Tuesday Open Thread

12 thoughts on “Tuesday Open Thread”

1. "GOP Whines Over Biden Social Security Attacks" From TPM.

   It’s a sure sign Biden has hit a soft spot and his attacks are working.

   Let’s say it again though for those in the back: Republicans have been targeting Social Security since its inception! As Paul Krugman puts it:

   "But, of course, many Republicans do want to eviscerate these programs. To believe otherwise requires both willful naïveté and amnesia about 40 years of political history."

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   1. 3/4 of Republican Reps Last Year… Again from TPM

      As we noted earlier, Republicans are now aghast that anyone would be claiming they want to cut Social Security. But last year the Republican Study Committee – a House caucus which includes about 75% of all House Republicans – released a proposed 2023 budget which included basically every kind of Social Security cut on offer.

      The Blueprint to Save America proposed raising the eligibility age at first to 70 and then higher if and when life expectancy goes up; it proposed cutting (or in their words ‘modernizing’) the benefit formula for everyone currently 54 and under; means-testing Social Security benefits; including work requirements for some Social Security beneficiaries; and allowing people to divert payroll taxes into private investment accounts – aka “retirement freedom”.

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2. It is official …. there will be a Republican Presidential primary contest. Nikki Haley chose to abandon her earlier pledge not to run against Donald Trump and has become the first announcement of a “major” alternative candidate. Sarah Longwell of The Bulwark sums up the import of the announcement:

   Haley’s candidacy represents the best of the “meh” middle tier of 2024 candidates, which for now includes the notional campaigns of Mike Pence, Mike Pompeo, and Chris Christie. No one is really asking any of those guys to run. But they don’t have anything better to do. So they’ll eventually put exploratory committees together and take a joy ride that may or may not make it to Iowa.

   And Haley, despite how good she is on paper, finds herself in that same tier: No one is asking for what she’s selling…. Haley would be the frontrunner in a Republican party that no longer exists.

   https://www.thebulwark.com/nikki-haley-is-the-perfect-republican-presidential-candidate-for-2015/

   I wonder how she’ll do in a Colorado Republican primary contest.  With her appeal for a “new generation” Republican who can appeal to everyone, I’m thinking she might be as successful as Kristi Burton Brown. 

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   1. Nikki Haley can't wipe the Trumpstink off fast enough. She's going to play a little pretend game like she never worked for the worst presidential administration in American history. I don't think that's going to fly.

      Same with Pompeo. He's already walking out of interviews over the subject.

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3. "how she'll do in a Colorado Republican primary……" Not well. The Colorado GOP is now dominated by the MAGA election deniers, the far right wing religious Inquisitors, and 2nd amendment over everything else crowd. 

   I remain as a registered Republican as the status has certain values. However, most of the Colorado GOP is a throwback to the Know Nothings of the 1850s. 

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   1. I am quite certain, CHB, I am not the only reader who would love to hear you identify, and elaborate upon, those "certain values".

       

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      1. Bless her heart

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      2. Special discounts on Members Only jackets, top hats, and some other really nifty Nixon Youth fashion apparel from the 1950s, 60s, and 70s ???

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4. Matthew Kacsmaryk is arguably the worst judge in the United States. Ian Milhiser at Vox.com

   As a general rule, lawyers are reluctant to ask a judge to reassign their case to another judge for any reason, no matter how justified, because these sorts of requests tend to antagonize the judge. The Justice Department, in particular, has good reason to shy away from such requests because it is a repeat player in federal litigation. If DOJ angers a particular federal judge, it can be certain that it will have to appear before that judge again.

   But Kacsmaryk ruled against the Biden administration so many times, and appeared so hostile to the very idea that the law sometimes calls for outcomes that right-wing activists do not like, that the Justice Department most likely calculated that it has nothing to lose from antagonizing Kacsmaryk.

   Matthew Kacsmaryk’s record reads like he’s the villain in a parable about a puritanical witch-hunter. A former lawyer at a Christian right law firm, Kacsmaryk has claimed that being transgender is a “mental disorder,” and that all gay people are “disordered.” He’s railed against a “Sexual Revolution” that began in the 1960s and 1970s, which supposedly claims “that marriage, sexuality, gender identity, and even the unborn child must yield to the erotic desires of liberated adults.”

   Kacsmaryk was the first federal judge to endorse an attack on the right to contraception after the Supreme Court’s decision eliminating the constitutional right to an abortion last June. He attempted to neutralize the federal ban on LGBTQ discrimination by health providers. And he’s widely expected to ban the drug mifepristone, a drug that is used in more than half of all abortions, in a lawsuit brought by the Alliance Defending Freedom, a far-right evangelical group.

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   1. And, most importantly to the DOJ, he doesn't preside over the District in Texas containing the State Capital, Austin. Which means he has no jurisdiction to hear this case and others filed in his court.

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      1. … Which means he SHOULDN'T have jurisdiction…

         That's the problem. 

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         1. Ah, the good old days, when judges ruled within their jurisdiction, with judgements limited to the people in their jurisdiction, using established precedent as their basis for ruling and leaving overturning such precedent as a job for higher courts.

            Most of these state v. Fed things should by my understanding be tried in the Federal District in the first place.

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