Colin Unger

I've looked into it and you appear to be mostly correct. Certainly more correct than I was. The Senate Democrats led by Harry Reid used the nuclear option to eliminate the 60-vote rule on executive branch nominations and federal judicial appointments. And then Harry Reid extended it to the Supreme Court as a response. I believe that the filibuster is still in place because I have heard talk that the democrats may be planning to remove the filibuster in the future. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_option I had almost completely forgotten about Kavanaugh. However, I think we can all agree that he was foolish and unwise to have made these comments? My point was that customarily the supreme court nominee doesn't weight in on current politics and that there is good reason for that. It would not reflect well on them to do so.

There is definitely hypocrisy on in this regard on both sides. Both sides are saying the opposite as to what they said when the roles were reversed. Classic politicians.

When it comes to political parties there is always shenanigans on both sides. The fact remains that the process became partisan when the democrats changed the laws to require only a simple majority. I don’t think anyone can envision a scenario now where this process won’t be completely partisan. You don’t think the democrats would want Supreme Court justices who would want to remove people’s rights to bare arms? To further back my statement Roe V Wade is an example of where democratic appointed justices made a ruling that created new law. BTW. I’m in favor of a women’s right to choose and I’m in favor of stricter gun control. But that’s outside of the larger point.

That’s somewhat disingenuous. Just because I think that some of the most outlandish attacks on Trump haven’t been vetted doesn’t mean that I hold him in high regard. There were multiple democrats running in the primaries who I thought would present a large improvement over Donald Trump. But just like last time they ended up stacking the deck against these candidates and nominated one of the few candidates who would be worse than even Trump who has only produced a few positive outcomes during his presidency.

The process of choosing Supreme Court justices has become more partisan since the Obama Administration changed the rules to allow for a simple majority in the senate in order to approve a Supreme Court pick. You might be surprised though that often these picks don’t end up voting the way that the president who chose them is hoping. The Republicans hope to choose justices that will not create new law when voting them in. The Democrats hope to put in picks who will make rulings that will create new law so that they don’t have to. I could be wrong but I think that there are very few Supreme Court nominees in the past who have weighed in on current politics. Not sure why she should be expected to.

Hadn't heard of this one. This certainly seems worth exploring to determine what would have been different had this team still existed.

Yeah same. Probably 15 minutes and done. I can assure you I wouldn't wait 10-11 hours to vote. One vote is meaningless anyways. Even if my one vote would decide an election I'm not convinced id wait 11 hours given there's very little true difference between large tent parties lol

There have been times when he's failed to condemn White Supremacists upon request. However, that is because he's insulted by the request. Why does he have to constantly be asked that question when he's condemned White Supremacists so many time. I view it more as an ego thing where he's not going to be a puppet to every request the media makes of him. Especially when he's already done it so many times. Its really laughable and also a lie at this point when people like Joe Biden suggest that Trump to this day has yet to condemn white supremacists. The statement where he said there there were good people on both sides he was talking about protesters who were against tearing down statues who had showed up. Not the neo-nazis.

Was that intended for me? I don't think a nominee for the supreme court wants to give an indication of how they would rule on something in the future that might be much more complex than the simple questions that are being asked. Additionally, these types of questions could be construed as injecting current politics into a supreme court nomination hearing. I could see a nominee not wanting to inject themselves into politics. Politics should not be their role.

Mortality rate is the ratio of covid cases to deaths. The death rate in this article is the number of deaths with Coronavirus being listed as at least one death factor compared to the overall population. This reminds me of when CNN horribly told Americans that they should not look at the Wikileaks documents themselves because this could be illegal and only get their wikileaks news from them. They don't want people to see what's actually be said they want to crop one liners and manipulate reality to match their political leanings.

If only WHO was all on the same page.. https://disrn.com/news/who-official-stop-using-lockdowns-as-primary-virus-control-method?fbclid=IwAR30YkB12EtHkF2GH5lPf6kdGZDEqo2KPcW-CBJ018u2mZfzY-OV_rwvYks

The biggest error in judgement on Covid response in the states was New York governor Cuomo. He literally implemented a policy that required nursing homes to accept clients who already had covid which ended up leading to a massively high fatality rate in New York.

There's more to it than that. During the obama administration instead of working together with the Republicans in the senate the Democrats passed a bill that made it so that all that is required to approve a supreme court justice would be a simple majority. The Republicans were enraged by this subversion of democracy and declared that the democrats would live to regret this decision and sooner than you think. So this is payback for that more than anything. It was a very foolish policy to bring in because it ended up ensuring that Supreme Court selections would be completely partisan going forward and that's exactly what has happened. The democrats right now are being completely disingenuous when they state that they should let the people decide on the supreme court during the next election because they refuse to give a list of the type of individuals that they would nominate to the Supreme Court and they refuse to state whether or not they plan to pack the courts. In doing so they are not actually letting the people decide. Trump and his cohorts keep stating that Joe Biden will indeed stack the courts but I don't believe it. They don't want to state clearly that they won't stack the courts because they want to give progressives false hope. The democrats will love a supreme court which favors the republicans. This will allow them to propose bills that progressives want to see implemented only to have the supreme court block these bills. Then they will be able to tell progressives that we tried and you gotta keep electing us for the next 30 years to get a supreme court in their favor which will never end up happening. It reminds me of George Bush on the abortion issue. He never actually delivered on the issue of Roe v Wade and even put in a supreme court justice who is against overturning it. Republicans like him want to win votes on abortion for the next 30 years without ever actually overturning Roe v Wade. The second it got overturned there would no longer be a reason to vote for them.

In terms of the real estate lawsuit in the earl 70's its' certainly troubling. As is Biden's record from the 70's. I would have greatly preferred candidates who didn't have these types of issues from the 70's like Bernie Sanders and Tusli Gabbard. However, the system is still broken and the best candidates the ones who want to make real change are not being allowed to make waves unfortunately. Tusli Gabbard would have been my most preferred candidate but she dared to speak about the problems with the democratic party and is even more anti-war than Trump. Not sure what Bernie's policy on war would be so she's even more preferred in my mind but she's very clear on the issue. A recap of what Biden was up to in the 70's if we missed the comments that Kamala Harris made towards him in the democratic debates. https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2019/03/joe-biden-record-on-busing-incarceration-racial-justice-democratic-primary-2020-explained.html

You put me in a difficult situation here because for most of these things I agree with you that Trump was in the wrong and am much more comfortable arguing with someone who would state that Trump did absolutely no wrong in these instances. However, I view your take on these events as somewhat of an exaggeration. In terms of separating families and holding them in hold areas at the border Trump was continuing a policy that was implemented by Obama and was using he cages Obama built. The only thing that changed under Trump in this regard is that he no longer sent people back with a warning as Obama was doing in many cases. He felt that you should be processing each case before turning the individual/individuals back because then when you had a repeat there could be stiffer penalties for breaking the law the second time. https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2019/live-updates/election-2020/third-democratic-debate-analysis-and-fact-checking/fact-checker-biden-on-immigration-policy/?arc404=true The situation with presuming guilt of the young Black men in Central Park. He called for the death penalty to be re-instated after the individuals had confessed to the crime of rape and murder. I can't find any evidence of him calling for them to face the death penalty after he became aware that they were innocent of the murder/rape charge. He was critical of a documentary on the subject because it presented these individuals as having been completely innocent wrong place wrong time. Multiple rioters had identified them as being involved in multiple beatings in central park that night. Now, I can't attest to what is true and what is not true in all of this because I'm not privy to the evidence. However, we don't have any reason to believe that Trump was motivated by a hatred towards African Americans. The way i view it he was more likely to believe that they were guilty perhaps because of their skin color which is systemic racism. Regarding Mexican Immigrants. Trump was completely wrong to say the things he said because he focused too much on the bad apples in those comments during his first speech. He's a horrible communicator and he should have not only taken a softer tone but he should have made a much clearer distinction between the average undocumented immigrant who is coming to america for the jobs that are being made available to them and the gangs that are coming into the country across the border. Trump was criticized by fellow Republicans during the debates for his plan to greatly increase legal Mexican Immigration after they've secured the border.

Well there are two types of racism that is often spoken about these days. One is Systemic. This is the type of racism that is almost subconscious. As an example. A white person might encounter several young African Americans when they go out for a walk. They may feel scared or something and walk to the other side of the street. That same white person would encounter several young white teenagerers and think they look like young punks but walk right past them. This would be an example of on a subconscious racism. And then there are pure racists like those in the Alt-Right and KKK ect. Who hate people who are not white, don't want to associate with them, and are fully aware of their hatred. These are two very different things. Everyone to some degree on some level is a systemic racist however most people are no full on racists.

There's all kinds of different waves of people who are either leaving the republicans or leaving the Democrats. There's the #Blexit movement of African Americans who are leaving the democratic party and getting behind Donald Trump led by Candace Owens. There's also a movement of democrats who want to see some abortion laws regarding things like 3rd trimester abortions who are being completely shut out by the Democratic party. They aren't able to have a conversation within their party about the issues whereas the Republicans are willing to talk to them to find common ground. The Lincoln Project seems to be republican strategists who have worked with neocons like John McCain and George Bush. Believe me their problem isn't racisms. There problem is that Donald Trump stole their party and drained these types of people out of the party and attacked their long standing war policy. They want to view Russia like its still the cold war. But like Obama pointed out to John McCain in one of their presidential debates regarding Russia. "The 1980's called. They want their foreign policy back". Its really unfortunate that Hillary Clinton was looking for a narrative that would take attention away from the substance of the leaked emails about what she was doing to Bernie Sanders. I think all this anti-Russia propaganda has really set things back. Don't get me wrong, Putin is a bad dude. But Democrats and Republicans have no problems getting into bed with an even worse regime like the one in Saudi Arabia.

I get that. But you had mentioned wondering what Kamala Harris thought about the situation and I was just trying to point out that her opinion on justice reform is cloudy by her own horrible record on the issue. What was your question exactly?

Of coarse she would be she has a horrible record on criminal justice and now she's pretending to be a progressive. I think Tusli Gabbard said it best in the debate that forced Kamala Harris to step out of the ring.

He has though.. Well its mostly been Jared Kushner pushing him to do these things. But again. I don't look to a politician to provide sincerity. I look to a politician to implement things that i think are right and justified. I can assure you that there's no way the Republicans would have supported that justice reform bill had it not been for Trump. Obama tried to get the bill passed but was never able to. Trump will have made backroom deals with them to make it happen.

He's pardoned several african americans. He pushed through the historic criminal justice reform bill that repeals some of the horrible policies that disproportionately affected African Americans that Biden passed and then bragged about. He also promised the African American community jobs before being elected and then African American employment rates ended up being at all time highs. Going forward he's planning on investing 500 billion dollars into building up African American business and is pledging to label the KKK as a terrorist organization which will open up all kinds of powers to go after white supremacists.

I totally agree with you that he largely is a fake person. He views politics the way that one my view a business start up. You find out what the people want and then you take on those positions. If you follow through on those promises then you will get repeat customers. Like nobody believes he found God for example. But he's done a better job of giving the evangelical vote what they want then other republican presidents. While he does like a lot. Especially when it comes to boasting his accomplishments and also not being honest about things he's done in his life that would hurt his presidency. I feel like he genuinely tries to implement the policies he was elected on. So in that way he's more honest than some presidents. Im not sure what you're referring to in terms of fostering hate for Black People and enables and excuses white supremacists. I hope you aren't referring to the Proud Boys who are 100 horrible things but certainly not white supremacists.

Yeah.. He's a systemic racist and has shown that like many other on many occasions. However, I've yet to see evidence that he hates people who are of a different race than him. In fact I think he's done a lot more than previous presidents for the African American community.

Do you always scream and swear when somebody disagrees with you?

I do hope he wins over Biden for the reasons i've mentioned. But I would have preferred Bernie Sanders over Trump. The biggest issue to me is war. I like how Trump doesn't believe in war and is willing to talk to dictators to reduce tensions like he did in North Korea. I believe Bernie also has a history of speaking to dictators. Im also a big believer in being tough economically on China. So those are two big ones where I think Joe Biden will go back to the old way of catering to China and expanding war efforts. Bernie Sanders like Trump was against the TPP. But establishment republicans and democrats were in favor of it.