Have a good day all. I have enjoyed the conversation, although we differ in some of our opinions.
Thanks to express your views and to not have this degenerate to insults. Appreciated.
Insults wouldn’t be allowed in this forum anyway. But you’re welcome.
I don’t like the subsidies in Obamacare. I don’t see why I have to pay for others’ insurance, and I don’t understand why young people don’t see it as another shift of income from young to old, to the same people that are bankrupting the country.
But I fail to see how shutting down the government has anything to do with any of that.
How do I feel about House Republicans? I don’t know yet; I don’t yet know who’s voted for/against the shutdown.
Why does Obama need to be involved in the debt ceiling debate at all? What can he do about it? Congress spends the money, it’s really their problem, right?
Well I don’t see why I have to subsidize through my taxes banks and oil companies and corporations which get tax breaks I don’t. I don’t see why I have to subsidize the largest known war machine the universe has ever known for going on 8 decades now. There are 100 million guns in the US in private hands that more than protect us. It would be nice if we could use our vast wealth on food stamps and health care rather than the nasty things the money is spent for. Latest boondoogle? 420 million cigarettes used for ATF stings have gone missing.
The Republicans can’t even agree with themselves anymore, so it isn’t really a cherry pick to cite this article on the following:
Didn’t George W Bush Himself say, “We don’t negotiate with terrorists?” That is how the GOP is behaving- terroristic threats unless we legislate their agenda. I move Boehner sucks my left one.
If members of Congress would like to discuss their proposals in a thorough, fact-based manner in order to clarify their merits, fine. At the point of a threat? Like this??? This isn’t a question of political horse trading. They threaten a government shutdown. If I were Assad, I’d approve. If I were Khameni, I would approve. Osama Bin Laden, I am sure, would have approved a shutdown a day or so before Delta Force 5 showed up to put a cap in his ass.
The GOP, if not actively aiding our enemies, sure seem to be behaving in a way consistent with the wishes of our enemies, as I conceive them anyway. Is there something about Citizens United that I ought to be informed about? Are wealthy, foreign factions funding the GOP’s zeal for shutting down the United States’ government? I don’t know, but at this point I wouldn’t be surprised.
Anyway, fuck 'em. The only vote on the debt ceiling shall be a clean vote on the debt ceiling, most anything else shall be vetoed. After all, Congress (House included) approved all this spending they are now suddenly against, no? If that isn’t good enough for them and they force a shutdown, well the pain of that will, in the long run, be worth it in exchange for being rid of the GOP for good in '14.
The real beneficiaries of Citizens United are the wealthy domestic corporations, the ones who want to buy Congressmen so they can get legislation passed which is favorable to their business interests. And they don’t want a shut-down! This sort of thing is bad for business. It disrupts the economy. It makes the bureaucracy unpredictable.
The “wealthy oligarch” faction of the Republican Party is completely against this crap. The only people favoring it are the ass-ignorant Tea-jerking racist ideological fuckwads of the extreme “God gave us Guns to kill Gays” variety. The hell of it is that this is the current soul of the Grand Old Party.
Is it not the duty of the minority party to oppose those bills and government policies they disagree with ?
I suspect if the election results were different and we had a Republican President then you all would applaud the efforts of the minority party (if so Democrat) undermine the goals of the President.
I seem to recall exactly that during the Bush years.
I don’t like people throwing around the word treason, especially since it’s narrowly defined in the Constitution. There’s a perfectly good word called “sedition” that nobody seems to want to use.
I think both words are poisonous to throw around, no matter how I feel about the Republicans in Congress right now. But I could get behind more people going to “sedition” instead of “treason”.
Really? Because I recall the Democrats rolling over like the pathetic lapdogs they are. But perhaps you have some examples similar to current GOP behavior.
Don’t you remember when the Democratic party tried to defund Medicare Part D, and default on the national debt? Well?
Gyrate, I suspect you have selective memory. The Dems were just as nasty during the Bush years to oppose the policies of the Administration.
You not recall the Bush Derangement Syndrome people and their behavior of the time. Right down to a movie highlighting the assassination of the sitting President ???
Of course at the time that was free speech, speaking truth to power, etc. I would just love to see someone do a similar move now and the reaction of those on the left side of the political center. For sure you would not consider it free speech.
The the left gives it pretty good to the Republican side when they want.
Then I’m sure you can provide some examples. Should be easy, yes?
Wow - I’d totally missed the Democrats making that movie.
I do remember this one, which was made in the UK, but as you may recall the UK has not governed the US for quite some time now and certainly never via a film company.
For sure? You sure about that? As sure as you are about Congressional Democrats stonewalling Republican legislation and appointments?
“The left” is not a monolithic entity. We’re talking about Congress, and the Democrats have done remarkably little obstructionism of the sort done by the GOP since January 20, 2009. Of course the GOP likes to pretty that each side is as bad as the other, which allows it to keep doing bad things because “they do it too!” even when doing things far worse by an exponential factor.
They don’t disagree with Obamacare. They wrote it.
The Democrats did no such thing. There were plenty of Democrats crossing the aisle.
Can you name one major part of Bush’s agenda that was actually thwarted by Democrats? The only thing that comes close is immigration reform, which was actually torpedoed by his own Republican party because they didn’t think it was punishing enough.
I suspect that the extreme right looked at the 2008 election and said:
"They nominated a WHAT!? and decided that there was no way the GOP would lose any match-up involving a black man, and sat on their hands.
Once the reality sank in - all of a sudden, there is this “grass-roots” (yeah, right) Tea Party - and it could appeal to blatant racism - even getting to use the N word on their posters and everything.
To say Obama energized the loons, who then steered the GOP further Right than had been seen since 1930, seems to be how i’d summarize why the GOP is now repudiating the GOP of 2010.
I grew up in IN - a lesson in GOP gerrymandering - the local elections in the vastly rural counties ar GOP, which ensures that the House Redistricting is done to the GOP benefit.
Result: the majority of House are GOP - but, the Senate, which is not subject to Districting, is Dem.
Quit voting GOP until after 2024 - let the Dems do the next Redistricting, and maybe we’ll have a government which doesn’t shut down every time the GOP loses a vote. Repeatedly.
There was also a comic book. So what?
At least we didn’t go for a damn fool impeachment that had no chance of succeeding, and at least we didn’t shut down the government over our partisan demands.
One of the harshest fights involved Bush’s pet plan to privatize Social Security, and, while it got nasty, it didn’t involve a government shut down.
We didn’t pull anything close to the level of this shit, and we opposed Bush’s proposals; we didn’t simply set out to make sure his Presidency failed. That’s what the current brand of Republicans have sold their souls to accomplish with Obama.
:rolleyes: Either your memory isn’t very good, or you have been listening to right wing lies so long that you believe them. Here is the Wiki entry on the movie. It was made by all those hard core Democrats in England. And it had a serious purpose. You can apologize to us now.
I mentioned that nearly a week ago. I’m sure Dbgb4 will be back when time permits to provide us with actual examples of the Congressional Democrats under Bush acting in the way that the Congressional Republicans are currently acting. He (or she) wouldn’t just accuse us of misremembering things without solid evidence that we were wrong, I feel confident.
I agree with much of what is being said here, particularly about the unfortunate choice of the Republicans to obstruct anything the Dems try to do, regardless of whether they even like the idea.
I actually hate Obamacare, firstly because it is a corporate-friendly insurance company ass-kissing joke. Secondly I hate it because I didn’t like how the Dems rammed it down everyone’s throats when there was clear majority opposition to it. If the people were misinformed, that sucks, but it doesn’t justify overriding their opinion, especially in such a condescending way. Seriously, how fucking condescending is it to tell someone who opposes a policy that it’s only because they don’t understand it, so we’re going to go ahead and pass it and you’ll see later. Bullshit. If people don’t understand a policy, the onus is on the ones who want to pass the legislation to educate them. If they fail to educate, then they should respect the will of the people.
That said, I hate what Republicans are doing more than I hate Obamacare. I think they have consistently behaved like petulant children. I’m pretty sure there are 2nd grade classrooms that could resolve conflict better than this. I’m actually a little giddy about the government shutdown because I think it’s going to piss off a lot of people. Between this and Republicans refusing to air primary debates on anything but Fox News, these people are digging their own grave.
When Obama won in 2012, there were all these thoughtful conservatives coming out of the woodwork to critique the problems within their own party. They fully acknowledged it was all madness and some major changes were needed to make the Republicans a viable option in 2016. I thought, perhaps naively, this would lead to a radical change in the Republican party. They would learn to embrace diversity and start to attract more moderate constituencies, and normal, rational conservatives who weren’t bigots would arrive in droves to resuscitate their party. But no, they’re just taking that train all the way to crazy town. So if they get absolutely slaughtered in 2016, I have no sympathy for them. That’s what happens when you elect developmentally stunted extremists.
It’s definitely corporate-friendly, no question - just look at all the new enrollees Big Insurance gets to charge. But it’s no joke - the number of people who will now be able to afford coverage is very real, as the millions who logged in yesterday will attest. And it’s also about the best we could get at that time.
Nope. There was clear majority support, if you look at polls that included “Doesn’t go far enough”, and that majority has only increased since and will likely continue to increase.
If some “people” are misinformed because they fucking refuse to listen to anything but the comforting lies their favorite cable channel tells them, no, that’s their *own *damn fault. You can’t *make *somebody understand who doesn’t want to, you can only walk away and let them find out for themselves when the outside-the-cable-box reality sets in. Seriously, what else could the Dems have done? The bill was always available for anyone to download and read, and was actually shorter than Palin’s "auto"biography for that matter.