TYT: Did Obama Screw Up By Picking Elena Kagan for Supreme Court?

[The Northerner]

Run time: 07:14 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=poBGi_4YBt4   Posted on YouTube: May 11, 2010 By YouTube Member: TheYoungTurks Views on YouTube: 1362   Posted on DU: May 11, 2010 By DU Member: The Northerner Views on DU: 1283

 

[Davis_X_Machina]

1. I assume that's a rhetorical question...

...because TYT already have given their anwswer, and precious short shrift to anything contrariwise.

[Cha]

2. It's another screw up from cenk.

[FiveGoodMen]

3. As usual: "Net recommendation: 0 votes (Your vote: +1)"

[Name removed]

5. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[ihavenobias]

4. A better question

We agree that the right wing is going to go nuts trying to paint Kagan as a radical leftist/socialist/communist, etc. And we know the mainstream media likes to parrot stupid right wing talking points and make it "conventional wisdom". Here are two responses:

A)-The left praises the choice of Kagan, saying she's excellent and a slam-dunk on the court.
B)-The left criticizes the choice of Kagan, saying she might be conservative and not progressive.

Forgot your personal opinion for a moment and answer this question from a politics/media perspective. Is A or B more helpful in refuting (or confirming) the right wing/MSM talking points about Kagan? Is A or B more helpful in getting Kagan in place on the court in light of the political climate in our (corporatist and conservative) Congress?

[mmonk]

6. The answer would depend if you want her on the court or not I guess.

[JDPriestly]

7. I defended Obama's choice of Kagan until I listened to the clip

on the Rachel Maddow show of a clip from her argument with Roberts before the Supreme Court.

Kagan may be a very nice person, but she needs a few more years of court appearances before she is Supreme Court ready. I question whether she has appeared before a court very often. I question whether she has spent much time even listening to lawyers argue motions and other such things in court or even in mediations and arbitrations. She seemed to have never foreseen that Roberts might ask the questions he did. She sounded completely unprepared to me -- either that or starstruck. Poor woman. She needed to wade into a few motions before she appeared in the most important Court and one of the most important cases in our time.

I question whether Kagan recognizes her the limits of her experience and ability. I see a mess in the making. Kagan could be the next Clarence Thomas. I hope I am wrong. But her performance in that clip was really poor. Roberts was trying to challenge her on simple issues. She sounded confused -- unprepared. Oh, this is not good.

[tabatha]

9. So, you judge her on just one clip.

I have heard that she has spent a lifetime of being extremely persuasive.

[JDPriestly]

11. From that clip, it is apparent that she was not comfortable in front of the Court.

That's a bad sign.

[Tx4obama]

12. Here's some more info on Kagan

http://www.demconwatchblog.com/diary/3493/elena-kagan

It's better to do 'a bunch' of research before forming an opinion.

http://www.demconwatchblog.com/diary/3493/elena-kagan

[ljm2002]

17. You say "Kagan could be the next Clarence Thomas"...

...and then "I hope I am wrong."

Your wish is granted, you are as wrong as wrong can be.

Thomas is an intellectual lightweight (to put it kindly) who should never have been nominated to the exalted position he holds, while Kagan is by all accounts brilliant. She may have stammered a bit in the clip we all heard, but then again, our illustrious Chief Justice couldn't even deliver the Presidential swearing-in oath accurately -- and he, also, is considered to be a brilliant legal mind.

I think Cenk hit the nail on the head: Obama will never pick a fight with the conservatives if he can help it, he is too busy being a "uniter". In the meantime he doesn't care a whit for the progressive wing of his own party, in fact the main purpose we serve for him is that he can point to us and say "See, I pissed them off so I must be doing something right".

It's a near-certainty she will be confirmed. My hope is that she will swing to the left as time goes on. It's happened before, it could happen again.

[Bitwit1234]

8. I do agree that

practically every time the republicans start to scream and yell, Obama and his advisors give in to them. I think this guy is correct. Obama is just afraid of a fight. NOW DONT YOU WISH YOU HAD HILLARY. I DO.

[FiveGoodMen]

14. Aggressive military stance ("Obliterate Iran"), cozying up to Big Insurance ("I can imagine needing

to show proof of health insurance to get a job"), playing the race card ("Good, white Americans know what I'm talking about"), having an orgasm on O'Reilly's show about how wonderful rich people are ("Rich people...GOD BLESS US!!!!"), and on and on and on.

Hillary merely showed on the campaign trail that she intended to do what Obama is currently doing.

She would not be much better.

Appalling, but evident.

[Capitalocracy]

10. K&R from me... DISSENT IS GOOD.

You have more power to influence the people who count on your vote than you do to influence the people who know you'll never vote for them in a million years. So why would you only criticize Republicans when the Democratic establishment are accomplices in their destruction of all things progressive? DEMAND BETTER.

[Tx4obama]

13. Obama does NOT want to 'totally get rid of Miranda', only to 'TWEAK' it

Gibbs: Obama Wants 'Limited Flexibility' On Miranda

From Washington Post:

Obama wants "limited flexibility" on Miranda

As you know, over the weekend Eric Holder made the surprise announcement that the administration is seeking ways to create a broad exception to the Miranda rule. Absent details, it was hard to evaluate the proposal or the administration's motives in announcing it.

But at the press briefing just now, Robert Gibbs shed a bit more light on what the administration wants. The phrase of choice: "Limited flexibility."

Asked whether the administration was looking for a "legislative vehicle" to expand interrogations without Miranda, Gibbs replied:

"The president is interested in limited flexibility. The president believes that the law that we have in place is an important one. And obviously any change that takes place would have to be done legislatively."

This suggests that the administration is interested in tweaking the law, rather than dramatically changing it, in order to give interrogators more time to question suspects before Mirandizing them. At the same time, though, Gibbs confirmed that, yes, the administration is seeking a legislative change to existing law.

Until we know more it will remain tough to evaluate how big a deal this is or to take a stab at divining the motives for it. For now, though, it's hard to see how any push to change existing law squares with the administration's previous claims that Mirandizing the Christmas Day bomb plotter and the Times Square suspect had no impact on the interrogation of the two men.

[icee]

15. Excellent, Cenk. We will now have a Supreme Court leaning toward

the Right just in time to issue opinions on Entitlements so that Congress doesn't have to destroy itself. After this, the next pick for the Supreme Court may be Judge Judy, who will be nominated because she has the most viewed talk show on tv. Some of this stuff is getting hilarious.

[20score]

16. How true. We need an FDR about now.