Rex Kickass

It appears that both were on board, although may have survived. 4 people aboard died, but identities have not been released. Hope both made it out alright.

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Aug 9, 2010 -> 08:48 AM) I really wonder if this is the last confirmed justice we'll see for a long time. We could very well be running a recess appointment supreme court from now on. When's the next time that either side will have anything close to a filibuster-proof majority? It makes me really sad that this is the case, to be honest. I was really hoping that the election of Obama would bring back some shape and form of comity to Capitol Hill. I will say that the nature of the Democratic party makes a filibuster a much less likely action when it comes to judicial nominations. I think over the last twenty years of Democratic party leadership accepting the legitimacy of elections that they have lost, even when (IMO some of those elections' legitimacy has been questionable.) They may vote against confirmation, but by and large they allow cloture to happen on nomination processes. I hope that in the next Senate (which will be likely Democratic controlled, but with a much smaller 53 or 54 seat majority rather than 59 current seats), the leadership will finally get the balls to shut down the Senate on ridiculous cloture/procedural filibuster actions. It really will only take a couple weeks of that before it stops becoming a useful tool for the opposition, especially when its being used to block anything and everything.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Aug 6, 2010 -> 06:59 PM) So next time the Repubs find someone with no judicial experience, the Dems won't hold it up this time? I don't know, but frankly, I hope not.

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Aug 6, 2010 -> 05:16 PM) At this point that flows just as equally both ways. I believe the current President supported the Alito Filibuster, did he not? Correct. But you could make an argument that Alito has a specific record and a specific track record on decisions that can be viewed as troubling, not just in regards to ideological differences - but in regards to basic concerns of civil liberties. The ACLU, for example, opposed his nomination for this very reason. Something they didn't do for anyone else besides Robert Bork, a deeply flawed nomination to the supreme court. In the case of Alito, there was a shred of a legitimate argument to be made about voting against this person. In the case of Kagan, its something very different. "Well I think she'll be liberal," is not a valid reason to block an appointment that you don't get to make. I don't necessarily agree with the motivation behind the Kerry filibuster - because the truth of the matter is that elections have consequences. And the election of the President means that he gets to appoint his choices to his appointments. Unless there is some serious concern about the good of the country, there's no reason to not support the appointments.

QUOTE (Chisoxfn @ Aug 6, 2010 -> 05:41 PM) Does he happen to be a Sox fan as well? If not, how the heck did he randomly stumble onto a Soxtalk page, lol. A mutual friend was a Sox fan too. (All three of us were from or spent a long time in the Chicago area). She was surfing the board, and they came across my avatar which was either Bea Arthur or Laser Liza Minnelli and thought that it had to be me. She lurked, might still lurk actually. So Teddy, if youre reading this - HEY!

My best friend who works in politics identified me on this site years ago without me ever telling him that I was on it.

QUOTE (kapkomet @ Jul 20, 2010 -> 09:02 PM) Lindsay Graham is a whore. And a cheap one at that. I wonder what Joe Biden offered him last week in their "secret meeting"? Or he could realize that his duty as a Senator is to advise and consent for nominations to the judiciary. Unless something super horrible comes out, there's really never a reason to vote against a nominee. Sad to see that a Senator who does his job the way its intended is now just a "whore." I guess you could call him that for a lot of reasons, but choosing to confirm someone who has different ideological beliefs as you because that person would be competent is not one of those reasons.

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Aug 6, 2010 -> 09:27 AM) To steal a line from Timothy Geithner...Welcome to the recovery! Worth noting...the Private sector added some 75,000 jobs. The job losses were entirely due to government cutbacks...2/3 of them were Census jobs, but another 50,000 public employees were laid off. Wait, I thought smaller government would lead to more jobs?

QUOTE (Jenksismyb**** @ Aug 6, 2010 -> 12:27 PM) Was making a joke. Someone referenced a report that apparently found gay men were more likely to molest children. Missed that post, just didn't understand the sentence.

QUOTE (Jenksismyb**** @ Aug 6, 2010 -> 12:17 PM) The "benefits" of giving out the miniority owned business contracts aren't much better than the "benefit" of protecting children from all those gay raper guys out there. Could you elaborate exactly what you mean by this sentence? What gay raper guys are you referring to exactly?

QUOTE (Athomeboy_2000 @ Aug 6, 2010 -> 11:46 AM) ahh ok. That really makes it much more clear for me now. Than I am in agreement, Prop 8 is, indeed, unconstitutional. So, wouldn't EVERY state have to allow gay marriage then? Not just pass a law allowing it. it would, by default, be allowed. Yes. If Prop 8 is found unconstitutional under the 14th amendment, I would argue that it is very likely that you would see same sex marriage allowed for all American couples, regardless of the number of genders involved.

QUOTE (kapkomet @ Aug 5, 2010 -> 09:33 PM) I don't disagree with your specific point, but pick the word that fits. The larger point here is that federalism has gone WAY too far. It started by what cases the supreme court even chooses to take up. They took up the cases to set the tone for the federal level to define what marriage is, and that's just plain wrong and totally should not be the point in this case. You're not married by the "power vested in xxxxx by the United States of Socialism, er I mean, Amerikkka,", it's the state. And they should be able to define what that is. Explain to me again how that's discriminatory in nature? You discriminate me by trivializing the definition of marriage. Now what? And for the record, I'm not against "gay marriage" even though I totally disagree with it morally, but that is not for me to judge the person/people. There are plenty of examples you can make where courts have blocked processes which are the responsibility of the state for political reasons. Bush v. Gore is a great example of that. However, state constitutions still need to abide by the federal constitution. If states get to pick and choose what parts of the constitution they are going to honor, we'll stop being the Republic that we've been since 1789 and go back to the Confederation of states that worked so well for us in the 18th century.

QUOTE (kapkomet @ Aug 5, 2010 -> 09:33 PM) I don't disagree with your specific point, but pick the word that fits. The larger point here is that federalism has gone WAY too far. It started by what cases the supreme court even chooses to take up. They took up the cases to set the tone for the federal level to define what marriage is, and that's just plain wrong and totally should not be the point in this case. You're not married by the "power vested in xxxxx by the United States of Socialism, er I mean, Amerikkka,", it's the state. And they should be able to define what that is. Explain to me again how that's discriminatory in nature? You discriminate me by trivializing the definition of marriage. Now what? And for the record, I'm not against "gay marriage" even though I totally disagree with it morally, but that is not for me to judge the person/people. You act as though the idea of providing people equal rights is the same thing as discriminating against couples who currently enjoy special rights (straight people). Again, the constitution provides that we are all allowed equal protection under the law. Please tell me what is so inherently dangerous and heinous to same sex couples being granted the same rights and responsibilities as multiple sex couples? If the answer is "nothing," then there's no reason to discriminate against same sex couples. To do so would violate equal protection as our constitution currently allows.

QUOTE (Jenksismyb**** @ Aug 5, 2010 -> 11:02 AM) Yeah, like the fact that marriage is in the jurisdiction of states and not the federal government. Right, but the definition of marriage has to not violate any of the amendments of the US constitution. By denying gay couples the same rights and responsibilities that straight couples enjoy and are entitled to, there is a clear conflict with providing same sex couples and multiple sex couples the equal protection under the law that the constitution guarantees all of us, regardless of who we are. It seems that there needs to be a compelling reason to deny a couple the same contractual opportunities from a state that other couples receive. It's really difficult to find a compelling reason with empirical evidence to back up any claim that same sex couples should be treated any differently than multiple sex couples when it comes to marriage.

CNN poll: 41% of Republicans believe Obama was not born in the United States. http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2010/...as-born-in-u-s/

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Aug 4, 2010 -> 09:36 AM) "energy" bill put on hold until at least after the recess in the Senate. With this being an election season such that both sides will be in full campaign mod, it may well be completely dead. This post, of course, is entirely to hammer at NSS, who insisted we would pass an energy bill this year. They didn't try anything. Reid could have kept the Senate in session and could have removed any other business from the docket. I think if the Democrats actually forced the GOP to really filibuster everything, GOP resistance to getting things done would crumble pretty quickly. They might still vote no, but they would at least allow the vote.

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Aug 3, 2010 -> 09:15 AM) Serious point in reply... There was, for obvious reasons, something of a rash of anti-Muslim violence back in 2001, if memory serves; but aside from the government round-ups and arrests of Cat Stevens at the airport, it seemed to stay fairly subdued. There'd be bouts of it after things like the Netherlands comic riots, but for 10 years, it never really struck me as pernicious and widespread. Suddenly now, we've got people firebombing mosques in multiple states, we've got people organizing Quran burnings, we've got people declaring publicly that they can't build a Mosque in place X because I like most muslims but the ones that want to be here are all terrorists and dirty. There's a line of thought out there that the anti-Muslim hysteria that wanted to percolate out was actually kept under wraps by noneother than George W., who, although he screwed up a lot and alienated a lot of Muslims with policy, flat out rebuked almost every attempt to demonize Muslims from private groups and did a lot of things to publicly embrace them. It would then follow that now that there's a secret Kenyan Muslim terrorist plant running the White House, it's bubbling to the surface without the big blockhead that was there the last 8 years. Just wondering if anyone had a response to that one. It's funny, because in some ways it feels like a lot of the ugliness we've seen in the last couple years is the sign of a movement dying. To me, this feels much more like a last desperate stand than something new and growing.

QUOTE (kapkomet @ Jul 30, 2010 -> 06:50 PM) Maybe because this president is the most radical assclown president we have ever had? But whatever... ya'll keep smoking the good s***. I guess I'm racist now, because how dare I criticize such a historical president. Funny because I keep thinking that Nixon was far more liberal than any President we've had in the last 30 years. But radical President, who keeps doing things like forcing Republicans to vote against their own proposals... right.

QUOTE (Jenksismyb**** @ Jul 30, 2010 -> 11:37 AM) Which is what people were talking about prior to my comment. Even still, 25% pay little to no income tax, credits or no credits. I get the point that people with higher incomes recieve greater benefits from tax credits (by a few percent), but they're also incurring much more debt to get those credits, making it more difficult to pay the income taxes they owe. But they do pay state income taxes in most situations. They pay sales tax. They pay into Social Security, they pay into Medicare, etc. To say that people that pay no income tax pay no taxes at all is disingenuous. They just pay less taxes. And in some cases, that isn't even true.

QUOTE (kapkomet @ Jul 28, 2010 -> 09:23 PM) So, who's in power right now? Also, media matters says hi. Apparently 41 largely Republican Senators and 5 largely Republican appointed Supreme Court Justices - at least as far as this issue goes.

Oil spill of about 20,000 barrels to reach Lake Michigan by the weekend. http://www.freep.com/article/20100727/NEWS...er-Battle-Creek

QUOTE (bmags @ Jul 27, 2010 -> 11:32 AM) also their entire production dept. got the boot. When Breitbart does that... edit: it should be mentioned that people WERE raising concerns in the CBS editorial dept. and were being ignored. That producer deserved to get the boot. IIRC, the forged documents that CBS News used fortified rather than created the story that they reported beyond that. There was seemingly a story with or without those fake documents.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Jul 26, 2010 -> 10:13 PM) Right, because its not like Dan Rather and CBS pulled a stunt like this... Dan Rather lost his job. Breitbart will probably get a book deal.

Clearly you're all misreading this chart. Who was President in 1979? Jimmy Carter. Mr. Peanut, j'accuse!

QUOTE (mr_genius @ Jul 25, 2010 -> 11:48 AM) media blackout on the story. haven't even seen it mentioned on ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN. Funny if you look up Rangel on Google News you get 1600 hits including stories on MSNBC, NPR, ABC News, CBS News, and if you look at CNN's Politics page, its the third video listed which isn't bad for a four day old story. But total blackout, so true.