CNN != Fox
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@approxinfinity And that’s the most insidious part of it.
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@KUSTEVE lol seriously? What proof do you have that Jay Powell is deliberately undermining Trump?
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You do realize that part of the reason that the Fed did not raise rates during the Obama presidency was that the economy was in recession when Obama took office, and then was in recovery through 2015. Raising interest rates during the recession or recovery period would have spurred another recession, likely tanking the economy again.
In other words, the conspiracy theory you point out was actually just sound economic policy to aid the recovery. This is not deep state conspiratorial action to hurt the Trump presidency. President Obama took office at the beginning of a recession and oversaw a careful economic policy to end the recession and begin the recovery.
However, economic policy also states that you cannot keep the rates low forever. At some point they must increase. President Trump has touted the recovery. Now he has to deal with the economic policy that comes with it - rising interest rates.
President Trump cut taxes last year to jolt the economy. However, he now has to follow that up with sound economy policy to encourage gradual growth. Cutting taxes or cutting interest rates isn’t a forever solution to economic growth because there is a limit to how much you can cut those things.
Additionally, President Trump may have other motivations for complaining about interest rates. His businesses have hundreds of millions of dollars in debt to various banks. As the interest rate rises, Trump businesses also see their debt servicing rise (the cost they pay on their interest to keep their loans current). Because some of Trump’s debt stems from bankruptcy settlements, he cannot default further without potentially losing his companies and assets to his creditors.
There are competing interests here. The Fed has to start raising rates because they were as low as they could go during the recession and recovery, and are still lower than they probably should be. Businessman Trump has companies that will see their debt service costs skyrocket as interest rates rise - a quarter point increase on hundreds of millions of dollars in loans gets very expensive very quickly.
The Fed has to run economic policy for the nation, not for Trump businesses.
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There still is no reason to raise the rate numerous times in such a short span of time.
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We all have our opinions and as I have always indicated they cannot be right or wrong because they are just that, opinions. Now, when we have actual facts it is different because they tend to speak for themselves and even then, different people see them differently.
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approxinfinity said:
@KUSTEVE You do agree that Jay Powell runs the Fed, is a Trump appointee, is a Republican, and is the person who makes the final call on the interest rates, right?
You have to admit that lot of appointments don’t turnout the way it was expected.
Looking at SCOTUS appointees:
William Brennan, appointed by Eisenhower as a conservative and left as a veritable liberal icon.
Harry Blackmun, appointed by Richard Nixon was supposed to be a conservative appointee to reign the Warren Court and became quite the liberal including taking the lead in the Row-V- Wade case.
Byron White, appointed by Kennedy as a liberal justice ended up being a fairly conservative justice.
John Paul Stevens, appointed by Ford ended up being quite the liberal justice, same as David Souter appointed by Bush.
Lewis Powell, appointed by Nixon who had written extensively in favor of business had quite the turnaround.
Earl Warren, appointed by Eisenhower became the patron saint of the liberal jurisprudential revolution.
The same is true for lots of others appointed to high positions based on their record only to act quite the opposite. Do you think Trump does not regret appointing Sessions as head of the Department of Justice?
Just because Trump appointed Powell does not mean he agrees with what he is doing or that he anticipated he would do what he is doing. Trump has stated he does not agree with the actions of the Fed/Powell but as an independent agency there is not much he can do at this time.
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JayHawkFanToo said:
approxinfinity said:
@KUSTEVE You do agree that Jay Powell runs the Fed, is a Trump appointee, is a Republican, and is the person who makes the final call on the interest rates, right?
You have to admit that lot of appointments don’t turnout the way it was expected.
You make an interesting point on SCOTUS appointees not being “what they were expected to be.” The SCOTUS is supposed to evaluate the case before them and rule on that.
Conservatives often focus on outcomes when they look at a nominee - they want someone to overturn Roe v. Wade or rule against gay marriage, for example.
Oftentimes, however, cases turn on application of the facts to the law. Roe was decided not because abortion is a fundamental right, but because privacy is a fundamental right. There’s a fundamental right that an individual should be able to make decisions for themselves regarding their body/health, etc. Its right there in the Roe opinion.
Same applies for gay marriage - the state cannot deny it because of equal protection under the law.
So when the SCOTUS ruled on those things, they were ruling that you, as a person that is against abortion, cannot be forced to have an abortion by the government just as much as someone that may want an abortion cannot be prevented from getting one by the government because the government cannot invade your privacy. The ruling wasn’t a one way street. It runs both ways. The government cannot force you to do one or the other because you have a right to privacy to choose for yourself.
The government cannot decide that homosexual couples are not allowed to marry just the same as the government cannot prevent mixed race couples from marrying because that is outside the government’s view. As long as you are of age to enter into a contract, you can legally marry whomever you want, and the government cannot prevent it. Again, its not a one way street.
If the only outcome you seek is the application of law in a fair and unbiased way, you land on those results every time. If, however, you want a specific outcome (abortion ban, gay marriage ban, etc.) then justice cannot be blind. That’s also a two way street.
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I did not comment on the merits of lack thereof for any specific case since I did not want to make it a political or any other type of issue, that was your take.
I simply indicated that oftentimes appointed/nominated individuals turn out to be quite different than expected, with the head of the Fed being one…tha’s all.
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@justanotherfan pointed out the tax cuts. With those adding 1.5 to 2 trillion to a hyper economy, the Fed could well have had a good reason for a series of rate increases.
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Fair point.
I guess my point is that justices shouldn’t be liberal or conservative - they should evaluate the facts of what’s in front of them and rule accordingly, not rule based on a preferred outcome.
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@approxinfinity for rationality on the Right, it’s simple - there was not one iota of proof that Kavanaugh was ever even at a party with Prof Ford.
It’s therefore completely rational to completely dismiss the charges as totally baseless and false. It’s so clear, even a liberal like Susan Collins could figure it out.
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@approxinfinity and how is any of that relevant - I don’t buy the charge that he lied about any of it?
Move the goal posts much? From rape attempt to serial rapist to "lied about drinking in HS? Is that rational?
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@Crimsonorblue22 how would you respond to a charge that you were a serial, canaibal mass murderer? Those Dem Senators deserve to be shamed. They were shameful.
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I agree. Justices, just like any other judge, should follow the Constitution which is the ultimate law of the land. If the people feel the Constitution needs to be updated/changed there is a process that must be followed and cannot be arbitrarily changed by activist judges that choose to interpret it in a manner that fits a political agenda and contrary to that intended explicitly or implicitly.
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@approxinfinity you believe, but on what basis, man?
The only basis for anyone’s belief in his guilt that I’ve seen is an additional belief that he lied in his denials. Or an additional charge that he wasn’t suffienciently deferential to his crazy Senatorial accusers.
What facts an evidence do you have that support Ford’s accusation?
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@JayHawkFanToo nice recap.
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@Crimsonorblue22 I don’t think he lied. I think that is the belief of those already disposed against him.
As a matter of fact, there are now documents of folks there, that his definition of terms were true to that group and time.
Where is the evidence that shows that’s not true.
But more importantly, this is in effect an argument over how one pronounced “Poh - Tate - Oh” or “Poh - Tot - Oh” back in his HS days. Which is effect to say, it is completely stupid, irrelevant argument given we have a good 20 years of very public service and public evidence of his relationships with people.
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@mayjay and so is it your professional opinion that an unbutressed 35 year old accusation outweighs the volumes of 20 years very public evidence of upstanding behavior?
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@justanotherfan but then again, the Judge wouldn’t be hurling outrageously false allegations at the defendant.
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If a defendant behaved that way in court towards anyone - a witness, the prosecutor, the alleged victim, their own attorney, the judge, someone in the gallery, etc. - they would be held in contempt.
Attempting to justify Kavanaugh’s behavior that way simply isn’t true. No matter what the accusation is, you are expected to conduct yourself with a certain level of professionalism and decorum.
If you have followed the news on exonerated defendants (i.e., people that went to prison for crimes they did not commit), you will notice that even during the appeals process, they conduct themselves with decorum - and these are people that are PROVEN to have been falsely accused. Yet at no point can they behave the way Judge Kavanaugh did without putting their entire appeal in jeopardy.
There is an expectation and Judge Kavanaugh fell well short of that in his hearing, and it simply does not matter whether the allegations were true or false. His level of conduct should have remained at a certain level, and it did not.
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You have a very one side view of events and your comparison is a straw man argument. Many on your side have argued that it was not a court of law and it cannot be compared to one.
In any case, in a real court of law the defense attorneys would be objecting to most of what he was asked as it was hearsay and a real judge would caution the prosecutor to move one or risk being held in contempt.
Kavanaugh behavior was not any different to that of many defendants in court that get in shouting matches with prosecutors.
I believe you compared Kavanaughs demeanor with that of Thomas before but they both have different personalities with Thomas being a very reserved individual that would not get excited but his words were every bit as biting as those of Kavanaugh.
Maybe Kavanaugh should have taken a page of the Hillary playbook and proclaimed…What difference at this point does it make? Of curse there was plenty of recent and corroborated evidence that she lied…and people actually died, compared to 36 year old unsubstantiated allegations against Kavanaugh…Hillary got away with it, right?
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@JayHawkFanToo Hearsay? I think your class on evidence was woefully inadequate. Where do you see hearsay issues in the questioning of Kav?
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Can you define hearsay under the rules of evidence without looking it up?
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@justanotherfan If he can I would be shocked! I know I could define hearsay, but the rules of admissibility (the exceptions and exclusions) always required careful review even back when I was practicing.
In a couple commodity fraud cases, this one jerk attorney kep objecting to my questions of the plaintiff regarding what promises he said the defendant broker had made. “You are asking for hearsay, Your Honor!” Probably about 6 objections until I finally threatened to kick him out of the case and default his client as a sanction.
People think hearsay is any quote people testify about. Drives me nuts to watch virtually any legal show.
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Unverified or uncorraborated information?
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@JayHawkFanToo Not at all close. It has nothing to do with verifiabilty of an allegation (although the history of the hearsay rule’s exceptions and exclusions are largely based on assumptions about likelihood of accuracy).
Hearsay is an out of court statement (by a Declarant) offered (in testimony by a Witness in court) to prove the assertion contained in the statement. E.g., Witness testifies that Declarant stated that the car was going fast. Hearsay? Yes, if offered to prove that the car was going fast, and if it is, normally it would be inadmissible if it doesn’t fall into an exception (here, it might be that Declarant said it as he jumped out of the way, and it might be admissible as an “excited utterance”. If the Declarant was talking 2 weeks later, maybe not admissible because statements made after reflection are not “excited” utterances.)
If Declarant is the opposing party to the side offering the witness, Declarant’s statement would be offered as an admission, and then it comes in as an exclusion to the rule. Exceptions are hearsay that is allowed; exclusions are things that look like hearsay but are not hearsay because of their purpose in the proceeding, i.e., who said it and why is it offered. (I still get exclusions confused because the list of exceptions is so long.)
In this example, if it is offered only to prove the Declarant could speak (not the speed of the car), then it is not hearsay, just ordinary testimony, and it comes in.
In my cases I mentioned before, the customer was testifying that certain promises were made to him about no-risk profits to be made if he opened the account. The customer was not saying that the statements by the broker were true (just the opposite!), only that the fraudulent statements were made. Thus, no hearsay. (Incidentally, hearsay was totally admissible in my proceedings anyway due to the type of forum).
There are lots of exceptions for certain documents, business records, self-certified official records, dying declarations, statements against interest, prior testimony, etc, all depending on the circumstances. Some depend on unavailability of the Declarant as well.
Kav’s testimony in response to the questions would have been fully admissible with regard to anything he said or did previously. Had he been on trial, the other complaining women besides Ford (since she directly testified, everything she said was admissible) would have had to testify to get their written statements in unless the defense stipulated to the admission of written testimony (and no atty would stipulate to that because of no cross-examination). Kav’s own letter to his fellow beach bums and his calendar were admissible because he prepared them.
Now you have a glimmer, just a glimmer, of how much more complicated the hearsay rule is than common usage makes it sound. “He said, she said” cases have to do with who is more believable, and nothing to do with hearsay, if both “he” and “she” testify.
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Would it be better to say citing facts not in evidence? Most of Dr. Ford’s testimony was uncorroborated since she did not even remember when or where it happened, how she got where she thinks it happened or how she got home afterwards and her testimony of the events was disputed by ALL the witnesses she named including her best friend. Other portions were also shown to be plain false…lots of information on the subject readily available via a quick Internet search so you don’t have to take my word for it.
I am sure you remember what U.S. Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart famously said that he could not use words to describe pornography but “I know it when I see it.” Likewise, many of us non-lawyers perhaps cannot or should not use legalese to describe a smear campaign or its components but like Justice Stewart…we know it when we see it.
Of course you will disagree but that is OK, I am aware what your idea of double standard is. Amazing how you concentrate on little insignificant details and yet ignore the elephant in the room, no pun intended.
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@JayHawkFanToo You are arguing with someone else, apparently. I have trashed the Dem senators and discussed at length factors both against and for the credibility of Ford. You called Ford’s accusation hearsay, and, just like your misapplication of the presumption of innocence, it was just flat wrong. When you try to sound like a lawyer and are flat out wrong, you will get called on it. Then admit it, and move on. You really should have plenty of practice by now.
Wrong also is your assertion about Ford’s allegations being not in evidence. Yes, they were. Her written submissions and her sworn testimony are evidence. You might not believe them, and you might legitimately contend there is little independent proof. However, that does not make them not evidence. And I still have not seen any independent evidence that supports the contention that her story was fabricated. As have thousands of others, I found Kav’s testimony evocative of a high school kid who, caught breaking into a car, immediately lashes out trying to bully his questioners into submission, ranting about being picked on, inventing imaginary conspiracies, and lying about ridiculous things all the while.
We agree that Pelosi’s office and others mishandled it. But while you think that means Ford’s allegations and the others should be dismissed, I have always simply advocated a deeper investigation, which you and your ilk have resisted because of the need to fill the seat expeditiously, ironic since your heroes blatantly disregarded their constitutional duty by obstructing the very same process in 2016.
And you have the gall to accuse me of having a double standard?
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Double standard? Absolutely. you indicated that comparing a political statement by Swift who was lauded by the MSM and Hollywood was not the same as a political statement by Kanye who was savaged by the same MSM and Hollywood. If this is not a double standard I don’t know what is. BTW, the candidate Swift endorsed lost 8 point since her endorsements and now trails by 14 points and what was a tossup race is now a safe republican seat…so much for that.
Now, Pelosi was not involved much in the process other than peripherally and it was Feinstein who screwed it up. Like I said, if the democrats …and you…really wanted a more complete investigation they should have acted way ahead of time on the information they had at hand instead of holding on for 6 weeks and waiting until the day before the vote to bring it out and once the FBI did the aditional investigation they tried to have it classified so no one would see the results. This much is obvious that the strategy was to bring out an accusation and then delay, delay, delay until after the November elections with the hope of capturing the Senate and denying Trump the nomination; there are contemporaneous recordings of democrat strategists saying exactly this (posted link before) and just before the accusation was finally made public. Even liberal Icon Ruth Batter Ginsburg thought it was highly political show.
"Kathleen Parker, a conservative-leaning columnist for the widely-considered liberal Washington Post, wrote this week that Ginsburg called the Kavanaugh hearings “a highly partisan show,” and that the latest tactic from the Democrats is "embarrassing to anyone with a conscience and a grown-up brain."
Democrats have no one to blame but themselves.
Now, if a liberal nominee would have defended him or herself vigorously against uncorroborated accusations, you probably would have applauded and indicated he or she was right to try to clear his or her good name. For every person that believes he was too aggressive I can show you at least one or more that agrees with him.
No question Americans get it and got it. Every poll I have seen afterwards blames the democrats and particularly Feinstein (up to 75%) for the entire fiasco. What a month ago seemed like a certain win for the democrats and control of the senate, now it looks like the republicans will not only maintain the majority but might actually increase it. We will find out soon enough.
Keep in mind that this approach was tried before by the democrats with Bork (when it worked) and then Thomas and now Kavanaugh when it did not work. Recently, the republicans have opposed very liberal candidates like Sotomayor and Kegan, but they did it on ideological grounds,as they should, and did not use character assassination to do it. Good chance that Trump gets to nominate one more justice; it will be interesting to see what the democrats do then.
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I get Pelosi and Feinstein confused and got it wrong obviously.
We will let you have the last argument. If you are able not only to ignore what I have said about virtually everything, but also to know what I will think or say about other things, there is no need for me to waste time actually doing my own discussing.
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Never fight a land war in Asia, Never eat yellow snow, Never cheer for Duke and Kentucky and never get into an argument about law with lawyers and judges when you’re neither of those. That’s good advice.
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@wissox Us lawyers are more fun worrying about things that never could possibly happen in the real world.
Like this: Homeless guy buys a 6-pack of beer and a lottery ticket at the local convenience store, slurring his words and having trouble getting his money out of his pocket during the transaction. He stumbles on his way out the door, tripping over the fold-down doorstop, and bumping into a pregnant woman who pushes him aside on her way in. She is unharmed but, concerned Homeless might be hurt, she turns to watch his progress in the parking lot. As she watches, he knocks over a sign that has a banner sttached. The banner lands on the Pregnant Woman’s unattended car, which catches fire from the hot exhaust pipe, demolishing it and igniting 53 gallons of gas stacked next to it by the Clerk that he is planning to steal after this, his last day of working there. Homeless, who was still disoriented after bumping into the pregnant woman, gets too close to the blaze and his pants catch on fire, which, fortunately, he is able to extinguish with his beer. As he crosses the street, Clerk sees he has dropped a piece of paper. Clerk calls to him. Homeless turns around and is vaporized by an 18-wheeler going by. The stress of the explosion causes Pregnant Woman to go into labor 2 weeks early. Meanwhile, the paper turns out to be Homeless’s lottery ticket, which later proves to be worth millions of dollars.
So, the question is, who is liable for the damage to the grill and radiator on the 18-wheeler?
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@mayjay Hmmm, that sounds like a fun one to solve. I remember you a couple years back said you used to have questions in law school like a guy is ending it all by jumping off a building. On his way down, someone in an apartment building fires their gun which strikes the guy as he passes his balcony. Coroner discovers a gun shot wound which actually killed the man, not the fall which of course would have killed the man. Can he be charged with murder/manslaughter or whatever?
I sometimes have Walter Mitty moments where I imagine myself in some role. I’ve thought I’d like to be a cop only for this moment. I question a guy who I suspect having drugs. He says to me “Man I don’t got no drugs”. I promptly place him under arrest for confessing to having drugs. He protests to which I say, “Too bad you didn’t learn about double negatives because you literally just confessed to having drugs.” How would that hold up in court?
