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27th February 2016, 12:21 PM | #1 | ||||||||||||||||||
Penultimate Amazing
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SCOTUS death watch / In Praise of the Real Wonder Woman: RBG
By the grace of Odin goes Ginsburg. I will forever curse Bill Clinton for appointing geezers. Whereas Thomas (Trump's favorite) was wearing diapers when appointed.
Liberals in blue.
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27th February 2016, 03:49 PM | #2 |
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RBG has had cancer twice and still outlived Scalia. I don't think she's going anywhere for another for at least one more presidential term.
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27th February 2016, 04:03 PM | #3 |
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What's truly amazing is that for all the lawmakers we fight over and presidents we waste hours arguing over, it all boils down to 9 people in black robes, and that has now rolled into one justice. Our whole culture and society hangs on this one nomination.
And once its finally made, it will be one more. Will be some very tense times until those oldest are replaced. The incredible power the SCOTUS has needs to be brought back into check!! |
27th February 2016, 04:08 PM | #4 |
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There’s only four things you can be in life: sober, tipsy, drunk and hungover. Tipsy is the only one where you don’t cry when you’re doing it. ~ James Acaster |
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27th February 2016, 04:50 PM | #5 |
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27th February 2016, 04:56 PM | #6 |
Penultimate Amazing
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To survive election season on a skeptics forum, one must understand Hymie-the-Robot.
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27th February 2016, 05:19 PM | #7 |
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27th February 2016, 05:28 PM | #8 |
Metaphorical Anomaly
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All they have to do to overturn any of these rulings is re-write the things in the constitution that said rulings are based on. Obviously, we won't do that as long as half of the country agrees with a given ruling. So... power to the people and such. Ultimately, no ruling that a significant percentage of the country disagrees with will stand.
Of course, a future SCOTUS overturning its own prior ruling is more likely than The Constitution changing, but one way or the other it will generally tend to follow society's majority opinion, and always has. |
27th February 2016, 06:42 PM | #9 |
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27th February 2016, 08:07 PM | #10 |
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You really ought to get and read this.:
http://www.amazon.com/Way-We-Never-W...y+We+Weren%3Bt Your dream of our past is not really how our past was. Or, minus a major die-off, any relation to where it is going. |
28th February 2016, 04:31 AM | #11 |
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Seriously dude, even Roman Emperors gave out quite a lot of food to their poor regularly, and they were militaristic madmen with gladiator arenas. Welfare is not a new or novel concept. Your notions of what the past was like have a lot more to do with the Republican dialogue than actual history.
Thing is, very few, if any "pull themselves up by their bootstraps." When it is done, it isn't generally alone, but tends to be more of a group effort. Hell, most of the things done in the modern economy tends to require more than one person's set of expertise. So... if the society around you rejects you for whatever reason, you're sort of screwed. |
28th February 2016, 05:02 AM | #12 |
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Yeah, if nothing else because it is a great way to make yourself popular and win support in difficult and rebellious times, while maintaining an image of selflessness and compassion. Sometimes as with Crassus, the richest man in Rome, it descended into outright bribery. And I'm reminded of this bit in Antony's funeral speech in Julius Caesar:
He hath brought many captives home to Rome Whose ransoms did the general coffers fill Did this in Caesar seem ambitious, when that the poor have cried, Caesar hath wept? Ambition should be made of sterner stuff! |
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"The president’s voracious sexual appetite is the elephant that the president rides around on each and every day while pretending that it doesn’t exist." - Bill O'Reilly et al., Killing Kennedy |
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28th February 2016, 07:52 AM | #13 |
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28th February 2016, 10:01 AM | #14 |
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It won't bother me in the slightest if debating the merits of political philosophies be left to more high minded threads, and here we focus on who is apt to die, and the ramifications.
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28th February 2016, 11:43 AM | #15 |
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28th February 2016, 11:47 AM | #16 |
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"The president’s voracious sexual appetite is the elephant that the president rides around on each and every day while pretending that it doesn’t exist." - Bill O'Reilly et al., Killing Kennedy |
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28th February 2016, 12:47 PM | #17 |
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29th February 2016, 10:22 AM | #18 |
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To survive election season on a skeptics forum, one must understand Hymie-the-Robot.
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29th February 2016, 10:48 AM | #19 |
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A man's best friend is his dogma. |
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29th February 2016, 12:33 PM | #20 |
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My heros are Alex Zanardi and Evelyn Glennie. |
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29th February 2016, 02:18 PM | #21 |
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I hope that Clarence Thomas dies next.
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29th February 2016, 11:00 PM | #22 |
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16th March 2016, 09:17 PM | #23 |
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This geezer business has got to stop. 63?!
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To survive election season on a skeptics forum, one must understand Hymie-the-Robot.
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16th March 2016, 11:17 PM | #24 |
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So the coming division of the country will be the fault of liberals and not the fault of the conservatives who are about to nominate Donald Trump? A candidate who is already dividing his own party.
If man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music which he hears, however measured or far away. - Henry David ThoreauYou and I step to the beat of very different drummers. Fortunately, America is big enough and strong enough to allow all of us to march to the music we hear. And lastly, I fear unbridled liberalism as much as I fear unbridled conservatism (although for different reasons). The tricky bit is getting the proportions just right. |
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I lost an avatar bet to Doghouse Reilly. |
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23rd March 2016, 09:46 AM | #25 |
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"Great innovations should not be forced [by way of] slender majorities." - Thomas Jefferson The government should nationalize it! Socialized, single-payer video game development and sales now! More, cheaper, better games, right? Right? |
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23rd March 2016, 10:50 PM | #26 |
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23rd March 2016, 10:51 PM | #27 |
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23rd March 2016, 10:52 PM | #28 |
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Ha! Foolmewunz has just been added to the list of people who aren't complete idiots. Hokulele It's not that liberals have become less tolerant. It's that conservatives have become more intolerable. |
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23rd March 2016, 10:53 PM | #29 |
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24th March 2016, 08:20 PM | #30 |
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With the GOP mumbling threats to not approve the 9th seat even if there's a Dem elected to the White House, the death/retirment watch becomes much more significant.
Ginsburg has wanted to find a safe retirement window for a while. And while the others are somewhat younger, just look at Justice "In The Prime of My Life" Scalia. Onset of a serious illness or sudden death could, statistically, overtake any of them. Is there a quorum for the Supremes? If we have three unexpected vacancies plus Scalia in 2017, can five Supremes hear cases? |
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Ha! Foolmewunz has just been added to the list of people who aren't complete idiots. Hokulele It's not that liberals have become less tolerant. It's that conservatives have become more intolerable. |
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25th March 2016, 05:20 AM | #31 |
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I'm not aware of any quorum. The number of seats isn't even in the Constitution. It is set by Congress. If the Republicans take the House and Senate (which is likely) and Trump wins, they could push through a bill to set the seats at 15. That would give President Trump 7 seats to fill.
Then we could see Justices Christie, Trump, Palin, Carson, Trump, Arpaio, and Putin. |
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28th March 2016, 12:45 PM | #32 |
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Hmm. Well actuary <> doctor, I can't really tell you the prognosis, just how much it will cost. But what the heck. Always prepared to give my opinion on things I don't know much about
Depends entirely on the stage of cancer and the severity of the heart disease. Lots of early stage colon cancer can be treated surgically with very little risk. Pancreatic cancer, in most cases, has a really poor prognosis - only about 20% 5-yr survival if the entirety of the cancer can be removed surgically, which is not often the case. For heart disease... that's a hugely broad category, and there's a lot of heart disease that can be managed almost indefinitely with nothing but diet and exercise. Even drug therapies can result in pretty much normal life spans. I know these things because the Google told me. |
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The distance between the linguistic dehumanization of a people and their actual suppression and extermination is not great; it is but a small step. - Haig Bosmajian |
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6th April 2016, 01:56 PM | #33 |
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What geezer business? You're not under what seems to be an increasingly common misconception among Americans that 'geezer' means 'old', are you? It's just a synonym for 'bloke' or 'chap'. If you want to talk about someone who's old, then you might call them an old geezer.
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The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, and wiser people so full of doubts.Bertrand Russell Zooterkin is correct Darat Nerd! Hokulele Join the JREF Folders ! Team 13232 Ezekiel 23:20 |
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6th April 2016, 02:00 PM | #34 |
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Well you gotta admit that with an average of what, 70 ? They are all quite old.
I am not expecting them to put a 20 something there, but why not having people between 40-60 and have nomination for maximum say 8 years ? Rather than life ? |
6th April 2016, 02:54 PM | #35 |
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To survive election season on a skeptics forum, one must understand Hymie-the-Robot.
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6th April 2016, 04:04 PM | #36 |
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It's a good question. Roberts himself argued in favor of limited terms back in the Reagan administration. The usual rejoinder is that it threatens the independence of the judiciary, but I don't see how limited terms would do that where lifetime appointments do not, and have never encountered a persuasive argument along those lines (not for lack of trying). The best you can do is the argument put forward two centuries ago by Hamilton in the Federalist Papers, but that's an argument pervaded by speculation that modern readers will recognize as erroneous, bordering on amusingly naive.
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6th April 2016, 08:27 PM | #37 |
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There is no Antimemetics Division. |
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7th April 2016, 12:02 AM | #38 |
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The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, and wiser people so full of doubts.Bertrand Russell Zooterkin is correct Darat Nerd! Hokulele Join the JREF Folders ! Team 13232 Ezekiel 23:20 |
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7th April 2016, 06:50 AM | #39 |
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To survive election season on a skeptics forum, one must understand Hymie-the-Robot.
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8th April 2016, 09:10 AM | #40 |
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The distance between the linguistic dehumanization of a people and their actual suppression and extermination is not great; it is but a small step. - Haig Bosmajian |
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