The Gaming Den

FrankTrollman wrote:The healthcare bill didn't hurt the democrats in the last election.

Except of course the argument back then was that the healthcare bill would help and gain the Dems another 14 million votes.

It didn't pan out. Instead, the debate became whether it hurt or did nothing.

That the debate changed to this is a negative strike against Democrats already.

Until the depression is over, the house is going to change hands every two years. That's simply how our system "works".

Yep. This much is true.

So people, stop panicking. The Radical Right isn't about to take over.

Surgo wrote:I will never, ever buy the "lesser of two evils" approach. If Obama cannot perform a 180 on his truly horrendous civil rights record, he will not have my vote in 2012. Perhaps a third party will (because I won't vote for the greater of two evils), but he will not.

Your retarded electoral system makes that exactly like not voting.

US politics is fucked and neither party wants to fix it since they're the beneficiaries.

Surgo wrote:I will never, ever buy the "lesser of two evils" approach. If Obama cannot perform a 180 on his truly horrendous civil rights record, he will not have my vote in 2012. Perhaps a third party will (because I won't vote for the greater of two evils), but he will not.

On what basis do you make your decision to vote? If it's not on the consequences of your vote, then what is it based on?

FrankTrollman wrote:The healthcare bill didn't hurt the democrats in the last election. The election was 100% about the economy and the minor healthcare changes had no impact at all at the polls. The democrats were 100% nailed to the wall because when the economy was 2.5 trillion dollars short in investment, they offered a 700 billion dollar stimulus and told everyone that it was going to be plenty.

The fact that the Republican plan of providing a negative stimulus package would have been even worse did not stop the party in power from losing seats. Because it's a 2 party system and Americans are kind of stupid. When things are going badly, they always vote for the "other party" even when things are going badly because the other party fucked things up in the first place and the current party in charge's major problem is that they aren't behaving differently enough from the other party.

Until the depression is over, the house is going to change hands every two years. That's simply how our system "works".

-Username17

That and people have a short memory. Fast forward a few years and everyone's forgotten the other party is just as much of a fuck up.

Draco Argentum wrote:US politics is fucked and neither party wants to fix it since they're the beneficiaries.

Even worse than that is the public's insane fanaticism towards the U.S. Constitution. People (as in the public at large) for some reason are extremely reluctant to change it even if the changes would be good. The only people who still support the electoral college and unlimited tenure of the Supreme Court for instance are the politically ignorant--which happens to be most of the public. But you seriously suggest trying to change that and people will scream like raped apes. So the country continues to become more and more undemocratic and unworkable because we have a bunch of dithering retards clinging to something they don't understand out of narrow-minded fear and laziness.

The U.S. is seriously headed towards a long-term death spiral, ironically because of its success. I seriously have no idea how to fix it short of a dictatorial coup specifically designed so that people rebel against it and design a new constitution. Or start educating people from the ground up about what a piece of shit it is and hope in 50 years enough of the dumbass older generation dies out that wecan write something that makes sense. Or maybe the economy can collapse Weimar Republic style and as part of the deal to get into the East Asia/EU union we have to write something less stupid.

Lago PARANOIA wrote:The only people who still support ... unlimited tenure of the Supreme Court for instance are the politically ignorant

If you actually believe this, then you are politically ignorant.

What, do you think a lifetime tenure is a GOOD thing for democracy? Do you think that it's a good thing that people play Russian roulette with the highest court in the land, with laws being essentially decided by luck with no easy way to change them?

The Supreme Court having an unlimited term wasn't a bad idea back in the 18th century when change was slow. It's a fucking awful idea now. The justices should have a tenure of 8 years, not 25.

Lago PARANOIA wrote:What, do you think a lifetime tenure is a GOOD thing for democracy? Do you think that it's a good thing that people play Russian roulette with the highest court in the land, with laws being essentially decided by luck with no easy way to change them?

The Supreme Court having an unlimited term wasn't a bad idea back in the 18th century when change was slow. It's a fucking awful idea now. The justices should have a tenure of 8 years, not 25.

Great, you've established that you don't like lifetime tenure. But see, you are not the only person in the world who is politically informed.

Those people who get law degrees or PHDs in political science and spend their careers arguing about political structures? They are not in any kind of consensus. There are still many drawbacks and advantages under consideration that make this not a uniform preference.

And none of the drawbacks of lifetime tenure is that people are playing Russian roulette, or that laws are decided by luck, or that the justices can't keep up with change.

Believe it or not, most judges that are appointed are appointed because they are capable of intelligently considering their choices. Yes, the occasional Clarence Thomas gets on the court, or Scalia, but those aren't even the majority. Even Alito and Roberts are capable of making intelligent decisions based on reason a good portion of the time.

So yes, a politically ignorant person named Lago who doesn't know shit about actual judging and actual interpretation hates unlimited tenure. No one cares. Their are politically informed people who do and don't agree with unlimited tenure based on actual understanding of the issues. That's a lot more important.

Kaelik wrote: And none of the drawbacks of lifetime tenure is that people are playing Russian roulette, or that laws are decided by luck, or that the justices can't keep up with change.

No, really, you are playing Russian roulette. When you have lifetime tenure, the only way you can get a change of that branch of government is through someone dying or retiring, which is extremely luck-based. Seriously, if twenty years ago a bunch of justices died in a fire and the President got to appoint five of them, how is it good for reflecting the will of the people that some dumbass from five administrations ago gets to have more influence than every other President that came after him?

Kaelik wrote: Believe it or not, most judges that are appointed are appointed because they are capable of intelligently considering their choices.

You are so naive, guy.

Kaelik wrote:Their are politically informed people who do and don't agree with unlimited tenure based on actual understanding of the issues. That's a lot more important.

Okay, yes, if you like humping the right side of the democracy <---> republic spectrum because you don't like an optimally functioning government or you like a government that's 20 years behind the times you can be politically informed and still support this. Similarly, you can be politically informed and support the electoral college because you live in some loser state like Wyoming.

I'm talking about what's best for democracy, not individual preferences. Dumb shit.

There are three alternatives to having unlimited tenure, Lago: Popular election of the Supreme Court, regular replacement of the Supreme Court by the President, or regular replacement of the Supreme Court by Congress. Which one of these do you want?

The legislature should approve the Supreme Court after the President appoints them, same as it was. Their terms should be 6-8 years however, and a justice cannot be appointed twice in a row. The appointment process is fine, I just have a problem with the length.

Lago PARANOIA wrote:No, really, you are playing Russian roulette. When you have lifetime tenure, the only way you can get a change of that branch of government is through someone dying or retiring, which is extremely luck-based. Seriously, if twenty years ago a bunch of justices died in a fire and the President got to appoint five of them, how is it good for reflecting the will of the people that some dumbass from five administrations ago gets to have more influence than every other President that came after him?

You are assuming that each justice is merely a cookie cutter of their president, instead of an intelligent rational person capable of making decisions themselves.

Lifetime tenure protects them from this, while maintaining high quality judges.

Lago PARANOIA wrote:Okay, yes, if you like humping the right side of the democracy <---> republic spectrum because you don't like an optimally functioning government or you like a government that's 20 years behind the times you can be politically informed and still support this. Similarly, you can be politically informed and support the electoral college because you live in some loser state like Wyoming.

Once again. Justice Stevens was not an old Codger who couldn't make goo decisions. He was the best judge on the court, and much more in touch with current issues and times then most of the younger judges.

Before Kagan/Sotomayor you would have found yourself agreeing more often with the older judges on the court.

Your assertion that someone being a lawyer for 10 years a judge for 40 years and on the Supreme Court for 20 years makes them super old fashioned idiots but somehow being a lawyer for 10 years a judge for 28 years, and on the Supreme Court for 8 years suddenly makes them a hip young fella in touch with the times is fucking crazy talk.

Lago PARANOIA wrote:I'm talking about what's best for democracy, not individual preferences. Dumb shit.

I'm talking about what's good for the country, which is not pure democracy, and the whole damn point of the Supreme Court is to make unpopular decisions that people don't want, because people are fucking retards.

Lago PARANOIA wrote:The legislature should approve the Supreme Court after the President appoints them, same as it was. Their terms should be 6-8 years however, and a justice cannot be appointed twice in a row. The appointment process is fine, I just have a problem with the length.

And how many Justice Stevens level judges are there in the world exactly? Do you really not see the tremendous decline in the quality of judges that would come from tripling or more the number of judges that you need to appoint to the supreme court?

Fixed retirement ages are mandatory though.

Australia changed its constitution after a senile judge was just hanging on until the next politically friendly government. He was pretty fucking senile too.

You don't need terms though, just a fixed retirement age - 65 or whatever.

Lago wrote:The legislature should approve the Supreme Court after the President appoints them, same as it was.

I have decided that someone has replaced Lago's brain with pudding.

cthulhu wrote:You don't need terms though, just a fixed retirement age - 65 or whatever.

I like this.

Kaelik wrote:And how many Justice Stevens level judges are there in the world exactly? Do you really not see the tremendous decline in the quality of judges that would come from tripling or more the number of judges that you need to appoint to the supreme court?

There are reasons to support lifetime appointments to the supreme court, but "there aren't enough judges of supreme court quality to go around" is definitely not one of them.

Kaelik wrote: You are assuming that each justice is merely a cookie cutter of their president, instead of an intelligent rational person capable of making decisions themselves.

God, this is naive to the point of willfully ignorant.

Because the justice is confirmed by the senate and the president appoints them, the people who grease their skids have an incentive to appoint justices that will please their party and advance their political beliefs. They really fucking want to, because as Roosevelt and Nixon have showed us a Supreme Court that's counter to your ideology will fuck you in the ass.

You'll notice that supposedly intelligent people don't agree on much of anything. But you can find an intelligent person who lines up with a lot of your views. Or even if you believe in some retarded things like the gold standard or creationism you can find someone who is overall okay with one or two blind spots. And regardless, what's the guarantee that Congress isn't going to sent a cementhead up for lifetime tenure up there? In case you haven't noticed, the voters of the party the selectors belong to want partisanship from their justices, not rationality or intelligence. Granted, you'll need some brains to get that high up the court circuit in the first place, but it seriously doesn't matter.

Seriously, how openly conservative of a judge does a liberal president appoint? When's the last time a conservative administration/legislature approved a liberal justice? Seriously, the Scalia and Thomas justices are the ultimate subversion of your position.

Kaelik wrote:He was the best judge on the court, and much more in touch with current issues and times then most of the younger judges.

And as you might have noticed, the United States turned considerably more conservative after he got appointed justice. The Supreme Court is not reflecting the will of the people at that point; they're serving some other non-democratic interest like the Constitution or their own believes. Which are total bullshit standards since those two things are so arbitrary.

Kaelik wrote: I'm talking about what's good for the country, which is not pure democracy, and the whole damn point of the Supreme Court is to make unpopular decisions that people don't want, because people are fucking retards.

What? What makes them so much better than the voters? They're painfully average, biased douchebags like everyone else, If you don't have any faith in the President/Senators who put them up there, why do you have faith in the justices themselves?

By the way, democracy is good. Having less democracy than the absolute maximum a country can sustain is bad--but the United States is way, waaaaay before the point where implementing more democracy is harmful.

Kaelik wrote:Do you really not see the tremendous decline in the quality of judges that would come from tripling or more the number of judges that you need to appoint to the supreme court?

Kaelik, do you understand the law of averages? Lifetime tenure won't affect the intelligent quotient of any Supreme Court over a period of time, because it'll shoehorn in an idiot for a longer period of time rather than getting him/her rotated out.

The only way your explanation makes any sense is if you hold onto some dumbass belief like 'justices in the past were better than what we have now, so let's make up rules to hold onto them!' At this point you may as well be arguing for a benevolent dictatorship and all of the associated flaws with that.

Maj wrote:I have decided that someone has replaced Lago's brain with pudding.

That's pretty much what's going on right now. Do you have a problem with the current approval process? Yes, appointment was a bad word, maybe I should've said approval, but that's the basic sequence.

If you wanted to cut the President out of the selection process I can't really blame you, since it's a YMMV thing at that point. But seriously, how would you improve on that?

The fact that the supreme court is appointed means it is influenced by whoever is in power. However, this is pretty much the LEAST bad way of doing things.

If you don't have lifetime appointments (anything less means the judge cares what other people think of their decisions) then the supreme court cannot make the decisions that the public doesn't want (see: desegregation, roe vs wade). Frankly, the general public is a bunch of ignorant bigots that want to thrust their religion deep down your throat, so we NEED a branch of the government ready to combat that.

Now, since the function of the supreme court is to make the unpopular decisions that means we need a way to insure that the court is WILLING to make unpopular decisions. Any process of general elections is going to make the judges elected be the ones that have a history of making popular decisions (exactly not the point of the supreme court). Being directly appointed by the president with no other influences would mean that a president gets to have massive power over the judiciary for years after his presidency ends, and that is a bad thing. Needing approval by congress means that unless the presidency is controlled by the same party as congress, you won't have judges far to one end elected.

So yeah, the appointments for life by the president and approved by congress is actually a pretty fucking ideal solution for the intent (keep congress from passing bad laws). A way to get rid of judges should they become senile is probably a good idea, but I don't think a mandatory retirement age is a good reason for the same reason an arbitrary age for anything is stupid; people do not have the same mental faculties at any given age, so what is appropriate for one person at one age may not be appropriate for another person at the same age.

ubernoob wrote: If you don't have lifetime appointments (anything less means the judge cares what other people think of their decisions) then the supreme court cannot make the decisions that the public doesn't want

This can be 'solved' if you view it as a problem (the courts forcing SUN-PAC down our tender throats destroys any credibility of it being a safeguard against democracy in my opinion) by making the appointments a one-time thing. You cannot be appointed to the Supreme Court again after serving one term, you need to find a better job or live off of the permanent retirement stipend or whatever.

That in my opinion sits comfortably in the middle of the spectrum of 'don't want these people to become too unresponsive to the voters' and 'don't want these people too beholden to interest groups'.

Lago PARANOIA wrote:

ubernoob wrote: If you don't have lifetime appointments (anything less means the judge cares what other people think of their decisions) then the supreme court cannot make the decisions that the public doesn't want

This can be 'solved' if you view it as a problem (the courts forcing SUN-PAC down our tender throats destroys any credibility of it being a safeguard against democracy in my opinion) by making the appointments a one-time thing. You cannot be appointed to the Supreme Court again after serving one term, you need to find a better job or live off of the permanent retirement stipend or whatever.

That in my opinion sits comfortably in the middle of the spectrum of 'don't want these people to become too unresponsive to the voters' and 'don't want these people too beholden to interest groups'.

This option is actually 100% worse. Assuming the judge is young enough to continue to want to work, they are thrust back to the lower court levels (and elections influenced by the decisions they made at the top) or must change careers (losing a very good judge from the system). Either that, or they will simply not accept nominations unless they are almost ready to retire anyways which means your supreme court is going to be made up of exclusively old farts that will not have to live in the world created by their decisions.

So, instead of being able to pick up a 50 year old judge that can serve for 20 years and would plausibly see the impacts of his reactions you pick up the 70 year old judge that gets bribed to do something bad in the long term so that his son can have a new house.

Oh, and because the judges would rotate out so quickly they would be subject to the same political swings that presidential elections are.

Yeah, this is pretty much 100% bad.

Lago PARANOIA wrote:Because the justice is confirmed by the senate and the president appoints them, the people who grease their skids have an incentive to appoint justices that will please their party and advance their political beliefs. They really fucking want to, because as Roosevelt and Nixon have showed us a Supreme Court that's counter to your ideology will fuck you in the ass.

And yet, they rarely get it, because the fact of lifetime employment guarantees that they don't need to concern themselves with appeasing the people who greased skids, and they can freely vote on things based on other concerns. Like applying legal principles.

Lago PARANOIA wrote:And regardless, what's the guarantee that Congress isn't going to sent a cementhead up for lifetime tenure up there?

And how is one cementhead for life different from one cement head followed by another eight years later?

Reagan was president. Eight years later, Reagen was still president. What the fuck do you want nine Reagen appointees on the Supreme Court for?

You would basically just make the entire law change every eight years, because no court could bear to adhere to precedence of an opposing court.

Lago PARANOIA wrote:Seriously, how openly conservative of a judge does a liberal president appoint? When's the last time a conservative administration/legislature approved a liberal justice? Seriously, the Scalia and Thomas justices are the ultimate subversion of your position.

1) How about Stevens? Oh right, you are politically uniformed, and therefore have no idea about Justice Stevens.

2) No, Scalia and Thomas are examples of my position. Scalia and Thomas both buck the party line considerably on many issues, because they adhere to their own principles of "Whatever the fuck I want" and "Strict Constructionism" respectively.

With your shitty system, there would be nine Scalias one the court at once.

Lago PARANOIA wrote:And as you might have noticed, the United States turned considerably more conservative after he got appointed justice.

Chief Justice of the Liberal Supreme Court Stevens, Statistically most Liberal voting member of the court Stevens, Waited four years to retire when he had wanted out a long time ago to wait for Obama to be elected Stevens turned the court more conservative? Are you fucking kidding me. It's like you aren't even paying attention to your own argument.

If he turned the court more conservative when appointed, then it proves that the older judge he replaced was more liberal than him.

When he retired, he was 90, the oldest judge on the court, the longest serving judge on the court, And he was the most liberal judge on the court, and if you knew anything about actual court cases, you would side with him one every single one.

I know you are politically uniformed Lago, but this is ridiculous, in every single respect, from his drift far to the left, from his age and residency, from his judicial philosophy, Stevens is a perfect counter example to any claim about shorter younger courts being more liberal.

The fact that you said anything besides "He's just one judge, not the norm." when I brought him up is proof that you don't know a single goddam thing about the Supreme Court decisions in the last 30 years.

Lago wrote:The Supreme Court is not reflecting the will of the people at that point; they're serving some other non-democratic interest like the Constitution or their own believes. Which are total bullshit standards since those two things are so arbitrary.

The Constitution is not arbitrary. You know what is arbitrary? The will of the people is arbitrary. The Supreme Court was fucking invented by the non arbitrary constitution to serve the express purpose of not serving the will of the people, but instead the interest of the people. The will of the people is that Gay sex be illegal, the US be a Christian Nation, and non Christians be second class citizens. The Supreme Court has always defended the non arbitrary rights to religious and speech rights, and many others, against the will of the people.

Lago wrote:What? What makes them so much better than the voters? They're painfully average, biased douchebags like everyone else, If you don't have any faith in the President/Senators who put them up there, why do you have faith in the justices themselves?

What makes them better then the voters? Well, how about the fact that they aren't painfully average, since every one of them is much smarter than you, and you are above average yourself. They have law degrees, and long experience judging, so that makes them significantly more knowledgeable about the law, and making good judgement then the voters.

I'm not sure why you ask who I have faith in, since I don't have faith in anyone, I recognize that the Supreme Court has a history of making many well reasoned judgments based on clear and intelligent legal principles, and that Congress has a history of being partisan douchebags, and that the voters, when given control over something, prove to be more partisan and douchey than Congress could ever dream of.

Why do you have faith in "voters"? Something that can't possibly be based on analysis of their results in the past, since the elected Bush once, after we knew what a fuck up he was, and Reagen twice.

Lago wrote:By the way, democracy is good. Having less democracy than the absolute maximum a country can sustain is bad--but the United States is way, waaaaay before the point where implementing more democracy is harmful.

Why is democracy good? Because then people can more easily oppress hated minorities, and you hate minorities? Because then people can run roughshod between extremes with no balance, and fuck the country up both ways? Because then the laws can change willy nilly, and the lack of consistency can drive the entire country off the deep end?

What's so great about democracy? People are stupid. There's a reason that every successful system ever involved basically robbing people of the ability to make any choices other than Person who doesn't do what you want, and other person who doesn't do what you want.

Lago wrote:Kaelik, do you understand the law of averages? Lifetime tenure won't affect the intelligent quotient of any Supreme Court over a period of time, because it'll shoehorn in an idiot for a longer period of time rather than getting him/her rotated out.

Lago, you are so stupid it hurts my brain. If there are 500 judges within acceptable qualifications and age range, it is objectively true that the best nine of them are better than the best 27 of them. Because those nine are better than the other 18. If you cut term length into thirds, you triple the number of people, so if you have the best already, you noticeably decrease the overall.

ubernoob wrote: Assuming the judge is young enough to continue to want to work, they are thrust back to the lower court levels (and elections influenced by the decisions they made at the top)

You mean like how their original promotion was influenced by decisions they made at the bottom? They were already made impure by the system beforehand. Let's not weep for their situationally-induced partisanship.

ubernoob wrote:Either that, or they will simply not accept nominations unless they are almost ready to retire anyways which means your supreme court is going to be made up of exclusively old farts that will not have to live in the world created by their decisions.

You'll obviously have to incentive people to accept a nomination with the expectation that they will be put to early retirement. Probably a money reward of some type.

But I still don't see why this is such a huge problem.

1) 50-60+ is already near the top of the retirement age anyway. It's not like we'll be putting 20 year olds out to pasture and worry about the most passionate of people not wanting to give it up early. You did 30 years of justicing, that should be enough for anyone.

2) Even if there was a huge proportion of justices that didn't want to give it up early, it still doesn't matter as long as you can get a deep enough bench for selection. This will probably mean reaching into the lower courts more often, which I see as a good thing for reasons unrelated to this thread. If you want to have a discussion about the Reverse Peter Principle, I'll be delighted to start one.

ubernoob wrote: Oh, and because the judges would rotate out so quickly they would be subject to the same political swings that presidential elections are.

You will obviously have to stagger the appointments. One or two a year should do the trick.

Lago wrote:That's pretty much what's going on right now. Do you have a problem with the current approval process? Yes, appointment was a bad word, maybe I should've said approval, but that's the basic sequence.

If you wanted to cut the President out of the selection process I can't really blame you, since it's a YMMV thing at that point. But seriously, how would you improve on that?

You said this:

Lago wrote:The legislature should approve the Supreme Court after the President appoints them, same as it was.

Technically, it should be nominate, but I don't really care. My issue was with the "same as it always was." The Senate still has to confirm the President's nominee - just like the Constitution said (Article II, Section 2 - if you care). And justices appointed during a Senate recess are not in for life. They still have to go through the normal process.

Quite frankly, given the antics of Congress of late, I'm glad that they don't appoint the justices. I don't have faith that they'd get anything done. Further, I don't think they'd produce candidates that are any less partisan than having a Presidential nomination - Congress' candidate would just reflect the ideals of the party currently in the majority. Having the President give the nomination streamlines things majorly.

Of all things, I don't have much issue with the Supreme Court. They may not make every judgment the way I want them to, but I do believe that they are a rational, functioning, and necessary part of our government.

Maj wrote:You said this:

Thanks for picking through an inconsequential statement in order to try to discredit my overall point Maj--are you really trying to claim because I used bad wording that I mean something the opposite of my clarification?

In order to make things absolutely clear, the current process to put someone in the Supreme Court is fine in my opinion. The executive and legislative branch should have their thumbs in the pie.

Maj wrote: They may not make every judgment the way I want them to, but I do believe that they are a rational, functioning, and necessary part of our government.

I do, too, but the fact that they have lifetime tenure is horseshit. People do change and not everyone is behind the times, but having lifetime tenure drastically increases the chances of having someone with political viewpoints that just doesn't reflect the country's. This wasn't a problem back in the bad old days because society changed so slow, but it is a problem nowadays.

Kaelik, your anti-democracy rant deserves a totally different thread on its own. So wait for it.

No Lago. Please no.

And frankly, this entire discussion would be largely moot if laws were reviewed by the Supreme Court before they are passed.

As opposed to letting the Supreme Court decide on the law after the fact, and making it as though the Justice department is actually the legislature.