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Mrs Whiggins

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Posts posted by Mrs Whiggins

  1. What about Facebook? That has got to be pretty bad too. Facebook is harder for me to follow because most folks set that to private or Facebook requires a login. Twitter at least for the most part is public and even though I don't have an account, it is pretty easy to spot the bots. Every once in awhile I will use one of the bot checkers that doesn't require an account to use. They are everywhere though.

     

  2. Quote

    “Alex, what are things you will never seen reported on the 6 o’clock news? Correct!”

    Dear Mr. Cruz,

    It has come to our attention that not only did you fudge your PE grade during the basketball unit but there seems to have been a mixup with your TAKS test results. Specifically the grammar section involving subject verb agreement. Therefore, we hereby inform you that it is required to repeat third grade. Please report to the HISD Administration Building so they can determine to which elementary school you are zoned. We ask that you not delay as the school year is already underway and you will have to make up any school work you have missed.

  3. 13 hours ago, Pig Bellmont said:

    I’m with this guy

    Not a guy but if I were, I would still feel the same. You all are smart and know that there is a give and take with sharing information between friends, but a lot of times, friends need to know when to be respectful of boundaries. As a side note, information is power and I have witnessed people abusing that 'in the name of friendship.' (It's Mean Girls 101) It is a dynamic that can be common among family members too, although I was fortunate enough to be raised in a family that viewed that as unacceptable.

     

  4. This is from Politico:

    https://www.politico.com/story/2019/09/12/ted-cruz-halil-sul-ozerden-nomination-1492305

    I am old enough to remember how expensive birth control was when it wasn't covered. I took it for medical reasons unrelated for contraception and frankly the intrusion into my personal health care decisions is wrong.  I'm fairly certain that Cruz' objection to this judge centers on the coverage of contraceptives (under ACA) and the judge has a 'funny' name.
     

    Quote

     

    Ted Cruz will oppose Trump's judicial nominee

    'Sul' Ozerden's nomination to the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals could be in jeopardy.

    Sen. Ted Cruz will oppose President Donald Trump’s nominee for the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals, Halil Suleyman “Sul” Ozerden, a major setback for the embattled nomination.

    Cruz (R-Texas) has informed the White House and colleagues this week that he will oppose Ozerden, according to three people familiar with the Judiciary Committee’s internal dynamics.

    ---

    “For a lifetime appointment on the court of appeals, I believe we should be looking for someone with a strong, demonstrated record as a constitutionalist. I have significant concerns that Judge Ozerden’s judicial record does not indicate that he meets that standard."

    ---

    As a district judge, Ozerden approved the Obama administration’s dismissal of a challenge to the Affordable Care Act’s contraception coverage mandate, deeming the challenge premature. Senate Republicans have expressed concern about Ozerden’s decision in 2012.

     

     

  5. I missed the first half of the debate due to a conflict and haven't sat down to view it yet, but my short take on the second half was still very pro Warren. All the rest had good and bad moments, I like Buttigieg, angry Beto, and if Klubuchar didn't put me to sleep, she was okay. I wish the candidates had more time per question because sometimes one would say something interesting but then never explain 'why' it (programs they had implemented) worked.

     

  6. 9 hours ago, Hugo Stiglitz said:

     

    I wish some enterprising campaign creator for the Democrats could shoot a commercial using this.

    Picture a split screen with Trump on the left with an incandescent light bulb where his brain is, while all his stupid lies are are scrolling across his chest. Other side of the screen has some of the images we have gotten all to used to seeing: detention center children, mass shooting chaos, hateful rally people with angry faces, and meanwhile the bulb fizzles out and then it all goes black until a sun rises on the full screen with the Democratic party etc.

    That is what we have going on before our eyes. A dim bulb that is about to expire.

    • Like 4
  7. 13 minutes ago, Hugo Stiglitz said:

    Little is known about Bruce Mann, Elizabeth Warren’s ball and chain.  He’s known for being a Harvard Law professor specializing in American History.  I can’t see what value he might bring to the White House except handling all the decorations during the holidays and planting a vegetable garden out back for the kids.  He might be able to fill the Easter Bunny suit too. 

    Given what the Trump family has brought to the WH, I think a Victory Garden would be just fine.

  8. 47 minutes ago, DixonHur said:

    I can't believe some of you people.  Finally we have a president who understand that people like water with some flavor and you're bitching about it?

    clean-dirty-waterx.png

    Remember about five years ago when Rex Tillerson and Dick Cheney sued to stop a fracking company from building the water tower near their ranches? Buncha NIMBYS. If you can't drink brown water or set it on fire when it comes out of the spigot, are you really living?

  9. 1 hour ago, wild_turkey said:

    I'm interested in peoples' thoughts on married couples who choose to not have children.

    Have you chosen this path for yourself? If so then what were your reasons and how has that decision held up through the years? Any regrets down the road?

    Do you have friends, family, or colleagues who have done this? Is your opinion positively or negatively impacted by their status as nonparents, or does that not enter the equation at all for you?

    If you have a general positive or negative impression of this, then what factors into that? Morals, ethics, religion, impact on society, selfishness, narcissism, jealousy, etc?

    I have children, but I have friends who do not. I don't have an opinion on their status as childless other than I figure it is their life and I consider it a private matter for them. It did make getting together more difficult when my children were younger, but you make it work out if all are agreeable to life circumstances changing plans sometimes. It can be nice to have conversations that are adult centered and with people from a variety of backgrounds and viewpoints.

    • Like 1
  10. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/12/business/dealbook/gun-background-checks-business.html
     

    Quote

     

    Business Leaders Call on Congress to Act on Gun Violence

    “Doing nothing about America’s gun violence crisis is simply unacceptable,” the heads of 145 companies wrote to senators.

    In a direct and urgent call to address gun violence in America, the chief executives of some of the nation’s best-known companies sent a letter to Senate leaders on Thursday, urging an expansion of background checks to all firearms sales and stronger “red flag” laws.

    “Doing nothing about America’s gun violence crisis is simply unacceptable and it is time to stand with the American public on gun safety,” the heads of 145 companies, including Levi Strauss, Twitter and Uber, say in the letter, which was shared with The New York Times.

     

    More at link.

  11. 14 hours ago, formermav43 said:

    1) That’s progressivism in the classical sense of the late 19th/early 20th century. You’re correct that it’s potentially misleading based on current usage, but there is a bit more art than science in the terminology they’re using to describe particular ideologies. Which relates to 

    2) You’re hung up on the “authoritarianism” label without realizing that y-axis is all about authoritarianism (whatever they actually called it, since the pic isn’t labeled). In other words, communism is more “authoritarian” than the “authoritarianism” on the chart, not less.

    This. I am a fan of old school progressivism. That is how we got kindergarten in the United States among other things. When one squawks words like a parrot without recognizing context and usage, it creates problems in comprehension.

    14 hours ago, DDD Dad said:

    6tzw5gxt1k311.jpg

    Marysha Bordenikova?

    • Hook 'Em 1
  12. 9 hours ago, Doc Sam Beckett said:

    So, while we are talking about Donald's sharpie drawings and nonsensical ramblings, this shit is happening.... 

    Is anyone going to stand up and stop this shit? Fuck 2020 and voicing our opinions at the ballot box. This is fucking unacceptable and one of these empty suits needs to fucking do something.... 

    https://beta.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2019/09/10/justice-departments-outlandish-arrogant-position-congressional-subpoenas/

     

      Reveal hidden contents

     

    The Justice Department has just taken the position that the executive branch may never be required to comply with a congressional subpoena.

    If that view sounds outlandish and arrogant, that’s because it is.

    The department’s assertion, which has escaped general notice since it was filed on Friday, came in its motion to dismiss the lawsuit brought by the House Ways and Means Committee to enforce its subpoena for President Trump’s tax returns. The motion contains several additional conventional arguments, but it leads with an absolutist assertion that the judiciary is powerless to address its noncompliance.

    The committee’s lawsuit seeks to enforce the straightforward statutory command in federal law that “upon written request from the chairman of the Committee on Ways and Means of the House of Representatives . . . the Secretary [of the Treasury] shall furnish such committee with any return or return information specified in such request."

    Notwithstanding the clarity of the law here, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin rebuffed the request on the spurious ground that the committee lacked any valid legislative purpose, prompting Congress’s lawsuit.

    And, now, the Justice Department has gone all in. Its centerpiece argument in the motion to dismiss is that nothing can be done to remedy its refusal to comply with Congress’s request.

    The Justice Department is arguing that, when the executive refuses for any reason to comply — no matter how clear the legal command — it sets up “an interbranch political dispute.” And, further, Congress may not “conscript the judiciary” on its side of such a dispute.

    Thus, according to the Justice Department, there is no constitutional or statutory basis for a congressional committee to try to enforce its subpoenas in the federal courts “where the Executive Branch has decided not to do so” (emphasis added).

    This position, by the way, has nothing to do with the fact that the subject of the committee’s request is the president. Congress has sued the treasury secretary for failing to comply with a clear congressional command; the Justice Department’s assertion that the secretary can just blow off Congress would apply even if a private individual’s tax returns were being sought. Or, indeed, to any command to any executive branch official.

    It also goes well beyond the already aggressive positions taken by the Justice Department during previous administrations. Previous departments (both Democrat and Republican) have argued, unsuccessfully, that the courts should not interfere in subpoena battles over assertions of executive privilege. Here, the government argues for a right to ignore the plain statutory command that it “shall” furnish the tax records to the committee.

    Thus, the basic outlandishness and arrogance: The department‘s position serves to convert the most rank legal noncompliance into one side of an august-sounding “interbranch political dispute,” which it then declares beyond the reach of the judiciary to resolve. The unitary executive becomes the lawless executive.

    If accepted, the Justice Department’s reasoning would gut Congress’s well-recognized constitutional oversight functions. The executive could simply respond to any congressional demand with a two-move checkmate: (1) refuse to comply, for good, bad, or no reason, and (2) declare an “interbranch political dispute” that the courts could not address.

    In fact, the motion to require Mnuchin to turn over Trump’s tax records falls in the dead center of the traditional scope of Article III power. Look no further than perhaps the most famous and important decision in the Supreme Court’s history, Marbury v. Madison. 

     

    Marbury, decided in 1803, held that the law provided no discretion for then-Secretary of State James Madison to withhold the judicial commission of William Marbury. Congress had passed a law, exactly like the statutory command at the center of the current dispute, that said the secretary “shall commission all the officers of the United States." Chief Justice John Marshall’s opinion explained “it is the duty of the Secretary of State to conform to the law, and in this he is an officer of the United States, bound to obey the laws.”

    Marshall relied on the fundamental distinction between discretionary powers of the executive, which are generally outside the power of the courts to examine, and nondiscretionary or ministerial responsibilities, which he evidently took as the province of the courts to enforce.

    In determining that the judiciary clearly had power to remedy the executive branch’s breach of its nondiscretionary duty, Marshall stated, “the Government of the United States has been emphatically termed a government of laws, and not of men. It will certainly cease to deserve this high appellation if the laws furnish no remedy for the violation of a vested legal right."  

    The Justice Department’s motion to dismiss didn’t discuss or even cite Marbury. But both of the previous decisions rejecting the department’s position did. Look for this case to produce a stern rebuke to the department’s absolutist position.

     

     

    Thank you for displaying that. It seems like a big deal to just ignore a subpoena, correct?! I mean am I, Jill Citizen, allowed to do that? If not, then they need to comply.

  13. I'm not sure which thread to put this in, but since the topic of the original tweet debate between Dr. Gorski and Rep Stickland concerned vaccines I chose here:

    It is well, I don't know how to put this...so I'll go with 'typical' Stickland. His district must be so so very proud. I'm sure DJ will be calling him to DC soon.

    I think it may have started with this tweet:

    But then escalated. Stickland eventually deleted some of his tweets I think (not sure since I don't do Twitter myself)

    To Stickland calling the Dr a 'bully,' and read on from there...

    The drama of hypocrisy, little big man syndrome, and ad hominem attack all rolled into one big tweet thread are example numero uno of what this country is all about when it comes to our votes and who we elect as our representatives. Congrats District 92! You win the Dummy Games!

  14. Sorry to cut in on the ongoing tragedy with Bahaman citizens and their plight, but is the depression heading for Florida something to monitor or is Texas ok? Got some working travel plans next week but I don't want to get in the way if people need to leave the Gulf area and will reschedule if necessary.

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