:fp: :fp: The Cold War ended a little more than 20 years ago, the Soviet Union is no longer a threat to us, and Czechoslovakia dissolved in 1993. Mitt better get new guys who are up to date. :fp:
Shows: 6.27.08 Hartford, CT/5.15.10 Hartford, CT/6.18.2011 Hartford, CT (EV Solo)/10.19.13 Brooklyn/10.25.13 Hartford
"Becoming a Bruce fan is like hitting puberty as a musical fan. It's inevitable." - dcfaithful
You can believe what you want, but Obama isn't the most honest politician running for president...I believe Gitmo still existing is evidence of that alone...I believe saying that autistic kids would need to fend for themselves is evidence of that...I believe saying that raising the debt ceiling and running deficits during the Bush administration was un-patriotic is evidence of that...I believe telling the Russian president to simply give him a little more time until after his election so he will have more flexibility is evidence of that...
and quit with the whole sign off peace. That is ridiculous.
Democrats...against death sentences except when in the womb...See how stupid that is to do. Your statement isn't any more honest than my example. I don't believe either to be true.
There is one candidate interested in peace, there is one candidate who believes we aren't the world's policeman...there is one candidate who believes peace comes from trade with all ... But keep supporting the same thing...obviously the last 50+ years has told us that politics in Washington are leading us down a fantastic road...why would we want to support anyone who would want to change it[/quote]
You said:
“You can believe what you want, but Obama isn't the most honest politician running for president...I believe Gitmo still existing is evidence of that alone...I believe saying that autistic kids would need to fend for themselves is evidence of that...I believe saying that raising the debt ceiling and running deficits during the Bush administration was un-patriotic is evidence of that...I believe telling the Russian president to simply give him a little more time until after his election so he will have more flexibility is evidence of that...”
That’s your opinion which you’re entitled to. I believe Obama is an honest president. If my
memory serves, he attempted to close GITMO by seeking the transfer of prisoners to US prison
facilities on the mainland, as well as other foreign nations. I believe there were a few states’
that had towns or counties with unused or underused prison facilities that would have welcomed
the opportunity to house these prisoners (good for the local economy). Then the republican faux
outrage machine kicked in and the plan was scrapped. I for one would have preferred the closing
of GITMO and the trial of defendants in court. I have faith in our criminal justice system to seek
justice. But until there is a politically tenable solution, I’m not sure you can insinuate that
Obama was dishonest. I’m not sure where you’re going with the autistic kids comment but if it
has to do with Obama’s comments regarding Paul Ryan’s budget proposal as it relates to
Medicaid, again I believe you’re off the mark. Obama signed legislation renewing funding for
autism research and treatment and was hailed by autism related organizations for doing so. His
comments regarding allowing autistic kids to have to fend for themselves was in response
to Paul Ryan’s budget proposal whereas Medicaid funding would be given to the states as block
grants rather than requiring the states to spend as dictated by the feds. Since the proposal wasn’t
to take effect until 2022, maybe 2020, there’s no saying what the states would have done. But, in
my opinion, allowing the states to “spend it as they see fit based on their individual state’s
need”, may just mean that the federal money allocated within the Medicaid block grant that was
earmarked for kids with autism, could or may be spent on “other” Medicaid expenses. Thus, in
my opinion, its possible that kids with autism might indeed be fending for themselves. Actions
speak louder than words as his signing the autism legislation attests. As for
raising the debt ceiling comments go, I call it “politics.” Many politicians have railed against
something that they may have, in the past, supported, particularly when they know there are
enough “yea” or “nay” votes, depending on which way they’re going to rail, in an
attempt to embarrass the other side or make for sound bites that play well to the home town
audience. Some would call it political theatre. Unpatriotic? I don’t believe so. If you’d like to
read up on an interesting description of the debt ceiling debate, check out the link:
Again, in my opinion, the republican faux outrage machine worked overtime on this one. Like
Obama was the first to raise it and the first politician to support something they previously
opposed. But that’s just me. Again, I don’t see how being honest and forthright with what your
current negotiating position is to a foreign leader, as it relates to nuclear reduction talks and other weighty issues, by stating the obvious, that because you as president and one third of the senate are headed toward re-election, that your bargaining ability is hampered by that fact and that it would be in everyone’s best interest to hold off on real meaningful discussions until after the elections is prudent and realistic. Any deal hammered out, whatever it is, would have to be approved by the senate. And Obama may not even be the president by the time the vote is taken or the deal is made. Again, what exactly is that evidence of?
Enlighten me if I’ve misinterpreted your comments.
You said: “and quit with the whole sign off peace. That is ridiculous.”
Sorry, maybe to you and again, it’s your opinion to which you’re entitled but I won’t. It’s how I
sign off. Maybe this will help you understand why:
1.
the normal, nonwarring condition of a nation, group of nations, or the world.
2.
( often initial capital letter ) an agreement or treaty between warring or antagonistic nations, groups, etc., to end hostilities and abstain from further fighting or antagonism: the Peace of Ryswick.
3.
a state of mutual harmony between people or groups, especially in personal relations: Try to live in peace with your neighbors.
4.
the normal freedom from civil commotion and violence of a community; public order and security: He was arrested for being drunk and disturbing the peace.
5.
cessation of or freedom from any strife or dissension.
EXPAND
6.
freedom of the mind from annoyance, distraction, anxiety, an obsession, etc.; tranquillity; serenity.
7.
a state of tranquillity or serenity: May he rest in peace.
8.
a state or condition conducive to, proceeding from, or characterized by tranquillity: the peace of a mountain resort.
9.
silence; stillness: The cawing of a crow broke the afternoon's peace.
10.
( initial capital letter, italics ) a comedy (421 b.c.) by Aristophanes.
interjection
11.
(used to express greeting or farewell or to request quietness or silence).
You said: “Democrats...against death sentences except when in the womb...See how stupid
that is to do. Your statement isn't any more honest than my example. I don't believe either
to be true.”
“I wonder when the Department of Labor will forbid parents from requiring children to make their beds, clean their rooms, or set the table for dinner.” – Ron Paul LAKE JACKSON, Texas – Congressman and 2012 Republican Presidential candidate Ron Paul issued the following statement regarding the Department of Labor’s new regulations applying child labor laws to family farms. [...]
No more stupid than what an elected member of congress had to say. The difference is that that
is my opinion expressed in a bumper sticker sized statement and I don’t hold elected office.
Yup, I believe that the current republican party, controlled as it is by the fringe way right, is pro-
life until you’re born for the simple reason that they either oppose almost any type of legislation
or regulation that might improve your life, after your born, or support legislation and/or
regulation that would harm your life after someone is born. Its my opinion, and like you, I’m
entitled to state it. I could also list all the things they’re for or against that make me think why I
do, such as: sensible gun control legislation, gutting, defunding, eliminating the EPA, cutting,
defunding AFDC, Medicaid, Medicare, education, consumer protection, healthcare, FDA,
deregulation of mining, Grover Norquist’s anti-tax pledge (beholden to an unelected lobbyist), oil and gas industries, Headstart, defense spending, etc. etc.
You said: “There is one candidate interested in peace, there is one candidate who believes
we aren't the world's policeman...there is one candidate who believes peace comes from trade with all ... But keep supporting the same thing...obviously the last 50+ years has told us that politics in Washington are leading us down a fantastic road...why would we want to support anyone who would want to change it.”
I don’t believe Ron Paul has the monopoly on peace, truth, justice or the American way. I believe Obama is interested in peace as well. If re-elected, he’ll bring the troops home from Afghanistan and he hasn’t been brow beaten to act irrationally toward Iran. He also didn’t jump right in and arm the rebels in Syria. Prudent, thoughtful but not afraid to use American military might when necessary (killing Osama, Libya). This president isn’t making decisions or trying to run the country in a vacuum or from a surplus budget/economic boom, like the previous president, and running it into the ground or operating in a vacuum. He inherited a mess, a major mess of epic proportions and is making s-l-o-w progress toward digging out of it, particularly in light of unprecedented opposition. “Its our stated goal to see this president fail and be a one term president.” How’s that for patriotism? I also don’t believe we should be the world’s policeman and that trade brings peace so I’d agree with you there. But what is Ron Paul’s alternative? On our military overseas? On eliminating the Fed? I checked his website and while I saw his reasons for opposing these things, I didn’t see what he suggests should replace it or how it would work or how the US would react to the aftermath of such policies. It’s easy to be against something. Eliminating whole government departments and withdrawing our military from everywhere without articulating your plan for the result of those actions is disingenuous and irresponsible. Much harder to articulate how you’d solve something or what operating in the new paradigm your policies created. Personally, I think this country has done pretty well over the past 50 years. Not on everything mind you as we’re certainly not perfect but there is no other place I’d rather live and raise my family. So I don’t know why you think the past 50 years has been a “fantastic road.” Again, enlighten me.
I’d be willing to bet that if we were to meet before a show, we’d have more in common than differences, despite our varying political views. That being said, I don’t consider you the “enemy” but rather someone who if they worked with me, like when Americans work together, we could accomplish a whole lot of that change that you and I want to see. I’ll stand by my support for Obama versus Romney as I believe Obama has more of my interests at heart than Romney does. Pretty simple really.
I’d be willing to bet that if we were to meet before a show, we’d have more in common than differences, despite our varying political views. That being said, I don’t consider you the “enemy” but rather someone who if they worked with me, like when Americans work together, we could accomplish a whole lot of that change that you and I want to see. I’ll stand by my support for Obama versus Romney as I believe Obama has more of my interests at heart than Romney does. Pretty simple really.
Peace.
Actually I was referring to the republicans comment. I typed the wrong peace :oops: sorry about that. I wasn't referring to that part. Just the part about republicans and being on your own nonsense...
In the interest of saving space. I won't reply to everything above specifically. but am going to pick a few highlights.
That’s your opinion which you’re entitled to. I believe Obama is an honest president. If my
memory serves, he attempted to close GITMO by seeking the transfer of prisoners to US prison
facilities on the mainland, as well as other foreign nations. I believe there were a few states’
that had towns or counties with unused or underused prison facilities that would have welcomed
the opportunity to house these prisoners (good for the local economy). Then the republican faux
outrage machine kicked in and the plan was scrapped...But until there is a politically tenable solution, I’m not sure you can insinuate that Obama was dishonest.
so it was scrapped because he couldn't do it? or that he was afraid to do it? That is exactly what I mean by dishonest in regards to a politician. did he out right lie? no, he did omit from saying I will only close gitmo if it doesn't harm me politically...no he didn't but that would have been more truthful wouldn't it? I believe the President talking to the Russian President is an example of what is wrong with politics. We will only make the tough decisions as long as our re-election hopes aren't dashed because of standing up for what we believe in.
...Thus, in my opinion, its possible that kids with autism might indeed be fending for themselves. Actions
speak louder than words as his signing the autism legislation attests.
You don't see a problem with a President deliberately using ridiculous language? And I won't defend Paul's use of hyperbole either. That is for people like me to do and it gets dangerous when it is done by those thought to be in charge. The states may also choose to spend the medicaid block grants on a craps table to try and double it...but I doubt that will happen. So could it, yes, will it, no...
as for the stuff on peace. We may have to disagree on some of it, but what made arming rebels in libya a smart prudent decision, while not doing it in Syria was also smart and prudent? How about arming neither and realizing it isn't our god damn country to meddle in in the first place?
the answers are out there and very easy to find if you are actually interested. I would encourage to look into what would replace the fed, but I know Ron Paul's ideas are out there. There are many brighter people than I on the subject of economics here on the train, I am sure that what you are looking for has been discussed. Bringing our military home would bolster our national defense. Not sure what plan you need to have other than that. Bringing our troops home and opening trade lines with all will go more for our national security than having bases around the world and alliances with some governments and not others... The point of eliminating the departments is to NOT replace them.
So I don’t know why you think the past 50 years has been a “fantastic road.” Again, enlighten me.
I don't think that it has been fantastic. that was sarcasm.
the value of a dollar has lost a frighteningly large purchasing power amount. Far more than wages have kept up with...
The department of education giving out easy to get loans to go to college was an idea that was noble, it has created a monster in tuition costs that saddle every new graduate with more and more debt.
An ever increasingly complicated tax code. Wars, seemingly unending, oddly selective military action. Consolidating federal powers while degrading states' rights. An unholy alliance with big business that has grown stronger every year. Government intrusion in energy markets has picked a winner (oil) without allowing a true free market to have a say on what products should win. Tax credits go to those with the strongest lobby...and so on and so on...
I could go on for hours about why I think the last 50 years of legislation have driven us down...could go on for days if we go back 100 years...
I won't vote for Romney either...but I don't like to pretend we only have the two choices. And we may have a lot in common as to the goals and our hope for final results...I prefer to not fall into the lesser of two evils game though. I don't believe for a second that Democrats or Republicans at heart are against America...I do believe the normal people on all sides of the spectrum want the same thing...a better place to live...we just have different ideas on how to get there.
didn't end up saving that much space
that’s right! Can’t we all just get together and focus on our real enemies: monogamous gays and stem cells… - Ned Flanders
It is terrifying when you are too stupid to know who is dumb
- Joe Rogan
'The reports are, if they are accurate, that our administration wittingly or unwittingly communicated to Chen an implicit threat to his family and also probably sped up or may have sped up the process of his decision to leave the embassy," Romney said. "If these reports are true, this is a dark day for freedom, and it's a day of shame for the Obama administration."
'The reports are, if they are accurate, that our administration wittingly or unwittingly communicated to Chen an implicit threat to his family and also probably sped up or may have sped up the process of his decision to leave the embassy," Romney said. "If these reports are true, this is a dark day for freedom, and it's a day of shame for the Obama administration."
it aint over yet me friend. Rules...who knew they should be followed?
that’s right! Can’t we all just get together and focus on our real enemies: monogamous gays and stem cells… - Ned Flanders
It is terrifying when you are too stupid to know who is dumb
- Joe Rogan
'The reports are, if they are accurate, that our administration wittingly or unwittingly communicated to Chen an implicit threat to his family and also probably sped up or may have sped up the process of his decision to leave the embassy," Romney said. "If these reports are true, this is a dark day for freedom, and it's a day of shame for the Obama administration."
it aint over yet me friend. Rules...who knew they should be followed?
:corn: Interesting.
Shows: 6.27.08 Hartford, CT/5.15.10 Hartford, CT/6.18.2011 Hartford, CT (EV Solo)/10.19.13 Brooklyn/10.25.13 Hartford
"Becoming a Bruce fan is like hitting puberty as a musical fan. It's inevitable." - dcfaithful
romney is a sacrificial lamb ... if i had to bet ... it would be that obama gets his second term ... mainly because, the powers that be like continuity ... obama hasn't done anything to piss off any large interest groups (oil, defense, pharma, etc) ... so, they will give him his second term ...
romney is a sacrificial lamb ... if i had to bet ... it would be that obama gets his second term ... mainly because, the powers that be like continuity ... obama hasn't done anything to piss off any large interest groups (oil, defense, pharma, etc) ... so, they will give him his second term ...
“The unemployment rate is lower now because not so many people want to work,” Romney said. “This is a sad time in America. When people who want work can’t find jobs. College kids, kids coming out of college. Surveys said half of the kids coming out of college can’t find work or can’t find work that’s consistent with their skills. This is a time when America wants to have someone who knows what it takes to create jobs and get people working again.”
Repeating an oft-used campaign line, Romney told the crowd that in order to create jobs, “it helps to have had a job.”
Interesting that the Republicans are now blaming Obama for the lack of jobs, whilst conveniently forgetting that they've blocked every attempt at balancing the budget that doesn't also have a detrimental effect on the middle and lower classes, whilst making sure those in the 1% keep raking in the cash.
If Obama had actually been allowed to implement the changes he wanted to implement then there's a good chance those jobs would be avaialble now. But instead the rich get richer and the poor get poorer, and now the Republicans have the audacity to blame Obama for this state of affairs.
And do you know how many terms/years the republicans have had both houses and the White House? And how many republican governors have their state houses with both chambers under republican control? Are you positing that 2 years of democratic control of both houses and the White House, at the federal level, are responsible for what is going on today? What happened to state's rights and "getting the job done" or maybe the loss of jobs, in the public sector, in republican controled states, Wisconsin, New Jersey, to name a couple, have a net negative of "private sector" job growth and higher unemployment than the national average. So, is it due to 2 years of democratic rule, at the federal level, from 2008 to 2010 or 3 or 4 years of Scott Walker, Chris Christie and the Koch Brothers and their ilk?
Mr. Speaker, "where are the jobs?!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"
And really, Romney? And you'd like me to believe that you actually cared about a Chinese pro-democracy political dissident? Really?
No jobs, too much tax, too much regulation, too much uncertainty. It's rather simple....
Romney discussed the plight of taxes on small businesses at the Sauereisen Concrete Company, which has been owned by the same family for three generations.
“Right now small business, the top rate they pay is the individual tax rate of 35% and 35% of what they make will go into the government income tax rolls. Then they have the state income tax rolls on top of that,” Romney
Obama had a democrat house and senate for two years. Get with the program. He lost. Game over.
The next American Century is upon us!
i think you are the one that needs to get with the program.
this is again a right wing talking point, that obama "had both houses". and it is absolutely bullshit. i hate that people do not understand the following, and yes i am giving you all a civics and history lesson here....
1. the democrats had the senate, yes. they had a simple majority and a simple majority only. the republicans in the senate have filibustered every single piece of legislation that obama has wanted. you don't believe me? look it up. do you know what a filibuster is and how it works? if not you should look it up too because it is a stalling tactic that keeps legislation from being debated and brought to a vote and it is a coward's technique. the dems had the opportunity to change the senate rules to not allow filibusters but they CHOSE NOT TO because they know that the gop would continue to use it and implement the anti filibuster rules against them if the gop ever won the senate again, so why outlaw something that the other side will certainly outlaw against you out of spite if you do it to them first?? the constitution does not mandate that everything has to have 60 votes in the senate to pass. it is the senate rules that are set at the beginning of their terms every few years.
2. the republicans as a party all vote together on nearly every issue. to break a filibuster in the senate you have to have 60 votes. the dems did not ever have a 60 vote majority in the senate, so everything that got filibustered did not have the 60 votes to override the filibuster because the dems did not have the votes, and god knows no republicans were going to break rank to allow legislation to move forward...
3. the dems are a diverse party and they do not all strictly vote the party line like the republicans do. they have people break rank all the time. the dems have a whole faction called "blue dogs" or conservative democrats from conservative states or districts. these are similar to what rush calls RINOS...they have not gone along with all of obama's ideas because it means they would have been committing political suicide back home. if they support a president that is unpopular in their home district they are gonna lose the next election....so these 20 or so blue dogs in the senate did not always support obama or his policies out of the instinct of self preservation. when it the last time republicans have done that?
so as you can see, the dems technically on paper had a numbers majority in the senate, but they did not have the numbers that are now required to pass every single item that is filibustered. so as you can see, obama never "had" both houses in any sort of effective majority.
keep up the hannity and limbaugh talking points though. it is fun debunking them....
There is nothing noble in being superior to your fellow man; true nobility is being superior to your former self.- Hemingway
if anyone wants to discuss for real why things are like this and how we got here they must address my post from the "obama slush fund" thread that only 2 or 3 posters commented on and it killed that thread because it killed any question that it is the republicans who are fucking everything up. here is my post in that thread from last week. if we are going to cheerlead a certain candidate i think we need to have a serious discussion about this, which nobody seems to want to do and i am not expecting a response here either so...
Obama $8.3 billion slush fund
by gimmesometruth27 » 30 Apr 2012 12:17
here is a nice op-ed written by a fellow at the very conservative brookings institution and another guy at the very conservative american enterprise institute. this most likely deserves its own thread, but since we are talking about short term memory loss and unwillingness to compromise and finger pointing with regard to whose fault this really is, i am posting it here. it is pretty bad when conservatives are outright trashing their party... but this is true....
Let’s just say it: The Republicans are the problem.
Rep. Allen West, a Florida Republican, was recently captured on video asserting that there are “78 to 81” Democrats in Congress who are members of the Communist Party. Of course, it’s not unusual for some renegade lawmaker from either side of the aisle to say something outrageous. What made West’s comment — right out of the McCarthyite playbook of the 1950s — so striking was the almost complete lack of condemnation from Republican congressional leaders or other major party figures, including the remaining presidential candidates.
It’s not that the GOP leadership agrees with West; it is that such extreme remarks and views are now taken for granted.
We have been studying Washington politics and Congress for more than 40 years, and never have we seen them this dysfunctional. In our past writings, we have criticized both parties when we believed it was warranted. Today, however, we have no choice but to acknowledge that the core of the problem lies with the Republican Party.
The GOP has become an insurgent outlier in American politics. It is ideologically extreme; scornful of compromise; unmoved by conventional understanding of facts, evidence and science; and dismissive of the legitimacy of its political opposition.
When one party moves this far from the mainstream, it makes it nearly impossible for the political system to deal constructively with the country’s challenges.
“Both sides do it” or “There is plenty of blame to go around” are the traditional refuges for an American news media intent on proving its lack of bias, while political scientists prefer generality and neutrality when discussing partisan polarization. Many self-styled bipartisan groups, in their search for common ground, propose solutions that move both sides to the center, a strategy that is simply untenable when one side is so far out of reach.
It is clear that the center of gravity in the Republican Party has shifted sharply to the right. Its once-legendary moderate and center-right legislators in the House and the Senate — think Bob Michel, Mickey Edwards, John Danforth, Chuck Hagel — are virtually extinct.
The post-McGovern Democratic Party, by contrast, while losing the bulk of its conservative Dixiecrat contingent in the decades after the civil rights revolution, has retained a more diverse base. Since the Clinton presidency, it has hewed to the center-left on issues from welfare reform to fiscal policy. While the Democrats may have moved from their 40-yard line to their 25, the Republicans have gone from their 40 to somewhere behind their goal post.
What happened? Of course, there were larger forces at work beyond the realignment of the South. They included the mobilization of social conservatives after the 1973Roe v. Wade decision, the anti-tax movement launched in 1978 by California’s Proposition 13, the rise of conservative talk radio after a congressional pay raise in 1989, and the emergence of Fox News and right-wing blogs. But the real move to the bedrock right starts with two names: Newt Gingrich and Grover Norquist.
From the day he entered Congress in 1979, Gingrich had a strategy to create a Republican majority in the House: convincing voters that the institution was so corrupt that anyone would be better than the incumbents, especially those in the Democratic majority. It took him 16 years, but by bringing ethics charges against Democratic leaders; provoking them into overreactions that enraged Republicans and united them to vote against Democratic initiatives; exploiting scandals to create even more public disgust with politicians; and then recruiting GOP candidates around the country to run against Washington, Democrats and Congress, Gingrich accomplished his goal.
Ironically, after becoming speaker, Gingrich wanted to enhance Congress’s reputation and was content to compromise with President Bill Clinton when it served his interests. But the forces Gingrich unleashed destroyed whatever comity existed across party lines, activated an extreme and virulently anti-Washington base — most recently represented by tea party activists — and helped drive moderate Republicans out of Congress. (Some of his progeny, elected in the early 1990s, moved to the Senate and polarized its culture in the same way.)
Norquist, meanwhile, founded Americans for Tax Reform in 1985 and rolled out his Taxpayer Protection Pledge the following year. The pledge, which binds its signers to never support a tax increase (that includes closing tax loopholes), had been signed as of last year by 238 of the 242 House Republicans and 41 of the 47 GOP senators, according to ATR. The Norquist tax pledge has led to other pledges, on issues such as climate change, that create additional litmus tests that box in moderates and make cross-party coalitions nearly impossible. For Republicans concerned about a primary challenge from the right, the failure to sign such pledges is simply too risky.
Today, thanks to the GOP, compromise has gone out the window in Washington. In the first two years of the Obama administration, nearly every presidential initiative met with vehement, rancorous and unanimous Republican opposition in the House and the Senate, followed by efforts to delegitimize the results and repeal the policies. The filibuster, once relegated to a handful of major national issues in a given Congress, became a routine weapon of obstruction, applied even to widely supported bills or presidential nominations. And Republicans in the Senate have abused the confirmation process to block any and every nominee to posts such as the head of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, solely to keep laws that were legitimately enacted from being implemented.
In the third and now fourth years of the Obama presidency, divided government has produced something closer to complete gridlock than we have ever seen in our time in Washington, with partisan divides even leading last year to America’s first credit downgrade.
On financial stabilization and economic recovery, on deficits and debt, on climate change and health-care reform, Republicans have been the force behind the widening ideological gaps and the strategic use of partisanship. In the presidential campaign and in Congress, GOP leaders have embraced fanciful policies on taxes and spending, kowtowing to their party’s most strident voices.
Republicans often dismiss nonpartisan analyses of the nature of problems and the impact of policies when those assessments don’t fit their ideology. In the face of the deepest economic downturn since the Great Depression, the party’s leaders and their outside acolytes insisted on obeisance to a supply-side view of economic growth — thus fulfilling Norquist’s pledge — while ignoring contrary considerations.
The results can border on the absurd: In early 2009, several of the eight Republican co-sponsors of a bipartisan health-care reform plan dropped their support; by early 2010, the others had turned on their own proposal so that there would be zero GOP backing for any bill that came within a mile of Obama’s reform initiative. As one co-sponsor, Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.), told The Washington Post’s Ezra Klein: “I liked it because it was bipartisan. I wouldn’t have voted for it.”
And seven Republican co-sponsors of a Senate resolution to create a debt-reduction panel voted in January 2010 against their own resolution, solely to keep it from getting to the 60-vote threshold Republicans demanded and thus denying the president a seeming victory.
This attitude filters down far deeper than the party leadership. Rank-and-file GOP voters endorse the strategy that the party’s elites have adopted, eschewing compromise to solve problems and insisting on principle, even if it leads to gridlock. Democratic voters, by contrast, along with self-identified independents, are more likely to favor deal-making over deadlock.
Democrats are hardly blameless, and they have their own extreme wing and their own predilection for hardball politics. But these tendencies do not routinely veer outside the normal bounds of robust politics. If anything, under the presidencies of Clinton and Obama, the Democrats have become more of a status-quo party. They are centrist protectors of government, reluctantly willing to revamp programs and trim retirement and health benefits to maintain its central commitments in the face of fiscal pressures.
No doubt, Democrats were not exactly warm and fuzzy toward George W. Bush during his presidency. But recall that they worked hand in glove with the Republican president on the No Child Left Behind Act, provided crucial votes in the Senate for his tax cuts, joined with Republicans for all the steps taken after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks and supplied the key votes for the Bush administration’s financial bailout at the height of the economic crisis in 2008. The difference is striking.
The GOP’s evolution has become too much for some longtime Republicans. Former senator Chuck Hagel of Nebraskacalled his party “irresponsible” in an interview with the Financial Times in August, at the height of the debt-ceiling battle. “I think the Republican Party is captive to political movements that are very ideological, that are very narrow,” he said. “I’ve never seen so much intolerance as I see today in American politics.”
And Mike Lofgren, a veteran Republican congressional staffer, wrote an anguished diatribe last year about why he was ending his career on the Hill after nearly three decades. “The Republican Party is becoming less and less like a traditional political party in a representative democracy and becoming more like an apocalyptic cult, or one of the intensely ideological authoritarian parties of 20th century Europe,” he wrote on the Truthout Web site.
Shortly before Rep. West went off the rails with his accusations of communism in the Democratic Party, political scientists Keith Poole and Howard Rosenthal, who have long tracked historical trends in political polarization, said their studies of congressional votes found that Republicans are now more conservative than they have been in more than a century. Their data show a dramatic uptick in polarization, mostly caused by the sharp rightward move of the GOP.
If our democracy is to regain its health and vitality, the culture and ideological center of the Republican Party must change. In the short run, without a massive (and unlikely) across-the-board rejection of the GOP at the polls, that will not happen. If anything, Washington’s ideological divide will probably grow after the 2012 elections.
In the House, some of the remaining centrist and conservative “Blue Dog” Democrats have been targeted for extinction by redistricting, while even ardent tea party Republicans, such as freshman Rep. Alan Nunnelee (Miss.), have faced primary challenges from the right for being too accommodationist. And Mitt Romney’s rhetoric and positions offer no indication that he would govern differently if his party captures the White House and both chambers of Congress.
We understand the values of mainstream journalists, including the effort to report both sides of a story. But a balanced treatment of an unbalanced phenomenon distorts reality. If the political dynamics of Washington are unlikely to change anytime soon, at least we should change the way that reality is portrayed to the public.
Our advice to the press: Don’t seek professional safety through the even-handed, unfiltered presentation of opposing views. Which politician is telling the truth? Who is taking hostages, at what risks and to what ends?
Also, stop lending legitimacy to Senate filibusters by treating a 60-vote hurdle as routine. The framers certainly didn’t intend it to be. Report individual senators’ abusive use of holds and identify every time the minority party uses a filibuster to kill a bill or nomination with majority support.
Look ahead to the likely consequences of voters’ choices in the November elections. How would the candidates govern? What could they accomplish? What differences can people expect from a unified Republican or Democratic government, or one divided between the parties?
In the end, while the press can make certain political choices understandable, it is up to voters to decide. If they can punish ideological extremism at the polls and look skeptically upon candidates who profess to reject all dialogue and bargaining with opponents, then an insurgent outlier party will have some impetus to return to the center. Otherwise, our politics will get worse before it gets better.
Thomas E. Mann is a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, and Norman J. Ornstein is a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute. This essay is adapted from their book “It’s Even Worse Than It Looks: How the American Constitutional System Collided With the New Politics of Extremism,” which will be available Tuesday.
Post edited by gimmesometruth27 on
There is nothing noble in being superior to your fellow man; true nobility is being superior to your former self.- Hemingway
Rubio, speculated to be a top candidate to serve as Romney's running mate, added his voice Sunday to that criticism, accusing the president of repeatedly failing in situations involving human rights. He pointed to the Iranian uprising of 2009, an event in which the Obama administration largely refrained from involvement.
"And we see that again here now, in China, where somehow this administration looked almost reluctant to forcefully assert the United States' defense of human rights and the principles of human rights," Rubio said.
here is a nice op-ed written by a fellow at the very conservative brookings institution and another guy at the very conservative american enterprise institute. this most likely deserves its own thread, but since we are talking about short term memory loss and unwillingness to compromise and finger pointing with regard to whose fault this really is, i am posting it here. it is pretty bad when conservatives are outright trashing their party... but this is true....
Let’s just say it: The Republicans are the problem.
Rep. Allen West, a Florida Republican, was recently captured on video asserting that there are “78 to 81” Democrats in Congress who are members of the Communist Party. Of course, it’s not unusual for some renegade lawmaker from either side of the aisle to say something outrageous. What made West’s comment — right out of the McCarthyite playbook of the 1950s — so striking was the almost complete lack of condemnation from Republican congressional leaders or other major party figures, including the remaining presidential candidates.
It’s not that the GOP leadership agrees with West; it is that such extreme remarks and views are now taken for granted.
We have been studying Washington politics and Congress for more than 40 years, and never have we seen them this dysfunctional. In our past writings, we have criticized both parties when we believed it was warranted. Today, however, we have no choice but to acknowledge that the core of the problem lies with the Republican Party.
The GOP has become an insurgent outlier in American politics. It is ideologically extreme; scornful of compromise; unmoved by conventional understanding of facts, evidence and science; and dismissive of the legitimacy of its political opposition.
When one party moves this far from the mainstream, it makes it nearly impossible for the political system to deal constructively with the country’s challenges.
“Both sides do it” or “There is plenty of blame to go around” are the traditional refuges for an American news media intent on proving its lack of bias, while political scientists prefer generality and neutrality when discussing partisan polarization. Many self-styled bipartisan groups, in their search for common ground, propose solutions that move both sides to the center, a strategy that is simply untenable when one side is so far out of reach.
It is clear that the center of gravity in the Republican Party has shifted sharply to the right. Its once-legendary moderate and center-right legislators in the House and the Senate — think Bob Michel, Mickey Edwards, John Danforth, Chuck Hagel — are virtually extinct.
The post-McGovern Democratic Party, by contrast, while losing the bulk of its conservative Dixiecrat contingent in the decades after the civil rights revolution, has retained a more diverse base. Since the Clinton presidency, it has hewed to the center-left on issues from welfare reform to fiscal policy. While the Democrats may have moved from their 40-yard line to their 25, the Republicans have gone from their 40 to somewhere behind their goal post.
What happened? Of course, there were larger forces at work beyond the realignment of the South. They included the mobilization of social conservatives after the 1973Roe v. Wade decision, the anti-tax movement launched in 1978 by California’s Proposition 13, the rise of conservative talk radio after a congressional pay raise in 1989, and the emergence of Fox News and right-wing blogs. But the real move to the bedrock right starts with two names: Newt Gingrich and Grover Norquist.
From the day he entered Congress in 1979, Gingrich had a strategy to create a Republican majority in the House: convincing voters that the institution was so corrupt that anyone would be better than the incumbents, especially those in the Democratic majority. It took him 16 years, but by bringing ethics charges against Democratic leaders; provoking them into overreactions that enraged Republicans and united them to vote against Democratic initiatives; exploiting scandals to create even more public disgust with politicians; and then recruiting GOP candidates around the country to run against Washington, Democrats and Congress, Gingrich accomplished his goal.
Ironically, after becoming speaker, Gingrich wanted to enhance Congress’s reputation and was content to compromise with President Bill Clinton when it served his interests. But the forces Gingrich unleashed destroyed whatever comity existed across party lines, activated an extreme and virulently anti-Washington base — most recently represented by tea party activists — and helped drive moderate Republicans out of Congress. (Some of his progeny, elected in the early 1990s, moved to the Senate and polarized its culture in the same way.)
Norquist, meanwhile, founded Americans for Tax Reform in 1985 and rolled out his Taxpayer Protection Pledge the following year. The pledge, which binds its signers to never support a tax increase (that includes closing tax loopholes), had been signed as of last year by 238 of the 242 House Republicans and 41 of the 47 GOP senators, according to ATR. The Norquist tax pledge has led to other pledges, on issues such as climate change, that create additional litmus tests that box in moderates and make cross-party coalitions nearly impossible. For Republicans concerned about a primary challenge from the right, the failure to sign such pledges is simply too risky.
Today, thanks to the GOP, compromise has gone out the window in Washington. In the first two years of the Obama administration, nearly every presidential initiative met with vehement, rancorous and unanimous Republican opposition in the House and the Senate, followed by efforts to delegitimize the results and repeal the policies. The filibuster, once relegated to a handful of major national issues in a given Congress, became a routine weapon of obstruction, applied even to widely supported bills or presidential nominations. And Republicans in the Senate have abused the confirmation process to block any and every nominee to posts such as the head of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, solely to keep laws that were legitimately enacted from being implemented.
In the third and now fourth years of the Obama presidency, divided government has produced something closer to complete gridlock than we have ever seen in our time in Washington, with partisan divides even leading last year to America’s first credit downgrade.
On financial stabilization and economic recovery, on deficits and debt, on climate change and health-care reform, Republicans have been the force behind the widening ideological gaps and the strategic use of partisanship. In the presidential campaign and in Congress, GOP leaders have embraced fanciful policies on taxes and spending, kowtowing to their party’s most strident voices.
Republicans often dismiss nonpartisan analyses of the nature of problems and the impact of policies when those assessments don’t fit their ideology. In the face of the deepest economic downturn since the Great Depression, the party’s leaders and their outside acolytes insisted on obeisance to a supply-side view of economic growth — thus fulfilling Norquist’s pledge — while ignoring contrary considerations.
The results can border on the absurd: In early 2009, several of the eight Republican co-sponsors of a bipartisan health-care reform plan dropped their support; by early 2010, the others had turned on their own proposal so that there would be zero GOP backing for any bill that came within a mile of Obama’s reform initiative. As one co-sponsor, Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.), told The Washington Post’s Ezra Klein: “I liked it because it was bipartisan. I wouldn’t have voted for it.”
And seven Republican co-sponsors of a Senate resolution to create a debt-reduction panel voted in January 2010 against their own resolution, solely to keep it from getting to the 60-vote threshold Republicans demanded and thus denying the president a seeming victory.
This attitude filters down far deeper than the party leadership. Rank-and-file GOP voters endorse the strategy that the party’s elites have adopted, eschewing compromise to solve problems and insisting on principle, even if it leads to gridlock. Democratic voters, by contrast, along with self-identified independents, are more likely to favor deal-making over deadlock.
Democrats are hardly blameless, and they have their own extreme wing and their own predilection for hardball politics. But these tendencies do not routinely veer outside the normal bounds of robust politics. If anything, under the presidencies of Clinton and Obama, the Democrats have become more of a status-quo party. They are centrist protectors of government, reluctantly willing to revamp programs and trim retirement and health benefits to maintain its central commitments in the face of fiscal pressures.
No doubt, Democrats were not exactly warm and fuzzy toward George W. Bush during his presidency. But recall that they worked hand in glove with the Republican president on the No Child Left Behind Act, provided crucial votes in the Senate for his tax cuts, joined with Republicans for all the steps taken after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks and supplied the key votes for the Bush administration’s financial bailout at the height of the economic crisis in 2008. The difference is striking.
The GOP’s evolution has become too much for some longtime Republicans. Former senator Chuck Hagel of Nebraskacalled his party “irresponsible” in an interview with the Financial Times in August, at the height of the debt-ceiling battle. “I think the Republican Party is captive to political movements that are very ideological, that are very narrow,” he said. “I’ve never seen so much intolerance as I see today in American politics.”
And Mike Lofgren, a veteran Republican congressional staffer, wrote an anguished diatribe last year about why he was ending his career on the Hill after nearly three decades. “The Republican Party is becoming less and less like a traditional political party in a representative democracy and becoming more like an apocalyptic cult, or one of the intensely ideological authoritarian parties of 20th century Europe,” he wrote on the Truthout Web site.
Shortly before Rep. West went off the rails with his accusations of communism in the Democratic Party, political scientists Keith Poole and Howard Rosenthal, who have long tracked historical trends in political polarization, said their studies of congressional votes found that Republicans are now more conservative than they have been in more than a century. Their data show a dramatic uptick in polarization, mostly caused by the sharp rightward move of the GOP.
If our democracy is to regain its health and vitality, the culture and ideological center of the Republican Party must change. In the short run, without a massive (and unlikely) across-the-board rejection of the GOP at the polls, that will not happen. If anything, Washington’s ideological divide will probably grow after the 2012 elections.
In the House, some of the remaining centrist and conservative “Blue Dog” Democrats have been targeted for extinction by redistricting, while even ardent tea party Republicans, such as freshman Rep. Alan Nunnelee (Miss.), have faced primary challenges from the right for being too accommodationist. And Mitt Romney’s rhetoric and positions offer no indication that he would govern differently if his party captures the White House and both chambers of Congress.
We understand the values of mainstream journalists, including the effort to report both sides of a story. But a balanced treatment of an unbalanced phenomenon distorts reality. If the political dynamics of Washington are unlikely to change anytime soon, at least we should change the way that reality is portrayed to the public.
Our advice to the press: Don’t seek professional safety through the even-handed, unfiltered presentation of opposing views. Which politician is telling the truth? Who is taking hostages, at what risks and to what ends?
Also, stop lending legitimacy to Senate filibusters by treating a 60-vote hurdle as routine. The framers certainly didn’t intend it to be. Report individual senators’ abusive use of holds and identify every time the minority party uses a filibuster to kill a bill or nomination with majority support.
Look ahead to the likely consequences of voters’ choices in the November elections. How would the candidates govern? What could they accomplish? What differences can people expect from a unified Republican or Democratic government, or one divided between the parties?
In the end, while the press can make certain political choices understandable, it is up to voters to decide. If they can punish ideological extremism at the polls and look skeptically upon candidates who profess to reject all dialogue and bargaining with opponents, then an insurgent outlier party will have some impetus to return to the center. Otherwise, our politics will get worse before it gets better.
Thomas E. Mann is a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, and Norman J. Ornstein is a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute. This essay is adapted from their book “It’s Even Worse Than It Looks: How the American Constitutional System Collided With the New Politics of Extremism,” which will be available Tuesday.
Very interesting article that.
Thanks for posting.
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I stopped by on March 7 2024. First time in many years, had to update payment info. Hope all is well. Politicians suck. Bye. Posts: 9,487
I'm still voting for Ron Paul.
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I stopped by on March 7 2024. First time in many years, had to update payment info. Hope all is well. Politicians suck. Bye. Posts: 9,487
And that Rubio sure turned into another war-mongering neocon.
Rubio, speculated to be a top candidate to serve as Romney's running mate, added his voice Sunday to that criticism, accusing the president of repeatedly failing in situations involving human rights. He pointed to the Iranian uprising of 2009, an event in which the Obama administration largely refrained from involvement.
"And we see that again here now, in China, where somehow this administration looked almost reluctant to forcefully assert the United States' defense of human rights and the principles of human rights," Rubio said.
Ahh, so you think the esteemed Senator from Florida can speak, act or have a cogent opinion on human rights in China? Really? He can't fully articulate why he should be Mitts running mate. And he'll tell China how it should be? Really? I wonder how many Spanish speakers there are in China? He'll definitately connect. Through the Wii. And Iran? He's an authority on Iran and geo-politics? He has an inside scoop on what the Obama Administration has been doing with promoting democracy in Iran? Hmmm, what exactly should the US be doing in Iran? Bomb. Bomb. Bomb? Iran? Sorry, but McCain's Reagan moment wasn't very presidential. But I digress. Really? Rubio? That's the best you can come up with? Really? Romney and Rubio?
R Squared, we'll put you in a box!
As an American , I respect your right to be foolhardy and throw your vote away. Its cool. But really? Rubio? You'd have a better chance with Ron Paul.
Obama never even had a job and he's the leader of the free world.
In real news, sanatorum is now on board.
Lawyer
Law professor
Chicago Community Organizer
Chicago State Senator
United States Senator
He has had a job or two
:thumbup: I've said all these whenever I talk with my uncle.
Shows: 6.27.08 Hartford, CT/5.15.10 Hartford, CT/6.18.2011 Hartford, CT (EV Solo)/10.19.13 Brooklyn/10.25.13 Hartford
"Becoming a Bruce fan is like hitting puberty as a musical fan. It's inevitable." - dcfaithful
Unbelievable that your litmus test is whether or not the person, or entity, that occupies the White house, held a job? Really? The man currently occupying the White House "worked" his way there. He didn't have millions of his own money or SUPERPACS to annoit him, he worked the grassroots and got elected. You can't respect that? For the toughest, most imprtant job in the "free world?" If this were 1948, or if it were 1948 4 years ago, the headline would read, "Community Organizer Trumps Wall Street."
So, do you tell your children, if you have them, that they can be president? Or only if they amass untold amounts of wealth first? Yea, you belive in the American Dream alright.
Ha, Obama hasn't held a job thus he is unfit to be re-elected. Really? That is what you've devolved to? The French at least have intelligent debate prior to picking their candidates. Freedom fries anyone?
Shows: 6.27.08 Hartford, CT/5.15.10 Hartford, CT/6.18.2011 Hartford, CT (EV Solo)/10.19.13 Brooklyn/10.25.13 Hartford
"Becoming a Bruce fan is like hitting puberty as a musical fan. It's inevitable." - dcfaithful
Comments
Godfather.!
http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/20 ... et-threat/
http://maddowblog.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2 ... t-war?lite
"Becoming a Bruce fan is like hitting puberty as a musical fan. It's inevitable." - dcfaithful
You can believe what you want, but Obama isn't the most honest politician running for president...I believe Gitmo still existing is evidence of that alone...I believe saying that autistic kids would need to fend for themselves is evidence of that...I believe saying that raising the debt ceiling and running deficits during the Bush administration was un-patriotic is evidence of that...I believe telling the Russian president to simply give him a little more time until after his election so he will have more flexibility is evidence of that...
and quit with the whole sign off peace. That is ridiculous.
Democrats...against death sentences except when in the womb...See how stupid that is to do. Your statement isn't any more honest than my example. I don't believe either to be true.
There is one candidate interested in peace, there is one candidate who believes we aren't the world's policeman...there is one candidate who believes peace comes from trade with all ... But keep supporting the same thing...obviously the last 50+ years has told us that politics in Washington are leading us down a fantastic road...why would we want to support anyone who would want to change it[/quote]
You said:
“You can believe what you want, but Obama isn't the most honest politician running for president...I believe Gitmo still existing is evidence of that alone...I believe saying that autistic kids would need to fend for themselves is evidence of that...I believe saying that raising the debt ceiling and running deficits during the Bush administration was un-patriotic is evidence of that...I believe telling the Russian president to simply give him a little more time until after his election so he will have more flexibility is evidence of that...”
That’s your opinion which you’re entitled to. I believe Obama is an honest president. If my
memory serves, he attempted to close GITMO by seeking the transfer of prisoners to US prison
facilities on the mainland, as well as other foreign nations. I believe there were a few states’
that had towns or counties with unused or underused prison facilities that would have welcomed
the opportunity to house these prisoners (good for the local economy). Then the republican faux
outrage machine kicked in and the plan was scrapped. I for one would have preferred the closing
of GITMO and the trial of defendants in court. I have faith in our criminal justice system to seek
justice. But until there is a politically tenable solution, I’m not sure you can insinuate that
Obama was dishonest. I’m not sure where you’re going with the autistic kids comment but if it
has to do with Obama’s comments regarding Paul Ryan’s budget proposal as it relates to
Medicaid, again I believe you’re off the mark. Obama signed legislation renewing funding for
autism research and treatment and was hailed by autism related organizations for doing so. His
comments regarding allowing autistic kids to have to fend for themselves was in response
to Paul Ryan’s budget proposal whereas Medicaid funding would be given to the states as block
grants rather than requiring the states to spend as dictated by the feds. Since the proposal wasn’t
to take effect until 2022, maybe 2020, there’s no saying what the states would have done. But, in
my opinion, allowing the states to “spend it as they see fit based on their individual state’s
need”, may just mean that the federal money allocated within the Medicaid block grant that was
earmarked for kids with autism, could or may be spent on “other” Medicaid expenses. Thus, in
my opinion, its possible that kids with autism might indeed be fending for themselves. Actions
speak louder than words as his signing the autism legislation attests. As for
raising the debt ceiling comments go, I call it “politics.” Many politicians have railed against
something that they may have, in the past, supported, particularly when they know there are
enough “yea” or “nay” votes, depending on which way they’re going to rail, in an
attempt to embarrass the other side or make for sound bites that play well to the home town
audience. Some would call it political theatre. Unpatriotic? I don’t believe so. If you’d like to
read up on an interesting description of the debt ceiling debate, check out the link:
http://hschneider.hubpages.com/hub/The- ... ing-Debate
Again, in my opinion, the republican faux outrage machine worked overtime on this one. Like
Obama was the first to raise it and the first politician to support something they previously
opposed. But that’s just me. Again, I don’t see how being honest and forthright with what your
current negotiating position is to a foreign leader, as it relates to nuclear reduction talks and other weighty issues, by stating the obvious, that because you as president and one third of the senate are headed toward re-election, that your bargaining ability is hampered by that fact and that it would be in everyone’s best interest to hold off on real meaningful discussions until after the elections is prudent and realistic. Any deal hammered out, whatever it is, would have to be approved by the senate. And Obama may not even be the president by the time the vote is taken or the deal is made. Again, what exactly is that evidence of?
Enlighten me if I’ve misinterpreted your comments.
You said: “and quit with the whole sign off peace. That is ridiculous.”
Sorry, maybe to you and again, it’s your opinion to which you’re entitled but I won’t. It’s how I
sign off. Maybe this will help you understand why:
1.
the normal, nonwarring condition of a nation, group of nations, or the world.
2.
( often initial capital letter ) an agreement or treaty between warring or antagonistic nations, groups, etc., to end hostilities and abstain from further fighting or antagonism: the Peace of Ryswick.
3.
a state of mutual harmony between people or groups, especially in personal relations: Try to live in peace with your neighbors.
4.
the normal freedom from civil commotion and violence of a community; public order and security: He was arrested for being drunk and disturbing the peace.
5.
cessation of or freedom from any strife or dissension.
EXPAND
6.
freedom of the mind from annoyance, distraction, anxiety, an obsession, etc.; tranquillity; serenity.
7.
a state of tranquillity or serenity: May he rest in peace.
8.
a state or condition conducive to, proceeding from, or characterized by tranquillity: the peace of a mountain resort.
9.
silence; stillness: The cawing of a crow broke the afternoon's peace.
10.
( initial capital letter, italics ) a comedy (421 b.c.) by Aristophanes.
interjection
11.
(used to express greeting or farewell or to request quietness or silence).
You said: “Democrats...against death sentences except when in the womb...See how stupid
that is to do. Your statement isn't any more honest than my example. I don't believe either
to be true.”
“I wonder when the Department of Labor will forbid parents from requiring children to make their beds, clean their rooms, or set the table for dinner.” – Ron Paul LAKE JACKSON, Texas – Congressman and 2012 Republican Presidential candidate Ron Paul issued the following statement regarding the Department of Labor’s new regulations applying child labor laws to family farms. [...]
No more stupid than what an elected member of congress had to say. The difference is that that
is my opinion expressed in a bumper sticker sized statement and I don’t hold elected office.
Yup, I believe that the current republican party, controlled as it is by the fringe way right, is pro-
life until you’re born for the simple reason that they either oppose almost any type of legislation
or regulation that might improve your life, after your born, or support legislation and/or
regulation that would harm your life after someone is born. Its my opinion, and like you, I’m
entitled to state it. I could also list all the things they’re for or against that make me think why I
do, such as: sensible gun control legislation, gutting, defunding, eliminating the EPA, cutting,
defunding AFDC, Medicaid, Medicare, education, consumer protection, healthcare, FDA,
deregulation of mining, Grover Norquist’s anti-tax pledge (beholden to an unelected lobbyist), oil and gas industries, Headstart, defense spending, etc. etc.
You said: “There is one candidate interested in peace, there is one candidate who believes
we aren't the world's policeman...there is one candidate who believes peace comes from trade with all ... But keep supporting the same thing...obviously the last 50+ years has told us that politics in Washington are leading us down a fantastic road...why would we want to support anyone who would want to change it.”
I don’t believe Ron Paul has the monopoly on peace, truth, justice or the American way. I believe Obama is interested in peace as well. If re-elected, he’ll bring the troops home from Afghanistan and he hasn’t been brow beaten to act irrationally toward Iran. He also didn’t jump right in and arm the rebels in Syria. Prudent, thoughtful but not afraid to use American military might when necessary (killing Osama, Libya). This president isn’t making decisions or trying to run the country in a vacuum or from a surplus budget/economic boom, like the previous president, and running it into the ground or operating in a vacuum. He inherited a mess, a major mess of epic proportions and is making s-l-o-w progress toward digging out of it, particularly in light of unprecedented opposition. “Its our stated goal to see this president fail and be a one term president.” How’s that for patriotism? I also don’t believe we should be the world’s policeman and that trade brings peace so I’d agree with you there. But what is Ron Paul’s alternative? On our military overseas? On eliminating the Fed? I checked his website and while I saw his reasons for opposing these things, I didn’t see what he suggests should replace it or how it would work or how the US would react to the aftermath of such policies. It’s easy to be against something. Eliminating whole government departments and withdrawing our military from everywhere without articulating your plan for the result of those actions is disingenuous and irresponsible. Much harder to articulate how you’d solve something or what operating in the new paradigm your policies created. Personally, I think this country has done pretty well over the past 50 years. Not on everything mind you as we’re certainly not perfect but there is no other place I’d rather live and raise my family. So I don’t know why you think the past 50 years has been a “fantastic road.” Again, enlighten me.
I’d be willing to bet that if we were to meet before a show, we’d have more in common than differences, despite our varying political views. That being said, I don’t consider you the “enemy” but rather someone who if they worked with me, like when Americans work together, we could accomplish a whole lot of that change that you and I want to see. I’ll stand by my support for Obama versus Romney as I believe Obama has more of my interests at heart than Romney does. Pretty simple really.
Peace.
Libtardaplorable©. And proud of it.
Brilliantati©
Actually I was referring to the republicans comment. I typed the wrong peace :oops: sorry about that. I wasn't referring to that part. Just the part about republicans and being on your own nonsense...
In the interest of saving space. I won't reply to everything above specifically. but am going to pick a few highlights.
That’s your opinion which you’re entitled to. I believe Obama is an honest president. If my
memory serves, he attempted to close GITMO by seeking the transfer of prisoners to US prison
facilities on the mainland, as well as other foreign nations. I believe there were a few states’
that had towns or counties with unused or underused prison facilities that would have welcomed
the opportunity to house these prisoners (good for the local economy). Then the republican faux
outrage machine kicked in and the plan was scrapped...But until there is a politically tenable solution, I’m not sure you can insinuate that Obama was dishonest.
so it was scrapped because he couldn't do it? or that he was afraid to do it? That is exactly what I mean by dishonest in regards to a politician. did he out right lie? no, he did omit from saying I will only close gitmo if it doesn't harm me politically...no he didn't but that would have been more truthful wouldn't it? I believe the President talking to the Russian President is an example of what is wrong with politics. We will only make the tough decisions as long as our re-election hopes aren't dashed because of standing up for what we believe in.
...Thus, in my opinion, its possible that kids with autism might indeed be fending for themselves. Actions
speak louder than words as his signing the autism legislation attests.
You don't see a problem with a President deliberately using ridiculous language? And I won't defend Paul's use of hyperbole either. That is for people like me to do and it gets dangerous when it is done by those thought to be in charge. The states may also choose to spend the medicaid block grants on a craps table to try and double it...but I doubt that will happen. So could it, yes, will it, no...
as for the stuff on peace. We may have to disagree on some of it, but what made arming rebels in libya a smart prudent decision, while not doing it in Syria was also smart and prudent? How about arming neither and realizing it isn't our god damn country to meddle in in the first place?
the answers are out there and very easy to find if you are actually interested. I would encourage to look into what would replace the fed, but I know Ron Paul's ideas are out there. There are many brighter people than I on the subject of economics here on the train, I am sure that what you are looking for has been discussed. Bringing our military home would bolster our national defense. Not sure what plan you need to have other than that. Bringing our troops home and opening trade lines with all will go more for our national security than having bases around the world and alliances with some governments and not others... The point of eliminating the departments is to NOT replace them.
So I don’t know why you think the past 50 years has been a “fantastic road.” Again, enlighten me.
I don't think that it has been fantastic. that was sarcasm.
the value of a dollar has lost a frighteningly large purchasing power amount. Far more than wages have kept up with...
The department of education giving out easy to get loans to go to college was an idea that was noble, it has created a monster in tuition costs that saddle every new graduate with more and more debt.
An ever increasingly complicated tax code. Wars, seemingly unending, oddly selective military action. Consolidating federal powers while degrading states' rights. An unholy alliance with big business that has grown stronger every year. Government intrusion in energy markets has picked a winner (oil) without allowing a true free market to have a say on what products should win. Tax credits go to those with the strongest lobby...and so on and so on...
I could go on for hours about why I think the last 50 years of legislation have driven us down...could go on for days if we go back 100 years...
I won't vote for Romney either...but I don't like to pretend we only have the two choices. And we may have a lot in common as to the goals and our hope for final results...I prefer to not fall into the lesser of two evils game though. I don't believe for a second that Democrats or Republicans at heart are against America...I do believe the normal people on all sides of the spectrum want the same thing...a better place to live...we just have different ideas on how to get there.
didn't end up saving that much space
It is terrifying when you are too stupid to know who is dumb
- Joe Rogan
Defend freedom.
Romney-woot!
http://youtu.be/zyyz2VdjSz0
it aint over yet me friend. Rules...who knew they should be followed?
It is terrifying when you are too stupid to know who is dumb
- Joe Rogan
"Becoming a Bruce fan is like hitting puberty as a musical fan. It's inevitable." - dcfaithful
I like that thought
Repeating an oft-used campaign line, Romney told the crowd that in order to create jobs, “it helps to have had a job.”
If Obama had actually been allowed to implement the changes he wanted to implement then there's a good chance those jobs would be avaialble now. But instead the rich get richer and the poor get poorer, and now the Republicans have the audacity to blame Obama for this state of affairs.
Their hypocrisy and cynicism knows no bounds.
The next American Century is upon us!
Mr. Speaker, "where are the jobs?!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"
And really, Romney? And you'd like me to believe that you actually cared about a Chinese pro-democracy political dissident? Really?
Woot Newt Woot!
Peace.
Libtardaplorable©. And proud of it.
Brilliantati©
Romney discussed the plight of taxes on small businesses at the Sauereisen Concrete Company, which has been owned by the same family for three generations.
“Right now small business, the top rate they pay is the individual tax rate of 35% and 35% of what they make will go into the government income tax rolls. Then they have the state income tax rolls on top of that,” Romney
Land of the free, home of the brave.
We're back!
Woot
this is again a right wing talking point, that obama "had both houses". and it is absolutely bullshit. i hate that people do not understand the following, and yes i am giving you all a civics and history lesson here....
1. the democrats had the senate, yes. they had a simple majority and a simple majority only. the republicans in the senate have filibustered every single piece of legislation that obama has wanted. you don't believe me? look it up. do you know what a filibuster is and how it works? if not you should look it up too because it is a stalling tactic that keeps legislation from being debated and brought to a vote and it is a coward's technique. the dems had the opportunity to change the senate rules to not allow filibusters but they CHOSE NOT TO because they know that the gop would continue to use it and implement the anti filibuster rules against them if the gop ever won the senate again, so why outlaw something that the other side will certainly outlaw against you out of spite if you do it to them first?? the constitution does not mandate that everything has to have 60 votes in the senate to pass. it is the senate rules that are set at the beginning of their terms every few years.
2. the republicans as a party all vote together on nearly every issue. to break a filibuster in the senate you have to have 60 votes. the dems did not ever have a 60 vote majority in the senate, so everything that got filibustered did not have the 60 votes to override the filibuster because the dems did not have the votes, and god knows no republicans were going to break rank to allow legislation to move forward...
3. the dems are a diverse party and they do not all strictly vote the party line like the republicans do. they have people break rank all the time. the dems have a whole faction called "blue dogs" or conservative democrats from conservative states or districts. these are similar to what rush calls RINOS...they have not gone along with all of obama's ideas because it means they would have been committing political suicide back home. if they support a president that is unpopular in their home district they are gonna lose the next election....so these 20 or so blue dogs in the senate did not always support obama or his policies out of the instinct of self preservation. when it the last time republicans have done that?
so as you can see, the dems technically on paper had a numbers majority in the senate, but they did not have the numbers that are now required to pass every single item that is filibustered. so as you can see, obama never "had" both houses in any sort of effective majority.
keep up the hannity and limbaugh talking points though. it is fun debunking them....
"Well, you tell him that I don't talk to suckas."
Obama $8.3 billion slush fund
by gimmesometruth27 » 30 Apr 2012 12:17
here is a nice op-ed written by a fellow at the very conservative brookings institution and another guy at the very conservative american enterprise institute. this most likely deserves its own thread, but since we are talking about short term memory loss and unwillingness to compromise and finger pointing with regard to whose fault this really is, i am posting it here. it is pretty bad when conservatives are outright trashing their party... but this is true....
Let’s just say it: The Republicans are the problem.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/ ... story.html
Rep. Allen West, a Florida Republican, was recently captured on video asserting that there are “78 to 81” Democrats in Congress who are members of the Communist Party. Of course, it’s not unusual for some renegade lawmaker from either side of the aisle to say something outrageous. What made West’s comment — right out of the McCarthyite playbook of the 1950s — so striking was the almost complete lack of condemnation from Republican congressional leaders or other major party figures, including the remaining presidential candidates.
It’s not that the GOP leadership agrees with West; it is that such extreme remarks and views are now taken for granted.
We have been studying Washington politics and Congress for more than 40 years, and never have we seen them this dysfunctional. In our past writings, we have criticized both parties when we believed it was warranted. Today, however, we have no choice but to acknowledge that the core of the problem lies with the Republican Party.
The GOP has become an insurgent outlier in American politics. It is ideologically extreme; scornful of compromise; unmoved by conventional understanding of facts, evidence and science; and dismissive of the legitimacy of its political opposition.
When one party moves this far from the mainstream, it makes it nearly impossible for the political system to deal constructively with the country’s challenges.
“Both sides do it” or “There is plenty of blame to go around” are the traditional refuges for an American news media intent on proving its lack of bias, while political scientists prefer generality and neutrality when discussing partisan polarization. Many self-styled bipartisan groups, in their search for common ground, propose solutions that move both sides to the center, a strategy that is simply untenable when one side is so far out of reach.
It is clear that the center of gravity in the Republican Party has shifted sharply to the right. Its once-legendary moderate and center-right legislators in the House and the Senate — think Bob Michel, Mickey Edwards, John Danforth, Chuck Hagel — are virtually extinct.
The post-McGovern Democratic Party, by contrast, while losing the bulk of its conservative Dixiecrat contingent in the decades after the civil rights revolution, has retained a more diverse base. Since the Clinton presidency, it has hewed to the center-left on issues from welfare reform to fiscal policy. While the Democrats may have moved from their 40-yard line to their 25, the Republicans have gone from their 40 to somewhere behind their goal post.
What happened? Of course, there were larger forces at work beyond the realignment of the South. They included the mobilization of social conservatives after the 1973Roe v. Wade decision, the anti-tax movement launched in 1978 by California’s Proposition 13, the rise of conservative talk radio after a congressional pay raise in 1989, and the emergence of Fox News and right-wing blogs. But the real move to the bedrock right starts with two names: Newt Gingrich and Grover Norquist.
From the day he entered Congress in 1979, Gingrich had a strategy to create a Republican majority in the House: convincing voters that the institution was so corrupt that anyone would be better than the incumbents, especially those in the Democratic majority. It took him 16 years, but by bringing ethics charges against Democratic leaders; provoking them into overreactions that enraged Republicans and united them to vote against Democratic initiatives; exploiting scandals to create even more public disgust with politicians; and then recruiting GOP candidates around the country to run against Washington, Democrats and Congress, Gingrich accomplished his goal.
Ironically, after becoming speaker, Gingrich wanted to enhance Congress’s reputation and was content to compromise with President Bill Clinton when it served his interests. But the forces Gingrich unleashed destroyed whatever comity existed across party lines, activated an extreme and virulently anti-Washington base — most recently represented by tea party activists — and helped drive moderate Republicans out of Congress. (Some of his progeny, elected in the early 1990s, moved to the Senate and polarized its culture in the same way.)
Norquist, meanwhile, founded Americans for Tax Reform in 1985 and rolled out his Taxpayer Protection Pledge the following year. The pledge, which binds its signers to never support a tax increase (that includes closing tax loopholes), had been signed as of last year by 238 of the 242 House Republicans and 41 of the 47 GOP senators, according to ATR. The Norquist tax pledge has led to other pledges, on issues such as climate change, that create additional litmus tests that box in moderates and make cross-party coalitions nearly impossible. For Republicans concerned about a primary challenge from the right, the failure to sign such pledges is simply too risky.
Today, thanks to the GOP, compromise has gone out the window in Washington. In the first two years of the Obama administration, nearly every presidential initiative met with vehement, rancorous and unanimous Republican opposition in the House and the Senate, followed by efforts to delegitimize the results and repeal the policies. The filibuster, once relegated to a handful of major national issues in a given Congress, became a routine weapon of obstruction, applied even to widely supported bills or presidential nominations. And Republicans in the Senate have abused the confirmation process to block any and every nominee to posts such as the head of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, solely to keep laws that were legitimately enacted from being implemented.
In the third and now fourth years of the Obama presidency, divided government has produced something closer to complete gridlock than we have ever seen in our time in Washington, with partisan divides even leading last year to America’s first credit downgrade.
On financial stabilization and economic recovery, on deficits and debt, on climate change and health-care reform, Republicans have been the force behind the widening ideological gaps and the strategic use of partisanship. In the presidential campaign and in Congress, GOP leaders have embraced fanciful policies on taxes and spending, kowtowing to their party’s most strident voices.
Republicans often dismiss nonpartisan analyses of the nature of problems and the impact of policies when those assessments don’t fit their ideology. In the face of the deepest economic downturn since the Great Depression, the party’s leaders and their outside acolytes insisted on obeisance to a supply-side view of economic growth — thus fulfilling Norquist’s pledge — while ignoring contrary considerations.
The results can border on the absurd: In early 2009, several of the eight Republican co-sponsors of a bipartisan health-care reform plan dropped their support; by early 2010, the others had turned on their own proposal so that there would be zero GOP backing for any bill that came within a mile of Obama’s reform initiative. As one co-sponsor, Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.), told The Washington Post’s Ezra Klein: “I liked it because it was bipartisan. I wouldn’t have voted for it.”
And seven Republican co-sponsors of a Senate resolution to create a debt-reduction panel voted in January 2010 against their own resolution, solely to keep it from getting to the 60-vote threshold Republicans demanded and thus denying the president a seeming victory.
This attitude filters down far deeper than the party leadership. Rank-and-file GOP voters endorse the strategy that the party’s elites have adopted, eschewing compromise to solve problems and insisting on principle, even if it leads to gridlock. Democratic voters, by contrast, along with self-identified independents, are more likely to favor deal-making over deadlock.
Democrats are hardly blameless, and they have their own extreme wing and their own predilection for hardball politics. But these tendencies do not routinely veer outside the normal bounds of robust politics. If anything, under the presidencies of Clinton and Obama, the Democrats have become more of a status-quo party. They are centrist protectors of government, reluctantly willing to revamp programs and trim retirement and health benefits to maintain its central commitments in the face of fiscal pressures.
No doubt, Democrats were not exactly warm and fuzzy toward George W. Bush during his presidency. But recall that they worked hand in glove with the Republican president on the No Child Left Behind Act, provided crucial votes in the Senate for his tax cuts, joined with Republicans for all the steps taken after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks and supplied the key votes for the Bush administration’s financial bailout at the height of the economic crisis in 2008. The difference is striking.
The GOP’s evolution has become too much for some longtime Republicans. Former senator Chuck Hagel of Nebraskacalled his party “irresponsible” in an interview with the Financial Times in August, at the height of the debt-ceiling battle. “I think the Republican Party is captive to political movements that are very ideological, that are very narrow,” he said. “I’ve never seen so much intolerance as I see today in American politics.”
And Mike Lofgren, a veteran Republican congressional staffer, wrote an anguished diatribe last year about why he was ending his career on the Hill after nearly three decades. “The Republican Party is becoming less and less like a traditional political party in a representative democracy and becoming more like an apocalyptic cult, or one of the intensely ideological authoritarian parties of 20th century Europe,” he wrote on the Truthout Web site.
Shortly before Rep. West went off the rails with his accusations of communism in the Democratic Party, political scientists Keith Poole and Howard Rosenthal, who have long tracked historical trends in political polarization, said their studies of congressional votes found that Republicans are now more conservative than they have been in more than a century. Their data show a dramatic uptick in polarization, mostly caused by the sharp rightward move of the GOP.
If our democracy is to regain its health and vitality, the culture and ideological center of the Republican Party must change. In the short run, without a massive (and unlikely) across-the-board rejection of the GOP at the polls, that will not happen. If anything, Washington’s ideological divide will probably grow after the 2012 elections.
In the House, some of the remaining centrist and conservative “Blue Dog” Democrats have been targeted for extinction by redistricting, while even ardent tea party Republicans, such as freshman Rep. Alan Nunnelee (Miss.), have faced primary challenges from the right for being too accommodationist. And Mitt Romney’s rhetoric and positions offer no indication that he would govern differently if his party captures the White House and both chambers of Congress.
We understand the values of mainstream journalists, including the effort to report both sides of a story. But a balanced treatment of an unbalanced phenomenon distorts reality. If the political dynamics of Washington are unlikely to change anytime soon, at least we should change the way that reality is portrayed to the public.
Our advice to the press: Don’t seek professional safety through the even-handed, unfiltered presentation of opposing views. Which politician is telling the truth? Who is taking hostages, at what risks and to what ends?
Also, stop lending legitimacy to Senate filibusters by treating a 60-vote hurdle as routine. The framers certainly didn’t intend it to be. Report individual senators’ abusive use of holds and identify every time the minority party uses a filibuster to kill a bill or nomination with majority support.
Look ahead to the likely consequences of voters’ choices in the November elections. How would the candidates govern? What could they accomplish? What differences can people expect from a unified Republican or Democratic government, or one divided between the parties?
In the end, while the press can make certain political choices understandable, it is up to voters to decide. If they can punish ideological extremism at the polls and look skeptically upon candidates who profess to reject all dialogue and bargaining with opponents, then an insurgent outlier party will have some impetus to return to the center. Otherwise, our politics will get worse before it gets better.
Thomas E. Mann is a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, and Norman J. Ornstein is a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute. This essay is adapted from their book “It’s Even Worse Than It Looks: How the American Constitutional System Collided With the New Politics of Extremism,” which will be available Tuesday.
"Well, you tell him that I don't talk to suckas."
Rubio, speculated to be a top candidate to serve as Romney's running mate, added his voice Sunday to that criticism, accusing the president of repeatedly failing in situations involving human rights. He pointed to the Iranian uprising of 2009, an event in which the Obama administration largely refrained from involvement.
"And we see that again here now, in China, where somehow this administration looked almost reluctant to forcefully assert the United States' defense of human rights and the principles of human rights," Rubio said.
Very interesting article that.
Thanks for posting.
Ahh, so you think the esteemed Senator from Florida can speak, act or have a cogent opinion on human rights in China? Really? He can't fully articulate why he should be Mitts running mate. And he'll tell China how it should be? Really? I wonder how many Spanish speakers there are in China? He'll definitately connect. Through the Wii. And Iran? He's an authority on Iran and geo-politics? He has an inside scoop on what the Obama Administration has been doing with promoting democracy in Iran? Hmmm, what exactly should the US be doing in Iran? Bomb. Bomb. Bomb? Iran? Sorry, but McCain's Reagan moment wasn't very presidential. But I digress. Really? Rubio? That's the best you can come up with? Really? Romney and Rubio?
R Squared, we'll put you in a box!
As an American , I respect your right to be foolhardy and throw your vote away. Its cool. But really? Rubio? You'd have a better chance with Ron Paul.
Rubio? Really?
Peace.
Libtardaplorable©. And proud of it.
Brilliantati©
In real news, sanatorum is now on board.
Lawyer
Law professor
Chicago Community Organizer
Chicago State Senator
United States Senator
He has had a job or two
Gotcha
"Becoming a Bruce fan is like hitting puberty as a musical fan. It's inevitable." - dcfaithful
And you know, I'm not an Obama supporter... But for Christ sakes, the man has had a JOB. I'm not going to make up some kind of a fib like that.
So, do you tell your children, if you have them, that they can be president? Or only if they amass untold amounts of wealth first? Yea, you belive in the American Dream alright.
Ha, Obama hasn't held a job thus he is unfit to be re-elected. Really? That is what you've devolved to? The French at least have intelligent debate prior to picking their candidates. Freedom fries anyone?
Peace.
Libtardaplorable©. And proud of it.
Brilliantati©
One way or the other, can't have it both if you want to make sense.
Duh
Woot
http://news.yahoo.com/romney-taking-cre ... 25566.html
"Becoming a Bruce fan is like hitting puberty as a musical fan. It's inevitable." - dcfaithful