Well... He's not a math professor...Follow

Why so much anger today varus?

After five, is it really losing it?

Careful, Varus. Next he's going to get offended when you offer to put your tackle in his box.

Edited, Mar 16th 2010 4:20pm by MoebiusLord

you should put the s after the X in my name.

I was actually going to make a comment about that.

Says the person who can't ******* spell moron.

Oh and gbaji, actually I can think of another court case that I disagree with. Two actually. The Goodyear case vs. a female employee of theirs who found out after she'd been working there for several years (I forget the exact number) that she had been paid less than her male coworkers. The court took the established precedence of allowing lawsuits within 180 days of the last unequal paycheck, and changed it to within 180 days of the FIRST, which is total bull ****. The other is the recent decision to change campaign finance reform.

Sure. And so can I. Kelo v. New London is my second "go to" bad SCOTUS decision (and we've debated in on this board a couple times).

Here's the thing though. Could you remember those in an interview setting? How long did it take you to dredge them out of your memory? You can't sit there for 20 seconds thinking about it with the camera running. Also, can you remember the actual names of the cases? Want to take a guess what would have happened if Palin had referenced a case without knowing its name?

We'd all be talking about how stupid Palin is that she doesn't even know the names of the cases she used as examples of bad SCOTUS decisions, right?


It was a trap question. Candidates go into those interviews with a whole set of semi-prepared responses. They know they'll be asked about specific broad issues. Position on the court. Position on economics. Position on foreign policy. Position on education. And so forth. They come prepared with one "example" in each of those areas to talk about. One example of what they agree with, and one example of what they disagree with. It's a pretty standard way of prepping for those sorts of interviews, and everyone does it pretty much the same way. Of course, the interviewers know this. Which means that if they want to be nice to the person they're interviewing, they ask questions designed to feed into that sort of prep. Questions like: "What is the biggest problem with our economic policy today?", or "What do you feel in the most important objective with regard to the fight against global terrorism?". When a reporter wants to be mean, or wants to portray a candidate in a bad light, they ask questions specifically designed to throw someone off their standard prep.

Asking someone to name a bad SCOTUS decision, but *not* the obvious first answer that candidate would normally give is exactly that sort of "I'm going to make you look bad" question an interviewer may ask.

Edited, Mar 17th 2010 4:31pm by gbaji

Kind of a subjective position though, isn't it?

Do you honestly think Biden would have done better with a similar question? Be honest...

There would have been so many ways to finesse that. An indignant (and she does indignant so very well) "they ruled the government has more rights to private property than private citizens do!" would have sufficed.

Or even, "they dictated limits on where we could send our kids to school!"

Or even, "they tied the hands of hardworkin' blue collar police officers to get confessions out of suspects they had down at the station there, caught redhanded, doncha know, but no, the criminals have all the rights, you betcha."

Have you read the transcript? Couric asked both of them two questions. She first asked Biden why he thought Roe v Wade was a good decision. Then he was asked for a decision he didn't agree with. Palin was asked why she thought Roe v. Wade was a bad decision. A balanced interview would have then asked her to name a case in which she agreed (one against and one for from each candidate). Instead, she asked her to name another case in which she disagreed other than Roe v. Wade.

So unbalanced questions first. But here's the thing. Biden didn't name a case either. He rambled on about some law he proposed which the court struck down. Odd that he couldn't name a court case he was directly involved with. But he's not called to the mat for that? Really?


She answered by talking about *why* she would agree or disagree with a court ruling. She talked about preferring power be exercised at a state rather than federal level. When asked to name a specific case, she instead talked about the kinds of cases she'd disagree with, but did not name a specific one. Was her answer "worse" than his? I don't think so. His answer didn't tell us anything about his position on how the Supreme Court should rule. Hers did. Both were equally rambling if you watch the clips.

Yet she's labeled as a dumb woman, while he's just given a pass... No bias there at all, huh?

Edited, Mar 17th 2010 6:51pm by gbaji

I linked to the video, Chucklemuffin.


Why? He didn't just "ramble", he gave an actual answer discussing why he thought there was an interstate commerce rationale for his law and yet the court decided that there was no federal jurisdiction, a point which Biden obviously disagreed with. But, see, even if he had said "X v Y", it wouldn't have really added to the answer because the meat of it was why he thought the court was wrong on this specific case. Palin didn't mention any specific cases in even the vaguest of terms. She just stared blankly and then kept trying to pass of "Well, I don't like cases with too much federal stuff." as an answer.


So she couldn't answer the question and tried to change the topic like a stuck high school student? Gee, I'm impressed!

I've seen "moran" used in the self-aware-ironic-joke way plenty of times. It goes along with the use of "an" before a word beginning with a consonant, Nobby's Cnut, and the word bitch as an expression of affection.

I've also seen Varus post long enough to recognise that he's usually not being funny on purpose - he's just stupid. And one of those quiet, law-abiding, but genuine sociopaths.

Why do you care?

How strangely empathetic of you.