The 2016 US General Election

[Monash]

And in other cray-cray news:

http://www.nbcnews.com/card/trump-su...he19th-n665406



Also: http://www.latimes.com/nation/politi...htmlstory.html

Dear deity-who-existence-I-doubt, when will this nightmare end?

The way the polls are heading at the moment, they'd have erase the 13th Ammendment as well to give Trump a shot.

[zraver]

http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-me...-times-obama-/


GOP leader: Supreme Court has ruled 13 times that Obama exceeded his constitutional authority

Great example of why I don't trust politihack

http://www.cato.org/blog/obamas-abys...-supreme-court

I’ve written exhaustively about this administration’s sheer statistical failure at the Supreme Court. It has the worst record of any modern presidency, whether you count in absolute won-loss – where the solicitor general’s office struggles to get to 50 percent, against a historical norm of 70 percent – or by unanimous losses alone.

While we’re still in the part of the Court’s term before the decisions start flying fast and furiously, I thought I’d present the latest update on where we stand with respect to those unanimous losses, where President Obama doesn’t even get the votes of the two justices he appointed. Here are the stats:

In the first 6.5 years of Obama’s presidency (January 2009 to June 2015), the government lost unanimously at the Supreme Court 23 times, an average of 3.62 cases per year.
In all 8 years of George W. Bush’s presidency, the government lost unanimously 15 times (1.875 cases per year).
In all 8 years of Bill Clinton’s presidency, the government lost 23 times (2.875 cases per year).
In other words, Obama has lost unanimously twice as often as Bush and 1.5 times as often as Clinton. Obama also passed Bush’s 8-year total in less than 5 years.
The Justice Department’s unanimous loss rate from 2012 to 2014 was especially bad – 13 cases in 30 months – almost three times Bush’s overall rate and almost twice Clinton’s (and that doesn’t count amicus litigating positions with unanimous losses).
For the record, here are the unanimous losses in the last four terms, so we can reminisce about the greatest hits (cases in which Cato filed marked with an asterisk):

2012 (4 cases): United States v. Jones*; Sackett v. EPA*; Hosanna-Tabor v. EEOC; Arizona v. United States
2013 (5 cases): Gabelli v. SEC*; Arkansas Fish & Game Commission v. United States*; PPL Corp v. Commissioner of Internal Revenue*; Horne v. USDA*; Sekhar v. United States
2014 (4 cases): Burrage v. United States; Bond v. United States*; Riley v. California*; Noel Canning v. NLRB*
2015 (3 cases): Mach Mining v. EEOC; Henderson v. United States; McFadden v. United States
These cases have nothing in common, other than the government’s view that federal power is virtually unlimited: Citizens must subsume their liberty to whatever the experts in a given field determine the best or most useful policy to be. If the government can’t get even one justice to agree with it on any of these unrelated cases, it should realize there’s something seriously wrong with its constitutional vision.

And so, as we look ahead to the opinions due to come down this spring and summer, keep in mind that if the government loses, it won’t be because its lawyers had a bad day in court or because the justices ruled based on their political preferences. It will be because the Obama administration continues to make legal arguments that don’t pass the smell test.

[tbm3fan]

Is Donald Trump going to turn out to be the Bloody Shirt of the first half of the 21st Century?

And I had a discussion with a good friend last evening and he raised something I had not been thinking of...will Donald Trump concede? Will he make the traditional call? Or will he try to claim the election was rigged and try to drag it into the courts? My buddy may be a Democrat but he is also the most realpolitik guy I know. He is wondering this not because its the GOP but because it's Donald J. Trump.

Really hope we don't see that happen.

Being the supreme egotist that he is, and from his other actions, would anyone ever think he could admit fault or defeat. I can't see him conceding the election nor making the traditional phone call. I expect him to double down and say the fact that he lost proves that the election was rigged just like all the polls now. I don't expect peace on Nov. 9th.

I will go so far as to say Trump will hang around, one way or the other, up to 2020 haunting the Republican Party. That being the case be prepared for Trump 2, that doesn't mean Trump a second time, but someone else who uses his playbook.

[Monash]

Question is would he be vain enough to have another go in four years time running as an independent? (Assuming of course he could get his support base to bankroll it - damm sure he wouldn't be spending his own dime!)

[Stitch]

Being the supreme egotist that he is, and from his other actions, would anyone ever think he could admit fault or defeat. I can't see him conceding the election nor making the traditional phone call. I expect him to double down and say the fact that he lost proves that the election was rigged just like all the polls now. I don't expect peace on Nov. 9th.

I agree with this 100%; there is no way Trump will EVER concede defeat. He'll blame somebody, or something, for the fact that he lost. And then he'll probably try to sue the Electoral College for fraud. And if that doesn't work, he'll throw a temper tantrum on public media, blaming the pinko commie Democrats for rigging the election.

We probably won't hear the end of it until the next Presidential election.

[Stitch]

Oh, wow!!! I want one of those.
Maybe a little black AH-6i...

I'd like a nice, low-mileage, MH-60L DAP, with the optional M230 Chain Gun cannon package, please . . .

[DOR]

zraver,

DOR, its not just the number of executive orders, but the type and scope.

My apologies.
I wasn’t aware you, or anyone else with a strictly neutral political stance, had analyzed each of the more than 10,000 executive orders issued since the Wilson Administration. Please let me know where I can find such amazing insight.

= = = = =

snapper,

I don't think a Government should implement major measures without the scrutiny of Congress/Parliament etc

When has that happened?
And, would you extend that to include legislation already passed by both houses and signed by the president? Such as, say, Obamacare?

London is getting cold and wet. But, Summer’s almost over!

= = = = =

Tip o’ the hat to Gun Grape … but some folks still don't get it
Executive overreach, Supreme Court 9-0 edition:

“President Barack Obama received a strong rebuke from the Supreme Court last week [June 2014] for his attempt to make appointments when Congress was still technically in session.” Rep. Bob Goodlatte, R-Va., chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, said the "9-0 decision last week was the 13th time the Supreme Court has voted 9-0 that the president has exceeded his constitutional authority."

Goodlatte’s assertion doesn’t seem to hold water.

In eight of the cases, the alleged overreach occurred under President George W. Bush:

US vs Jones (can the FBI use GPS to track suspects? That’s some overreach!)
Sackett vs EPA
Hosanna-Tabor vs EEOC
Gamelli vs SEC
Arkansas F&G vs US
PPL Corp vs IRS
Horne vs USDA
Bond vs US

Then there’s Arizona vs US, in which the court 2012 sided with the Obama Administration 5-3 on three counts and against 9-0 on one count because it was too soon to decide.

Then there’s US vs Wurie and Riley vs California in which the court ruled police cannot search your cell phone if you are arrested. Aside from the actual case itself, (hardly executive overreach, is it?), the case originated pre-Obama.

Then there’s McCullen vs Coakley, regarding no-protest zones around abortion clinics. Talk about executive overreach!

Hence, Politifact says Goodlatte is a liar.

[antimony]

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/...0e8c198a6076d?

mocked what he called the “rape police.”

“You can do anything, the left will promote and understand and tolerate anything, as long as there is one element,” the conservative talk show host said in comments posted online by Media Matters. “Do you know what it is? Consent.”

He continued:

“If there is consent on both or all three or all four, however many are involved in the sex act, it’s perfectly fine, whatever it is. But if the left ever senses and smells that there’s no consent in part of the equation then here come the rape police. But consent is the magic key to the left.”

After reading this, is it fair to say that Conservatives are would be rapists who do not understand the meaning of consent? Also, some, I assume, are good people.

[antimony]

Ok, I can understand the misogyny, racism, and hunger for power, but what the fudge is this???

http://www.newsweek.com/donald-trump...bombing-509417

Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump has issued an apology for his country’s decision to bomb Serbia during Bill Clinton’s tenure at the White House, according to the Serbian weekly magazine Nedeljnik.

U.S. and NATO allies launched aerial campaigns against the faltering Yugoslav regime, targeting ethnic Serb troops, in 1995 and 1999. The first attack was carried out in support of groups in Bosnia and Herzegovina, seeking independence from Belgrade, while the second was in support of similar forces in Kosovo. Trump was asked to comment on the campaign in 1999.

"The bombing of Serbs, who were our allies in both world wars, was a big mistake,” Trump told the Serbian weekly magazine Nedeljnik for an article published on its website Thursday. “Serbians are very good people. Unfortunately, the Clinton administration caused them a lot of harm, but also throughout the Balkans, which they made a mess out of."

Eh???

[DOR]

This is the most damning thing I’ve ever read about how the GOP has underminded Amer

American Democracy Betrayed, By Elizabeth Drew,
The New York Review of Book, Aug 18-Sept 28, 2016

It is a review of a book by David Daley called “Ratf**ked: The True Story Behind the Secret Plan to Steal American Democracy.

Excerpts:
Redistricting works in a circular fashion by which the states get caught up in an ongoing cycle of self-protecting exploitation of the advantages of incumbency. Thus a party wins control of the legislature of a state that then draws its state and congressional districts in a way that maintains that party in power.

… according to the Cook Political Report, only 37 out of 435 seats are being contested this year. While the precise number can be affected by other factors such as retirements or whether someone from the opposition party decides to run, redistricting, or incumbent protection, is the overwhelmingly relevant factor.

But arguably the more significant result of the 2010 election was that in the states the Republicans were in a position to redraw most of the congressional districts—and they did so with an unprecedentedly high-powered national project called REDMAP, or Redistricting Majority Project.

REDMAP was a new way to aim for successful partisan redistricting by concentrating first on winning the greatest majority possible in the congressional and state elections preceding the next Census and using the state majorities to redraw the districts.

Direct quote from the book: “The problem with our politics is not that all of us are more partisan, or the Big Sort. It’s that we have been sorted—ratfucked—into districts where the middle does not matter, where the contest only comes down to the most ideological and rancorous on either side. Because the Republicans drew the majority of these lines, there are more rancorous Republicans than Democrats.”

Daley also explains one of the most important developments in recent years: the near disappearance of moderate Republicans. Democratic presidents from Lyndon Johnson to Bill Clinton could rely on moderate Republicans to help them pass their initiatives, while Obama has had virtually none.

Senators aren’t redistricted, of course, but moderate Senate Republicans were subjected to the same political trend faced by moderate House Republicans: their renomination could be challenged from their right.

Direct quote from the book, quoting former Representative Heath Shuler of North Carolina: “I’d say 300-plus [House] seats are responsive to the most partisan elements of our society…. The middle? Where most of the people are? There is no middle here. And when you lose the middle, you lose the ability to govern a diverse society like the United States of America. We can’t even do the small problems now, much less the big ones.”

Tanner explains to Daley a phenomenon well understood in Washington but one that deserves widespread understanding: “I saw the gridlock…. These guys are trapped in this system wherein the only threat is from their base in a primary.”

Daley tells the interesting tale of how a young southern Republican strategist named Chris Jankowski recognized that the Republican sweep in 2010 showed that nearly permanent Republican districts could be nailed down by working to affect the state redistricting that was to come. At that point, while about six states did their redistricting through nonpartisan commissions or commissions working with the legislatures, the rest mostly left the process to the legislatures. Through REDMAP, Jankowski looked for states where changing the political majority in just a few districts might change the makeup of the House.

Jankowski worked with other Republican groups such as the Republican Governors Association, the US Chamber of Commerce, and ALEC (the American Legislative Exchange Council, funded by conservative organizations and businesses). Karl Rove’s American Crossroads, a conduit of funds for the Tea Party, was another ally. The project was also partly funded by undisclosed contributions—dark money.

One critically important consequence of taking over state legislatures was that it furthered the Republican goal, backed by Rove, of denying voting rights to groups inclined to vote for Democrats—the great evil of our contemporary politics.

Daley cites revealing e-mails obtained by the Ohio Campaign for Accountable Redistricting. One set of e-mails showed how a tiny peninsula was added at the last minute to a new district in northeast Ohio not because it contained certain residents but because it was the site of a large manufacturing company that could produce campaign contributions. In another last-minute change, the mapmakers snuck into a part of the Democratic district containing Columbus an area in which major insurance companies were located. They did this to support incumbent Republican Steve Stivers, a former banking lobbyist.

The question must be asked: Is that representative government?

Sam Wang, a Princeton neuroscientist who doubles as a political scientist and is known for his highly accurate computer models of voter behavior, … bserved that 2012 was only the second time since World War II that the party that won the most overall votes for Congress didn’t capture the House.

Wang’s computer exercises showed that if in 2010 all the districts had been drawn in a nonpartisan manner, “control would have been within reach for the Democrats.”



Read it.
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/2016...racy-betrayed/

[cataphract]

Ok, I can understand the misogyny, racism, and hunger for power, but what the fudge is this???

http://www.newsweek.com/donald-trump...bombing-509417




Eh???

Probably pandering to his Russian financiers.

[Mihais]

Or common sense.An American president cannot pander to Russia,or not for long.But Kosovo was and is a mess

[cataphract]

Or common sense.An American president cannot pander to Russia,or not for long.But Kosovo was and is a mess

No one cares about Kosovo. Or any of the boutique nation states in fashion today in the Balkans.

[astralis]

well, Trump campaign is calling that a hoax. not a surprise to me because I'm pretty damn sure Donald doesn't know where Kosovo is nor does he care.

[Albany Rifles]

well, Trump campaign is calling that a hoax. not a surprise to me because I'm pretty damn sure Donald doesn't know where Kosovo is nor does he care.

That...^^^^^