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So do actions. There was a time (it seems long ago) when elections were bitterly contested, but when the survivors made it to Congress they would roll up their sleeves and try to get some work done, and this meant working across the aisle. Hard though it may be to believe, Republicans and Democrats often socialized together and even had some pretty solid friendships. For some time now though, Republicans have adopted a scorched-earth strategy of total obstructionism when they are the minority, and ram-it-up-your-ass policy making when they are in the majority. This policy has been carried to the ultimate extreme by McConnell, who has pretty much destroyed the Senate as a deliberative body. Once upon a time the Senate required 60 votes to confirm Cabinet appointments and senior judgeship's including the Supreme Court. In Obama's first term McConnell was minority leader but still pushed the Republicans in the Senate to block several of Obama's nominees for his Cabinet, and also many nominees the judiciary. He was not coy about using the filibuster to try to castrate the Obama administration, so that Obama could not seat a full cabinet or fill judicial appointments in a timely manner. This forced the majority leader, Harry Reid, into a Hobson's choice. A Hobson's choice is where you have to make a choice but you only have one option. He eliminated the filibuster (the 60% rule) for most positions that required Congressional approval, but he did not eliminate it for Supreme Court appointments, arguing that such an important appointment should require more than a bare 51 votes to confirm. Leaving the Supreme Court at 60 votes meant any nominee would need to attract at least a few votes from the minority party, so they could not be too extreme. The problem with the Democrat's approach is that they still assumed some measure of good faith on the part of the Republicans. Instead, when the Republicans gained control of the Senate, McConnell blocked almost all of Obama's judicial nominees, creating a huge backlog of empty positions and also a huge backlog of cases waiting to be heard, and ultimately of course he blocked Obama's nominee for a Supreme Court seat. Then when Trump nominated Gorsuch, McConnell eliminated the 60 vote rule for the Supreme Court so he could ram through Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, and now Barrett with not one Democratic vote. What I meant by "actions have consequences" is that McConnell's legacy will be a Congress in which Democrats will have learned the lesson to never allow the Republicans one inch, because if you do they will fuck you. The Senate is dead as "the world's greatest deliberative body". It will for a long time be focused far more on screwing over the other side than on doing any actual bipartisan legislation. Good job, Mitch. I have voted for Republicans in the past, when I thought they were the best candidate. Not for president it is true, but I would not have been too alarmed if McCain or Romney had won as I was confident they actually had the best intentions for the country. No longer. The Republican "party" has shown itself to be interested only in cementing their own power in place, establishing one party rule, and prostrating themselves before Trump and their corporate masters. Even if I think a particular individual is OK the party is so corrupt I can never again consider a Republican for any level of government.

It was always going to turn into a night of Trump spewing trash out of his mouth while Biden was talking. At least now they’re doing it on separate channels.

Yes. Or at least not questioning or verifying any information. You have not denied beating your wife. When did you stop beating your wife turtle?

Max Boot, in WaPo 10/13/20 Many voters are still supporting Trump because they’re living in a hermetically sealed disinformation bubble that is impermeable to reality. A Pew Research Center survey makes clear the extent of the problem. Among those who get their election news primarily from Fox “News,” 86 percent say Trump is delivering the “completely right” or “mostly right” message about the pandemic, 78 percent that “the U.S. has controlled the outbreak as much as it could have” and 61 percent that Trump and his administration get the facts right about the coronavirus “almost all” or “most of the time.” Perhaps the most disturbing finding of all: 39 percent of Fox News viewers say that QAnon — an insane conspiracy theory that posits that Trump’s opponents are satanic child-molesters — is “somewhat good” or “very good” for the country. I’m sorry, these are not issues on which rational people can legitimately disagree. Trump’s covid-19 message — that, as he said Saturday, “it is disappearing” — is objectively false. In the past week, daily confirmed coronavirus cases in the United States have increased by 13.3 percent and hospitalizations by 9.8 percent. Trump’s claims to the contrary, we have done far worse during the pandemic than most wealthy countries. If we had the same death rate as Canada, 132,000 victims of covid-19 would still be alive. And it should go without saying that QAnon, whose adherents have been linked to numerous acts of violence, is a bane, not a boon. Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan (D-N.Y.) used to say: “Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not to his own facts.” That’s no longer true. While irrationality and conspiratorial thinking exist on both the left and the right, the right in recent decades has been much more afflicted by an epidemic of “alternative facts.” This is not a new development: Conspiracy theories about fluoridation, Whitewater, Vince Foster’s death, John F. Kerry’s Swift boat service, Bill Clinton’s 1969 trip to Moscow and Barack Obama’s birth certificate predate the Trump presidency. But the rise of Fox News and Facebook allows “fake news” to spread much more readily — and Trump gives it the imprimatur of the Oval Office. It’s bad enough that the president lies so much; what’s worse is that so many think he is telling the truth. Unfortunately, even if Trump is defeated, a large portion of the country will continue to believe a lot of things that simply are not so — and a small but significant number could be led into violence by their lunatic beliefs. The disturbing plot by members of a right-wing militia to kidnap the governor of Michigan may be a taste of what is to come. As Francisco Goya warned, “the sleep of reason produces monsters.”

as did i. me thinks a book is in order. that was entertaining as hell.

The number of abortions at 7 months is pretty small. The number done when the mother's life is not in danger or when they find serious defects in the fetus is just about zero. The idea of abortions that late being done for birth control is one that has been fabricated by the 'pro-birth' crowd (they sure as hell aren't 'pro-life' - the last 7 months have demonstrated that pretty clearly).

And you don't think that she'll vote for every single thing that will limit it? Effectively making it impossible? I'm no single-issue voter, but I don't want an ideologue of any type on the Supreme Court. Wendy P.

I completely agree -- and those laws that are morally wrong or right are exactly the ones that I'm worried about. People who want to preserve what they feel they've earned (even if it's by being born into a wealthy family, or by having connections unavailable to most people), or who want society to look like they think it did in the 1950's when they felt safe at home in their small isolated towns, unaware of the mass of people who didn't, in fact, have anything remotely resembling equal rights. As long as viagra is covered by insurance and birth control pills aren't, don't go telling me that it's gender-neutral... I will add that there are people who feel just as strongly that abortion is morally wrong, just as discrimination (against white males too), etc. I think my real argument with strict originalists is that they rule in a vacuum, not the real world. Wendy P.

I don't think there is anything about her to fight over on a personal level. She seems to be qualified academically. She has religious beliefs and associated lifestyle decisions that will seem extreme to many, but I think those are her choices to make for herself. My issue is that she seems willing to impose those beliefs and choices on others, at least indirectly. Yesterday I saw an interview with two legal scholars, one pretty conservative and the other liberal. They were asked where she fit in with the current slate of 8 justices. They both agreed that she does not "fit in", she would actually be significantly to the right of Justice Thomas, who everyone agrees is currently the most conservative justice by some distance. She clerked for Justice Scalia, who once said of himself "I am an originalist, but not a nut", and who on rare occasions could be convinced to see things from a "liberal" point of view (for example, considering flag burning as political speech). People who are familiar with Amy Barrett say that no-one should expect any agreement with the liberal wing of the court, ever. She will, of course, be polite and even charming as she guts voting rights, LGBTQ rights, reproductive rights, the ability of the government to protect citizens against pollution and disease, etc. She "praised" Ginsberg for "breaking glass ceilings", but recall that Scalia disagreed with Ginsberg on every important civil rights case, and Barrett is apparently more right wing that Scalia. Of course she cannot do those things completely on her own. She will need other justices to agree. The problem is, with this nominee, the court is the most conservative it has been since the 1930s, when the court was focused on undoing as much as it could of the New Deal legislation. I think we will have a big problem when the court is running almost a century behind much of the rest of the country. MAGA notwithstanding, America was not so great for a lot of people in the 1930s/1940/1950s. If the court strips millions of people of their health insurance, their ability to make decisions for themselves about reproduction, their ability to vote, breath clean air, etc it will, I think, destroy the public's confidence in the judicial system. I think a more balanced court, where no one side is able to impose it's will on the other in every case, is more in the best interest of the country. Don