Domain: themonkeycage.org
Stories and comments across the archive that link to themonkeycage.org.
Comments · 8
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Re: They didn't succeed though
When have the democrats ever linked hands to deny every supreme court nominee?
I can't say that there is history of Democrats blocking every Supreme Court nominee. But the Democrats have a rich history of blocking nominees at all levels including Supreme Court, especially recently.
Here's a short overview. More specific links follow.
Samuel Alito was not filibustered but it was a close thing. Several prominent Democrats (including Senator Barack Obama) unsuccessfully voted for a filibuster despite Alito being rated "Well Qualified" by the American Bar Association.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samuel_Alito_Supreme_Court_nomination
George W. Bush's nominees repeatedly were blocked in committee or filibustered.
"...only ten Bush appellate nominees were confirmed during the 110th Congress. A total of eleven appellate seats with Bush nominees were left open at the end of the 110th Congress."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_W._Bush_judicial_appointment_controversies
Democrats blocked Priscilla Owen for four solid years (including filibustering). Senator Barack Obama personally voted against her.
The Democrats seem to really hate Trump, and I imagine that a majority of them will think it a virtuous act to block anyone he appoints. We'll see if I'm right or not.
Democrats are more like herding cats. Republicans are more like the Borg.
Democrats have reached a record for voting together: 97.4% This may be the all-time record, but easily searchable electronic records only go back to 1989 and the article linked below only checked the electronic records.
The Republicans currently are at 87.2%, a much lower number, but the article speculates that the Republicans will raise that number now that they have majority power.
And here's an article called "Are Democrats Less 'Disciplined' than Republicans?" Spoiler: no.
http://themonkeycage.org/2011/10/are-democrats-less-disciplined-than-republicans/
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Re:"Social Justice" should be considered a religio
I was surprised to see that all double blind tests are now showing liberals as more racist than conservatives. The average liberal now has a default "affirmative action" position and is racist against white people. This has been confirmed over and over again in studies, one even showed that liberals are far more likely to sacrifice a white person to save multiple black people than they are the other way around. So we gave truely crossed into delusional type unlogical thinking in politics as well.
Let's see now, where's the pony inside this pile...
"Overall, Republicans are slightly more likely to assess blacks unfavorably on these dimensions. For example, 39% of Republicans place blacks on the “lazy” side of the scale, while 31% of Democrats do. But by and large, Tabarrok is quite correct: both parties include substantial fractions willing to stereotype blacks unfavorably....This graph shows that identification with the Democratic Party tends to decline, and identification with the Republican party tends to increase, as attitudes toward black become less favorable—at least when attitudes are measured with two different racial stereotypes." http://themonkeycage.org/2012/...
"We examined the relation between political ideology and racial categorization. People categorized morphed faces that ranged from 100% Black to 100% White. Conservatism (vs. liberalism) was associated with the tendency to categorize racially ambiguous faces as Black. Relation between ideology and categorization was mediated by opposition to equality. This research helps to explain the ideological underpinnings of hypodescent." http://www.sciencedirect.com/s...
" in Studies 1a and 1b we found that liberals were less willing to endorse the killing of an innocent person on consequentialist grounds when the name of the individual suggested he was Black than when it suggested he was White. Study 2 demonstrated that liberals’ biased application of moral principles, when made salient in a within-subjects design, was eliminated. When given both the Chip and Tyrone scenarios, participants were strikingly consistent in their use of consequentialist or deontological principles, such that their responses on the second scenario almost always mirrored those in the first. This suggests that participants explicitly believed that the principles they were invoking were general enough to apply regardless of the victim’s race. In Study 3 we found that conservatives were more likely to condone the killing of innocent civilians in a military attack when those civilians were Iraqis killed by Americans rather than Americans killed by Iraqis, while liberals did not demonstrate such a flexible set of responses. Finally, in Study 4 we primed participants with either patriotism or multiculturalism, and found that, analogous to the effects on self-reported political ideology in Study 4, participants primed with patriotism (compared to those primed with multiculturalism) were more likely to accept collateral damage when Iraqi civilians were killed by American forces, but not when American civilians were killed by Iraqi forces." http://journal.sjdm.org/9616/j... -
Re:Voter Recruitment Commissioned by NPR
High income college educated whites vote Republican.
73% of Asian Americans voted for Obama in the last election.
If NPR can put even more college educated white techies out of work by importing even more Asian techies, they'll get more of existing whites voting Democrat and more immigrants who are known to vote Democrat even at high income levels.
I like how the charts also show that the most highly educated are the least likely to vote Republican. Makes one think, doesn't it?
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Re:Voter Recruitment Commissioned by NPR
High income college educated whites vote Republican.
73% of Asian Americans voted for Obama in the last election.
If NPR can put even more college educated white techies out of work by importing even more Asian techies, they'll get more of existing whites voting Democrat and more immigrants who are known to vote Democrat even at high income levels.
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Re:further reason for a popular vote
This is possibly banging my head against a brick wall, but it ought to be obvious that I was referring to the system that was proposed, rather than a system that is already operating. In case it wasn't, then let me make it clear I was referring to the proposal that were being kicked around as discussed in this article on Fox News.
The point was that, rather fortuitously for the Republicans of course, these plans were only being mooted in states that usually vote Democrat in Presidential elections, but happen to have Republican controlled state senates and Republican governors.
If you believe that the fact that these changes, if implemented, have the completely unintentional, but happy, side-effect of nullifying the Democrat vote in states that are increasingly leaning blue, then I have a bridge to sell you.
The only time a politician proposes a change in the way people vote is when it advantages them. Because of the distribution of vote in states where Democrats have a larger support, Republicans would not only win seats where they otherwise wouldn't, they actually win more seats that the Democrats. Don't believe me, look up Not Gerrymandering, but Districting: More Evidence on How Democrats Won the Popular Vote but Lost the Congress. Basically, they lost the popular vote in both presidential and congressional races, but managed to win big in the house races. The Republicans had =47% of the house vote in Michigan but got 64% of the seats.
So the Republicans wanted to engineer a way to win in states were they are a minority vote party. As I said, utterly repugnant. Basically, without a wholesale redistribution of the population in those states to produce election results that reflected the popular will, Democrats would never win in those states.
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Re:What's the value here?You might find this interesting.
And don't cry obstructionism in general. The Democrats did their fair share while Bush was in office.
Yeah... about half as much.
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Re:GOP was irrelevant after 2008 election
You have hardly presented a water-tight case.
The Dems certainly filibustered -- at about half the rate of the GOP. (During George W's presidency.) So your point (5) is plain wrong.
The nuclear option is hanging over the senate like a dark cloud. It highlights that tradition is more important than rules per se. Obviously the Dems believe in the institution of the senate as is. If the GOP continues on this path, then we may just go there. And it would be a good thing. Most other democracies don't have the filibuster nonsense. So that's point (2).
Reconciliation /was/ used for the affordable care act. You should find this interesting. That answer point (3).
As for (4) -- well conservatives have their own media-world, which is very much four-legs good, two legs bad. In this world, the GOP can obstruct, and them blame the other side for not compromising. And conservative media cheerleads. (Not reports -- cheerleads.) It will cost them in the long run. And the president has gone to the US public and questioned the obsession with tax breaks for the wealthy.
Point (1) is interesting. Should Obama not have had a platform to run on? Romney-Ryan don't have anything specific, but claim that congress/senate will just bork it anyway, which is true. But then, how do we know where they stand? I support candidates have detailed platforms. (That they actually stand by.)
So what I have said is not false at all. -
If you insist...
I'll leave out really common feeds and a few that won't interest many people, but here are the top 25% or so of my feeds:
A Gentleman's C http://gentlemansc.blogspot.com/rss.xml
An Angry Professor gripes about stuffArmchair Generalist http://armchairgeneralist.typepad.com/my_weblog/index.rdf
Blog by a moderate-left military analystArts & Letters Daily http://aldaily.com/rss/rss.xml
Three interesting links every day (actually usually one or two INTERESTING ones)Breaking News (History News Network) http://hnn.us/roundup/rss_full/41.xml
Stories about History with a slight conservative biasConsumerist http://consumerist.com/excerpts.xml
Shoppers bite back.indexed http://indexed.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default?alt=rss
Note card humor, usually featuring Venn diagramsInside Higher Ed http://feeds.feedburner.com/insidehighered/OxmP
Stories from academe, with fairly grumpy commentsJunk Charts http://junkcharts.typepad.com/junk_charts/rss.xml
Redraws charts to make data analysis easierObscure Store and Reading Room http://obscurestore.typepad.com/obscure_store_and_reading/index.rdf
Well-known wierd news site with commentsPostSecret http://postsecret.blogspot.com/rss.xml
Secrets on postcards, every Sunday. Fascinating.ReelViews New Reviews http://feeds.feedburner.com/ReelviewsNewReviews
My favorite currently-active film reviewerSCOTUSblog http://www.scotusblog.com/movabletype/index.xml
Get the skinny on the latest Supreme Court actionsSlashfood http://www.slashfood.com/rss.xml
Because I love foodSlate Magazine http://www.slate.com/rss/
The best of the online political mags; lefty biasSpluch http://spluch.blogspot.com/rss.xml
Always something interesting. Similar material to the extremely popular Boing Boing, but with fewer posts per day.The Monkey Cage http://www.themonkeycage.org/atom.xml
Analysis from political scientists. Much better than the usual partisan approach.The Onion http://feeds.theonion.com/theonion/daily
Most of the humor is usually contained in the headlines, so I seldom read more