You’re calling that post vitriolic rhetoric? What the fuck?
Reading comprehension fail. That post said that no thread was safe from the vitriolic rhetoric of Diogens the Cynic. And my post said that I found that statement to be true.
Wow, you’re a tool.
I’ll concede I misunderstood, because I didn’t see Diogenes’s longer post, only the one above the post I responded to. But how can it be a failure of reading comprehension when you changed what was in the quote?
Did you honestly (honestly, sincerely, in truth and in fact) believe that his post consisted entirely of “<blah blah blah>”?
There’s stupid, and then there’s you. Lighten up, Francis.
:smack:
Let me spell it out for you in small words.
You did not quote what he really said. I saw his post above yours and thought that was what you were responding to. The post above yours was not vitriolic rhetoric. I expressed my confusion.
Dipshit.
Not if you really only have 59, and arguably 56.
Now there’s bipartisan cooperation in action.
The Reps have shut themselves out of the process. By simply opposing anything that the Democrats were elected to do, by a solid majority of We the People. You did take Civics class once, didn’t you?
How, pray tell, did I mischaracterize the bill?
Do you have anything rattling around in there except empty rhetoric?
You sure did. Plainly, emphatically, and for all the world to see. Next time keep your mouth shut until you’re not confused. Or better yet just keep your mouth shut.
Shitdip.
I’ll try to follow your brilliant example.
Before going to the effort of typing out a lengthy argument about bargaining and the costs of paying off the marginal legislator, I really need to know if your ignorance here is remediable.
Having a 60-senator majority is, if you actually think about it, incredibly difficult to work with.
“Welcome back to the 2010 Dopies, friends. It’s the moment you’ve been waiting for - we’ll announce this year’s winner of the Most Appropriate Noob User Name award. And the winner is…”
Your own is a candidate too, ya know. 
Republicans are empty calories. Particularly the cuts from above the neck. As for Republicans being pushed out of the process, you’re wrong. Here’s an example:
http://www.chickashanews.com/local/local_story_239102559.html
See how wrong you are? As wrong as a very wrong thing.
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/31234647/obamas_big_sellout Here is a Rolling Stone article on the incest at work in the people in charge of financial policy and the corporations they are in bed with.
Look ,I am not declaring Obama’s admin is a failure. But he failed to deliver on some rather simple promises. GitMo should have been closed by now. Torturing should have been halted immediately. Cuban relations should have been eased a lot more than they have. He should not have ratcheted up the Afghanistan war. Wars are breaking the US. We have to sit at the negotiation tables with the middle east governments. It has to end. We have 800 military bases around the world. They are draining the treasury every year. But we are making more not less. The consolidation of the media has continued. It will be interesting to see if Obama’s FCC stands up against the Comcast deal.
I know that he appointed Mitchell to mid east envoy. He has attempted to get Israel and the Palestinians to sit down and carve out a 2 state solution. That has to be done sooner or later. That is a good sign.
I may be impatient, but I don’t like the trends. The way the repubs act ,he may have only 2 years to get it done. The mid term elections may cut back on his power.
So having a filibuster-proof margin makes it hard to get your agenda passed. What an interesting perspective.
If Republicans reduce that margin, or (God willing) gain a majority. Will that help?
Come on - for Dems. this is practically the Perfect Storm - control of all three branches of the federal government. Yet people like you are still complaining about how tough poor widdle Obama has it
You expect the GOP to roll over? Not gonna happen.
Regards,
Shodan
I expect(ed) the GOP to actually participate in government as the loyal opposition.
Ha ha, kidding. That’s what they’re supposed to do. I expected them to pout and sulk like they’re doing. The matter of the attempted attack over Christmas is a fine example. Republicans aren’t talking about how to protect against terrorism because that’s not where their interest lies. It lies with crying about Obama some more. Republicans seem more uptight about taking three (three!) days to make a speech than the reason for or contents of this speech.
And if this alleged filibuster-proof majority includes Lieberman(I-Republican) then it does not exist.
It might, yes. But it depends on who is elected in place of which democrats.
The issue here is whether the majority party can purchase the allegiance of its most marginal senator. This is quite hard to do. There are a lot of democrat mouths to feed, and obviously resources are scarce. The republicans, by contrast, only need to pry off one democrat and this supposed filibuster-proof majority falls apart. This is a relatively easy problem for the republicans, since they can more or less identify who can be bought and throw all of their resources at that senator. The democrats have to anticipate this and adjust their internal payoffs accordingly.
Of course, when bribe your most marginal senator to keep him in the fold, that exposes another senator as marginal. Obviously the strategy is to conceal which of your senators is the most marginal from the opposition. But senators who perceive themselves as marginal have no incentive to conceal this information because they believe they can extract payoffs from the opposition party in addition to whatever they get from their own party.
And so the legislative calculus plays out. Having this supposed majority is nice on paper and is great for disingenuous people to wield as a bludgeon to attack a disliked majority. But if you think it through, you can probably come to the same conclusion. Razor-thin majorities encourage costly bargaining on the margins which distort legislative outcomes. Either you want to have a massive majority that can stand the defection of a few members or you want to be in the position that you can buy off a few members of the opposition on the cheap to get what you need done. Right now, the democrats are in neither place.
It was tough for poor widdle Bush, too. This has nothing to do with political persuasion and everything to do with legislative strategy.
Of course they won’t roll over. They have strategic advantages that they are exploiting pretty much as they should. The GOP rhetoric is pretty disgusting, but the actions they are taking are thoroughly intelligible.
A 70-30 advantage is a “razor-thin majority”? Come on.
Regards,
Shodan
Down here on planet earth, there are 58 democrats in the Senate.