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The Democrat's roster for a Trump - beater in 2020


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Another soon also-ran throws his hat in the Democratic ring:  https://www.cato.org/blog/governor-inslee-announces-president

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Washington Governor Jay Inslee is throwing his hat in the ring for President of the United States. The central focus of his campaign for 2020 will likely be climate change. In an echo of the Green New Deal’s grand vision, Inslee says in a new video that he wants “100 percent clean energy, that will bring millions of good paying jobs to every community across America, and create a more just future for everyone.”

However, Inslee has been remarkably unsuccessful in convincing residents of his own state to go along with his tax-and-spending plans for climate change. He has not been able to get a carbon tax passed through the state legislature and carbon tax plans have failed twice on statewide ballots.

In 2016, Washington voters rejected a carbon tax (Initiative 732) by a solid (59-41) margin. In 2018, Washington voters rejected another carbon tax (Initiative 1631) by another solid (56-44) margin.

Governor Inslee was assigned an “F” on the 2018 Cato Fiscal Report Card. He was the worst-scoring governor on the report. His appetite for tax and spending increases has been insatiable since he entered office in January 2013.

From the Governor’s Report:

Inslee has pushed relentlessly for tax increases. He originally campaigned on a promise not to raise taxes, but he proposed more than $1 billion in higher taxes in his first budget in 2013. In 2014, he proposed a new tax on capital gains and increases in cigarette taxes and other taxes. In 2015, he approved a gas tax increase as well as higher taxes on businesses. In 2016, he proposed broadening the bases of various taxes to raise funding for education.

In his budget for the 2017–2019 biennium, Inslee proposed increasing the state’s business and occupation tax rate to raise more than $1.1 billion a year, creating a new capital gains tax of 7.9 percent to raise more than $800 million a year, and creating a carbon tax to raise more than $900 million a year. Most of his proposed tax hikes did not make it through the legislature, but Inslee did sign into law an increase in the state property tax and online sales tax to raise $1.5 billion annually. He also vetoed legislation to reduce the business and occupation tax rate.

Inslee has continued to advocate for a carbon tax even though the idea has been rejected by both the state legislature and Washington’s voters. In November 2016, voters rejected a carbon tax (Initiative 732) by a solid 59–41 margin. But in the wake of that defeat, Inslee has continued to push for such a tax; his latest plan is designed to raise at least $750 million in its first year and growing amounts after that. So far, the plan has failed to pass the legislature.

Carbon-tax supporters keep trying, and they have put another scheme on the ballot for November 2018. Voters will decide on Initiative 1631 whether to impose a new tax on carbon emissions to raise about $800 million a year by 2027. The tax would be collected from various industries, although the plan exempts certain politically favored industries.

Inslee also scores poorly on spending. The current biennial general fund budget is up 17 percent over the prior budget. State government employment has risen more than 7 percent since Inslee took office.

Yeah, sounds like a real winner.

 

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And another, they are like flies to potential honey:  Ex-Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper enters presidential race: https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/former-colorado-gov-hickenlooper-joins-presidential-race/2019/03/04/4cce1e90-3e71-11e9-85ad-779ef05fd9d8_story.html?utm_term=.2a29450aa90f

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Former Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper said on Monday he’s running for president, casting himself as a can-do uniter who’s used to overcoming adversity and accomplishing liberal goals in a politically divided state.

“I’m running for president because we need dreamers in Washington, but we also need to get things done,” Hickenlooper, 67, said in a video announcing his campaign . “I’ve proven again and again I can bring people together to produce the progressive change Washington has failed to deliver.”

He becomes the second governor to enter the sprawling field, after Washington Gov. Jay Inslee announced last week, and is trying to cast himself as a pragmatist who can also take on President Donald Trump. Though as governor Hickenlooper prided himself for staying above partisan fights, he has argued his record as a former governor and big-city mayor distinguishes him from a broad field of Democratic presidential aspirants who are backing ambitious liberal plans on health care, taxes and the climate.

....

 

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14 hours ago, gonzoron said:

Hillary announced she wasn't running earlier this week. I'm surprised none of you commented about it. 

It's not over until the doors close on the 2020 Democratic National Convention.

 

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With Uncle Joe leaning towards a run, this could get interesting.....

https://www.chicksonright.com/blog/2019/03/07/bidens-past-comments-on-busing-and-integration-arent-going-to-go-over-too-well-with-the-dems/?fbclid=IwAR13d90F3L5axV23SdNKq0qB1uunj0BGnyeOCM5mOhhmCVKm2nNU2Nt6nHU

AAALRIGHTY folks.

So Biden is about 10 seconds away from announcing his candidacy… and honestly, he might be among the Dem’s very top contenders. His main obstacle? Getting over the whole “old white man” thing. Democrats take issue with that. They don’t particularly LIKE old white men.

Some newly re-discovered comments of his are CERTAINLY not going to help his cause.

Interestingly… they’ve been newly rediscovered by the ultra-liberal WASHINGTON POST. (My guess is they have their money on Kamala.)

The Dems are about to lose it big time.

Screen-Shot-2019-03-07-at-12.14.17-PM.pn

Mmm Hmm. And it only gets less “woke” from there.

Screen-Shot-2019-03-07-at-12.15.06-PM.pn

 
 

WAAAIT.

Is Joe saying Diversity ISN’T our strength?!

Screen-Shot-2019-03-07-at-12.16.05-PM.pn

And then…

 

Screen-Shot-2019-03-07-at-12.16.33-PM.pn

So… he’s NOT in favor of reparations, right?

I’m not necessarily commenting on his opinions here. I actually agree with him that slavery is in no way the fault or responsibility of people around today.

But how’s this going to play out with the libs? At a time when other top contenders are running on “White man BAD” platforms?

My guess… NOT SO GOOD.

 

Please run Joe, please run...............

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If You're Afraid of Shep Smith, You Probably Shouldn't Be President

Why are Democrats so scared of Fox News?: https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2019/03/06/if-youre-afraid-of-shep-smith-you-probably-shouldnt-be-president-225643

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The Democratic National Committee sent a cutting disinvitation to the Fox News Channel Wednesday, denying the network television rights to any of its upcoming 2020 presidential candidates debates. In a statement to the Washington Post, DNC Chairman Tom Perez said this week’s story about Fox in the New Yorker had convinced him that the network had become too cozy with President Donald Trump (whoa there, Sherlock!) and was therefore “not in a position to host a fair and neutral debate for our candidates.”

The disinvitation didn’t disrupt an ongoing DNC-Fox relationship. As the Hollywood Reporter’s Jeremy Barr reported Monday, Fox hasn’t hosted a Democratic presidential debate in more than 15 years. In 2007, Democrats agreed to partner with Fox in a presidential candidate debate but canceled after Fox Chairman and CEO Roger Ailes cracked a rude joke about Barack Obama in a speech. “It’s true that Barack Obama is on the move,” Ailes said, deliberately playing on the similarities of Obama’s name to that of Osama bin Laden. “I don’t know if it’s true that President Bush called Musharraf and said. ‘Why can’t we catch this guy?’”

...

Rather than illustrating growing political polarization or deepening radicalization at the already radical Fox, the Perez disinvitation mostly reasserts the status quo arrangement—that the Dems see little percentage in playing ball with Fox this year or any presidential campaign year. The idea that the New Yorker story could have alerted Perez to some previously hidden right-wing, anti-Democratic Party tendencies at Fox is hilarious. The network’s Fox & Friends show has shilled for Trump since 2011, as this Post story by Paul Farhi points out, and Fox has consistently tilted for various Republicans in its commentary programming since Roger Ailes and Rupert Murdoch founded it in 1996. If Fox is guilty of anything, it’s guilty of being Fox.

The Democrats aren’t the only party willing to spurn a cable news network over presidential primary debates. In 2013, the Republican National Committee originally voted to block CNN and NBC from hosting the next GOP debates. What bothered the RNC that year was a planned Hillary Clinton documentary on CNN and a planned Hillary Clinton miniseries starring Diane Lane as Hillary on NBC. Within weeks, both networks canceled their Clinton films, and both made happy with the party and ended up hosting GOP debates.

....

That Republicans and Democrats seem so easily bruised by the network coverage of presidential debates shows that both expect the forums to produce infomercials that glorify their candidates, not journalistic grillings. Priebus voiced his preference for infomercial coverage in 2013 after the Republicans voted to block CNN and NBC from hosting debates.

“Our party should not be involved in setting up a system that encourages the slicing and dicing of candidates over a long period of time with moderators that are not in the business of being at all concerned about the future of our party,” Priebus said. Refreshingly direct!

As for the Democrats, no matter your view of Fox or the New Yorker’s view of Fox, the party’s avoidance of the network reveals a shameful political gutlessness, especially considering that Fox intended to assign tame newsers Bret Baier and Chris Wallace to the debate, not feral opinionators Tucker Carlson and Sean Hannity. Being president involves making unpalatable decisions and confronting tough customers on a daily basis. It means learning how to tell voters what they don’t want to hear and convince them they should like it. So any politician who can’t hold his own against a journalist from the other team should be disqualified from running.

 

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Biden Run Portends Ideological Struggle in Party, Bad News for Socialist Sanders: https://www.thenewamerican.com/usnews/politics/item/31679-biden-run-portends-ideological-struggle-in-party-bad-news-for-socialist-sanders

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Joe Biden will run for president.

The former vice president and senator from Delaware has all but announced a candidacy, CBS News and the New York Times reported, which means the Democrats must still deal with elderly, more mainstream liberals uncomfortable with the party’s lurch toward open socialism and openly racial politics.

Yet a Biden run means more than just a reevaluation the party’s move to the crackpot Left. It also means big trouble for communist apologist and fellow Gerontocrat Bernie Sanders, and the much-younger candidates Kamala Harris and Cory Booker.

Then again, the young radicals pose a problem for Biden.

Thus, the ideological fight for control of the party.

....

The support of a union does not mean the support of its members, but at any rate the Timesquickly got to the squabble a Biden candidacy means: “As a candidate, Mr. Biden would present Democrats with a clear alternative to the hard-charging liberals who now dominate the race and test the appeal of his old-school political profile at a moment the party is hungry for fresh faces but even hungrier to win.”

In other words, as much trouble Biden might mean for the rest of the field, they will mean trouble for him. Candidates such as Harris and Booker, along with the young anti-American radicals in Congress — Ilhan Omar and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, to name two — are ready for the old white guys to accept the inevitable.

Even veteran Democratic button-man James Carville thinks the party’s old folks should head for the retirement home. “The only major organization in the world that has been, and is, run by 80-year-olds is the Roman Catholic Church,” Carville told the Times.

So young voters, not just younger candidates, should concern Biden and his backers as much as he should concern them.

...

Biden’s entry into the race is very bad news for Senator Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.). Reporting from New Hampshire, the nation’s first primary state that gave him a 22-point victory over Hillary Clinton, the Associated Press divulged that top Democrats who supported the aging Castro fanboy in 2016 might not do so again.

“More than a half-dozen Democratic leaders, activists and lawmakers who endorsed the Vermont senator in 2016 said they were hesitant to do so again,” the news service reported. “Some said they were passing over the 77-year-old self-described democratic socialist in search of fresh energy while others said that, 11 months away from the primary, it's simply too early to make a choice.”

In other words, Sanders won’t just face the hugely popular Biden. Party radicals who likely view Biden as a milquetoast appeaser of GOP “racists” and “fascists” have other choices, such as Harris and Booker.

“He’s right on many of the issues that I care about,” Jackie Cilley, a former state senator who endorsed Sanders in 2016, told AP. “But I’m just looking at some new candidates.”

So are a lot of others.

 

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5 minutes ago, gonzoron said:

I guess we should ask why Trump is afraid of CNN then.

https://www.quora.com/Why-is-President-Trump-so-afraid-of-CNN

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...

Because CNN is always portraying Mr. President in a bad light and they do everything to discredit him.

An example could be a CNN “news story” where they’ve made fun of him for using a knife and fork while putting a terror attack in a scroll bar below. Pathetic.

main-qimg-d87d11361c9eff4a76a5189ad1f028c1.webp

Why would the President invite CNN when all they do is discredit him?

....

CNN And Fox News are just two sides of the uni-party coin.

 

Edited by Muda69
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Clash of the Hoosiers: Buttigieg takes on Pence: https://www.politico.com/story/2019/03/10/pete-buttigieg-mike-pence-indiana-1214887

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Democratic presidential candidate and South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg on Sunday blasted Vice President Mike Pence — the former governor of Buttigieg’s home state, Indiana — for becoming “the cheerleader of the porn star presidency” after enacting policies of “social extremism” on the nonfederal level.

“Please don't judge my state by our former governor,” Buttigieg said during a town hall in Austin, Texas, after he was asked whether Pence’s conservatism is representative of all Indianans.

“I think those views are so out of line with where anybody is. And look, I got to tell you, this was kind of a difficult journey for a lot of people,” Buttigieg said at the event, moderated by CNN host Jake Tapper.

“I mean, if you were conservative and from an older generation, and you were brought up by people you trusted to believe that it was morally wrong to be, for example, in a same-sex marriage, and then the pace of change has happened so quickly,” he said. “I’ve benefited from the pace of that change. But I also understand how disorienting it must be for people to have gone through that.”

The 37-year-old Buttigieg, who is the youngest Democrat in the crowded 2020 field and the only gay contender, also described his experience coming out four years ago at a time when Pence was Indiana’s chief executive.

“Frankly, when I first got into politics, elected politics at the beginning of this decade in Indiana — in Mike Pence’s Indiana — I thought you could either be out or you could be in office, but you couldn't be both,” Buttigieg said.

“I came out in the middle of a reelection campaign because it was just that time in my life when I had to do that,” he continued. “Pence was governor. We weren’t sure what it would do to my political future in a socially conservative community. I wound up getting reelected with 80 percent of the vote.”

Asked by Tapper whether he would prefer a President Pence or President Trump, Buttigieg struggled to answer, but said he previously trusted that Pence “at least he believes in our institutions” and did not consider him to be “personally corrupt.”

“But then how could he get on board with this presidency?” Buttigieg said.

Buttigieg said that while his understanding of the Bible was rooted in "protecting the stranger and the prisoner and the poor person," Pence's reading of the Gospel "has a lot more to do with sexuality" and "a certain view of rectitude."

“But even if you buy into that, how could he allow himself to become the cheerleader of the porn star presidency?” Buttigieg added.

“Is it that he stopped believing in Scripture when he started believing Donald Trump? I don't know.”

 

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Elizabeth Warren Wants to Make Your Life More Annoying and More Expensive: http://reason.com/blog/2019/03/12/elizabeth-warren-tech-antitrust-amazon

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To understand the ramifications of Sen. Elizabeth Warren's (D-Mass.) new plan to break up big tech, consider AmazonBasics. It's an in-house brand under which Amazon sells many things, from bath towels to sheets to batteries. The label is probably best known for its electronics cables, which typically cost quite a bit less than their brand name counterparts and are more reliable than most cheap generic brands.

The New York Times has praised AmazonBasics cables for their general reliability. And Wirecutter, a consumer reviews site owned by the Times, chose AmazonBasics HDMI cables, an essential cord for connecting supporting devices to home theaters and flat-screen televisions, as their best all-around pick. Two years ago, a Times Smarter Living columnist recommended AmazonBasics' affordably priced 6 foot long iPhone charging cable as a cheap way to change your life for the better, calling the longer-than-average cable "magic" and writing, "the happiness of lying on my couch while charging far outweighed the cable's $7.99 price tag." It's a surprisingly affordable form of bliss.

The point is: These cables are good. They're inexpensive, reliable, and, thanks to Amazon's ubiquity, easy to come by.

Elizabeth Warren wants Amazon to stop selling them.

That's because Warren's proposal would prohibit large companies from selling products in marketplaces they own and operate, meaning that Apple, for example, could not sell software through the App Store it runs. "Apple, you've got to break it apart from their App Store. It's got to be one or the other. Either they run the platform or they play in the store," she told The Verge over the weekend. "They don't get to do both at the same time."

As an Amazon house brand selling products within Amazon's platform, AmazonBasics would go away. It would have to be shut down or spun off, and would thus no longer benefit from being backed by Amazon's considerable resources. The same would be true of numerous other AmazonBrands, from GoodThreads, which offers quality, inexpensive clothing basics, to Stone & Beam, the company's label for modestly priced furniture and home goods.

Warren has billed her plan as a way to promote competition and provide consumers more choices, but the most immediate and obvious effect is that consumers would lose inexpensive, reliable options.

Amazon's house brands are not the only products and services that would be affected. Warren also wants to appoint regulators to unwind some high-profile mergers. Whole Foods would be unwound from Amazon. Mapping service Waze and thermostat maker Nest would be forced apart from Google, whose search and ad business would be affected too. These are useful services, and part of their usefulness comes from their integration with a larger corporate infrastructure, from Google's expertise in artificial intelligence to Amazon's comparative advantage with logistics. Warren wants to make these useful services less useful.

Also, she wants to break up Facebook and Instagram.

And she wouldn't stop with today's tech giants. All companies with more than $25 billion in global revenue that offer an "online marketplace, an exchange, or a platform for connecting third parties would be designated as 'platform utilities.'" Large, public-facing companies of the future would be subject to the same treatment. Essentially, they would become quasi-governmental operations, their plans and practices overseen by the likes of, well, Elizabeth Warren. Warren may be running for president, but her plans for large corporations often make it sound like she's running for something more like national CEO.

There is something hubristic about Warren's proposal, which would use the force of law to remake one of the most productive economic sectors of the last four decades. She claims to be doing this in the name of boosting competition and consumer choice, but consumers have already made their choices. All of the companies in her crosshairs grew as large as they did in large part because they provided products and services that consumers wanted. Yes, some have benefited from unwarranted government handouts, but if those are the problem, then Warren should attack them directly. Instead, Warren is focused on a blunt effort to cut them down to size.

Yet for all its scale and scope, there is also something tellingly small and petty about the way her plan would position regulators and lawmakers in between so many minor transactions. Warren, going back to her ideas for the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which was premised largely on the notion that most people are too dim to understand the contracts they sign, seems to believe that it's government's job to negotiate these transactions for you. She wants to be capitalism's ever-present middleman, the busybody between you and the stuff you want to sell and buy, from houses to HDMI cables.

Warren doesn't frame it that way, of course. She says she wants to regulate big tech because selling on an in-house platform gives a company too much power and leverage, which doesn't serve the interests of consumers.

Instead, she wants to give more power to herself and others in government.

Granted, as a campaign rallying cry, "let's reign in powerful technology companies" sounds a lot more appealing than, "let's get rid of the good, cheap charging cables." But the latter is closer to the truth.

You bet it is closer to the truth.  It also sounds that under this regulation giant retailers like Wal-Mart and Target, both who sell their "house brand" items online as well as in their brick-and-mortar stores, would have to stop selling those house brands or spin them off.  Either would mean higher prices for consumers.

  

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On 2/22/2019 at 2:28 PM, Muda69 said:

83gqnaoo11i21.jpg?width=960&crop=smart&a

As you may know, and my men Irish and IO can attest, I am the resident TWD geek. That is absolutely Negan, but I did conclude through my hours of research, that TWD writers interviewed Bernie for his thoughts.  Of course, that’s per my “sources.”

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Kirsten Gillibrand the Brave Enters the Democratic Presidential Ring: http://reason.com/blog/2019/03/18/kirsten-gillibrand-the-brave-enters-the

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New York Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand threw her hat in —or should we say beret?—for the Democratic presidential nomination on Sunday, the sixth woman in an already-crammed field.

Gillibrand has been a U.S. House member in a heavily Republican district in New York. She was initially tapped in 2009 to fill Hillary Clinton's U.S. Senate seat in New York when Clinton was named Secretary of State.

She was re-elected to the Senate in 2018, and since then she has moved from a centrist to a progressively progressive position.

 

She rose to national prominence as an outspoken critic of President Donald Trump and his misogynistic comments. Subsequently, she positioned herself as an advocate of women's issues within her party and became a forceful proponent of the #MeToo movement, authoring a children's book last year titled Bold & Brave: Ten Heroes Who Won Women the Right to Vote.

She was the first senator in 2017 to call for Minnesota Democrat Al Franken to resign from the Senate after allegations that he touched women inappropriately. She even commented that President Bill Clinton should have resigned over the Monica Lewinsky affair. If this upset Hillary Clinton, who strongly supported Gillibrand's bid to become her successor, she didn't say anything, although Bill Clinton did comment that Gillibrand was "living in a different context." However, the Clintons must have experienced at least a little schadenfreude earlier this week when Gillibrand herself faced claims that she mishandled allegations of sexual harassment in her Senate office. A female Senate staffer for Gillibrand resigned in 2018 after her complaints about sexual harassment by a senior advisor didn't result in his firing.

Gillibrand used to be anti-"amnesty," pro-gun, and anti–gay marriage. Now she has reversed herself on all those issues, which aside from gun rights isn't a bad thing from a libertarian perspective—although it does raise questions about her campaign theme of "bravery," which she featured in her opening ad.

The ad mocks Trump's calls for banning Muslims and building a wall as fear-mongering, not bravery. True bravery, it suggests, rests in embracing all progressive causes in toto. That may be par for the course given that she is, after all, a progressive. But what was jarring to anyone who cares even a little big about logic was this little non sequitur: "If we could land on the moon," then we can definitely achieve "universal coverage" and "paid family leave" and "end gun violence" and "pass a Green New Deal"— unless Gillibrand has some secret way of making astronauts airdrop these things on the United States from the moon like manna!

Gillibrand has yet to reach the 1 percent mark in polls, a Democratic National Committee requirement to be included in the upcoming 2020 debates.

....

 

 

 

 

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Andrew Yang, Upstart Democratic Presidential Candidate, Comes Out Against Circumcision: https://www.thedailybeast.com/andrew-yang-the-upstart-democratic-presidential-candidate-comes-out-against-circumcision

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Outsider presidential hopeful Andrew Yang’s latest idea is both literally and figuratively his most unorthodox yet: He’s taking a strong public stance against circumcision.

The Democratic candidate revealed in a little-noticed tweet last week that he was against the ritualized practice of cutting a newborn’s foreskin. But in an interview with The Daily Beast, he said that if he were elected he would incorporate that view into public policy, mainly by pushing initiatives meant to inform parents that they don’t need to have their infants circumcised for health reasons.

“It’s sort of pushed on parents in many situations,” Yang said, describing pressure to circumcise a child as a “cultural onus” imposed on families.

...

According to the American Academy of Pediatrics, the upsides of circumcision—including a reduced chance of sexually transmitted diseases and urinary tract infections—are worth any risks. But the AAP and other medical groups say the decision should still be left up to parents.  

Intactivists oppose the practice, often saying that being circumcised as infants has interfered with their adult sex lives. Georganne Chapin, the head of intactivist group Intact America, compared removing a baby’s foreskin to taking off a child’s lips or fingers.

“I’m not optimistic that [Yang] coming out against circumcision will make him popular, but I think it’s wonderful,” Chapin said.

Yang’s anti-circumcision platform has also been a hit with the racist 4Chan posters who have embraced Yang’s call for a monthly $1,000 payment to every American, which they’ve dubbed “Yangbux.” After Yang tweeted about circumcision, his fans in the alt-right took it as a jab at Jews, who perform ceremonial circumcisions on their newborn sons on the eighth day of their lives.  

“Holy shit,” wrote one 4Chan user. “A candidate actually redpilled on circumcision?”

Yang has said that he rejects support from white nationalists and anti-Semites. He also told The Daily Beast that while he wants parents to have more information about circumcision, he wouldn’t support a ban on practice.

But even just his recommendation that parents be told that they don’t have to circumcise their sons has won over intactivists. Chapin said Yang’s anti-circumcision stance is a perfect fit for his campaign motto, “Humanity First.”

“I think there’s nothing more inhumane than tying down a baby or a child and amputating a healthy, normal part of his body,” Chapin said. “So I just think that his campaign slogan is awesome.”

 

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Just now, swordfish said:

Yeah - that'll get him elected......

You've got to read his whole platform ... that's just the tip of it.

raw

 

Lord, I apologize for that.

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4 hours ago, foxbat said:

You've got to read his whole platform ... that's just the tip of it.

raw

 

Lord, I apologize for that.

yeah...he can take that stance; it's no skin off his back.
If he sticks to this stance, he may face some stiff competition.
He may be wondering what all the flap is about.

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Dangers of Growing Support for Court-Packing: http://reason.com/volokh/2019/03/20/dangers-of-growing-support-for-court-pac

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In recent weeks, there has been growing support for court-packing on the left. A number of prominent liberal Democrats, including several presidential candidates, have either endorsed the idea of expanding the size of the Supreme Court to reverse the current 5-4 conservative majority among the justices, or at least indicated they are open to it. Those expressing such views include presidential candidates Pete Buttgieg, Kamala Harris, Elizabeth Warren and Kirsten Gillibrand. Former Obama administration attorney General Eric Holder also argues that the idea should be "seriously" considered. Presidential candidate Beto O'Rourke has suggested a plan to increase the size of the court to fifteen justices: five Democrats, five Republicans, and five more justices selected by the other ten.

Liberal advocates of court-packing argue that it is a justifiable response to previous Republican bad behavior on judicial confirmations, most notably the GOP-controlled Senate's refusal to hold hearings on President Obama's nomination of Judge Merrick Garland in 2016, which eventually enabled to President Trump to fill the open seat with Justice Neil Gorsuch in 2017.

Both parties have engaged in skullduggery on judicial nominations in recent years, the GOP most certainly included. In my view, the refusal to consider Garland was understandable in light of previous Democratic actions (including their own refusal to hold hearings on a number of prominent Bush-era judicial nominees). But it is also true that it was a risky escalation of the judicial nomination wars.

Be that as it may, court-packing would be a dangerous step beyond previous judicial nomination shenanigans because, unlike them, it threatens to destroy the entire institution of judicial review, by creating a pattern of escalation under which each party would pack the court any time it simultaneously controls both Congress and the presidency. That would ensure that the Court would almost never rule against any significant initiative of the party in power, no matter how dangerous and unconstitutional. I discussed the flaws of court-packing in more detail here, here, and here. Prominent liberal Harvard Law School Professor Laurence Tribe summarizes the danger well:

Larry Tribe likewise argues against court-packing. "I'm not in favor of trying what FDR sought to do — and was rebuffed by the Democratic Senate for attempting," he tells me. "Obviously partisan Court-expansion to negate the votes of justices whose views a party detests and whose legitimacy the party doubts could trigger a tit-for-tat spiral that would endanger the Supreme Court's vital role in stabilizing the national political and legal system."

Similarly, Democratic Senator and presidential candidate Corey Booker "caution people about doing things that become a tit for tat throughout history... So when the Democrats expand it to 11, 12 judges, when Republicans have it, they expand it to 15 judges." Booker and Tribe are right. And indeed these sorts of structural concerns are exactly what led a Democratic-controlled Congress to bury Franklin D. Roosevelt's 1937 court-packing plan - the last serious attempt to expand the size of the Court in order to shift its ideology. Critics rightly feared that court-packing would create a Supreme Court subservient to whatever party controlled the presidency and Congress at the time.

As Democratic Senator Burton Wheeler put it in a speech on FDR's plan:

Create now a political court to echo the ideas of the Executive and you have created a weapon. A weapon which, in the hands of another President in times of war or other hysteria, could well be an instrument of destruction. A weapon that can cut down those guaranties of liberty written into your great document by the blood of your forefathers and that can extinguish your right of liberty, of speech, of thought, of action, and of religion. A weapon whose use is only dictated by the conscience of the wielder.

For what it is worth, my opposition to court-packing is is not limited to plans put forward by liberal Democrats. I first wrote about the subject when prominent conservative law professor Steven Calabresi and his coauthor Shams Hirji put forward a plan for Republicans to pack the lower federal courts back in 2017. It was a bad idea when raised by some on the right two years ago, and it's no better now when it is gathering steam on the left.

Undermining judicial independence might be a feature of court-packing rather than a bug if you believe that judicial review does more harm than good, in any event (as do a few legal scholars on both the right and the left). Such people contend we would have a a freer and more just society if the courts let the political branches of government do as they please. I believe that is a dangerous delusion, for reasons I summarized here:

For all their serious differences and very real flaws, mainstream liberal and mainstream conservative jurists still agree on many important questions, including protection of a wide range of freedom speech, basic civil liberties, and ensuring a modicum of separation of powers, among others. History shows that these are the sorts of restraints on government power that the executive (sometimes backed by Congress) is likely to break during times of crisis, or when they have much-desired partisan agendas to pursue. Such actions are especially likely if the president is a populist demagogue with authoritarian impulses. And, as the current occupant of the White House demonstrates, the safeguards against such people getting power are not nearly as strong as we might have thought before 2016. As specialists in comparative politics emphasize, it is no accident that court-packing is a standard tool of authoritarian populists seeking to undermine liberal democracy, recently used in such countries as Hungary, Turkey, and Venezuela.

As a libertarian, I have a long list of reservations about both conventional liberal judges and conventional conservative ones. But even if the judiciary is staffed by flawed jurists, it is still a valuable safeguard against illiberalism and authoritarianism.

Some liberals who value judicial review generally might believe that conservative judges will not act to curb the abuses of Trump and other Republican presidents. If so, it might be better to risk blowing up the judiciary than allow conservatives to continue to have a majority on the Supreme Court.

It is indeed true that conservative judges have sometimes let Trump get away with violations of the Constitution, most notably in the egregious travel ban case. But conservative Republican judicial appointees (along with liberal Democratic ones) have done much to curb the administration's excesses in other important cases. Notable examples include the numerous rulings against Trump's attempts to coerce sanctuary cities, the recent Ninth Circuit decision against the administration's efforts to severely restrict migrants' opportunities to apply for asylum (authored by prominent conservative judge Jay Bybee), and a variety of decisions on such important issues as DACA, the administration's family-separation policy (struck down by a Republican-appointeed judge who ordered the administration to reunite the separated children with their families), and freedom of speech. If Trump had had a free hand to pack the courts as he likes, things would likely have been much worse. And the same goes for future presidents inclined to abuse their power.

Some on the left argue that the Democrats can expand the size of the Court without generating retaliation in kind by Republicans if they repackage court-packing as "court balancing" or some other similar euphemism. This is unlikely to work, for reasons I discussed here. Those attracted to such ideas should consider whether they themselves would forego retaliation the GOP tried to pull a similar trick.

Fortunately, the left is far from monolithic when it comes to court-packing. As the above quotes by Laurence Tribe and Corey Booker reveal, some liberals do recognize the danger. Other notable liberal critics of court-packing include former Obama White House Counsel Bob Bauer, columnist Damon Linker (who calls it "the dumbest Democratic idea yet") and well-known legal scholar Richard Primus. Whether Democrats actually move forward with court-packing the next time they have a chance to do so depends in large part on who becomes the next Democratic president and whether he or she decides to make this an important part of the party's agenda.

Some Democrats are instead promoting other, far more defensible, reforms to the Supreme Court. For example, Corey Booker has called for imposing 18-year term limits on the justices. I have no problem with that idea, which enjoys widespread (though certainly not universal) support from legal scholars on different sides of the political spectrum, such as Sanford Levinson on the left, and Steve Calabresi on the right. It would limit the power of individual justices without giving the president and Congress a blank check to pack the Court as they like.

Beto O'Rourke's plan to increase the size of the court to 15 justices (mentioned above) is far less problematic than standard court-packing proposals. Because it would require a balance between five Democratic and five Republican justices, with five more chosen by the first ten, it would not enable either the president or Congress to simply pack the Court with their own minions. There are, however, many practical problems with the plan. For example, it is not clear how the Democratic and Republican justices would be selected. In addition, if independents or third parties ever gain a significant foothold in Congress, they would be shut out of the judicial selection process. O'Rourke's proposal would also require a constitutional amendment to enact, which I think is highly unlikely to happen.

On the other side of the political spectrum, GOP Senator Marco Rubio plans to propose a constitutional amendment limiting the Supreme Court's membership to nine justices, which would prevent future court-packing. I am happy to support any such amendment. But I doubt that it can get enacted without some sort of quid pro quo for the Democrats. If it were up to me, I would be willing to pay a price to remove the danger of court-packing forever. But most Republican politician probably think otherwise.

For the moment, therefore, the main barrier to court-packing is the longstanding political norm against it. It has lasted for almost 150 years, and survived an assault by Franklin D. Roosevelt, one of the most popular presidents in American history. The next Democratic president is unlikely to be as commanding a figure as FDR was. On the other hand, the Democratic Party is arguably more ideologically cohesive now than in the 1930s, and the relative youth of the conservative Supreme Court justices (combined with increased life expectancy) makes it less likely that the Democrats can quickly retake control of the Supreme Court by "natural" means in the near future, than was the case back in 1937. And we should not underestimate the risk that liberal anger over the Court could help generate a "crisis of legitimacy" at some point in the next few years, which in turn could pave the way for court-packing. Nonetheless, I am guardedly optimistic that court-packing can still be staved off. But that happy outcome is more likely the more people understand the gravity of the danger.

 

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15 minutes ago, DanteEstonia said:

It’s not packing the Court if there’s no Constitutionally defined judge limit.

FTA:

Quote

On the other side of the political spectrum, GOP Senator Marco Rubio plans to propose a constitutional amendment limiting the Supreme Court's membership to nine justices, which would prevent future court-packing. I am happy to support any such amendment.

I will be contacting my elected federal representative and senators, urging them to support Mr. Rubio in this endeavor.

 

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