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For February , here are two opinions .
Picking any nominee to the Supreme Court Bench is always mired in investigations of by partisan biased Committees . (1)>>Well Tulsi Gabberd said, "Biden chose Harris as his VP because of the color of her skin and sex—not qualification. She's been a disaster," Gabbard said early Monday morning. "Now he promises to choose Supreme Court nominee on the same criteria. Identity politics is destroying our country." (1.2)>>Pres . Biden wants a "black woman " in the Court . An ABC News/Ipsos poll out Sunday showed that 76 percent of Americans wanted the president to consider "all possible nominees" while just 23 percent wanted him to only consider Black women for the nomination [ emphasis ] True enough, but there are a bunch of people here who would argue that any Black women nominated must have been chosen based on (2)>>color or sex even though they are highly qualified.The sad part is that Biden could have simply nominated a "black woman" without declaring that he wouldn't consider anyone else. He did that thinking of himself and not the nominee. Replacing Breyer won’t ultimately change the court’s 6-3 conservative majority, which has stymied Biden on major priorities including his recent vaccine and testing mandate for large businesses. (3)>>CLARENCE THOMAS. Conservative. So many black people are leaving that plantation of the Do Nothing Party that they are now picking a person based on RACE and not qualification....An insult to all of them and MLK. I tend to not like ANY of Justices that barely ask anything in arguments for decades. That he/she always sides with conservative rulings with arguments , regardless of being Democrat or Republican . SO that a first year law school student would find idiotic doesn't help either , the most left of the Judges always lean to the right as we have seen recently . It has not anything to do with packing the court . (4)>>The Court IS ALWAYS STRONGLY CONSERVATIVE .Senate Judiciary Chair Dick Durbin on Sunday defended President Joe Biden’s plan to nominate a Black woman to the Supreme Court, despite blowback from Senate Republicans and new polling indicating most Americans want the White House to consider candidates regardless of race and gender.In an interview on ABC’s “This Week,” Durbin (D-Ill.) responded to Biden’s critics by citing pledges from previous Republican presidents to select female nominees to fill Supreme Court vacancies.There are dozens, even hundreds of qualified people of all genders, races, and backgrounds. Why does it matter than Biden says “of this pool of qualified candidates, I’m going to pick a woman of color”? Like, there is no “most qualified” person for stuff like this. Everyone who has ever been picked as been subjectively picked based on what that particular president wanted and nobody had an issue with it. NOW THE SURPRISING TWIST, (5)>>Shortly after news of Justice Stephen Breyer’s retirement, William Owen, a Democratic National Committee member from Tennessee, texted the party chair, Jaime Harrison, with an idea that by then was already all over Twitter: (6)>>Kamala Harris for the Supreme Court. Former White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany on Wednesday endorsed the unlikely notion that Harris could get the nomination as a way to end the controversies surrounding her. “I think it’s a theory that could be credible,” McEnany said while co-hosting the “Outnumbered” show on Fox News. BUT COULD be the TRIGGER that crashes the Democrats in 2022 and 2024 .Harris has been dogged by criticism since Biden tapped her to deal with the ongoing migration crisis at the southern border, and multiple reports have detailed dissension among her staffers, who’ve called her a “bully” and said they’re “treated like s–t.”
2. Ukraine , and NATO war?
(7)>>Come on now does America want another war , another cold war ?I've read alot about Russian troop numbers, but has Ukraine mobilized? I read nothing about Ukrainian troop numbers. SO is this (7.1)>>ANOTHER TRAP TO SUCK AMERICA INTO ANOTHER WAR ????Because you need (7.2)>>to explain first how diplomacy work in general and what specifically US diplomacy is.There are lots of political questions on this sub from EU/US guys who seem to be normal (not biased, not a troll, like regular people) but all of them are just SHINING with ignorance.This ignorance kinda matches pattern where west destroys whole countries and US/EU citizens just aren't aware about that. Seems like they don't become aware even after immigrants flood their country. Just don't see the connection. And some of these people think than North Koreans/Chinese/Russians/whatsoever are brainwashed. Putin is clearly frustrated with the status quo. (8)>>Ukraine is still getting a lot of weapons and military aid without being a member of (8.1)>>NATO. This means that bigger guns could be deployed there eventually. TB2 drones put the Donbas militants at a significant disadvantage. Allegedly, Ukraine is developing intermediate-range missiles of their own, something capable of reaching Moscow. . That's what Poroshenko threatened in the past. Another thing is the internal politics of Ukraine have become extremely unfavorable to Russia. Last year Zelensky arrested Viktor Medvedchuk, who is seen as someone close to (9)>>Putin, and banned his TV channels. While he started off his tenure as a peacemaker, now he seems to be dead set on a military solution to the conflict, in spite of the Minsk agreements signed by Ukraine, which stipulate reintegration of breakaway republics with autonomy.So there you have it. Putin has no conventional ways of influencing Ukrainian politics anymore, while Ukraine is rearming and pledging to take occupied territories (and that includes Crimea) back by force, emboldened by Western support. Germany, France, and now the US haven't done anything to compel (10)>>Ukraine to implement the Minsk agreements. Putin wouldn't have that. His concerns regarding NATO play into it as well, that's something that has been building up for a long time. Russian president Vladimir Putin has told western leaders that he wants binding guarantees that Nato will not allow Ukraine to become a member and will not station missiles on its territory.Moscow handed proposals on the issue to a visiting senior US diplomat this week and said it was ready to start talks on the matter immediately, while continuing to move troops and armour towards Ukraine in what Kiev and its allies fear could be preparations for an all-out invasion.Could also be a ploy to make Crimea and the eastern half of (11)>>Ukraine internationally recognized as permanently Russian, which would be a huge win. Ukraine (as a state) can exist only being neutral. Otherwise it's going to be torn apart as from within (because "ukrainians" are not a monolith nation and frankly saying some regions openly despise and hate other regions - it doesn't help to keep the country from falling apart by itself) so from outside.And of course the NATO demands. That said, an actual invasion should diplomacy fail, could do the same thing.
NOTES AND COMMENTS: (1)>>Well Tulsi Gabberd said. I guess but that is hardly a litmus test for me. She’s an independent democrat currently critical of the same shit most reasonable people are, Dem or Republican. Personally, I’m not going to manufacture thing to disparage her about. She’s principled and ethical relative to the status quo on both sides. (1.2)>>Pres . Biden wants a "black woman " in the Court .Yes, I get pissed off by this and it’s shocking to me that others aren’t. I felt the same way when he said he was going to pick a black woman VP. By making this announcement he’s saying he’s going to pick the best black woman for the job… had he just picked a black woman without this announcement then he would have picked the best person for the job that happened to be a black woman. It reduces the accomplishments of the person picked, stokes racial fear from the right and is all around unnecessary. I don’t see any benefit of making this announcement and nothing but downsides.It absolutely diminishes the accomplishment when the candidacy pool is artificially shrunk based on race. If he didn't say anything and just did it I would applaud him. But he wanted the political brownie points that's why he announced it.(2)>>color or sex even though they are highly qualified.U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez described identity as "just the starting step when we are discussing a Supreme Court justice.” Ocasio-Cortez wants to focus on other questions, notably: “What is going to be that nominee’s worldview?”On the last point, some left-leaning voices in recent days have tried to elevate the relationship between big business and the Supreme Court as an issue in the upcoming nomination fight.Judiciary Chairman Dick Durbin, D-Ill., and ranking minority member Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, will meet with Biden at the White House to go over potential nominees to replace Justice Stephen Breyer, who announced his retirement last week. Biden himself served as head of the Judiciary Committee when he was a senator and presided over the confirmations of six high court picks, including Breyer.(3)>>CLARENCE THOMAS. writing on behalf of the five conservatives on the Supreme Court and in his first majority opinion of the term, Justice Clarence Thomas tossed out the verdict, finding that the district attorney can’t be responsible for the single act of a lone prosecutor. The Thomas opinion is an extraordinary piece of workmanship, matched only by Justice Antonin Scalia’s concurring opinion, in which he takes a few extra whacks at Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s dissent. (Ginsburg was so bothered by the majority decision that she read her dissent from the bench for the first time this term.) Both Thomas and Scalia have produced what can only be described as a master class in human apathy. Who's surprised? The conservative judges on the supreme court are more unabashedly and unapologetically activist than any of the liberal judges the conservatives always used to complain about. At least this time they just ignored some of the facts of the case, not, as in the citizens united case, ignored normal procedure plus threw out stare decisis.If Roe v Wade isn't overturned and the separation of state and church at least weakened in the next few years, I'll bloody well eat my hat. If I had one.(4)>>The Court IS ALWAYS STRONGLY CONSERVATIVE . For decades, a quartet of liberal justices has sometimes been able to secure -- often through tense negotiations -- a crucial fifth vote from the conservative wing. That has meant even though America's highest bench was shifting rightward, it preserved abortion rights and narrowly declared a right to same-sex marriage.But, for the most part, the Court’s most recent religion cases have been extraordinarily favorable to the Christian right, and to conservative religious causes generally. Many of the Court’s most recent decisions build on earlier cases, such as Hobby Lobby, which started to move its religious jurisprudence to the right even before Trump’s justices arrived. But the pace of this rightward march accelerated significantly once Trump made his third appointment to the Court.(5)>>Shortly after news of Justice Stephen Breyer’s retirement. Breyer is one of the three remaining liberal justices, and his decision to retire after more than 27 years on the court allows President Joe Biden to appoint a successor who could serve for several decades and, in the short term, maintain the current 6-3 split between conservative and liberal justices.The progressive group Demand Justice hired a truck last year to drive around the Supreme Court's neighborhood bearing this sign: "Breyer Retire. It's time for a Black woman Supreme Court justice."Among likely contenders are federal Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson, former Breyer law clerk, and Leondra Kruger, a justice on California's Supreme Court.Despite calls from some Biden supporters to add more seats to the Supreme Court to counter its current conservative lean, Breyer said in March that such a move would risk undermining confidence in the court.(6)>>Kamala Harris for the Supreme Court. So they shove Kamala into a Supreme Court slot….Biden picks a new Vice President, resigns, and suddenly they have exactly the person they want as president who will not have had one vote cast for them to be president. Sounds like a democrat dream. Lol. Absolute insanity this could happen. My god i can only imagine the leftist shilling trying to sell this corruption as legitimate to the American people. Bonkerz .Yes. The worst AG in California history. A woman who is famous for being Willie Brown’s mistress. On SCOTUS. America deserves better. And Biden could not pick worse. Her 15 tie-breaking votes in 2021 were the most ever by a vice president in a calendar year. Senate Democrats, nominally in control of the 50-50 chamber because of Harris, will need her this year to continue breaking ties to help advance their policy agenda and secure confirmation of the administration’s nominees to the executive branch and judicial positions. Even if her vote isn’t needed, Harris—the first woman, the first Black American and the first South Asian American to serve as vice president—could still preside over the high-profile vote and announce the confirmation of the first Black woman to the nation’s highest court.(7)>>Come on now does America want another war , another cold war ? If you’re too young to have lived through the original Cold War .If that stance has echoes of the Berlin crisis of 1961, which led to the building of the wall, or the invasion of Czechoslovakia by the Warsaw Pact powers in 1968, well, the similarities (and some significant differences) are all there.Do we really want a future of fear? Do we want the United States and its supposed enemy to once again squander untold trillions of dollars on military expenditures while neglecting basic human needs, including universal health care, education, food, and housing, not to mention failing to deal adequately with that other looming existential threat, climate change?(7.1)>>ANOTHER TRAP TO SUCK AMERICA INTO ANOTHER WAR ???? True, but an actual war would cost magnitudes more than what they have spent on “border exercises”. I’m not sure they have the money for a real war. NEVER TRUST the AMERICAN MILITARY INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX, they'll LIE via news media to the American people . The other civilizations' lack of negotiating, dealing, or compromising anything was always a source of frustration. We could have had decades if not centuries of peace and technological advancements and wonder-building. We could have had joint wonder-building ventures, but noooo everyones' afraid and paranoid of my Science Victory. The Latest fear mongering media , In fact, during the past few decades, there has been an eerie perception of some sort of a NATO crisis or another: a “profound crisis”, a “deepening crisis”, a “fundamental crisis”, a “general crisis”, an “unprecedented crisis” and even – a “real crisis”.(7.2)>>to explain first how diplomacy work in general and what specifically US diplomacy is.I mean....it is??....it means NATO countries such as USA can have military bases there and have nukes. So ya it IS kind of a threat? Kind of like Cuba accepting Soviet nukes was also a threat, and remember how upset America got about that lolThis isn't the 60's though, and the Cold War has been over for over 30 years. To try and dictate the allowance of a foreign, sovereign nation into an international group is tyrannical and- more importantly- nonsensical. The US has nuclear subs and naval groups all over the planet, literally. They don't need bases in Ukraine to nuke Russia, and so far the only one to move troops into Ukraine has been Russia. The whole "we need the buffer for defense" is just a PR excuse used by Putin to continue his adventurism in Ukraine, which gets him lots of good, distracting news to give the conservatives back home while real people die in defense of their homeland.Let’s not kid ourselves here. If Russia decided to buddy up with Mexico and establish some bases there, then the USA wouldn’t allow this.I don’t know what the solution here is though. Ukraine should get to do what they want, join NATO. Russia should be able to protect their borders and not have hostile neighbours. The USA and NATO I have no idea what they should do. (8)>>Ukraine is still getting a lot of weapons and military aid. The American government is making matters worse in the Russia -Ukraine conflict by sending weapons to Ukraine . Sends the wrong message . How can we guarantee that our arms won't be used against civilians in a goddamn civil war?As a matter of fact, how can we guarantee that they won't just sell our weapons, just like they did with the MREs we sent them?The West has issued numerous sanctions against Russia in a bid to get it to stop its aggression in the Ukraine crisis, though Moscow denies playing any part in the conflict. The United States so far has supplied Ukraine with non-lethal military equipment, such as flak jackets, medical supplies, radios and night-vision goggles.Unfriendly steps, such as Ukraine bolstering a defense from being invaded. They totally deserve to be invaded for that.I mean, the US was selling arms in the past years and that didn't stop Russia's saber-rattling - on the contrary, it fuels their narrative of being provoked.That’s what is hilarious about all of their statements and I hope the Russian people see it too. UK supplying anti tank weapons to Ukraine… if Russia doesn’t invade and if Russia has no tanks in the Ukraine then how would those be a threat to “Russia”.(8.1)>>NATO.This will prove a challenging task. NATO seems to have lost its mojo after Trump deformed its strategic vision and values and cast doubt over its shared destiny, albeit rhetorically. I don't think the EU wants NATO to exist anymore , the EU is basically cozy with the Russian Federation .The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) is the physical manifestation of this relationship, and if dissolved, would be sorely missed. (9)>>Putin, and banned his TV channels. Putin's gamble makes sense from his perspective, because he has a waning window to have any leverage anywhere and needs to drum up nationalism at home... but its also a gamble that could undo him if he doesn't somehow pull off enough of a material win to offset the damage he'll be doing to both Russia, and more specifically its oligarchs, and IMO even in the best case scenario for Russia, the negatives will end up costing more than he gets out of the deal. Dealing with the insurgency to retain Ukraine alone is going to end up eating more resources than its worth, never mind the sanctions and asset freezes/seizures. It'll be one small step forward for his ambition/pride, and 4 giant steps backward for everyone else stuck going along with his hubris.(10)>>Ukraine to implement the Minsk agreements. Start implementing the Minsk agreements. And statements like " May Russia implement them too" are either made by dishonest or ignorant people, the Minsk agreements clearly define the order of actions and the ball is now in Ukraine's side which must hold elections in Donbass and make changes to the constitution. I think the West is getting increasingly put off by Putin's aggressive rhetoric as it is dispersed by his minions, and will increasing pressure the EU to join in severe sanctions to give Putin something to think about. This is if Minsk II collapses, or never gets off the ground for even one day.There is nothing in this agreement that blocks a future EU or NATO membership, in fact its almost helping them along. The border control thing is HUGE. Its basically a point that will dictate a lot of the others and how the future of the area will develop.It was political theater, Merkel and Hollande leaders wanted to forestall US intervention, Putin and Poroshenko wanted to look like they were open to peace. There was precious little substance there from the beginning, though if you focused on some parts and ignored others as you have in your post, either side could come to the conclusion that they were robbed or that they got a great deal.By implementing Minsk agreement, giving broad autonomy to Donbass and general amnesty for political prisoners. It will probably lead to several other regions requesting same and Ukraine transforming in federation like modern Germany. For this to happen either Ukraine political elites or their american handlers have to agree, so far they prefer current state of affairs.(11)>>Ukraine internationally recognized as permanently Russian. "The Ukraine" is offensive to Ukranians, because adding "the" makes them feel like Ukraine is just a region inside Russia, which is...Sort of the basis of this whole conflict.There is also a terrifying subtext of some hardliners who remember Kiev was an early capital of Russia so they feel its an important part of their birthright to control it. This isn't a massive belief but some of the people in control of "the little green men" believe it. 2021 essay by Putin, titled “On the Historical Unity of Russians and Ukrainians,” as an example of his thinking.In the essay, Putin called the two nations “essentially the same historical and spiritual space,” tracing his notion of a shared history back more than a thousand years.
