A thread for Democrats Only
POSTED BY: THGRRI
UPDATED: Sunday, September 6, 2026 15:36
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You haven't answered the challenge that addresses your own claim.
Here is your claim, and the challenge, again, in case you forgot. You drew a distinction between democratic presidents as being more constitutional, and republican presidents as less so.
Quote:I challenged you to come up with SPECIFIC DIFFERENCES using two recent presidents who operated under similar circumstances such as House rules, Senate rules, and Supreme Court rulings ('W' Bush and Obama).
Originally posted by SECOND:
I have doubts that you will ever understand that Democratic Presidents are restrained in what they can do by what the Constitution will allow, while guys like Trump and Nixon have got their own little area that they move freely around in and it is smaller and only partially overlaps the one in the Constitution.
Quote:
Originally posted by 1KIKI:
I'd like to see you try to make that case, SECOND.
It's easy to pretend you have knowledge by pretending to be superior - harder to prove it, with quotes and links.
Let's get specific with two close-in-time presidents, under the same operational frameworks and Constitutional decisions: What did Bush do OUTSIDE OF THE CONSTITUTION that Obama didn't?
And if democrats don't do anything different, how are they any better?
tic tac
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So, I made a list off the top of my head about things that might be unconstitutional
mass data collection of Americans
drone-killing Americans w/out a trial
torture
SECOND has submitted starting wars without Congressional declaration
I'm going to mull on this but I hope others add to the list.
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just for reference Congressional ability to bring suits re the Constitution to Federal Courts, and to participate in those proceedings
https://fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/R42454.pdf
https://fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/R45636.pdf
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Quote:Until the Supreme Court makes a ruling, any action by the President is in a quantum superposition of constitutional/unconstitutional. And the Supreme Court has completely avoided that part of its responsibility for many decades. The Supreme Court told Nixon he could not constitutionally withhold his records from Watergate. Then you have to jump all the way back in history to FDR and Truman to find a Supreme Court telling a President he can't do something. If the Federal Government was functioning the way it was imagined in the 18th Century, the Supreme Court would be making decisions a dozen times per year about constitutional/unconstitutional action by the President. But we don't live in that world and so the actual number of decisions is zero.
Originally posted by 1kiki:
So, I made a list off the top of my head about things that might be unconstitutional
mass data collection of Americans
drone-killing Americans w/out a trial
torture
SECOND has submitted starting wars without Congressional declaration
I'm going to mull on this but I hope others add to the list.
One example 1kiki mentioned: "drone-killing Americans w/out a trial"
The Supreme Court didn't take that case, which means it is still in a quantum superposition of constitutional/unconstitutional. Trump took advantage of the Supreme Court's indecision to blow up with a drone the daughter of a guy Obama blew up with a drone. Who knows if it is Constitutional? Who is going to do anything about it if it wasn't? Certainly neither the Supreme Court nor Congress.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anwar_al-Awlaki#Lawsuit_against_the_US
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
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Trump picks another Fed member who believes in the gold standard.
The United States abandoned the gold standard in 1971, and today the majority of economists in America believe reviving it would be disastrous for the US economy.
Yet that isn't stopping President Donald Trump from naming a longtime proponent of returning to the gold standard, conservative scholar Judy Shelton, as his latest pick for a seat on the Federal Reserve Board.
Both of Trump's most recent previous would-be nominees, conservative analyst Stephen Moore and businessman Herman Cain, endorsed returning to the gold standard. But Shelton is far more identified with her advocacy for the idea, which is based on the belief that the price of gold is stable and would make the dollar less susceptible to inflation or other volatility.
"It sounds kind of persuasive if you haven't studied economics, but it's really completely counter-factual and for good reason," said Darrell Duffie, a finance professor at Stanford University. "Gold is an incredibly volatile asset relative to the US dollar as we know it today. It's just a misperception that if we were to go to the gold standard that we would have more stable prices."
An idea that keeps coming back around
The gold standard has a long history in Republican economics.
In the 1980s, President Ronald Reagan launched the first Gold Commission, headed by monetarist Anna Schwartz, who eventually came out against the endeavor with her colleague Milton Friedman.
But the Republican Party revived the idea in its 2012 and 2016 campaign platforms, calling for a new commission to investigate the viability of a return to gold standard system. Former GOP presidential candidates, including Senators Ted Cruz of Texas and Rand Paul of Kentucky, have supported the idea.
As a candidate, Trump told GQ magazine: "Bringing back the gold standard would be very hard to do, but, boy, would it be wonderful. We'd have a standard on which to base our money."
More at www.cnn.com/2019/07/05/economy/judy-shelton-gold-standard-federal-rese
rve/index.html
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
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Quote:
Originally posted by SECOND:
I have doubts that you will ever understand that Democratic Presidents are restrained in what they can do by what the Constitution will allow, while guys like Trump and Nixon have got their own little area that they move freely around in and it is smaller and only partially overlaps the one in the Constitution.
Quote:So you're saying no presidents do anything outside of the Constitution, because - it's in a legal quantum state?? Is that your claim NOW?
Originally posted by SECOND:
Until the Supreme Court makes a ruling, any action by the President is in a quantum superposition of constitutional/unconstitutional.
I'm glad to see you argued yourself out of your biased impression of democratic v republican presidents.
But if I read you trying to again make ANY point about constitutionality, I'll just refer you back to yourself http://www.fireflyfans.net/mthread.aspx?bid=18&tid=61954&mid=1
078593#1078593 , and you can have a fun time arguing yourself in circles.
And if democrats don't do anything different, how are they any better?
tic tac
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Quote:1kiki, wrong as usual. The Supreme Court has avoided ruling on whether the President had done something Constitutional since it ruled that Nixon could not withhold evidence on Watergate. The experience so traumatized the Supreme Court that it didn't ever want to do it again. My goodness, they had to make a decision in only days, rather than months. And they had to make themselves clear, rather than have a separate opinion from all nine judges. Too much stress!
Originally posted by 1kiki:
So you're saying no presidents do anything outside of the Constitution, because - it's in a legal quantum state?? Is that your claim NOW?
I'm glad to see you argued yourself out of your biased impression of democratic v republican presidents.
But if I read you trying to again make ANY point about constitutionality, I'll just refer you back to yourself http://www.fireflyfans.net/mthread.aspx?bid=18&tid=61954&mid=1
078593#1078593 , and you can have a fun time arguing yourself in circles.
That has left America where it is today: the President doesn't know what the hell is Constitutional or not. The Court won't tell him with one voice. Neither will Congress. That leaves the White House lawyers, trembling at the wrath of the President, telling the President whatever he wants to hear about Constitutionality.
It is a very ineffective system when one branch (Supreme Court, the Mommy branch) is too lazy/cowardly/slow to decide what is Constitutional and the other branch (Congress, the Daddy branch) is schizophrenic, hearing hundreds of confused/angry voices buzzing in its head about what is Constitutional. That leaves the third branch (President, the Baby branch) to be a whinny child, making decisions depending on the personality of the child sitting in the President's chair. Smart child or dumb child? Strong or weak self-control? Stoical or prone to tantrums? Truthful or dishonest?
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
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Quote:is not like
Originally posted by SECOND:
Until the Supreme Court makes a ruling, any action by the President is in a quantum superposition of constitutional/unconstitutional.
Quote:Have fun debating yourself.
Originally posted by SECOND:
That has left America where it is today: the President doesn't know what the hell is Constitutional or not.
And if democrats don't do anything different, how are they any better?
tic tac
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Why Trump Fears the Secret British Memo Calling Him a Clown
It’s notable that rather than lashing out with his customary viciousness, Trump is attempting to isolate the issue to the idiosyncratic views of a single, “wacky” ambassador who will soon be replaced. Meanwhile, Trump insists he maintains good relations with the royal family and the (unnamed) next British prime minister.
The president’s unusual restraint may reflect two realities that Democrats ought to bear in mind. A pollster once told me that one of the few foreign-policy facts that registers in the minds of the electorate is the country’s standing with its allies; a rift with friendly nations actually bothers lots of people. A Pew survey from a couple years ago found that 59 percent of Americans believe their country “should take into account the interests of its allies even if it means making compromises with them,” while only 36 percent agreed that it “should follow its own national interests even when its allies strongly disagree.” Trump’s notion of “America first” does not command popular support, and hostility toward a country like Great Britain can actually hurt Trump.
Second, the memo validates questions about Trump’s fitness for office. In a recent poll, 65 percent of the public agreed Trump has “acted in a way that’s unpresidential.” Of course, some of that 65 percent approve of Trump’s overall performance anyway — they’re Republicans, after all — but the size of this number shows just how many Americans find his conduct distasteful or worse.
The case against Trump contains so many damning particulars, it is difficult to narrow it down. But the existence of a written memo confirming the view of a close American ally that Trump is utterly unfit for office might qualify as one of those facts the opposition should bring to the public’s attention.
http://nymag.com/intelligencer/2019/07/trump-fears-secret-british-memo
-kim-darroch.html
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
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The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
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