Bush supporters' aftermath thread

Okay, I see that along with the metaphor deciphering tools and the clues in the care packages, I need to add a diagram on 'getting the point' too.

Where does the need for the Right to attack ever end?

Oh I got the point, all right.

Dean came out in support of civil unions primarily because "The overwhelming evidence is that there is very significant, substantial genetic component to it,". That is a quote from your own post.


He later added, "My view of Christianity . . . is that the hallmark of being a Christian is to reach out to people who have been left behind,".

Fact is, the civil unions bill has been under unrelenting fire from the Religious Right for years. Almost everyone who opposes it does so for religious reasons, or is closely allied with right wing religious groups. So Dean made a statement which evened it up.

Dean or the liberals didn't bring up the religious aspect on this issue. The conservatives not only brought it up, they harp on it and harp on it year after year. Apparently conservatives have no problem with somebody invoking religion to support a right wing theme, but citing any religious support for a liberal theme is strictly forbidden.

PS: And now, apparently, even the venerable Congregationalists, one of the oldest and most respected churches in American history, are due for snide attacks because Howard Dean is one of their members. Where does the need for the Right to attack ever end?

Yes, the ABA Rankings Are Biased
Clinton's judicial nominees were much more likely to get a favorable rating.

BY JAMES LINDGREN
Monday, August 6, 2001 12:01 a.m.

With the American Bar Association meeting in Chicago today, it is an apt moment to look at the ABA's controversial judicial-evaluation process and consider whether it provides an objective, nonpartisan measure of a judicial nominee's qualifications.
That's what it says it does, a claim echoed by the Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee, who vow not to schedule a nominee's hearing until they have reviewed the ABA's rating. This faith persists despite the White House's decision not to call upon the ABA to pre-screen its judicial nominees, a system that had been used by presidents since the 1950s.

What does the evidence show? I've just completed a statistical study of the ABA's ratings of appointees to the U.S. Courts of Appeals during the Clinton and first Bush administrations and can report that the facts don't support the ABA's claim of objectivity. The ABA may once have been objective, but it's not anymore.

I analyzed the credentials of the 108 nominees who were ultimately appointed to the federal appeals courts during the Clinton and Bush-1 administrations. The results? The ABA applied measurably different and harsher standards during President George H. W. Bush's administration than it applied during President Bill Clinton's tenure. In short, the Bush appointees got lower ABA ratings than the Clinton appointees ...

... A Clinton nominee with few of the six credentials I measured had a much better chance of getting the highest ABA rating than a Bush nominee with most of these credentials. For example: A nominee with an elite law school education, law review, a federal clerkship, and experience in both government and private practice would have only a 32% chance of getting the highest ABA rating if he were a Bush appointee, but a 77% chance if he were a Clinton appointee. A Clinton nominee with none or just one of these five credentials would still have at least a 45% chance of getting the highest rating.

The differences in how the ABA treated Bush-1 and Clinton nominees reached even to the internal decision making of the ABA committee. The ratings committee split its vote between two ratings 33% of the time when evaluating Bush-1 appointees, but it split only 17% of the time when evaluating Clinton appointees.
If Clinton nominees had been subjected to the same credentials-driven approach as Bush-1 candidates, only 46% of Clinton's confirmed nominees would have been unanimously rated as "Well Qualified." Instead, 62% actually received that top rating. On average Bush-1 and Clinton nominees had almost identically strong measured qualifications, yet they were not rated similarly.

The data suggest that when Bill Clinton took office, the ABA softened its standards, possibly emphasizing credentials such as temperament and philosophy that are harder to measure than experience and educational success. Now the ABA is back to rating Republican nominees--and apparently is also back to its old harsh ways. The ABA ratings of George W. Bush's first 11 appellate nominees were released this summer. While it is much too soon to reach any firm conclusions about Bush-2, the pattern so far is not encouraging.

Although 62% of Clinton's 66 confirmed appellate nominees got the ABA's highest rating of unanimously "Well Qualified," only five of the first 11 new Bush nominees--45%--have received the highest ABA rating, the same percentage that confirmed nominees received under the administration of the elder Bush.

At the end of the day, one nagging question remains: Why hasn't the ABA itself noticed the large political differences in its evaluative processes and worked harder to understand, explain or eliminate them? Now that there are hard data that support the claims of its critics, it would be good to see fewer denials and more introspection and reform.

Mr. Lindgren is a professor at Northwestern University School of Law. His full study will be published in the October issue of the Journal of Law & Politics.

What is unprecedented now is how Republicans in the Senate, under pressure from social conservatives, have blocked the confirmation of judicial nominees almost from the outset of the Clinton presidency. They have waged an increasingly bitter war against his selection of judges ever since they gained control of the Senate following the 1994 midterm elections. They stalled the judicial appointment process in 1995 and, a year later, virtually shut it down in advance of the presidential election.

Then, as now, candidates running for the GOP presidential nomination singled out federal judges in their campaign rhetoric. Remember Patrick J. Buchanan decrying the "judicial dictatorship" governing the land? In 1996, the Senate confirmed just one appellate-court nominee and 17 district-court judges. By comparison, in the last year of Republican President George Bush's term, the Democratic-controlled Senate confirmed 66 judges, more than during any previous year of his administration.

Embittered and angry over Clinton's reelection, Senate Republicans increased pressure on Sen. Orrin G. Hatch (R-Utah), who chairs the Senate Judiciary Committee, to hold up hearings on Clinton's judicial nominees. They also pressed Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott (R-Miss.) to break with tradition by allowing individual senators to place "secret holds" on nominees they opposed, thereby denying them hearings before the Senate Judiciary Committee. Ever since, the GOP-controlled Senate has been stonewalling judicial confirmations, long before the campaign for the presidential election in 2000 kicks into high gear.

During the last two years, the Senate also extracted promises from the White House to name judges handpicked by Republican senators in exchange for possibly moving the confirmation process along. Yet, even the concessions made by Clinton have not broken the logjam or expedited the confirmation process.

Notably, in the first half of 1999, Hatch balked at holding confirmation hearings on any of Clinton's judicial nominees, some of whom were nominated two to three years ago. Hearings were held only after Clinton agreed to name Ted Stewart to a district-court judgeship in Utah. Although opposed by environmentalists and liberal groups, Stewart had the backing of his powerful old friend Hatch, for whom he once served as an aide. Nor was this the first time Clinton had to strike deals over judgeships with Senate Republicans. Nonetheless, the Senate has not acted on 37 of the 61 nominees put up this year and has voted to confirm only 11 judges.

This long-running war over federal judges is taking its toll. More than 12% of the seats on appellate courts are vacant, as are more than 6% of those on district courts. Furthermore, the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts deems one-third of the unfilled posts to be "judicial emergencies," that is, judgeships that have gone unfilled for more than 18 months and now face serious backlogs of cases.

extract: (which gives a more credible view)

The corps has long wanted to strengthen some of the levees which have been sinking, and on its website yesterday said it planned to build a further 74 miles of hurricane defences. But according to local media, it was last year refused extra funding by the White House which wanted to save money to pay for homeland security against terrorism. "In its budget, the Bush administration proposed a significant reduction in funding for south-east Louisiana's chief hurricane protection project. Bush proposed $10.4m, a sixth of what local officials say they need," reported Newhouse News Service yesterday.
Local officials are saying, the article claimed, that had Washington heeded warnings about the dire need for extra hurricane protection, including building up levees and repairing barrier islands, "the damage might not have been nearly as bad as it turned out to be".
Last year Walter Maestri, emergency chief for Jefferson Parish, Louisiana, one of the worst affected areas, reportedly told the Times-Picayune newspaper: "It appears that the money [for strengthening levees against hurricanes] has been moved in the president's budget to handle homeland security and the war in Iraq, and I suppose that's the price we pay. Nobody locally is happy that the levees can't be finished, and we are doing everything we can to make the case that this is a security issue for us."

article at
http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,12271,1560351,00.html

Can you give a link, timber? It's not jumping out at me.

Oh, I don't think so, FD, bear in mind The Electorate dis not bestow upon The Democrats during the Clinton Administration the simultaneous occupation of the Oval Office and Legislative Majority status, let alone reaffirm and increase voter selection of Democratic legislators, Statehouse representation, and Governorships at the pertinent mid-terms and State Elections, as has been the case with The Electorate's decision regarding "Balance of Power" pertaining to The Current Administrationv... a huge difference in terms of "Voter Preference".

McTag wrote:

extract: (which gives a more credible view)

The corps has long wanted to strengthen some of the levees which have been sinking, and on its website yesterday said it planned to build a further 74 miles of hurricane defences. But according to local media, it was last year refused extra funding by the White House which wanted to save money to pay for homeland security against terrorism. "In its budget, the Bush administration proposed a significant reduction in funding for south-east Louisiana's chief hurricane protection project. Bush proposed $10.4m, a sixth of what local officials say they need," reported Newhouse News Service yesterday.
Local officials are saying, the article claimed, that had Washington heeded warnings about the dire need for extra hurricane protection, including building up levees and repairing barrier islands, "the damage might not have been nearly as bad as it turned out to be".
Last year Walter Maestri, emergency chief for Jefferson Parish, Louisiana, one of the worst affected areas, reportedly told the Times-Picayune newspaper: "It appears that the money [for strengthening levees against hurricanes] has been moved in the president's budget to handle homeland security and the war in Iraq, and I suppose that's the price we pay. Nobody locally is happy that the levees can't be finished, and we are doing everything we can to make the case that this is a security issue for us."

article at
http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,12271,1560351,00.html

I see the liberals are already blaming Bush for the effects of the Hurricane. Any thoughts as to why the levees weren't improved pre-9/11 under Clinton's watch?

And does the Louisiana State Government have any roll in fixing their own problem? Nah, just Bush.

Bottom line, FD, is you and I are as unlikely to agree on politics as are Democrats and Republicans. Its not my fault The Electorate currently appears to feel The Dems are wrong -

I suppose you are right that we won't agree. But it always comes down to a winner-loser/right-wrong thing for you doesn't it. A pitty really, because there's so much more to it.