Yep. I agree. Every time Obama was forced to use executive power, I cringed and was thinking “what if Bush had done this? What if Bush had the power to do this?”. Of course, at the time I had no idea it could be even worse than that.
I mean even many Obama supporters, such as I, had issues with some of the things like that, even while acknowledging the necessity at times.
The debt ceiling thing was one such fiasco. It was a bad set of choices. Congress was refusing to act like a responsible party, and so the options were executive overreach, default on debts, or anarchy. In that scenario the options for executive action were uniformly bad, and worth criticism, but also typically better than defaulting on federal debt. So many were critical, while positing at as the least bad option.
Also worth noting that Obama used executive actions less than any president since Grover Cleveland, while Trump is using more than any president since Carter (an increase in annual rate of 58% over Obama).
But to put the hypocrisy up, look at the argument over states rights. Conservatives are for it when defending the right to segregate and discriminate, but against it when it comes to stricter gun regulations and environmental issues. I mean right now the GOP is looking at ways to stop California from passing environmental regulations for automobiles, and they already successfully forced Illinois to take concealed carry against the wishes of the populace, as well as remove the hand gun ban within the city of Chicago.
I mean look back at things like the drone campaigns of Obama. It was a frequent point of criticism about how they were done, and how they were an extension of a massive executive expansion of power signed in under a GOP leadership with the Patriot Act and War on Terror authorization. So very few people were genuinely comfortable with it, even when it was ‘our’ guy.
It always comes down to: if something helps the rich/wealthy/gun owners/racists/religious then it is perfectly fine and legal. If it doesn’t then it is the worst thing ever and should be immediately investigated!
The debt ceiling is a unique situation since Congress can’t fucking default on the federal debt. It’s right there in the Constitution. How they ever started that horseshit is beyond me. I honestly wanted Obama to say “Go ahead, we’ll see what the Supreme Court says,” because they’d say “Are you fucking high? It’s right there in the Fourteenth Amendment, leave us alone and do your jobs.”
Sure, I agree.
It doesn’t mean that some of those solutions floated out there would be good, long term. Better than the alternative? Yes. But also a grand expansion of executive power.
The 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution would seem to cover that (and has generally been interpreted that way) but there are wackos out there cough ClarenceThomas cough who believe that it only applies to the federal government and not to those of the states.
Which is extra stupid because it was passed during Reconstruction, so it’s pretty obvious it was intended to apply to the States.
But Thomas believes in the dumbest of all interpretations… when it suits him.
Believe it or not - the current debt ceiling is the result of an improvement over the original setup:
Between 1788 and 1917 Congress would authorise each bond issue by the United States Treasury by passing a legislative act that approved the issue and the amount.
In 1917, during World War I, Congress created the debt ceiling with the Second Liberty Bond Act of 1917, which allowed Treasury to issue bonds and take on other debt without specific Congressional approval, as long as the total debt fell under the statutory debt ceiling.
Vice President Mike Pence’s physician has resigned, the latest fallout from the collapse of Ronny Jackson’s nomination for secretary of Veterans Affairs.
Dr. Jen Peña, who like Jackson is a military physician detailed to the White House, was among those who detailed claims of professional misconduct against Jackson to senators considering his nomination, according to a person familiar with the events.
“The Vice President’s office was informed today by the White House Medical Unit of the resignation. Physicians assigned to the Vice President report to the White House Medical Unit and thus any resignation would go entirely through the Medical Unit, not the Vice President’s office,” Pence spokeswoman Alyssa Farah said in a statement.
How do these swamp people justify it to themselves as Christians? https://www.gq.com/story/scott-pruitt-epa-personal-travel-agency
Too much bran in the morning probably.
We live in a helicopter parent society where parents fear allowing their kids to play in their own streets or to walk to school unattended. Parents can be arrested for leaving their kids alone at home. You can go online and find out where every sexual deviant in your city lives, and if any are in your neighborhood.
Is it any wonder (regardless of the religion angle) that parents are uncomfortable with the idea of males being allowed in their girls restrooms?
The thing is, legislating bathrooms literally does not make sense once you consider how it actually works.
For instance:
Ok, so imagine you have a transgender man, who was born a woman. He looks like a dude. You’re gonna say, “Hey guy, you can’t go into the men’s room!” So, instead, you want him to go into the woman’s room… despite the fact that he appears to be a man.
That’s going to be far more traumatic to a girl in there, than it would be for him to use the men’s room.
It also leads to situations, which have actually already happened, where moron bathroom vigilantes have assaulted girls, who are going into a girl’s room, because they “looked like men”. Not only do those cases highlight the absurdity of making a law that is going to require people to somehow know what someone’s actual born gender was, by looking at them… but it simultaneously highlights the fact that what they think they want is actually the OPPOSITE of what they want. Because if you force transgender folks to use the bathroom matching their birth gender, it means that you’re inherently arguing for people who look like men to be going into the women’s room.
Such legislation makes no sense, on any level, at all. It’s nonsensical from every angle.
Wait, I’m sorry, what? Mike Pence’s physician was a WOMAN? Was his wife present for any physical exams?
Until you realize that hard core conservatives believe that transgenderism is just a disorder and that a trans man (who used to be a woman) is still 100% a woman, just dressed like a man and vice versa.
It’s total bullshit and why you need legislation protecting people’s rights, if only to get rid of this antiquated thinking.
I mean Scuzz asks if we’re shocked that people think that way. No, we’re not shocked, we just want the manifestation of that thinking - assaults and victimization - to stop.
Well real conservatives dont. They would regard it as an unwelcome government intrusion into a persons freedom.
I doubt the people voting and crafting the law care either. But like all Republican politicians, they just want to make sure the bigot vote is shored up for them in November.
But no, even if you think that, it still doesn’t work for the reasons I said… you still have people who look like men, walking into the women’s room. That’s the situation that the law would require… which is exactly the imagined scenario that they are trying to prevent.
I just think people claiming those against it are some kind of evil right wing monsters need to look at the world as a whole and how parents view it in particular. As someone with two girls I am not sure how I would feel about it if they were little and just going thru this now. Knowing them now I realize for them it probably wouldn’t be a big deal, but hindsight makes things easy.
In today’s US politics I don’t believe there is any such population of “real conservatives” as you describe. At least not as a legitimate wing of politics with any notable influence.
I go back and forth. Certainly a significant portion of “never trump” conservatives I would put in that category. On the other hand the vast majority of Republican voters have demonstrated they are completely willing to vote for the racist, the bigoted and the insane. So yeah “real” conservatives if they exist in numbers are happy to go along with their parties descent into whatever the hell it has become. Sadly.