in an election. Apologetics: The goal is conversion of the opponent/audience to the one's system of belief or position. Deliberation: The goal is to analyze and understand some set of propositions, to come to agreement or at least an understanding of terms, evidence-sets, and lines of analysis. Now, if we're having a debate, all that matters is whether the audience/judges/voters buy my arguments, and anything goes, including accusations of bad faith, hypocrisy, or incompetence. If I'm engaged in apologetics I'm expecting my target to answer an altar call or join the church, and I'm going to use every tool of logic to undermine his arguments and positions and close that ideological deal. And if we're deliberating, I'm hoping that we can clear away the underbrush and understand what we're disagreeing about, right down to differences at the level of epistemolgy. Deliberation often ends in an if. O sir, we quarrel in print, by the book; as you have books for good manners: I will name you the degrees. The first, the Retort Courteous; the second, the Quip Modest; the third, the Reply Churlish; the fourth, the Reproof Valiant; the fifth, the Countercheque Quarrelsome; the sixth, the Lie with Circumstance; the seventh, the Lie Direct. All these you may avoid but the Lie Direct; and you may avoid that too, with an If. I knew when seven justices could not take up a quarrel, but when the parties were met themselves, one of them thought but of an If, as, "If you said so, then I said so;" and they shook hands and swore brothers. Your If is the only peacemaker; much virtue in If. Twelfth Night |
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Post by coachdoc on Jan 12, 2019 13:15:10 GMT -5
You are quite glib there, Russ. I admire it. It's why I failed Logic 101 As a Freshman. I could have used a jesuit back then to straighten out my thinking.
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Post by Russell Letson on Jan 12, 2019 13:36:57 GMT -5
If I were glib, that post wouldn't have taken me a half-hour to write. (This post, though, is pretty glib.)
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Post by AlanC on Jan 12, 2019 14:33:55 GMT -5
My last direct participation (that I remember) in one of the minor skirmishes which make up the ongoing Soundhole Cultural/Political War contained a solid Number Three. I think the Good Book said something along the lines of: What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun.
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