volkris @volkris@qoto.org
I think the most pressing and fundamental problem of the day is that people lack a practically effective means of sorting out questions of fact in the larger world. We can hardly begin to discuss ways of addressing reality if we can't agree what reality even is, after all.
The institutions that have served this role in the past have dropped the ball, so the next best solution is talking to each other, particularly to those who disagree, to sort out conflicting claims.
Unfortunately, far too many actively oppose this, leaving all opposing claims untested. It's very regressive.
So that's my hobby, striving to understanding the arguments of all sides at least because it's interesting to see how mythologies are formed but also because maybe through that process we can all have our beliefs tested.
But if nothing else, social media platforms like this are chances to vent frustrations that on so many issues both sides are obviously wrong ;)
Joined Dec 2022
Well, it's federal law coupled with Biden era action on regulation that blocked the availability.
The lower court was just pointing out that this is what the law said.
Good or bad depending on your perspective, I suppose.
Seems like getting back to normal order without major missteps being papered over by emergency orders from the court.
This is for either of the other branches to fix. The Court needs to stay out of it.
This shit is from 2023.
The same Hakeem Jeffries was one of the major figures who dropped the ball on the Democratic side.
It's a stretch to read this as injecting into politics.
The Court didn't do anything to the election. It vacated a lower court ruling that has been clearly shown to have been in error, sending the matter back to them for further processing.
The drawing of maps is STILL subject to that lower court's oversight.
This is how the machinery of the legal process works without regard to politics. This was the court STAYING OUT OF politics, leaving it to the lower courts to adjudicate.
That's the opposite of what the Supreme Court said.
Yes, a lot of people get this backwards, and it's worth emphasizing that a lot of politicians are looking to score political points by jumping on this bandwagon regardless of what the courts actually said.
But in the end SCOTUS recognized protected classes defined by law and said they must be afforded representation. Any state eliminating such representation is violating the law and the SCOTUS ruling can be used to go after them.
Idiot politicians saying otherwise are... well, racism isn't exactly correlated with intelligence.
No. In their opinion the Supreme Court said you can't. It's against multiple factors of US law.
Any state drawing districts so as to take black voters' power away is in violation of the Supreme Court opinion and stands to be sued on the grounds laid out by the Court.
Sometimes the conservative talk show hosts setting US policy outright say they don't know what's going on.
But hey, ignorance never stops them.
Still it's fun to highlight these moments to reinforce that there's no grant conspiracy here, just a bunch of people who don't know how the world works fiddling with the controls.
#BrianKilmeade ― Tickets to the World Cup in the US aren't being bought for some reason. I don't know why.#USPolitics #WorldCup
There are serious problems, both legal and practical, with all of those proposals.
But the part worth highlighting is how they would be a detriment to democracy and democratic principles, undermining the institutions that we put in place to amplify peoples' voices.
You're framing the issue backwards.
The status quo in the US has drugs being illegal until allowed, for better or worse.
In this case, the feds claimed to allow the drug, but basically admitted they didn't follow legal procedure for allowing it.
So this is not about whether to allow restrictions on the drug--that's just the norm--but whether to recognize federal efforts to approve the drug for sale.
What lies? And how is this biased?
A lower court handed down a ruling that's not compatible with the state of US law, so the appeal summarily called for a reexamination, as is completely consistent and appropriate.
The sad thing is that we'll probably reelect the Virginia (and national) politicians that botched the redistricting process in VA.
Of all the seats that needed to change, at least to different representatives in the same party, those are the real tragedy.
Republicans think lots of goofy stuff. We need to elect better.
The reason it's not nearly as extreme as those other cases is because this is merely reversing illegal orders by lower courts.
It's not imposing or justifying anything like racial regulations. In fact, the ruling emphasized that racist policies are illegal. Instead, this is just saying a lower court issued a ruling that doesn't match US law.
This is about court action. That needs to be understood.
One of the fundamental jobs of a US political party is to secure votes.
So YES, if a party isn't getting the margins they need to do whatever, then that IS a problem with the party as getting votes is their job!
The headline example is when Democrats lead the charge to oust McCarthy as Speaker of the House and kept the chamber seized for so long, only to have it reopen under Johnson. Instead,
Democrats should have used that position of high ground to gain advantage in rules if not speakership.
It was a powerful moment for them, but they used it for optics instead of taking real, substantive control in exchange for reopening under better terms.
I also ignored what my neighbor had for breakfast. What of it?
The political choices of politicians positioning themselves for points ahead of election later on have absolutely no relevance here.
Heck, if you buy the story that's so prevalent in Democratic circles, those politicians have run directly afoul of what the Supreme Court ordered.
Yes, I ignored the irrelevant actions of the when it comes to the SCOUTS decision, and the point is that we all should because it is irrelevant.
Keep in mind that a lot of people get wrong what the SCOTUS decided. It REFUSED to agree with Trump that he had complete absolute immunity:
"At the current stage of proceedings in this case, however, we need not and do not decide whether that immunity must be absolute, or instead whether a presumptive immunity is sufficient."
Trump lost on that count.
What the Court actually decided is rather tame: a former president is immune from prosecution for things that were legal exercises of his office.
He can still be prosecuted for illegal things.
It's a pretty different implication, right?
If it really was such a disenfranchisement of a protect class then it would run directly afoul of the Supreme Court's ruling in Callais, and a suit against the state would have that direct ammunition against the move.
It's not on you to organize, mobilize, etc. It's just on someone to file a lawsuit demanding an immediate injunction of what the supremes had *JUST SAID* was illegal.
You know, assuming it really was what you describe.
@renewedresistance
Yes, in example after example the Democrats had the upper hand and could have made progress toward their platform, or at least blocked Republicans.
But they didn't.
Why not? That's the question. Did they have a longer strategy of letting Republicans do more damage now to get elected later? Were they simply preserving campaign slogans? Were they too damn ignorant or incompetent to succeed? They're certainly not going to tell us their inner strategy.
IMO it doesn't matter. I'm happy to assume they chose to fail because they saw that they received donations every time they did, just as you're experiencing.
**I'm adamant that we need to hold them accountable, refuse to reelect them because for whatever reason they're an ineffective opposition.**
The best platform in the world amounts to nothing if the politicians can't or won't implement it even though they had the tools to move in that direction.
But it's not chaos. It's different states choosing to follow their procedures surrounding districting as they see fit.
It's nothing new that politicians wanted to do this for a long time, and now they see a political opportunity, and it's regardless of the SOCTUS decision since that has no legal weight in so many of these examples.
Even the Virginia nullification was predictable as the normal process in the commonwealth was to reject the referendum as invalid.
This is only chaos if separated from the rules and factors aligning it.
No, if you read the opinion the opinion they're very clear: "This interpretation of §2 does not require abandonment of the Gingles framework."
They bother talking about social change in the context of the section, bringing legal processes, the Gingles framework, in line with the law.
The decision on law was in the previous section, but they used this section to talk about how the decision on law would work in the lower courts.
It's law vs legal practice.
In the previous section the Court found that racial districting was disallowed by US law regardless of history, but they brought up legal history to show the process by which courts could reject racial districting.
"The facts of Gingles afford a good example of how a §2 plaintiff can properly meet these preconditions."
I think the most pressing and fundamental problem of the day is that people lack a practically effective means of sorting out questions of fact in the larger world. We can hardly begin to discuss ways of addressing reality if we can't agree what reality even is, after all.
The institutions that have served this role in the past have dropped the ball, so the next best solution is talking to each other, particularly to those who disagree, to sort out conflicting claims.
Unfortunately, far too many actively oppose this, leaving all opposing claims untested. It's very regressive.
So that's my hobby, striving to understanding the arguments of all sides at least because it's interesting to see how mythologies are formed but also because maybe through that process we can all have our beliefs tested.
But if nothing else, social media platforms like this are chances to vent frustrations that on so many issues both sides are obviously wrong ;)
Joined Dec 2022
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