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What Trump promised oil CEOs as he asked them to steer $1B to his campaign (washingtonpost.com)
24 points by peutetre 6 months ago | hide | past | favorite | 13 comments



https://archive.is/6bfT5

Nice response... It sounded as if those executives don't like the dirty politics and will do only as much of it as they think necessary.


The only bit I'm surprised by is the alleged shock of some executives.

Fossil fuelled fascism is the defining political trend of our age.


Well damn, if only political bribery hadn't been legalized by Bush's supreme court, the knowledge of this getting out could actually matter.


Please take the time to learn about the basics of how our government operates. It’s not Bush’s Supreme Court. The President does not directly control the process of appointing Supreme Court justices. They merely nominate them and Congress confirms them.


"Since the Supreme Court was established in 1789, presidents have submitted 165 nominations for the Court, including those for chief justice. Of this total, 128 were confirmed (7 declined to serve"

Based on the above, it's clear that the president's nominations are largely successful, and therefore, as the only nominator, it stands to reason that presidents define supreme courts, not Congress.

Also, no need to be snarky.


How many justices did President Bush specifically nominate that were subsequently confirmed by Congress? Unless it was 5 or more, I fail to see the connection the original post of this thread was trying to make.

EDIT: typo 4 -> 5


In the Citizens United v. FEC ruling of 2010, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in favor of Citizens United by a vote of 5-4. The justices who voted in favor were:

Chief Justice John Roberts - Nominated by President George W. Bush.

Justice Samuel Alito - Nominated by President George W. Bush.

Justice Anthony Kennedy - Nominated by President Ronald Reagan.

Justice Antonin Scalia - Nominated by President Ronald Reagan.

Justice Clarence Thomas - Nominated by President George H.W. Bush.

These justices constituted the majority that decided to prohibit the government from restricting independent expenditures for political communications.


I am not commenting on the part where they attributed the current court makeup to Bush.


Acting like SCOTUS isn’t partisan is very tiring. Also this is dismissing the massive influence that the Federalist Society/John Birch Society has had on the judiciary.


My comment never said otherwise. I just feel that it needs to be said that it is incorrect and inappropriate to blame the composition or the rulings of SCOTUS on a specific President. The government was intentionally designed to prevent that.


> I just feel that it needs to be said that it is incorrect and inappropriate to blame the composition or the rulings of SCOTUS on a specific President.

Not when the President's party controls Congress, at which point their nominees are all but guaranteed rubber-stamp approval, barring token attempts at vetting. It's appropriate to assign responsibility for SCOTUS to the President when the appointment process is controlled by party loyalties that transcend the balance of powers.


This thread seems to be about the Citizens United ruling that happened during the George W. Bush administration. He nominated 2 justices, Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Samuel Alito. Congress confirmed them. There were 7 other justices from previous administrations that he had zero influence on.


Yes, he had zero bearing on the Republican party or its policy. He and his family were just hapless figureheads with no impact.

We can ignore anyone stating historical facts such as the Bushes directly nominated 3/5ths of the justices who voted in favor of Citizens' United and their ally for the previous few decades was responsible for nominating the other 2 who voted in favor.




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