In too many cases, the “give them enough rope” solution will only result in a nice rope hammock they can relax in.
If Biden wins in November (and Dems win the senate) Biden should stack the court. I know that is unpopular here but I think letting the likes of Alito and Thomas and Co. to have another 15 years to cause damage that will take decades to fix is is worse.
So, riddle me this. Why is it OK to fly a US flag upside down, which is obviously a sign of disrespect, but not OK to kneel during the anthem, where kneeling was actually the respectful approach recommended by a veteran or something?
My point is, I imagine Alito won’t be playing for the Niners anytime soon.
(Obvious answer)
Because the kneeling was done in support of black people not being murdered, while the upside down flag was in support of white people rioting and killing police to take over the country.
Obvious.
The main problem is not the “disrespect” for the flag. The main problem is a Supreme Court justice weighing in on political events. Historically, justices have taken great efforts to avoid any political stand. Some even decline to vote. They don’t applaud at the State of the Union. Supporting Trump’s “stop the steal” efforts is a major breach of this tradition. But, as we have learned, “what if we don’t?” has become the new normal.
Not about the flag but I have seen the Harrison Butker commencement speech defended on the right as his 1st Amendment right with no sense of hypocrisy that they loudly decried Colin Kaepernick for using his 1st Amendment rights.
Conservatives have no shame.
Yeah, Can’t fire 'em, can’t strip them of their power. WTF should be done?
In the words of a very wise man, “Not everything that is fucked up can be fixed”.
That, IMHO, is a temporary solution. A Band-Aid. If both parties continued doing that, we would end up with 50 justices.
I hate those kinds of ‘solutions’. It may be all we have though.
The way out that I like is that we pass an ordinary bill, that automatically adds one more seat to the court every month, until such time as an amendment is passed to fix the system. Then we start the ball rolling on that amendment. How many seats do you want to give Biden before approving the amendment, red states?
I’m still not sure what the fix-it amendment should look like, though.
This is true.
Do I understand that when FDR tried (or threatened ) to stack the court, the court decided to let the New Deal exist?
Apologies if I missed it upthread, but I don’t think it’s per se disrespectful to fly the flag upside down. As a lad, I learned that an upside down flag was a sign that you were in distress and needed help (ie, a ship on the ocean would let others know they were in distress).
So one could argue that if one felt the nation is in distress, flying the flag upside down would be ok.
Not saying he isn’t a shitstain.
To me that way of thinking means calling 911 because you think Biden stole the election is ok.
Upside-down flag and 911 are both used to signal distress but not of the kind where you think the wrong person won an election.
It’s not a symbol for a nation being in distress, it’s a distress signal for actual physical distress. Using it as a political symbol, even if you’re not a Supreme Court justice, is disrespectful.
Making any political statement when you are a Supreme Court Justice has always been considered off limits.
Going a little off topic here, but I’ve said before the top priority we should have in this country is enacting a voting rights amendment.
The right wing has set up a system that allows them to disenfranchise voters and rig the outcomes of election.
If we had established a right to vote, equal voting, non-bloc voting, and basic democracy, the current Republican party would be reducing to a nuisance. They could never win any honest elections that required them to get 51% of the people to vote for them. And they know that, which is why they prevent elections like that from happening.
Ninety percent of the political problems in this country are caused by Republicans. If we can keep Republicans out of power by forcing them to face real elections, then we would see a ninety percent reduction in political problems.
George W. Bush and Donald Trump would never have been President. Roberts, Alito, Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, and Barrett would not be in the Supreme Court. No Patriot Act or Guantanamo Bay detentions. No invasion of Iraq in 2003. No recession in 2008. No bungled Hurricane Katrina response in 2005 or Hurricane Maria response in 2017. No bungled Covid response in 2020. No Bush v Gore decision or Citizens United decision or Arkansas decision or Mckesson decision or Dobbs decision or CFPB decision or Biden v. Nebraska decision. No January 6 uprising. Several hundred thousand people who are dead would still be alive.
I won’t even start on what Republicans are doing in Congress.
This is only listing the worst things the Republicans have done in the last twenty-five years. If we don’t stop them, there will be another list of terrible things they will do in the next twenty-five years.
Nitpick: If we’re counting his bungled covid response, the number of deaths that can be laid at Trump’s feet is in the millions.
I recognize this is a hijack so I will leave it there.
Not sure what you base that on. I’m going to assume pretty few people outside of the United States were dumb enough to take health advice from Trump and his executive power stops at the border. So 1,200,000 Americans died of Covid (rounded off to the nearest hundred thousand). Even if we attribute all of those deaths to Trump, it’s not millions.
Realistically, some of those people would have died even if we had had a competent president in office. We’ll use Canada’s statistics as a hypothetical model for what America could have done. America’s Covid death rate was 3508 deaths per million population. Canada’s was 1412 per million or 40% lower than America’s. Forty percent of 1,200,000 is 500,000, which means Trump’s mishandling of the Covid crisis was responsible for 700,000 deaths (figures again rounded off).
On a tangent to a tangent, I’ll note my spellcheck doesn’t agree with covid or Covid. Apparently COVID is the capitalization it approves of. But this is a hill I will die on.
Democratic supermajorities in the House and Senate.
Okay, everybody, you know what we need. Now, get out there and make it happen!
(here’s a hashtag you can all use to advance the cause: #it’s_a_sin_to_vote_for_a_Republican)
That’s not my understanding. IIRC (from elementary and high school History classes; I’m not 112 years old!), after some New Deal programs were struck down as unconstitutional, FDR tried to get Congress to give him the power to stack the Court, in order to forestall further defeats. But too many in Congress (even on his own side) cried “Foul!” at the idea, so he let the plan die and took subsequent Ls (and Ws) as they came.
I’ll check on the accuracy of that.
Here’s another curious tidbit about Justice Alito.
When right wingers lost their mind over Bud Light teaming up with a transgendered person to create a promotional can, Alito was among their ranks in boycotting the company (no word on how this impacted Kavanaugh’s last keg party).