brett05

QUOTE (illinilaw08 @ Oct 7, 2016 -> 10:21 AM) I don't think you understand how much that would cost. The tax code, health care, probate, the bankruptcy code (just off the top of my head) would all need to be changed to accommodate that. And sometimes, the laws regarding married couples make sense! Take the probate code for instance. If you are married and don't have a will, your estate passes to your spouse. That makes sense! It's easier to just understand and recognize the distinction. The State is involved with marriage. So are different churches. The State cannot mandate that the Catholic Church perform the sacrament of marriage between two guys, two gals, or even two people who haven't gone through all the hoops the Catholic Church makes people jump through before they will allow the marriage to take place. By the same token, however, the State cannot deny the equal protection of the law to same sex couples. It would be quite dumb to take all the time and expense necessary to change all the laws just because a certain portion of the population can't recognize the distinction between marriage, the religious sacrament, and marriage the civil contract. No, what is dumb is that the government is involved in this at all.

QUOTE (StrangeSox @ Oct 7, 2016 -> 09:55 AM) No. No no no no no. That is exactly the point. Actual, legitimate polls show that "Joe American" thinks Clinton won the debate handily. Only garbage online polls had Trump winning, and again the legitimate polls found that people absolutely did not think he looked Presidential. You're still not showing that you actually understand the problem with the online polls you keep referring to. And as NSS pointed out, he's not leading in the polls. He's losing--bigly. He was losing by a little less in mid-September, but Clinton's reopened her large lead. At one point in the past three weeks Trump was leading the Electoral College. He has since the past couple of days closed up some races.

QUOTE (pettie4sox @ Oct 7, 2016 -> 09:48 AM) brett05 Would Trump be your first choice for president? Who would have you preferred? My first choice died fast...Scott Walker. My second choice was Ted Cruz. If Condoleezza Rice ran or was the VP this would be all over. She'd be my #1

QUOTE (CrimsonWeltall @ Oct 7, 2016 -> 09:48 AM) You spent post after post defending those polls as quality indicators of Trump winning the debate. In your last post, you said you knew they were garbage, but were only trying to be technically correct that Trump won the most polls. That's a flip-flop. strawman all you wish

QUOTE (CrimsonWeltall @ Oct 7, 2016 -> 06:53 AM) That's a quality flip flop. based on your response I am positive you don't know what that means.

QUOTE (NorthSideSox72 @ Oct 7, 2016 -> 08:19 AM) On this I actually agree with you. I don't think the government should have any connection with marriage. It's a social construct. If you were to start a new country, for me, that's the way I'd do it. No government involvement in that. However, it is now so intertwined with taxes, health care and other things, that unwinding it is basically impossible. Which is why I think you need to err on the side of freedom when there's a choice to be made, which is (along with simply favoring love over exclusion) why I am in favor of same sex marriage. Would it take some work? Yes. And the government should do exactly that IMO.

QUOTE (StrangeSox @ Oct 7, 2016 -> 06:50 AM) See this post really gives the impression that you don't really understand. You seem to think or at least thought that us dismissing the online polls was wishful thinking, that Trump actually won that debate and that the election is his for the taking. I have stated that Hillary won the debate. Joe American thinks Trump has. Trump's only goal was to look Presidential and for the most part he did that. This Sunday will be very interesting as Trump continues to close leads on Hillary.

QUOTE (StrangeSox @ Oct 6, 2016 -> 02:22 PM) There were posts on pro-trump message boards directing people to go vote at those polls. Regardless, you're still missing the underlying problem with self-selected polls. They're basically guaranteed to not be a representative sample of the population at large, as opposed to scientific polls which attempt to be. Those online polls are a result applicable only to the people who sought out and voted in those polls and you can't extrapolate those results to any larger population group. Scientific polling attempts to get a sample whose demographics closely resemble the population of interest at large. Building out the model of what the expected voter demographics will be is inherently subjective, but the results are still at least somewhat representative whereas those online polls aren't and never could be. And yet I know all of this. All I stated were that the majority of polls were Trump and that was true. I think you all need some Valium

QUOTE (pettie4sox @ Oct 6, 2016 -> 12:12 PM) Roe vs Wade is old, like were any of the current justices involved in that decision? The government has business with marriage as long as their benefits from it. If you eliminate the benefits of being married, then yes, they should not have a say in it. Do you have any additional cases? I agree about the Obamacare mandate being bad. Married people should not get special privilege.

QUOTE (KyYlE23 @ Oct 6, 2016 -> 11:10 AM) should I just respond "I think it's been discussed in this thread enough" while I'm waiting for you to respond to what Badger and Illinilaw said yesterday and today? How long ago did you dismiss voter disenfranchisement in NC? Any more polls that you can post while at the same time claiming conspiracy? 1) I claimed no conspiracy. 2) What factual item did either Badger or Illinilaw bring up that was factual? 3) Are you saying that it's FACTUAL that the voter law passed in NC was to deny a race or multiple races?

QUOTE (StrangeSox @ Oct 6, 2016 -> 11:04 AM) yess yesssssssssss unskew Unskew UNSKEW those polls! brett do you follow Bill Mitchell on twitter? Seems like he'd be right up your alley re: polls I do not

QUOTE (CrimsonWeltall @ Oct 6, 2016 -> 11:13 AM) Correct, scientific polls of actual people typically don't reach the totals of online polls that can be answered repeatedly by the same person over and over, or bots. For which there is no evidence of "stuffing."

QUOTE (illinilaw08 @ Oct 6, 2016 -> 11:02 AM) So your instances of judicial activism by SCOTUS, mandating a return to a more Conservative, Constitution upholding Court are (1) a decision from 1973 involving none of the current justices; (2) a decision authored by one of the Conservative justices on the Court upholding a law passed by Congress; and (3) gay marriage. It's ok to say that you want SCOTUS to align with the Conservative principles that you believe in. I'd disagree with you from a philosophical standpoint on that. But it's a complete mischaracterization to say that those values are the values of a "constitutional court," implying that the remainder of the Court is not a "constitutional court," and ignores the Constitution in rendering their decisions. I'm ok with agreeing to disagree.

QUOTE (KyYlE23 @ Oct 6, 2016 -> 10:37 AM) br, im just gonna keep watching you dodge So no other specific facts that I have dodged like you said there were?

QUOTE (NorthSideSox72 @ Oct 6, 2016 -> 10:23 AM) Of course a lot of people thought Trump won. Millions I'm sure, some of whom probably didn't even watch the debate. But the scientific polls show you that a lot MORE millions thought Clinton won. There is no conspiracy. It's the difference between an actual scientific poll, versus an internet click bait. Are you seriously trying to say they are of the same value for the purpose of evaluating things? No I am not. The CNN poll may meet the scientific criteria but has a built in bias by their own admission toward democrats. I also do not think the vote totals for the scientific polls approached the non, but I digress. My statement was that most polls had Trump as the winner and at the time it was said I was correct.

QUOTE (StrangeSox @ Oct 6, 2016 -> 10:01 AM) That means they carry zero value, though. It means there were a lot of people that felt Trump won. You'd have to prove a conspiracy.

Ky, Anything other facts I've dodged that you would like answered?

QUOTE (NorthSideSox72 @ Oct 6, 2016 -> 07:56 AM) OK. I think you are misunderstanding how polls work. There are internet polls, and direct polls. The articles you linked are all about internet polls - which are simply driven by whomever clicks, which can (obviously) be gamed quite easily. No sampling work is done, no random calls or anything like that. They get linked by people wanting to drive the polls a certain way. The few actual direct polls - ones that follow mathematically valid methods - all showed (as we linked for you earlier) a real sampling of LV or RV (or whatever the subset is). Internet polls carry zero meaning in evaluating anything. They're just for fun. I never claimed that they were scientific. Let that be clear.

QUOTE (NorthSideSox72 @ Oct 6, 2016 -> 07:50 AM) None of those links works. I think what you did was paste in the link with the "..." in the middle. Try highlighting the text of a word, then clicking the Link button (the one right to the right of the emoji drop-down), pasting in the link and clicking OK. Anyway, there were only a few actual non-internet polls, and all showed that people felt Clinton won. Some by a small margin, others a large one. Thanks. Let's try this: http://www.infowars.com/poll-who-won-the-f...dential-debate/ http://fortune.com/2016/09/26/presidential...y-clinton-poll/ https://theconservativetreehouse.com/2016/0...won-the-debate/

QUOTE (pettie4sox @ Oct 6, 2016 -> 07:38 AM) brett05 Are you talking about the SCOTUS ruling on Obamacare? edit: That's the only one I can think about having a gripe that they are making new laws or what not. I'd but Roe v Wade there. The overturn on Prop 8 (though personally I think marriage should be left out of the government completely no matter how it is defined)

QUOTE (KyYlE23 @ Oct 6, 2016 -> 07:26 AM) Im still waiting for you to provide a link to all of the polls you claimed that proved Trump won the debate. Or, maybe you can respond to Soxbadger and Illinilaw with something better than "Well, someone talked about it earlier in the thread so I dont really feel like it." Soxbadger and Illinilaw threw plenty of items at you, and of course you just glossed them over and said "nah" I did provide the links. Hmm. :scratches head: OK, Here you go, the litany of polls: https://theconservativetreehouse.com...on-the-debate/ http://fortune.com/2016/09/26/presid...-clinton-poll/ 30ish polls here http://www.infowars.com/poll-who-won...ential-debate/ Are there other specific facts I have dodged? EDIT: Links aren't working here, check my post a few down.

QUOTE (caulfield12 @ Oct 5, 2016 -> 10:21 PM) No, no....Brett is just staunchly hardcore Republican. His posts bait response in an entirely different way than Greg's anti HRC screeds. Hardcore conservative, but thanks

QUOTE (KyYlE23 @ Oct 5, 2016 -> 08:31 PM) Gregs posts aren't really like that to be honest. The only thing I find similar is how neither provide facts they just keep going, even when presented facts KyYlE23, What facts have I been presented that I have ignored?

QUOTE (RockRaines @ Oct 5, 2016 -> 02:44 PM) Yeah but there are extensions of the constitution, like the christian bible. You are a raging atheist. I have no issues with that, except this isn't a thread on religious beliefs.

QUOTE (JenksIsMyHero @ Oct 5, 2016 -> 02:29 PM) I get the gist of what you're saying here, and I'm generally on the side of Scalia/textualist decisions, but you have to acknowledge both sides becomes activists and "make" law by their decisions (nature of the beast in many situations), and there are both good and bad results when SCOTUS "reads into" the Constitution. Privacy rights, for example, are completely made up, but hugely important. I think the argument you're going for is that you'd rather we have justices that want to stick within their role as reviewers of the law, not creators of the law, in the sense that they will abide by the laws passed by the people (through Congress and state legislatures) except in extreme cases where constitutional rights are infringed without an overwhelming reason to do so. Said much better than I. Yes.