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[Baffler]

Well, the bright side of hillary vs. jeb would be you could probably vote for someone else comfortable in the knowledge you're not actually running the risk of changing the results.

The down side is that jeb would actually be on the ticket. Hillary's got her problems, but there's not much else I've noticed that quite embodies "lukewarm conservative incompetence" like jeb does, ruinous public policy and all. Lived through years of that guy as a state governor. Those were not good years.

Still. H v J come 2016, burn down the local polling stations, vote third party. Or sanders or somethin'. It's a plan.

Maybe it's just because I'm from Ohio, but I still think John Kasich doesn't get the credit he deserves. He balanced Ohio's budget and brought it to a surplus without raising taxes, a major talking point for any politician. His plan to tie budget to performance in schools was less successful, but he still ended up increasing education funding. He's had some success in criminal justice reform as well, but a very mixed sort of success. I don't think I'd vote for him because of his apparent hatred for collective bargaining alone, but if it had to be a Republican, I think I'd choose him. If I remember right he's also one of a relatively small number of people who can say that they rode the Tea Party wave, then jumped ship when things got a little too crazy.

[smjjames]

@RedKing: Yeah, Scott Walker has to get his ass in gear.

I have a feeling that the first debate will at least start thinning out the crowd. Then again, we'll have to slog through the problem of 'too many choices and can't decide' syndrome.

The first debate is in August I think? Or September maybe.

[SalmonGod]

Got a good chuckle out of this...

[mainiac]

Well, the bright side of hillary vs. jeb would be you could probably vote for someone else comfortable in the knowledge you're not actually running the risk of changing the results.

Yup!  Just like in 2000!

[RedKing]

Well, the bright side of hillary vs. jeb would be you could probably vote for someone else comfortable in the knowledge you're not actually running the risk of changing the results.

Yup!  Just like in 2000!

Oh gawd....here we go with the "Blame Ralph Nader for Al Gore being about as charismatic as a wet towel" routine...

[Aqizzar]

Maybe he just meant the "popular vote doesn't actually matter" angle.  But he probably meant the Nader one, yeah.

I feel more comfortable blaming Pat Buchanan instead, because people only voted for him by mistake, but it was still enough to matter.

[Lord Shonus]

Well, the bright side of hillary vs. jeb would be you could probably vote for someone else comfortable in the knowledge you're not actually running the risk of changing the results.

The down side is that jeb would actually be on the ticket. Hillary's got her problems, but there's not much else I've noticed that quite embodies "lukewarm conservative incompetence" like jeb does, ruinous public policy and all. Lived through years of that guy as a state governor. Those were not good years.

Still. H v J come 2016, burn down the local polling stations, vote third party. Or sanders or somethin'. It's a plan.

Maybe it's just because I'm from Ohio, but I still think John Kasich doesn't get the credit he deserves. He balanced Ohio's budget and brought it to a surplus without raising taxes, a major talking point for any politician. His plan to tie budget to performance in schools was less successful, but he still ended up increasing education funding. He's had some success in criminal justice reform as well, but a very mixed sort of success. I don't think I'd vote for him because of his apparent hatred for collective bargaining alone, but if it had to be a Republican, I think I'd choose him. If I remember right he's also one of a relatively small number of people who can say that they rode the Tea Party wave, then jumped ship when things got a little too crazy.

Are you serious? Kasich's one of the slimiest and most destructive governors in Ohio's history - under his regime library budgets have plummeted, worker's rights have been stripped away to 1950s levels, and city taxes have skyrocketed because he's looked for any excuse to strip state money away. If I ever meet him face to face, I'm going to beat the shit out of him, no matter the consequences.

[Bohandas]

Yeah. Generally "balanced the budget without raising taxes" means "slashed a bunch of essential stuff"

[Baffler]

Is that the speed of it? I guess that's what I get for not looking any closer at this person than his own campaign page, and what his supporters wrote on his wikipedia entry. Which, now that I type it out, should have been so incredibly obvious that I feel more than a little embarrassed because of it. It seems there's no non-shitty Republican candidate after all...

[scriver]

So in non-american American news, the media over here is still heaping attention on Clinton. None of the other democratic runners gets barely a mention to the point where I didn't even recognise a single name except of course Mr Vice President who apparently isn't even official yet. Republicans also get tiny amounts of focus in relation. A reportage the other weektried to paint Bush as a centrist or even left-leaning republican, which is quite the opposite of the impression I've gotten here (but maybe it's also in relation to his runner company). Together the Bushs and Clintons make for a lot of asides about the "American monarchy" and "political nobility".

There's also not enough attention going to Trump and how ridiculous he is, and that makes me the saddest.

[smjjames]

Maybe he just meant the "popular vote doesn't actually matter" angle.  But he probably meant the Nader one, yeah.

I feel more comfortable blaming Pat Buchanan instead, because people only voted for him by mistake, but it was still enough to matter.

I thought he meant Florida with those 'chads'.

And yeah, there's Ralph Nader managing to grab Oregon.

So in non-american American news, the media over here is still heaping attention on Clinton. None of the other democratic runners gets barely a mention to the point where I didn't even recognise a single name except of course Mr Vice President who apparently isn't even official yet. Republicans also get tiny amounts of focus in relation. A reportage the other weektried to paint Bush as a centrist or even left-leaning republican, which is quite the opposite of the impression I've gotten here (but maybe it's also in relation to his runner company). Together the Bushs and Clintons make for a lot of asides about the "American monarchy" and "political nobility".

There's also not enough attention going to Trump and how ridiculous he is, and that makes me the saddest.

Biden is barely even campaigning at all.

Anyways, those asides are yet another reason to not vote for either one I guess.

[FearfulJesuit]

SCOTUS has ruled Obamacare's health insurance subsidies are legal.

[Aqizzar]

SCOTUS has ruled Obamacare's health insurance subsidies are legal.

Given the court's past decisions on the law, I was expecting it to turn this way.  The court has a lot of power invested in it to interpret Congressional intention, and this was a very clear case of some hawkeyed laywer hunting for an ambiguously worded clause - literally just four words - to try to reverse the entire purpose of the market-management system.

By far the best thing about this decision though was John Roberts joining the majority opinion.  Mostly because it helps take the wind out of the sails of the Court being politically motivated by it's membership (no matter how much Sam Alito says it is when he's in the dissent).  I remember ten years ago when Bush appointed him, I thought, "This man's single largest qualification to the President is looking like the father from Leave It To Beaver".  He has consistently proven me wrong in being a remarkably thoughtful judge of political authority and intention, even when he's delivered decisions I didn't agree with.  Naturally, I found a post of mine from the last time this happened saying the same thing.

[FearfulJesuit]

His quote about the court's purpose not being to save the people from their own decisions is one that a lot of people would do well to remember, yeah. I remember that when the Hobby Lobby opinion came out, my Facebook feed was filled with people being outraged that the Supreme Court was attacking women's rights. Certainly, it's better for people to have contraception coverage that for people not to have contraception coverage. But it's not SCOTUS's job to change a law just because the consequences are undesirable, and there was almost no criticism of the actual legal reasoning behind the decision (which seemed pretty solid to me).

Increasingly, people seem to want to treat SCOTUS as a "second Congress" that picks up the pieces from Congress's dysfunction, and that's not a good way to look at the Court.

[Aqizzar]

Increasingly, people seem to want to treat SCOTUS as a "second Congress" that picks up the pieces from Congress's dysfunction, and that's not a good way to look at the Court.

To be fair, that was kinda how the Civil Rights movement finally gained traction, from Earl Warren basically saying, if Congress isn't going to set things right here, then we'll just do it ourselves.  Although I suppose that was mostly founded on the Warren court forcing state governments to act on the letter of bullshit laws and holding "separate but equal" as a real legal standard for the first time, which quickly proved how untenable it was.

Anyway.

I agree that the best compliment I can give Roberts is that he refuses to bow to people's expectations for the Court to function as a proactive branch of the government.  That an undercurrent like that has even gotten as strong as it is says volumes about how important his job is.  People left, right, and center have lost so much faith in their elected officials (well, the other guy's elected officials) to actually make useful decisions for themselves that we want to entrust legislative power to a panel of unelected "deliberation experts".  Hugo Gernsback would be proud.