[amphibian]

We're not having the same conversation. You want to jam a non-existent artificial intelligence into whatever social system we're discussing and that's completely taken over what you're saying and doing here.

Take a look at this article from Pro Publica:
https://www.propubli...d-for-aid-grows

It features lines of casual brutality like this:

"Jackie Farwell, a spokesperson for the Maine DHHS, gave a similar explanation for that state’s unspent TANF funds, saying it was caused by the Maine Legislature limiting lifetime welfare eligibility to five years."

"Between June and November 2020, the national poverty rate made its largest jump since the government began tracking it 60 years ago, from 2.4% to 11.7%."

"Ty Bishop, a spokesperson for the Texas Department of Human Services, which has the nation’s lowest TANF acceptance rate at just 7% of those who apply, said most applicants there “exceed the income and resource limits.” To qualify, a family with two children and one caretaker must have less than $1,000 in assets and a monthly income of less than $188."

"If they qualify for TANF, applicants also risk losing any child support they might receive from a noncustodial parent, said Moriah Geer, a caseworker at Maine Equal Justice, a legal aid organization that assisted Bridgforth as she navigated TANF."

"A report this year found that TANF serves only one in four Maine children living at or below the federal poverty level, and that 84% of families in the state leaving the cash assistance program in 2019 were still living in poverty."

How in the hell is a non-existent AI supposed to deal with this complex system of contradictory laws, pressure to turn people away, savagely high standards for what "eligible poverty" is, and nonfunctioning uplift of people and children out of poverty?

[amphibian]

It is also readily apparent that you have spent very little time in a nursing facility if you think tech is a primary solution to the complex problems encountered there.

Most nursing home problems are addressed by having much more staff than are currently there, especially here in NY where there are no minimum staffing requirements. That's not a tech problem in the slightest and all the fancy computers + programs in the world won't get 35 bedridden people on a nursing home floor turned over in their beds every 3 hours or their diapers changed immediately after they're soiled. Tech isn't going to prevent a person with Alzheimer's from falling catastrophically out of bed at 2 am because they're worried that they have to go to the bank to pay their bills.

I am speaking from direct professional and personal experience about these things. You're on some kind of trip with this that is weirdly cruel, especially in the light of your taking extreme precautions for COVID.

I'm furious and I'm putting this conversation down for a while.

This post has been edited by amphibian: 29 December 2021 - 04:14 PM

[Azath Vitr (D'ivers]

Cause, on 29 December 2021 - 03:51 PM, said:

Was it necessary to my survival no? I lost weight. Treating myself to a half liter of ice cream for 3-5 dollars from dollar general once a week wasn't a waste though. It was a comfort and a treat.

I think restricting food stamps from being used at restaurants is enough. Poverty is punishment enough. Let a person buy themselves a chocolate bar once in a while. Let them have control over their food stamp allowance. Hell I'd say let a person buy a premade hot soup or sandwich from a deli even.

Of course occasional junk food isn't too harmful, and I'm not saying people on food stamps should be banned from ever having cake or ice cream etc. But strictly speaking there are ways to comfort and treat oneself that don't involve eating junk food, or spending money at all, so in that sense it is relatively wasteful. And there are healthy foods that taste just as good and can be just as fulfilling. Limiting the amount of junk food that people on food stamps eat would give poor people an advantage, especially children, since they'd have better nutrition and healthier long-term habits. Automation and better data sharing could make regulating that easy, without people having to jump through hoops (the automation would take care of that for them).

[Azath Vitr (D'ivers]

amphibian, on 29 December 2021 - 04:11 PM, said:

It is also readily apparent that you have spent very little time in a nursing facility if you think tech is a primary solution to the complex problems encountered there.

Most nursing home problems are addressed by having much more staff than are currently there, especially here in NY where there are no minimum staffing requirements. That's not a tech problem in the slightest and all the fancy computers + programs in the world won't get 35 bedridden people on a nursing home floor turned over in their beds every 3 hours or their diapers changed immediately after they're soiled. Tech isn't going to prevent a person with Alzheimer's from falling catastrophically out of bed at 2 am because they're worried that they have to go to the bank to pay their bills.

I am speaking from direct professional and personal experience about these things. You're on some kind of trip with this that is weirdly cruel, especially in the light of your taking extreme precautions for COVID.

I'm furious and I'm putting this conversation down for a while.

Didn't suggest it's the primary solution (in the near term, at least). Also, funding from tech companies in exchange for testing new automation technologies (for example, before roll-out to the at-home care market) could help nursing homes more generally. Automation is already being used extensively in nursing homes in Japan:

'Japanese nursing homes (the paper is based on a survey of about 860 such facilities) [...] have been early and government-backed hotbeds of experimentation with new types of robot, from health monitors to machines that help to lift people on to their beds.

Many of these are likely to become standard around the world. As more countries face aging populations, Japan's case will help shed light on how demographics interact with new automation technologies, says the paper.'

https://financialpos...ed-technologies


'Exhausted and understaffed nursing home workers could have sensors and webcams to help them keep tabs on residents' health and wellbeing. The growing "AgeTech" industry could help seniors age in place in the comfort of their homes.'

https://www.theguard...rise-elder-care

This post has been edited by Azath Vitr (D'ivers: 29 December 2021 - 05:59 PM

[Mentalist]

Azath Vitr (D, on 29 December 2021 - 05:24 PM, said:

Cause, on 29 December 2021 - 03:51 PM, said:

Was it necessary to my survival no? I lost weight. Treating myself to a half liter of ice cream for 3-5 dollars from dollar general once a week wasn't a waste though. It was a comfort and a treat.

I think restricting food stamps from being used at restaurants is enough. Poverty is punishment enough. Let a person buy themselves a chocolate bar once in a while. Let them have control over their food stamp allowance. Hell I'd say let a person buy a premade hot soup or sandwich from a deli even.

Of course occasional junk food isn't too harmful, and I'm not saying people on food stamps should be banned from ever having cake or ice cream etc. But strictly speaking there are ways to comfort and treat oneself that don't involve eating junk food, or spending money at all, so in that sense it is relatively wasteful. And there are healthy foods that taste just as good and can be just as fulfilling. Limiting the amount of junk food that people on food stamps eat would give poor people an advantage, especially children, since they'd have better nutrition and healthier long-term habits. Automation and better data sharing could make regulating that easy, without people having to jump through hoops (the automation would take care of that for them).

Fuck the government deciding what's best for me with any degree of coercive power.

I accept they can incentivise people to make certain choices with taxes; but trying to make lifestyle decisions for me? Yeah, no.

Never getting a smart home. That shit's creepy.

[Azath Vitr (D'ivers]

Can't stress enough that the main issue isn't the problems with the expanded child tax credit itself (any expansion of the social safety net or move towards UBI is a positive), but the fact that Manchin has said he will agree to the climate change legislation if (and only if) his concerns about the CTC are ameliorated. If the legislation does not pass,

'It will be a colossal tragedy for the planet and future generations, which are depending on the US government to accelerate the transition away from fossil fuels this decade with major legislation like this bill, to avoid the worst effects of climate change. The bill also contains funding for adapting to climate change and helping the most vulnerable communities; without it, the US will be far less prepared to face escalating climate disasters here at home.

It's unlikely Democrats will have exactly the same set of political circumstances — in control of both the presidency and Congress — to pass a similarly ambitious climate agenda in the next decade. "We won't be acting on the climate crisis if we don't pass this bill, and there's not a decade left to waste," said Leah Stokes, a climate political scientist at UC-Santa Barbara who has been advising Democrats. "Senator Manchin talks a lot about that and what he owes to his grandchildren, and the number one thing he owes to his grandchildren is a livable planet."

[...] The US is responsible for the largest share of global warming, so serious federal action is essential to closing the gap. Climate scientists have warned that once the atmosphere warms more than 1.5 degrees Celsius, we will live in a drastically changed world. If countries, corporations, and individuals don't take immediate action to reduce pollution, the world may hit that grim milestone in just 10 years.

The bill would also literally save lives. [...] One Harvard estimate found that reaching 80 percent clean electricity by 2030 would save 9,200 lives in 2030 alone, and another 317,500 through 2050.

Finally, the bill would dedicate hundreds of millions of dollars to helping communities prepare for worsening floods, heat, and fires in the name of climate justice.

[...] "This is the last best shot we're really going to have to enact national policy that deals with the climate crisis in the scope and scale that's necessary,"'

https://www.vox.com/...er-clean-energy

Hopefully Manchin's concerns can be addressed without the restriction of benefits harming too many people. A work requirement that forces large numbers of people to expose themselves to the pandemic does seem particularly heinous, though it's not clear to me whether that could be mostly replaced with work from home (perhaps even diverting some of the funding to expanded work from home options, or including exemptions in cases where WFH or other jobs with very low pandemic risk are unavailable, at the very least for the highly vulnerable?).

[amphibian]

Azath Vitr (D, on 29 December 2021 - 05:31 PM, said:

Didn't suggest it's the primary solution (in the near term, at least). Also, funding from tech companies in exchange for testing new automation technologies (for example, before roll-out to the at-home care market) could help nursing homes more generally. Automation is already being used extensively in nursing homes in Japan:

'Japanese nursing homes (the paper is based on a survey of about 860 such facilities) [...] have been early and government-backed hotbeds of experimentation with new types of robot, from health monitors to machines that help to lift people on to their beds.

Many of these are likely to become standard around the world. As more countries face aging populations, Japan's case will help shed light on how demographics interact with new automation technologies, says the paper.'

https://financialpos...ed-technologies

Have you heard of a Hoyer lift? It's a machine that's about $1700 to 2500 that is used to lift people from a bed to a chair or bath or table and the other way too. It's nearly a skeletal looking thing that is somewhat easy to repair. Having a robot do the lifting is not much of an advance and likely much, much harder to repair - especially in rural places where the tech needs to be as rock solid as possible, relatively cheap + easy to repair, and able to have about 50 of these in a nursing facility at any given time that can fit neatly into a person's room and/or bathing area (which are generally not that big).

I read that article. What is not said is "What specific tech is improving situations in the nursing facilities?" This is basically a press release that is being taken to mean "automation is being used extensively in Japanese nursing homes". What was automated? What changed? There are already monitors, sensors, lifts, and check-in mechanisms being used. There are no details here because the coverage by the person and the entity looking at this isn't designed to give anyone actual details about what is happening. I can prove this by pointing you and other readers here to what the coverage is basing this bullshit article on - a not-yet-completed project to study potential effects of automation/robots in Japanese nursing homes.

https://aparc.fsi.st...home-care-japan

The people studying this released an early working paper that was then blended up into pablum for media coverage. That working paper identifies better what the automation in the nursing homes is and what it does.

"In our analyses, we group these into three main categories: transfer aid robots, mobility robots, and communication and monitoring robots.

Currently, qualitative evidence suggests that robots can reduce the burden on care workers, but that most tasks cannot be substituted completely. Accordingly, human care workers and robots need to coordinate and divide tasks. Anecdotal reports also hint at the potential longer-term impacts for quality of care for residents. For example, one elderly care center in Setagaya, Tokyo, that has used five types of robots since 2017 — including monitoring robots to sense clients’ movements in and out of bed and movement-supporting robots to enhance mobility—reported that the robots not only helped to prevent client hip problems and to reduce staff burden, but also contributed to decreasing the rate of physical accidents by 30%. A government pilot study of nursing care robots in 40 nursing homes found that monitoring robots allowed for better efficiency and reduced burden for care workers; movement assistance robots (wearable and non-wearable) resulted in better prevention of hip pain in care workers, but did not change the users’ satisfaction; and for nonwearable movement assistance robots, care workers said that it took time to use the robots, but led to better communication and greater safety. Managers reported that monitoring robots led to some change in inputs, since help could be provided by one staff member only, instead of multiple staff, although the time requirement did not decrease. Moreover, some indications of improved quality of life and less pain suggest that adoption of robotics could contribute to enhanced quality of care. Our study complements and extends these descriptive, anecdotal, and small-scale previous studies."

If you read the working paper (https://www.nber.org...8322/w28322.pdf), you find out that 17% of the 850ish nursing homes surveyed tested out robots and the ones that did were in general already better staffed, owned rather than rented more equipment already, and in general, were dealing with an average of about 70ish patients in totality, rather than the average 100+ patients in the US.

The existing staff to patient ratio is stated: "Regulations in Japan require both types of nursing homes to maintain a 3:1 ratio of residents per caregiver, i.e., care workers plus nurses must total at least one for every 3 residents."

That is much, much lower than what is present almost anywhere in the US. In ICUs, we generally have 1:2, in ERs we have 1:4, in nursing homes that ratio can be anywhere from 1:5 to 1:30 and usually is much closer to 1:30 than it is 1:5.

The Japanese standard of care in nursing facilities is so much higher than what is happening in the US and it is not because of automation. It is a staffing issue. The stuff the project is covering has some small potential to assist staff in preventing falls, getting injured less while transferring patients, and so on. These are relatively minor, yet valid improvements. The big step for care to rise in the US is to get the staffing ratios to not be as miserable as they are - especially with COVID wrecking the entire healthcare industry and country.

Quote

'Exhausted and understaffed nursing home workers could have sensors and webcams to help them keep tabs on residents' health and wellbeing. The growing "AgeTech" industry could help seniors age in place in the comfort of their homes.'

https://www.theguard...rise-elder-care

My mother and I occasionally have trouble keeping my grandmother in diapers. We would not be able to keep sensors on her. It is just flat out not possible. We have gotten a camera for her bedroom to provide nighttime check-ins and/or assess like a baby whether there is an emergency or injurious fall. The problem isn't the tech of sensors or cameras. It is having the staff to be able to have at 2 am Nurse A be taking care of the bedsore wounds of Person 1, Nurse B be changing the diaper of Person 2, Nurse C on the main desk checking the cameras of the 12 people they are all handling for that shift (I think the 1 to 4 nurse to patient ratio for an emergency department is actually what we should be using for nursing homes here and the Japanese have an even higher standard).

Instead we get 2 nurses/assistants handling 25 people who all have various needs - medication, changes, bathroom assists, Alzheimer's related non-physical needs etc. Even if the alarms go off, there aren't enough staff to get to the alarm quickly or provide everyone the routine care - which leads to caregiver burnout, lack of care provided to people in the facilities, and a general attitude among nursing home owners/administrators that as long as the state/feds don't come to ruin their business, they can functionally get away with all of this.

This isn't a set of problems tech solves. It can assist at the fringes and pretty much already does. There are functionally no giant areas to leap forwards in tech that are awaiting us for nursing facility care to improve.

[Gorefest]

https://www.theguard...30-trump-canada

A rather chilling read, though sadly not seeming all that far fetched in light of the current developments.

This post has been edited by Gorefest: 03 January 2022 - 09:29 AM

[Azath Vitr (D'ivers]

Gorefest, on 03 January 2022 - 09:28 AM, said:

https://www.theguard...30-trump-canada

A rather chilling read, though sadly not seeming all that far fetched in light of the current developments.

'Trump gave a bizarre endorsement of Hungary's authoritarian prime minister, Viktor Orban, on Monday morning, saying he has his "complete support." Trump said the anti-LGBTQ, anti-Muslim leader—who's promoted "illiberal democracy"[...] is a strong leader and respected by all. He has my Complete support and Endorsement for reelection as Prime Minister."'

https://www.thedaily...ritarian-leader


'"Despite Trump's failure to thoroughly corrupt the federal and state governments, he came frighteningly close to overturning the election or, at the least, throwing the nation into the mother of all constitutional crises," [...] "How close? Trump fell five Rudys short."

[...]


"Substitute Rudy Giuliani — or Sidney Powell or Jim Jordan or any other Trump cultist — for just five people who held state or federal office at the time of the 2020 election, and think about what might have happened," [...] "Put a Rudy in the place of Brad Raffensperger, the Republican secretary of state in Georgia who stood his ground in the face of hellish pressure from the president of the United States and certified Joe Biden's win in the state. Replace Michigan Board of State Canvassers member Aaron Van Langevelde, who bucked GOP pressure to provide the swing vote to certify Biden's win in Michigan, with a Rudy."

[...] "Make a Rudy the secretary of state of Pennsylvania instead of Kathy Boockvar, who certified Biden's win in that state. That puts 42 electoral votes in play in Georgia, Michigan, and Pennsylvania alone. Forget about Arizona and Wisconsin — Trump wouldn't need them. He only lost by 38."

[...]

"If he's reelected in 2024, (Trump)…. will appoint a Rudy to every federal position that can impact a presidential election, starting with his selection of a vice president and his appointment of an attorney general…. That won't help him win in 2024. He's out of office, so he no longer controls the levers of the federal government. [...] He'll need to corrupt the states, where the real power lies when it comes to overturning presidential elections."'

https://www.alternet...e-very-worried/

'retired generals are warning that, without decisive action to hold all the wrongdoers to account, we will witness a march to another coup attempt, and one more likely to succeed, if Trump or another demagogue runs and loses. [...] the party faithful have already set out to use state-level elections and legislative processes to better set the table to steal the 2024 election should that be necessary to their return to power.

[...]

Students of how democracies fail and tyrannical regimes arise from the dust they leave behind [...] teach that such groundless myths of wrongful defeat at the hands either of enemies within or of enemies without are invariably part of the demagogue's narrative and of its hold on popular consciousness.


They require only that the cult of Trump repopulate with party hacks the bureaucracy of honest vote-counters and nonpartisan election personnel at the state and local levels, and that Trump-backed lawmakers elected to state legislatures rig the voting rules to dilute the influence of all who might oppose a Republican victory. Because these steps are well under way, we face a challenge more daunting than we did even when the powers of the presidency were in Trump's hands.

Nor can we count on the congressional voting integrity measures [...] to save us from what the growing number of Republican state legislatures seem only too eager to do. For one thing, even before the 2022 midterm elections, Democrats control too few seats in the Senate to overcome the antiquated filibuster [...] For another, the US supreme court, as packed by means of dubious legitimacy by Trump during his presidency, is poised to hold unconstitutional virtually any meaningful voting protection or electoral reform Congress might enact even if that [filibuster] obstacle could be carved away in a limited class of cases.

[...]

The base is being primed for more violence in the run-up and aftermath of the next election. And the Trump-packed supreme court is poised to do its part by gutting what is left of America's laws against carrying guns anywhere and everywhere – including maybe in courthouses, polling places and the like.'

The risk of a coup in the next US election is greater now than it ever was under Trump | Laurence H Tribe | The Guardian

[Malankazooie]

So, think anything is going down tomorrow on the anniversary? Or are we in the clear?

I personally play defense on these type of things and expect not necessarily the worst, but that something will probably happen. There is at least one nutter out there ready to flip his crazy switch.

[Azath Vitr (D'ivers]

'The Hidden Agenda Behind the Attack on Vaccine Mandates

Six Republican-appointed justices may use these cases to seize power from the president and Congress.

[...]

[...] the "major question doctrine." Under this principle, federal agencies cannot issue a regulation that raises a "major question" of economic or political significance without a "clear statement" from Congress. So, for instance, it wouldn't be enough for Congress to instruct the health and human services secretary to protect health care workers' "health and safety" [...]

Second, the challengers cite the nondelegation doctrine, which bars Congress from "delegating" too much authority to federal agencies. The idea is that only Congress can legislate, and when it gives too much discretion to the executive branch, it unconstitutionally transfers its legislative power. [...]

Do those doctrines appear in the text of the Constitution?

No. [...] Moreover, the doctrines are so "vague and open-ended," [...] they transfer massive amounts of power from the elected branches to the judiciary. Unelected judges can wield these tools to strike down any policy they personally dislike.

[...] federal agencies are staffed with subject matter experts with a deep understanding of the problem. [...]

On the other side are armchair epidemiologists like Trump Judge Terry Doughty, who [...] issued a nationwide injunction against the mandate[... and] falsely claimed COVID vaccines do not prevent transmission, credulously citing a fringe anti-vaxxer.

[...] All six Republican-appointed justices have evinced profound hostility toward the "administrative state." In August, when these justices struck down the CDC's eviction moratorium, they used language that invoked the major questions doctrine. Moreover, five justices are on the record endorsing the nondelegation doctrine. [...]

[...] the Supreme Court has already taken up a case challenging the EPA's authority to restrict carbon emissions. [...]

Regulations of pollution, labor, housing, the economy—pretty much everything, really—rests on congressional delegations from Congress to the executive branch. Congress entrusts experts [...] to accomplish its goals. And if these delegations are struck down, basic government functions would grind to a halt. As Justice Elena Kagan once wrote, if the conservative justices are correct about the nondelegation doctrine, "then most of government is unconstitutional—dependent as Congress is on the need to give discretion to executive officials to implement its programs."'

https://slate.com/ne...e-mandates.html

[Cause]

My Google fu failed me on this but I was curious. Has an incumbent president ever lost to a rigged election like trump claims? Normally it would be the party in power staying in power right, that’s how they can rig the left ion on the first place?

[Azath Vitr (D'ivers]

Cause, on 11 January 2022 - 03:04 PM, said:

My Google fu failed me on this but I was curious. Has an incumbent president ever lost to a rigged election like trump claims? Normally it would be the party in power staying in power right, that's how they can rig the left ion on the first place?

Not in the United States---though you probably mean 'has that ever actually happened anywhere'....

This post has been edited by Azath Vitr (D'ivers: 11 January 2022 - 07:10 PM

[amphibian]

Cause, on 11 January 2022 - 03:04 PM, said:

My Google fu failed me on this but I was curious. Has an incumbent president ever lost to a rigged election like trump claims? Normally it would be the party in power staying in power right, that’s how they can rig the left ion on the first place?

No to the specific question you're asking. However, there have been some elections where some back-room deal making happened to tilt an election this way or that way for non-incumbents.

Take a look at this short article on the presidential elections that were decided by the House of Representatives (after a tie or a not-decisive enough win): https://history.hous...ctoral-College/

The way Jefferson was chosen over Burr had a lot to do with back-room deal making, which makes it somewhat a rigged result. The deals that I think I remember reading/hearing about had to do with certain states/representatives wanting assurances from Jefferson that the banking system would mostly remain the way it was structured and that certain people here and there would keep their positions in the new administration (some of these people were corrupt).

[Azath Vitr (D'ivers]

amphibian, on 11 January 2022 - 10:46 PM, said:

Cause, on 11 January 2022 - 03:04 PM, said:

My Google fu failed me on this but I was curious. Has an incumbent president ever lost to a rigged election like trump claims? Normally it would be the party in power staying in power right, that's how they can rig the left ion on the first place?

No to the specific question you're asking. However, there have been some elections where some back-room deal making happened to tilt an election this way or that way for non-incumbents.

Take a look at this short article on the presidential elections that were decided by the House of Representatives (after a tie or a not-decisive enough win): https://history.hous...ctoral-College/

The way Jefferson was chosen over Burr had a lot to do with back-room deal making, which makes it somewhat a rigged result. The deals that I think I remember reading/hearing about had to do with certain states/representatives wanting assurances from Jefferson that the banking system would mostly remain the way it was structured and that certain people here and there would keep their positions in the new administration (some of these people were corrupt).

In particular:

'Tilden won the popular vote and the electoral count. But Republicans challenged the results in three Southern states, which submitted certificates of election for both candidates. While the Constitution requires the House and Senate to formally count the certificates of election in joint session, it is silent on what Congress should do to resolve disputes. In January 1877, Congress established the Federal Electoral Commission to investigate the disputed Electoral College ballots. The bipartisan commission, which included Representatives, Senators, and Supreme Court Justices, voted along party lines to award all the contested ballots to Hayes—securing the presidency for him by a single electoral vote. The Commission’s controversial results did not spark the violence in the post-Civil War South that some had feared largely because Republicans had struck a compromise with Southern Democrats to remove federal soldiers from the South and end Reconstruction in the event of a Hayes victory.'

... so not 'rigged' in the ways Trump's been claiming the 2020 election was, but 'rigged' in one of the ways he wanted it to be... a precedent.

[Malankazooie]

SCOTUS Stephen Breyer to retire. What do you think Mitch McConnell's move will be?

[amphibian]

He's going to try to do what he did with Garland.

It remains to be seen if Manchin and Sinema will let him do that.

[Obdigore]

amphibian, on 26 January 2022 - 05:25 PM, said:

He's going to try to do what he did with Garland.

It remains to be seen if Manchin and Sinema will let him do that.

Of course they will. They are shamelessly there to get money, not to legislate.

[Azath Vitr (D'ivers]

'The president and Senate will have until the court's next term convenes on October 3 to appoint and confirm Breyer's successor.'

https://www.forbes.c...sh=1b53e4b01393

First, McConnell will try to stall until after the midterms; Republicans are likely going to retake the Senate.

Of course the filibuster has already been abolished for judicial nominees, and Manchin (so far) hasn't tried to insist on bringing the filibuster back for Biden's judicial nominees. Breyer is 'liberal', so Supreme Court will still have a right-wing supermajority.

Sinema's approval rating among Arizona Democrats has plunged recently as a consequence of her refusal to back the voting rights legislation... if she tries to run as a Democrat again. If she also refuses Biden a Supreme Court nominee, her political career---as a Democrat, at least---will most likely effectively be over. But her term doesn't end until 2025, voters may have short memories, and she might not even care that much about getting reelected....

But Sinema and Manchin could try to get away with stalling... and McConnell would proceed to refuse Biden any judicial nominees. Even number of justices does lead to the possibility of a tie, but in that case the lower court order stands.

This post has been edited by Azath Vitr (D'ivers: 26 January 2022 - 06:21 PM

[amphibian]

Obdigore, on 26 January 2022 - 05:38 PM, said:

amphibian, on 26 January 2022 - 05:25 PM, said:

He's going to try to do what he did with Garland.

It remains to be seen if Manchin and Sinema will let him do that.

Of course they will. They are shamelessly there to get money, not to legislate.

Yes, they want money for campaigns and outside-of-politics money/positions. However, it seems Manchin is either running again for Senate (after saying he'd retire past this term) or running for Governor of West Virginia. That's been a big driver of why he's being an absolute dickhead on the child tax credit and the big legislations. Sinema... her current staff and former staff are leaking like crazy to the press that she thinks she's a genius politician who's just 5 moves ahead of everyone and will be president. So... these two senators are driven by more than money here.

I am curious as to how effective the Republican stall/sabotage tactics will be in relation to the mid-term elections. A better world would see so many of the Republicans go down in flames for stalling out Congress and being absolute murderous cancers on society, but... I don't think we live in that world and we have two senators in the other party who are just on a bad trip.