tvc184

As far as the experience, what I’d needed? Leon Panetta was a Secretary of Defense under Obama. He sure much had great qualifications! But did he or was he just an insider and trusted ally of the president? According to Wikipedia, Panetta went into the Army in 1964 as a Second Lieutenant and left the service in 1966 as a First Lieutenant. Then he went into private practice as a lawyer and over a decade later entered Congress. Apparently his big breakthrough was chief of staff to Bill Clinton. Fast-forward to Morocco Obama’s presidency, Panetta was named CIA director because…… oh, well connected as a White House chief of staff. And hey, he did two years in the Army. As director of the CIA, Wikipedia says that he supported Barack Obama’s use of drones to strike terrorist. Well, since he supported Obama for using drones, he was picked for Secretary of Defense. So a guy who spent two years in the Army 40 years earlier was picked because he was an insider and chief of staff for Bill Clinton and supported Barack Obama all drone strikes (I did too). I’m not criticizing his pick as Secretary of Defense make compare hair service to a man who spent 20 years in a military, so I have three tours in combat and we’re retired as a Major. He apparently is not qualified but a two year once promoted officer because he was chief of staff for a former president, is qualified. If it’s good for the goose, is it good for the gander? If they have some serious issues, that can be proven with Trump‘s pick, great throw it out there, but when talking about experience, how is that even an issue?

It appears as though the sentencing against Trump for his criminal trial of paying hush money, which was scheduled for later this month, has been adjourned indefinitely. [Hidden Content]

You are stretching that rubber band beyond the breaking point. Now you have God possibly issuing punishment based on Supreme Court picks by presidents. Apparently free will doesn’t exit. When I am before Judgment, I have enough of my own transgressions to answer for. I don’t think that I will have to answer for other people nor they for me.

Coincidence? The school district tried their best to keep God in school by allowing school prayer on campus. They are not the ones who rejected God at school, Supreme Court did that. If it was not a coincidence and there was divine intervention, was SFISD punished by God for fighting it all the way to the Supreme Court to keep Him on campus? Your logic seems flawed.

Maybe that is correct but maybe not. It all comes down to the center…. or maybe even the right side of the aisle. If something like that was allowed to go forward (won’t happen) “most” Republicans are not gonna vote Democrat because there’s a Bible of the classroom. Most Democrats are not going to all of a sudden vote Republican because there’s a Bible in the classroom even if they are Christian and agree with it. It’s probably almost a non-issue for them. How much will the center be offended by such a law dictating Christianity in the classroom? Perhaps enough to throw an election? Perhaps joined by some Republican Christians? Don’t believe it? In Santa Fe ISD v. Doe, the Supreme Court threw out a pre-game prayer over public address system. In that case so as to attempt to make it constitutional, the school district completely backed out of the process. The students were allowed to vote whether they wanted a public address with a prayer. If so, they were allowed to choose their own student representative who would deliver the prayer and what that prayer would be. So in that case, it was completely voluntary by students who are absolutely allowed to pray at school by the Constitution. Since there was no school input at all, they felt that it would pass a constitutional challenge. But no, someone was offended. It was the atheists, right!? Nope. Then it had to be the Muslims who were offended by something like Christian!! Wrong again. It was a Catholics and Mormon who filed the federal lawsuit. So you had two Christians filing on an almost certainly Christian prayers over the public address system although it was supposed to be non-denominational. The Supreme Court ruled that such a prayer was a violation of the Constitution. Because it was at a public school event, on public school property and over a publicly owned PA system, it violated the First Amendment. This isn’t to try to re-litigate the case but just to show that it was two Christians who ended school prayer before football games over the PA system. It wasn’t the evil atheists or someone from an opposing non-Christian religion. So I’m not really sure how a person can claim for that it won’t make no difference. When they put the Bible in the classroom, is it going to be the King James Bible or the Catholic Bible? Don’t be so sure that the opposition won’t be a Christian religion against another Christian religion. Like a bumper sticker that I saw once, my Jesus is better than your Jesus.

This is about keeping the base happy and maybe fulfilling promises. ”We will try to get the Holy Bible back in classrooms!! It won’t happen but….. They can claim the effort was there and the evil opposition killed it.

Conservatives always talk about schools and the Christian religion. The odds of any changes is close to 0%.

I was thinking about that also.

I think that he might have a hard time getting confirmed.

Lt. Colonel Tulsi Gabbard, I believe the last person to drop out of the Democrat primary in 2020 but then put on a terror watch list by the current administration, is named as nomination for Director of National Intelligence.

Not only are they taking this long, it is for house members. Those are not statewide elections like for the president or senators. Those are relatively local elections like only Jefferson and Hardin County in our area.

I said that in another thread. The government was originally planned to make legislation and constitutional changes difficult. For merely enacting a law, it took two different houses, elected by different means. Then it took the president to agree with both houses. If the president disagreed and vetoed the bill, both houses could still override the veto. Then…. if someone gave a challenge, the Supreme Court could rule a law unconstitutional. The Senate has the rule of allowing a senator unlimited time to speak once he takes the floor in debate. Once he stops, his time is over but there is no limit so if he could talk for 30 hours (with short breaks), he can do so. If 40 senators wish to use such a debate tactic, the filibuster, they can tie a bill up for a month or more and potentially kill it. Again, it makes enacting legislation difficult, as it should be. The House with its 435 members could debate for months on a single bill if it had the same debate rules as the Senate. For that reason, they have much more restrictive rules on limiting debates. To end the filibuster the Senate enacted a new rule a little over 100 years ago called cloture. In cloture, if 60 senators agree to it, they can end debate and go to a vote. Cloture will kill a filibuster but it takes a 3/5 60 vote majority to do so. The Dems seem notorious for wanting to change long standing rules if they think it gives them an advantage. It’s basically like cheating but legally. The Democrats could not get several Republican senators to side with them in order to kill the filibuster so the Republicans could effectively stop any presidential nomination, like to the federal courts. That is the rules that they put in place for a reason. When Obama was not nominating moderate judges but more left leaning activist judges to the federal courts, the Republican threw up a roadblock with the filibuster. The Democrats could not gain the 60 votes needed to end debate and force of vote where they would only need 51 votes for confirmation. That left two options. Obama could appoint more moderate judges and get a few Republicans to agree to allow the vote or they could use the nuclear option. In the nuclear option, nicknamed because it’s the most devastating weapon in Senate legislation, there was a loophole to get around cloture. It is basically a legislative trick/loophole in the rules where a senator would ask the majority leader of the Senate (Senate equivalent of Speaker of the House) to suspend the rules on cloture. By rules that is not legal, however….. the loophole allows for a call to clarification the decision and in this clarification process, the rule could be suspended. So there is a back door way around cloture but it kind of makes a mockery of the Senate rules and the intent of making it more of a deliberate body than the House. But….. it’s legal under a loophole. Harry Reid as the Democrat majority leader, had a tantrum with Democrats backing him up. Reid threatened to use the nuclear option unless the Republicans gave them what they demanded. I believe it was Mitch McConnell, who was head of the Republicans as minority leader, who said you really don’t want to do that because you’re not going to be in charge forever. Too bad, the Democrats continued with their temper tantrum and forced the nuclear option. So they got their federal judges appointments. They were fine with that because they expected Hillary Clinton to win the next election and they can continue on for years. Oops!! Shockingly to the Democrats, Donald Trump beat Hillary Clinton and lo and behold, three Supreme Court justice seat came open. The Democrats could have blocked the seats with the filibuster, but… they had changed the rule by ending the cloture requirement for federal judges. So while they could have had the votes needed to blocked Trump‘s Supreme Court nominations, they had given up cloture on federal judge nominations. Oops!! With all the talk of the Supreme Court overturning Roe v. Wade and the bump stock ban, overturning of Chevron, etc., because of Trump nominations, guess who caused it? That’s right, the Democrats, who did not like the rules applying to them and changed the rules. Because they changed the rules, it came back to bite them in the butt big time. So move forward to January 2022 with a tied Senate of 50/50 with Kamala Harris being the swing vote/tie breaker. The Democrats again wanted to change the rules to completely do away with the filibuster and cloture. It would in effect become another House of Representatives. Fortunately, for Republicans at the time and the Democrats now, Democratic Senator Joe Manchin would not side with his own party because he knew the importance of the rules. The long-standing rules were more important than a brief party victory. As Hippie brought up in the OP, if the Republicans remain in control of the House, Trump would have basically a super majority in both houses. A single vote could pass any legislation that the Republicans wished. Obamacare could end with a single vote in both house, the Republicans can vote on making a 15 member Supreme Court and adding six new conservatives to the court almost immediately (a recent Democratic threat), pass a complete abortion ban, make a law making all firearms laws invalid and so on. Again, fortunately for the Democrats, one of their own senators knew the intent of the Senate as opposed to the House and the meaning of the Senate rules to make things difficult. He decided to go with the intent of the Constitution and took a dramatic stand against his own party. Just like they did when they changed rules to get federal judges confirmed, the Democrats would have changed the rules on the filibuster and again it would’ve come back to bite them in the butt big time but one of their own saved them by voting against them. Yes, I think it would be hilarious if the six vote Republican majority in the Senate brought up ending the filibuster. Then watch all 47 Democrat remaining senators who voted to end the filibuster two years ago… vote unanimously to not change the rules.

I was looking to start a thread on this. People claim to be worried about Trump weaponizing the government. Now we fund it that people had their property and lives put at stake due to political affiliation. A FEMA supervisor orders workers to avoid homes with Trump signs? I at first heard it on the radio a couple of hours ago and so started looking into articles. According to an article that I found, the worker was fired and is being investigated so there is that. While I don’t particularly like whataboutism, what if a White FEMA supervisor had said to not check homes with Harris signs? Imagine the outrage (completely correct) and possible protests and riots. Despicable!! [Hidden Content]

!!score:28/34/f

Nederland starting at 40 in OT