Indeed. It is merely too negative for some people to grasp and too hot to hold. hot potatoes.

I’m hoping that our government wasn’t always this way, and that things have really just gotten so bad during the last couple of decades.

The highest point of corruption was before CW1, due to the Slave Power institution, and then afterwards, also due to the Demoncrat slavery institutions that merely called itself Black Codes or Jim Crow or KKK.

Then after Reconstruction, it also got a little bit bad before it got better, due ot WIlson/FDR.

But for the most part, America’s history and legends about the Founding Fathers were accurate rather than inaccurate. It just cycles up and down depending on how corrupt the people are. The more corrupt they are, the more the tree of liberty needs the blood of patriots and tyrants in a war to cleanse. Then the recycle repeats itself.

What people don’t know is that Booth and his co conspirators, all were part of a religion that called itself the Universal Church (of Rome). Politically, Land of Mary and other parts South, were educated in a peculiar theology that advocated slavery, and much of that Church supported slavery, universally or perhaps just for the States. So the assassin that speaks of killing a tyrant, based itself on the Code that said that whomever his religious leader determined was out of favor, was a tyrant that needed to be killed. And yet that anti tyranny position also supported slavery…

Human antics are pretty funny.

I hope Trump talks to the women on his list, and gets agreement from one or more to go thru the public HELL that is sure to come with the nomination hearings.

I’m sure there will be attempted Borking of whoever Trump chooses. I’m pretty sure the extremist Dems will look more ugly to the undecided and independent, so more will vote for normal Reps.

The press is likely to make things up, be dishonest, and often have half-truths — Trump’s likely to tweet many of these as examples of Fake News, which they will be.

Give the Dems enough rope to hang themselves… and both get the nominee accepted as well as use ugly Dem PC-bully words to be part of what Reps are against.

I was NeverHillary – we need more voters who are NeverPC-bullies. The Dems are PC bullies, and should be called that.

I like your idea.

Try now, and if Republicans currently in the Senate will not stick together and vote for Trump’s SC nominee, this can be used as an issue against them by challengers in the midterms. Resulting, one hopes, in more conservative Republicans in the Senate, and perhaps an easier time for his nominee, and passage when Trump submits his next choice after the election.

Yes.
* **
I am more inclined to the “get it while the getting is good” philosophy – if the nominee isn’t confirmed with 51 Republicans, the Trump can try again after the mids.

It should have been, and I hope it will be if the same line of questioning is pursued for any nominee, “The Constitution prohibits a religious test from being required for any office under the United States. I will not answer that question, and you, Senator, should know better than to ask it.”

This borking issue would have an interesting turn if Amy Coney Barrett, as many people expect, will be nominated. A practicing Roman Catholic with 7 children, a member of Charismatic movement (speaking in tongues, may be?), member of Federalist Society. What can get wrong?

I hope we can get her, but all it takes is one GOP defector to result in her defeat.

And she will be treated like sewage.

May God protect her.

And, LORD, please, don’t let it be all for nothing. What I mean is, please God, if we have a nominee that’s persecuted to hell-and-gone for being an originalist and having a large household (or whatever), please let that nominee get confirmed and then not drift leftward over time.

I firmly believe that, in the end, “the Judge of all the earth will do right.” (Genesis 18:25, for those who care about citations.) I do. But I do get a little impatient to see it happening for a change. Proverbs 13:12: “Hope deferred maketh the heart sick.”

Let’s have us some real Hope and Change, for a change.

– Thomas
– Alito
– Gorsuch
– Roberts
– A brand-new, untested conservative

Sorry.

That does not count, because Roberts is only about 75% reliable, and any brand-new, untested conservative could easily turn out to be another Kennedy (40% reliable) or O’Connor (30% reliable) or Stevens (0% reliable). A brand-new, untested conservative should be regarded as 50% until a track-record of decisions shifts the percentage one way or the other.

It isn’t a conservative-majority court until the sum of the reliability-percentages of the conservatives totals at least 451 out of 900. That (very slim) majority could happen with four 100% reliable justices and one 51% reliable justice. Roberts is not 100% reliable, however, which means that the new guy/gal will need to be at least 75% reliable to achieve an evenly-split court.

And Gorsuch is still quite new. He looks good so far, but he could still surprise us, or he could begin sliding gradually leftward over time. Call him a 90% conservative thus far.

I need not bother with the percentages of the left-wing justices. They are (so far as I have ever noticed) always 100% reliable to vote for the leftist outcome.

Hence the need for a conservative supermajority (at least 6) before anyone can rest easy that the leftward-slide of society is temporarily halted.

And as for reversing the last fifty years of that slide! Hah! Minimum of 7 before that happens.

And, again, they must be reliably conservative. Having 6 conservative justices hardly matters when they average 70% reliability and 30% backstabbiness. That just means that the court ends up 420% conservative, 480% leftist.

So always watch your SCOTUS justices’ records over time. They tend to slide leftward as they age, just like the society does. (I don’t know if that’s a consequence of Original Sin, or something they put in the water supply in D.C., or what.)

To correctly estimate their reliability, you have to keep a rolling 5-year-average of their decisions, with extra weight on important culture-overturning ones (e.g. Obergefell and NFIB v. Sebelius).

But if we can get 6 conservative justices, I expect we can prevent any new harm to the country, from that vector.

With 7, we could reverse a bit of the existing harm.

Speed the day.

The real question is what will the Republicans do in response to the Democrats?

This confirmation is a yuge deal. Over his 30 year tenure, Kennedy did a lot of damage to the fabric of our society and we have a chance to undo some of it.

If the Republicans respond in their usual limp-wristed manner they will lose the battle. McConnell showed remarkable backbone (for him) by not bring up Garland for confirmation. Will he be able to come down hard on squishes like Collins and Murk when they waver? He has been preparing himself all his life for this moment. I pray it is his time to succeed.

To determine much that we, the voters and citizens, very naively thought that we were determining. and to limit our knowledge of what was really going on.

It is very easy to laugh at the idea of “conspiracies,” to see them as the province of tin foil-hat wearing nut jobs, and writers of bad and formulaic fiction.

And, in fact, there is a whole conspiracy genre, a whole cottage industry of novels that have grown up, particularly over the last several decades, that—in spinning their tales—usually leave us with the impression of just how far-fetched and unlikely such government conspiracies are.

Yet—as the evidence for such an actual conspiracy at work becomes ever more exposed and evident—here we are.

A cynic might say that this is how things have always really worked—powerful and influential men in key positions talking democracy, our Constitution, and the Rule of Law, but behind the scenes, really running things as they pleased, protected by the outward appearance, the shell of being a democracy, and our ignorance.

I’m hoping that our government wasn’t always this way, and that things have really just gotten so bad during the last couple of decades.

But, I could be wrong.