Argument from anecdote may be compelling to you, but it doesn’t demonstrate that the Republicans are not using the filibuster in record numbers.
Perhaps this is a good example of why you should do your research before posting, rather than merely threatening to do so after the fact. Rule 22 is the Rule that allows the procedural filibuster, the very issue at hand here.
This is an example of making a claim, citing evidence for something else, and then later pretending to have supported your claim. I have to repeatedly post your quote and call your attention to it in order for you to actually address it, allowing you to then call me a stalker.
Here again is your quote, and I do hope that you will take the time to compare it against your evidence carefully.
First, what about the Hayek book and the rest of Ayn Rand’s books, all of which you claimed are best-sellers. By what metric is Hayek’s book a best seller? Please cite.
Secondly, we’ve already discussed the wide vacillation of rankings on Amazon, which should indicate to anyone without an agenda that Amazon book sales numbers are not very reliable. However, why else should we not point to Amazon book sales as evidence for a growing general interest in Altas Shrugged? Because devotees intentionally “book bomb” Amazon to pump up Atlas Shrugged sales figures.
Fortunately, you are here to help spread that message to the SDMB.
I find it highly amusing that a group of Ayn Rand devotees would game the Amazon website in order to make it appear that Atlas Shrugged is popular. How in hell does that A equal the other A?
In the future, please cite numbers from somewhere other than Amazon or the Ayn Rand Institute in order to argue for a growing popularity of Rand’s philosophy.
I assume you are not alleging that the fact that Obama is proposing more spending than any other President in history has nothing to do with the other fact that he is proposing the largest federal deficit in history.
Could you please produce a cite showing that Amazon book sales numbers are not reliable?
OK, I’ll try and explain again. Like a household, the government has income and outgoings. Let’s pretend the government is a household. In 2009 it had to go into debt for a huge emergency expenditure (the stimulus). It had already been bringing in less money than it was paying out for the previous eight years and had an ongoing amount in 2009 that was due to spending and income patterns in previous years (inherited ongoing half a trillion a year deficit). But in 2009 the household saw reduced work hours so its income dropped dramatically from 2008 levels. So when you have an existing yearly debt, then you add a big emergency payment, then you add on the effect of a big drop in income from the previous year you get where we are now.
Clinton proposed his own balanced budget if you read your own cite. He just differed from the GOP on how to balance it. It isn’t true that he wanted to put cuts back till he was out of office. The shutting down government thing was a bit of theatre like all the bs investigations. It was the implementation of PAYGO rules that was key in balancing the budget. If the GOP hadn’t scrapped them in 2001 they wouldn’t have been able to pass the tax cuts or OK the two unfunded wars or pass the unfunded Medicare bill which will add $15 trillion with a “t” to America’s long term debt picture, more in one single bill than the current national debt. Clinton’s “raised spensing” in 1993 was a paltry $31 billion stimulus to helpp repair the economic damage caused by the recession he inherited, an irrelevant amount in a two trillion dollar budget.
Obama is going to create record deficits because of the situation he inherited. Huge tax cuts, two unfunded wars and an economic collapse caused by eight years of pro-growth business-friendly free market policies are to blame. As you can see from this chart the ongoing deficits are entirely due to the two unfunded wars, disastrous tax cuts and economic meltdown that Obama inherited. Not due to any spending that Obama is responsible for. It’s not like he’s spending trillions on the national ACORN Escalade-for-every-minority-who-signs-up-to-vote program or the Bill Ayers Memorial giant welfare handout or something. He’s inherited an ongoing fiscal trainwreck not of his making as the chart clearly shows. And as you posted above he’s spending more than any other president because the budget always increases every year. Each president always spends more than the previous ones.
Here’s the chart. I posted this same chart in reply to one of your posts last week and you never got back to me. I’d be interested in your views on it :
Not sure “reliable” is the right word to apply here. It seems Amazon is not totally up front about their book ranking system (at least from the little I read looking in to this). FWIW I found this although it is dated (i.e. do not know is this is still the way of things):
In the case of this book, it’s a best seller in the context of academic books. The Kindle version is the best selling kindle book put out by the University of Chicago press. Overall, the book’s monthly sales have more than quadrupled since 2008.
As for your problems with Amazon’s rankings, I don’t really care. I’ve provided cites that reasonably back up what I said. And now we’ve wasted an amazing amount of time arguing a single throwaway line I made in a post. This is exactly the kind of useless ankle-biting that needs to stop on this board. It’s killing debate.
In the future, I’ll cite whatever I damn well please.
Then it’s a good thing I never claimed otherwise, isn’t it Mr. Strawman?
Rule 22 is a cloture rule, used to END filibusters. Until Rule 22 was passed in 1917, there was no way to stop a filibuster.
Once again: Any senator can filibuster. He’s not invoking any rule to do so - he’s just refusing to yield the floor. To stop him, a majority of 60 can invoke Rule 22, forcing a cloture vote.
Perhaps your thinking of the 1975 amendment to Rule 22, which lowered the threshold for cloture to 60 from 75. In return for that, the ‘procedural’ filibuster was allowed, which meant that the Senator didn’t actually have to talk on the floor - he could just announce his intention to do so. This was seen as preferable because a real filibuster pretty much kills ALL Senate floor voting on all bills. The procedural filibuster allows other business to be carried out unimpeded.
Regardless, Rule 22 is a cloture rule. If you repeal it, the minority can filibuster for as long as they want - so long as they actually continue speaking.
Incidentally, I’m all for the repeal of that rule. I think the procedural filibuster is stupid. And I wouldn’t mind seeing cloture require 75 votes. This is my idea of better government - watching old Senators have to stammer away for days on end, while in the meantime there’s never a big enough majority to stop him or her. Is that what you want?
You mention (again) “a big emergency payment”. This is singular. I assume you are referring to Obama’s stimulus package. That is $787 billion. That created a $1.3 trillion deficit. Fine, let’s take that as given.
Obama’s next budget is much larger than $1.3 trillion in deficit. Therefore, two thing must be true [ol][li]What you claimed about the stimulus being a one-off incident of spending must be false. BHO is spending even more now than he did last year. And [*]what you claimed about PAYGO preventing Obama from spending money that isn’t covered by tax increases and other spending cuts must be wrong too. Since the deficit and the budget both are larger, not smaller.[/ol][/li]
So, apparently both the claims you have made are false.
You’re having a bit of fun, aren’t you? It’s impossible you can’t understand the Janet and John explanation I just did. I refuse to believe you can’t understand it.
And here is the fundamentalism I am talking about.
Conservatives take it as an article of faith that government=bad. Government needs to be smaller, the market place is the ideal for almost anything barring a few very narrow government concerns (e.g. the military).
There is no nuanced look at where government should get involved because government=bad. Period. Anyone who suggests anything else will be labeled a socialist and be pummeled to death by “The Road to Serfdom” toting mobs.
Shodan displays this above. There is no nuanced look at why the numbers are the way they are. It is just Obama is presiding over the biggest deficit ever therefore Obama=bad. There is just no more to it than that to him it seems.
Taking such things as an article of faith, market=good and government=bad, with no deeper look at the issues is a fundamentalist stance.
The sad thing is the very conservatives in power who use this mantra as a bludgeon barely practice what they preach. Bush presided over the largest expansion of government since WWII:
He did that with a conservative Congress who gleefully ran down that path with him.
When they do try to get government out of the way, as they say they are all about, they unleashed unmitigated disaster on the country. Regulations? Who needs those! Government=bad, market=good so government needs to get out of the way!
The result? The biggest financial collapse since the Great Depression and record income disparity and near record unemployment.
Yet despite the historical record (deregulate the S&L industry anyone?) of these patently bad moves the mantra remains the same.
Thanks for clarifying. I will accept that at one point last year, Hayek’s book was the best selling Kindle book put out by the U of Chicago press.
Rand devotees organize “book bombs” by rebuying a specific copies in order to pump up the sales numbers on Amazon. I consider that metric to be as reliable an indicator of general popularity of the book as I do sales figures for L. Ron Hubbard’s Dianetics.
Words matter, or you wouldn’t use them. Misleading statements are not conducive to debate. Calling for accuracy in the claims that people make shouldn’t be dismissed as ankle biting.
And you’re the guy who refuses to answer a data point because it is tainted by proximity to Crooks and Liars? The evidence must be ignored because it is cited by a lefty blog? And yet, when you offer as evidence what nothing more than the opinions of persons friendly to your point of view, that’s an offering of objective fact? Are you playing by Canadian rules, here?
And in your haste to sing your aria of wounded innocence, you left out a couple of minor, but salient, facts. It is the best selling kindle book put out by the University of Chicago? Very impressive, perhaps, if we had any notion as to how many such books they have released. Your source is silent on that.
But one must, to be strictly fair, note the gargantuan sales of Mr. Hyeks academic spleen-venting (which I, personally, rank up with there Slouching To Gomorrah It has lept from the respectable 400 copies per month to “more than quadruple” that number. I daresay it stands ready to rival Mallard Fillmore’s Greatest Hits (Remainder House). That might be just short of 24,000 volumes per year! Steven King must seethe with envy.
You offer this as evidence of a massive public movement toward conservative thought?
As usual, Michael Lind nails it: The problem with today’s American right is that its most visible manifestation is not a sober, policy-oriented, think-tank-based counter-establishment, but an irrational, theatrical counter-culture.
Of course, it’s not quite the same. Abbie Hoffman never had his own TV show; nor did the old lefty counterculture ever get massive funding from the major corporations or explicit support by leading members of Congress.
There was much about Abbie Hoffman that was just plain stupid, and some others that were inspired. He should best be remembered for reminding us that political action can be a joyful and positive act, and not to leave it to sombre and bitter old men in suits.
There is no more joy to Glen Beck than a proctological examination.
